Hearts and minds

The L.A. Times is jumping up and down, waving it's arms and sounding the alarm. It turns out that they found out from a source inside the Pentagon that the military is "planting" stories about good news in Iraq...in Iraqi newspapers.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.

So the articles are factual, and the operation is covert, yet the Times doesn't like it. Yes, I suppose I'd be upset too if I had to read the truth everyday. Lord knows that's not what the Times specializes in.

Some of the newspapers, such as Al Mutamar, a Baghdad-based daily run by associates of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, ran the articles as news stories, indistinguishable from other news reports. Before the war, Chalabi was the Iraqi exile favored by senior Pentagon officials to lead post-Hussein Iraq.

Others labeled the stories as "advertising," shaded them in gray boxes or used a special typeface to distinguish them from standard editorial content. But none mentioned any connection to the U.S. military.

One Aug. 6 piece, published prominently on Al Mutamar's second page, ran as a news story with the headline "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism." Documents obtained by The Times indicated that Al Mutamar was paid about $50 to run the story, though the editor of the paper said he ran such articles for free.

I have to say, I'm amazed at the depth of the investigation here. I wonder if the Times would consider how the American media reports the news? Perhaps the AP? Perhaps CBS? What causes are they tied to? Which presidential candidates have they contributed to? I want to know, I want to see how impartial our media personnel are. Mary Mapes has her new book out, I want to see the Times do a book report on it.

Is the U.S. running "fake but accurate" stories? No. They are conducting a covert operation to counter the endless stream of anti-American and anti-war screeds coming out of al Jazeera and the international press, not to mention our own American media.

See I wonder, if the media are so concerned with the war effort, why have they not reported on the slander of U.S. troops by Moveon.org?

Wait, you haven't heard? Well why not? Oh yes...not reported...

It turns out that Moveon.org has been doctoring photos of British troops, pretending they are Americans, and constructing more "our poor troops are stuck over there during the holidays, bring them home" commercials.

And don't even get me started on the fraud perpetrated by CBS on the American public with regards to the Bush TANG memos - and the fraud the media are still perpetrating in the exultation of Joe Wilson and righteous indignation at the outing of Valerie Plame.

The media have no honor left among them, and yet even now they still run around screaming "Gotcha!!!!" and exposing one covert American operation after another. First it was the CIA airline (real covert agents placed at risk, millions of dollars down the drain), then the prisons in Europe (real covert agents placed at risk, millions of dollars again, and now our allies are under threat from the E.U. (France), to fess up or face penalties, and now we have their newest idea - undermining public support in Iraq. Throw enough doubt on things, and soon everybody will suspect everyone is up to no good. It worked here in America. Just look at how the public has soured on the war, how everyone believes Bush lied about Iraq - as if he just invented the WMD idea out of thin air, as if Joe Wilson were not a proven liar.

Wars cannot be won without public support. Not even WWII could have been won without the secrecy and necessary filtration of news, information and propaganda that the Allies embarked upon. Information is a weapon during times of war, both truth and lies. Did Americans hear about the thousands dead on D-Day? No, they heard about the "liberation of Europe!" Did Americans here about the Anthrax that the Brits were planning to use to defend their homeland? No, they heard about "the Battle of Britain!" Did Americans hear that we nearly lost our shirts in Africa against the Germans? The losses in the Pacific? The unstoppable German army? The torture of Germans by American troops?

No.

Because while speech and the press should always be free, that war took place at a time when the media had tact, consideration, care, and a desire to see America and her allies win the day.

Sadly, that is no longer the case. Because the moral relativism that plagues the press is a flawed way of thinking, that leads good people to not understand what they have until it is too late. The ideals of democracy and freedom, life and liberty, the principles this country was founded upon, that for which we fight, are not equivalent to the totalitarian and sadistic malevolence of the terrorist mind.

And the media should know better than to think that fighting a war for the future of the world - and then trying to make sure that the good news gets in the paper (because otherwise it most decidedly will not) - somehow equates to the antithesis of freedom.

Oh Hillary...

Possibly making the most predictable move in recent history, Hillary Clinton has attacked President Bush for his war plan.

In her letter to voters, the senator cited prewar assurances from the White House that the United States would use the United Nations to resolve the issue of Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction.

"Based on the information that we have today, Congress never would have been asked to give the president authority to use force against Iraq," she said. Clinton stopped short of saying her vote was a mistake, the political path chosen by two other potential Democratic candidates — former vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

"Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their 'last throes," this administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq," she wrote.

Clinton's allies billed the letter as her most comprehensive statement on the war to date.

"It is time for the president to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor," she wrote.

Clinton, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said earlier this month it would be a "big mistake" for U.S. troops to pull out immediately. She stuck with that line Tuesday. "America has a big job to do now. We must set reasonable goals to finish what we started and successfully turn over Iraqi security to Iraqis," she wrote.

Yes, the war was mistake, yet we must go on fighting and dying! It's worth it, but it's not, but we're there, so we must, but we were wrong, so we should be ashamed, but we need security, so we have to finish it....blah blah blah...

The position Democrats find themselves in is one of utter convolution. They can't support the war, because they never really did. They voted, but it was for the U.N., not war. They support the troops, yet they are more willing to label all soldiers as war criminals who want to torture terrorists. No wait, scratch that, they can't even name the enemy still, so I'm not even sure who our soldiers are supposed to be torturing or killing. Insurgents? Don't they mean Saddam loyalists? - that 13% or so that didn't vote in the elections?

By the way, there's another election coming up. The media has so kindly forgotten about it. But there it is, one of the surest signs of true freedom and a sign that the Iraqi people want us there and like what we're doing.

But, as for Hillary, it's obvious she's started her 2008 campaign. But I wonder how easy this will actually be for her. Attacking the president, low poll numbers or not, doesn't seem to be that smart an option. Why?

Because Bush is not running for re-election.

Besides, as Tim Graham of The Corner so aptly points out, Hillary has her own problems on military matters.

Perhaps Co-President Hillary would like to put herself on the record about the "false assurances" and "faulty evidence" about Iraq her administration put out in the late 1990s. As for "mismanaged" military events, perhaps she would like to take credit for the Clinton team bombing a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in 1998 as a supposed attack on terror. Bush is fighting a war on terror. The Clintons thought a war on terror was something to engage in periodically to distract attention from his adulteries. She ought to be laughed off the stage after their pathetic attempts at self-defense disguised as national defense.

Is this "letter" of hers findable on the Internet? It should be posted. It seems to me that this approach sounds very John Kerry-like, very muddled. This was is a mistake and a disaster, and I'm glad I voted for it? I'm in favor of war, as long as I get to be the one who commands it, not that other guy?

Sounds about right. Will this tactic win votes? I don't know...it's a long time till 2008. Plenty of things can go right in Iraq.

Like, winning.

X marks the...bias?

Well cross my heart and hope to...be right. It appears that CNN has fired someone in light of their investigation of the phantom X.

Apparently, a viewer called in to complain about the whole X rated affair, and whoever took the call began to bait her. According to Drudge:

A CNN switchboard operator was fired over the holiday -- after the operator claimed the 'X' placed over Vice President's Dick Cheney's face was "free speech!"

"We did it just to make a point. Tell them to stop lying, Bush and Cheney," the CNN operator said to a caller. "Bring our soldiers home."

The caller initially phoned the network to complain about the all-news channel flashing an "X' over Cheney as he gave an address live from Washington.

"Was it not freedom of speech? Yes or No?" the CNN operator explained.

"If you don't like it, don't watch."

Laurie Goldberg, Senior Vice President for Public Relations with CNN, said in a release:

"A Turner switchboard operator was fired today after we were alerted to a conversation the operator had with a caller in which the operator lost his temper and expressed his personal views -- behavior that was totally inappropriate. His comments did not reflect the views of CNN. We are reaching out to the caller and expressing our deep regret to her and apologizing that she did not get the courtesy entitled to her."

Huh...I guess it could be free speech. I mean I'm free to say that CNN sucks. I can say they have terrible reporting and that they're more biased towards the cause of liberalism than the DNC. But I'm just saying...

But I do like his advice, if you don't like it, don't watch. Honestly I don't watch CNN, unless I can't avoid it if it's playing on an airport terminal TV, or it's the only channel in my hotel room. Then it's like looking at the sun, just get a glimpse of where it is and then look away.

Ah well, it looks like CNN is the one getting burned in this case. But at least we know Hollywood is back to normal. You know after reality TV started to decline, I worried they'd have to throw in the towel. The West Wing has been on so long it's bordering on needing a name change to The Politburo, and I hear Alias has been canceled. I mean what will we do without Jennifer Garner? No, really, I'm serious.

Well, all is well. Apparently the networks have their creative spirits back. And soon they'll be back to doing what they do best, plotting the destruction of America.

The TV networks are getting edgier in their '06 pilot plans.

The nets have filled their development slates with a bevy of brave ideas and bold format experiments, VARIETY reports on Monday, including shows about THE END OF AMERICA!

ABC alone has at least two would-be shows set in post-apocalyptic America ("Resistance" and "Red & Blue") while Gavin Polone and Bruce Wagner are teaming for the comfy-sounding plague drama "Four Horsemen" at CBS (which also is developing "Jericho," about life in a small town after America is destroyed).

Says Fox exec VP Craig Erwich: "The creative community appears to be really inspired this year," he says. "It was an exciting time to be buying. I came away pretty encouraged about network TV."

Take THAT Global Warming! - the plague is back! And it's tired of playing second fiddle to you. Who worries about the ocean rising in a hundred years when the plague can wipe us out in days!

I don't know. It seems timely, what with bird flu and all. But then again, maybe they really have run out of ideas and they're just taking the 70s disaster obsession and the poultry plague pandemic to a whole new level.

Or, maybe they're just grasping, and what the networks really need to do is to stop denigrating America and putting X's on the Vice President's head.

"That's no moon, it's a space station."

No actually, this moon is a moon. Really. It just looks like a space station. I hope. Take a look!

Impact-battered Mimas steps in front of Saturn's rings, showing off its giant 130-kilometer (80-mile) wide crater Herschel.

The illuminated terrain seen here is on the moon's leading hemisphere. North on Mimas is up and rotated 20 degrees to the left. Mimas is 397 kilometers (247 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini narrow-angle camera on Oct. 13, 2005 at a distance of approximately 711,000 kilometers (442,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 112 degrees. The image scale is 4 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.

Cassini needs to get closer...to see if "that old man got that tractor beam out of commission."

Time for an intervention

Somebody needs to step in and tell the Democratic party that they have completely left reality when it comes to Iraq. Their carping about pre-war intelligence and analysis, a profession that, in the long history of the world has always been a high stakes guessing game, where hugely expensive efforts often resulted in spotty truths and the smallest of baby-steps for a gain--one way or the other--has long since waxed ridiculous. And their continued calls for troop withdrawal are seriously undermining the war effort.

They have been pushed over the ledge of common sense by the extreme anti-war fringe, and have managed, with their cheerleaders in the media, who never believed in America's right to defend herself in the first place, to place this country on the wrong side of the war, history, and are driving forward with the idea that we need to feel good about admitting failure and consigning the world to the whims of the darkest forces since the days of Hitler.

The Democrats have no plan for success, only for misery, self-loathing, and a hope that they can turn the world against conservatism - the only thing really stopping them from achieving total power. After all, the terrorists aren't really terrorists, they are freedom fighters, insurgents, militants, misunderstood, needing of love, and poor Muslims who just want George Bush and Halliburton to leave them and their oil alone. Right?

Wrong.

I submit that any group who clamors for women's rights, yet says nothing as young girls are stoned to death for being raped, has made a disconnect with reality, with any principles, and has given over to a flawed ideology. Any group that says one thing to justify a war, but then blames others for their own decisions, has given over to a flawed ideology. Any group that spreads blatant, provable lies about the conduct of rightly elected leaders, has embraced a flawed ideology. And any group that can stare the demon that is terrorism in the face, and blame their own country for it, has embraced a flawed ideology.

Terrorists do not act because they hate America. They act because they want power, and their will be done. And America stands in the way of that goal. Fringe Democrats, who have given over to this insane hatred of George Bush, are projecting their thoughts and feelings onto the terrorists. They sympathize with them, because their enemy is the same. Remember, it was Howard Dean who said that "the real enemy is George Bush". And yet now Howard Dean runs the DNC.

In yesterday's Washington Post, Senator Joe Biden put forward his master plan for surrender in Iraq. It is fraught with contradictions about our war plan, the enemy motivations, our ability to win, and the idea of our place in the world. It is worth reading just to see the extent that their fantasies have seeped into reality. Here is an excerpt.

The question most Americans want answered about Iraq is this: When will our troops come home?

We already know the likely answer. In 2006, they will begin to leave in large numbers. By the end of the year, we will have redeployed about 50,000. In 2007, a significant number of the remaining 100,000 will follow. A small force will stay behind -- in Iraq or across the border -- to strike at any concentration of terrorists.

That is because we cannot sustain 150,000 Americans in Iraq without extending deployment times, sending soldiers on fourth and fifth tours, or mobilizing the National Guard. Even if we could, our large military presence -- while still the only guarantor against a total breakdown -- is increasingly counterproductive. A liberation has become an occupation.

There is another critical question: As our soldiers redeploy, will our security interests in Iraq remain intact or will we have traded a dictator for chaos?

There is a broad consensus on what must be done to preserve our interests. Recently, 79 Democratic and Republican senators told President Bush we need a detailed, public plan for Iraq, with specific goals and a timetable for achieving each one.

Biden goes on to talk about training the Iraqi army and how to provide quick reaction to the "insurgency". Unfortunately, he has no concept of the enemy. Does he not think they can read? Does he not think they have a brain in their head? Does he not think that the enemy cannot plan for a withdrawal chart that CNN puts on TV?

After WWII, the United States left nearly 200,000 troops in Europe...until the end of the Cold War. What? You mean you've never heard about the "occupation" of Europe? Yes, you didn't realize we had taken over the continent? We planted American flags in Germany, France, Britain, the lot of them. We even had nuclear weapons over there.

I don't really remember it much either. Nobody talked about "bringing the troops home", because that wasn't really the reason for having troops. The job of the military is to protect the United States, from all threats, wherever those threats have--or may--materialize. I seem to recall there was no war on in Europe for the last few decades, yet our troops were there. So why now, when there is a war in Iraq, are we talking about taking them out?

Vietnam.

The media's shining moment, and the Democrats only plan for success - forcing the surrender of the United States, and convincing the public that it was the only way to peace.

But the withdrawal from Vietnam led to anything but peace. Millions were murdered in Vietnam and southeast Asia. Russia invaded Afghanistan, calculating that the U.S. would not interfere. You know - Afghanistan - that same country that Democrats tell us we abandoned after we did try to help them fight off the Russians, a help that did succeed, and somehow "created" bin Laden. Yet no one says that Vietnam "created" bin Laden, although we can all look at a calendar and read a history book.

In fact if you want to go back further you could say France "created" bin Laden, because France caused Vietnam. After WWII, France attempted to reassert control over it's lost colonies in southeast Asia. Or wait, were they saving southeast Asia from the communists?--just like America tried to do. Perhaps Stalin created bin Laden? If not Stalin maybe Hitler? Of course if the Nazis had taken over then we would have never had to worry about bin Laden. So maybe then the Allies created bin Laden? The anti-war crowd says it's a war for oil, so perhaps the dinosaurs and plant matter created bin Laden?

All events in the world lead to the next, that's the beauty and curse of history. And yet George Bush is the alpha and the omega for terrorism, the hatred of America, Big Oil, Global Warming and...I don't know, what else can you think of?

The truth is America has to stay in Iraq because we need to be in Iraq. That's where the war for the future is taking place. The terrorists know it, so why don't we? Terror nations, enablers, bin Laden, they are all pouring people into Iraq. Why? To fight for the poor Iraqis? No, last I checked the Iraqis voted for freedom by 78%.

They are in Iraq because that is where they are most vulnerable. That is where the idea of terrorism will begin to die if we succeed.

There is no time clock in this game, only victory. And victory is defined by the spread of freedom, and breaking the will of those who feel terror is the path to power.

The Great American Holiday

As I sit here, completely stuffed after the Thanksgiving meal (in my family a combination of traditional turkey combined with all sorts of Italian side dishes), scheming as to how I am going to find room to eat all the desserts my mother baked, I've been doing a bit of poking around the web, just to see what's been going on in the world.

I see France is now blaming rappers for the riots, turkeys are fighting back, the balloons at the Macy's parade fought back, politicians are still padding their resumes, icebergs have started singing, Michael Newdow needs to STOP rapping (because otherwise he might be blamed for those riots in France), and some people, no matter how great they have it, will always always always hate America.

But I have to say, as Americans we truly have a lot to be thankful for, because this country DOES stand for all that is good in the world. No one is ever perfect, or always good, or always smart. But we try. We try everyday to be the source of light in the world. We may be at war, we may have troops fighting terrorists around the world, we may be despised by the French and terrorist nations everywhere, and we may be caught in the grips of some of the most vicious and sinister political battles I've ever seen...but we know how lucky we are. And how lucky we have been since the first Thanksgiving.

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, Many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

I am truly thankful for all that I have in this world - my family, my friends, my health, my career. I am thankful to be alive, to be living in America, to be a citizen of this great country. I am thankful for the American military, for all that they do, sacrificing their very lives for my freedom and yours. I am thankful for our President, for having the fortitude to do what is right in the world. And I am thankful for God, his love and his grace, for even just the barest bit of it that I pray that I receive.

And I am thankful for this blog. Yes, this blog. This blog has enabled me to be a part of a community of thought and ideas, of an incipient culture of utterly cool personalities, that really makes a difference in the world. And I've enjoyed every minute of it. And I am truly thankful for that.

To all my friends and fellow bloggers, to all my readers, have a hearty and healthy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your holiday. I wish you all the best.

From God to your iPod

The Catholic Church may be a lot of things, but the idea of the stuffy, old homily during Mass is about to get a facelift. Gone are the days of missionaries just handing out bibles and preaching to the masses, proselytization just got a new recruit. The iPod.

In the beginning there was Madonna. Now, you can also download Pope Benedict XVI into your iPod.

Inspired by Vatican documents that called on Church officials to exploit the full potentials of the computer age, the Holy See's official broadcaster, Vatican Radio, is "podcasting" audio content to any of the world's 1 billion plus Catholics -- and any other interested parties -- who own a portable MP3 Latest News about MP3 player.

The service, launched with hardly any fanfare, has been wildly popular. Unfortunately most of the podcasts are in Italian, though the service is expanding.

All of this was inspired by the late Pope John Paul II, who saw a great opportunity in the Internet to spread the word of God.

The radio station has since expanded operations and now offers constantly updated services in a total of 14 languages.

"Our long-term aim is to expand the service to comprise all of the 39 languages in which Vatican radio broadcasts," Putzolu explained.

La Civilta Cattolica, a magazine run by Italy's Jesuits, says all preachers should be encouraged to use podcasting as a means of spreading God's message, particularly among the young.

To shy away from podcasting "because of a fear of technology or any other reason," the bimonthly's latest edition warns priests, "is not acceptable."

Pretty cool.

The Birds

Like some freaky rendition of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, turkeys of the world are uniting. Or at least, in America they are. It seems that Bush's pardons were not enough. Their demands were not met. And so now the prey is taking the fight to the enemy.

In April, Will Millington was riding his dirt bike down a narrow trail in Norman, Okla., when he stopped before a flock of wild turkeys. The hens scattered, but two toms flared their feathers and stalked toward him. Then they suddenly leapt in the air, beat Mr. Millington with their wings and tried to scratch him with the sharp spurs on the backs of their legs.

Mr. Millington frantically revved his bike's motor. Thirty yards down the trail he looked back. "They were running after me," says the 46-year-old property manager. "That was kind of spooky."

As Americans prepare to eat some 46 million domestic turkeys slaughtered for Thanksgiving, their wild cousins are fighting back. The explosion of the wild turkey population to nearly seven million from just 30,000 in the 1930s has put a growing number of humans in the face of angry gobblers.

Patricia Huckery, a Massachusetts Wildlife Department district manager in Acton, west of Boston, says she has gotten 25 calls this year for advice on coping with aggressive turkeys. Last year in Cranford, N.J., a letter carrier killed a turkey with a stick after complaining to police that a flock of turkeys wouldn't let him out of his delivery truck. In Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, wildlife conservation officer Chris Heil says he has had to kill 42 turkeys this year in response to complaints about behavior ranging from attacking a child on a tricycle to scratching cars.

Though perhaps the most humorous event took place in Massachussets (how could it not really?).

Last month, jogging on a back road in Massachusetts' Berkshire hills, Betsy Kosheff passed a farmers' field where farm-raised wild turkeys were pecking for grain. Suddenly about 30 of them took off after Ms. Kosheff, who has a public-relations firm in West Stockbridge, Mass.

"It was like that scene in 'The Birds' except there was no phone booth," says Ms. Kosheff, referring to the famous refuge in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. A passing friend stopped her pickup truck and Ms. Kosheff ran around it several times. The turkeys kept up the chase, although she says "they were too stupid to split up or change directions" to trap her. Finally, Ms. Kosheff got in the truck, where, she says, her friend "was laughing so hard she almost choked on her Dunkin' Donut."

So you see? The moral of the story is: eat more turkey, and avoid those killer doughnuts.

X-Man

Of course, everyone is up on the latest - CNN, making light with the job performance, had a snafu the other day that branded Vice President Cheney's forehead during a speech with a big black X on it. It was a mistake...

No really. It was.

Whatever. Nobody cares really. The story only has legs because Drudge is reporting the x-capades of the CNN staffers didn't end with the mix-up.

CNN management has launched an internal investigation into how a giant black 'X' mark appeared over Vice President Dick Cheney's face -- as he delivered a speech from Washington on Monday!

"We are taking this matter very, very seriously, and I can assure you no one at this network would ever deliberately place an 'X' over the vice president's face," a top CNN source, who asked not to be named at this time, said from New York.

A well-placed CNN insider claims a control room staffer "laughed" when the image appeared shortly after 11 am.

A careful review of the tape now shows a white colored 'X' was also transposed over Cheney's face during the speech, it appeared for less than 1/15 of a second, creating a startling flash effect.

CNN spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg emails: "We concluded this was a technological malfunction not an issue of operator error. A portion of the switcher experienced a momentary glitch. We obviously regret that it happened and are working on the equipment to ensure it is not repeated."

A rival network news director asks: "When has an 'X' ever aired on CNN before? Who had the graphic sitting in the key signal? Who generated the 'X'?"

The vice president himself is said to have brushed off the incident, a White House source said early Tuesday morning.

Yeah, that's because his real identity is secret.

So who is Cheney? Rex Racer of course. Otherwise known as Racer X.

Racer X

Undeniably, Racer X is the least understood driver on the Formula 1 racing circuit. Both feared and revered, he inspires rumors that whenever he competes, crashes are sure to occur. A facemask used to conceal his true identity further shrouds him in mystery, only adding to his reputation as a jinx.

Unbeknownst to Speed (and his family), Racer X is really his older brother, Rex Racer, a fact we are frequently reminded of throughout the long series. Long ago, while competing in a race, Rex crashed a car Pops built. Subsequently he ran away from home when Pops told him he lacked the necessary experience to race professionally. Aided by his mentor, Kabala, Racer X hones his driving skills, learning how to drive on “tortured roads and broken trails.” After this internship, he becomes a professional driver.

Along the way, he adds “secret agent” to his resume. He uses his experience as a racecar driver as cover for his primary occupation at the Paris-based International Police.

See? Am I right? You know I am. The guy is mysterious, always in "undisclosed locations", always helping out the President when times are tough. I mean we all knew President Bush had Speedracer-like tendencies, associated with his biking fanaticism. But no one ever put the finger on Cheney.

Halliburton was a cover, set up by the French, of course. I mean Halliburton, Schlumberger - it's all the same, Big Oil. They're all connected, so the media tells us. Sure enough, it was him all along...

Seriously, Cheney's people need to get him to a NASCAR race pronto, and get him some sunglasses and a black "Racer X" jacket. The President's poll numbers would jump ten points. I am not kidding.

The point of no return

It's interesting to note that a milestone in Democratic perfidity was reached last week. No, I'm not refering to the shameless turncoats in the Senate and House who think it's hip to turn tail and run from the fight of our lives.

Actually I'm refering to Bill Clinton, deciding that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. The Wall Street Journal calls him to the carpet, reciting the words Clinton himself spoke during his media-praised call for regime change in 1998.

A man has a right to change his mind. So we guess Bill Clinton was within his rights when he told a student audience at the American University in Dubai that the Bush Administration had committed a "big mistake" by liberating Iraq. "Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done," said the former President.

This is not the Bill Clinton we remember. Back when he was running for President, in 1992, Mr. Clinton promised an Administration that would "not coddle tyrants, from Baghdad to Beijing." As President, he launched military strikes against Iraq in 1993, following Saddam's attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait; in 1996, and in 1998, following Saddam's ouster of U.N. weapons inspectors.

On October 31, 1998, Mr. Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. "The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home," Mr. Clinton said in language later adopted by the Bush Administration. "I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq's history or its ethnic or sectarian makeup. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else."

Two months later, while announcing a three-day bombing of Iraq, Mr. Clinton added: "Heavy as they are, the cost of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them and he will use them".

Oh Bill...you deluded slave of Halliburton, you shallow puppet of Rove, you minion of the evil George Bush (the current George Bush of course - as he is to blame for everything wrong in the world, for all time).

The good thing is, in spite of all the evidence of corruption with Oil for Food, Iraq's ties to al Qaeda, and the always percolating weapons programs, Bill Clinton has finally seen the media light and decided that now is the time to escape the Bush cabal.

What? I mean don't you believe him? He said one thing then, and something else now. He wouldn't lie to us back then...right? Only Bush would lie. Only Bush could lie, because when Clinton attacked he was only doing it because of Monica, whereas Bush was doing it for Halliburton. Right?

hmm...maybe not. On both counts.

As I referenced in an earlier post, many of the leading intelligenc analysts of the Clinton administration spent a lot of time building the case that Saddam and Osama, while not the best of friends, had a dangerous common cause, the downfall of America.

Just a few months after the strike on al Shifa the Clinton administration's original indictment of bin Laden, which alleged that al Qaeda agreed not to work against Saddam's regime and to cooperate on weapons development, was unsealed. The 9/11 Commission Report tells us that the passage concerning Iraq and al Qaeda, "led Clarke, who for years had read intelligence reports on Iraqi-Sudanese cooperation on chemical weapons, to speculate to Berger [National Security Advisor] that a large Iraqi presence at chemical facilities in Khartoum was 'probably a direct result of the Iraq-Al Qida agreement.'"

That's the 9/11 Commission report that you and I know, by the way. The one you can pick up a copy of. And the names are Richard Clarke and Sandy Berger, the amnesiac Bush critic and the National Archives kleptomaniac. And if you think that was amusing, you'll really get a kick out of this.

Indeed, as the current war in Iraq approached many forgot or ignored Saddam's response to the four-day war of December 1998. It is a shame because his response to that four-day bombing campaign--the largest since the first Gulf War--was telling. In his quest for revenge he had few options, but one of those was Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Just days after Operation Desert Fox concluded one of Saddam's most loyal and trusted intelligence operatives, Faruq Hijazi, was dispatched to Afghanistan. He met with senior leaders from the Taliban and then with bin Laden and his cohorts on December 21.

While we cannot be sure what transpired at this meeting, we can be sure that it was not some benign event. In fact, within days of the meeting bin Laden loudly declared his opposition to the U.S.-led missile strikes on Iraq and called on all Muslims to strike U.S. and British targets, including civilians, around the world. According to press accounts at the time, bin Laden explained, "The British and the American people loudly declared their support for their leaders' decision to attack Iraq." He added that the citizens' support for their governments made it "the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill" them.

Bin Laden's words sounded alarm bells around the world. Countless media outlets scurried to uncover the details of the relationship between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. Dozens of news outlets--foreign and domestic--reported on the growing relationship and its ominous implications. When assessing any news account the reader must take all of the information with a grain of salt. But the sheer weight of the evidence reported from so many different sources paints a disturbing picture.

Highly disturbing. And yet...Bush lied. It's all so simple. There was no cause for war, there were no terrorists in Iraq, there were no WMDs. It's a war for oil, to kill soldiers, to take over the world, etc, etc... The media is so trustworthy...

The most insidious thing, in all of this, is that the left in this country would rather paint America as a bad guy than name that which is truly evil in the world. And all for what? For being "right". For their version of history. For your trust. For power. It is the quest of a party who's ideology has attacked the backbone of Western civilization, that threatens to turn us over to a flood of Islamic terrorism, all so that they can revel in the light of a non-existant Utopia. France, if you can see it through the fires that the rioting Muslim "students" are still setting, is supposed to look something like that Utopia. Beautiful isn't it?

They are living in a fantasy. Note this, journalist Chris Matthews, fantasizing away.

"The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn't a robust discussion of what we were doing," Matthews said.

"If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil — they just have a different perspective."
....

When asked what caused the U.S. to invade Iraq, he said it was a combination of factors.

"I think the father-son relationship with the Bushes is part of it. I think the oil thing is part of it," Matthews said of the current president and his father, George Bush Sr., who was president during the Gulf War more than a decade ago.

"Our friendship with Israel (is part of it) and 9-11 created a kind of crazy Zeitgeist in the country. Bush wanted to do something big. It couldn't just be tracking down al-Qaida. He wanted a big bang. I think it's a mixture of these things."

The insanity is not going away either. Because Bill Clinton signaled the point of no return. He was the "moderate", a politically savvy, pragmatic, rather slimy, very smart politician. He wants his wife in the Oval Office. He wants to run the U.N. - and thus the world.

And he has decided the time is now to change tactics on the war. Democrats are going to follow his lead. They sense opportunity, and they are going all the way on this.

If Republicans are willing to fight, they may still be able to turn the tide of public sentiment back to full awareness. The truth is on their side. President Bush and Vice President Cheney, late to the game, have thankfully started to push back. But this needs to be a concerted party effort, and that means all Senators and Representatives in concert. Difficult, if not impossible, I know. And that's why, as things stand right now, the future looks pretty rocky.

The spin to lose the war

There has been a steady drive, ever since 9-11, to delegitimize any attempt by America to fight her enemies.

Let us recall:

Not even a few days after 9-11, with bodies still being removed from the rubble of the Trade Center, the argument was "Let us understand the terrorists."

The U.N. and others grumbled slightly as the U.S. zeroed in on Afghanistan, but they said nothing - with public support for fighting back at around 90%, there wasn't much anybody could do to stop us. Besides, the Anthrax attacks had everyone on edge as well. Yes...it's so easy to forget that we were attacked with biological weapons when reporting on it drops off the face of the earth.

But let's not forget the cries from the fringe left as our troops prepared for the fight. "The Russians couldn't conquer Afghanistan." "It is going to take years, maybe thousands dead." No one was really all that optimistic about low casualties, but we were ready.

A month later it was all but over. And as the clean-up in Afghanistan went on Americans wanted to know who was next.

Everybody knew Iraq was up to no good, as had been the case for a decade. Nobody disputed it, not the U.N., not the French, not the Russians, not Iraq's neighbors, not even Democrats. Indeed, Iraq served as a driving force of all manner of nefarious activities in the world, not the least of which were their dealings with terror groups.

One has to think back to the 90s, to the al Qaeda attacks on America to see the relationship. As much as Democrats and the media would love to cloud our minds about the war al Qaeda waged against us during that decade, many facts are now coming to light that show that relationship was there.

The Clinton administration responded to the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania by simultaneously destroying two sites: al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant named al-Shifa, which was suspected of being part of al Qaeda's chemical weapons procurement efforts. The decision to strike the training camps was uncontroversial. The decision to destroy al-Shifa was quickly labeled suspect by many in the mainstream media and some political partisans, including some Republicans, who speciously reasoned that Clinton was "wagging the dog." (I happen to agree with Benjamin that the charges leveled against President Clinton in this regard were wrong.) Much of the criticism focused on a soil sample the CIA said showed traces of EMPTA, a precursor for VX nerve gas, and the ties between the plant and bin Laden.

Benjamin and his frequent co-author, Steven Simon, argue that the media and the president's opponents got it all wrong. They spend an entire chapter defending this episode in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror. They argue that the "pivotal event" for understanding the threat bin Laden posed, prior to 9/11, was the reaction to the strike on al-Shifa and the failure to give the intelligence surrounding that decision an honest hearing.

They argue the connections between the plant and al Qaeda were solid, as were the connections between the plant and Iraqi chemical weapons experts. They write,

Officials who spoke with reporters also noted that Iraqi weapons scientists had been linked to al-Shifa, and this Iraqi connection was independently underscored by UN weapons inspectors. There are several different methods for making VX, but the only one known to involve EMPTA is Iraq's. Again, this information was never contradicted, but few found it persuasive.

This would appear to be evidence of a "noteworthy relationship," no?

Benjamin of course now disavows his statements. Most Democrats do. But such memory re-orientation is both fatuous and dangerous. The enemies of the free world are only aided by our desire to put more importance on the political games of the day.

Think back to Richard Clarke, former intelligence official, and yet another full-time Bush critic, who coined the phrase "boogie to Baghdad". He was talking about bin Laden, and the feared consequences of the Clinton administration pushing too hard to capture him.

In 1996, after bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan, he wasn'’t sure if he would be able to get along with his new Taliban hosts. So he made inquiries about moving to Iraq.

Saddam wasn’t interested. At the time, he was trying to have better relations with his neighbors -— and bin Laden’s enemy -— the Saudis.

But a bit later, Saddam apparently changed his mind. According to the report:

"“In March 1998, after bin Laden'’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with bin Laden."

Still nothing happened. But later:

"Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and bin Laden or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the [intelligence] reporting, Iraqi officials offered bin Laden a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Laden declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more favorable than the Iraqi alternative."

It was in that context that Clarke believed that if the United States made bin Laden'’s situation too hot in Afghanistan, then, in Clarke'’s non-famous words, "“old wily Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad."

Now, that doesn'’t at all suggest that Iraq had a role in Sept. 11, but it certainly does suggest a relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda.

That'’s important, because these days Democrats are poring through old statements by Bush administration officials, looking for evidence to support their claim that the president "“lied"” us into war in Iraq.

And yet here it comes again. Bush lied us into war. Nothing so plausible as the intelligence was flawed, that we had no sources anywhere near Saddam's inner circle, that half of our intelligence about Iraq's yellowcake aspirations came from the French, that our CIA was deficient on multiple levels, that Congress had the same information as the President...

The inspectors crawling all over Iraq during the 90s had the best view, so to speak. Here is what one of them had to say about the way Saddam conducted business.

FP: With the Democrats now so viciously and hypocritically attacking Bush about WMDs, I'’d like to discuss your own knowledge and expertise on this issue in connection to Iraq. You have always held that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Why? Can you discuss some actual finds?


Tierney: It was probably on my second inspection that I realized the Iraqis had no intention of ever cooperating. They had very successfully turned The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections during the eighties into tea parties, and had expected UNSCOM to turn out the same way. However, there was one fundamental difference between IAEA and UNSCOM that the Iraqis did not account for. There was a disincentive in IAEA inspections to be aggressive and intrusive, since the same standards could then be applied to the members states of the inspectors. IAEA had to consider the continued cooperation of all the member states. UNSCOM, however, was focused on enforcing and verifying one specific Security Council Resolution, 687, and the level of intrusiveness would depend on the cooperation from Iraq.

I came into the inspection program as an interrogator and Arabic linguist, so I crossed over various fields and spotted various deception techniques that may not have been noticed in only one field, such as chemical or biological. For instance, the Iraqis would ask in very reasonable tones that questionable documents be set aside until the end of the day, when a discussion would determine what was truly of interest to UNSCOM. The chief inspector, not wanting to appear like a knuckle-dragging ogre, would agree. Instead of setting the documents on a table in a stack, the Iraqis would set them side to side, filling the entire table top, and would place the most explosive documents on the edge of the table. At some point they would flood the room with people, and in the confusion abscond with the revealing documents.

This occurred at Tuwaitha Atomic Research Facility in 1996. A car tried to blow through an UNSCOM vehicle checkpoint at the gate. The car had a stack of documents about two feet high in the back seat. In the middle of the stack, I found a document with a Revolutionary Command Council letterhead that discussed Atomic projects with four number designations that were previously unknown. The Iraqis were extremely concerned. I turned the document over to the chief inspector, who then fell for the Iraqis' "“reasonable request" to lay it out on a table for later discussion. The Iraqis later flooded the room, and the document disappeared. Score one for the Iraqis.

And there's more. Tierney has some rather revealing views about the case of the missing WMDs.

FP: Let'’s talk a little bit more about how the WMDs disappeared.


Tierney: In Iraq'’s case, the lakes and rivers were the toilet, and Syria was the back door. Even though there was imagery showing an inordinate amount of traffic into Syria prior to the inspections, and there were other indicators of government control of commercial trucking that could be used to ship the weapons to Syria, from the ICs point of view, if there is no positive evidence that the movement occurred, it never happened. This conclusion is the consequence of confusing litigation with intelligence. Litigation depends on evidence, intelligence depends on indicators. Picture yourself as a German intelligence officer in Northern France in April 1944. When asked where will the Allies land, you reply "“I would be happy to tell you when I have solid, legal proof, sir. We will have to wait until they actually land."” You won’t last very long. That officer would have to take in all the indicators, factor in deception, and make an assessment (this is a fancy intelligence word for an educated guess).

The Democrats understand the difference between the two concepts, but have no qualms about blurring the distinction for political gain. This is despicable. This has brought great harm to our nation's credibility with our allies. A perfect example is Senator Levin waving deception by one single source, al-Libi, to try and convince us that this is evidence there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as though the entire argument rested on this one source. Senator Levin, and his media servants, think the public can’t read through his duplicity. He is plunging a dagger into the heart of his own country.

Could the assessments of Iraq’s weapons program been off? I am sure there were some marginal details that were incorrect, but on the matter of whether Iraq had a program, the error was not with the pre-war assessment, the error was with the weapons hunt.

In the run up to the war, with all the focus on America, with Democrats beating the drum about the "rush to war", with the maneuvers of France and Russia, Iraq had all the time in the world. We "rushed to war" for nearly a year. And as Tierney states:

While working counter-infiltration in Baghdad, I noticed a pattern among infiltrators that their cover stories would start around Summer or Fall of 2002. From this and other observations, I believe Saddam planned for a U.S. invasion after President Bush'’s speech at West Point in 2002. One of the steps taken was to prepare the younger generation of the security services with English so they could infiltrate our ranks, another was either to destroy or move WMDs to other countries, principally Syria. Starting in the Summer of 2002, the Iraqis had months to purge their files and create cover stories, such as the letter from Hossam Amin, head of the Iraqi outfit that monitored the weapons inspectors, stating after Hussein Kamal's defection that the weapons were all destroyed in 1991.

Democrats and many in the media have let themselves slip into a very dangerous way of thinking, and that is not seeing the enemies of America as living, breathing, thinking foes. This nation's enemies are not static, nor stupid, nor idle. They are constantly plotting and acting.

And those who would so readily believe the media spin that Saddam would have nothing to do with al Qaeda, the same people who - being secular, and religious, racially diverse, from all walks of life, who banded together to opposed George Bush with a fiery passion - believe that secular and religious fanatics don't mix, that the pre-war intelligence was dreamed up by Halliburton, that for the entire decade of the 90s that Saddam did nothing but dispose of his weapons, that al Qaeda mistakenly attacked our soldiers, embassies, buildings and warships...to that I say they have no concept of how evil works in the world. And for them the media line is secure.

The spin to lose the war has been in motion since 9-11. And even now, as many have discovered that our troops may actually be ready to begin an Iraq drawdown, the spin continues. The spin to create a loss out of a win, defeat out of victory, shame out of triumph. It is all Democrats and the major media seem bent on doing. And it is truly pathetic, and a dishonor to the good name of America - and the troops who fight for her.

Let's talk about the enemy

For the better part of three years, Democrats and an ever-breathless news media have been screaming about the lack of WMDs in Iraq. Yet what they should be screaming about is that someone apparently has stolen their brains, because anyone with one, who has read any of those fine reports that keep coming out of all those intelligence commissions, would know that the issue isn't merely about WMDs, it is about an inimical tyrant who ascended to power and succeeded in driving a wedge between the great powers of the world with his money, oil and quest for power. And now that Saddam is gone, it is about completing our counter-strike, to break the back of terrorism as a political option by providing the vision of democracy to the people of the Middle East.

That is the war on terror. Bush knows it. Our military knows it. And the terrorists know it. That's why the terrorists are in Iraq. They have to stop us from wrenching the pliable minds of their youths away from their radical indoctrinations.

And before you start in with "but Iraq was secular, they had no radicals!", just stop right there. The Iraq of the future is the beacon to all Middle Eastern countries. Look at Lebanon, Syria, Iran - they all have young populations dying for freedom, for a voice in the world. Saudi Arabia, Egypt - they are holding elections, nothing fancy, but elections all the same. It is progress. And there is no temptation greater than staring over the border towards a fully democratized Iraq . The oppressive regimes cannot hold out forever with that kind of example in their midst.

But our military cannot win this war alone. Without beating the enemy's will to commit terror, the will to subjugate women, the will to blow oneself up for the thought of martyrdom - there is no victory. And Iraq is central to that victory.

Yet nobody cares. The entire Western world would rather snipe and back-bite and beat up on America and George Bush. The Democrats, pining away for the power they once knew, would rather the country go down in flames, that we lose in Iraq, that millions of people be consigned to lives of absolute terror. Because whether you agreed with going into Iraq or not, that is what will happen to those people if we leave.

Yet it's all about the lack of WMD in Iraq...

Iran announced the other day that it got plans for a nuclear weapon. They've also voted to resist any inspections. In the most recent intelligence estimates released by the U.S. government, they say that terrorists want to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Terrorists in Iraq like to saw heads off. In Indonesia they're still hacking little girls to pieces because they're Christians. And they've called for the deaths of leaders, of America, of our way of life.

The Muslims in France don't like the welfare system, so they are burning the place down - still, I might add, though you won't find that on TV. But everybody was supposed to love France, and the news media says I still should, so perhaps that was all just some big misunderstanding. Or perhaps not.

So which is it going to be? The Koran in the toilet or getting the job done? What do we want to obsess about more? Our enemy is waiting. It's our move.

North Korea is starving it's citizens, curtailing all freedoms and making them work against their will, all for nuclear weapons. What are we prepared to do to stop them?

Rep. Murtha, as you know, a Vietnam veteran himself, has called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Just redeploy them, right now. He can't bear to hear another story about a dead marine, can't bear to talk to another wounded soldier. He was quite broken up while he spoke on the House floor, so I hear.

I feel for him. But, I'd like to ask, what is worth fighting for in this world? Is there any cause for America's military? If this isn't it, then I'd respectfully ask what criteria must be met first?

I think Sun Tzu mentioned something once about choosing the ground for the battle. We chose Afghanistan and Iraq. Based upon all available intelligence at the time - intelligence used in the speeches of Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and the entire host of Congressional Democrats - we went to war. And we're winning.

Yes, didn't you know? We're winning. Iraq had an election a while back. You might have read about it. The electorate came out, about 78% actually, and voted for freedom. Pretty cool huh? And terrorists from Iran and Syria are dying by the thousands.

The terrorists are deathly afraid we'll win in Iraq. It's too bad Democrats are more afraid of allowing George Bush a perceived political win.

So Who Is The "Marrying Kind"?

The age old debate between men and women about who is the "marrying kind" took a turn for the flippant recently as Maureen Dowd, expert on all things--apparently--decided to trump up some sales for her new book. The title of her book says it all: "Are Men Necessary?"

Legitimate question. I've often wondered the same thing about some men I've seen. But then I realized, she was also talking about me.

I know, can you believe it? Me - the adorable one.

Anyway, reviews of Ms. Dowd's book have been reserved, at best. As Publisher's Weekly deftly notes:

What Dowd seems really to want to do is dish up anecdotes of gender bias in the media, which she does with her usual aplomb—everything from how Elizabeth Vargas was booted out of Peter Jennings's vacant chair at ABC during his illness...to the guys who won't date Dowd because she's got more Beltway juice (and money) than they. The rest is padding: endless secondary source and pundit quotes...examples of gender relations gone wrong in books, film and TV; random interview blips...little musings from girlhood that are rarely revealing enough; endless career rehashes of everyone from Anita Hill to Helen Gurley Brown. A chapter on dating is a mishmash of everything from The Rules to He's Just Not That into You; one on reproductive science...ends up referring a lot to orgasm. It's intermittently entertaining, but neither sharp enough nor sustained enough to work as a book.

In other words, don't bother.

Though the problem with the book doesn't seem to be with the writing, but instead it's Ms. Dowd. Her ideas and commentary are all based upon her "discovery" and dismay that a lot of men just don't have what it takes to date (paraphrasing) successful women. They'd rather marry the secretary or a teacher or a nurse instead of a business executive or...her.

Sounds quite shocking, I know - especially her characterization of any woman as being "unsuccessful." Rather a low blow to everyone who works hard every day, regardless of profession. What makes it even worse is the study she used is entirely unrepresentative of men in general.

Surprise! They interviewed only a handful of men and women at a college. No one with a job in the workplace, no one who was even married, yet the interviewers asked them questions about workplace dating - "Your boss or the secretary?"

How about asking if they met a fascinating woman through a friend?--who happened to be a doctor?--who happened to be single?--who happened to be very nice? Or how about checking into people who were already married? Why not see who is actually getting married? Why not put that on the questionnaire?

Oh, right, because the study was conducted this way:

"The following prediction was tested: Males were expected to be most attracted to the female target when she was described as a subordinate, and we expected a male preference for the subordinate target to be most pronounced when males were considering a long-term (high investment) relationship with the target."

It borders on a biased survey, if even that. It is not a legitimate study of the male and female mind--though it does say quite a bit about the researchers. I say we revoke their white lab coats.

Studies are things like this: The Marrying Kind: Which Men Marry and Why.

Challenging the popular stereotype of the marriagephobic male, findings from a new national survey of young heterosexual men, ages 25-34, indicate that while men are delaying marriage until older ages, most men are "the marrying kind."

They did a national survey of over a thousand men. And assumptions about subordination, threesomes and dating your boss were left where they should be, in the pages of Maxim and Cosmo.

And what are those magazines peddling today? Certainly not anything real that I've seen. In the seventies pop culture gave us Farrah, in the eighties it was Christi and Demi, in the nineties it was Pamela and Winona, and for the millennium it was...probably some porn star or actress who had her sex tape "stolen". But those aren't real women, those are ideas of women, women marketed as the ultimate fantasy icon. And sadly, it is true that the percentage of men getting lost to that culture is growing.

But while the Academy is giving away Oscars for every woman portraying a stripper or a prostitute and Paris Hilton is shopping for lingerie with the paparazzi and her psycho pet monkey in tow, it seems that most men are not all that interested in craving them as brides.

So what type of women do men want? Well as strange and vague as this sounds, they want women who want to get married. Be they doctors or secretaries or lawyers or nurses - it doesn't matter. Mostly because a woman's profession is not a man's decision. What matters is the compatibility between personalities, religion, politics, the timing of it all, the physical attraction, and that ever mysterious ingredient called chemistry.

In my daily life I can point to acquaintances, friends and relatives, all married, who have loving, caring, successful marriages. And yet they come from all walks of life, all professions, all backgrounds. I know women who are doctors, women who stay home with children, who have no children, who have many. I know men who run two businesses, who run none, who do lab work, who do construction, the list goes on. What stereotype do they follow?

None.

The idea that men want women who are not intellectually challenging, or smart, or funny, or witty, or exciting, or career driven or "successful"--at anything--is bogus. But nor is it proper to assert that men always want the smartest girl in the room. Guys and girls, who want to get married, are always looking for the right fit. They are looking for the person who makes them laugh, who they can talk to, party with, but who they can also just sit with. They are looking for the person who "gets" them, who they're attracted to, who they respect, who they want to see grow both spiritually and professionally, and who helps them do the same. That's who most men, real men anyway, and real women, are looking for.

And there is no formula for success. Because that's not what marriage is. Your spouse is not a notch on the bedpost, or an acquisition, or a trophy, or a psyche validation, or a servant, or the next chapter in Maureen's book. Your spouse is your heart, your love and your life--and between the two of you that is a total effort of being. And when you find the right person, you give that freely, always.

And the beauty of it is, the men and women who are out there looking always seem to converge on that same truth. It's just a question of finding one another.

Dowd and her books are not the be all and end all of relationships, thank God. Real men and women are out there.

Of course, there are a lot of jerks out there too - a lot of people who see relationships as nothing more than a means of satisfying their own selfish needs. Maybe they'll grow up eventually...or maybe they'll end up in Maureen's next book.

Internet saved...now how about those iTunes prices?

The paragons of international freedom, Hugo Chavez and Mouamar Khadafi, who apparently made special trips to Tunis in the interest of pushing for non-U.S. control of the Internet, have had their hopes dashed.

The U.S. made one concession by agreeing to create an international forum on an array of Internet issues. But already it won perhaps the biggest debate facing the summit: who gets to approve new domain-name extensions and award the corporate contracts for administering them.

That task will remain in the hands of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, the organization that must approve all proposals for new domain-name extensions, even international ones like .eu for the European Union.

While Icann's board includes more than a dozen international members, the U.S. retains the power to veto the board's final decision. Members of the European Union, as well as countries like China and Brazil, had been hoping to wrest oversight of the process from Icann and place it in the hands of an international body.

The international consortium that was agreed upon has no binding authority, and this is good news. The prospect of a "digital Munich", as Claudia Rosett put it in her most recent editorial, was very real. Coverage of the conference has been minimal, with the major media establishment more consumed with drumming up the Democrats' campaign attacks for next Fall.

It was a conference set up to pit the U.S. against the world, the U.N. as the champion of the poorest of the poor, the aggrieved victims of a U.S. conspiracy to create something, decide to open it up to public use, and then control it. Oh the humanity...

What Mr. Annan evidently does not care to understand, and after his zillion-year career at the U.N. probably never will, is that for purposes of helping the poor, the problem is not a digital divide. It is not the bytes, gigs, blogs and digital wing-dings that define that terrible line between the haves and the have-nots. These are symptoms of the real difference, which we would do better to call the dictatorial divide.

In free societies, all sorts of good things flourish, including technology and highly productive uses of the Internet. In despotic systems, human potential withers and dies, strangled by censorship, starved by central controls, and rotted by the corruption that inevitably accompanies such arrangements. That poisonous mix is what prevents the spread of prosperity in Africa, and blocks peace in the Middle East, and access to computers, or for that matter, food, in North Korea (which is of course sending a delegate to Tunis).

But never mind the realities, as long as Mr. Annan and his entourage see an opportunity for more U.N. turf, job patronage, global clout and funding (including the prospect of a "ka-ching" for the U.N. cash register every time someone logs on). Leading the charge, with policy documents posted on the U.N. information summit site, are such terrorist-breeding blogger-jailing regimes as those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and such millennial pioneers of backward motion on free speech as Belarus and Russia. China's rulers, who have recently been availing themselves of modern technology to censor the Chinese word for "democracy" out of Internet traffic, and to track down and punish its users, have been toiling away to add their two cents to this summit. Sudan, better known for genocide than free speech, has registered to set up a pavilion. Were Saddam Hussein still in power in Iraq, as Mr. Annan tried to arrange, the odds are good that a front company for his regime, with U.N. blessing, would be setting up a booth in Tunis as well.

Funding and censorship is really where it's at. The most oppressive nations want to maintain power, while the U.N. is desperately scheming for some way to break free of it's bonds and grow as a world government. For both of those goals you need money and the ability to exercise control over the population. And the Internet, ironically, is both their stop and their salvation.

In all of this, I counted but a handful of U.S. politicians who voiced any concern over this world power play. Granted, the U.N. et al were crafty in their assault, not wanting to blatantly make a grab for your mouse. That would have resulted in an almost immediate Congressional smack-down...though I have to say I would have paid to see it.

But in a world where the most vile dictators show up for a personal one-on-one against some lowly U.S. representative, to attempt to wrest control of the truest free medium there is, it doesn't seem like we - or the media - have our eye on the ball.

You can be sure that this is not the end of the battle. The U.N., the E.U., and the likes of Hugo Chavez will not be content to sit back and sulk for long. But instead of doing something about real freedom in the world, our politicians would rather squander their floor time in the Senate re-running the 2004 presidential race, the media would rather put Joe Wilson on TV, a known liar, as he slanders the president, than discuss the acts of terror attributed to Saddam and the other world dictators who are still carrying on in their depravity and oppression. Congress would rather haul oil company executives in and make a show about gasoline prices, yet the single act of free-market assistance they can actually provide to the people, opening up ANWR to allow for more oil, they pass on in the wake of delusional media hysteria.

Why not haul Apple executives in to ask them why they're raising the price of iTunes? Nothing has changed, there is no shortage of new artists or mp3 players or software. Why hasn't the media raised the alarm and called for the crusade?

Oh yeah, because there's no politics in it.

There is a prevailing phoniness in our society today, and while pop culture is certainly rife with it, the political game is where the lasting damage is done. Real power meets with cunning rhetoric and the drive to shape reality - rather than deal with the world as it actually is. This is a dangerous cocktail we're drinking, and we need to sober up, because the real world is in Tunis right now, and while we're fussing over our next drink they've got their hand in our pocket looking for our keys.

Woodward closes the -gate

I find it rather ironic that the person to potentially blow the lid off the Plamegate matter is one of the men who coined the -gate suffix for political scandals.

It turns out Bob Woodward just remembered something: he learned Valerie Plame's identity nearly a month before it was disclosed - and not from Karl Rove or Scooter Libby.

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 -- one week after Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

All of this begs the question, exactly how many journalists are floating around out there who knew Valerie Plame? The more we learn about this, the more it seems like her name was commonplace among journalists, that everyone talking about her did not think she was covert, or that it was even classified to know she worked for the CIA.

Democrats and the media have been trying to concoct the crime of the century, but in reality it's looking more like the Simpsons' rendition of "telephone", except Valerie Plame is the new "purple monkey dishwasher".

So who was Woodward's government source? The prosecutor knows. Why? Because apparently it was the source, not Woodward, who contacted the prosecutor about the disclosure.

It is unclear what prompted Woodward's original unnamed source to alert Fitzgerald to the mid-June 2003 mention of Plame to Woodward. Once he did, Fitzgerald sought Woodward's testimony, and three officials released him to testify about conversations he had with them. Downie, Woodward and a Post lawyer declined to discuss why the official may have stepped forward this month.

Woodward goes on to say that he thinks the story is much ado about nothing.

No kidding.

But there is one bit of nothing that I am curious about, and that is the discrepancy between Woodward and Walter Pincus.

Woodward's statement said he testified: "I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst."

Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.

"Are you kidding?" Pincus said. "I certainly would have remembered that."

As blogger Betsy Newmark (guest blogging for Michelle Malkin) rightly points out:

So, if Woodward and Pincus both testify to different memories of their conversations, how is that different from Libby and Russert both testifying to different memories of their conversations? If we can believe that the great Bob Woodward is misremembering when he told someone something, isn't it possible that Tim Russert could misremember something, too? Or that Scooter Libby could? Why is one discrepancy worthy of indictment and the other one chalked up to "confusion about the timing"?

Yeah, why?

Smart tactic, or surrender?

In a surprising move, the Senate put forth a resolution that would require the White House to give extensive quarterly updates on the war, and to start laying out a plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The proposal on the Iraq war, from Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require the administration to provide extensive new quarterly reports to Congress on subjects like progress in bringing in other countries to help stabilize Iraq. The other appeals related to Iraq are nonbinding and express the position of the Senate.

The plan stops short of a competing Democratic proposal that moves toward establishing dates for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But it is built upon the Democratic approach and makes it clear that senators of both parties are increasingly eager for Iraqis to take control of their country in coming months and open the door to removing American troops.

Mr. Warner said the underlying message was, "we really mean business, Iraqis, get on with it." The senator, an influential party voice on military issues, said he did not interpret the wording of his plan as critical of the administration, describing it as a "forward-looking" approach.

"It is not a question of satisfaction or dissatisfaction," he said. "This reflects what has to be done."

I believe the current response conservative bloggers are hurtling back across cyberspace is "Baloney!" - or some non-PG variant thereof.

I have to admit, at first glance I opted for the non-PG expletive, and in some respects still do. There is no way to spin this such that terrorists won't be cheering to Allah and plotting new attacks. Senate Republicans just carried them a few more rounds. And on the homefront the resolution comes at the worst possible time - right when the President started to fight back against the pre-war intelligence debacle. In a word, it's maddening.

On the other hand, the mood in the country is especially dour. Democrats have been screaming for such a resolution. And so Republicans, faced with increasing pressure, opted to retreat to familiar ground. The idea to Republican-ize the resolution appears to be their motive. The resolution makes no demand of a timetable, nor does it chastise the Administration.

But I find all of this rather mindless behavior. Senate Republicans need to be smarter than this. This is not good policy, it's cowardice under the guise of concern. They get plenty of updates and strategy explanations from the White House. As Donald Rumsfeld so bluntly noted:

"Department of Defense and the Department of State send literally dozens of Iraqi-related reports to Congress each year already" and that the Pentagon alone sends Congress "I don't know, it's something over 900 reports total every year" on an array of subjects.

"I hope someone reads them," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

One wonders.

Republicans in the Senate need to get their act together. This is not the disaster that many are braying about...yet. But it is a setback, and one the Senate needs to rectify quickly.

Our objective is to win the war. And that is the only objective that matters. All ancillary strategies must converge upon that single goal. Schedules and timetables are fine for strategic, tactical and logistical necessities, but not for politicians to wail and pontificate about on the floor of the Senate.

The President ordered the military to carry out the mission, and he has the proper respect for their expertise to allow them to prevail in that objective. One would hope the Senate could do the same - instead of opening up yet another front in the war on terror.

Senator Rockefeller...speak no evil?

Democrats, clamoring for investigations into pre-war intelligence, may have just put a hole in their boat. Senator Jay Rockefeller, on Fox News Sunday, let loose with this little gem:

WALLACE: Now, the President never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The - I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq - that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

Really? January of 2002? You mean before the war in Iraq? Before the President even gave his speech to the United Nations? Before Joe Wilson went to Africa?

This is bad in some way...right?

This is not a prewar intelligence mistake, it is a prewar intelligence giveaway.

Syria is not only on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the country many speculate is where Hussein has secreted weapons, it is also the country from which terrorists are flowing into Iraq to fight our troops and allies. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have had, over the years, conflicted loyalties. What was Senator Rockefeller doing? What was he thinking? And all this before President Bush even made a public speech about Iraq - to the U.N. or anyone else.

We can have our umpteenth investigation into what the White House knew and when it knew it about Iraqi weapons - we will find the same answer: It knew what President Clinton, Sandy Berger, Madeline Albright, and William Cohen knew when they made speeches about the dangers of Iraq in the late 1990s and when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. How about an investigation, now, into what exactly Senator Jay Rockefeller told Syria and just what Syria might have done with the information made available to them presumably before it was made available to the U.N., the Senate, or the American people.

Yeah, how about that investigation? Where's Harry Reid? We need a closed door secret session so we can open up the truth to the American people.

What? If he was serious, then so am I.

Investigations notwithstanding, one thing that Republicans should not forget - that Rockefeller's admission is a direct result of the President fighting back.

By answering, forcefully, the charges, by firing back, he has put the Democrats in a position where they can't merely wax moonbat anymore. They have to explain themselves. And as they do, the illusion of outrage will all fall apart.

True enough, Rockefeller's actions merit a thorough looking into, especially if the information he was floating made it to Syria or any other country doubling as a terrorist highway. The war against Islamofascism, it's battlegrounds in Afghanistan, Iraq, and dozens of countries around the globe, is not a political playground, yet it is our unfortunate reality that so many politicians seem right at home treating it as such.

The endless campaign

For reasons only their psychiatrists know, Democrats have felt compelled to run a continuous campaign against the President since the 2000 election. The brief respite after 9-11 was merely an intermission, so Ted Kennedy could go fill up his flask again before the next act.

Actually, I jest about the psychiatrists; I don't think they know either. But if someone were to ask me what I suspect, I'd have to say it was full blown Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush.

We see it time and time again, most recently the absolute inability of Democrats to put together a single rational sentence when it comes to pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

Joe Wilson, his "wife who must not be named", Niger, the CIA, the U.N., France - mention any of this stuff and just watch the fireworks. For nearly three years Democrats and a sympathetic press have crafted a story of utter corruption at the highest levels of power - how the president and his advisors lied about pre-war intelligence just to get Halliburton a no-bid contract. Indeed, beyond that, even Howard Dean was caught peddling the idea that Bush knew about 9-11 beforehand.

But then again, you know that. Everybody knows that. The media have been trumpeting Democrat claims with every breath. It's all they report. Yet none of it is true.

Commission after commission found both that the intelligence was not cooked, nor were analysts pressured for any data. So what gives? Kerry lost, Iraq is on it's way, Bush can't run for President again, yet the endless campaign continues. Democrats just cannot let go.

Dr. Sanity explains it best:

The number of things that Bush has been blamed for in this world since 9/11 (even acts of God like Tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters) is the stuff of major comedy. You name the horrible event, and he is identified as the etiologic agent.

He is blamed when he does something (anything) and he is blamed when he does nothing. He is blamed for things that ocurred even before he was President, as well as everything that has happened since. He is blamed for things he says; and for things he doesn't say.

What makes Bush Hatred completely insane however, is the almost delusional degree of unremitting certitude of Bush's evil; while simultaneously believing that the TRUE perpetrators of evil in the world are somehow good and decent human beings with the world's intersts at heart.

And now, that the President is forcefully rebutting the charges...well, that's his fault too.

President Bush on Friday launched his third presidential campaign -- this one to salvage his reputation, and what's left of his second term.

His goal this time is not to win an election; it's to gain back the public trust.

He's such a big meany, bullying the public and Democrats. How dare he defend himself?! How dare he fight back?

The good news is, we now know it's working. President Bush needs to keep making speeches, at least a few times a week. The media have immense power to shape perception, but their one weakness is that as long as Bush is talking, they have to quote him. The President needs to capitalize on this, and drive the truth home.

President Bush draws them in

Apparently his speech on Veteran's Day did him some good, because George Bush is in a fighting mood. From his speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, Bush hit back again at Democrats.

"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Bush charged.

Bush went on the attack after Democrats accused the president of manipulating and withholding some pre-war intelligence and misleading Americans about the rationale for war.

"Some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past," Bush said. "They're playing politics with this issue and they are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. That is irresponsible."

The AP tried to clean up the Democrats' mess by rattling off the laundry list of DNC talking points, quoting John Kerry bemoaning the horrors of being misled into war and then doing a little dance on Bush's poll numbers. But as long as Bush keeps talking, they have to keep quoting him.

"Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people," Bush said.

He quoted pre-war remarks by three senior Democrats as evidence of that Democrats had shared the administration's fears that were the rationale for invading Iraq in 2003. Bush did not name them, but White House counselor Dan Bartlett filled in the blanks.

_"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons." — Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

_"The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as (Saddam Hussein) is in power." — Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich.

_"Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think that the president's approaching this in the right fashion." — Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then the Democratic whip.

"The truth is that investigations of the intelligence on Iraq have concluded that only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world — and that person was Saddam Hussein," Bush charged.

This is the fight Democrats have brought upon themselves. And Bush needs to keep it up. For the war, for our country, for our troops and for his honor, Bush has to win this fight too.

I recommend a speech a day. Keep it coming. Draw the Democrats out and make them whine and moan and do something stupid. Bush has the truth on his side, and it's time for him to start using it as a weapon.

The Internet showdown

The world powers are getting ready to rumble in Tunis this week, as the UN's International Telecommunication Union hosts a summit on internet governance. The trouble is, it's the U.S. against the world.

At the moment the Internet is administered mainly by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based independent body which is awarded the task by the US government on a renewable tender.

ICANN was set up in California in 1998 when the Internet boom was largely focused on the US.

It is run by a group of free-spirited enthusiasts who were anxious to avoid regulation of the Internet.

However, the exponential growth of Internet connections worldwide, and the web's growing economic and social importance, have prompted opposition to the US monopoly.

'The idea that the Internet is an unregulated haven, these days are finished,' a source close to the talks said.

Now while ICANN manages the top level domains, such as .com and .org, it also manages the country specific domains, such as those for France (.fr) and Libya (.ly). And such control has been causing many governments heartburn - the idea that a change in U.S. favor could leave them back in the Dark Ages.

Now while I admit to having a certain fascination with the idea that there might be a breaker switch in a lab in Marina del Rey with the label "France" on it, I doubt the French have the U.S. to fear (though I can't speak for the California wineries). Besides, isn't the Internet America's? Al Gore didn't create it, but he sure bragged about it. What right do other countries have to it? - or the U.N. for that matter?

Shouldn't somebody ask Vint Cerf what he thinks about all of this? I mean maybe the U.N. has an ulterior motive?

One constant -- and this is where vagueness becomes an even bigger danger -- is that a U.N.-run oversight body would address "public policy issues that currently do not have a natural home or cut across several international or intergovernmental bodies." In other words, it could do darn near anything it wanted.

It's no surprise that supporters' bureaucratic web of choice is the U.N., which cloaks its designs on Internet control in language about such niceties as bridging the "digital divide." Spreading Web access is a worthy goal, but centralizing control runs directly at odds with that aim. The phenomenal growth of email, e-commerce and e-everything else is directly attributable to the Internet's decentralized nature. One area where a U.N.-run Web might very well expand its reach is into the taxpayer's pocket. Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac have long dreamed of a global "solidarity" tax on online financial transactions. This could be their vehicle for doing so.

The good news is that the U.S. is already in the driver's seat, and we don't really need the U.N. or France for much, so losing total control is a bit of a stretch. The international press is hopeful though.

What this really boils down to is information control and the future - in other words, power. The U.S. is on the fast track to it's hyperpower status, and the rest of the world is scrambling to keep up. Have no doubt, the U.S. needs the rest of the world, and vice versa, but while the U.S. has mainly viewed Internet governance as a non-profit affair, the U.N.'s sticky fingered approach threatens to create a cash cow to fund their bureaucratic explosion and lead the charge towards world government.

And I don't know about you, but I'd rather rely on the over-caffinated IT guys at ICANN to keep my laptop wired-in than the whim of Iran or Kofi Annan.

Is it over, or just beginning?

The situation in France has all but dropped off the media radar. As the weekend approached we heard about curfews, the suspension of citizen assembly, more police, and then a muted media cheer as the number of burned autos dropped (probably because there were none left to burn).

Most of the international press coverage expressed confidence in the Chirac government to engage the situation, though the man himself has only just recently popped his head up, to take care of it and implement all those wonderful reforms that are needed, to fight the "malaise". And as today's Wall Street Journal muses:

The riots seem on the wane although as the media's daily count of torched cars tells us, the troubles are hardly over. Even though more than 1,200 cars burned one night at the height of the violence, having "only" a few hundred destroyed the last few nights hardly qualifies as success. But the most troubling part of the crisis now begins, for once la loi et l'ordre have been restored, everything points to French politics returning to business as usual.

But French politicians are behind the curve, as the mainstream press attempted to convey a "nothing to see here" message even as the violence was at it's peak.

The pinnacle of media hallucination came a few days ago in the form of this editorial by The Washington Post (I would have loved to call out the New York Times, but alas, they never covered the story in any depth at all), where the editors, unable to reconcile any means of blaming America or Bush, and certainly not wont to point the finger at the French Utopia, concluded that--as the guys at Powerline so aptly put it--"The whole thing must be a big misunderstanding."

THE RIOTS in France have provoked their own mini-storm of misinterpretation, outside the country and among some of the French. So it's worth noting what 12 days (so far) of car-burning, looting and occasional shooting in the poor suburbs of Paris, and now dozens of other towns, is not about. It's not the European version of an intifada: Islamic ideology and leaders play no role in the disturbances, and many of those participating are not Muslim. But not all the demonstrators are hoodlums and drug dealers either, as some senior French officials portray them; anger over high unemployment and racism has been building in these ghettos for years.

...building for years, of course, and no Islamic leaders played a role... But no one really hated France, of course. Somebody got the wrong memo and burned down the wrong country. Right?

Wrong.

The violence, despite the media headlines, has not ended. And despite a monumental attempt by French police, the attacks, while fewer, have gotten more coordinated. The police are cracking down, the number of arrests are skyrocketing, the government has extended the state of emergency powers, but still the violence continues... Why?

Disaffected youths who have not assimilated and who cannot find jobs? Are the rioters still avenging the two youths who were electrocuted? Or are these merely symptoms of a much larger issue? Many have theorized that the road to radicalism is most prevalent for young Muslims in Western countries, as the societal structure that avoids assimilation presents an open door for the "purer", yet more extreme, teachings of bin Laden and his ilk. Perhaps such claims are alarmist...or...perhaps the real issue is a pairing of both the French system working against immigrants and an al Qaeda desperate for success.

Labeling France as having an "underclass" problem, the Wall Street Journal, while warning that Islamic radicals could eventually exploit the situation, points the finger at an economic system designed for stagnancy:

The larger problem for the prime minister is that France's underclass is a consequence of the structure of the French economy, in which the state accounts for nearly half of gross domestic product and roughly a quarter of employment. French workers, both in the public and private sectors, enjoy GM-like benefits in pensions, early retirement, working hours and vacations, sick- and maternity leave, and job security -- all of which is militantly enforced by strike-happy labor unions. The predictable result is that there is little job turnover and little net new job creation. Leave aside the debilitating effects of unemployment insurance and welfare on the underclass: Who would employ them if they actually sought work?

And I don't disagree. While French unemployment on the whole is around 10-12%, the unemployment of immigrant youths is pushing 40% in some areas. Contrast this with America, where while the immigrant population has doubled in the last 20-30 years, the unemployment rate among immigrants is down in the 5-6% range. So there is no doubt that the kindling for carnage is there and that the lack of jobs holds much of the blame. But what of the claim by The Washington Post that radicals do not? The situation is far from encouraging.

As the Post itself reported not a month before:

French police investigating plans by a group of Islamic extremists to attack targets in Paris discovered last month that the group was recruiting French citizens to train in the Middle East and return home to carry out terrorist attacks, sources familiar with the investigation said.

One French official said the extremists were using a virtual "underground railroad" through Syria to spirit European and Middle Eastern citizens into and out of Iraq. A senior French law enforcement official, who declined to be quoted by name because he was speaking about classified information, said French citizens had undergone terrorist training at camps in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

True to form, the Post throws the crisis in America's lap, blaming the surge of terrorist activity on the invasion of Iraq, as there were no terrorists there until we dared to fight them. However what the Post conveniently forgets is that it was France herself who pressured Turkey to deny the United States the northern invasion point for the 4th ID - a move that many analysts suspect would have all but crushed the insurgency and terrorist efforts by now. But the Post has no head for irony, only America bashing and a selective memory.

Should anyone be worried about the terrorist's targeting France, or are the youths too busy burning cars and schools to heed the call of al Qaeda? Perhaps they learned how to create safe-houses to build gasoline bombs and spread violence to 300 cities instantly from TV? No wait, they couldn't have, as no one is reporting on the violence anymore, or the terror plots. The causes are left to the imagination.

Or are they?

Curiously absent in all of this, even moreso than the causes of the violence, is any talk about a real solution. One would think that even the Washington Post, if unable to blame America for the violence, might certainly trumpet the French solution as both wise and inclusive. What was the solution, by the way? French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin raised his hands to calm everyone and promised to fix the problems by providing community centers and job training programs, but I have yet to read any reports that the rioters have accepted the proposals. In fact, all they seem to be shouting is how they're going to turn Paris into the next Baghdad while praising Allah.

But perhaps the Post is right. Perhaps this is just some big misunderstanding. Perhaps we should just leave them all alone. It's about a lack of jobs and discrimination, not Islam. Right?

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.

"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

Boy that sounds reassuring, a group many have associated with al Qaeda offering to maintain law and order inside France. I'm sure the brotherhood will recuse themselves from al Qaeda while they do that right? Right...

So what have we learned? France is still burning, the violence has not ended, French politicians seem content to scheme for the best political out, yet the French "fixes" won't work unless they attack the larger issue of their economic system, and it appears that al Qaeda, left unchecked, is certainly open to slipping in through the back door. All in all quite a mess. And what does the French press have to say about all of this?

One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians.
....

"Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.

Good to see they have their priorities straight.

Russia: We shall save France

France is still burning, despite the media blackout. Apparently the strategy to ignore reality isn't working. But never fear, Russia has stepped up. They have the answer.

Send soccer thugs. No, really.

A Russian politician has offered to send the country's violent soccer thugs to France in order to sort out the rioters.

Far right politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky says he already has hundreds of volunteers, many of whom have special forces training.

In a telegram sent to France, Zhirinovsky, who is also the Duma's deputy speaker, said: "We are ready with volunteer units of football fans and activists who have served in military combat hot spots.

"I am convinced that our initiative would restore total order and calm the rioting within 48 hours."

I believe the code word to get the ball rolling is: Gooooooooaaaaaaaaal!

Nothing less than victory...absolutely.

President George W. Bush:

While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.' That's why more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The stakes in the global War on Terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our Nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory.

Spot on, Mr. President. Spot on. The speech was excellent. Now stay on the offensive.

Washington Post gives Ronnie Earle a push

Taking pity on Ronnie Earle's rapidly sinking case against former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, The Washington Post has given the prosecutor a nudge, crafting an article of intrigue and plea bargains. But it's a short story, mostly because even the Post ran out of steam after the first few paragraphs.

As disclosed by sources involved with the case, the new details present a more complete picture of the sequence of events leading to the indictment of DeLay at the end of September. They reveal the unusual lengths to which DeLay and his lawyers were willing to go to avoid charges that would force him to leave his powerful post -- and how it was DeLay's own words that ultimately got him in trouble with the prosecutor.

The disclosures also show the potential weakness of the Travis County prosecutor's case. Sources said it is based so far almost entirely on DeLay's admissions to Earle and his subsequent statements in media interviews about the money transfers. To date, Earle has not gathered compelling testimony from other witnesses or found documents that portray DeLay as the mastermind of the $190,000 transfers, they added.

So basically Earle's got nothing. But of course the entire plan wasn't to convict DeLay. It was to get him out of his leadership position. Democrats have been clamoring for a way to derail Republican House successes for years, and through Earle they found a way to do it.

You can be sure DeLay would not have allowed ANWR to fall through the cracks, not being such an important party goal for years. In today's Wall Street Journal, the article starts "Republican disarray on Capitol Hill reached self-ramming speed..." I couldn't have said it any better. And in straight reporting the writers put it even more bluntly.

The troubles in the House are more remarkable because it has been an engine for the Republican agenda. The leadership is clearly strained since former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R., Texas) stepped down after his indictment for alleged campaign-finance violations

This is what the criminalization of politics has wrought, Democrats not countering with policy, or ideas, or even vote-winning elections. They are attacking with tricks and traps and a sympathetic press that continues to mend and launder storylines so tattered that even the slightest gust of truth strips them naked.

As far as the Post's article goes, the prosecutor's office was leaking information alright, but it appears they were nervously peeing on their own legs.

Veteran's Day

Stars and Stripes says it best: A day for those who served, and those who still serve.

Maybe it takes a war for many Americans to see the meaning of Veterans Day.

“Sadly, that’s so,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Gravens, the top enlisted soldier in U.S. Army Europe. “Even then, I don’t think the average American realizes the sacrifices of soldiers and their families.”

Gravens was the keynote speaker for an early Veterans Day service Thursday at a base that certainly can relate. He spoke to fewer than 100 people in the base chapel at Caserma Ederle. More could have been expected if thousands of troops assigned to the base weren’t serving a yearlong stint in Afghanistan.

....

A few hours after Gravens’ address, a group of soldiers in a separate ceremony paid tribute to nine Sky Soldiers who died in Iraq.

Lt. Col. Michael Shinners, the brigade’s rear detachment commander, gave a brief history of Veterans Day to those gathered, tracing its history to the armistice signed following World War I.

Memorial Day, he said, is for those who have given their lives while serving their country. Veterans Day is for those who proudly served their country and those still serving.

Some survived. Some didn’t.

He then read the names of nine soldiers from the brigade who died in Iraq and helped lay a wreath on a memorial in front of the brigade’s headquarters dedicated to them.

About ANWR...

Does anyone think that this would have happened...

Top Republicans such as Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, and Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., worked into the night Wednesday refining the bill in an attempt to bring uneasy lawmakers on board. Florida Republicans were especially active, helping kill the offshore drilling plan and loosening proposed restrictions on food stamp benefits for legal immigrants.

The decision on the Arctic refuge was a big setback for those who have tried for years to open a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil development. It was a victory for environmentalists, who have lobbied hard against drilling. Bush has made drilling in the Alaska refuge one of his top energy priorities.

...if this guy was still cracking the whip? I'm just asking.

The quest by Democrats and the media establishment to criminalize politics, to create scandals out of nothing, to perpetuate stories reported incorrectly so many times as to become understood as fact has gone largely unanswered by Republicans and the White House.

To DeLay's credit, however, he has fought hard, and will probably be rewarded with victory sooner or later. But if Republicans don't start thinking about the long game, and start taking the battle back to Democrats and the media, turning the other cheek indefinitely will start to cost them elections. And voting against ANWR will not save them, neither from the media or their own voters.

Democrats and the media are seeking vindication, not Republican capitulation. They will forever demonize George Bush and Republicans for who they are, for who their voters are and what they stand for, not for how much they compromise or allow the Democrats their political cash drives. Moveon.org eats up the lies, and they donate heavily to Democrats. But it is more than that. It is a mental perception that they have developed, a derangement of ridiculous proportions that forces them to crusade under the banner that "Bush lied" or "Republicans are corrupt" or "Rove!" or "fake but accurate" or "Halliburton!". This is not rational thinking, nor sane behavior. And there will be no rational solutions either. Their ideology does not permit them to admit failure or compromise.

By any means necessary, the Democrats are trying to pick off Republicans of substance. Republicans can't worry about appeasing the media. They need to play to win.


About that "not saving them from their voters" part...Michelle Malkin has some letters to Republicans illustrating my point.

Apparently Senator Voinovich can't read...

Snowe isn't the only moderate Republican to voice concerns about passing tax cuts this year. Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, another Republican moderate, said he will vote against tax cuts because the government is accumulating too much debt and the economy does not need stimulation through tax reductions right now.

"It is time to recognize a simple fact of life," Voinovich said. "Contrary to what some of my colleagues seem to believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves."

I don't really understand the purpose of this hole Republicans seem to want to dig. I'd like to see the strategy guidebook they are using. The Anchoress vents her anger here, and Lorie Byrd agrees.

The Marine Corps turns 230

These guys deserve all the praise you can muster.

On Nov. 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved to raise two battalions of Continental Marines, marking the formation of the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1921, Lejeune set Nov. 10 of each year to honor the founding of the Marine Corps. Soon, some Marine commands began to celebrate it. The first "formal" Birthday Ball took place in Philadelphia in 1925.

Michelle Malkin has more tributes and links to personal stories. And I'd also like to direct everyone's attention to this site, a list of marines who received the Medal of Honor. While by no means complete or even able to convey the sheer scope of sacrifice our servicemen and women have given for this country, I hope it will prompt you to take a moment and say a prayer for all those who served and who serve still today. Here is but a small portion of the citations, chosen at random.

The President of the United States in the name of The Congress takes pride in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR posthumously to
LANCE CORPORAL RICHARD A. ANDERSON
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

for service as set forth in the following

CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as an Assistant Fire Team Leader with Company E, Third Reconnaissance Battalion, Third Marine Division, in connection with combat operations against an armed enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. While conducting a patrol during the early morning hours of 24 August 1969, Lance Corporal Anderson's reconnaissance team came under a heavy volume of automatic weapons and machine-gun fire from a numerically superior and well-concealed enemy force. Although painfully wounded in both legs and knocked to the ground during the initial moments of the fierce fire fight, Lance Corporal Anderson assumed a prone position and continued to deliver intense suppressive fire in an attempt to repulse the attackers. Moments later he was wounded a second time by an enemy soldier who had approached to within eight feet of the team's position. Undaunted, he continued to pour a relentless stream of fire at the assaulting unit, even while a companion was treating his legs wounds. Observing an enemy grenade land between himself and the other Marine, Lance Corporal Anderson immediately rolled over and covered the lethal weapon with his body, absorbing the full effects of the detonation. By his indomitable courage, inspiring initiative, and selfless devotion to duty, Lance Corporal Anderson was instrumental in saving several Marines from serious injury or possible death. His actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.

....

The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR posthumously to
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS BRUCE W. CARTER
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

for service as set forth in the following

CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Grenadier with Company H, Second Battalion, Third Marines, Third Marine Division in connection with combat operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On 7 August 1969, Private First Class Carter's unit was maneuvering against the enemy during Operation Idaho Canyon and came under a heavy volume of fire from a numerically superior hostile force. The lead element soon became separated from the main body of the squad by a brush fire. Private First Class Carter and his fellow Marines were pinned down by vicious crossfire when, with complete disregard for his own safety, he stood in full view of the North Vietnamese Army soldiers to deliver a devastating volume of fire at their positions. The accuracy and aggressiveness of his attack caused several enemy casualties and forced the remainder of the soldiers to retreat from the immediate area. Shouting directions to the Marines around him, Private First Class Carter then commenced leading them from the path of the rapidly approaching brush fire when he observed a hostile grenade land between him and his companions. Fully aware of the probable consequences of his action, but determined to protect the men following him, he unhesitatingly threw himself over the grenade, absorbing the full effects of its detonation with his own body. Private First Class Carter's indomitable courage, inspiring initiative, and selfless devotion to duty upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.

....

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR to
PRIVATE WILSON D. WATSON
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE

for service as set forth in the following

CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Automatic Rifleman serving with the Second Battalion, Ninth Marines, Third Marine Division, during action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 26 and 27 February 1945. With his squad abruptly halted by intense fire from enemy fortifications in the high rocky ridges and crags commanding the line of advance, Private Watson boldly rushed one pillbox and fired into the embrasure with his weapon, keeping the enemy pinned down single-handedly until he was in a position to hurl in a grenade and then running to the rear of the emplacement to destroy the retreating Japanese and enable his platoon to take its objective. Again pinned down at the foot of a small hill, he dauntlessly scaled the jagged incline under fierce mortar and machine-gun barrages and with his assistant automatic rifleman charged the crest of the hill, firing from his hip. Fighting furiously against Japanese troops attacking with grenades and knee-mortars from the reverse slope, he stood fearlessly erect in his exposed position to cover the hostile entrenchments and held the hill under savage fire for fifteen minutes, killing sixty Japanese before his ammunition was exhausted and his platoon was able to join him. His courageous initiative and valiant fighting spirit against devastating odds were directly responsible for the continued advance of his platoon and his inspiring leadership throughout this bitterly fought action reflects the highest credit upon Private Watson and the United States Naval Service.

The next step

Taking a rather sober look at the current political waters, John McIntyre from RealClearPolitics outlines a fairly competent strategy for the Bush team. Take note of the language: "If Bush is willing to fight..."

It's striking that that has become the basic pre-condition, asking if Bush or Republicans want to win anything anymore. In fact I am starting to wonder if I should be in agreement, considering the passive-aggressive stance on ANWR, the ridiculous charade of hauling oil company executives into Congress to answer questions, the inability or unwillingness of Republicans to fight back against the insidious flood of intelligence leaks, etc, etc.

Here is the relevant portion of John's analysis. Please read the entire thing.

While there is no question that the President has taken a pounding these last few months starting with Cindy Sheehan, Katrina, Miers and then Fitzgerald; he still holds some powerful cards not the least of which is the fecklessness of the Pelosi/Reid/Dean opposition. Democrats would be well advised to remember that Republicans put a hard and specific agenda in front of the American people in 1994, which combined with the unhappiness with Congress is what led to the big GOP win. Right now there is no Democratic agenda. Simply repeating "NO" or "BUSH LIED" is not a program.

If Bush is willing to fight he can turn things around. The final round of elections in Iraq, Saddam's impending conviction and execution, and the potential for many American troops to come home could provide a backdrop to turn around public perceptions about Iraq. A strong economy, coupled with firm housing and equity prices are another positive for the President. And then finally, the Alito nomination will provide a forum for a partisan fight, that as long as Alito is confirmed, will energize his base and demoralize the Left.

....

But everyone should take a deep breath and remember it is November 2005 not November 2006. And because the Democratic "success" these last few months has come almost exclusively from Bush's woes and nothing the Democrats are pro-actively offering, the President has it in his power to turn things around for the GOP. But he better get out there and fight, because he is not going to catch a break from his political enemies, and he better get that job approval back above 40%.

I couldn't agree more.

200 posts!

Yep, that's right. The little ticker on Blogger just rolled over. And to top it off, today is my one year blog birthday. One year ago today I logged on to Blogger and started this puppy up. Of course, then I promptly had work and life craziness come up, a book I was trying to make progress on--and a hope that politics for conservatives had turned a corner and the media war against George Bush would stop... heh...

I didn't blog for six months. And then one day in May I decided I had to get back in the game. Speaking out about terrorism, about the culture of life, about what we think about life and our universe, about conservative values, about the media, Democrats, and of course making fun of Ted Kennedy--that's what it's all about. It's been pretty wild, being in the thick of it, but I have to say it has been a truly rewarding experience.

So to all my readers, commenters and fellow bloggers, thanks for stopping by. I've been amazed at how this blog has grown and the exposure it's gotten. I hope you'll continue to tune in. I have some new additions planned in the coming weeks and I hope to keep the commentary lively and insightful. I'd also like to say a special thanks to E.M. Zanotti over at The American Princess. She was gracious enough to allow me to guest blog on her site when I was just getting back into blogging, and I owe her many thanks for helping me build an audience.

So stick around everybody. Yesterday's elections, on the whole, may have been a bit bumpy for conservatives, but upon reflection I think the loses say a lot more about what Republicans need to do than any inroads Democrats are making. And Republicans need to get their act together by being the party for the people, of listening to their voters, and toning down the politics. The voters don't really care as much about the R or D next to the name. They want leaders, they want honesty, they want good decisions, and they want results. It's time to get down to business.

So let's get to it. Let's get on with the new day.

"...already done significant damage to U.S. efforts..."

And who has done this damage to the U.S.? Not terrorists, not France, not even Scooter Libby. No, apparently this blame goes on Dana Priest, The Washington Post journalist who reported on "black sites" in Europe where al Qaeda members were being imprisoned and interrogated.

Republicans have called for a congressional investigation. As Drudge reports:

Sources tell Drudge that early this afternoon House Speaker Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Frist will announce a bicameral investigation into the leak of classified information to the WASHINGTON POST regarding the "black sites" where high value al Qaeda terrorists are being held and interrogated.

Said one Hill source: "Talk about a leak that damaged national security! How will we ever get our allies to cooperate if they fear that their people will be targeted by al Qaeda."

According to sources, the WASHINGTON POST story by Dana Priest (Wednesday November 2), revealed highly classified information that has already done significant damage to US efforts in the War on Terror.

Nice job, Washington Post. Bravo. Are you happy now?

As Stephen Spruiell points out:

This is what Joe Wilson and the Democrats and all the major newspaper editorial boards that called for an investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity have wrought - a crackdown on classified information leaked to the press, akin to a de facto Official Secrets Act.

Honestly, I say we give'em one. Let's go, all the way. Let's investigate everything: pre-war intelligence, leaks, Joe Wilson, the French, the CIA, journalists.

I do not like the idea of interfering with American free press, but this ridiculousness, brought about by nothing more than a desire to hurt the President and Republicans, is utterly contemptible. As William Bennett recently ranted:

This is an outrage. It took less than a day for al Jazeera to run with the story. And by Dana Priest's own admission in an online discussion forum on the Washington Post's website she states, "The article [I wrote] is bommeranging [sic] around Europe, especially Eastern Europe."

It sure is, and now the European Union, the Hague, and other organizations are investigating our allies who are working with us in holding high-value targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin Al-Shib. It's not enough that our allies in Europe have suffered terrorism (cf. Spain, the U.K.) because of their siding with us - we now have to expose others, and give more justification to terrorists to attack our allies? And we have to suffer the war-time distraction of rebuilding sites and moving these prisoners?

This is irresponsibility at its highest; it's also hypocrisy. As for Plame? Well, here again is Dana Priest in her online forum: "I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."

You wouldn't know the foregoing from the way the Left and the press have handled the Scooter Libby story. Not only did he not out a covert agent, neither did Karl Rove - who is now the focus of the Left's wrath and the media's investigation. Who did out a secret and covert operation? The Washington Post. Shame on them. The consequences of what they've done will continue to rattle and distract our efforts - so too our allies'. In the meantime, the next time a White House correspondent tries to put Scott McClellan on the line for his involvement in the Wilson-Plame affair, I hope he unloads on them for what they've done here. I hope, too, that Jay Rockefeller and Harry Reid call for an investigation of just where this leak came from.

Apparently Reid and Rockefeller had to go to the little boys room, so Hastert and Frist stepped up.

So what will this investigation bring? If they are serious, then a massive outing of the truth about the war going on between the press and the White House--a war that I believe originally started with the press frenzy over the Pentagon Papers. And now we see routine use of lies, deceptions, obfuscations, circular reporting, omissions, selective truths, intelligence leaks--all reported by the press with an eye for maximum damage to the administration. It is beyond sickening. It is the war over the war, the war for liberal ideological vindication. And as the past few years have shown, it's really the only war we need to worry about the White House, and America, losing.

Election eve

So tomorrow, if you are alive, awake, lucid, a human being, and can get to a polling place, go vote. Once only please.

Michelle Malkin is following some of the hottest contests. And I see Texas made the list.

The biggest fight going on here in the Lone Star State--since the mayor of Houston is essentially running uncontested--is called Proposition 2, and it would place an amendment to the Texas constitution providing that marriage in Texas is solely the union of one man and one woman, and that anything outside of this, and from outside Texas, would not be recognized.

As predicted, every major newspaper in Texas has come out against the Proposition, which in my book is enough of a reason to vote for it then. Here is how the *pulls a paper at random* Waco Tribune-Herald describes the issue:

Proposition 2 would amend the constitution to declare that marriage in Texas consists only of the union of one man and one woman. It also would prohibit the state or any political subdivision of the state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

This proposed constitutional amendment is redundant and unneeded. The Tribune-Herald editorial board recommends that voters reject Proposition 2.

Texas already has a law that prohibits marriage between persons of the same sex. It also prohibits civil unions between persons of the same sex.
....

The rationale behind this duplication of effort both in legislation and in the constitution was that a lawsuit might come along and successfully overturn the state's Defense of Marriage Act if it were found to unlawfully discriminate against some citizens.

Opponents of same-sex marriages want to erect as many roadblocks as possible to prevent gay couples from joining the institution of marriage. A constitutional amendment would be harder to change if attitudes in Texas about gay citizens also changed in the future.

Actually, the reason pro-marriage citizens want to put their will into the constitution is to show exactly how strongly they object to anything other than the union of one man to one woman being called a marriage, and how serious they are about protecting their votes and their marriages from activist judges and states who have given up on respecting marriage altogether.

Now the opponents of Prop 2 have pulled a few well-timed dirty tricks, the most notable being a recent phone campaign.

On Monday, the political action group Save Texas Marriage made more than 2 million autodial phone calls to Texas voters claiming the amendment, which defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman, was worded incorrectly and would somehow dissolve heterosexual marriages in the state.

Seems rather ridiculous, but these are Democrats we're talking about, and they have spent a considerable amount of money on this. It's doubtful it'll make a difference, but many of the Proposition 2 opponents seem to be testing the waters for a "moral victory".

I was never one to subscribe to the idea that losing was a moral victory, but I'm not as enlightened as I should be, I suppose. So I'll leave the posturing to others more qualified to understand the nuance of a loss at the polls.

Can Europe make it?

I think media fascination has overwhelmed any desire to discount the unrest in France as "all but over" or give credence to Chirac's calls for "law and order". But the AP and Reuters are still attempting to lay blame on France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy for calling Muslim youths "scum" in the initial hours of the riots. This is a rather pathetic attempt to deflect blame from the ultimate cause, however, the policies of the French government.

In fact, as this thing grows, it's looking more like a nascent call to arms for all Muslims in Europe.

Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight and a man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.

As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm.

On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started Oct. 27, Michel Gaudin told a news conference.

Now for those wondering how in the world a country could transition from relative peace to near civil war in the span of a week, there is an explanation, and it has nothing to do with the poor youths who died as they hid from police.

This type of violence has been going on for years in Europe, except it was Jewish synagogues being burned, not Peugeots or Renaults. And the European elite ignored these signs in return for the peace they so enjoy. But the French dream of multiculturalism, stripped of any real measures for integration, of bringing Muslims into the fold of French society, has cultivated not a utopia, but cultures captive to the benevolence of the French welfare state.

As such, whereas in America, who throughout history has gone through her own evolution of race integration, those who demanded equality and a place in society did so with love for their country, to dare the country to do better, this is not the case in Europe. What we are seeing is hatred of France. And it's spreading.

Democrats seduced by Valerie Plame

What they want: Democrats Seek Report on Prewar Iraq Intel

The DIA concluded that al-Libi probably was deliberately misleading the interrogators, and he recanted the statements in January 2004, according to the document made public by Sen. Carl Levin, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"In other words, he's an entirely unreliable individual upon whom the White House was placing substantial intelligence trust," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a member of the Intelligence Committee.

"And that is a classic example of a lack of accountability to the American people," Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told CNN's "Late Edition."

What Congress needs to do: Investigate the CIA

• Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or represent CIA clients.

• When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.

• Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.

• CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.

For the original "seduction" post, see here.

Reuters is seduced by Star Wars

From Star Wars:

BEN: Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

LUKE: The Force?

BEN: Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.

From Reuters:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was "seduced by the glamour of U.S. power" in the build-up to the Iraq war and repeatedly failed to influence U.S. policy, a former top British diplomat said in comments published on Monday.

"...without a doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of."

So let's see. We've got plagues in the form of bird flu and mad cow. We've got war in the Middle East. Paris is burning because of a Muslim uprising. And now...we've got pirates.

Pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns tried to hijack a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast Saturday, but the ship outran them, officials said.

Two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast and opened fire while the heavily armed bandits tried to get onboard, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.

The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course.

And apparently these were not your run of the mill pirates either. We're talking hard core Treasure Island pirates. No Jack Sparrow's or Seinfeld puffy shirts in this lot. Captain Jack Sparrow, I mean...

Edith Laird of Seattle, who was traveling with her daughter and a friend, told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an e-mail that her daughter saw the pirates out the window.

"There were at least three rocket-propelled grenades that hit the ship, one in a state room," Laird wrote. "We had no idea that this ship could move as fast as it did and (the captain) did his best to run down the pirates."

The Spirit was bound for Mombasa, Kenya, at the end of a 16-day voyage from Alexandria, Egypt. It was expected to reach the Seychelles on Monday, and then continue on its previous schedule to Singapore, company officials said.

The 440-foot-long, 10,000-ton cruise ship, which is registered in the Bahamas, sustained minor damage, Good said. The liner, which had its maiden voyage in 1989, can accommodate 208 guests.

"They took some fire, but it's safe to sail," he said.

Oh yeah, sure, no problem. Just a couple rockets in the side. Battle on the high seas? All in a day's work. Just run'em over at flank speed. No sweat.

Impressive move by the captain. I'd have ran their ass over too. But good grief...some vacation.

"We didn't start the fire..."

Why I think of really bad 80s songs when I think of France, I'll never know. My associative powers tend to thwart all logic sometimes.

But the point is, Paris, along with a portion of the French countryside, is on fire. The rioting which started last week has now spread and grown into a pseudo-intifada against the French state.

With 897 vehicles destroyed by daybreak Saturday, it was the worst one-day toll since unrest broke out after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them. Five hundred cars were burned a night earlier.

In a particularly malevolent turn, youths in the eastern Paris suburb of Meaux prevented paramedics from evacuating a sick person from a housing project, pelting rescuers with rocks and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry official said.

A nursery school was badly burned in Acheres, west of Paris.

The town had previously escaped the violence, the worst rioting in at least a decade in France. Some residents demanded that the army be deployed, or that citizens band together to protect their neighborhoods.

Now granted, not much is lost when a Renault goes up in smoke, but the idea of absolute chaos in France has a good portion of Europe on edge. Because they were 'it'--France was the stalwart against American imperialism, the protector of Islam from the cowboy in the oval office (unless you were a Muslim schoolgirl who wanted to wear proper religious attire to class).

So much for that idea.

Of course anyone with a brain knew such tactics were bound to backfire eventually. The French have prided themselves on creating a multiculturalist paradise...in their minds...and by opposing America. By setting themselves up to be the paragon of politically correct thought, cultural refinement and the gatekeepers of international legitimacy they had hoped to establish their dominance in the world and foster desire for their way of doing things. Oh how they were wrong.

What Europe has never understood, is that appeasement never works, that the enemies of the free world are always plotting, that talk is not action, that surrender is not leadership, that refinement is not a substantive identity and that multiculturalism without individualism and national pride will never ever work.

French is now perceived as weak. As a recent discussion on NRO noted:

"The Iraq war: as I had noticed very strongly in Tunisia a little more than 2 years ago, the opposition of France to intervention in Iraq has been perceived as a sign of weakness, and French are since considered as Dhimmis. The change of attitude from Arabs against French has been dramatic: now I know problems of security in Tunisia, and even in the French planes to go and come from there, and in Nice (French Riviera) Airport! This opposition, probably motivated by the money earned in Oil For Terror program and by threats from Saudi Arabia and Iran, has marked the end of France as a Western country (whatever one thinks about the Iraq war per se!)."

And there it is, the real root of the problem, how the French are perceived in the world. Not by the U.N., or the West, but by those who would seek to act out against her. I do not want to equate the specific riots going on in France to terrorism. But the comparison must be made, if on no other level than this: at it's root, the multicultural race differentiation and European welfare state, providing labels for race but no individual identity, has led to the lack of assimilation of Muslims into the French culture, and thus opened the door for a lack of national and individual pride, created closed cultures within other cultures, and left tempting Osama bin Laden's promise of a purer Islam in the face of the Western culture of sin.

These riots are only the beginning if the idea of multiculturalism is not addressed in an honest and open way. And it needs to happen now.

The case of the missing utopia

Back during the attack of the hurricanes, I blogged about the news media fretting about the power of Mother Nature and how science had not tamed her yet. Their "it wasn't supposed to be this way" way of thinking persists in part because they just don't understand what they're asking for. They envision some Hollywood utopia, probably based on some Star Trek socialist paradise, where we have no hunger, no money, full health care, no war (because no one will be greedy with no money right?), and control of the elements (that will supposedly allow us to create such a paradise). Hey, if Roddenberry did it, why can't we?

Now don't get upset, I like Star Trek. Sort of. I'm a Star Wars man myself. But I love techno and a good science or time-travel mystery, so as long as that episode of TNG started out with the Enterprise blowing up, I was in. Dianna's mother and Worf's kid had no business being in the series, I don't care what you say.

But on to that missing utopia.

Where the media goes wrong is in assuming two things: that people will work and innovate to the best of their ability for zero compensation, and that we can tame the forces of nature--if at all--in a cost effective manner.

Now I know what you're thinking. But look how far we've come? We've got good quality of life, for the most part, we've got the bomb, we've got cell phones and microwaves, cars and Starbucks. I can walk into a McDonalds in Springfield and a McDonalds in Venezuela, buy the same hamburger, the same Coca-Cola, and it will taste exactly the same. You can travel the world eating your way to a heart-attack with nary a drop in quality or variation. Okay...so I mean quality in the sense of taste and appearance, not nutrients.

The point is, you're right, we have come a long way. In fact, it's pretty darn amazing. But the effort it took to bring us this far was pretty darn amazing too. Think about how your microwave works, or your car, or how your latte tastes the same everywhere you go. It's no small feat. It never is. Just ask those poor souls who dug out the Panama Canal. Even the medicines we ingest--I won't get in the habit of defending drug companies, but profits aside, it takes a lot of effort to get that itty-bitty pill you pop every time your cholesterol gets too high.

We've become a society where the effort that goes into making things or providing things has gotten masked over by the immediacy of our wants. Starbucks doesn't care if you don't appreciate their logistical scheme for shipping coffee worldwide, they just want you buying that upside-down-non-fat-frap-mocha. And you don't need to understand their methods either. In fact we all sorta get cloistered into our own areas of expertise. But innovation, production and logistics is a part of how the world works that gets glossed over too often when it comes to the "where do we go from here" talk.

It manifests itself when politicians start railing against McDonalds because their food is fattening, or oil companies because they made a profit, or drug companies because they didn't make a flu vaccine, or the president for causing Global Warming, or automakers for not making a battery-powered car that is better than a gasoline powered one--right now!, or for the industrialized nations for not ending our dependence upon oil--right now!. These are fantasies, propagated by those with a political objective, not anyone with knowledge of the science or economics involved.

Can changes be made, quickly? Can we get better gas mileage, and use less oil, and stop Global Warming? The answer is probably yes for all except that last one. You're not stopping the sun, or that big chemical reaction that is the earth, I'm sorry. But you have to weigh your desire for change with the chaos such changes will inflict upon the world economy. If we stopped using oil tomorrow, the markets would crash, the entire world would stop. Even phasing such stuff out over years would be chaotic. Entire industries are built around this commodity. Millions of people, families, would be affected. Infrastructure the world over, worth billions of dollars, would suddenly become worthless.

Want to rail against Exxon for making that huge profit? Tell me, how much did the government make from the taxes on your gasoline? Congress is putting the CEO of Exxon on trial, I'm curious if they feel any shame that the U.S. government brought in even more money than Exxon?

I'm not defending Exxon, I'm defending capitalism. Corporations that skirt the law, or gouge the consumer, the market will take care of them. The stock market punished Enron a million times more than the government ever could. It destroyed the company and left it burning on the side of the road for all other companies to look at. And the banks lost billions too. The market, not the government, taught them a lesson.

And the market also teaches companies that innovate a lesson as well. There are rewards for new ideas. No socialist utopia can provide that. And that's why America continues to lead the way in the world. Our innovation is rewarded and our individualism is celebrated.

But, to get to the point... That's why when I see stuff like this, I have to shake my head and cringe. Because I just know this is what contributes to the media perception of the way things should be, instead of the way things are.

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.

Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation.

Does it work? Well for it work he would have to turn about 60 years of physics on it's head.

The problem is that according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the behaviour of atoms, the idea is theoretically impossible. "Physicists are quite conservative. It's not easy to convince them to change a theory that is accepted for 50 to 60 years. I don't think [Mills's] theory should be supported," said Jan Naudts, a theoretical physicist at the University of Antwerp.

What has much of the physics world up in arms is Dr Mills's claim that he has produced a new form of hydrogen, the simplest of all the atoms, with just a single proton circled by one electron. In his "hydrino", the electron sits a little closer to the proton than normal, and the formation of the new atoms from traditional hydrogen releases huge amounts of energy.

This is scientific heresy. According to quantum mechanics, electrons can only exist in an atom in strictly defined orbits, and the shortest distance allowed between the proton and electron in hydrogen is fixed. The two particles are simply not allowed to get any closer.

According to Dr Mills, there can be only one explanation: quantum mechanics must be wrong. "We've done a lot of testing. We've got 50 independent validation reports, we've got 65 peer-reviewed journal articles," he said. "We ran into this theoretical resistance and there are some vested interests here. People are very strong and fervent protectors of this [quantum] theory that they use."

Quantum theory. You know the term, you may not know the physics. But it's why your cell phone works, why we have the bomb, why you have GPS, why we have MRIs, why your computer works, why the atomic clock works so well.

Ever wonder why the atom is the size it is? Ever wonder why the positive nucleus and the negative electrons never touch? Ever wonder why your fingers don't pass through the keyboard on your computer? Ever wonder why a nuclear explosion happens? It is all explained by Quantum Theory.

By no means perfect, by no means a complete theory (a huge issue not for this discussion), and by no means as elegant as many in the scientific world would like, but it works. And it works amazingly well. So well in fact that even Einstein was stumped as to why. In fact everybody is still stumped. Anyone who tells you that they understand Quantum Theory doesn't really know what they're talking about. As Richard Feynman once said, "Nobody understands quantum physics."

This not to say this new "discovery" doesn't merit investigation. I'm all for it. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We all remember the Cold Fusion debacle. Free energy, there is no such a thing. It always has to come from somewhere. Chain reactions work well in nuclear explosions, but last I checked the fission process was still persona non grata, and the fusion process is hardly controllable yet. Plus I'm not sure people will be all too keen on having a small sun next to their homes any time soon.

Interestingly, the article has a couple neat alternative energy ideas being kicked around.

Alternative energy

Cold fusion [Going nowhere fast.--ZP]

More than 16 years after chemists' claims to have created a star in a jar imploded in acrimony, the US government has said it might fund more research. Mainstream physicists still balk at reports that a beaker of cold water and metal electrodes can produce excess heat, but a hardy band of scientists across the world refuse to let the dream die.

Methane hydrates [Curious.--ZP]

The US and Japan are leading attempts to tap this source of fossil fuel buried beneath the seabed and Arctic permafrost. A mixture of ice and natural gas, hydrates are believed to contain more carbon than existing reserves of oil, coal and gas put together.

Solar chimneys [Santa may have a problem with this.--ZP]

Sunlight heats trapped air, which rises through a giant chimney and drives turbines. Leonardo da Vinci designed such a power tower and the Australian company Enviromission plans to build one. Despite being scaled down recently, the concrete chimney will still stand some 700 metres over the outback.

Nuclear fusion [The real Doomsday device.--ZP]

Turns nuclear power on its head by combining atoms rather than splitting them to release energy - copying the reaction at the heart of the sun. After years of arguments the world has agreed to build a test reactor to see whether it works on a commercial scale. Called Iter, it could be switched on within a decade.

Wave generators [What do they do on calm days?--ZP]

No longer a dead duck, the hopes of engineers are riding on bobbing floats again. The British company Trident Energy recently unveiled a design that uses a linear generator to convert the motion of the sea into electricity. A wave farm just a few hundred metres across could power 62,000 homes.

Anyway, regarding the new discovery, my thought is to just let it all play out. I'm very curious. But...let's not start dreaming of our own private starship Enterprises just yet. Maybe a phaser. But no further.

The Paris situation worsens

As much as I dislike the decisions France has made--probably since WWII--I have to say the rioting that's taking place over there is quite troubling and I hope they can get it under control soon. The French people, for all their, well...Frenchness, are going to suffer a great deal more if this continues.

But that said, I believe they need to come to their senses about the huge problem they have in their midst.

Riots erupted in an outburst of anger in Clichy-sous-Bois over the accidental electrocution Oct. 27 of two teenagers who fled a soccer game and hid in a power substation when they saw police enter the area. Youths in the neighborhood suspect that police chased Traore Bouna, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, to their deaths.

Since then riots have swelled into a broader challenge against the French state and its security forces. The violence has exposed deep discontent in neighborhoods where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.

The Interior Ministry released a preliminary report Thursday exonerating officers of any direct role in the teenagers' deaths. Some 1,300 officers were being deployed in Seine-Saint-Denis, a tough northeastern area that includes the town of Clichy-sous-Bois and has seen the worst violence.

The report said police went to Clichy-sous-Bois to investigate a suspected intrusion on a building site but did not chase the teenagers who were killed. A third teenager who was seriously injured also told investigators he and the other boys were aware of the dangers when they hid in the substation, which was fenced off, the report said.

The report did not address why the youths ran when officers came to the neighborhood, but it said Benna was known to police for having committed robbery with violence and Bouna was among those who had intruded onto the building site.

It is truly sad that two youths have died, but rioting in response, tearing down the city, this cannot stand. However, even if the French can quell the riots, this really is looking like the death-knell for Europe's much hoped for multi-culturalist utopia.

The violence also has cast doubt on the success of France's model of seeking to integrate its immigrant community — its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe's largest — by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children often complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.

"It is very tough when you are stuck midway between France and Algeria or Morocco," said Sonia Imloul, who works with troubled teens in Seine-Saint-Denis and was born in France of Algerian parents. She added: "Perhaps we should be told clearly to stop having children, because they have an 80 percent chance of not succeeding."

On Thursday, rioters fired four shots at police and firefighters but caused no injuries, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for Seine-Saint-Denis. Nine people were injured in other unrest and 315 cars were torched across the Paris area, officials said.

Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a commuter line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains. A passenger was slightly injured by broken glass.

Police have made 143 arrests during the unrest, Interior Ministry Nicolas Sarkozy said.

Residents and opposition politicians have accused Sarkozy of fanning tensions with his tough police tactics and talk — including calling troublemakers "scum."

"Sarkozy's language has added oil to the fire. He should really weigh his words," said Kaci, whose daughter lost her gym. "I'm proud to live in France, but this France disappoints me."

And therein also lies the problem, blaming everybody but those actually responsible. Europe has avoided such realities in the past, and they still blame America for terrorism. But such enemies of convenience and victim-hood thinking don't go far when your own home is under attack. You either do something about it immediately or you don't survive.

Michael Moore found!

He's been missing for months, nay, nearly a year out of the media spotlight. Many had feared the worst.

But never fear. He's back. He's apparently no longer fat. And he's got a new film! Hold on to your sanity, because coming next May, Moore is going to huff and puff and blow your house down with "Katrina: The Wrath of Bush".

The Cannes Film Festival (May 17th through May 28th, 2006) is pleased to announce that Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11) will debut his new documentary, "Katrina: The Wrath of Bush" on Monday, May 22, 2006 at the Cinema de la Plage. The film will be a special presentation sponsored by the Independent Film Channel.

Now I've seen the Wrath of Khan, and I have to say, if this movie is anything like that, then George Bush is going to have the biggest pecs you have ever seen. Eat your heart out Mr. Montalban!

Of course it'll be real too, not prosthetic like in Khan, because everything in a Michael Moore movie is real...

So...I guess what Moore's trying to tell us, especially in light of his new and improved mini pot-belly, is exercise pays, the little creepy-crawlies that ate their way into Chekov's brain are exactly like the chips that Halliburton and Rove put in Republicans' heads, and hurricanes are like the Genesis device. Which actually, if you think about it is kinda true.

I mean George Bush is rebuilding New Orleans from the flood waters (and that dang chip in my head itches something fierce!). Though in the movie the genensis device was tested in stages. First the cave (New Orleans?), and next the...world? I don't know, I'll have to see the film. I just want to see the fight in the nebula...I guess that will be caused by Global Warming this time, instead of interstellar gas frought with gravity, supernova shockwave remnants and stellar wind (heh...no warming going on there...).

But thank God Moore is back! I was worried the Republicans would have to campaign in '06 without any help from the liberal fringe. Now the Republican majority is all but assured. Plus we get to see a Star Trek remake.

I wonder what he'll do with the role of Sulu?

World ends in France...betcha didn't know that huh?

So for what--a week now?--Paris has been burning. Riots and violence, caused, as Aljazeera says, by "young students". Though perhaps they should have been a tad more descriptive and said "young muslim students".

Violence has erupted for a sixth night in the troubled suburbs northeast of Paris, with police firing rubber bullets and tear gas as they faced down gangs of youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois.

A store was set on fire in the nearby suburb of Bondy, France-Info radio reported on Tuesday.

No trouble was immediately reported in Clichy-sous-Bois, where rioting began on Thursday after the accidental deaths of two teenagers.

An Associated Press Television news team reported confrontations between about 20 police and 40 youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois, with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.

Some of the havoc they've caused is quite severe.

Youths lobbed Molotov cocktails at an annex to the town hall and threw stones at the firehouse. It was not known whether the clashes led to injuries.

Four people were arrested for throwing stones at police in Bondy where 14 cars were burned, the prefecture said. A fire engulfed a carpet store, but it was not known whether the blaze was linked to the suburban unrest.

Officials gave an initial count of 69 vehicles torched in nine suburbs across the Seine-Saint-Denis region that arcs around Paris on the north and northeast. The area, home mainly to families of immigrant origin, most of them from Muslim North Africa, is marked by soaring unemployment and delinquency.

Officials said "small, very mobile gangs" were harassing police and setting fires to garbage cans and vehicles throughout the region.

France-Info said about 150 fires were burning in suburbs of the Seine-Saint-Denis region.

So out of control, rampaging criminals (I think once they set the first building on fire it's okay to go ahead and upgrade "students" to "criminals") are burning and pillaging Paris, their city is burning down around them, and their solution is...

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - blamed by many for fanning the violence with tough talk and harsh tactics - met in Paris with youths and officials from Clichy-sous-Bois in an effort to end days of rioting. But the unrest spread even as they met.

I feel terrible about it, I do. But I mean really, tell me their reponse of "talking tough" and then using "harsh tactics" (though I question their definition of harsh, this is France we're talking about), and then backing down because of criticism is anything but ridiculously weak. Of course appeasement is their next step, and so, as anyone could have predicted, that just gives everybody involved zero incentive to stop.

For a brief, yet more realistic analysis of why Paris is burning, I'll quote the guys from Powerline.

The Paris riots are just one small part of a worrisome picture. Over much of Europe, chronically slow economic growth has combined with a demographic crisis, comprised of low birth rates and inadequate assimilation of immigrants, to create the potential for explosive social unrest.

They have a real problem brewing over there, and these stories need media coverage. By the way, if you're curious why I went to Aljazeera to get this story, well...that's because the major media in the U.S. won't report on it. Makes you wonder who's worse...

Blackjack is the new Nuclear

Looks like the Democrats want to go nuclear. Harry Reid has locked down the Senate, invoking Rule 21.

Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, demanding answers about intelligence that led to the Iraq war. Republicans derided the move as a political stunt.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Democratic leader Harry Reid said the American people and U.S. troops deserved to know the details of how the United States became engaged in the war, particularly in light of the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session. With a second by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, senators filed to their seats on the floor and the doors were closed. No vote is required in such circumstances.

"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions," Reid said before the doors were closed.

I've often wondered what it would look like to watch an entire national party commit political suicide. I guess this is pretty close.

The motive is apparently to "discuss" and "investigate" pre-war intelligence, because the president "lied" about the war and the corruption (Scooter) in his administration has gone far enough (I guess the Bush administration's one indictment has the same weight as the Clinton administration's...what was it?--50 something indictments?) Perhaps the other, unstated reason, is the idea of a Justice Alito, and the president not listening to the New York Times, got to be too much for them.

Either way, they seem to have decided that this is their way back to power (or the end of the world) and no tactic is too dispicable, no lie too bold.

Scooter Libby, indicted he may be, and perhaps guilty of all charges, cannot help the Democrats here. Because the dirty little secret that nobody is mentioning is...he was only indicted for lying to investigators about events that happened after the investigation started. Meaning, months after the outing of Valerie Plame. Libby is only in trouble because of how he handled himself during the investigation, not because of anything he talked to reporters about, or the VP about, or any of his actions while Plame's name was leaked--by somebody. We don't know who leaked her name, because Scooter was not charged with leaking it.

So now Democrats want to investigate pre-war intelligence, and the president. Oh I hope the Republicans oblige....I really hope so... Because maybe then the Senate Intelligence committee will decide that Joe Wilson should be investigated for perjury, and providing false intelligence. Perhaps the Senate should investigate exactly why, if Plame was some super-secret covert operative, she would suggest to the CIA to send her husband, an out of work ambassador, on a vacation to meet with the rulers of Niger and then allow him to write an op-ed in the New York Times, explicitly contradicting the information he related to the CIA agents who debriefed him. Or why she would take the risk in the first place, because her husband, blabber mouth and fame seeker as he was, effectively guaranteed that she would be outed.

If this is the fight that Democrats want, I say give it to them. If they want to play pattie-cake and footsie with the highway bill, I could care less. But this kind of backstabbing further allows the criminalization of politics and our national intelligence. And these fools are seriously harming the war effort. We cannot let this stand. Either Senate Republicans shut Reid and the others down first chance they get, or I advocate a full offensive by Republicans with a detailed chronology of Democratic treachery.

Democrats get caught with their pants down

Again.

The nomination of Judge Samuel Alito is barely a day old, and already the Democrats have initiated, circulated, trumped up and gotten caught creating a scandal out of thin air.

This document has been circulated, purporting to show Alito's ties to the Mob and the GOP. This is a new one to me (not Democrats using racist smears, that I've come to expect). No, I had always assumed the standard line was "HALLIBURTON!!!". If I had known this yesterday I would have used it in my moonbat monologue for Blog Like a Liberal Day.

Anyway, if you don't have time to read the entire document, let's just say that even Chris Matthews of MSNBC had this to say about it:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "[I]'m Sitting Here Holding In My Hands, A Pretty Disgusting Document, This Is Put Out Not For Attribution. But It Comes From The Democrats, They're Circulating It. I Can Say That." (MSNBC's "MSNBC Live," 10/31/05)

So wait, how do we know that the Democrats circulated the document? Apparently the geniuses at the DNC don't have Microsoft Word quite figured out yet. (via RedState)

despite the Democrat's attempt to make this document "Not for attribution" - let's go ahead and attribute it, shall we? Because the technical wizards at the Democratic National Committee never got the "don't forward Word documents" memo.

And there's more. Wizbang has the MS Word screencapture.

I'd have thought the brilliant minds that brought us the Dean and Kerry campaigns would have learned how to use Microsoft Word since the Bush TANG memo fiasco. But apparently they haven't. Come to think of it, neither has the U.N. And bringing up the rear, Ronnie Earle's crew still isn't too swift with that other Office enigma Microsoft Excel.

Who knew Bill Gates was going to single-handedly thwart the liberal agenda? Probably getting the Democrats back for when Clinton went after Microsoft during the 90s.

I can't wait for the next Office update...