Category: Uncategorized

The State Department on Thursday “strongly urged” private U.S. citizens to leave Saudi Arabia as it announced plans to order some U.S. diplomats out the country because of security concerns. “Private American citizens currently in Saudi Arabia are strongly urged to depart,” the State Department said in a travel advisory after it decided to send nonessential U.S. diplomats and all embassy family members home.

June 30th is coming fairly soon. Perhaps the President and his military advisors have decided that it’s time to grasp the nettle. There’s no shame in admitting a strategy isn’t working, only in sticking with it once you know it isn’t working. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

From the BBC: Italian hostage defied killers. The Italian hostage killed by kidnappers in Iraq was a defiant hero in his final moments, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says. The dead man was identified as Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 36, a security guard. As the gunman’s pistol was pointing at him the hostage “tried to take off his hood and shouted: ‘now I’ll show you how an Italian dies,'” he said.

Sometimes, your only choice is to die poorly or die well. Bravissimo, Fabrizio. Ha mostrato il cuore di un leone. Il suo onore e il suo coraggio confondano i suoi assassini. Resta nello pace.

The Dark Prince of politics, Robert Novak, writes: When George W. Bush faced the nation in a rare prime time press conference, he was responding to a crisis of confidence among his Republican supporters. His recent difficulties in dealing with adversity had planted serious doubts among party leaders. The president’s performance Tuesday night eased their anxiety about an imminent loss of support by his base, but worriers were not completely reassured. Considering how he has handled the first three months of this election year, President Bush’s press conference was indeed a welcome relief. Republicans had feared another public relations disaster following twin failures in his State of the Union address and his appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” While he dodged a third bullet Tuesday night, Republicans concede Bush was less than triumphant.

Funny, I don’t remember either the State of the Union address or Meet the Press being mentioned as disasters at the time. I do remember some breathless color commentary on NRO’s Corner, generally more positive than Jonah Goldberg’s laconic review this time around: “I thought Bush was fine though. At first I thought the prepared remarks were a bit too down-tempo. But it became clear his comments were building on each other. I think he set the right tone and said the right things.”

No doubt we’ll be hearing about how the next one was satisfactory, in contrast to the previous three disasters. In any case, Churchill he ain’t.

The Asia Times covers the Chinese economy: So, all hunky-dory in the Middle Kingdom? Maybe. In the past decade, and certainly since the Asian crisis, warnings by some contrarian analysts of a rapidly overheating Chinese economy cranked up a few more notches. That didn’t faze foreign investors and Chinese policymakers, who scoff at the babble as banal – the same way Asia ignored, then lampooned, similar talk in the mid- to late 1990s. Then, wham! Asia’s economic castles were found to be built on sand. Their miracles were almost entirely debt-financed. And still other analysts fervently describe Chinese economic development as a miracle par excellence. Some are already saying this century is China’s. The zeal and eulogies are all too familiar. But the contrarian chatter is fast catching up to China, with stronger tones – not something Chinese policymakers can afford to ignore anymore.

“The miracles were almost entirely debt-financed.” Why does that remind me of something?

Oh yeah, Mogambo was going off as if he had a cell phone attached to him: as a case in point, I take the $21 billion weekly issuance of debt, multiply it times fifty-two weeks, and compare that annual debt issuance to, oh, let’s say, income. Oh, not YOUR income of course, because you are so smart and handsome and you make the big bucks. No, I’m talking about the national Personal Income, which is listed as $9,364 billion, a figure that includes the pathetic contribution of us ugly little trolls out here slaving away at our pathetic little low-paying, dead-end jobs, and then coming home at night to listen to someone else whine about THEIR pathetic little low-paying dead-end job, although we have no interest in her damn day, and I think I speak for all us trolls when I say that we seethe with envy at your good fortune. Anyway, so when I calculate all that out that, I find that the federal government, our lackluster elected officials, are putting us in more debt, to the tune of 11.5% of our income

Right, there’s your white-hot 8.2 percent growth. The triple-D economy. Debt + Debt+Debt = short-term growth, long-term bust. Not good times.

The commission, anyhow. Let’s follow the progression. Gorelick writes a memo setting up a bureacratic wall. Said wall is widely considered to have made the 9/11 attacks more easily accomplished. Gorlick named to 9/11 commission, commission goes on TV and the memo is released. An obvious conflict of interest given that Gorelick was a participant in the events leading up to 9/11, and yet the vast bulk of the mainstream media claims that it doesn’t matter or attempts to ignore it altogether.

Get up, ah, get, get down.

911 is a joke in your town….

BLS writes: I would respectfully suggest you distill your political beliefs down to the two or three most important to you, then decide which candidate you think is most likely to support them after actually being elected. It’s a two-part process: who can win, and of those, which is better….

No difference between JFK and GWB is a common theme on this blog. It may indicate lack of clear thinking.

I’ve distilled my hot buttons down to five. In fact, this is precisely why I am totally indifferent as to who will win in 2004, just as I was in 2000. I understand that some people believe that it matters greatly if one person is willing to commit 10 percent less fraud than another, as for me, I don’t care to support anyone who embraces the concept. We can agree to disagree, of course. I’m throwing ideas, not rocks.

1. Ending the Federal Reserve and inflation paper.

JK=O

GB=0

GN=1

2. Protecting private gun rights

JK=0

GB=.5

GN=1

3. Leaving the United Nations and all organizations infringing on national sovereignty

JK=0

GB=0

GN=1

4. Respecting the American Constitution.

JK=0

GB=0

GN=1

5. Responding to the petition of We The People.

JK=0

GB=0

GN=.5 (based on his negative comments about income tax, I believe he would at least investigate the claims.)

I believe Gary Nolan of the Libertarian Party – the only Libertarian candidate I’ve interviewed thus far – is by far the best candidate for the Presidency. Management of the undeclared war on method isn’t even in my top ten, especially since I am increasingly of the opinion that Bush is bungling the war that the global jihad has declared on America. So, I’ll cheerfully vote for Gary Nolan, assuming he wins the Libertarian nomination.

If I had just one wish this Christmas season, it’s that all the children of the world would join hands and sing together a song of peace in perfect harmony. If I had two wishes this Christmas season, it would be to hold a heavily short position on the QQQs the day before Congress forces Wall Street to expense employee options. NRO’s Ramesh Ponnuru was wondering why there’s such a big fuss about expensing options, and this little pair of charts should help explain why:

It is unlikely, however, that the average private investor is aware of how significant options accounting is for the earnings of tech companies…. As you can see, excluding employee options as a cost of doing business increased reported net income per share by an average of 77% in 2001, 61% in 2002 and 34% last year. For some companies, like Cisco and Ebay, for example, earnings per share were doubled or tripled due to the accounting fiction that the cost of employee options grants should not be considered an ordinary cost of doing business.

Yeah, get rid of half or two-thirds of their earnings, since the shareholders will never see them, and I imagine that their share prices will tend to sink a bit. I imagine the Wrinkled Whores will have a little something to say about ever allowing that to happen, though.

The newspapers are crying crocodile tears about the young woman soldier who died in Iraq and her two sisters who are still on duty. Keep in mind that these are, for the most part, the very individuals who have been arguing that women have an absolute right to serve in the military, not only in a support role but in the elite special forces as well. They cheered the ludicrous notion of GI Jane, the Navy SEAL, (GI?) and then are horrified when these American Amazons experience what happens to a dependable percentage of soldiers in combat.

As I have written before, most women and the sort of men who don’t engage in any physical activity – such as the average left-oriented journalist – have simply no idea how great a divide separates the sexes. I’m not a particularly big guy, but when I was in the weight room doing arms today, I curled Space Bunny’s weight five times. Now, consider that she’s taller than average and extremely fit – scored 100 on the USMC’s fitness test when we took it for fun one day – but can’t even come close to benching her own bodyweight once.

There are those who think that modern combat doesn’t require physical strength, and it’s true, you’re not often carrying a sword and shield around these days. But an M-16 and several hundred rounds of ammo aren’t exactly weightless, and in the field, it’s not always possible to have the cooking staff setting up a kitchen and serving you hot meals. So, you’ll probably want to carry around a few MREs. And then, you’re in the desert so water is a necessity, and water is surprisingly heavy. Not to mention the GPS, grenades and ten other things that I’m forgetting.

I’m sorry for that girl, her sisters and her parents too. But she should never have been there, in a combat zone, in the first place.

The Evangelical Outpost travels to the strange, strange world of Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder: …the last straw came when he “dropped the N-word,” as one amused observer recalled. He said—bragged, even—that he’d voted for Nader in 2000. At that point, according to Hamilton Fish, the host of the party, “it got interactive.” Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, was sitting in the back of the room, next to Joe Wilson, the Ambassador. He shouted out, “Thanks for Bush!” Exactly what happened next is unclear. Alterman recalls that McGruder responded by grabbing his crotch and saying, “Try these nuts.” Jack Newfield, the longtime Village Voice writer, says that McGruder simply dared Alterman to remove him from the podium. When asked about this incident later, McGruder said, “I ain’t no punk. I ain’t gonna let someone shout and not go back at him.” Alterman walked out. “I turned to Joe and said, ‘I can’t listen to this crap anymore,’” he remembers. “I went out into the Metropolitan Club lobby—it’s a nice lobby—and I worked on my manuscript.”

Sometimes I really feel as if I’m missing out by not living my life in the incestuous little media fish bowl. All of these little dust-ups that never amount to anything, posturing between gamma males who only talk smack because they know no one is ever going to actually do anything about it. So, what do we learn from this?

1. McGruder not only isn’t funny, he’s pathetic. Like most lefties, he can’t take any heat.

2. Alterman is not only an intellectual coward, it sounds as if he might be a physical one as well. I note in passing that he subscribes to the same pragmatic voting philosophy as our friendly lesser-of-two-evils gang here.

3. Left-liberal gatherings have the same high-strung bitchy vibe as sorority meetings at elite colleges.

Reading this, it makes me feel a little bit like one of my friends in the dojo, one of our most lethal fighters. He was looking rather wistful as we watched a fight getting broken up one evening out at the clubs. “Thirteen years I’ve trained, and no one ever even takes a swing at me,” he said, more than a little sadly. I pointed out that it would probably help if he would stop wearing Dragon accoutrements and generally looking as if he was just itching for the opportunity to go Bruce Lee on someone. When even the gangstas are looking at you, raising their eyebrows and looking quickly away, you might want to consider bringing it down a few notches if you want to get your bang on.

This reminds me – it isn’t related – but if you’re interested in martial arts, one of the instructors I trained under for a few months apparently has a video series out. Karl’s a nice guy and great fighter, but he could be a little touchy at times. After Big Chilly trophied at Diamond Nationals and Karl failed to defend his title there, he was still pissed-off to such an extent that he ended up cracking Big Chilly’s ribs with a sidekick the next time they sparred. I drove by the building where Karate Junction was the other day; it’s been demolished and a new building is going up. No great architectural loss to the world, but it made me feel sentimental, for a moment, anyhow.

You may recall that I estimated that I’d been pounded several hundred times in the past. Karl is responsible for about 10 or 12 of those poundings. He knows what he’s doing.

Puzzled asks: RJK and VD: where did you study medicine?

I can’t speak for RJK, naturally, but I have my MD from the same place many of the public school counselors, psychiatrists, and child psychologists who prescribe Ritalin, often after a five-minute consult, received theirs.

“…one urban school district in Minnesota reported administering 1,294 medications in 1985; by 2000, that number had increased to 35,111, according to a 2002 report to the Minnesota Legislature…. In Maine, for example, the Legislature found in 2000 that 63 percent of school personnel who were distributing drugs had two hours or less of training.”

Shoot, I’ve got more, ahem, training, than that….

Even the DEA is concerned: “The DEA doesn’t have oversight in schools, where large quantities of methylphenidate are often stored in unlocked drawers and dispensed by nonmedical personnel. Many schools have more methylphenidate on hand than some pharmacies.”

House Passes Bill to Bar Schools from Requiring Medication of Students

The United States House of Representatives voted May 21 to prohibit school personnel from requiring a child to obtain a prescription for a controlled substance as a condition of attending school. State education agencies would be required to develop policies and procedures to prevent schools from making such requirements…. The House Committee on Education noted that it was concerned especially about the appropriate role of prescription medication in treating children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). “The Committee has been made aware of situations where parents have voiced concern that local educational agency officials have required them to place children on psychotropic medication in order to attend school or receive services.”