Open Threads

This is kinda frightening. Last night I babbled about Gore (scroll down), and titled it ‘He’s BAAAACKKK!’

Rod Dreher on the corner, mentioned the same speech, and titled it:

‘He’s BAAAACK.’

Granted, I used 4 A’s, 1 C, and 3 K’s, while Rod used only 4 A’s. But, weird, indeed. And I just read this Rod piece 2 minutes ago.

Maybe The Weekly Standard will accuse me of plagiarism.

This is kinda frightening. LastPost + Comments

The complete anti-globalization questionnaire can be found at Protein Wisdom (whose fancy layout gives me site envy).

The twerps at the WTO meeting and the recent WEF always remind me of the scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian in which they ask what the Romans have ever done for them:

REG: They’ve bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.

LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.

REG: Yeah.

LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.

REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES: The aqueduct?

REG: What?

XERXES: The aqueduct.

REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.

LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS: And the roads.

REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads–

COMMANDO: Irrigation.

XERXES: Medicine.

and on and on until:

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

The complete anti-globalization questionnaire canPost + Comments

He’s BAAAACKKK!

Al Gore presented a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier today, and in a sign that he is running for Prez in 2004, he agreed that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea are in fact an ‘axis of evil.’ Because he is Al Gore, he could not stop there, and he offered some unsolicited advice:

“The United States must deal with the threat of Iraq “on our terms,” he said.

Which, presumably, means ‘our’ as in the collective American sense, and not ‘our’ as in the Clinton/Gore sense. The former makes sense and is the advice equivalent of cold oatmeal (bland, lumpy, pedestrian and only mildly offensive when served to someone), the latter is a clear signal to aspirin factory workers all around the globe to head for the hills.

That means U.S. strategy must be mindful of the survival of Pakistan’s leader, avoid an escalation of Middle East violence and protect the security and interest of allies like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf states.

MmmHmm. Can’t you see all the European CFR attendees smiling and nodding. The snarkiness here is because ONLY A BLITHERING IDIOT WOULD NOT HAVE THESE AS GOALS. What the hell do these dolts think is going on in the White House?

Cheney: “Mr. President, if we do this, we can ensure that Musharref is deposed, we can finally have the Israelis and the PLO really going at it like crazed men, and maybe we can further destabilize the region, throw Turkish Democracy into an anarchic pre-autocratic state, and if we are damn lucky, we can get Qatar and Yemen to go at it.”

Bush: “Let’s Roll.”

Gore continues with his sage advice: Gore said that once a strategy for Iraq is developed, “we must be prepared to go the limit.”

I am assuming that ‘to go the limit’ means something different than what the previous White House was doing most of the time when they were ‘going all the way.’

Iran must be recognized as a potential threat greater than Iraq, but the U.S. should also find ways “to encourage the majority who obviously wish to develop a more constructive relationship with us,” Gore said.

Paging Michael Ledeen, paging Michael Ledeen.

He said the United States needs to keep the peace on the Korean peninsula by being ready for war. He said that in the 1990s, the Clinton administration showed “that a creative, sustained program could help move the North Korean regime in new directions.”

Clinton/Gore-like head in the sand, multilateral appeasement will help North Korea move in a new direction. South. And don’t feed me the Rahm Emmanuel/Paul Begala nonsense that our overtures to Kim Dip Song (or whatever the hell his name is) were working. Keep thinking that, while they are improving their ICBM technology and starving their populace.

“It isn’t enough to destroy what is evil, then seek to leave by the nearest door,” Gore said. “We must make the commitment to work with those whom we have rescued until they can stand on their own feet.”

But he said that other dangerous forces have to be addressed, such as poverty, ignorance, environmental problems, disease, corruption and political oppression.

Thus confirming that he is ready to join the rest of the root-cause apologists in the tenured bliss that is modern academia.

He’s BAAAACKKK! Al Gore presentedPost + Comments

Last week, Rand Simberg wrote an interesting little blurb titled Yes, Even When Lives Are At Stake:

In Enterprise last night, I was struck at how sometimes the writers Just Don’t Get It, and make the ship’s crew look like fools. If you didn’t see it, Archer and T’Pal are kidnapped and being held for a ransom of weapons to aid the local rebel cause. The Vulcans show up to the rescue, and inform the crew that “Vulcans do not negotiate for hostages.” Commander (?…what is his rank anyway, I’ve never been able to sort out ranks on ship, other than the Captain, but I haven’t been paying that close attention…) Tucker gets upset and whiny, and asks “Even if lives are at stake?” thus presumably demonstrating the moral superiority of the warm and emotional humans over the coldblooded and logical Vulcans.

Yes, Trip. Especially when lives are at stake. Of course,the writers don’t grant the Vulcans any kind of logical rejoinder–that negotiating for hostages simply ensures future hostage taking, and that sometimes lives have to be risked both on principle and to save the lives of many future hostages (the stance which, by the way, the U.S. government has appropriately taken in the Daniel Pearl case). No, they simply look Vulcan and disgusted. I wonder if the script was written pre- or post-911?

Little did he know how right he was (and before you type it, don’t send me vitriolic letters telling me that pulling policy decisions from Star Trek is childish- if you are inclined to write such a letter, you have missed my (and Rand’s) point COMPLETELY). In today’s NYT, it is revealed that the mastermind behind the Daniel Pearl kidnapping was British born Ahmed Omar Sheikh. The NYT had this to add:

Mr. Sheikh, the son of clothes merchants in East London, attended the London School of Economics. He spent five years in an Indian prison after being arrested in a 1994 kidnapping case that bore strong similarities to that of Mr. Pearl. He was freed into Afghanistan in a 1999 hostage-prisoner swap brought about by the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet.

Emphasis mine. The moral? You don’t negotiate with terrorists. As Mr. Simberg presciently noted, even when lives are at stake.

Last week, Rand Simberg wrotePost + Comments

David Janes has a take that is different than mine on what constitutes a sport.

His rules for what is a sport are:

It has a “natural” measurable scoring — i.e. someone goes the highest, goes the fastest, or finishes before others;
It requires skill;
One can be hurt in the normal course of the sport if that skill is not exercised properly.

My rule was simpler:

A sport is an athletic event that requires you to play offense and defense. Anything else is an athletic event.

At any rate, we both agree. Ice Skating is not a sport.

David Janes has a takePost + Comments

This is the kind of criticism of John Ashcroft that is worthy of a read (rather than the tired rhetoric of the race-baiters and the abortion fetishists):

John Walker Lindh may not love America but at his arraignment this week he should express gratitude to Attorney General Ashcroft and his prosecution team. They failed to charge the American Taliban with treason when the evidence was there to do so.

Go, Victoria, go.

This is the kind ofPost + Comments

Islam, the Peaceful Religion.

All of the subjects of inquiry for future terrorist acts are Arab.

This, no doubt, will lead to a dramatic increase in the shakedown of 60-something Irish women from Pennsylvania, 70-something Jewish blue-hairs from New Jersey, and 50-something hulking Norwegian farmers from North Dakota at airports around the nation.

No lawsuits have yet been filed by the ACLU or CAIR.

Islam, the Peaceful Religion. AllPost + Comments