Dean Esmay is right. The tinfoil hat crowd makes me want to defend the UN.
John Cole started Balloon Juice early in 2002. Those who have followed along know that this has been quite the journey.
Hidden Meanings
The Winds of Change has a long and very readable series of posts about why the Democrats are in trouble in 2004, and while they bring up many points (some good, some not so good), I think this comment by Kevin Drum goes farther to illustrate why Democrats are in trouble more than anything described by the folks at the Winds of Change. While discussing FCC Deregulation, Kevin states:
Heh, heh, just kidding. See, the problem is that I’m not sure I’m actually opposed to deregulation. There, I said it.
Roughly speaking, here’s where I stand: despite my liberal leanings, my conservative readers will be either surprised or amused (depending on temperament) to hear me say that I’m not especially in favor of government regulation of industry without a compelling reason.
I don’t recall the party of JFK (and that is Kennedy, not Kerry, thank you) beig culturally and politically defined as the anti-business party, yet that is where the Democrats find themselves today, at least rhetorically. All the years of faux-populism, railing against business, and using the class warfare rhetoric has placed the Democrats in a position where even Kevin has to excuse himself and explain- “Hey- even though I am a liberal- I am not overtly and instinctively anti-business.” When a proud member of the supposedly liberal party has to excuse himself for choosing the primacy of the individual over government, of the primacy of private enterprise over heavy-handed government involvement and regulation, it goes a long way to explain some of the problems the Democrats currently have to overcome.
Congo Update
While waiting for the woefully undermanned contingent of UN peacekeepers, at least 100 more people were slaughtered in the Congo:
At least 100 people were massacred at the weekend in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), near the southern tip of Lake Albert, a Ugandan army officer said on Sunday.
A DRC rebel official put the number of dead at more than 250, including about 20 babies.
The killings come in the wake of a spate of massacres in DRC’s Ituri region and amid preparations for a major French-led international force to deploy over the next week in Bunia, Ituri’s capital, to protect civilians.
Ugandan army Brigadier Kale Kaihura said that fighters from Ituri’s majority Lendu ethnic group attacked the rival Hemas “in Kyomya, about 30 kilometres from the Ugandan border, when they realised that withdrawing Ugandan forces, stuck there due to heavy rains, had finally withdrawn.”
Meanwhile, there appears to be no real mandate for the UN contingent, even when it does arrive:
The UN mission in Congo needs a tougher mandate across the board to allow it to keep the peace and help end the world’s deadliest ongoing conflict, a top UN official said.
A robust French-led force is due to start deploying to the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this week after getting the go-ahead from the UN Security Council to end horrific militia killings and cannibalism in the stricken Ituri region.
However, troops from the United Nations Observation Mission in Congo (MONUC) mission elsewhere in Africa’s third biggest country have a mandate which lets them do little but defend themselves. Uruguayan soldiers in Ituri were powerless to stop savage killings – including those of two UN observers.
For more information, make sure you check the Africapundit, and also read this piece in today’s NY Times.
New Book
My father has just completed his book titled Plugged into English: English and language arts activities for the computer lab, and I thought I might do some free advertising for him. If you are a teacher and are looking the following, or if you know of a teacher who has been complaining that you can not think of many activities for your kids, this might be right up your alley. The nice thing about this is that the activities are adaptable enough for other fields, so all teachers might get some use out of it. At any rate, here is the description from Cottonwood Press:
Plugged In to English comes with a CD-ROM that includes all student activities. The activities can be used with either PCs or Macs in any computer lab, using any word processing program. Although the activities are designed for grades 8-adult, many work very well with younger students as well.
Computer Tips for English Teachers
What If You
And They Wonder…
Two nude female anti-G8 protesters, one with a slogan painted on her back, take to the streets in the Swiss city of Lausanne on Saturday, May 31, 2003. Slogan reads: ‘Shame on G8! Not on me.’ Some 25 naked protesters blocked roads and shouted anti-G8 slogans to protest against the G8 summit in the neighboring Evian, France. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
And they wonder why we don’t take em seriously.
What WMD? What Weapons Violations?
How many more stories like this before the left stops with the incessant “Bush lied to us” chorus that is reaching a crescendo:
British military officers have uncovered an attempt by Saddam Hussein to build a missile capable of hitting targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel, The Telegraph can reveal.
Plans for the surface-to-surface missile were one of the regime’s most closely-guarded secrets and were unknown to United Nations weapons inspectors. Its range of 600 miles would have been far greater than that of the al-Samoud rocket – which already breached the 93-mile limit imposed by the UN on any Iraqi missiles.
Oh- that smoking gun.
Unhinged Liberals, Pt. 3 in an Unending Series
Apparently, if Democrats do not win the next election, and some Democrats did do everything they could to win, it will be as bad as the Germans who stood idly by and let the Jews be slaughtered in Nazi Germany. At least, that is what Janot Reno thinks:
Joanne Goldfarb, of Delray Beach, said she needed just such a pep talk, just such a push to make her feel she can make a difference. That’s why she was in the audience. She’s taking small steps toward becoming an activist.
One part of Reno’s speech, which touched upon issues such as classroom sizes, health care and the criminal justice system, seemed to speak directly to Goldfarb. Reno spoke about visiting the Dachau concentration camp in Germany as a child and learning what had happened.
“I went back and asked my adult German friends, ‘How could you let that happen?’ ” Reno said. “They said, ‘We just stood by.’ ”
She looked right into the the audience and told them that’s why she was there. She had no intention of just standing by.
“And don’t you just stand by,” Reno said.
Idiot.
Unhinged Liberals, Pt. 3 in an Unending SeriesPost + Comments (3)