Mark Steyn says that demography is destiny.
Thanks A Lot, Guys
France and Italy have been funding terrorists in Iraq:
Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to
Subverting Private Enterprise
YouTube joins the War on (Some) Drugs.
Bad on them. The DEA is certainly welcome to post whatever nonsensical propaganda they want on the site, but the suppression of dissent is odious. What kind of arm twisting went on for that?
[Update a few minutes later]
In reading the comments, I see that there’s nothing unusual about this. Anyone who uploads a video can disable comments and ratings.
[/VOICE=”Emily Litella”]
Never mind.
[/VOICE]
Still, as one of the commenters points out, this could end up backfiring on the drug warriors. First, who’s going to go out of their way to look at anti-drug propaganda on YouTube? Second, expect dozens of parodies of the thing to appear very soon, which will get viewed and linked.
(Not So) Hidden Agendas?
I’ll probably have some commentary on this when I get more time (i.e., when relatives aren’t visiting for the weekend), but Jon Goff has an interesting post on some candid comments by Doug Stanley on ESAS. I’m sure that Doug is sincere in his beliefs that a) Mars is more important than the moon and b) ESAS is the best way under the political circumstances to make it happen. But I think he’s wrong on both counts, and more importantly it is not his place (or even Mike Griffin’s) to make policy. If he has problems with VSE as stated, and wants to do a touch and go on the moon (ignoring the president’s directive), he should work to get the policy changed, rather than pervert the architecture in his preferred direction without such a debate.
[Update on Monday morning]
More interactions with Dr. Stanley, from Keith Cowing.
Still Busy
Patricia and I are kid sitting this weekend while their parents go to Key West for the weekend, for their first vacation alone since the kids were born. They’re six and eight (almost nine) and a lovable handful. Doesn’t leave much time for blogging.
I do have to say, though, that if USC beats Notre Dame tonight and then loses next week to UCLA, you can’t imagine how hard I’ll laugh…
[Watching game]
I should obligatorily add, that I really, really hate having to root for Notre Dame…
But it’s 21-10 now, favor USC.
Being Thankful
I’ve got family visiting, and am making my traditional stuffing with cornbread, turkey sausage (I used to be able to get cranberry sausage in California, but there are no Bristol Farms here), wild rice, pine nuts, wild mushrooms, and the secret ingredient, pomegranate. My niece helped me dissect it for the berries. Her mother is from Iraq, so she knows her pomegranates.
We’ll be busy the rest of the day cooking, taking kids to the beach, watching football, ingesting fermented malt beverages, etc.
I’m thankful that we have pomegranates. And turkeys. I’m thankful that at my age, I’ve still got enough teeth to enjoy them (I recall my grandfather having to cut off his corn with a knife to eat it, when he wasn’t a lot older than me). I’m thankful for medical technology in general, which seems to be continuing to get better, and giving me hope that I’ll live to see escape velocity.
I’m thankful for family and loved ones, and the ability to share my thanks with them in good health on this day.
I’m thankful for the technology that allows me to express my thankfulness to those people who read this little web site, and I’m thankful for the readers who unaccountably and seemingly masochistically keep coming back to read it.
I’m very thankful that we’ll have elections again in two years. And that’s not a partisan comment (particularly since I’m not a member of any political party)–it would be true regardless of the results three weeks ago. Having a sister-in-law who is from Baghdad can make you appreciate small things like that.
We Don’t Need A “Dialogue”
Victor Davis Hanson says that we’re still in the “phony war” stage:
…why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by
We Don’t Need A “Dialogue”
Victor Davis Hanson says that we’re still in the “phony war” stage:
…why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by
We Don’t Need A “Dialogue”
Victor Davis Hanson says that we’re still in the “phony war” stage:
…why would either Damascus or Teheran wish to talk? The answer is plain. The former wants to profess to cool it a bit in destabilizing Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye in Lebanon; the latter wants to act like stopping the sending of agents of our destruction into Iraq in exchange for cooling our rhetoric about their bomb. What we would be doing in essence by
Free To Speak
In a victory for freedom of expression, Nonie Darwish has been reinvited to speak at Brown:
Any Arab who speaks differently from the status quo is immediately just branded as traitor, and they want to shut us up. We left the Middle East thinking we