Yes, the U.S. response should have been more firm.
Category Archives: War Commentary
Democrats And Socialism
Well, this is refreshing. Maybe she should think about switching parties, though; she seems out of touch with the base.
Pete Buttigieg
NATO
What is its 21st-century value?
It’s interesting to note that he doesn’t talk about the current mess with Turkey. I think it was a mistake to admit it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of Turkey, Erdogan seems to be losing popular support (which is a little surprising, considering the power grabs he’s been making).
The F-35
Thoughts from pilots on “flying” it. Scare quotes because they make it sound like they don’t fly it; they just issue commands to it.
The Russian Collusion Hunt
The tables have turned. I’d still like to know why Samantha Powers, or someone acting in her name, unmasked a person per day on average in 2016. And who leaked the names.
A Truth Commission
We need one for the Russia collusion set up:
…the most powerful individuals, institutions and interests in America conspired to set up a presidential candidate, and later president-elect, and later still President. Their goal? To defeat him in 2016; should he be elected, to prevent his taking office; and should he take office, to have him removed. And yet it’s precisely these people who accused (and, in many cases, still accuse) Mr. Trump of ‘stealing’ and ‘rigging’ an election, of ‘subverting our democracy.”’This is projection on an unimaginable scale.
Indeed. It also has to dig into the Clinton “investigation,” and see how high the abuse of power and obstruction of justice went.
[Late-afternoon update]
Sorry, broken link is fixed.
The Media Lied, Their Credibility Died
I favored the removal of Saddam Hussein, but I thought that the Bush administration Charlie Foxtrotted the aftermath, particularly with regard to fecklessness with the mullahs. But I was also continually annoyed by the “Bush lied, people died” mantra (not to mention the “War for Oil” nonsense). The only reason WMD was even an issue is that Tony Blair demanded UN approval, which couldn’t be attained without it. Anyway, Ari Fleischer sets the record straight (again).
The AR-15
Yes, the gun-control case against it is full of lies. As he notes, this isn’t about the AR-15; it’s about banning all semi-auto rifles, if not all semi-auto guns, if not all guns. That’s always their ultimate goal, because they know that an armed society is a free one.
A Modest Proposal For Academia
An earlier post elicited this comment from George Turner (who should have his own blog). I thought I’d slightly edit and elevate it here:
“Trying to stop the cheating won’t fix the problem, which was baked in when parental/donor pressures led to grade inflation. Using brutal attrition and grading on the curve was a way to continually deselect students. There was no point in a parent tying to cheat a kid into Harvard if the kid would almost immediately flunk out.
That harsh grading system’s drawback was that it produced drop-outs, and that was an inefficient way to get all of the bright kids the maximally beneficial education. And it still had the corruption problem because some rich or powerful kids simply weren’t going to be flunked out, even if it took hand-holding by the administration. And once it became obvious that rich kids weren’t really going to flunk out, the public realized that the Ivy League had become social clubs.
That seemed unfair, so SATs/ACTs. But those are harsh, and Jews did too well, so they added essays. But essays are hard, too, and Jews and Asians are great writers, so they emphasized BS high-school extra-curricular activities and offered a back door for ping-pong. Academics, educators, and administrators will no doubt make careers out of debating the merits of various fixes, and the wheels of the bus go round and round.
Continue reading A Modest Proposal For Academia