January 31, 2003
SNIAHCRUOYGNIKNAYTSUJMI:
Genome Evolution | First, a Bang Then, a Shuffle: Did duplication fuel vertebrate genome evolution? (Ricki Lewis, Jan. 27, 2003, The Scientist)Picture an imperfect hall of mirrors, with gene sequences reflecting wildly: That's the human genome. The duplications that riddle the genome range greatly in size, clustered in some areas yet absent in others, residing in gene jungles as well as within vast expanses of seemingly genetic gibberish. And in their organization lie clues to genome origins. "We've known for some time that duplications are the primary force for genes and genomes to evolve over time," says Evan Eichler, director of the bioinformatics core facility at the Center for Computational Genomics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.For three decades, based largely on extrapolations from known gene families in humans, researchers have hypothesized two complete genome doublings--technically, polyploidization--modified by gene loss, chromosome rearrangements, and additional limited duplications. But that view is changing as more complete evidence from genomics reveals a larger role for recent small-scale changes, superimposed on a probable earlier single doubling. Ken Wolfe, a professor of genetics at the University of Dublin, calls the new view of human genome evolution "the big bang" followed by "the slow shuffle." [...]
Polyploidy is rarer in animals, which must sort out unmatched sex chromosomes, than in plants, which reproduce asexually as well as sexually. "But polyploidization is maintained over evolutionary time in vertebrates quite readily, although rarely. Recent examples, from the last 50 million years ago or so, include salmonids, goldfish, Xenopus [frogs], and a South American mouse," says Postlethwait. On a chromosomal level, polyploidy may disrupt chromosome compatibility, but on a gene level, it is an efficient way to make copies. "Polyploidy solves the dosage problem. Every gene is duplicated at the same time, so if the genes need to be in the right stoichiometric relationship to interact, they are. With segmental duplications, gene dosages might not be in the same balance. This might be a penalty and one reason why segmental genes don't survive as long as polyploidy," Lynch says. [...]
Human genome sequence information has enabled Gu and others to test the 2R hypothesis more globally, reinstating one R. His group used molecular-clock analyses to date the origins of 1,739 duplications from 749 gene families.8 If these duplications sprang from two rounds of polyploidization, the dates should fall into two clusters. This isn't exactly what happened. Instead, the dates point to a whole genome doubling about 550 million years ago and a more recent round of tandem and segmental duplications since 80 million years ago, when mammals radiated.
Ironically, sequencing of the human genome may have underestimated the number of duplications. The genome sequencing required that several copies be cut, the fragments overlapped, and the order of bases derived. The algorithm could not distinguish whether a particular sequence counted twice was a real duplication, present at two sites in the genome, or independent single genes obtained from two of the cut genomes.
Eichler and his group developed a way around this methodological limitation. They compare sequences at least 15,000 bases long against a random sample of shotgunned whole genome pieces. Those fragments that are overrepresented are inferred to be duplicated. The technique identified 169 regions flanked by large duplications in the human genome.
Although parts of the human genome retain a legacy of a long-ago total doubling, the more recent, smaller duplications provide a continual source of raw material for evolution. "My view is that both happen. A genome can undergo polyploidy, duplicating all genes at once, but the rate of segmental duplications turns out to be so high that every gene will have had the opportunity to duplicate" by this method also, concludes Lynch. It will be interesting to see how the ongoing analyses of the human and other genome sequences further illuminate the origins and roles of duplications.
It would appear they've identified several of the precise moments at which God intervened to create Man, in these cases doubling the entire genome to force evolution onto chosen tracks.
NUMBER ONE, WITH A CROSS:
Jesus Sells: What the Christian culture industry tells us about secular society. (Jeremy Lott, February 2003, Reason)Critics are right about the apparent insularity of evangelical culture, but not as right as they think they are. The hand wringing that the Left Behind series has engendered, for instance, is irrational. Though Bruce Bawer's Tompaine.com piece is an extreme example of overreaction, a few nonreligious friends have privately explained to me that the existence and popularity of such books -- "wish fulfillment fantasies about non-fundamentalists suffering apocalyptic torment," as Bawer put it -- worry them. The reviewer for the determinedly anti-religious Free Inquiry likened the series to The Turner Diaries, the anti-Semitic survivalist underground classic that helped inspire Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh.Yet, other popular novelists, Stephen King among them, are often just as apocalyptic as LaHaye and Jenkins, without inspiring dire warnings that America is about to embrace a fascist theocracy. True, King and company don?t take their apocalypses seriously. On the other hand, the end of the world has been a popular subgenre for many years. Exactly what has drawn readers to so many secular total destruction fantasies is a question that?s hard to answer, but that answer is unlikely to be compassion for humanity.
In any event, one might hazard that the incomprehension of secular outsiders has contributed significantly to the birth of the commercial Christian pop culture scene. That is, while the books, music, and videos in CBA stores may not have been of the highest quality or featured the best production values, they at least took seriously the beliefs held by evangelicals, who may constitute anywhere from a quarter to a third of American society. The move by secular presses, movie studios, radio stations, and record labels to cater to this market could be viewed as a victory for commercial self-interest over religious intolerance.
This whole piece is interesting, but on just this one point, one wonders if it's really that far off to compare things like Left Behind to the "literature" that militia groups favor. It seems likely the reviewer in question was trying to be inflammatory and to smear Christians, but most cultural conservatives--who obviously tend to be white and Christian--do have a feeling of being an embattled minority and a sense that most of the trends of modernity lead toward ruin for Western Civilization and thereby for mankind. Nor is this anything new, as evidenced by Ortega y Gasset's fear of the masses and Albert Jay Nock's portrayal of the Remnant. Art, even if extreme, that portrays the few as the Chosen and that suggests that the decline around us presages a great moment coming, rather than an ignominious end, must obviously be attractive. Add to this the the abysmal state of popular entertainment--books, movies, music and tv--not just in terms of the low quality and the gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity, but also the frequent hostility to religious belief, and it seems no surprise that a rather insular community would develop around art that consciously avoids these things.
Meanwhile, one of the most interesting recent developments in pop culture is the resurgence of "decent" great films with serious moral themes. Consider some of the best, and often most successful, movies of last year--Harry Potter, Spiderman, The Lord of the Rings, Signs, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Lady and the Duke, etc.--there's been not only a return of movies that portray existence as a battle of good vs. evil but that portray good as prey to temptation and despair and that place selfless moral obligations upon the good. It's hard to think of a moment in the popular arts--with the possible exception of the punk rock explosion in the mid-70s--that was quite this reactionary and retrograde. Whether the popularity of Christian products had an influence on this or not, it seems certain that if the secular movie industry continues to roll out big-budget flicks like this it will have to impact the distinctly evangelical culture. And the conscious creation of popular art that invites evangelicals and other conservatives in, rather than putting them off, would have to be considered something of a victory for Christian culture, regardless of whether it represents merely an economic decision on the part of artists or a genuine acceptance of the ideas for which they're now becoming proselytizers.
MORE:
Hollywood Rallies Round the Homeland: In a culture newly stirred by the danger of the national security state, the bad guys are clear-cut
and the good guys go nail 'em to the wall. (Todd S. Purdum, 2/02/03, NY Times)
The 70's revelations about C.I.A. coup attempts and other skulduggery gave way to the Carter administration's seeming powerlessness in the Iranian hostage crisis and the Reagan-era rebound in defense spending and the end of the cold war. By the 1990's, with the cold war over and prosperity reigning at home, the C.I.A. came to be seen as almost an afterthought.Now the attacks of 2001 and the swift success of the United States's military campaign in Afghanistan have made for some creative amnesia about the American role in war through most of the last decade, when the Clinton administration stood on the sidelines in the face of the bloodbath in Rwanda and bombed Kosovo only from a relatively safe distance without a single American soldier on the ground. Next month, Bruce Willis stars in "Tears of the Sun," the tale of a Navy SEAL who defies orders by staging an unsanctioned rescue of a group of refugees in Nigeria.
"In how people are thinking, there's definitely an approach that says, `The government is not the bad guy,' " said Sean Daniel, an executive producer of "The Hunted," a thriller from Paramount set for release on March 14. Directed by William Friedkin, it stars Tommy Lee Jones as an F.B.I. agent on the trail of a serial murderer played by Benicio del Toro.
"There's an understanding from television and the `C.S.I.'s' and "Law and Orders' and the `24's' that there's a desire to see the bad guy gotten," he added. "It weighs in the story conferences and in the staff meetings. It just does. And while clearly the traditional grand escapism is what the movies are there for in times like this, there are also movies to be made where the government gets the bad guys."
Chase Brandon, a veteran covert operations officer who for the last six years has been the Central Intelligence Agency's official liaison to the world of movies, television and documentary films, said he had seen a steady increase in Hollywood's efforts at verisimilitude as well as a predisposition to offer sympathetic portrayals of the agency's work.
"People have seen documentary programs, most notably the series on the Discovery Channel, and they know what our lobby looks like and what our buildings look like, and more about the actual work that we do," he said. "So the old, tired and hackneyed representation of us as a bunch of rogue operatives, with everything dark and gloomy and sensational, that doesn't wash any more."
SUNSHINE IS THE BEST INFECTANT:
South Korean Leader Assailed on Funds Transfer to North (DON KIRK, January 31, 2003, NY Times)President Kim Dae Jung faced mounting pressure today to provide a detailed account of why nearly $200 million was moved to North Korea shortly before he flew to Pyongyang for his summit meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, in June 2000.The opposition Grand National Party, which controls a majority of seats in the National Assembly, said Mr. Kim "must reveal all details of secret-room deals with North Korea" and called on him to "apologize for lying to the people."
Opposition politicians, as well as some news organizations, asserted that government officials had denied the money transfer until government auditors verified that the funds had moved through a large corporation involved in an elaborate tourism project with North Korea. Prosecutors are now weighing whether to bring charges against some of the major figures involved in the transfer and are also investigating reports that other funds also wound up in North Korea.
Henry Kissinger, Yasar Arafat, Nelson Mandela, Kim Dae Jung, Jimmy Carter.... No matter how much money they give Laureates, would you let the Nobel Committee add your name to that list?
GO, AL, GO:
Unnamed Dem Candidate Edges Bush In New Jersey, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Lieberman Is Top Pick Of Dem Pack (Quinnipiac University, 1/31/03)When looking for a possible presidential nominee, 32 percent of New Jersey Democrats pick Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, followed by:* Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry with 18 percent;
*Rev. Al Sharpton with 12 percent;
*Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt with 9 percent;
*North Carolina Sen. John Edwards with 7 percent;
*Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean with 4 percent.
Nothing better demonstrates liberal media bias than the way they're refusing to cover the candidacy of Al Sharpton, who may well arrive at the Democratic convention with the second most votes.
THE DEMOCRATS VS. HISPANICS:
GOP Pushes Estrada Past Democrats, 10-9: After nearly two years, panel OKs appellate court nominee (Tom Brune, January 31, 2003, Newsday)Over Democrats' objections, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee yesterday quickly sent to the full Senate the long-delayed judicial nomination of Miguel Estrada, a conservative Hispanic attorney considered a potential Supreme Court pick.In a 10-9 party-line vote that followed a contentious exchange among senators, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Estrada's nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. [...]
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the committee chairman, accused liberal activists of a smear campaign against Estrada, who came to the United States from Honduras when he was 16, because of his ethnicity and politics.
"One new obstacle Hispanics face today is the attempt by some Washington political operatives to smear anyone who could be a positive role model for Hispanics and who might be a constitutionalist, rather than a liberal judicial activist, or who might even be conservative or Republican," Hatch said.
No honest observer will deny that had he an identical record and philosophy and WASP heritage Mr. Estrada would have sailed through. What Democrats fear is that he now becomes a slam dunk Supreme Court nominee, who they'd be forced to approve even in the final days of the second Bush term, when they'd normally be able to stop any nomination. This doesn't make them anti-Hispanic per se, but it does put them in the position of denying job promotions to Hispanics (and blacks) because of their ethnicity.
AMERICA--LAND OF THE MEAN DOVES:
Poll: Even Doves Back Iraq Action (Dana Blanton, January 31, 2003, FOX News)While only slightly more Americans describe themselves as "hawks" than as "doves" when it comes to military matters, by more than three-to-one the public supports military action to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power.According to the latest FOX News poll, conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corporation, two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) support U.S. military action against Iraq -- the same level of support as before the president's State of the Union address on Tuesday evening. Among "hawks," that support climbs to 83 percent, and even among "doves" a majority still supports ousting Saddam (52 percent).
When asked to describe themselves on military matters, 38 percent say they are a hawk, 31 percent say dove, and 16 percent say it depends. President Bush is seen as a hawk by 67 percent and as a dove by only 9 percent of the public.
Overall, fully 87 percent of Americans believe Iraq is deceiving inspectors by hiding chemical and biological or other weapons of mass destruction, and almost as many (81 percent) believe Saddam has ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist group.
Which leads one to ask: precisely who are the Democrats playing to with their opposition to the war?
EXHIBIT A:
DENNIS MILLER: Conservative (or at least libertarian) hero. (Edward Driscoll, January 31, 2003)Years ago a friend sent us a few of Mr. Miller's jokes accompanied by a note that said: You probably don't like him because he's a Hollywood liberal, but these are funny.
I responded: Of course I like him. He is funny and all humor is conservative.
Thus began a years long argument, though we've yet to have anyone refute the point.
NUTHIN' FROM NUTHIN' (via Thomas Nicholson)
Go forth and multiply (Mark Steyn, January 27, 2003, National Post)A society whose political class elevates "a woman's right to choose" above "go forth and multiply" is a society with a death wish. So today we're the endangered species, not the spotted owl. We're the dwindling resource, not the oil. Abortion is like the entirely mythical "population bomb" touted by the award-festooned Paul Ehrlich, who predicted millions of Americans would be starving to death by the 1980s: It's a prop of the Western progressive's bizarre death-cultism. We are so bad, so racist, so polluting, so exploitative that we owe it to the world not to be born in the first place. Abortion fetishism and our withered birth rate are only the quieter symptoms of the West's loss of self-confidence manifested more noisily elsewhere, from last weekend's Saddamite demonstrations to Chirac and Schroeder's press conference. The issue this week, according to the Ottawa
Citizen's David Warren, is simple: "Is what we are worth defending?" If you think the Euro-appeasers' answer is pretty pathetic right now, wait another decade, after the birth rate's fallen even lower and their bloated welfare programs are even more dependent on an increasingly immigrant workforce.The abortionists respond that every child should be "wanted." Sounds nice and cuddly, but it leads remorselessly to Italian yuppie couples having just the one kid in their thirties. In a healthy society, not every baby is exactly "wanted": things happen, and you adjust to them. Legal abortion was supposed to make things better for that small number of women who found themselves clutching a handful of cash and riding the bus to a backstreet abortionist in the next town. But "unwanted" is a highly elastic term: in Romania in the Nineties, three out of four pregnancies were being terminated. Europe, in eliminating "unwanted" pregnancies, is eliminating itself. In Canada, meanwhile, Patricia Pearson assures us there's plenty of other folks to take up the slack:
"Immigrants to Canada from China and Eastern Europe are, I think it's fair to say, more secular and more accustomed to official support for abortion and gender equality espoused in the socialist and communist states they have fled from, than those immigrants to the United States who come from Catholic Latin America."
Well, that's one way of putting it. "Official support" means China telling you how many babies you can have: not a woman's right to choose, but the state's right to choose for the woman. Some "tolerance."
Those of us less persuaded than Miss Pearson by the benefits of totalitarian approaches to birth control will just have to do our bit as we can. Next time you're in a rundown diner and the 17-year-old waitress is eight months pregnant, don't tut "What a tragedy" and point her to the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic. Leave her a large tip instead. She's doing the right thing, not just for her, but for all of us.
It would make life so much easier if only we could all hate humankind as much as the Left does. But you can't care about Man and reconcile yourself to who we're becoming, or not becoming, if defenseless enough.
As always when I read something like this, the mind turns to one of the most insightful paragraphs of Albert Jay Nock:
Burke touches [the] matter of patriotism with a searching phrase. 'For us to love our country,' he said, 'our country ought to be lovely.' I have sometimes thought that here may be the rock on which Western civilization will finally shatter itself. Economism can build a society which is rich, prosperous, powerful, even one which has a reasonably wide diffusion of material well-being. It can not build one which is lovely, one which has savour and depth, and which exercises the irresistible attraction that loveliness wields. Perhaps by the time economism has run its course the society it has built may be tired of itself, bored by its own hideousness, and may despairingly consent to annihilation, aware that it is too ugly to be let live any longer.
Isn't this, in fact, precisely what is happening in Japan, Canada, and Europe, where countries with wealth that was previously unimaginable are,
rather than thriving, killing themselves off? And, if we're honest, who among us didn't have at least a brief frisson of terror on 9-11 that we too had slouched so far down the road to Gommorah that our time of reckoning had come? And wasn't part of the undeniable thrill of the days following simply a function of our relief that we remain a decent, courageous, and surprisingly substantial people at our core?
Europeans mock us for our religion, our moralism, our conservatism on social issues like abortion and cloning, and our relative prudishness about sex (think Clinton scandal), but ultimately it must be the case that it is these very remains of what we (and they) once were and the strong pull that they continue to exert on our society, almost uniquely, have given us the only still rising nation in the West. We may well be growing hideous, but somehow enough folks here are raging against the dying of the light that we, unlike the rest of the West, aren't quite ready for annihilation yet.
PRINCESS CASPIAN:
A Different View of the Islamic World: Caspian Countries Defy Stereotypes (Baku Today, 31/01/2003)[Brenda] Shaffer is research director of the Kennedy School's Caspian Studies Program. Its chairman is Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government. Founded in 1999, the Caspian Studies Program focuses on those countries that surround the Caspian Sea, the huge saltwater lake known for its oil deposits and its caviar.Even the program's title represents something of a paradigm shift. Under a more traditional scheme, Iran, which borders the Caspian on the South, would be considered part of the Middle East. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan on the East would be seen as part of Central Asia, while on the West, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia would be part of the Caucasus. Russia, which borders the Caspian to the West and North, has always been a geographic anomaly because it spans both Europe and Asia.
But the term "Caspian region" makes sense because the countries are all part of the Caspian basin, and Shaffer believes that defining regions in functional terms, based on how people live, whom they interact with, what their economic and security interests are, makes more sense than simply drawing an arbitrary line around a geographic area.
Part of what Shaffer hopes to do is get people, and especially U.S. policy-makers, to see the world in these functional terms rather than make assumptions on the basis of cultural, ethnic, or religious identity. As far as the Caspian region goes, she believes that shift is crucial.
"These are countries that can contribute to our energy security, to nuclear nonproliferation, to antiterrorism," she says, "and they were cooperating before 9/11!"
Maybe we could have done with fewer stories on shark attacks and Gary Condit and a few more on these bewildering portions of the globe.
PEOPLE WILL SAY WE'RE IN LOVE:
Every picture tells a story, don't it?
ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW SUPERMAX:
Saddam exile plan gathers pace (Syed Saleem Shahzad, 1/31/03, Asia Times)Even as the United States appears to be drawing closer by the day to attacking Iraq, behind-the-scenes efforts are continuing to find a peaceful solution to the crisis by forcing Saddam Hussein to step down at the eleventh hour to prevent his humiliating dethroning after defeat in war, with Saudi Arabia and the US playing a pivotal role in the diplomatic initiative.Asia Times Online has learned of an unpublicized visit to Pakistan by a high-powered Saudi delegation believed to have been headed by influential Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the defense minister. The Saudis flew into the city of Rawalpindi last Friday aboard a special non-stop flight from Washington and then flew on to Paris the following day.
The Pakistan government has not said a single word about the delegation, but a highly-placed official in the Islamabad administration told Asia Times Online that the mission was a part of ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at developing a plan for the exile of Saddam, as well as to discuss possible options for the future of Iraq.
Promise him anything to get him out and then arrest him anyway.
(AND JEWS):
Politicians With Guts (Robert Kagan, January 31, 2003, Washingon Post)I live in Brussels, famed "capital of Europe," and have traveled across the continent over the past year, speaking with intellectuals, journalists, foreign policy analysts and government officials at the endless merry-go-round of highbrow European conferences. The settings couldn't be nicer; the food and wine couldn't be better; the conversations couldn't be more polite. And the suspicion, fear and loathing of the United States couldn't be thicker. In London, where Tony Blair has to go to work every day, one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the "neoconservative" (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy. Britain's most gifted scholars sift through American writings about Europe searching for signs of derogatory "sexual imagery." In Paris, all the talk is of oil and "imperialism" (and Jews). In Madrid, it's oil, imperialism, past American support for Franco (and Jews). At a conference I recently attended in Barcelona, an esteemed Spanish intellectual earnestly asked why, if the United States wants to topple vicious dictatorships that manufacture weapons of mass destruction, it is not also invading Israel.Yes, I know, there are Americans who ask such questions, too. We have our Buchanans and our Gore Vidals. But here's what Americans need to understand: In Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It's the mainstream view. When Gerhard Schroeder campaigns on an anti-American platform in Germany, he's not just "mobilizing his base" or reaching out to fringe Greens and Socialists. He's talking to the man and woman on the street, left, right and center. When Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin publicly humiliate Colin Powell, they're playing to the gallery. The "European street" is more anti-American than ever before. Even in the 1960s at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests or in the early 1980s at the height of the "nuclear freeze" movement, European anti-Americanism was always more than counterbalanced by European anti-communism. Most Europeans believed the real problem was the Red Army and Soviet totalitarianism, not Nixon or Reagan, and the United States, whatever its flaws, was defending them from those twin evils. When Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher and even Francois Mitterrand stood with Reagan in the waning years of the Cold War, theirs was a courageous and vitally important but not a politically risky stand.
Not so today for Messrs. Blair, Aznar and Berlusconi or for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister. For leaders in Western Europe, more so than for their Central and Eastern European colleagues, standing with Bush in the present Iraq crisis is political poison, at least in the short run. With the Soviet and communist threats safely behind them and the Balkan crises settled, most Western Europeans either don't remember, don't choose to remember or perhaps even resent America's long record of strategic "generosity" toward them. Certainly they do not feel a scintilla of generosity toward the United States. Instead, as keen observers such as Christopher Caldwell have noted, anti-Americanism has become the organizing theme for all European grievances about their world. And just as Arab leaders channel domestic unhappiness with their rule into anti-Americanism as a kind of
safety valve for discontent, so, in perhaps more subtle ways, do European leaders.
Do you suppose Bill Clinton is capable of the level of reflection that would cause him to look at Tony Blair and say: I too could have been somebody?
January 30, 2003
"DISRUPTED OUR PLANS"?:
Mother wins damage claim over lack of test for Down syndrome (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, January 30, 2003)A woman who said she would have had an abortion had she known her daughter would be born with Down syndrome has been awarded $10,000 (U.S.$6,500).Dr. Ken Kan of suburban Richmond was negligent in failing to send Liu-Ling "Lydia" Zhang for an expedited amniocentesis, a procedure that likely would have detected the chromosome defect that causes the condition, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Michael Catliff ruled this week.
Zhang, 42, a business operator with homes in Vancouver and Hong Kong, testified during a 15-day trial last November that she was devastated after her daughter Sherry was born on April 29, 1997.
Zhang said her husband, Simon Fung, could not accept that she had given birth to a retarded child and having Sherry "totally disrupted our plans."
These people are just despicable. Even if you can understand prefering the abortion to the child--and there is a coherent, though not necessarily compelling, case to be made--what kind of person would pursue a suit like this and say these things once their daughter is born? Is $6000 worth telling your child you wish she were dead?
BUMPER CROP:
Albania ready to join U.S.-led anti-Iraq coalition(LLAZAR SEMINI, Jan 30, 2003, Associated Press)Albania is ready to join the U.S.-led anti-Iraq coalition, the government said Thursday, releasing a letter from Prime Minister Fatos Nano to the American president pledging the country's "total and unconditional" support. [...]"I wish to bring to your attention that the resolution of my government to support the United States in the war on terrorism is total and unconditional," said the letter, made available The Associated Press. "We want to be as helpful as possible to the United States and stand ready to join the coalition of the willing as your friend and ally."
Which calls for a rendition of that sentimental favorite by Ernie Pantuso:
Albania, Albania, you border on the Adriatic.
Your terrain is mainly mountainous.
And your chief export is chrome.
Or something like that. God Bless Albania.
WILLIAM YOUNG FOR SENATOR COMMITTEE:
Shoe Bomber Sentenced to Life in Prison (AP, January 31, 2003)Richard Reid, the al-Qaida follower who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoes, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a judge who warned him: "We are not afraid ... We are Americans. We have been through the fire before.''The 29-year-old British citizen cried, "You will be judged by Allah!'' before being dragged from the courtroom in handcuffs. [...]
"Your government has sponsored the rape and torture of Muslims in the prisons of Egypt and Turkey and Syria and Jordan with their money and with their weapons,'' said Reid, who converted to Islam eight years ago.
U.S. District Judge William Young would have none of it.
"We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid,'' said the judge. "We are Americans. We have been through the fire before.
"You are not an enemy combatant - you are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war - you are a terrorist. To call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. You are a terrorist and we do not negotiate with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.''
The judge then pointed to the American flag behind him and said: "You see that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is long forgotten.''
"That flag will be brought down on the day of judgment,'' Reid replied.
We're thinkin' the judge had the better of this discussion.
APE DESCENDANTS ONLY NEED APPLY:
Justice Department probes Texas Tech professor's policy: Student alleges religious discrimination (LISA FALKENBERG, Jan. 29, 2003, Associated Press)The U.S. Department of Justice is looking into the policy of a Texas Tech University biology professor who refuses to write letters of recommendation to students who don't believe in the theory of human evolution, school officials said Wednesday.Federal officials, in a Jan. 21 letter, asked the university to respond to a complaint alleging that Texas Tech and biology professor Michael Dini are discriminating on the basis of religion. [...]
Texas Tech spokeswoman Cindy Rugeley said the university stands by Dini and that his policies do not conflict with those of Texas Tech.
"A letter of recommendation is a personal matter between a professor and student and is not subject to the university control or regulation," Texas Tech Chancellor David Smith wrote in an October response to a complaint letter.
The professor may well be a flaming anus, as the comments on his website suggest, but since when do you have a right to a recommendation from anyone? It's not even clear that there'd be a cause of action if he refused all Jewish or black or gay students. We're with the Darwinist on this one.
SCALIA THE LIBERAL ACTIVIST:
Justice Scalia's Lament (The Washington Post, January 28, 2003)In reality, the founding-era practice of religious neutrality was not one that even Justice Scalia today would recognize as neutral. For while Justice Scalia's idea of government neutrality among religious groups had some adherents at the time, it was not the principle that governed the early history of the American republic. States retained established churches and religious tests for public service, for example. Congress paid for missionary work among Native Americans. And many scholarly authorities emphatically did not understand the First Amendment, as the justice now does, as putting Christianity on an even playing field with other religions. Justice Joseph Story -- a celebrated early commentator on the Constitution -- wrote in 1833, for example, that the point of the amendment was "not to countenance, much less to advantage Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity," but to establish federal neutrality between Christian sects and the states those sects dominated. "[I]t is impossible for those who believe in the truth of Christianity as a divine revelation to doubt that it is the especial duty of government to foster . . . it among all the citizens and subjects," he wrote. This sounds little like neutrality among religions. Justice Scalia's Constitution, in other words, is just as "living" as the one he derides. He merely prefers to draw the line in a different place.The trouble is that he draws it in a place that would permit public religious exercises that endorse one broad religious system -- Judeo-Christian monotheism -- at the expense of all other systems of belief and would do so with the imprimatur of the state. Justice Scalia can pretend that certain school prayers, to cite one example, are nondenominational, but any invocation of one God necessarily excludes Hindus as surely as it excludes atheists. Protecting their consciences from state indoctrination may be, as Justice Scalia laments, a deviation from the vision of religious freedom the First Amendment was originally intended to enshrine. But America has changed since the 18th century, and the American understanding of the principle the First Amendment stated -- Justice Scalia's understanding included -- has changed with it. In contemporary America, governmental neutrality on religious matters should be true neutrality.
They start off so well, pointing out that even Justice Scalia has drifted too far from the intent of the First Amendment, but then they fritter it all away by proposing that we veer even further.
The Constitution isn't alive; it's a written document. If you want to change it then let's call the Convention and let the chips fall where they may.
THE FORSAKEN:
Newly released letters tell of Jesus calling Mother Teresa 'my little wife' (STEPHEN FRASER, 12/08/2002, The Scotsman)MOTHER TERESA had visions in which she saw the Virgin Mary and talked to Jesus, newly-published letters have revealed. In her visions, Jesus called her "my little wife" and "my dear little woman" and told her to found a new order of nuns devoted to helping the poor in India.The letters she wrote to two priests, who acted as her spiritual mentors, also reveal that Mother Teresa - who died in 1997 aged 87 - suffered episodes of depression throughout her life in which she underwent grave crises of faith. [...]
Her letters suggest the 1947 vision was her last experience of "dialogue" with Jesus. Later communications suggest profound religious doubt. In one letter, dated 1958, she wrote: "My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains."
Because she kept a smile on her face, she wrote, people "think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with His will fill my heart. If only they knew."
Mother Teresa was more explicit in another item of correspondence: "The damned of Hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that God does not exist."
Apparently this bothers or gladdens some folks. But if this is so:
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabach'thani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
...if Christ despaired (which is, after all, the most important aspect of his sojourn here among us), how could any mere human, even a saint, not suffer their own crises of faith?
IN THE NAME OF LOVE:
Unlikely Allies Influenced Bush To Shift Course On AIDS Relief (Mike Allen and Paul Blustein, January 30, 2003, Washington Post)Administration officials said Bush, who had planned to announce the effort during a trip to Africa that had been scheduled for this month but was postponed, was convinced of the scale of the crisis in part because of trips to Africa last year by the outgoing Treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill, and by Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans.Evans said that he told Bush about the heartbreaking scourge he had witnessed and that Bush believes passionately that "we're here to serve other people and love our neighbors, and these are our neighbors."
The effort was championed inside the West Wing by Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, who told a colleague several months ago, "We need to do something major on this." Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter, also took an early interest in the issue, and an administration official said he has talked for months about "the importance of speaking to this as a moral matter."
Several administration officials have become friends of Bono, the lead singer of U2, who said in an interview from Dublin that Bush's announcement shows how the world has changed. "If you think back just six months or a year, conservatives, especially religious conservatives, were very skeptical about this, and we had to explain that if you can't get the drugs, why would you test, and if you don't get people testing, we can't control the virus," Bono said. "All these points have sunk in."
It's been interesting to listen to interviews over the past few days and hear how genuinely thankful and truly perplexed folks in the AIDs community are that it's a religious conservative like George W. Bush who is doing this.
MORE:
How Bush got wise to world AIDS crisis (STEPHANIE NOLEN, January 30, 2003, Globe & Mail)
Bush's Moral Rectitude Is a Tough Sell in Old Europe (TODD S. PURDUM, January 30, 2003, NY Times)
The President rides out: George Bush's foes see him as an inarticulate bully. Friends say that evangelical faith underpins his every action. Ed Vulliamy, January 26, 2003, The Observer)
WHO'LL TELL JOE STIGLITZ:
The World is Winning, Not Losing, the War on Poverty: New research rebuts the accepted notion that globalization is causing poverty to worsen. (Clive Crook, January 28, 2003, Atlantic Monthly)Western governments, however dedicated they may claim to be to the cause of global economic integration, seem equally embarrassed by the record on poverty and inequality. There's only one I know of that goes out of its way to confront the subject-the government of Australia. I have just been reading one of a series of refreshingly combative papers on the merits of globalization by economists in Australia's Treasury Department. Europe could do with a few civil servants like this. America could too. [...]The Australian economists explain why, to begin with, you need to ignore all those comparisons of the "gap between richest and poorest": They are always grossly misleading. The main problem is that the richest and poorest countries keep changing, so the comparison is not like with like. The poorest country one year will typically not be the poorest country 10 years later; by then, it will have moved off the bottom rung, but this improvement is screened out by the comparison. The top slot changes too, so the pace of improvement at that end is correspondingly exaggerated. Also, the poorest country or countries in the world each year will usually be the ones hit hardest by temporary crises such as wars, natural disasters, or collapsing political systems-together with the economic privations they bring. If you are interested in global inequality and its trends, it is necessary to look at broader and more consistent sets of information. [...]
What about the absolute number of people living in poverty? The official figures show that the number of people living on less than a dollar a day (in 1993 PPP terms, the standard benchmark) has been about steady in recent years at 1.2 billion. However, as the Australians point out, global population is growing by about 70 million a year, mostly in poor countries. Against that background, it is quite an achievement just to hold the head count of poverty steady. And an obvious consequence of rising population, given that the poverty head count is stable, is that the proportion of the world's people living in poverty is falling fast: from 29 percent at the start of the decade to 24 percent by the end. By historical standards, all of this is no failure: It is an entirely unprecedented success.
These radically different conclusions follow from looking disinterestedly at exactly the same data (provided by the World Bank) used by the professional pessimists at the UNDP. If the Australians were now to look at the most recent research, they would find that their optimism may be even better grounded than they think.
Did anyone who doesn't stink of patchoulli ever doubt this?
AXIS OF EVIL TRYOUTS:
Report: France, Syria coordinate Security Council efforts to avert Iraq war (AP, Jan 30, 2003)Leaders of Syria and France discussed ways Thursday to coordinate their positions on the U.N. Security Council to avert a war on Iraq, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported..Syrian President Bashar Assad received a telephone call from his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, in which the agency said they sought ways to "coordinate at the Security Council in the next stage to prevent the circumstances from reaching the point that may lead to the war on Iraq." [...]
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa, meanwhile, reiterated his country's "absolute rejection" of U.S. threats to wage a war against Iraq.
"A war in Iraq will have dangerous repercussions and consequences on the region," he said in a speech delivered to members of the Arab Writers Union during an annual meeting Thursday.
Yes, the most obvious consequence is that Syria becomes the top layer of scum waiting to be skimmed off of the Middle East swamp. Apparently the frogs don't mind getting caught up in the skimmers. (How's that for an extended and tortured metaphor?)
STAR WARS--THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:
Will There Be A Nuclear Space Race Between America And China (Wayne Smith, Jan 28, 2003, NuclearSpace.com)The China Daily reports that China has spent 2.3 billion US dollars toward putting a man into space in October of this year -- and that is only the beginning of their ambitions.The Chinese space program first began in 1956 with 30 young scientists and roughly 100 college graduates, some of whom didn't even know "exactly what missiles were," according to a Chinese government publication.
On Monday, November 21, 1999, they launched their first unmanned Shenzhou space vehicle with a view to eventually launching men into space. China invented the first rocket almost 900 years ago and now they want to be at the forefront of modern development. A nuclear space race would see a return to the frenzied and visionary, if politically induced, days of Apollo.
Let's hope that Nasa's nuclear space challenge does indeed awaken the Dragon.
Unless China implodes in the immediate future the arms race will certainly be carried to space. That's why Missile Defense is far too paltry a vision for America's space based weapons program. Our goal should be to develop the capability of destroying every single satellite in Earth orbit. The ability to leave our enemies largely blind and silent and to eliminate any weapons they may put in space seems like an imperative.
THE MAGNIFICENT EIGHT:
LETTER: Europe and America must stand united (Times of London, January 30, 2003)THE real bond between the United States and Europe is the values we share: democracy, individual freedom, human rights and the Rule of Law. These values crossed the Atlantic with those who sailed from Europe to help create the USA. Today they are under greater threat than ever. [...]Jose Maria Aznar, Spain
Jose Durao Barroso, Portugal
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy
Tony Blair, United Kingdom
Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic
Peter Medgyessy, Hungary
Leszek Miller, Poland
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark
Here's the letter from the New Europeans. One doubts the Old Europe really does share those values.
DO DEMOCRATS BELIEVE IN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OR NOT?:
Ex-Illinois senator to visit D.M. (THOMAS BEAUMONT, 01/29/2003, Des Moines Register)Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois said Tuesday she will visit Iowa next month as she considers a potential run for president in 2004.Moseley-Braun said she would run in Iowa's precinct caucuses should she decide to seek the Democratic nomination, because they invite one-on-one campaigning with voters. Moseley-Braun, who is the only black woman ever elected to the Senate, expects to decide by Feb. 20.
"If I were to do this, it would make sense for me to come to Iowa," she said in a telephone interview with The Des Moines Register on Tuesday. "To talk about issues is what I like best. That's what motivates me about the whole set of challenges that a national campaign would represent." [...]
Elected to the Senate in 1992, Moseley-Braun was dogged by questions on campaign finance and ethics throughout her term. Republican Peter Fitzgerald defeated her bid for re-election in 1998.
Moseley-Braun told Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe two weeks ago she would not run for her old Senate seat in 2004 and was considering a presidential bid. Last week she discussed a potential presidential run with Democratic organizer Pete D'Alessandro, who managed former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley's 2000 caucus campaign and other Iowa campaigns.
She met Monday with McAuliffe and influential Illinois Democrats about a potential presidential candidacy.
Moseley-Braun agreed Tuesday to speak at 1 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Hotel Fort Des Moines at an event sponsored by American Women Presidents, a group that encourages female White House aspirants. She agreed to headline events sponsored by the same group on Feb. 16 in New Hampshire and Feb. 17 in South Carolina, a Moseley-Braun adviser said Tuesday.
In keeping with their commitment to affirmative action, wouldn't it be appropriate for at least one, if not all, of the white male Democrats to bow out of the race, in order to increase the likelihood or even guarantee genuine diversity at the top of the ticket?
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN:
We received the following from Glenn Dryfoos, the Brothers Judd jazz correspondent, in response to the Wynton Marsalis article and comments below:
That Marsalis didn't like Miles' later work and publicly said so merely makes Wynton an honest guy. Most of what Davis played in the last years of his career was crap (with occasional exceptions, like his rendition of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time").To say (as Jeff does in his comment) that no one named Marsalis has "demonstrated anything beyond mere virtuosity" is ridiculous. Wynton, Branford and their dad, Ellis, are all more than just virtuosos; they all play great and beautiful music...and in the case of Wynton and Branford, they've written some damn good tunes.
Now, as for Wynton's place in the pantheon (Armstrong, Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Coltrane, Taylor). He clearly isn't there. Those greats are held in the esteem that they are because of the new sounds and ideas they bought to the music. Wynton is, in essence, a neo-classicist...his works, while impressive, are mostly built on the sounds and concepts developed by others (to my ears, his biggest compositional influences are Ellington and Wayne Shorter). In my view, however, there's no shame in "merely" being a great player and composer, but not an innovator...if that were the case, guys like Clifford Brown and Stan Getz and even Sonny Rollins wouldn't be as revered as they are. (And, conversely, great innovators like Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter would be even more revered than they are.)
On the other hand, Marsalis has done the world a great service by banging the drum and reminding us of how great Ellington and Armstrong and Monk were. If it weren't for his efforts, those guys would be a lot more overlooked than they are now...and people like Ken Burns wouldn't have been inspired to look back at the history of jazz. Marsalis doesn't pretend to be a revolutionary...he likes playing his interpretations of musical styles that came before him. I don't think that's a reason to criticize him; it's just a fact.
As for Jeff's "the new Stan Kenton, at best" comment...ouch. First of all, Marsalis is a far greater instrumentalist than Kenton, and that alone is a huge difference. Secondly, his compositions and arrangements are far more diverse and interesting (and swinging!).
So where does that leave us? With a guy who for 20 years has been the finest trumpet player in jazz. A guy who has pushed for people to learn more about the history of the music and who has put together a great jazz orchestra that explores this repertory. He has never criticized "new" music or music that doesn't hew to the orthodoxies he admires...he has only criticized men, like Davis and Herbie Hancock, who once made great music, and then cashed in at the altar of bad pop. (Wynton doesn't launch fusillades at Herbie all the time, only when he releases "music" like "Rockit".)
At bottom is this: I have heard Wynton play live maybe a dozen times. Putting aside labels and agendas, he is simply a thrilling trumpet player. His improvisations and compositions are filled with fire and tenderness, sophistication and honky tonk, seriousness and humor.
He may not be Armstrong, but I'm awfully glad he's around.
As for the Brothers, we just have a soft spot in our cold hearts for misanthropes of every stripe, but particularly for those who defend classicism and revile modernism.
Here are some Wynton Marsalis discs that Dryfoos particularly recommends:
Wynton Marsalis (his first LP as a leader)
Live at Blues Alley
Standard Time, vol 3 (with his Dad, Ellis)
Soundtrack to "Tune in Tomorrow"
Crescent City Christmas
Blood on the Fields
Haydn Trumpet Concerto
MORE:
-PROFILE: Born Out of Time: Wynton Marsalis and his contemporaries recapitulate modern jazz (Francis Davis, April 1988, The Atlantic Monthly
APPROPRIATE SKEPTICISM:
Bush AIDS Plan Surprises Many, but Advisers Call It Long Planned (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and RICHARD W. STEVENSON, January 30, 2003, NY Times)As one of the government's leading scientists, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci often visits the White House to talk about bioterrorism and vaccine research. But whenever he sees President Bush, Dr. Fauci said today, the president has the same question: "He says, `Tony, how's the AIDS program going?' "That program, $15 billion over the next five years to fight global AIDS, caught many people by surprise when President Bush announced it Tuesday night. But while critics have long accused Mr. Bush of neglecting the epidemic, Dr. Fauci and other officials have been working on the initiative since June, they say, at Mr. Bush's explicit direction.
Mr. Bush's aides say the president has always been committed to the global AIDS cause, though not convinced that taxpayers' money could be well spent. But in recent months, a string of people from inside and outside the administration--including Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; and Bono, the Irish rock star--made a passionate case to persuade Mr. Bush that the time was right.
Among those most surprised by Mr. Bush's announcement were officials in 12 countries in Africa, which along with Haiti and Guyana will receive the money.
In the United States, the president's unexpected initiative has political ramifications, as well as humanitarian ones. With Republicans still smarting from racially charged remarks of Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader, Mr. Bush's initiative may help mend fences with African-American leaders in Congress.
Today, they held a news conference to express what Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, called "new hope" and "some skepticism."
Mr. Conyers skepticism is well placed. There's not much of a constituency in the Republican Party for such a measure, there's no petro-benefit to be reaped in Africa (it can't all be about the oil there, can it?), and there's little prospect of blacks voting Republican any time in the near future. The only reason the President could have proposed this is because he actually believes in it and the only reason a Republican Congress would pass it is because they do to. They'd have to be acting because they think it's right, not because it's politically expedient. If such a thing happens then folks like Mr. Conyers will have to re-examine much of what they believe about George W. Bush and the Republican Party. If your opponents threatened to make the world shift under your feet you'd be skeptical too.
A HEADLINE THAT DETERS READING:
Fighting an immoral war: Sure Saddam Hussein is an evil gangster, but... (Jack Lessenberry, Detroit Metro Times)Is it wrong if you feel like you need read no further than that headline to know that the author is dazed and confused? If the leader of a country is an evil gangster, how can a war to replace him be immoral? Certainly some tactics or strategy we might employ could be considered immoral--recklessly or intentionally inflicting civilian casualties for example--but how can it be immoral in and of itself to fight to stop an unquestioned evil?
PETROFIED & PETRIFIED:
'The Devil's Excrement': Perez Alfonzo's different name for oil. (Jerry Useem, January 21, 2003, Fortune)"Ten years from now, 20 years from now, you will see," former Venezuelan Oil Minister and OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo predicted in the 1970s, "oil will bring us ruin." It was an oddball statement at a time when oil was bringing Venezuela unprecedented wealth--the government's 1973 revenues were larger than all previous years combined, raising hopes that black gold would catapult Venezuela straight to First World status. But Perez Alfonzo had a different name for oil: "the devil's excrement."Today he seems a prophet. When it hit the jackpot, Venezuela had a functioning democracy and the highest per-capita income on the continent. Now it has a state of near-civil war and a per-capita income lower than its 1960 level.
Far from an anomaly, Venezuela is a classic example of what economists call the "natural resource curse." A 1995 analysis of developing countries by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found that the more an economy relied on mineral wealth, the lower its growth rate. Venezuela isn't poor despite its oil riches--it's poor because of them.
How could that be? For the same reason so many entertainers go bankrupt. Showered with sudden windfalls, governments start spending like rock stars, creating programs that are hard to undo when oil prices fall. And because nobody wants to pay taxes to a government that's swimming in petrodollars--"In Venezuela only the stupid pay taxes," a former President once said--the state finds itself living beyond its means.
This dynamic won't be at all surprising to anyone who's read the great Orientalist Bernard Lewis, who makes the point that oilwealth has effectively severed governments in the Middle East from the governed, because the leadership does not have to ask for tax dollars and is therefore beyond accountability.
But, maybe a more interesting point implicated by the story is that, while Americans pride themselves on being ultra-modern and a model of democracy, some of this same dynamic occurred here in the '90s. The post-Cold War boom was so massive and long lived that government--Federal, state, and local--found itself swimming in dollars, without having to raise taxes. For the most part it responded by spending this windfall, rather than returning it to the people. But now, when the downturn has come, those tax dollars aren't there but the spending programs are. So governors--many of whom are forced to be somewhat responsible by balanced budget requirements in their constitutions--face the unpleasant task of slashing spending and raising taxes in the teeth of a recession. The easy money of the 90s got us living beyond our means and enabled us to avoid making hard choices when we could afford them.
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS EUROPE:
'Gang of Eight' Iraq Letter Rubs Salt in EU Wounds (Paul Taylor, January 30, 2003, Reuters)A joint letter by eight European leaders backing the United States on the crisis with Iraq highlighted the European Union's divisions on Thursday, rubbing salt into the wounds of its stumbling foreign policy.EU president Greece, in charge of trying to coordinate European foreign policy, criticized the signatories for undermining a common approach to the Iraq problem.
The European Parliament deepened the disarray by declaring that Iraq's response to U.N. weapons inspectors did not justify military action and warning against a unilateral U.S.-led war.
In an article published in a dozen newspapers, the leaders of EU members Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Denmark, plus future members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, called time on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and appealed for unity.
The move appeared aimed at isolating France and Germany, which had publicly argued against a rush to war, and building a pro-American caucus within the 15-nation EU.
"This looks like Rumsfeld's Europe," one EU diplomat said, referring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal of France and Germany last week as "old Europe."
The eight failed to consult most of their EU partners and candidates about their initiative, launched just two days after the bloc's foreign ministers had tried to paper over the cracks with a statement backing the U.N. disarmament effort in Iraq.
We mentioned the benefits of instability below and we're fond here of saying that war forces the contradictions. Considering that the EU is a threat to both the future of Europe itself and to American interests in the world and that a Union of such disparate states is self-contradictory, these growing divisions may be inevitable and are certainly welcome. If you're British you have to ask yourself a fairly simple question: as a citizen of one of cradles of liberty, what do you really have in common with the statist/egalitarian French and Germans? There's a reason that Britain has fought those countries repeatedly over the centuries and, unless you have no respect for the power and endurance of cultural differences, you have to wonder if they've really become so much like you that there's no more reason for conflict, or whether, instead, Union represents an ultimate victory for what you've long fought against--totalitarianism.
Why not let the Germans and French have their own Union? Bring the New Europe (and the Commonwealth nations, Amnerica's NAFTA partners, Turkey, Israel, India, Taiwan, etc.) into the Anglo-American special relationship and tie all together with the gentle binding of free trade, mutual defense, and the like, without the kind of bureaucratic dictatorship and common economic system that the EU envisions.
IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE (WHITE) HOUSE?:
The Wrong Words: To the Arabs, it seems that the major force behind instability in the Middle East is the United States itself. (Abdel Monem Said, 1/30/03, NY Times)The historical bond between the United States and the moderate Arab states and mainstream Arabs in general contributed to the stability of the Middle East. For half a century, the bond worked well--to thwart Communist expansion in the cold war, to contain the waves of Iranian Islamic revolution and to end in 1991 Saddam Hussein's radical and regional ambitions. Now, it seems for the Arabs, the major force for instability in the region is the United States itself, which is moving militarily to Iraq, ignoring the Arab-Israeli peace process, giving Ariel Sharon a free hand in Israel, and insinuating a radical program for change in the region without building strategic understanding for it.
Who would even argue with this? The United States, since its own Revolution, has been the most destabilizing force in human history (except
perhaps for Christianity itself), to the great benefit of mankind. Having shucked off the imperial hand of England at its birth it has gone on to annihilate slavery and apartheid within its own borders, tossed other imperial forces out of the Western Hemisphere (from buying out Napoleon to backing the Contras against the Soviet clients in Nicaragua), defeated the Spanish Empire, the Kaiser, and fascism in battle and communism in Cold War. It has played a key role in "imposing" democracy from Tierra del Fuego to St. Petersburg to Johannesburg to Kabul. There's hardly a democracy that doesn't owe the U.S. some debt for either installing, preserving, or restoring it.
Mr. Said seems oblivious to one of the key points he's making. When communism was the primary threat to world peace the United States sought stability in the Middle East while it worked to destabilize the Soviet Empire. Stability was a subsidiary purpose of a policy that sought instability on a massive scale. But now the old communist states are by and large stable democracies and allies and it's the Islamicists who are the greatest threat to world peace. Who would wish a state like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, or even Saudi Arabia to be stable? A temporarily stable patient with a malignant tumor is still terminal. It requires a surgeon to radically and invasively destabilize that patient if he's to be restored to some semblance of health.
MORE:
Stability, America's Enemy (Ralph Peters, Winter 2001, Parameters)
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER:
Iran Veers Between Admiration and Resentment of American Power: Even as Iran declares its opposition to an American-led war to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it is leaving all its options open in case war comes. (ELAINE SCIOLINO, January 30, 2003, NY Times)At the Friday Prayer sermon last week at the University of Tehran, Iran's official national pulpit, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani condemned the United States for "drunkenness" in pursuing the goal of dominating the world.That night, in a low-budget play that opened at a theater festival a few miles away, a despondent, drug-addled young man dressed in a T-shirt emblazoned with an American flag vowed to find happiness by going to America.
The two images capture the extremes in Iran's discourse about the United States. At one end, America is still an evil-intentioned enemy that must be opposed at every turn. At the other, particularly among the two-thirds of the population that is under 25, it is called the "Fortune Land," a mythical place of limitless opportunity and freedom.
But images can deceive. Quietly, as a result of the projection of American power in the region since Sept. 11, Iran has embarked on a pragmatic strategy of pursuing its national interests within the context of America's overwhelming military might. So even as Iran declares its opposition to an American-led war to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it is leaving all its options open in case war comes.
My math isn't so hot, so maybe someone can help me, but if two thirds admire us and the one third that resents us is willing to work with us--even if only implicitly, rather than explicity--doesn't that get us fairly close to three thirds?
WE WIN; HERE'S YOUR STATE; KILL EACH OTHER OR LET'S MOVE ON:
Israel's tortuous path to disengagement: Ariel Sharon has both the opportunity and the obligation to break theuntenable status quo. (Gerald Steinberg, Financial Times)[M]r Sharon's second government is more likely to be forced into gradual unilateral disengagement. In the absence of any realistic hopes for peace, one-sided separation from the Palestinians is very popular and this theme was adopted by the Labour party during the election campaign. The construction of a separation barrier built near the 1949 ceasefire lines and around Jerusalem has been forced on a reluctant Mr Sharon in the past year. While it is proclaimed that this will demarcate a security line, rather than political boundaries that would eventually lead to a viable Palestinian state, the distinction is clearly rhetorical. Once the barrier is completed, including four official crossings, it will become a de facto border for the Palestinian state.To move decisively, Mr Sharon should now declare victory over Palestinian terrorism, so that dismantling some isolated settlements on the other side of the barrier would not be interpreted as a reflection of weakness, as occurred when Israel withdrew from Lebanon three years ago. He should then embrace the road map concept, and the goal of the two-state solution, while moving simultaneously to erect the barrier to provide a safety net if diplomacy fails again.
With the momentum from his decisive political victory, Mr Sharon has both the opportunity and the obligation to break the untenable status quo. If the hopes for resumed negotiations under the road map prove unworkable, he will have to lead Israel through the process of unilateral disengagement.
Palestinian statehood has been Israel's de facto position since Oslo, but it was always going to be on Israeli terms. Arafat had a chance for ridiculously good terms when Barak and Clinton were willing to give him nearly everything he asked for, but once there's a state he's superfluous, so he bailed out. Now is the time, with Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush both riding electoral mandates and in the aftermath of a successful war to replace Saddam Hussein, for Israel to withdraw from Palestine and declare the borders of the Palestinian nation, which America will promptly recognize. Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush can then offer the Palestinian people economic, infrastructure, and security assistance as soon as they choose a government that is willing to accept peace and such relationships.
To do this would be to accept the Palestinians at their word, that they are serious about statehood as their primary objective. If this really is the case then the anger and violence that Palestinians justifiably feel about the state of their lives will be directed at the real culprits, their current leadership. But at the end of an internal struggle we can hope (and should be willing to help) that a representative government will emerge and be prepared to rebuild a decent civil society, at peace with its neighbors. If not, Israel will be facing a sovereign state that it can crush with relative impunity, rather than a restive territory with an internal population that it can repress only at great cost in public opinion at home and abroad.
January 29, 2003
GLORIANA RULES AGAIN!:
Today's mail brings news that will fill with joy the hearts of those whose allegiance to America is tempered only by a love of its sole superpower rival, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The family of Leonard Wibberley informs us that his great comic novel, The Mouse that Roared is finally back in print. Here's our review.
ALONE TOGETHER:
Europe split as leaders back US on Iraq (George Jones and Robin Gedye, 30/01/2003, Daily Telegraph)The split in Europe over America's readiness to go to war against Iraq deepened last night when leaders of seven European nations joined Tony Blair in calling for the Continent to stand united with President George W Bush.The diplomatic initiative, masterminded by Spain and Britain, did not include France or Germany, the two EU nations that have been most critical of what they fear is a rush to war by the US.
The appeal by the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark and the Czech Republic is a boost for Mr Blair who has sought to build a European coalition of support for Mr Bush.
Life holds no more beautiful prospect than that of Germany and France isolated from the rest of the West and stuck with only each other.
MORE:
Eight leaders rally 'new' Europe to America's side (Philip Webster, January 30, 2003, Times of London)
Blair gains Europe support on Iraq (BBC, 29 January, 2003)
Blair's Iraq gamble (Andrew Marr, BBC)
BRAZIL NUT CRACKER SUITE:
TRANSCRIPT: Hardball (MSNBC, 1/28/03)[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: Tom DeLay of Texas. Thanks for joining us.Right now, let me go over to one of our panelists who hasn't had a chance yet. You yielded to Pat Caddell a moment ago. Let me ask you what you think. How does the president-I will go back to the main point of tonight's discussion. How does president convince you and other people who think, of like mind, that this is going to be a good-a good war? In other words, a necessary war. I think they're the same. How does he make that case to you?
[DONNA] BRAZILE: I think it's-Well, I don't think it takes lot-it doesn't take a rocket scientist and it clearly doesn't take a form of pest control man...
MATTHEWS: OK...
BRAZILE: ... like Tom DeLay, who believes that Republicans have the answer because they control the majority now in Congress. I think it takes coalition. It takes allies. I mean, we have the might, but my grandmother used to say might doesn't make it right. But we also need support. We need allies. This is going to be a huge endeavor to try to dispose and disarm Saddam.
MATTHEWS: But you know, in all fairness, Donna, since you took a shot at a man who was trying to earn a living as a pest controller-he succeeded as a pest controller. (LAUGHTER)
BRAZILE: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: You failed as a campaign manager.
BRAZILE: He succeeded...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I mean, there's a difference between being successful and...
BRAZILE: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: Anybody who works-to work is to pray, I believe. Never make fun of someone's occupation, Donna.
BRAZILE: I made fun of his occupation...
MATTHEWS: You shouldn't do that.
BRAZILE: ... and I will do it again.
MATTHEWS: I don't think you should.
This very nearly redeems Mr. Matthews for his comparison of Saddam Hussein to a serial double-parker.
"NO BACKSIES!":
Some Democrats Want Another Vote on Iraq(DAVID ESPO, 1/29/03, AP)
President Bush's threat to disarm Saddam Hussein, the centerpiece of his State of the Union address, sparked criticism from senior Senate Democrats on Wednesday, some of whom proposed legislation requiring a fresh congressional or U.N. vote before the onset of hostilities.
Who knew there were mulligans on war resolutions?
PART OF THE WAY, WITH JFK:
War Now Drives the Presidency (Ronald Brownstein, January 29, 2003, LA Times)[T]he appearance Monday of chief weapons inspector Hans Blix before the U.N. may have been more of a turning point than Bush's address. In his unexpectedly tough indictment of the Iraqi regime, Blix reframed the case against Iraq into a succinct argument: While Iraq was cooperating with the "process" of inspections, it was continuing to resist the "substance" of disarmament.Bush followed a similar strategy, underscoring the gap between the chemical and biological weapons Iraq had previously acknowledged possessing and those it can prove it has destroyed.
Even before Bush's speech, there was evidence this argument may be subtly strengthening the administration's position in the domestic debate. Though opposition to a near-term invasion of Iraq has been broadening among Democratic officials, Blix's conclusions may be sapping some of its intensity.
Just hours before Bush's address, for instance, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) told a small group of reporters that based on Blix's report, he believed Iraq was now clearly in material breach of the U.N. resolutions demanding disarmament.
Last week, Kerry had accused Bush of a "rush to war" and urged him to give inspections more time and to work harder to build international support for any military action. But on Tuesday, while repeating those arguments, Kerry also said he would be open to a U.N. resolution authorizing an invasion if Iraq did not disarm within 30 days. "That would sound pretty reasonable," he said.
By a "rush" Senator Kerry apparently meant attacking in February instead of March. You'll have to explain to me how Saddam can be in material breach but a new resolution be required.
KICKING OUT THE JAMS:
Bush Adds Managed Care to Debate on Drug Benefit (Vicki Kemper, January 29, 2003, LA Times)President Bush did far more Tuesday night than signal the beginning of a new round in the debate over a Medicare drug prescription benefit.By proposing to tie eligibility for the benefit to participation in a managed-care plan, Bush also changed the rules of the high-stakes political battle.
Last year, Senate Republicans and Democrats came tantalizingly close to agreement on a compromise benefit package. After weeks of back-room politicking and serial votes over the details of the benefit and how much it would cost, in the end all that separated the partisans was a disagreement over how the benefit should be delivered.
Senate Republicans, along with their counterparts in the House, wanted private insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers to administer the benefit, while Democrats wanted Medicare -- that is, the government -- to do it.
But now, with Republicans in control of Congress, and congressional Democrats lining up to run against him in 2004, Bush has upped the ante.
Instead of using the drug benefit to bring some private-sector competition into the Medicare program, he wants to make prescription coverage the driving force for a more thorough privatization of Medicare itself.
If you were a bettor you'd have to lay big money that he'll fail in this effort. But it's the essence of great leaders that they change the terms of debate. Love them or loathe them, FDR's "greatness" lay in changing the United States from a country in which government was distrusted into one in which it's depended on. LBJ's lay in his putting that government on the side of the nation's most despised and oppressed citizens. Reagan's lay in his assertion that not only was the Cold War winnable but that our victory was inevitable and just. Bill Clinton had a chance to be great. He could have been the President who brought free enterprise principles and structures to the Welfare State. But, other than welfare itself, which the GOP shoved down his throat and Dick Morris got him to swallow, Clinton just didn't have the vision or the stomach for the task. George W. Bush appears to have vision and stomach to spare, but it's unimaginable that the rest of his party will rise to the moment, while they would certainly have done so had they had Clinton for cover.
The '90s--what a waste.
PATIENCE, CHILDREN:
Blair: North Korea is next (The Guardian, January 29, 2003)Tony Blair today pledged that after dealing with Iraq, the UN would confront North Korea about its nuclear weapons programme.The prime minister was giving an impassioned defence of the government's position on Iraq during his weekly question time when an anti-war MP shouted: "Who's next?"
Replying to the heckle, Mr Blair said: "After we deal with Iraq we do, yes, through the UN, have to confront North Korea about its weapons programme".
"We have to confront those companies and individuals trading in weapons of mass destruction," he added.
To another cry of "When do we stop?", Mr Blair answered: "We stop when the threat to our security is properly and fully dealt with."
Democrats have hypnotized themselves into believing that Iraq will last about a week, George Bush will get a bump in the polls, but by November 2004 they'll have a clean shot at him and the focus will be on an economy that they seem to believe will be in a new Depression. You'd think they'd have figured out by now that the President's serious when he says that the war on terror will last for many years and take us to many places. Their crocodile tears about not taking on North Korea may soon come back to haunt them.
NORTH CAROLINA, THE NEW FLORIDA:
Five ballots and no new speaker (AMY GARDNER AND LYNN BONNER, 1/29/03, The News & Observer)After five ballots, the state House of Representatives recessed for the day Wednesday afternoon when neither Republicans nor Democrats could marshal 61 votes to elect a new speaker.On each ballot, the 60 House Democrats united to back Rep. Jim Black's bid for a third term. Republicans were divided, with 55 voting for the party's nominee, Rep. George Holmes of Yadkin County, and five for Rep. Richard Morgan of Moore County.
It was the first time since 1866 that the speaker of the 120-member House was not elected on the first ballot. The House went through four roll-call ballots, recessed so Republicans and Democrats could meet privately in separate groups, and then conducted one more ballots before adjourning deadlocked in mid-afternoon. [...]
In the November election, Republicans won a two-seat majority. But that vanished suddenly Friday when Rep. Michael Decker of Walkertown switched parties and declared his support for Black.
Decker's defection ripped wider a division among House Republicans who could not unite their first nominee, Rep. Leo Daughtry of Smithfield. And even when Daughtry
stepped aside on Tuesday, Republicans still could not rally behind Holmes, the new pick.
In the immortal words of Wesley Snipes: Always bet on Black.
"I" AS IN IRONY:
Iraq to Chair U.N. Disarmament Conference (Liza Porteus, January 29, 2003, FOX News)While the United States leads the charge in making sure Iraq owns up to its promises of complete disarmament, Saddam Hussein's country will head an international disarmament conference and will steer the course of the U.N. disarmament agenda this spring.The irony has more than a few U.S. lawmakers up in arms.
"With the consideration of Iraq to head the Conference on Disarmament, the U.N. now becomes worse than any off, off, off-Broadway show. It becomes the theater of the absurd," said Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona, who joined Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., Wednesday in a news conference denouncing Iraq's taking the rotating chair.
"This is ridiculous. It's like the fox watching over the hen house," Fossella said. "Iraq has zero credibility to disarm any nation when it stands in violation of U.N. resolutions because it continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. This decision will leave a permanent stain on the conference, undermine its credibility and threaten its mission to disarm nations that possess nuclear weapons."
In May, Iraq will take the helm of the U.N. Committee on Disarmament and will hold that position for one month. The co-chair will be Iran. The presidency rotates in alphabetical order.
What next, France and Germany chairing the U.N. Committee on Gratitude?
PLASTIC MAN:
On the button: Navel-baring midriffs credited for rise in umbilicoplasty (Clive Thompson, 1/16/03, Colorado Springs Independent)Breast implants and liposuction are the traditional ways to create a new you. But a new body part is now going under the knife: the navel. In the spring of 2002, plastic surgeons began reporting a curious spike in the number of women requesting navel reconstruction -- or "umbilicoplasty," as the pros call it.Sometimes it was part of a tummy tuck; sometimes the tummy was fine, but the navel rankled. "I get about three or five inquiries a week now," says Jim Romano, a San Francisco surgeon who performs the outpatient procedure for about $3,500. Calls have "gone way up, with all the midriffs showing." [...]
Consider what's going on here: a style of clothing is driving a style of surgery. But with umbilicoplasty, the body has become as plastic as fashion -- to be nipped and tucked along with trends that themselves might last only a matter of months.
And people think this species can be trusted with genetic engineering technology?
THE ETERNAL OLIVE TREE:
Bush's Domino Theory: First, democracy for Iraq, then the rest of Middle East (CS Monitor, January 28, 2003)On his current book tour, the former White House speechwriter who was behind the phrase "axis of evil" is calling the president's Middle East strategy nothing short of a foreign-policy "revolution."Just more poetic license from a political wordsmith? No, his word choice isn't poetic enough, if bringing democracy to that troubled part of the world is truly the president's goal, as former insider David Frum states.
Certainly, the Bush administration's hawks hope the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would be the first domino to tip other autocratic states in the region toward democracy. Having felled the Taliban in Afghanistan, and insisted on new Palestinian elections, this White House drive to bring democracy to Iraq - as well as to disarm it of chemical and biological weapons, and end its support of terrorism - fits into an emerging United States strategy to push democracy into places that breed or support terrorists and the weapons of terror.
But for Mr. Bush to speak or act more boldly right now in promoting democracy in the Middle East could possibly lessen support for an Iraqi war from other Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia. So the administration may be soft-pedaling this new domino theory, and simply waiting to showcase a democratic postwar Iraq as a model for its neighbors.
Bush's intention, if not the detail, is right there in black and white in the National Security Strategy from last September. The document declares that the US example of freedom, democracy, and free enterprise constitutes "a single, sustainable model for international success," and that this model is "right and true for every person, in every society."
As is so often the case, the question of whether the domino theory of bringing democracy to the Arab world is most revealing when you consider the opposing viewpoint. First, you have to ask, if the dominoes there won't fall--as they've already fallen in Latin America; Eastern Europe; and most of East Asia--why not? What is it about Muslims that makes them unique among humans and uninterested in peace, freedom, and prosperity? Why are these people impervious to the globalization that is transforming the rest of mankind (for good or ill). And if they are that unique, and the dominoes won't fall, then is it responsible and safe for the West to allow an entire region of the world to remain a hotbed of anti-democratic, anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian hatred?
HARD NOT TO LIKE HIM:
A talent for making music and enemies: He outrages feminists, had a spat with Miles Davis and is widely accused of being a reactionary, but trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis doesn't care. He is on a messianic mission to revive classic jazz. (Peter Culshaw, 20/01/2003, Daily Telegraph)I suggest that at least one benefit of such movements as acid jazz is that many people are impelled back to the originals after hearing samples used on records. "That's a mind-boggling argument to me. It's like saying it's great that people might come across a quote from Hamlet in Playboy magazine. Why should you come into contact with the best of your culture through some other source? That's a major failing in education."Marsalis has also been attacked by almost every politically correct group in New York for assorted perceived crimes from nepotism to sexism - feminists recently staged a demo complaining that there were no women in the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra. "I'm paid to be artistic director, and I make the decisions" is all he will say on that.
Marsalis's most celebrated spat was with Miles Davis. Davis said of him: "The more famous he became, the more he started saying things - nasty, disrespectful things - about me," and famously exploded in Vancouver, "That motherfucker's not sharing the stage with me." So what was that all about?
"There was a classic competition between an older man and a younger man who is more idealistic. By that stage he'd given up jazz and was playing pop and rock, trying to stay pertinent." Marsalis makes "pertinent" sound like an insult. "He had released a large portion of his integrity." How is he so sure about that? "He knew it. We both knew it."
What is most impressive - but also a little scary - about Marsalis is his messianic drive to spread his version of jazz. He thinks in mythic terms.
What's that Middle East proverb: The enemy of my enemies is my friend? Is there a worse thing for an artist to do than stop trying to create beauty and try to be"pertinent" (as Mr. Marsalis is using the term) instead? Great art should be timeless, not timely.
MORE:
-INTERVIEW: And the trumpet shall sound: Wynton Marsalis is a man with a mission to spread the gospel of jazz. Some people are worried his influence will make the music too respectable. (Adam Sweeting, 06/02/2001, Daily Telegraph)
-WyntonMarsalis.net (Sony Music)
-Wynton Marsalis Page (Jazz World)
LET'S NOT DICKER OVER TERMS:
Bias Control: Eric Alterman attacks the Right, but victory feels hollow. (John Dicker, 1/23/03, Salt Lake City Weekly)Is the media really liberal? The question is as exhausting as it is inexhaustible, and it screams for qualifiers: Whose media are you talking about?
How about this media: the three major television networks, the two major weekly news magazines; and the major newspaper in the ten biggest cities in America? Is there a single one in that group that isn't left of center?
Hard to think of one. That may be a function of the free market of ideas and that's what viewers/treaders want. But that would still be a bias in favor of the Left.
SEE NO, SPEAK MUCH:
The Empire Strikes First (MAUREEN DOWD, January 29, 2003, NY Times)The axis of evil has shrunk to Saddam, evil incarnate.
It was gratifying enough to hear the President repeat his use of the word "evil" several times last night, something many commentators predicted he'd be too embarrassed to do. But the use had a particular genius--he really has some good speechwriters--because it framed Saddam in a way that makes Ms Dowd's point, which we hear often these days, look asinine:
The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained: by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.
If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.
So the question, for Ms Dowd and her ilk: is this not evil? And if it is evil, then why is it wrong to confront such evil?
Now, the honest answer for much of the Left is that there's no such thing as evil, but few pundettes would acknowledge that. So then you have to fall back on explanations of why this particular evil does not concern us. Even if that argument is right and popular--and it may be both--you sound rather craven making it.
NON-RESPONSIVE:
Democrats Say the Nation Heads in Wrong Direction': The Democratic governor chosen to respond to President Bush faulted the president on the economy and national security. (CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 1/28/03, NY Times)[T]he selection of Mr. Locke was recognition of the party's fortunes in Congress, as well as a desire to present a fresh image. While the opposition's response to the State of the Union address is most often delivered by a lawmaker, the Democrats instead offered the nationally televised spot this time to their governors' association, to showcase a figure from outside Washington and shine a light on the statehouses, one of the few bright spots for the party in November.Mr. Locke, of Chinese ancestry, stressed his roots as he began his speech.
"My grandfather came to this country from China nearly a century ago and worked as a servant," he said. "Now I serve as governor just one mile from where my grandfather worked. It took our family a hundred years to travel that mile."
On foreign affairs, the governor tried to strike a balance between support for a popular president at a time of international tension and encouraging that president to avoid acting unilaterally against Iraq.
"We are far stronger when we stand with other nations than when we stand alone," said Mr. Locke, who, like other Democrats, also noted that while Mr. Bush was focused on Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, remained at large.
Granted it's an awfully tough job, but who in the Democrat Party thought it would be a good idea to have someone most of the country has never heard of, who has no foreign policy experience, give the rebuttal to a run up to war? His personal story is fine, in its place, but this isn't exactly the moment to stress immigration and it certainly had nothing to do with confronting Saddam. The governor was punching way above his weight.
NUMBSKULL:
Someone else who heard this is going to have to vouch for it, because I honestly wouldn't believe it if I read it somewhere: here's a rough transcript of a discussion between Don Imus and Chris Matthews this morning:
Imus: What would you do about Iraq?Matthews: I think we need to keep doing what we're doing and let the inspections work.
Imus: What if they don't work?
Matthews: What do you mean by "don't work"?
Imus: They don't find anything and we know he still has stuff.
Matthews: You know, I think you just have to trust him. Saddam may be evil but you have to trust that he can be deterred. It's like parking tickets--the reason you don't just park anywhere you feel like is because you know you'll get in trouble. It's the same with him attacking us.
It might have been helpful if Imus had pointed out that when Saddam parks illegally there may be a significant weapon onboard the truck.
SWING AWAY:
The State of the Union (President George W. Bush, Jan. 28, 2003, Jewish World Review)Health care reform must begin with Medicare; Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society.We must renew that commitment by giving seniors access to the preventive medicine and new drugs that are transforming health care in America.
Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is.
And just like you, the members of Congress, and your staffs and other federal employees, all seniors should have the choice of a health care plan that provides prescription drugs.
My budget will commit an additional $400 billion over the next decade to reform and strengthen Medicare. Leaders of both political parties have talked for years about strengthening Medicare. I urge the members of this new Congress to act this year.
To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher cost: the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued.
Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care, and many parts of America are losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit; I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform.
No matter how often the Left, far Right, and Libertarians dismiss him as a Rockefeller Republican or Clinton-lite, Mr. Bush, rather than backing doiwn from something like privatizing Social Security, pushes the envelope farther--here proposing the privatization of Medicare. EJ Dionne, on NPR, called the speech Clintonesque. If Bill Clinton had proposed vouchers and privatizing the Welfare State's middle class benefits, when he had a Congress that would have eagerly passed them, he'd be remembered for more than being a sexual predator and he'd have left the country in the best shape it had ever been in.
Instead the heavy-lifting falls to a Republican president, who will be savaged by the Democrats and their interest groups, especially the media. But if President Bush can just get the process of privatiza