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One small voice in the proud tradition of FreeBlogging*Saturday, August 21, 2004posted by gbarto at 11:56 PM:Thought the layout of the Lying Bastard Sheet (er, New York Times) quite interesting this a.m. Apparently an awkward embrace shared by W and McCain is more noteworthy than Kerry launching a counterattack against the Swift Boat Veterans. The former, after all, was on the front page, with pictures; the latter was on A10 and didn't really address the allegations made against Kerry, merely quoted people saying they were unfair. Also deemed unfair, the Swift Boat Veterans' complaints that John Kerry came to political prominence denouncing his "band of brothers" as war criminals and now wants to be president on the basis of their glory.Still waiting for: a South Park style take-off on Sen. Kerry and Mr. Hat discussing their Cambodia adventures. The Mercury News also had a shot at knocking down the Kerry story - on the front page - which is good because it means enough people are talking about this now for it to be an issue. This is all to the good, because the press has spent three years trying to push up Bush's negatives - there's not much left they can do - but Kerry has had a relatively free ride. We'll know this is sticking, though, when the Kerry campaign starts talking about a need to focus on issues, not biography. * * *posted by gbarto at 11:06 PM:from the e-mail bag:Now let me get this straight............. Bill Clinton is getting $12 million for his memoirs. His wife Hillary got $8 million for hers. That's $20 million for memories from two people who for eight years repeatedly testified, under oath, that they couldn't remember anything. God Bless America * * *posted by gbarto at 2:56 AM:What do you say to the head of Poland...if you're President of the U.S. and have deemed an alliance with your country and his as fraudulent? Will Collier of Vodkapundit would like to know, because it's an issue a President Kerry would face - when you've denied existence of genuine international support for Bush's Iraq effort, what do you tell those who feel they've offered genuine support without making them feel like they were petty frauds or unimportant? The answer, of course, is that videotape or no, Kerry never said these things and that Republicans took advantage of the Senator's time away for a secret mission to China to circulate false rumors. Right? Betcha the NY Times would buy it. * * *posted by gbarto at 2:36 AM:It's not easy being PC...Notes Cicero, some of the many women in the cabinet of Spain's Zapatero appeared in a Vogue photospread. Leaving feminists up in arms. So... Did the women appear in Vogue because they're backward and silly? Or empowered to enjoy what life has to offer? Or may we summarize thus: Being a feminist means never having to say you're happy.... For you sisters, or with the sisterhood. Or in general. * * *Friday, August 20, 2004posted by gbarto at 8:33 AM:What happens if Kerry appears to be losing?The major premise of the Kerry primary campaign is that Kerry was that he was electable, that with his gravitas and Vietnam experience he could challenge Bush like no one else. Right now, the press is shilling like crazy to bury questions about Kerry's gravitas - $250 bucks to catch a plane to go windsurfing? flying hairstylists across the country? - and his Vietnam experience - someone really needs to do a South Park style send-up of Kerry and Mr. Hat go to Cambodia. Kerry will be given a pass on just about anything, of course, because the media's all important goal is defeating Bush. But... The media is taking a hit here. It's very much in the "nothing to see here" mode of the crooked or incompetent cop, and in small numbers, at least, the public is starting to wonder why they're not in on a story that a small subset of the population - journalists and political junkies - seems to know all about. If the Kerry story gets out - or anything else happens to damage his electability - what will the press corps do? They've been standing by their man, ready to swallow anything to beat Bush. But Hewitt says it's increasingly unlikely that Bush will be beat. When do the recriminations start? And how painful will it be, if once influential, to have to face the journalists you had told that Kerry was the man to beat Bush. I have a feeling that when we're done, we're going to see the Demos in a strange and painful place that benefits only one major actor in the party: the original draft-doging, truth disemboweling governor from Arkansas will again be the only Demo who knows how to win an election. And Shrum will have two losses with "Vietnam veterans." Wonder what kind of realignment that brings on. * * *posted by gbarto at 7:38 AM:This post appeared on the old turkeyblog site last night, as gbarto.com was down a few hours so the hosts could do a software upgrade (wish they'd told me, grrr, but everything's up again).Barnes and Noble bias? I was in a local Barnes and Noble this evening where I learned some interesting things about how the Bay Area B & N ordering works. If you visit the current events section, you'll find Dowd's Bushworld, Molly Ivins galore and more. But you won't find Unfit for Command. They ordered 15 copies, which are gone, and they're not sure when the next batch is coming in. But, not to worry. They have around a dozen copies of Bushworld, Imperial Hubris and other anti-Bush titles. To be fair, they have around 8 of Hewitt's book and the same number of Dave Bossie's Faces of John Kerry. And they have displays all over the place with at least 30 copies of My Life. I talked to a bookseller who says he hasn't seen one of them move in days - massive over-ordering: once the book had been discussed on television, nobody seemed to need it anymore. I asked why there were so many copies of Clinton and so few for Unfit for Command. The bookseller said that both the liberal ordering and the liberal displays (the Current Events highlights rack could have been put together by Terry McAuliffe) reflected, in management's view, the audience in the Bay Area. Which explains everything except why My Life's rotting on the shelf and Unfit is on order. Methinks the management's ordering "strategy" reflects the thinking that "nobody I know is voting for Bush," even if the sales tell another story. Which raises the question: do the more liberal types who go into bookselling (at the local level, anyway) represent another form of media bias? Even if not in ordering, it's certainly evident in the displays around here which assume, among other things, that that Molly Ivins is just a hoot, though in my regular visits to bookshops I rarely hear her latest being discussed and rarely find a copy of her work moved to a different part of the store - interested non-buyers often deposit a book in the wrong place - or with the spine cracked. * * *Wednesday, August 18, 2004posted by gbarto at 11:26 PM:Before you steal an election, be sure to case it out...A lot of us in the Blogosphere have hit on one big story - the media's efforts to hide all defects Kerry while slamming Bush and Nader at every turn. Plainly the media's in the tank for Kerry, but some of their number (Evan Thomas, call your office) have pretty much acknowledged this. Who gives a damn... they can say and do anything because as much as we talk, we can't put it on the front page. Marcus, I think, is on to the next big story - what happens if the fifteen points the media scrapes up for Kerry aren't enough? It's obvious, of course, that if Bush wins in spite of the fifteen points the media is bringing Kerry by buring Kerry negatives and highlighting Bush's, the only way he can do so is to steal the election. Various leftish outfits are already hiring lawyers, preparing briefing papers and coaching potential witnesses to prove that if Bush wins, it's because Kerry voters were disenfranchised. Be sure to follow Marcus' updates on how they'rethe Demos are boosting their man's chances, first by raising doubts about election processes, the ability to get a fair shot at voting, etc, and second by shutting Nader out. Now, then, think that over one more time: The media is sure they'll deliver an extra fifteen points for Kerry. Bush can't win in those circumstances. Therefore, a Bush win would be by default fraudulent. And we live in a Democracy? When do we get to vote on the Fourth Estate? * * * Incidentally, a few questions... I read a fair amount, both on paper and on the internet. At different times in my life, I've read three newspapers a day. I still usually read six to ten newspapers a week. I imagine this is true of most political bloggers. Do your neighbors who aren't into politics, don't blog, etc, likely to read a dozen newspapers a week? Are they likely to get anything other than the local paper? You and I know that this blog is not going to be enough to get out the full story on Kerry. You and I know that even Instapundit can't, apparently, get Kerry's Cambodia lies on the front page. But... My experiences writing a blog and being in the blogosphere have been enough to reduce my reading of the NYT from two or three times a week to two or three times a month. I used to read it to see what the left was thinking; I now skim for lies and omissions. I used to be an ideal newspaper consumer - a regular reader and purchaser. I now usually read one paper - and that for the comics - and get my news mostly from online sources. We know that bloggers are a small percentage of the population. But what percentage of the newspaper buying population are they? Will the NYT and Washington Post feel it in their bottom lines, over the long term, if they continue to insult the intelligence of readers who also go online? I know the NYT hasn't sold me a copy in a few weeks. * * *posted by gbarto at 11:05 PM:Before you steal an election, be sure to case it out...A lot of us in the Blogosphere have hit on one big story - the media's efforts to hide all defects Kerry while slamming Bush and Nader at every turn. Plainly the media's in the tank for Kerry, but some of their number (Evan Thomas, call your office) have pretty much acknowledged this. Who gives a damn... they can say and do anything because as much as we talk, we can't put it on the front page. Marcus, I think, is on to the next big story - what happens if the fifteen points the media scrapes up for Kerry aren't enough? It's obvious, of course, that if Bush wins in spite of the fifteen points the media is bringing Kerry by buring Kerry negatives and highlighting Bush's, the only way he can do so is to steal the election. Various leftish outfits are already hiring lawyers, preparing briefing papers and coaching potential witnesses to prove that if Bush wins, it's because Kerry voters were disenfranchised. Be sure to follow Marcus' updates on how they'rethe Demos are boosting their man's chances, first by raising doubts about election processes, the ability to get a fair shot at voting, etc, and second by shutting Nader out. Now, then, think that over one more time: The media is sure they'll deliver an extra fifteen points for Kerry. Bush can't win in those circumstances. Therefore, a Bush win would be by default fraudulent. And we live in a Democracy? When do we get to vote on the Fourth Estate? * * * Incidentally, a few questions... I read a fair amount, both on paper and on the internet. At different times in my life, I've read three newspapers a day. I still usually read six to ten newspapers a week. I imagine this is true of most political bloggers. Do your neighbors who aren't into politics, don't blog, etc, likely to read a dozen newspapers a week? Are they likely to get anything other than the local paper? You and I know that this blog is not going to be enough to get out the full story on Kerry. You and I know that even Instapundit can't, apparently, get Kerry's Cambodia lies on the front page. But... My experiences writing a blog and being in the blogosphere have been enough to reduce my reading of the NYT from two or three times a week to two or three times a month. I used to read it to see what the left was thinking; I now skim for lies and omissions. I used to be an ideal newspaper consumer - a regular reader and purchaser. I now usually read one paper - and that for the comics - and get my news mostly from online sources. We know that bloggers are a small percentage of the population. But what percentage of the newspaper buying population are they? Will the NYT and Washington Post feel it in their bottom lines, over the long term, if they continue to insult the intelligence of readers who also go online? I know the NYT hasn't sold me a copy in a few weeks. * * *posted by gbarto at 11:35 AM:Kerry and Exit StrategiesJohn Kerry is criticizing Bush's plans to bring some troops home from Germany and South Korea. He says it's not safe to pull the troops from South Korea. Didn't we wrap up things in Korea, like, 50 years ago? Oh, but there are ongoing problems in the region, like a homicidal maniac with suicidal wishes for his country? There are also South Korean pols with suicidal wishes for their country - they bait us, question our value and rely on us to shield them from their idiocy. It's time they dealt with their own security if they know so much about it. But... Isn't this the same Kerry who has a secret plan to get us out of Iraq with our allies' help? Take it easy, John. If we really need Western troops in South Korea, I'm sure your buddies in France and Germany will take up the slack, just like they're going to do in Iraq. Please. * * *posted by gbarto at 2:18 AM:It's curious to look at... but is it art? Da Vinci's Hangover - Three views * * *posted by gbarto at 2:07 AM:Here's Tagorda picking on Kerry just because his campaign accidentally claimed he was vice-chair of the Intelligence Committee (that would have been Bob Kerrey, of Nebraska, not John Kerry of Massachussetts).I think they're being a little harsh here. For once with Kerry, it really is a subordinate's fault! Of course one does still worry about the team he'll put together as president... Mr. President, we've just received word that New York is under nuclear attack. Apparently your withdrawal from Iraq emboldened the terrorists, rather than pacifying them... * * *Tuesday, August 17, 2004posted by gbarto at 2:46 PM:Was John Kerry a Secret Agent Gunrunner?That's sorta what he told US News and World Report's Kevin Whitelaw a couple years back. Visit Hugh Hewitt for the scoop. And be sure to use the phrase "John Kerry - Gunrunner" early and often in conversation and, if you have one, in your blog. * * *posted by gbarto at 1:36 PM:Bjørn Stærk has taken a pretty good look at one unfortunate development of late: the gradual lumping together of Islam and Islamism.Islam is a religion. Like all religions, it asserts that it has ultimate truths, truths worth dying for, and truths quite possibly worth conquering for. Like most religions (all that I've seen), it's also riddled with logical contradictions of the sort that only the hardiest believer could bear, never mind try to reconcile into a coherent worldview. Most religions call for peace, promote love and brotherhood and mention that these will come shortly after a great and mighty god rubs the unbelievers' noses in their own impiety. If you read the texts, there are legitimate reasons to believe this about my religion. To my chagrin, instead of praying for every last soul to find their way to the true path so that the awful vengeance mentioned in my religious texts would be unnecessary, some adherents of my faith seem to revel in the fact that they'll get to have the last word as the wicked are smote. That's certainly what I took from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell's "more in sorrow than in anger" declarations that God no longer loved us if He allowed 9/11 to happen - and why would He, given our deviation from those gentlemen's ideas for what we should be... And frankly, there's an element of that thinking going all the way back to Dante (and doubtless before). The problem here is that where the rubber meets the road with religion is a place called the human being. Human beings are quite possibly the best things God ever made, with apologies to dogs, cats, rainbows and vanilla ice cream on a hot summer afternoon. But like our fanciest computers, they're a mess. If you talk to Freud, we all want to sleep with our mothers, and if you watch Jerry Springer, half of us have. We're the species that brought you 9/11 - the senseless destruction of 3,000 lives and acts of heroism that would have made Homer's jaw drop. We've given the world Michelangelo... and Hitler, Bach... and Idi Amin, Aristotle... and Jerry Springer. (I know, I know, billions of people throughout history and he's stuck for a sixth!) Religions are, to the understanding of their adherents, God given. But they're also a way that human beings make sense of the world. And with all due respect to the divine letters of Sanskrit and the sacred origins of the runes, we're doing it with imperfect human languages. We cannot know the mind of God, because it works differently from ours. We, in the U.S., live in a first world country where every year one or two epileptic or asthmatic children die because a "healing" goes bad. Where a certain number of people believe that fossils are the work of a cunning Satan trying to trick us. Where, less than a hundred years ago, the state of Kentucky declared pi to equal three in all real estate transactions, because 3.14... was too hard to figure with. When you are confronted with a philosphy that explains, literally, life, the universe and everything, you're likely to get worked up about it. But with imperfect human understanding, we're bound to make a hash of it. We can't even picture four dimensions. How are we to conceive of the perfect unity of creation? We can't. Smart people treat this discovery as an opportunity for humility and introspection. And even contemplation of the world around them but outside of them. Then there are those who make the pieces of the puzzle fit, dammit, even if the end result doesn't look like anything. We call these people -ists, because if something lacks a logical explanation, naming it obscures the fact. Less than a millenium ago, an awful plague was unleashed across Europe. Many were killed, sacred sites were desecrated, the general worth of humanity was discarded as secondary to the holy cause of the moment. It was called the Crusades. It featured such inspiring moments as Saint Louis IX of France's death in the Holy Land - from diarrhea. It featured the rise of a likely corrupt but certainly profitable group of monks who lived in castles with their vows of poverty - the Templars. Its high point, unquestionably, was the sack of Constantinople, in which thousands of Christians were robbed and slaughtered in the name of Jesus Christ. And can we forget the Inquisition? The Catholic church has certainly tried. What happened during the Crusades, and during the Inquisition, wasn't Christian. It violated many of the most basic precepts of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Some things happened that can't even be justified with the Old Testament! Christianity, glad to say, has survived. It offers a noble teaching that encourages us to love our fellow man, to consider the interests of others as our own, to forgive both others and ourselves while thanking God for the truest and most saving grace, His divine forgiveness of those who follow the way of His Son. That's not what the Crusades brought. That's because they were an -ism. Call it Christianism. It was an ideology that asserted that select men, in the name of God, could direct the resources of man toward remaking the world to fit a certain picture of what Christianity should, in the end, produce. It was not, mark you, an attempt to live to the fullest as a Christian. It was an effort to make others live as Christians, and such compromises as were made in the middle were taken for granted as a) excused by flimsy readings of the really bad parts of the OT and probably Paul and Peter and b) necessary for the greater glory of God. The world survived Christianism and a much better Christianity ultimately emerged. But lest we forget, it was less than 250 years ago that the Divine Right of Kings was first firmly tested by the French and American Revolutions. 150 years ago, there were still monarchists trying to restore the House of Bourbon to the status God wanted for it. So to look askance at the Islamists is, more than anything, to fail to recognize just how fast we've come to where we are. Christianism, in the end, was undone by the Enlightenment. What is interesting is that Christianity survived, though Christianism didn't. In fact, in the most religious Enlightenment society, the United States, political liberty and religious free will seemingly merged, with the state getting a whole new role in protecting Christianity - creating a space for individual conscience that the state would not interfere in. That also creates a space in which one may freely be a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist or whatever, so long as you don't disturb the neighbors. We take this for granted today, but two or three hundred years ago, it was assumed that the state needed to act to protect people's virtue. Somewhere between the inquisition and putting people in stocks for missing church, one will find the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Closer to the inquisition end of the spectrum, you'll find the Wahabbists. But if history is our guide, a time will come - as with the Enlightenment - when making the puzzle pieces fit becomes more inconvenient than tangling with the local Iman. In places, that time is already arriving. It's happened for Musharraf. But it's also happened for a fair number of Palestinians who just want to reopen their shops. It's happening with Iraqis all over the place. Today, we're actually not in so horrible a place. Yes, the threats of nuclear terrorism, etc, persist. But the historical sweep indicates the dying of another -ism, Islamism, even before the word has fully caught on. So let us be careful in contemplating Islam, Islamism, Al-Qaeda, etc. Al-Qaeda is, unquestionably, evil. As was the inquisition. Both perverted institutions designed to guide humanity into tools for debasing and oppressing it. Islamism, like Marxism, like Christianism, is headed for the ash-heap. The appropriate response is not disdain for Islam (how many people stood up to the Inquisition, at first?), but a morbid disgust at what happens when small minds and smaller hearts are joined in an effort to make a backward picture of the world go forward. Pray that it's over soon. Take heart, for on the historical timeline, at least, it will be. * * *posted by gbarto at 11:11 AM:Cicero has been writing up a storm about incompetent Democratic election officials, voter intimidation, etc. What do we see? It looks like the groundwork's being laid for a legal challenge to Florida again, just in case the Demos don't win it outright.The entry is called, "Trying to steal an election they have (probably) already won." Evocative of Watergate, but there's one big difference. If they do try to pull off these shenanigans, Woodward and Bernstein won't be out front getting the scoop. The big guns of journalism will do their best to bury the whole thing and any reportorial resources tasked to the case will be charged with demonstrating the odiousness of the accusers. When does the left realize they've been had by a party that now exists entirely for its own power and indifferent to ideas? Or does that describe the left, too? * * *Monday, August 16, 2004posted by gbarto at 2:06 PM:Pulling back from Europe, AsiaWe're pulling a pretty good share of our troops out of Europe and Asia, and it's about damn time. People probably have forgotten the old Civilization game by Sid Meier, but there was something instructive built into its workings: happiness levels dropped when troops were away from home for too long. With the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts drawing many troops from home and reminding us of just how many troops are overseas, we've had some problems with this. The bigger problem, though, is that the mission was problematic. Our aim in having troops in Germany and South Korea was to promote security in the regions. They have not been doing that. Both European and South Korean politicians have gone on a holiday from history (is that Kagan's phrase?). Kagan wrote a very instructive book on this, Of Paradise and Power. The end result has been that security in Europe and South Korea are worse off, as pols offer increasingly untenable visions of history that assume a) everlasting peace and invulnerability for Europe and b) an inoffensive North Korea. Both visions are patently false: Kim Jong-Il is making nukes and Europe threatens to be overrun from within by its Arab populations. However, by quietly keeping them secure, we're allowing the pols to create an environment in which we won't be able to provide protection if needed, because the same pols who rely on us for security have instructed their peoples not to trust us or our motives. I'm very fearful about where all this goes, and will not be surprised to see a North Korean incursion into South Korea (as Iraq did with Kuwait) or truly destabilizing unrest in Europe as greens, reactionary Islamofascists and disaffected leftists separately chink away at their leaders ability to govern (don't think it could happen? ask the gendarmerie in Paris or Marseilles how hard they work to maintain order in the Arab neighborhoods - parts of France are occupied already). Unfortunately, as with World War II, we're screwed: Europe, perpetually secure in its older wisdom, is going to do it again, doddering into something that only its ill-regarded child, America, can clean up. And we're probably stuck in Asia, too, though there's some hope that South Koreans will become more pro-American as it appears that anti-Americanism really means the only line of defense against the North is the power or prayer or the unpleasantness of arming themselves. The good news: America will take charge again in the end, for the simple reason that we have no choice. And like WWII, the Cold War, etc, it will be a bitch. But we will succeed, because a) that's what we do, and b) we have no choice. * * *posted by gbarto at 12:52 AM:Just read this interesting bit at Instapundit on the damage done by burning coal.Question: Which is worse? Coal? or gasoline? Here in California, there's a lot of chatter about electric cars. But we have an outmoded, overburdened power system. If you plug in your car, doesn't that just mean you're burning coal instead of gasoline? So, drive an electric car to... burn more coal, further stretch the power grid, and waste all the energy lost in transmission a) over power lines and b) converting voltage from power lines to charge the batteries on your energy car. If your car is energy efficient, wouldn't gasoline be better? I'll leave the question for the scientists; I'm not sure where it balances out. But I have a hunch that electric cars just relocate smog, not prevent it. Anyway, in news of the asinine... According to a letter to the editor in the LG Daily News, they're considering a new tax f0r road maintenance in Cali. It would be by the mile, not a tax on gas. The writer noted this could simultaneously increase transportation tax costs for drivers of the small, energy-efficient vehicles favored by the not so well to do and decrease them for drivers of road damaging heavy trucks... This being the Bay Area, the writer smelled an evil conspiracy to do in the poor. I smell stupidity coupled with some crafty lobbying by the parties - small haulers, small businesses that deliver heavy goods to customers - with the most to gain. No idea if the idea will make it from chatter to law; am doubtful that our legislature could at the moment agree on whether it's 3:00 or 3:01 as midafternoon set in. But worth watching. Also worth watching: What happens to the logging/clearing/fire-protection bill. It looked like duck soup to pass a bill that would allow private landowners to cut their own damn trees to reduce risk of fires spreading across their land. But since people with small stands of trees were most likely to let real loggers do the work, as opposed to getting out their ax, wagon and lawn tractor, you know the enviro-left couldn't let that stand. Sure enough, a Palo-Alto legislator, representing all those great landowners who attend Stanford, pushed and succeeded in getting his own anti-logging bill with ridiculous restrictions on clear-cutting merged with a sensible bill to protect California homes and homeowners. So if your house burns down while you're waiting for permission to clear your own lands (a process that can take months and cost thousands of dollars), be sure to send your thank you note to Sen. Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto. * * *posted by gbarto at 12:31 AM:I believe I've read this one over at Instapundit (link at left) a few times, usually with calls to carry it in more papers. I just read this one: But the place I found it was the Los Gatos Daily News, my own local paper. So he's at least getting picked up here and there. Be sure to check out Day by Day every day. And write your local paper. Suggest they run it in place of Doonesbury. * * *
French Elections, 1st round
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