The Review

Dude, the 60s are over

(Review) Byron York writes that John Kerry seems stuck in the 60s.

Is Kerry's the only campaign to play Jimi Hendrix — specifically, "Fire" from the 1967 album Are You Experienced? — at rallies? Other candidates — like John Edwards, with his theme song, John Mellencamp's "Small Town" — aren't exactly cutting edge, but they have chosen somewhat newer stuff.

And what about the music on Kerry's bus? Before the Iowa caucuses, Washington Post reporter Ceci Connelly described the candidate hanging out on the bus with Peter Yarrow, his old friend from Peter, Paul, and Mary. "Pedro, sing us a song," Kerry ordered one day. Yarrow picked up a guitar and began to play and sing — and later waxed nostalgic about the antiwar rallies he attended way back when with Kerry and Eugene McCarthy.

Earlier, Connelly wrote, when Yarrow sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" at an event in a private home in Ames, Iowa, "Kerry lifted his fingers to his mouth for a quick toke on an imaginary joint. You can almost see his thick mane of silver hair returning to the shaggy brown do of those days."

Even Kerry's latest soundbite, the speech in Ohio Tuesday in which he described President Bush as a "walking contradiction," was apparently a reference to the old days. In this case, it was Kris Kristofferson's "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33, " from 1970, with its line, "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction."

This man is living in a time warp. No wonder Kerry sees any conflict — Gulf War I, Afghanistan, Gulf War II — as a potential Vietnam. In Kerry's world, Vietnam is running on a continuous loop on that big screen TV — with Jimi, Kris, and Peter, Paul, and Mary singing in the background.

Jebus, how much longer do we have to wait before these hippies get too old to bother us any more? How much longer am I gonna have to listen to this crap about "Nixon's War, man!"

Yeah, it was Johnson's War, moron, and it was over 30 years ago! Move the f*ck on!

Note to "The Greatest Generation": First, thanks for whacking the Nazi's and all, but don't expect any gratitude for raising the most self-absorbed, whiniest generation ever.

Krugman on Free Trade--Finally!

(Review) Well, after a couple of weeks of wondering where Paul Krugman stands on free trade now that his party's presidential candidates have been moving in a protectionist direction, we now know.

Krugman believes in free trade, but he's not a fanatic about it or anything.

Let me spare you the usual economist's sermon on the virtues of free trade, except to say this: although old fallacies about international trade have been making a comeback lately (yes, Senator Charles Schumer, that means you), it is as true as ever that the U.S. economy would be poorer and less productive if we turned our back on world markets. Furthermore, if the United States were to turn protectionist, other countries would follow. The result would be a less hopeful, more dangerous world.

Yet it's bad economics to pretend that free trade is good for everyone, all the time. "Trade often produces losers as well as winners," declares the best-selling textbook in international economics (by Maurice Obstfeld and yours truly). The accelerated pace of globalization means more losers as well as more winners; workers' fears that they will lose their jobs to Chinese factories and Indian call centers aren't irrational.

Addressing those fears isn't protectionist. On the contrary, it's an essential part of any realistic political strategy in support of world trade. That's why the Nelson Report, a strongly free-trade newsletter on international affairs, recently had kind words for John Kerry. It suggested that he is basically a free trader who understands that "without some kind of political safety valve, Congress may yet be stampeded into protectionism, which benefits no one."

Mr. Kerry's Wednesday speech on trade seemed consistent with that interpretation. He decried the loss of jobs to imports, but was careful not to promise too much. You might say that he proposed speed bumps, rather than outright barriers to outsourcing: rules requiring notice to employees and government agencies before jobs are shifted overseas, steps to close tax loopholes that encourage offshore operations, more aggressive enforcement of existing trade agreements, and a review of those agreements with an eye toward seeking tougher labor and environmental standards.

I. Am. Stunned.

I guess I shouldn't be, because...well, it's Paul Krugman in the New York Times. But this kind of cynical backpedaling is simply breathtaking, considering the man's lifelong work.

The first Krugman popular economics book I ever read was Peddling Prosperity. Half of this book is a detailed explanation of how the whole idea of "Fair Trade" or "Managed Trade" as proposed by the Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich was complete hogwash.

Now, all the sudden, it's all "safety valves"on free trade and "speed bumps" to outsourcing.

Essentially, after writing a best-seller decrying the foolishness of managed trade, he now says that John Kerry is practically a saint for proposing managed trade.

I thought I was relatively inured to the political opportunism Krugman regularly demonstrates in the Times. But, I guess not.

On the other hand, it's not every day that you see a guy essentially declare his whole life's work a bag of crap just to help his favorite candidate get elected. I mean, you gotta give the guy credit: That's committment.

An FMA I could live with

(Review) If there does have to be an FMA passed, then Michael Horowitz has the least objectionable one I've seen.

Except for distinctions based on race, color or religion, the establishment of civil marriage in all of its forms, and the benefits thereof, shall in each state be solely defined by the legislature or citizens thereof, and shall have such legal force in the remaining states as the legislatures or citizens of such states shall determine.

Of course, it wouldn't actually be a Marriage Protection Amendment. It would be an amendment that reinforces democratic governance, which strikes me as appropriate, even if I wish it was uneccessary.

Bear Flag Review

(Review) Thanks to S&A for this week's Bear Flag Review.

Well, the first half of it anyway.

Wedge Issue

(Review) John Podhoretz takes a look at the wedge issue of gay marriage, and makes some good points in addition to the Krauthammer points I address in the post below.

Bush is no culture warrior, and those who are accusing him of it are simply trying to change the focus of the discussion. The story these past months is not that conservatives are acting up against gay marriage. It is that the forces who support gay marriage have decided to stage an assault on the rule of law and the proper functioning of government.

A court in Massachusetts has decided that state legislation declaring marriage the union of a man and a woman is unconstitutional, simply because - well, because the judges are ideologically opposed to the legislation and therefore have taken it upon themselves to cancel it. And the mayor of San Francisco has been overseeing illegal "marriages" of gay couples despite the fact that the state of California, which legalized civil unions, has a law explicitly banning the act.

Is gay marriage to be imposed on a nation of 290 million people by a few Massachusetts judges and the mayor of a medium-sized city - when this nation's House and Senate in 1996 passed a bill defining marriage as the union of a man and woman that was then signed into law by Bill Clinton?

...That process was duplicated in 39 states, including Massachusetts. The view that gay marriage should not be legalized is firmly established as the majority opinion of the people of the United States as expressed by their representatives at every level of government...

By going this route, Bush hasn't taken an easy political path, but a difficult one. Given the conviction of gay-rights supporters that they have the better of the argument and that the country is moving in their direction, why should they fear a battle over an amendment? If they're right, they'll prevail. The president will lose, and inevitably, gay marriage will become legal.

Could it be because they know the only way they will get their way is through the injudicious acts of unelected judges imposing their revolutionary social agenda on a nation that doesn't actually want its most basic institutions redefined into meaninglessness?

I suspect this is precisely the reason. When corresponding with gay marriage advocates like Trey Givens or BoiFromTroi I get the impression that they think that gay marriage will never pass if put to a vote, therefore, the democratic process can't be trusted to give them what they want.

I think that such arguments are a) outrageously cynical, in that they imply a lack of regard for the Constitution and the courts as nothing more than a rights-dispensing machine that gives them the outcome they desire, and b) factually incorrect.

I think a majority of the public would allow gay marriages (or civil unions that have precisely the same legal rights and priviliges as marriage even if we call them something different) if the arguments were properly made. I think people want to be persuaded, because I think Americans are a fair-minded people.

That means acknowleging and properly responding to opposing arguments, not just dismissing them as gay-bashing nonsense. This is not a war you can win by being confrontational. But it is one that can be won by appealing to the fairness and decency of our people.

The average American is not really interested in imposing gratuitous difficulty on his fellow citizens. If anything he is interested in a live and let live policy of social libertariansm. That is the side of Americans you need to engage.

Because, while they can be persuaded, Americans hate being told what to do.

When I was stationed in The Netherlands, at HQ AFCENT, I noticed something peculiar. Because I was a military cop, I was always in a position of having to tell people to do things they might not otherwise want to do. If they objected, you would have to force them to do what you said.

If this happened with a German, then from that point on, every time the German saw you, he would wave and smile and say "Hello", no matter how acrimonious the original argument had been. Every time he saw you, he'd want to shake your hand and ask how you'd been.

It was just freakin' wierd.

Because if the same thing happened with an American, every time you saw him after that, he would just give you "the stare", and maybe nudge a buddy and tell him, "You see that MP over there? He's a dick."

Force a German to obey you, and you've got a friend for life. Force an American and you've just made a lifelong enemy.

Gay marriage advocates can win the debate on gay marriage, but only if they appeal to the better angels of America's nature. Trying to force the issue, the way gay marriage advocates are now, is far more likely to result in the FMA than it is to result in gay marriage. 

A good place to start would be by taking the default position your opponents are decent people of good will rather than vile, fag-bashing homophobes, unless they prove themselves to be so.

Intellectual honesty is important

(Review) Charles Krauthammer writes that, while he supports civil unions for homosexuals, he's not willing to have the decision shoved down his throat by the courts. Even Justice Ginsburg, hardly a conservative icon, implies that it's unwise.

We are the only Western country to have legalized abortion by judicial fiat rather than by democratic approval of the people or the legislature. Are we going to do it again with gay marriage? We know what short-circuiting democracy does. Thirty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion still brings masses of demonstrators into the streets.

Roe v. Wade, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, "halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue."

Certainly, that's a point I've made several times. Going to the courts short-circuits the democratic process, which, as the abortion debate has clearly shown, creates more problems than it solves.

Even more interesting has been watching the reactions of people like Andrew Sullivan, Rosie O'Donnell, et al., in response to the President's support of a Federal marriage protection amendment.

I don't support a marriage amendment, of course, since that's not the purpose of the Constitution. And I don't want to go through some long, agonizing process like we did with the 18th/21st Amendments over alcohol prohibition, when we realize a decade hence, that Amending the Constitution to protect marriage is essentially a silly idea.

But one thing that gets right up my nose are people accusing the president of using this issue to create a wedge issue. As Krauthammer comments:

Bush had no desire to get involved in this issue. If not for the activism in Boston and San Francisco, it would not be an election issue at all. Boston and San Francisco have made the question very stark: We are going to have national gay marriage or we are not. "States' rights" is a phony - and ironic - alternative that will not withstand constitutional muster.

I welcome the debate on the constitutional amendment because it will shift the locus of this issue from unelected judges to where it belongs: the House and the Senate and the 50 state legislatures. In the end, however, I would probably vote against the amendment because for me the sanctity of the Constitution trumps everything, even marriage. Moreover, I would be loath to see some future democratic consensus in favor of gay marriage blocked by such an amendment.

Nonetheless, that does not render the abusive, ad hominem charges made by the marriage revolutionaries any less hypocritical. Gay activists and their judges have every right to revolution. They have every right to make their case. But they deserve to be excoriated when they then cry, "culture war!"

Gay marriage advocates are the ones pushing to change the definition of marriage. They are the ones who have forced the issue in Massachusetts. They are the ones behind all the marriage licenses being issued in San Francisco.

So it's a bit disingenuous to push for what is, no matter how you look at it, a social revolution, then, when the other aide reacts to your efforts, accuse them of kindling a culture war.

That is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie.

Excuse me, you're the people who're pushing the social revolution. It isn't as If W just woke up day before yesterday, and said to himself, "You know what really ticks me off? Those fags. I need to slap them down publicly." This was a response to months of legal wrangling in Massachusetts and civil disobedience by the city government in San Francisco.

So you don't get to pretend that your view is perfectly mainstream and reasonable while any opposing view is the result of homophobia and hatred. And you don't get to accuse the president of "kindling a culture war" that you started.

You know what? I'm perfectly happy to have gay marriage. Doesn't bother me a bit. The problem with marriage is not that gays are getting married but that straights aren't staying married. I don't think gay marriage is a right, but I'm perfectly willing to allow it as a matter of fairness. Not because I think it's an ethical requirement, mind you, but because I'm a nice guy.

But being forced to do it by the courts, without any democratic audit, just sticks in my craw. And listening to the sickening, intellectually dishonest vituperation I've been hearing for the past two days really torks me off, too.

So, note to gay marriage advocates: If you think these kind of rhetorical tactics are winning you any friends among the moderate electorate, then it's a fools' paradise you're living in.

And I can tell you, it doesn't do anything to keep my vote in your corner, either.

Of course, if you can jam it down my throat through judicial fiat, then my vote is irrelevant, isn't it?

Which is, I suspect, the whole point. 

The Watcher's Council

(Review) I didn't win, but thanks to the Watcher's council for nominating one of my posts for the weekly vote.

Speaking Truth to Power

(Review) McQ, at the QandO Blog comments on Alan Greenspan's statements vis a vis the deficit and taxes, and social security.

Naturally the Democrats are having a cow.

But as I've said here ad infinitum there is no free lunch. You can have all the government services you want, but eventually they have to be paid for. You can, as we've been doing for the past 30 years, angage in runaway deficit spending and put off that payment for a while. But the Bills do come due. Either you have to cut spending or raise taxes to cover the bills.

Look, this isn't rocket science. if you want $X amount of services from the government, they will cost $X dollars. If you borrow money to pay for those services up front, they will cost $X +$N. Government services aren't made from the ether. Theyt have to be purchased just like any other good or service.

McQ writes:

Now days if you attempt to speak the truth, you're called upon to resign. A bit like killing the messenger bearing bad news, isn't it? Doesn't change the news one bit.

But, you say, why was Greenspan talking about Social Security now being such a big problem?

Because the political hacks who call themselves our representatives have been ignoring problems for YEARS. Its called the "third rail of politics" and they've refused to touch it.

Its never been a secret ... its all a numbers game, really and they've known the reality of those numbers for years as well.

77 million "baby-boomers" move into the retirement ranks and projections show the country will go from having just over three workers supporting each retiree to 2.25 workers for every retiree by 2025.

You don't have to be a member of Mensa to figure that one out, do you? Sound like a sound fiscal model to your, or a little more like a Ponzi scheme every passing day?

See you at 65 or 67 or whatever age they decide they'll pay you some of the money you've been shoveling in for years. Try not to die before you at least get SOME of it back.

The Democrats' answer hasn't changed since Jimmy Carter. Tax and spend, tax and spend.

Sometimes, I think the best thing that could happen would be to have Democrats running all three branches of government. Four or eight years of that would cool the ardor for socialism for decades.

It would be sweetly poetic justice if it weren't for the fact that millions of Americans would pay for the Democrats' economic stupidity with their livelihoods.

As Hugh Hewitt calls it, the San Francisco Chronically Wrongicle

(Review) Reviewer Don Lattin, the San Francisco Chronicle's religion writer has reviewed Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. In a wide-ranging (i.e. incoherent) review, Lattin offers up this gem, as he attempts to draw a picture for us about life in first-century Palestine:

Jesus and his early followers were Jews living in mostly Jewish territories on the outskirts of the Roman empire.

At the time, the Jewish world was in turmoil. There was a Jewish king, Herod, who collaborated with the Romans, as did some of the Jewish religious authorities.

There were prophets, rebels, mystics, fundamentalists and more than one guy claiming to be the messiah.

They all were trying to survive under the forces of an imperial occupation -- not unlike the Sunnis and the Shiites amid the chaos of today's Iraq.

It's such a stupid and egregiously tendentious simile, that all I can do is smile. I mean, I can't even get mad at the anti-Americanism it implies, because I find the utter crassness so humorous.

But, I should make it clear. The number of crucifixions so far in occupied Iraq: 0.

It's just amusing to see how, when writing on a totally unrelated subject, the author can get in a jab about his pet peeve, the War in Iraq. It's the same kind of target lock that John Kerry has about Vietnam:

"Senator Kerry, why do you so strongly support government-financed health care?"

"Well, you know, it goes back to when I was wounded in Vietnam. As I felt the hot metal shrapnel tear through my body..."

Really, there's an art to doing this, and getting it down so pat that it even seems natural when you pull it off, is a real acomplishment.  

Similarly, and worth at least an honorable mention, is Patricia Wilson's piece for Reuters (naturally), titled "Democrat Kerry Urges Caution on 'Passion'".

Kerry, a Catholic, said he was worried about the movie's potential anti-Semitism. Some critics have complained that Gibson portrays Jews as responsible for Jesus' death.

"I am concerned," he told reporters. "I don't know if it's there or not but there's a lot of it around now. I think we have to be careful."

The four-term senator from Massachusetts hasn't had much time to see movies lately. He has been running for president virtually since the beginning of last year.

In fact, the last movie he saw in a theater was another Mel Gibson flick released in 2002 called "We Were Soldiers," set in Vietnam where Kerry commanded a Navy Swift boat and was decorated for heroism.

You just have to admire that kind of artistry. 

It's the "common touch" that makes him so attractive

Photo: Reuters/Jim Bourg

What is Big Labor thinking?

(Review) I'm usually very shy about quoting Ann Countler on these pages. Oh, sure, I read her every chance I get, because it's a delicious, sinful little pleasure. But I usually don't quote her because she's often so strident.

Today, however, she does bring up an interesting point.

In the past decade, the AFL-CIO has lobbied Congress on three major issues of any importance to union members:

Oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement;

Oppose permanent normal trade relations with China;

Support drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The unions lost every vote. Demonstrating his savvy political skills, the head of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, repeatedly throws the federation's support to political candidates who opposed labor on all three issues. So if you ever find yourself negotiating with Sweeney, make sure your opening bid is "nothing"...

Strictly following his strategy of selling union votes for nothing, the AFL-CIO has endorsed Sen. John Kerry – who voted for NAFTA, voted for trade with China and voted against drilling for oil in Alaska. Skilled laborers will have to wait another day for "fair trade" and high-paying jobs in Alaska, but at least Sweeney's candidate supports the issues that really matter to the average blue-collar worker: gay marriage, global-warming treaties and hybrid cars.

Kerry denounces "Benedict Arnold" CEOs who ship "American jobs overseas." (Experts are still trying to figure out why Kerry didn't mention his service in Vietnam in that statement.) Sweeney seems to be satisfied with Kerry's explanation that – like his vote for war with Iraq – he voted for free trade, but then was shocked when free trade resulted.

Sen. John Edwards calls protection of U.S. jobs "a moral issue." Reminding audiences that he is the son of a mill worker almost as often as Kerry mentions that he served in Vietnam, Edwards says that "when we talk about trade, we are talking about values." As the son of a mill worker, he has seen with his "own eyes" what bad trade agreements "do to people." Of the evil trade agreements (supported by AFL-CIO's candidate) Edwards says: "Those trade deals were wrong. They cost us too many jobs and lowered our standards."

Except – like Kerry – Edwards also voted for those trade agreements every chance he got. In 2000, Edwards voted for trade with China. Having seen with his "own eyes" what happens "when the mill shuts down," Edwards voted to shut down a few more mills. Edwards also voted his conscience to oppose drilling in Alaska. Whenever Edwards' conscience speaks to him, it sounds remarkably like Barbra Streisand.

Edwards' only fig leaf for claiming he backs labor is a hypothetical vote he never actually cast. He bravely claims he would have voted against NAFTA – if only he had been in the Senate when it came up for a vote.

That's an interesting moral calculus. Edwards didn't mind forcing American workers to compete with a billion Chinese – famously including child workers and slave laborers. But trade with Canada and Mexico he says would have offended his delicate moral sensibilities.

The question, really, is, why do unions always back democrats. It's not like they've gotten any traction with the Democrats on...well...anything.

I've never really figured this out either: Why does the union rank and file elect weasels like Sweeney?

It just seems counterintuitive. And, if you're a union member who's voting your own self-interest, self defeating. As Coulter points out:

There is only one candidate for president who didn't vote for NAFTA, didn't vote for trade with China and supported drilling in ANWR. That candidate is George Bush. He got into office by beating Al Gore – the guy who was the head cheerleader for NAFTA. And unlike Dick Gephardt, Bush spends more time on the phone with Jimmy Hoffa than with Barbra Streisand. As president, Bush enraged free traders – and our precious European "allies" – by imposing tariffs on steel imports.

Along with tariffs on softwood lumber and textiles.

It's just a curious alliance, this Democrat/Big Labor hookup, and I just don't see what Labor gets out of it. Is it because public-sector unions like AFSCME and NEA are so powerful, and so dependent upon government largesse?

Wierd.

Howard Stern: Fired

(Review) The broadcast community is running a bit scared these days. The FCC has decided not only to apply the decades-old FCC rules against obscenity from 6 am to 10pm, they want to increase the fines from $27,500 to $250,000.

Clear Channel communications, who own all radio stations everywhere (almost) have laid down the law to CCC staff. If you get fined for indecency by the FCC, you're fired.

Today, they pulled a successful show that ran on 4 Florida stations, the amusingly named "Bubba the Love Sponge", as well as pulling Howard Stern off the 6 CCC radio stations on which he was broadcast (Stern works for Infinity, not CCC).

Of course, Howard is hopping mad. And, of course, the usual suspects are whining about free speech.

Cry me a river, Howard. It's commercial speech, first of all, not political speech, so you're kinda suckin' wind. Second, it's not the government that's laying the heavy hand of The Man on you, it's a private entity. Private parties can't violate your right to free speech. They can hire or fire you at will. If you think CCC is violating your right to free speech, then your just a Constitutional ignoramus. They are under no obligation whatsoever to provide you with money and a microphone.

It is, after all, their microphone.

It looks like the pendulum is swinging back, after a decade of relative openness.

Now there are a lot of arguments for and against regulating speech via the FCC. But it seems to me that the government does have a legitimate argument that obscene and outrageous speech should be limited by people who use the public airwaves. The government is after all, providing broadcasters with extremely lucrative portions of bandwidth, allowing the companies to rake in truckloads of cash. It seems like, in return, the government does have some authority to mandate minimal standards of civility in free broadcasts.

If you want something a little raunchier, you can always watch cable and subscribe to XM radio. 

A close election?

(Review) Hugh Hewitt writes that all the predicitons of a close election between Bush and Kerry might be pure bunk. Because Kerry, like W, has a past.

The preliminary evidence I have gathered via a playing on my radio show of the audio of Kerry's April, 1971 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee indicates that a large part of the public is very interested in what Kerry did, and that the vast majority of that group holds him in deep contempt because of his actions, and that most of that majority are retired or active duty military. Kerry has his defenders in the military and among the veterans, but everything I have heard or read tells me that the men and women who have worn or are wearing the uniform view Kerry's antiwar activities as profoundly wrong and disqualifying for the presidency.

Count me in on that. Kerry's "band of brothers" is more like a small combo than a whole band. The rest of the orchestra is on the other side.

Some have argued that Kerry's past is past and anyway, Americans vote their futures. Historically, of course, that isn't correct, as Bloody Shirt elections and Watergate babies attest. There are plenty of pundits who would prefer that we not look back at Kerry's votes against the B-2, the Abrams tank, the Patriot missile, the Aegis cruiser and land-based missile defense, much less his salad days with the radicals of the early '70s. In Kerry's testimony to the Senate, he spoke approvingly of the "Indian nation of Alcatraz," the band of radicals who had occupied the island in San Francisco bay--a jarring reminder of the politics of those unhinged days. Kerry was very much a part of the strange doings of those years; there are great numbers of Americans who haven't forgotten.

And, I suspect W will ensure that our memories get even sharper by November.

Your personalized voting guide

Once again, it's election time, here in California, with the Primary just days away. Also on the ballot Tuesday are some important Ballot propositions.

So, let me tell you how you need to vote next week.

Prop 55: NO
Prop 55 would allow the state to sell $12.3 billion in general obligation bonds for school improvements. It's for the Children!© Well, now that we are utterly, utterly broke here in California, the kids are just gonna have to suck it up with the rest of us. As a little reminder, our credit rating places us slightly south of Chile in the desirability of our bonds. We'll have to pay bond yields that look the the interest rates charged by people whose middle names are "the" (Jimmy the Fish, Tony the Hammer, etc.) Sorry the kids can't have new schools and all, but we already spent all their money on medical care, education, and welfare for illegals, at the rate of $7 billion per year. Oh, and by the way, practically all this money would go to LAUSD. You know, the guys who regularly fritter away every dollar they get on useless adminsitrivia?

Prop 56: NO
This is one of those stealth propositions that says one thing but means another. It's being sold as a way to discipline the legislature. »Why, if they don't get a budget done on time, they won't get paid!« In reality, though, this proposition eliminates the requirement that tax increases get a 2/3 majority in both houses of the legislature. Under this proposition, the majority party, i.e. aging hippie Democrats from San Francisco, will be allowed to raise taxes pretty much anytime, at will. The only people who'll be losing any pay under this proposition will be taxpayers, who'll have their pay hoovered up by Sacramento at the drop of a hat. Remember, please, the only reason why State Senate Leader John Burton (D-Pluto), et al. didn't shove $12 billion in new taxes down our throats last year was that the 2/3 rule prevented them from getting the votes to enact it.

Prop 57: YES
This is one of those, "you've already screwed me, so now I gotta pay for it or get screwed worse" measures. Here's the deal: The Lej has spent like a drunken sailor on a Singapore shore leave for the last three years. They didn't have the money to cover all that spending so they borrowed the money on a short-term basis. The trouble is, now we don't have the money to pay those bills when they come due. So, in June, we gotta have $11 billion in hard cold cash to pay off those short-term bonds, or we gotta default on them. What this allows us to do is to do a one-time borrowing of $15 billion, and convert all those short-term obligations to a 30-year note. Now remember, that money has already been borrowed, we just don't have the money to pay it all back by June. This allows us to convert it to long-term debt that we can pay off with much smaller payments each year. The legislature has already screwed us by borrowing this money, this is just the best way available to clean up the mess. If we don't, then we're gonna have massive budget problems in June. We gotta suck it up on this one, too, and bite the bullet. We also gotta ensure that this never happens again, hence the next proposition on the ballot.

Prop 58: YES
This proposition goes hand in hand with the previous one. In a sense, we're saying, OK, we'll borrow the money to pay off your spending spree, but now you've gotta straighten up and fly right. The proposition does a couple of things. First, it puts a spending cap on Sacramento, by requiring that spending not exceed income each year. We did have a balanced budget requirement previously, but it had a hole large enough to drive a truck through, hence our current problems. This closes that loophole. Second, it requires that the state build a reserve account of at least $8 billion. In the 1990s while revenues were booming, the state spent all that extra revenue as soon as it came in. Once the economy slowed, there wasn't enough revenue to cover those increased commitments, and since the state hadn't put any money aside, we were pretty much screwed. Finally, the proposition prohibits any future borrowing to pay off deficits. Hopefully, passing this proposition, along with 57, will keep our heads above water, financial-wise.

So, you now have your orders, and I expect all of you to vote correctly.

That is all.   

A supply-sider's view

(Review) Larry Kudlow writes that the Democrats are simply ignorant about economics.

Modern Democrats love jobs but can't stand the businesses that create them. They also claim to want prosperity, but don't want anyone to get rich should prosperity come about. Kerry and Edwards, for example, propose a sharp steepening of marginal tax rates on upper-income brackets and the investments that successful earners would make. But if these policies came to pass, they would rob the economy of the vital incentives necessary to expand the supply of capital that is crucial to inventing new products, forming new businesses and creating new jobs.

The Democratic Party has literally no understanding of the dynamic job-creating process -- what the eminent economist Joseph Schumpeter termed "gales of creative destruction." In the last 10 years -- a period that included NAFTA, the emergence of China, and the high-tech revolution -- 18 million new jobs were created, even with the 2000-02 economic downturn. Yet behind those 18 million new jobs, the economy actually wiped out a staggering 339 million old jobs, while creating an astonishing 357 million new jobs.

The free-market capitalist system, by its very nature, is all about choice, competition and freedom. Democratic ideas to restrict economic freedom by closing trade markets and steepening tax rates will doom us to stagnation.

As I've said before, the Democrats haven't had a new economic idea since Das Kapital was published in English.

The Gray Lady has spoken

(Review) The New York Times today reveals their choice for Democratic presidential nominee. They choose john Kerry, naturally. And their reasoning makes perfect sense.

In Nut Land.

Emphasis in the quotes that follow, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. It helps me separate out the truly stupid stuff from the merely foolish.

It's true that Mr. Edwards has as much or more experience than George Bush did when he entered the White House in 2001. But that was a different era. Now Americans understand better that they live in perilous times, and they aren't likely to feel comfortable switching leaders this fall if the challenger seems to require a lot of on-the-job training. Mr. Bush himself was not well served by the thinness of his résumé when Sept. 11 occurred.

Really? Because, in the space of two years, he liberated two separate countries from stultifyingly brutal dictatorships, eliminated the Taliban's main support and training base, and killed or captured the majority of Al-Qaida's leadership. And, to top it all off, he's managed to prevent a single terrorist attack of any significance anywhere in the United States sine 911.

Yeah, if he'd had a sharp, punchy resume like John Kerry, why he'd have done....none of it. He'd have put the FBI on the trail of the 911 hijackers. After all, he assures us that the War on Terror is really a Law Enforcement deal, mainly. So, really, it's not so much a War as it is a Major RICO Investigation of Terror.

If John Kerry had been calling the shots, the industrial plastic shredders would still be running in Baghdad, with Uday contemplating whether to run his victims through head-first or feet first, and whether he should have their wives raped in front of them first, just so it'd be the last image they had in their heads when they went through the choppers.

Mr. Kerry, one of the Senate's experts in foreign affairs, exudes maturity and depth. He can discuss virtually any issue of security or international affairs with authority.

Yes, Mr Kerry's quite the expert. He's consistently voted against the very weapons systems that our now the mainstays of our military power. He voted for cozying up to Russian puppets like the hideous Daniel Ortega. He was for a nuclear freeze, so that the USSR, the longest lived Evil Empire of the 20th Century, could be appeased.

As far as I can tell, all of Kerry's expertise points to the conclusion that his main talent is being on the wrong side of every major political issue of his life. Only in government can you be such a consistent failure, and be proven so incontrovertibly wrong, and yet still be considered a candidate for the most powerful office in the country.

What his critics see as an inability to take strong, clear positions seems to us to reflect his appreciation that life is not simple. He understands the nuances and shades of gray in both foreign and domestic policy. While he still has trouble turning out snappy sound bites, we don't detect any difficulty in laying down a clear bottom line.

Oh, so now an inability to take strong clear positions is a strength. Silly me, I always thought it was a sign that one was either philosophically or ideologically unmoored, or was simply an opportunist, taking whatever positions that seemed best calculated to improve one's electability. Evidently, I missed the memo that explains that this is actually a sign of good leadership.

How clear, exactly, are those bottom lines of Kerry? He voted against the First Gulf War, because he was for it, but he voted for the second Gulf War because he was against it.

Well, I guess the bottom line there actually is pretty clear. "Whatever gets me elected, that's the bottom line."

If that's what the Times' editors meant, then I guess I agree.

If Mr. Kerry wins the nomination, the Bush administration will undoubtedly attempt to paint Mr. Kerry as a typical Massachusetts liberal, but his thinking defies such easy categorization. His positions come from mainstream American thought, centrism of the old school.

I can't imagine anyone who lives outside of Manhattan, Hollywood, or San Francisco writing this line with a straight face. Kerry has a senate voting record that puts him slightly to the left of Teddy Kennedy, for cripe's sake! It's an odd kind of "centrism" that puts Teddy Kennedy in the center-right.

The Bush Administration won't attempt to show Kerry is a Massachusetts Liberal, they'll prove it by the simple expedient of showing his Senate voting record. It's not like the Bushies are making this stuff up. It's Kerry's record. He's the guy who cast the votes. Don't toss it all off like it's some sort of Karl Rove "dirty tricks" campaign.

And the Times' leadership has the temerity to be insulted when someone implies they have turned into a partisan rag... 

Outsourcing: The view from the other side

(Review) Tom Friedman is in Bangalore, and he's looking into what "outsourcing" to India looks like in India.

"How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.

Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

Protectionists act as if outsourcing all goes one way. It's all heathen foreigners stealing American jobs, or disloyal American companies shipping jobs overseas. Those jobs are ours, and how dare the bloody wogs presume to do them!

Well, quite apart from anything else, the fact is that we really don't want to keep those jobs here. Yes, it's true that individual workers get hurt by outsourcing. They lose their jobs and livelihood, and as a compassionate society, we are troubled by this.

The trouble is that the obverse side of the outsourcing coin isn't that visible to us. We see the industrial worker laid of from his job down at the mill, but we don't see Microsoft, Coke, or Cisco hiring new employees to produce the products we're selling overseas as exports rise. And we don't see how a company that saves labor costs by outsourcing can lower prices, making their products more generally available.

Over the long term, by which I mean from business cycle to business cycle, we create about 3 million net new jobs every year. If all of our workers are busy down at the mill, or taking customer support calls in a call center, who's going to do those new jobs?

How many people worked at Microsoft, or Apple, or Cisco or Sun Microsystems, or SAIC, or any of a hundred other companies 30 years ago?

Answer: None.

Yet, in that 30 years, despite the job losses in the rust belt and Detroit, we've still managed to create tens of millions of new jobs.

Now, there may be a lot of policies we might want to implement, such as worker retraining, so that those mill workers who lose their jobs can learn other skills, and get other jobs. That's fine, and there's all kinds of stuff we can talk about there. But the one policy that will do the most harm to the largest number of people is trying to "protect" American jobs from outsourcing.

You can do all the Buchananite/Perot-nist ranting and raving, and can produce all the pie charts you want. All that makes you is a crank with cool graphics. 

Being a Vet is not a free pass

(Review) Thomas Sowell, in his random thoughts column, comes up with this little tidbit:

Benedict Arnold was a war hero, wounded in battle -- before he turned against his country. Hitler was likewise a decorated and wounded veteran of the First World War. Being a war hero is not a lifetime "get out of jail free" card, exempting you from responsibility for what you do thereafter.

Just a little something to keep in mind, without naming names or anything. 

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer "universal health care."

It's even more amazing when you see the end results, wich tend to be either vastly increased medical spending, severe non-price rationing, or, as is more usual, both.

Any time you start proposing a policy, before you do so, you always need to ask yourself, "And then what will happen?" Ask yourself that about four or five times.

No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.

Yeah, funny how that works.

Get over it

(Review) Famed feminist, bestselling author, and rhodes scholar Naomi Wolf has a horrifying story to tell. A secret so dark that now, twenty years later, she must write to express the pain and humiliation that still haunt her, two decades later.

In 1983, it seems, when she was a senior at Yale, she invited her professor, Alan Bloom to her apartment, along with two other students.

As Wolff tells it:

The four of us ate a meal. He had, as promised, brought a bottle of Amontillado, which he drank continually. I also drank. We had set out candles—a grown-up occasion. The others eventually left and—finally!—I thought we could discuss my poetry manuscript. I set it between us. He did not open it. He did not look at it. He leaned toward me and put his face inches from mine. “You have the aura of election upon you,” he breathed.

I hoped he was talking about my poetry. I moved back and took the manuscript and turned it around so he could read.

The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh.

I lurched away. “This is not what I meant,” I stammered. The whole thing had suddenly taken on the quality of a bad horror film. The floor spun. By now my back was against the sink, which was as far away as I could get. He moved toward me. I turned away from him toward the sink and found myself vomiting. Bloom disappeared.

When he reemerged—from the bedroom with his coat—a moment later, I was still frozen, my back against the sink. He said: “You are a deeply troubled girl.” Then he went to the table, took the rest of his sherry, corked the bottle, and left.

So, I gotta wonder, is this really worth several thousand words in New York magazine? I was afraid that my reaction was because I am neanderthal troglodyte, until I saw Anne Applebaum's Washington Post column about Wolf's article.

Applebaum isn't much impressed either, and comes close to implying a lack of honesty on Wolf's part.

But Wolf's article is not merely about that event (a secret that she "can't bear to carry around anymore"). The article is also about the lasting damage that this single experience has wrought on a woman who has since written a number of bestsellers, given hundreds of lectures, been featured on dozens of talk shows and photographed in various glamorous poses, including a smiling, self-confident head shot on New York magazine's Web site this week. Not that she mentions her achievements. On the contrary, she implies that this terrible experience left a lasting mark on her academic and professional career: "I was spiraling downward; I had gotten a C-, a D, and an F. . . . My confidence shaken, I failed in my effort to win the Rhodes Scholarship."

She also implies that she never recovered academically, which isn't quite the case. I was her contemporary, and happen to remember some of her achievements. But although I scoured the article, I could find no reference to the fact that Wolf did eventually win a Rhodes Scholarship, thanks, in part, to a recommendation letter written by Bloom. Or that, while in England, she began writing "The Beauty Myth," the first of those bestsellers.

What's even worse, writes Applebaum, is how Wolf voluntarily strips herself of her achievements to claim the "victim" mantle.

But in the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never get over it. The implication is also that women are naive, and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.

The larger implications are for the movement that used to be called "feminism." Twenty years of fame, money, success, happy marriage and the children she has described in her books -- and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation's leading feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated victimhood? It's not an ideology I'd want younger women to follow.

On the other hand, if some professer tried a lame pickup line on me like, "You have an aura of election about you," I'd probably throw up, too. But, I doubt I'd still be moaning about 20 years later, after a highly successful career.

Some votes are harder to explain than others

(Review) According to the Washington Post, Kerry is a bit touchy about his record of defense votes.

As a candidate for the Senate in 1984, Kerry proposed eliminating a series of weapons systems, including the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-14A, F-14D and F-15 fighter jets, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, the Patriot missile system and the M1 Abrams tank, among others. Kerry told the Boston Globe last year that some of those proposals were "ill-advised, and I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then."

Asked Monday when he changed his mind and which proposals were ill-advised, Kerry replied, "I never voted for one of those, I don't think, so I very quickly came to that conclusion when I was in the United States Senate in 1985 and 1986."

Kerry immediately amended that statement, saying he had opposed former president Ronald Reagan's missile defense system, anti-satellite weaponry and the MX missile. "I think I've tried to do things that made sense for the long-term defense of our country," he said.

That touched off a flurry of documents from the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign citing votes Kerry made against a number of those weapons systems, and a response from the Kerry campaign asserting that he had sought to cut fat from the Pentagon budget but had supported a strong defense throughout out his career.

And not only that, he was in Vietnam, too!

Obviously, he's a bit touchy about his senate voting record. As well he should be.

I love Kerry's quote, too, admitting his votes were "ill-advised, and I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then."

So, he admits, then, that his decisions about national security have essentially been unsound? Well, if that's the argument he wants to make, I'm certainly not going to quibble with it.

"The Anti-NAFTA Candidate"

(Review) David Ignatius is a little peeved at Democrats for their newfound populist, protectionst leanings. Not to put too fine a point on it, it makes them sound like cranks.

Clinton's message during his 1996 reelection campaign was that there was no easy escape from global competition. Protectionism would only hurt U.S. workers in the long run. The answer was education and job training that would give U.S. workers the skills to compete -- to "build a bridge to the 21st century," as Clinton put it in the signature line of the 1996 Democratic convention.

Now, contrast Clinton's blunt advice with the pandering and prevarication on trade issues of this year's leading (which is to say, surviving) Democratic candidates, Kerry and Edwards.

In the run-up to last week's Wisconsin primary, Edwards was proclaiming himself the anti-NAFTA candidate, which to me is the economic equivalent of joining the Flat Earth Society. A defensive Kerry was almost apologizing for his support for the 1993 free-trade pact with Mexico and blasting "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who export jobs overseas in an effort to cut costs.

This anti-trade talk is dangerous nonsense, and the Democrats should be embarrassed by it. It suggests to U.S. workers that there is an alternative to change and adaptation -- to getting the skills that are necessary to compete in an increasingly competitive world. That's wrong, most of all because it misleads people about their real options. Rather than helping workers build a bridge to the future, as Clinton tried to do, these Democrats talk as if they want to build a roadblock. Shame on them.

This protectionist nonsense is nothing more than dangerous pandering. Dangerous because it doesn't help. Reality is what it is, and pretending it's otherwise won't make it go away.

Our troops

(Review) Ralph Peters says it all:

The American soldier is a historical anomaly - not a grasping conqueror, but a man or woman of courage and good heart who wishes only to do what must be done, and then go home. Our troops are inspiring in ways that no campaign speech or campus rally will ever rival. They live the virtues - courage, patriotism, love of freedom, self-sacrifice, honor - of which their critics are embarrassed to speak.

They have a wicked sense of humor. They're exuberantly politically incorrect. They're part of the most thoroughly integrated, representative American institution - our military. And when the American people and our leaders stand behind them, they can do any job on earth.

Defying countless predictions of disaster, our soldiers have accomplished more in Iraq than we had any right to expect. And they did it not because of some brilliant master plan - there was none - but because they took a look at the bloody mess they inherited, rolled up their sleeves and went to work to fix it.

They're the best we've got.

Roger that.

No Wedding bells for you boys

(Review) President Bush has announced his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment.

*sigh*

So, my question to Gay Marriage Advocates: Happy now? If this Amendment is passed--and I have every reason to believe it will--then you can take your "constitutional rights" argument and shove 'em.

So, good going. You've managed to take an issue the public was slowly coming to accept, and alienate the majority of the electorate by trying to shove it down their throats via the judiciary. The American people are pretty defenseless over the long term against arguments about fairness. But we're a pretty stubborn people when you try to shove things down our throat.

So, how's that workin' out for you?

Idiots.

And for members of the judiciary, what were you thinking? Hasn't the last 30 years of turmoil, acrimony, and judicial politication following ROE v. WADE taught you guys anything?

Here, repeat after me: "This is a matter for the state legislatures to decide." Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Of course, if you start saying things like that, then you'll probably miss the heady feeling that comes of dictating policy for the Republic by fiat. It is, after all, good to be the King.

Here's a little lesson. If you lose in the legislature, you can always go back the next session. And the next. And the next. If you lose in a Constitutional Convention, then you're pretty much screwed.

By making this a legislative issie, you probably would've gotten gay marriage in the fairly near future in VT, NY, MA, CA, WA, IL, and some other states.

Now, you face an excellent change of never getting it anywhere at all.

Draft Dodger

(Review) Byron York writes that Democrats are preparing a massive attack on Dick Cheney's lack of military service and his history of deferments during the Vietnam War.

That sounds like a pretty silly strategy to me. Cheney was born in 1941. That means he'd have been 18 in 1959. Byt the time LBJ really kicked things off in the Nam, it was 1965, making Cheney 26 years old. Dick Cheney was never gonna go to Vietnam, even if he had been drafted.

Besides, I've got a copy of the Constitution around here somewhere and it doesn't say anything about military service being a requirment for the Vice-Presidency.

Or the presidency for that matter.
 

The King of not getting it

(Review) Parolee gets tired of waiting for his case to be called. Steps outside the courtroom to light up a joint. Hilarity ensues.

How it will be

(Review) The President opened up his campaign last night, contrasting his positions on the economny and the war on Terrorism with the Democrats. He also took on John Kerry's record of flip-flops.

"The other party's nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions," Bush said. "They're for tax cuts and against them. They're for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They're for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They're in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts." His supportive audience erupted in laughter and applause.

I think we'll be hearing more of this. So, evidently does the Kerry campaign, and they don't like it.

Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter disputed Bush's list of purported flip-flops. Kerry opposed Bush's tax cuts for the richest Americans and stands by that; voted for NAFTA and stands by it; voted for the Patriot Act, but believes the Justice Department is using it to trample civil liberties; and stands by his vote to authorize force for Iraq, but believes Bush's prosecution of the war "created a breeding ground for terror" and alienated allies, Cutter said.

Well, she can dispute anything she wants, but Kerry's votes, and his public statements about those votes are a matter of record. And, looking at that record, Kerry appears to take both sides of any major issue witrh a timing based solely on what he thinks will do him the most political good.

Time to get tough

(Review) Mark Levin writes that it's time for President Bush to start hitting the Democrats hard about their weakness on national security. A shortcoming which has been the Democrats' main foreign policyweakness for decades.

President Bush has done more in three short years to liberate and defend Muslims the world over than any former president, any foreign leader, or any Muslim leader. He set in motion events that freed 50 million Afghans and Iraqis. In so doing, he badly damaged the terrorist networks that had been funded, encouraged, and embraced by the oppressive Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes. We can react forever to Democratic demands for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — weapons Democrats themselves have argued existed for more than a decade. But their main concern is hardly WMDs; their purpose now is to downplay or dismiss the remarkable accomplishments of the Bush presidency in a part of the world where America has suffered repeated setbacks under both Democratic and Republican presidents...

Call it preemption. Call it self-defense. Call it liberation. In truth, President Bush is advancing the Reagan Doctrine, or what should now be called the Reagan-Bush Doctrine. Ronald Reagan rejected the Iron Curtain, he rejected Communism, and he rejected the status quo. He came to office when the Soviet Union was extending its tentacles over several continents, including South America. He believed that, for humanitarian and national-security reasons, the Soviets had to be defeated, not tolerated. And against all conventional wisdom, and severe criticism from many of the same Democrats who now disparage George Bush, Reagan did just that. Hundreds of millions were freed, and the Russians are no longer the threat they once were. Who would have thought it? Certainly not the Democrats.

But they were wrong.

When I first went on active duty in 1984, we were training to fight nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare in Central Europe. Soviet Communism seemed like our permanent enemy. HAd you asked me in 1984 what I thought I would be doing in 1993, I would have answered that Iwould be stationed in Europe somewhere, watching for the moment when Soviet tanks rolled across the Fulda Gap.

But by 1993, the USSR had been defunct for two years.

And I doubt very seriously that would've happened if Reagan had been forced to go along with people like John Kerry, who voted against the MX missile, the Ground Launched Cruise Missile/Pershing deployments, and for a nuclear freeze, abandoning Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, and all the other foreign policy idiocy to which the Left was, and is, so erroneously devoted.

The Hollow Army

(Review) James Fallows writes for The Atlantic that the US military is stretched to the breaking point.

The article is too complex to quote little snippets from, and you should read it all. Basically, he posits the operational tempo is simply too fast for the number of troops we have to keep up with it.

I was on active duty in the 80s, when the US Armed forces reached a 3.8 million people. Bythe time I left, in 1993, we werre down to 2 million. Now, there are 1.4 million on active duty.

At the same time, the number and frequency of deployments has steadily increased. Back when I was on active duty, you could reasonably expect a deployment around once per year for 60-90 days, most of which were voluntary. Now, troops routinely spend at least 6-9 months per year away on mandatory deployments. In addition, tens of thousands of guardsmen and reservists have been called up for one-year tours of active duty, which causes a not inconsiderable economic strain for their families, businesses and communities.

The Bush Administration, led astray perhaps by Donald Rumsfeld's zeal for "Transformation" is trying to fight a global war on terror on the cheap. They aren't asking for large increases in funding or manpower for the DoD.

In many ways this probably seems quite reasonable to the Administration. But, no matter how much transformation can theoretically downsize troop levels, there is a limit to how much the trrops themselves will put up with.

When you have an all-volunteer force, you simply can't keep deploying them ad infinitum. They need time to rest, be at home with their families, and recharge their batteries after a while.

Transformation, it seems to me, is leading the administration down a path that insuffieciently accounts for the affects on the human capital of the military. That's a capital error when dealing with volunteers.

Steyn on Kerry

(Review) Mark Steyn presents a vicious rebuff to the media, and to the Kerry campaign, by writing the truth.

I dozed off the other day watching a White House press conference in which President Bush was asked nary a question about anything that had happened since 1972, and I dreamt there was a muffled explosion from al-Qaida down the street blowing up the Capitol. And, when it had died away, the press corps brushed the plaster dust off their suits and said, ''But, Mr. President, critics point out that National Guard pay stubs from the '70s are notoriously easy to forge.''

It's been said that America is divided into Sept. 11 people and Sept. 10 people. The former category are those for whom Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything. The latter are those for whom Sept. 10, 1972, changed everything. That's when Bush didn't show up at the Air National Guard base because he was dancing naked on a bar in Acapulco with Conchita the surly waitress. Or whatever. If you think this is the most important issue facing America, feel free to vote for John Kerry, who back in 1972 was proudly serving his country by accusing its armed services of committing war crimes.

These would be the same American soldiers that Kerry now refers to as his "band of brothers".

Assume for the purposes of argument that the media are right: that John Kerry's four months in Vietnam are so impressive they outweigh two decades of zero accomplishment in Washington, save for a series of votes remarkable for being wrong on every major issue, from Reagan's raid on Libya to the Gulf War to every new weapons systems for the U.S. military. What will President Kerry do?

This is how he characterized the war on terror to Tom Brokaw: ''I think there has been an exaggeration,'' he said. ''They are really misleading all of America, Tom, in a profound way. It's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation.''

That's all I need to know.

Bush wants to take the war to the enemies, fight it on their turf. Kerry wants to do it through ''law enforcement'': If the Empire State Building gets blown up, he'll launch an investigation immediately. It's not enough.

Even if Bush was AWOL 30 years ago, on everything that matters John Kerry is AWOL now.

This is why no Democrat will ever get my vote again until they can prove that some of the spirit that animated Harry Truman and FDR in defending this country is still extant in their party.

Until they do that, then I'll regard every other policy position they have as an irrelevance. 

Bush to Senate Dems: Drop Dead

(Review) President Bush has given Alabame Atorney General William Pryor a recess appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The usual suspects are yapping like scalded chihuahuas.

More on Gay Mariage

(Review) Trey Givens goes all the way with me, almost, in my arguments about [Note: about, not for or against.--Ed.] gay marriage.

So, Mr. Franks asks, "The true question is whether or not such discrimination [between consentual unions] serves a useful purpose about which we should think very carefully before tinkering." And of course it does not serve any rightful purpose.

Maybe I missed something about Dale Frank's position on this, but it sounds like he's laid out the problem correctly, his closing statements just seem like maybe he doesn't want to do the math.

I am not arguing against gay marriage. I am arguing against perverting the constitution in order to reach a desired outcome.

I acknowledge, however, that if this become a matter of public debate, rather than legal challenge, then there are those who will oppose it for a variety of reasons. The true question is, therefore, precisely as I phrased it..."whether or not such discrimination [between consentual unions] serves a useful purpose about which we should think very carefully before tinkering."

Now, Givens' answer might be, "Tinker away, Baby!" As it happens, as far as gay marriage is concerned, that's my answer, too. I can think of a number of rational reasons to restrict polygamous and incestual relationships on other than moral grounds. But that is a legislative distinction not a constitutional one.

But, many gay marriage advocates are terrified of even implying that support for gay marriage might start us down a slippery slope towards legalized polygamy and incest.

And, you can see, just by looking through the comments on Boi's web site here and here to my posts, that--Givens excepted--no one wants to take the step and say, "Yes, if bans against gay marriage are unconstitutional, then so are bans against polygamy and incest." But if we are constitutionally forced to recognize that banning one type of consensual adult relationship is wrong, then we must honestly recognize that the constitutional protection we espouse must extend to all consensual adult relationships.

Givens may be happy to agree, but, I think it's fascinating that so many other gay marriage advocates are far less willing to do so.

What I am doing is not arguing for or against gay marriage, I'm just pointing out the weaknesses in the constitutional arguments for it that say Gay marriage is constitutionally mandated, but all that other icky stuff isn't.

There's no need to jump through these rhetorical hoops, except for the fact that most gay marriage advocates don't think they can get a majority of their fellow citizens to approve of it. That being the case, they are obliged to make bogus constitutional arguments to pursue the matter through the courts.

It seems to me that it would, in fact, be better, or at least more honest, to go to the public and say, "Look, you guys have the power to extend the right of marriage to gays. We are just as committed in our relationships as you are in yours. We seek the same things in marriage as you do. Why not vote to let us have it as a matter of fairness?"

That approach, it seems to me, short-circuits the right's ability to make slippery slope arguments, because, in the real world, if it's left as a matter of legislative or public discretion, there'll never be legal polygamy or incest anywhere in the US.

Except maybe in Utah.

Where, hopefully, it'll just be polygamy.

Of course, I say that as a resident of California, a state that allows 1st cousins to marry. So, really, we're already just a step away from Dueling Banjos on the porch as it is. 

UPDATE:

Trey Givens comments:

I figured out what I missed. Maybe this clarification will help others:

"The true question is whether or not such discrimination [between consentual unions] serves a useful purpose about which we should think very carefully before tinkering [with the Constitution.]"

or even better:

The true question about which we should think carefully before tinkering with the Constitution is whether or not such discrimination [between consentual unions] serves a useful purpose.

I'm not busting on you here, I really am writing for elucidation. So, in this one case, please don't think I'm being a snot.

(Other cases may yet be considered.)

Actually, I wasn't referring to tinkering with the Constitution at all. I was referring to tinkering with marriage. As I said, any decision we make should be a legislative decision about what constitutes marriage.

Marriage is an important institution. Indeed, we regard it as the bedrock relationship in our society. So, it behooves us to make a rational decision about whether or not we wish to tinker with it.

At the end of the day, I suspect that answer will in due course be "Yes", in the case of gay marriage. But that is the debate we need to be having, i.e. rational reasons for legalizing it or not, and doing so through the exercise of our judgement; making the informed decision that this is a case in which we should tinker with our definition of mariage to include gays and lesbians. The way to do that is to rationally shoot down arguments that allowing gays to marry will fracture the foundation of our society, cause the breakdown the family, cause dogs and cats to sleep together, etc.

The debate we should not be having is whether or not the Constitution has anything to do with marriage at all. It's hardly going to win friends or influence people to simply declare, "The Constitution says I can, so you can go suck it!" Because A), as far as I can tell, the Constitution says no such thing, and B) if you get the opposition PO'd enough, they will ensure the Constitution does say something about it, and I guarantee you won't like what it says.

I dunno, but I think what's bothering Givens and others is that the way I'm phrasing the question seems to imply that we will decide to exclude gay marriage as a possibility. But, in the short term at least, that's very possible, and we have to acknowledge that.

But our task in a democratic Republic is to convince our fellow citizens through reason and persuasion, not to bludgeon them over the heads with court orders. We did that with abortion and that's done more to fracture and divide our politics and judiciary since the era of slavery.

Good going pro-choicers.

If we'd left abortion to state legislatures, it would be a dead issue right now.

The march of progress

Photo: AFP

I'd rather be right than president

(Review) Ralph Nader rides to the rescue!

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who ran for president in 2000 as a Green Party candidate, will enter the 2004 race for the White House as an independent candidate, advisers told Fox News on Friday. A formal announcement by Nader is expected this weekend.

Let me be the first to say, "Go, Ralph, Go!" Where do I go to give him money?

Mark Steyn: The Anglosphere's priceless treasure

(Review) Steyn takes on the Candaian uproar over the antics of Triumph the Comic Insult Dog, and concludes that "entire country has been relocated to the rue des Pussies."

Let's go back to Triumph the dog's contention that Quebec men are mostly homosexual. In 1991, Edith Cresson made the same allegation against the British. At the time, she was the prime minister of France. In other words, she wasn't just Conan O'Brien's hand puppet; she was President Mitterrand's hand puppet. And she was flesh and blood, which was indeed the main basis of her assertion: She claimed that as a vibrant sensual woman she found more men came on to her in the streets of Paris than London and concluded from this that Englishmen were obviously gay.

Instead of falling into po-faced whining like the Toronto Star, Britain's Sun ran a picture of two Frenchmen carrying those dinky little male purses they're partial to over there, under the headline: "They Don't Call It Gay Paree For Nothing." Instead of huffing and puffing about "racist filth" like Canadian Members of Parliament, one British MP attempted to introduce the following motion: "This House does not fancy elderly French women." That's the way a mature, confident society deals with such provocations--with cheap jokes and extensive lists of "Famous French Poofs"--not the reflexive cringe that cries "racism" and calls for "hate crimes" investigations.

Mature? Confident? How patriarchal.

I'm shocked--shocked!--to learn this

(Review) According to the Washington Times:

The number of illegal aliens caught crossing into the United States increased dramatically just days after President Bush proposed a guest-worker program that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants now in this country, according to the union that represents the Border Patrol's 9,000 field agents.

The National Border Patrol Council said apprehension totals increased threefold in the San Diego area alone, adding that the vast majority of aliens detained along the border told arresting agents that they had come to the United States seeking amnesty.

Huh!

It seems that people respond to incentives. Who'd have thought.

And, by the way, however did they get the idea that the president's plan was an amnesty? He specifically said it wasn't an amnesty.

On the other hand, I said it was. And it looks like of lot of Mexican nationals said so, too.

Victor Davis Hanson

(Review) I am becoming a truly rabid fan of this man. I offer just a small piece of the goodness that is VDH in today's wide-ranging analysis.

The WMD controversy is similar. It is legitimate to question the nature of American intelligence as long as the fate of Saddam's once-undeniable arsenal remains murky. And the Democrats can legitimately score points in alleging that the administration put too much emphasis on a single case for war when there were a dozen other reasons for regime change that were far more compelling.

But they were not content with that fair enough tactic. No, they had to press on with really offensive rhetoric — Messrs. Gore and Kennedy alleging conspiracies, near treason, and the "worst" diplomatic decision in U.S. history. A sad cast of provocateurs and Vietnam War-era retreads like Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Not in Our Name were more often to be the intellectual godheads of the Democratic response than the ghosts of Harry Truman, JFK, and Scoop Jackson. A Hubert Humphrey would not have let a creepy Abbie Hoffman in the same room with him; Wesley Clark smirks on stage alongside a buffoonish Michael Moore as the latter calls a war-time president a deserter.

Yet the problem with this additional slander is that the war, in fact, has turned out to have a lot to do with WMD — and will bring dividends that are far more important even than disarming Saddam. Pakistan is now revealing the extent of its nuclear treachery; the developments in Libya are surreal, but inexplicable apart from the removal of Saddam; and a newly energized U.N. inspection team suddenly finds traction with Iran. Thus the more the Democrats allege American fantasies about WMD, the more quite dangerous regimes