Author: VD

Michael Graham writes on NRO’s Corner: Jeff Greenfield of CNN says the most disturbing revelation on “60 Minutes” last night was Bob Woodward’s claim that the Saudis plan to flood the international market with oil to bring down gas prices in time for the American election. To which I say “Great!” Why shouldn’t the Saudis help out the president who’s bravely led a coalition against an enemy on their own border, an enemy who has repeatedly threatened to invade Saudi Arabia? If the Democrats want to argue that having President Bush in office means oil-rich nations will try to help out the American economy, go right ahead. If these nations were driving gas prices up in order to punish Bush, you can bet Teresa Heinz Kerry’s dead husband’s last dollar that the Democrats would be holding Bush responsible. Instead, they’re helping a brother out. What’s the prob?

I’m not even sure where to begin teeing off on this one. If George Bush is “a brother” of the House of Saud, well, we’ve got some serious problems considering that it is the Wahhabist Saudis who have revived the long slumbering war on the Dar-al-Harb in the interest of establishing global sharia. But it would certainly go a long way in explaining why, after a Saudi-financed attack by Saudis at the behest of a Saudi expat cheered on by Saudi government clerics, the President decided to wage an undeclared war on Iraq. Michael Moore is a borderline insane, dishonest lump of lunacy, but I don’t know if even he’s gone so far in saying that the President is not only in bed with House of Saud, but is downright akin to them.

JT, a self-proclaimed widow, writes: I always thought a misogynist little boy lurked under your skin, and I now I know you are a misogynist little boy masquerading as a man. You aren’t even married; you are like a priest trying to tell a married couple how they should respond to each other…. I have no idea on what you are basing your ideas, but it seems to me that you need to have your ego stroked all the time. For instance sports–you need to have your sports time and would like to have a woman sitting by your side whether or not she is bored to death (sort of like a dog) so that you can reach over and touch her just to make sure you are not alone. You sound like a guy who just can’t be alone and who is not happy with the kind of person he is. I am 54 years old, so it may be that the years separate our opinions, but you really need to find yourself-really find yourself. Do people your age actually walk around thinking about their relationships all the time?

As usual, write something a woman doesn’t like, and immediately she resorts to accusations of mysogyny. It’s really sad when even the hate mail is tedious. So, where did I go wrong? What, exactly, is she asserting, that women should be disrespectful and uncivil to their husbands? That a woman should behave like a unhappy harpy and still expect a man to stick around? That a man is responsible for her feelings and that her time is well spent in trying to bring him down? That she should try to prevent him from hanging out with friends, and if they do happen to be around, she should insert herself into the gathering and play topic police? JT, do you even have a point?

I always find it amusing when people make staggeringly inaccurate assertions about me. As anyone whose ever spent 30 minutes with me can probably tell, I’m not all that keen on spending the bulk of my time around other people. The five books I’ve written would tend to be a bit of a clue that I enjoy my solitude. But it’s true, I do spend 24-7 thinking about relationships, watching Oprah and reading women’s magazines.

I expect CNBC to hire him as an expert investment commentator any day now. He’d fit right in with Larry Kudlow. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Meanwhile, Fleck writes: The refi game and government stimulus have been the only glue holding the economy together. If last Wednesday’s move in the bond market has shut the door on (mortgage) refi activity once and for all, as I believe it has, then the Fed is basically trapped. It is my view that we have reached the inflection point — where it’s game over for stocks, real estate and the economy. That doesn’t mean everything will stop on a dime, but we may look back at this period in time and say that it was an inflection point.

Scott comments: As an American who has lived in Israel for over 10 years, I consider myself very sensitive to the assault on American liberties. I got a firsthand look at the new reality in my short trip to Los Angeles last May. The TSA, at the very least, irked me. Everything they were doing was wrong. It’s like they stole the “form” of security, as done correctly by El Al, without adopting the “substance.

I experienced the uselessness of the TSA myself a few weeks ago. I was dropped off at the door with far more luggage than I could possibly carry by myself, while there was a huge line to check in. I flagged down a passing man in a TSA uniform and asked him if he could help me move the luggage to the back of the line, some 50 yards away, from where I could move things along, piece by piece. He said, no, he couldn’t, and was unmoved by my warning that I was just going to leave it there and get in line – I knew the line would eventually take me where the luggage was.

Now, I could see this big pile of baggage from my spot in the line 50 yards away, but the rest of the TSA people didn’t know that. And in the 20 minutes it took for the rest of the party to join me and collect the luggage, not a single passing TSA employee bothered to check out this big pile of anonymous suitcases. What a joke.

The order to kill every pregnant Jewish woman had been issued that morning. So when a Nazi guard patrolling the Jewish ghetto in Kovno noticed a pregnant Jew walking past the local hospital, he shot her at point-blank range. She died on the spot. Hoping to save the baby, some passersby rushed the dead woman into the hospital. An obstetrician determined that she had been in her last weeks of pregnancy, and said that if surgery were performed immediately, her baby might be rescued…. Then came a horrifying postscript. “The cruel murderers . . . came into the hospital to write down the name of the murdered woman. . . . When they found the baby alive, their savage fury was unleashed. One of the Germans grabbed the infant and cracked its skull against the wall of the hospital room. Woe unto the eyes that saw this!”

Abortionettes, Nazis, they’re all the same to me, except I have slightly more respect for the historical NASDAP than NOW. Calling a feminist a femi-Nazi is an insult to National Socialism.

LL writes: What a wonderful article. For the women who read, and heed this article life will be better. Many men stay in painful relationships for years, until their children are grown. Once their children are grown, it is not uncommon for them to leave their wives of many years. The pure and simple fact is: women control relationships from the ages of 6-45, they decide who they will date, they decide how serious the relationship will become, and in most cases they decide who they will marry. After the age of 45 there is a complete role reversal, women control almost nothing. The sex-induced fog of youth is mastered, and the simple fact of life is that there are far more available over-45 women than there are available over 45 men.

Yet when men leave wives of many years the wife is stunned. The only thing that the wife can come up with is that they have been left for a younger woman. They look for the “easy” answer, they are being left for youth. In actuality the husband decided years before to leave when the time was appropriate. The reality is that the husband is not leaving for a younger woman, but rather, is leaving for a more loving, more civil, caring partner who just happens to be younger. What also happens frequently is that many of these middle aged women go through menopause and lose all sexual interest in their husbands. Their rationalization is: “oh well, I don’t need it, so he will just have to do without.” Sorry…nope, nope, nope, nope…no only means no for as long as the receiving partner decides that he will accept no. Once “no” is no longer the acceptable answer he looks elsewhere, and if sex is of interest he passes right by the post menopausal set, on this way to the younger crowd.

I think the significant insight there is that “the husband decided years before to leave when the time was appropriate.” On occasions I’ve spoken with older, divorced men whose children are grown, I’m often struck by how happy many of them are. “The best money I ever spent” is a commonly heard theme. This is why I think that it is absolutely necessary for men to marry a Christian woman who embraces the notion of duty and responsibility within marriage, as opposed to a woman who views a relationship solely in terms of rights and happiness. A man should no more marry such a woman than a woman should marry a man who beats her, cheats on her or treats her disrespectfully.

Golden Gryphon has published THE ATROCITY ARCHIVE, by Charles Stross. If you have any interest in brilliant science fiction that combines computer technology and Cthulhu, that conflates MI-5 and the Mythos, you must seriously consider buying this novel. In addition to being the first writer to ever work Austrian economics into a novella, Stross was a finalist for the Nebula last year and his SINGULARITY SKY is up for the Hugo this fall. His ACCELERANDO is one of the most thought-provoking, mind-bending works of fiction I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. He writes like a William Gibson who actually understands technology.

Pat Buchanan thinks about an unthinkable that is a little less unthinkable than mine: The president calls failure in Iraq unthinkable. But the alternative may be an open-ended war the American people never signed on to, and, if present polls are any indication, may not be willing to support indefinitely. Iraq is not Vietnam, but, for President Bush, there are troubling similarities to other unhappy moments in American history. Truman’s presidency was broken by the “no-win war” in Korea. LBJ’s presidency was broken by his failure to “win or get out” of Vietnam.

What does a president do if he believes a war is just and necessary, but the people come to believe it is the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy? We are not at that point yet, but we are getting there. And President Bush had best begin to think the unthinkable.

Bringing the troops out of Iraq and taking a step backward after several steps forward in the war against the global jihad isn’t really all that unthinkable in my book. The unthinkable that concerns me far more is how elements within the federal government are using the conflict to war on American liberties and take a few quiet steps forward towards selling out national sovereignty to the United Nations. The problem is that whether we fight the war that’s been declared against us or not, the sell-out continues apace. President Clinton turned over the rivers and parks, President Bush is in the process of turning over the seas and possibly the Internet, and neither of these things required a war to excuse them.

You may see this as paranoia; I don’t care. The head-in-the-sand brigade has already been proven wrong about the EU (“it’s just a trade zone, it’ll never be a political entity”) and will be proven wrong over time about the UN as well. Whatever we do with regards to Iraq, turning an oil-producing country over to the United Nations in any way should not be one of the options. The UN is desperate to achieve an independent source of revenue; once it succeeds in that, it will begin asserting its self-proclaimed right to govern.

This isn’t rocket science, people, just an ability to think in terms of decades instead of election cycles. When power is centralized, it attracts those who wish to rule over others like a bitch in heat attracts male dogs.

U.S. radio broadcasters have asked federal regulators to bar rival satellite radio services from offering content tailored to local markets, according to a petition obtained on Friday. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents radio conglomerates like Clear Channel Communications Inc. , filed the request due to concerns the up and coming satellite services are trying to replace local radio outlets. Both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. now offer traffic and weather for several cities on its national service, but are barred from using ground-based transmitters that extend service into hard-to-reach areas to air programming aimed specifically at a local market.

“This foray into local content is directly contrary to … repeated and express promises that satellite radio service would be limited to delivering national programming to serve the unserved and underserved,” according to the petition filed this week and obtained by Reuters. NAB said the two companies may also be developing satellite radios that can receive advertisements, news and other content targeting a local market by using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS). The broadcasters’ group demanded that the Federal Communications Commission, which licenses satellite services, explicitly ban their rivals from using any technology to offer content in one area that is different from another location.

This is a good example of the absurd notion of the inherently conservative big corporation. Big corporations love socialist governments, because instead of having to compete with competitors spawned by new technology, they can simply lobby the government to ban their competitors altogether. The left’s attempt to create a dichotomy between big business and big government is a false one, as the two, in fact, tend to feed off each other. This is why the PRC has massive corporations, and why Hitler had no trouble reaching accomodation with the industrial giants of Germany. I always find it ironic that the environmental and anti-globalist left believes that government will somehow help them seriously rein in the big corporations.

I’m not a big NBA fan, but I’m pleased to see the Wolves do so well. Back when all the talk of the next Michael Jordan was revolving around Vince, Kobe and AI, I always felt that KG was the only possible heir to the throne. If he can lead the Wolves to a championship, this will become obvious to everyone. He’s that rarity of rarities, a true superstar of genuine humility and civility. Best of luck to you and the pack, KG.