Saturday, June 25, 2005

Why We Must Win... And We Will

Loyal reader KS sent us David Brooks' editorial from the New York Times Thursday. Brooks serves as the Times in-house conservative voice, but Democrats and liberals would be well-served to learn a lesson from him...

There's a reason George Washington didn't take a poll at Valley Forge. There are times in the course of war when the outcome is simply unknowable. Victory is clearly not imminent, yet people haven't really thought through the consequences of defeat. Everybody just wants the miserable present to go away.

We're at one of those moments in the war against the insurgency in Iraq. The polls show rising disenchantment with the war. Sixty percent of Americans say they want to withdraw some or all troops.

Yet I can't believe majorities of Americans really want to pull out and accept defeat. I can't believe they want to abandon to the Zarqawis and the Baathists those 8.5 million Iraqis who held up purple fingers on Election Day. I can't believe they are yet ready to accept a terrorist-run state in the heart of the Middle East, a civil war in Iraq, the crushing of democratic hopes in places like Egypt and Iran, and the ruinous consequences for American power and prestige.

What they want to do, more likely, is somehow escape the current moment, which is discouraging and uncertain. One of the many problems with fighting an insurgency is that it is nearly impossible to know if we are winning or losing. It's like watching a football game with no goal lines and chaotic action all over the field.

On the one hand, there are signs of progress. U.S. forces have completed a series of successful operations, among them Operation Spear in western Iraq, where at least 60 insurgents were killed and 100 captured, and Operation Lightning in Baghdad, with over 500 arrests. American forces now hold at least 14,000 suspected insurgents, and have captured about two dozen lieutenants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There were reports this week of insurgents fighting each other, foreign against domestic.

There is also the crawling political progress that is crucial to success. Sunni leaders now regret not taking part in the elections and Sunnis are helping to draft the constitution.

These tactical victories, however, have not added up to improvement over all. Insurgent attacks are up. Casualties are up. Few Iraqi security forces can operate independently, so far. There aren't enough U.S. troops to hold the ground they conquer. The insurgents are adaptable, organized and still learning.

Still, one thing is for sure: since we don't have the evidence upon which to pass judgment on the overall trajectory of this war, it's important we don't pass judgment prematurely.
Brooks cites a Biden speech that attacks the administration while also noting the progress of the war. Kudos to him -- while I think he's a blowhard, at least he's able to address the issue correctly. Many of his fellow Dems need to take lessons. It would be nice if every speech criticizing the war noted the progress we have made, and the fact that our troops will win, if we give them the necessary support. It is more than fair to attack the President for problems in Iraq, but it's also necessary to note the successes our troops have created. It's too bad that many on the left can't bring themselves to do so.

Waiting For Football

Bill Simmons writes a wonderful piece about Game Seven of the NBA Finals. Of course, the game he's really recalling is Game Seven from 1984. I can't really fault him -- watching the Spurs-Pistons game made me think of one thing.

Eagles training camp is 35 days away.

Friday, June 24, 2005

The Next Pay-Per-View Bout

NC pointed out this titanic battle of wits on NBC's morning show, as noted by Drudge...

NBC 'TODAY SHOW' host Matt Lauer was lectured by star Tom Cruise on the dangers of psychiatry and antidepressant during a promotional interview for WAR OF THE WORLDS.

The exchange aired Friday morning.

LAUER: TOM CRUISE CREATED A FIRESTORM WHEN HE CRITICIZED BROOKE SHIELDS FOR REVEALING THAT SHE WENT INTO THERAPY AND TOOK ANTIDEPRESSANTS TO DEAL WITH HER POST PARTUM DEPRESSION. AS A SCIENTOLGIST, HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN PSYCHIATRIC MEDICINE. I ASKED HIM ABOUT HIS COMMENTS.

CRUISE: I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever. Before I was a Scientologist I never agreed with psychiatry. and when i started studying the history of psychiatry, I understood more and more why I didn't believe in psychology.

And as far as the Brooke Shields thing is, look. You gotta understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I-- I think here's a-- a-- a wonderful and talented woman. And-- I wanna see her do well. And I know that-- psychiatry is-- is a pseudo science.

MATT LAUER: But-- but Tom, if she said that this particular thing helped her feel better, whether it was the antidepressant or going to a counselor or psychiatrist, isn't that enough?

TOM CRUISE: Matt, you have to understand this. Here we are today where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people (PH), okay, against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Aderol (PH) is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?

MATT LAUER:

The difference is--

(OVERTALK)

TOM CRUISE:

No, no, Matt.

MATT LAUER:

This wasn't against her will, though.

TOM CRUISE:

Matt-- Matt, Matt, Matt--

MATT LAUER:

But this wasn't against her will.

TOM CRUISE:

Matt, I'm-- Matt, I'm asking you a question.

MATT LAUER:

I understand there's abuse of all of these things.

TOM CRUISE:

No, you see. Here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.
You know, I actually understand Cruise's overall point, but the entire conversation veers into the weird netherworld that's almost as uncomfortable as watching Barbra Streisand act. Then again, maybe that's just because there's approximately 14 brain cells between Cruise and Lauer. Who would have figured that the most inane stupidity on Today this week would occurred without Katie Couric anywhere near the camera?

Supreme Preparation

As Howard Bashman reports, the Supreme Court's scheduled to announce its final decisions of this term on Monday. It's expected that we will also see at least one Justice retire from the Court next week, with most of the speculation centering on Rehnquist and O'Connor (and I keep hoping Stevens finally makes a decision I can support). This report speculates on the likely replacement nominees...

The White House has focused on several nominees with established conservative records: Judges J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson of the Richmond, Va.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

The official said the administration also has considered a number of judges President Bush has nominated to the federal appeals courts, including: John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Michael McConnell, of the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, and William Pryor, of the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Of those nominees, Luttig, Alito and Roberts have emerged as the leading contenders, sources close to the White House said. But Wilkinson remains very much in consideration, the administration official said.
I'd be thrilled with Luttig, whom I consider the best of the lot. I'm also a big fan of both McConnell and Roberts, although McConnell makes me nervous.

And for those of you wondering why this decision is important... if Robert Bork hadn't been tossed aside in favor of Justice Kennedy, yesterday's decision in Kelo might have been different.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Social Security Solution

On a normal day, this piece from Opinion Journal, forwarded along by the Lord of Truth, might have been the first thing I commented on...

The conventional Beltway wisdom says Social Security reform is dead, thanks to near-unanimous Democratic opposition. Well, not so fast. Republican reformers are introducing a new plan to invest Social Security surplus funds into personal accounts that has the potential to shake up the debate.

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint are calling for legislation to bring an immediate halt to the ongoing political raid on the surplus payroll taxes collected by Social Security. Congress now spends that cash on current programs--from cotton subsidies, to defense, to the Dr. Seuss Museum. Every day that Congress fails to act, another $200 million is spent rather than being saved for future retirement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once called this "thievery," and if corporate America were engaged in this type of accounting fraud Eliot Spitzer would be hauling CEOs to jail.

Instead of spending this retirement money, the reformers would allow individual workers to divert every surplus Social Security dollar--from now until the extra cash runs out in 2016--into personal retirement accounts. For the record, we endorsed this idea some months ago, so we're glad to see it gaining steam.

...DeMint-Ryan would allow workers to create individual personal retirement accounts and place marketable government bonds worth their portion of the Social Security surplus into these accounts. Think of this as creating 140 million "lock box" accounts, one for every American worker. After three years, workers could trade these Treasury bonds and invest instead in higher-return mutual funds containing a combination of corporate stocks and bonds.

...Another benefit is that Congress wouldn't be able to keep using the Social Security surplus to disguise its other spending habits. This means more-honest federal budgeting, and we hope more pressure for spending discipline. Members can check out a list released this week by the Free Enterprise Fund of $80 billion in corporate welfare and pork barrel projects that could be extinguished to make up the difference.

As for the politics, this calls the bluff of Democrats who claim to be the sole protectors of the Social Security trust fund but have done nothing to stop depleting it. Do they want to protect it or not? And by investing only surplus payroll taxes into private accounts, the proposal blunts the (specious but politically potent) attacks from AARP and the left that personal accounts will endanger the program's solvency. The DeMint-Ryan plan enhances solvency by preventing raids on the trust fund, which is a practice that has long infuriated senior citizens.
Politically, this is brilliant. Tactically, it paints the Dems into a corner. Man, if Karl Rove is behind this, the "Evil Genius" tag may be an understatement.

Eminent Domain Becomes All-Powerful Domain

I've never seen this many folks who I correspond with get this interested in a Supreme Court decision -- the Lord of Truth and K Mac almost sent the thing to me at the same time. Of course, my immediate thought was to wonder who slipped crack into Justice Kennedy's drinking water...

The Supreme Court today effectively expanded the right of local governments to seize private property under eminent domain, ruling that people's homes and businesses -- even those not considered blighted -- can be taken against their will for private development if the seizure serves a broadly defined "public use."

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the ability of New London, Conn., to seize people's homes to make way for an office, residential and retail complex supporting a new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. The city had argued that the project served a public use within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution because it would increase tax revenues, create jobs and improve the local economy.

A group of homeowners in New London's Fort Trumbull area had fought the city's attempt to impose eminent domain, arguing that their property could be seized only to serve a clear public use such as building roads or schools or to eliminate blight. The homeowners, some of whom had lived in their house for decades, also argued that the public would benefit from the proposed project only if it turned out to be successful, making the "public use" requirement subject to the eventual performance of the private business venture.

The Fifth Amendment also requires "just compensation" for the owners, but that was not an issue in the case decided today because the homeowners did not want to give up their property at any price.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the case turned on the question of whether New London's development plan served a "public purpose." He added, "Without exception, our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field."

The majority endorsed the view that local governments are better placed than federal courts to decide whether development projects serve a public purpose and will benefit the community, justifying the acquisition of land through eminent domain. In his opinion, Stevens wrote that "for more than a century," the high court has favored "affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power."

New London officials "were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference," Stevens wrote. "The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including--but by no means limited to--new jobs and increased tax revenue."

Stevens added that "because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment."
He was joined in that view by justices Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Dissenting were justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, O'Connor wrote that the majority's decision overturns a long-held principle that eminent domain cannot be used simply to transfer property from one private owner to another.

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she wrote. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded -- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public -- in the process."
Thomas' dissent was even better, at least in terms of the law. But getting back to basics... soon-to-be-sometime contributor The Southern Partisan notes...

Just when I thought big brother could get no bigger? Eminient domain now extends to takings for private development? Disgusting.

Of course the best part of this is that Stevens appears to have cited the judicial abstention doctrine---i.e., local governments know better than federal courts what is best for the local community. Well Dah, but that was not the issue here. I believe the issue here was whether any government's seizure of homes for private development, even with "just compensation," violates the fifth amendment of the Federal Constitution. Maybe Stevens just got this case confused with the TX sodomy case--and what he really meant to say was that the state of TX knows best how to protect the health and welfare of its citizenry.
Well, no one accused the Supremes of being consistent. Instapundit's got a great range of reaction. Politically, this is Bush's ticket to hammer the liberal justices and get a conservative on the Court, but legally, this decision is an abomination. As policy, it's even worse. Professor Bainbridge called it a moral outrage, and he's right. Jim Geraghty nails it nicely as well...
This is a huge political opportunity to the figure, Republican or Democrat, who grasps its power to homeowners (or even renters who want to own a home someday) and who leads the fight to overturn this, by Constitutional amendment if necessary.

Look, there's a reason the founding fathers put this in the Constitution. If I lose my house or property to a road or dam or some other project, it stinks, but there's at least a somewhat compelling case to be made that the new project benefits the entire public. Under this new interpretation, the new project doesn't necessarily benefit the public; it benefits the local government by paying higher taxes.

Your land is now up for auction by the local government, for sale to the entity willing to generate the most tax revenue.

I think I may be currently residing in a country (Turkey) that has better protections in this area than my home. What the hell happened back there?
Donald Sensing thinks churches are at risk. And Ed Morrisey at CQ has a great response...

I recall the words of Mark Twain, who famously lost a copyright case involving a bootleg publication of one of his novels despite having the law clearly on his side. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the reference -- perhaps a CQ reader can locate it.) Upon his loss, he remarked that since the judge was so cavalier with Twain's property, Twain planned to offer the Judge's house up for sale -- and if he got a good enough offer, he might let the buyer take the contents as well.

Can anyone come up with a good use for Justice Stevens' house? A bowling alley or a Bennigans, anything that improves the tax base for his community? We could urge its confiscation under eminent domain and perhaps put in a Mark Twain Museum instead. Now that would be justice.
Personally, I vote for a Hooters on Justice Stevens' land. Every community can use another Hooters.

Try Not to Shed A Tear

I feel like I'm back in the 1990's...

The family of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G tried Thursday to paint a dark conspiracy theory of his death by linking corrupt police officers to gang members in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the LAPD.

A witness for the plaintiffs, LAPD Detective Wayne Caffey, said he once saw a photograph showing disgraced officers Rafael Perez and David Mack together.

The family of Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, alleges that Mack helped arrange the rapper's killing.

Caffey said he saw the photo at a police station following raids on the homes of gang members in suburban Compton shortly after the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas.

"I don't know where the picture came from. I assume it was from the search warrant," Caffey said, adding that he notified homicide investigators.

Jerry Sanders, an attorney for the family of Notorious B.I.G., suggested nothing was done with the information. He also suggested that it was unusual for Perez and Mack to pose together and for such a photograph to be found in a raid.

There was no description, however, of what event the photograph depicted and, except for Caffey's testimony, there was no confirmation that it actually existed. Sanders did not produce the photo for the jurors.

Mack, who is serving a 14-year term for bank robbery, has denied any involvement in the killing.

Perez was at the center of a police corruption scandal involving anti-gang officers who allegedly framed suspects in the Rampart Division near downtown. He never was implicated in the Wallace killing.

Wallace, 24, was gunned down outside the Petersen Automotive Museum on March 9, 1997, after a music industry party. His death came six months after Shakur's. Both cases are officially unsolved.

Wallace's family contends that Mack helped arrange Wallace's killing at the behest of Death Row Records founder Marion "Suge" Knight as retaliation for the killing of Shakur, a Death Row star.
The real tragedy in all this, atop the death of Biggie, is that it launched Puff Daddy's career, which meant J. Lo became more famous. Well, that and the loss of Tupac's actng talent.

And Now You Know the Rest of the Story... WHAT???

Loyal reader RB sends us this story from Paul Harvey's news and comment today. The link can probably be found at his website. Sorry, my meager web skills prevent me from using an actual link to the audio. But RB took the time to transcribe the key portion, which starts at 2:20 on the tape...

Its been a noisy, bloody, ugly overnight in Baghdad. Coordinated car bombings one after another after another; one in the crowded central shopping district. Maybe half a hundred dead. I don’t know how many dying. It’s Sunni Arabs killing Shiite Arabs and as many of us as possible. Sunni Muslims are dominating Iraq for decades under Saddam Hussein convinced that they can outlast us now. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld goes up to the Hill this morning to update an anxious Congress.

For what its worth, after the attack on Pearl Harbor Winston Churchill told the American people “we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.” And that reminder was taken seriously. We proceeded to develop and deliver the time bomb, The Bomb. Even though roughly 150,000 men, women, and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a single blow World War II was over. Following New York’s September 11 Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy. So, we mustered our humanity. We gave old pals a pass. Even though men and women of Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon, we called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism. And we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq. Kept our best weapons in our silos. Even now we stand there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies. More moral. More civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist. But we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.

Once upon a time we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business. And wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry, up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.
Um, I'm not sure what he's saying. This is random gibberish at times, sort of like Grandpa Simpson, and trying to get to a point but not quite getting there, sort of like John Kerry. Frankly, it's a little scary, because thoughts of dropping a nuke should be scary.

Of course, I'd hope they'd scare the other side enough that they'd get it through their thick skulls that ramming planes into buildings and trying bio-warfare may lead to us, someday, losing the patience of civilized people.

In the meantime, I think someone needs to check Paul's medication.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Ummmm.... Burgers

Food blogging. Now here's useful information -- where to get the best burgers and pizzas. Heck, we even have the best pizza joints in Wildwood rated here. Can it get any better than that?

The Downing Street Democrats, and Why We Will Win Anyway

The Emporer may have no clothes, but the House Democrats may not have a brain...

In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.

They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.

The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.

"At the next hearing," he told his colleagues, "we could use a little subpoena power." That brought the house down.

...The hearing was only nominally about the Downing Street Memo and its assertion that in the summer of 2002 Bush was already determined to go to war and was making the intelligence fit his case. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA operative, barely mentioned the memo in his opening statement. Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, said the memo "only confirms what I already suspected."

No matter: The lawmakers and the witnesses saw this as a chance to rally against the war. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) proclaimed it "one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country." Conyers said the memos "establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses." Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) concluded that "the time has come to get out" of Iraq.

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
Ah, yes... the infamous Downing Street Memo. We're not sure what this has to do with defaming Isreal, but at least Howard Dean already took his fellow Dems to task for that. We're so amazed by Deam spouting sanity that we're going avoid piling on these Dems for their tacit approval of anti-Semitic comments and conspiracy theories.

But the Downing Street Memo... the Left's fantastic version of scandal bringing down a GOP administration seems to miss the facts. Mike Kinsley,who may get suspended from the vast left-wing conspiracy meetings for saying this, notes that the memo means very little...

But what does it say? It's a report on a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and some aides on July 23, 2002. The key passage summarizes "recent talks in Washington" by the head of British foreign intelligence (identified, John le Carre-style, as "C"). C reported that "military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy…. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

C's focus on the dog that didn't bark — the lack of discussion about the aftermath of war — was smart and prescient. But even on its face, the memo is not proof that Bush had decided on war. It states that war is "now seen as inevitable" by "Washington." That is, people other than Bush had concluded, based on observation, that he was determined to go to war. There is no claim of even fourth-hand knowledge that he had actually declared this intention. Even if "Washington" meant administration decision-makers, rather than the usual freelance chatterboxes, C was only saying that these people believed that war was how events would play out.

Of course, if "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," rather than vice versa, that is pretty good evidence of Bush's intentions, as well as a scandal in its own right. And we know now that this was true. Fixing intelligence and facts to fit a desired policy is the Bush II governing style, especially concerning the Iraq war. But C offered no specifics, or none that made it into the memo. Nor does the memo assert that actual decision-makers told him they were fixing the facts. Although the prose is not exactly crystalline, it seems to be saying only that "Washington" had reached that conclusion.

Of course, you don't need a secret memo to know this. Just look at what was in the newspapers on July 23, 2002, and the day before. Left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer casually referred to the coming war as "much planned for." The New York Times reported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's response to a story that "reported preliminary planning on ways the United States might attack Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein." Rumsfeld effectively confirmed the report by announcing an investigation of the leak.

A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed declared that "the drums of war beat louder." A dispatch from Turkey in the New York Times even used the same word, "inevitable," to describe the thinking in Ankara about the thinking in Washington about the decision "to topple President Saddam Hussein of Iraq by force."

Then there's poor Time magazine (cover date July 22 but actually published a week earlier), which had the whole story. "Sometime last spring the President ordered the Pentagon and the CIA to come up with a new plan to invade Iraq and topple its leader." Originally planned for the fall, the war was put off until "at least early next year" (which is when, in fact, it occurred).
This is similar to the people who complain that we rushed to war without a debate. In their eyes, any actions constituting war would have been construed as a "rush to war." The entry into Iraq was debated for more than enough time for people to hear the debate. It's the final decision that the "rush to war" folks dispute, not the amount of debate that took place.

As for how we're doing in Iraq, which should be the real focus, Karl Zinmeister and Austin Bay have good analyses (hat tip: Instapundit). We're winning, but we need to have the will to finish the job. My favorite part comes from Bay...

In February of this year, under the direction of an Iraqi colonel who is rapidly earning a reputation as Iraq's Rudy Giuliani, the battalion drove terrorists from this key Baghdad drag. Last year, Haifa Street was a combat zone where US and Iraqi security forces showed up in Robo-Cop garb -- helmets, armor, Bradleys, armored Humvees. Horst told me that he and his Iraqi counterpart now have tea in a sidewalk cafe along the once notorious boulevard. Of course, Abu Musab al Zarqawi's suicide bombers haunt this fragile calm.

This return visit to Iraq, however, spurs thoughts of America -- to be specific, thoughts about America's will to pursue victory. I don't mean the will of US forces in the field. Wander around with a bunch of Marines for a half hour, spend 15 minutes with National Guardsmen from Idaho, and you will have no doubts about American military capabilities or the troops' will to win.

But our weakness is back home, in front of the TV, on the cable squawk shows, on the editorial page of The New York Times, in the political gotcha games of Washington, D.C.

It seems America wants to get on with its Electra-Glide life, that Sept. 10 sense of freedom and security, without finishing the job. The military is fighting, the Iraqi people are fighting, but where is the US political class? The Bush administration has yet to ask the American people -- correction, has yet to demand of the American people -- the sustained, shared sacrifice it takes to win this long, intricate war of bullets, ballots and bricks.

Bullets go bang, and even CBS understands bullets. Ballots make an impression -- in terms of this war's battlespace, the January Iraqi elections were World War II's D-Day and Battle of the Bulge combined. But the bricks -- the building of Iraq, Afghanistan and the other hard corners where this war is and will be fought -- that's a delicate and decades-long challenge.

Given the vicious enemy we face, five years, perhaps 15 years from now, occasional bullets and bombs will disrupt the political and economic building. This is the Bush administration's biggest strategic mistake -- a failure to tap the reservoir of American willingness 9-11 produced.
He's right -- we will win in Iraq, because Bush won't give up. But he also needs to make sure we understand why we can't give up, and that we need to make sacrifices as well.

Old Media Meets New Media Pranksters

Oh, man...

A Los Angeles Times experiment in opinion journalism lasted just two days before the paper was forced to shut it down Sunday morning after some readers repeatedly posted obscene photos.

On Friday, the paper introduced an online feature it called a wikitorial, asking Web site readers to improve a 1,000-word editorial, "War and Consequences," on the Iraq war.

Readers were invited to insert information, make changes or come to different conclusions. The model was based on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where anyone can add facts or update information.

"It sounds nutty," said an introduction to the wikitorial in Friday's paper. "Plenty of skeptics are predicting embarrassment; like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, The Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than be hip. Nevertheless, we proceed. We're calling this a 'public beta,' which is a fancy way of saying we're making something available even though we haven't completely figured it out."

What they had not planned for was hard-core pornography, which the paper's software could not ward off. Its open-source wikitorial software allowed readers to post without vetting from editors, who could take down posts only after they appeared. Any contributor who persisted in bad behavior could be blocked.
The good news is that many people took this seriously, and engaged in thouhtful debate. The bad news is that the porn is no longer accessible.

Nazi Comparisons... and Why They Cheapen Even Hitler

Loyal reader RB sends us a link we watched over the weekend -- Jon Stewart takes apart the idea of comparing your opponents to Hitler. Hysterical doesn't begin to define it.

For the record, calling someone "Adolf" or likening them to Hitler is cheap. Try Mao, or maybe Che Guevera -- he's more cutting edge anyway. Of course, some idiots might consider that a compliment.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Maybe They Should Check What The Smell of Ben Gay Does

I'm not sure why this would be true...

A study of smells shows that the scent of grapefruit on women make them seem about six years younger to men. However, grapefruit fragrance on men does nothing for them.

The study by the Smell and Taste Institute in Chicago was conducted by Institute director Alan Hirsch. Hirsch smeared several middle-aged woman with broccoli, banana, spearmint leaves, and lavender but none of those scents made a difference to the men.

But the scent of grapefruit changed men's perceptions. Hirsch said that when male volunteers were asked to write down how old the woman with grapefruit odor was, the age was considerably less than reality.
Last I checked, grapefruit reminds me of Florida, which is filled with retirees. But to each his own.

Social InSecurity

The Lord of Truth sent me these stories on Social Security reform a week ago, but I've been slightly busy. They're both well worth the read.

John Tierney, one of the few people at the left-wing dishrag who's not a raging left-winger (as noted in South Park Conservatives) does a fair analysis of the system and its problems. Here's the money section...

Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement. Their jobs are less physically demanding than their parents' were, but they're retiring younger and typically start collecting Social Security by age 62. Most could keep working - fewer than 10 percent of people 65 to 75 are in poor health - but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they prefer not to.

The problem isn't that Americans have gotten intrinsically lazier. They're just responding to a wonderfully intentioned system that in practice promotes greed and sloth. Social Security is widely thought of as a kumbaya program that unites Americans in caring for the elderly, but it actually creates ugly political battles among generations.

With the help of groups like AARP, the elderly have learned to fight for the right to retire earlier and get bigger benefits than the previous generation - all financed by making succeeding generations pay higher taxes than they ever did themselves.

The result is a system that burdens the young and creates perverse incentives for people to retire when they're still middle-aged. Once you've worked 35 years, more work often yields only a tiny increase in your benefits (sometimes none at all), but you still have to keep paying the onerous Social Security tax, which has more than doubled over the last half century.

If the elderly were willing to work longer, there would be lower taxes on everyone and fewer struggling young families. There would be more national wealth and tax revenue available to help the needy, including people no longer able to work as well as the many elderly below the poverty line because they get so little Social Security.

Getting that kind of system seems politically hopeless at the moment here, but it already exists in Chile. Its pension system has a stronger safety net for the older poor than America's (relative to each country's wages) and more incentives for people to work, because Chileans' contributions go directly into their own private accounts instead of a common pool like Social Security.

Once Chileans accumulate enough money in the account to finance a pension that pays at least half their salary (which is better than what the typical American gets from Social Security), they can start collecting the pension and still go on working. In fact, they have an extra incentive to go on working because they keep more of their paychecks: elderly Chileans, unlike Americans, are freed of the obligation to continue making pension contributions.
Hmmm. Private contributions. There's an idea I've never heard.

Of course, maybe you think raising taxes will solve the problem. Then, let me introduce you to my favorite libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. By way of disclosure, I'm a contributor to Cato -- and FYI, the folks at Cato are about as independent-minded as anyone gets. They're fiscal conservatives who opposed the war in Iraq and rip Bush regularly for failing to wield his veto pen to rein in spending. Their word's pretty solid here.

The bottom line? It's time for a change. And it will come, no matter how much obstruction and scaremongering the Democrats try. The only question is when.

A Personal Anecdote

Apparently, my lovely bride-to-be came home last night and found me asleep. This is unusual, since it was about 8:30, but that happens when you didn't sleep the night before due to illness and work.

The best part was the resulting conversation.

Her: "What time is your flight tomorrow? Do you want me to set the alarm?"

Me: "Six thirty." (which was wrong)

Her: "What time should I set the alarm for?"

Me: "Five. Five million."

I have to stop dreaming about winning the lottery.

An Update on the WTC Memorial

The Kansas Redhead asked whether I've written about this yet. Not directly, but here's my original post.

This is a worthwhile cause. You can sign the petition here.