One at the usual place and the other at…The Onion.
A Very Strange Poll Question
I’m not sure what the point of this poll question is:
Forty-nine percent (49%) of Americans say that President Bush is more responsible for starting the War with Iraq than Saddam Hussein. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 44% take the opposite view and believe Hussein shoulders most of the responsibility.
First of all, Saddam started the “War with Iraq” fifteen years ago, way back in August 1990, when he invaded Kuwait. That war didn’t end until March, 2003, when he was deposed, because there was never a peace treaty from the first Gulf War, and he was in continuous violation of almost all of the UN resolutions that were put in place as conditions of the truce.
Now certainly, the president does have responsibility for taking action to finally end (not start) the war with Saddam. But I don’t really know what it means to say that someone started a war, or what value it has in assessing whether or not they were right to do so. Technically, one could say that Israel started the 1967 war, because they had to preempt what would otherwise have been a devastating attack by Arab forces massed on her borders.
So what?
Why is Rasmmussen even asking this question? The issue is not who “started the war,” but whether the war was just, and necessary for the purposes of national security. Talk about “who started it” is the mentality of the playground, which seems to be where the minds of many of our so-called opinion leaders reside these days.
Still Uptight
(Democrat) Victor Davis Hanson reviews the book “South Park Republicans,” and notes that the new puritans are on the left:
Dour, humorless, self-righteous, eager to use the coercive power of the state to impose ideological orthodoxy, so-called “liberals” and “progressives” had become enemies of freedom. These days the humorless, repressed enforcers of rigid standards of behavior are the politically correct professors and media pundits, the dour feminists (“That’s not funny!”), the race-tribunes, and the identity-politics hacks that monitor the media and popular culture for any deviations from the party line of liberal dogma, multiculturalism, and victim-politics.
He’s correct, in my opinion. It’s not just coincidence that Massachusetts is one of the bluest of the blue states. Modern (il)liberal nannyism is a direct descendant of the Puritan strain in American history, brought there by the East Anglians who settled that region, as described by David Hackett Fischer in Albion’s Seed. It continues to echo down the generations.
[Update on Saturday morning]
Someone notes that I didn’t read carefully–it’s on VDH’s web site, but the review is actually by Bruce Thornton.
Where Are All The People…
…who screamed at the “murder” of the noble Rachel Corrie, when something like this happens? Somehow, I don’t think that there will be any memorials set up for this and worshiped by the moonbats. Or protests of Caterpiller about it.
Chilling
Kerry Country points out one of the potential effects of the SCOTUS ruling:
This has to be a godsend for towns and cities that have been stymied so far in their attempts to shut-down any businesses, corporations, or private groups of which they disapprove. Private gun ranges, airfields, RV tracts, hunting preserves, fishing resources, minority religious congregations, newspapers — all are now fair targets for seizure and closure “for the economic benefit of the people.”
I think they’re right. To hell with stare decisis (particularly in a 5-4 vote). This is a ruling that should be overturned, or at least narrowly restricted, as soon as we can replace at least one of the justices who voted in favor.
An Anti-Hurricane Device?
It’s getting to be the time of year in south Florida to hope that this will work.
Just one of several items in the latest Technology Quarterly from The Economist.
Unimpressive
I’m reading the space policy paper by (former JSC Director George) Abbey and (former Clinton Science Advisor Neal) Lane.
It gets off on the wrong foot, in my opinion, right in the preface:
Space exploration on the scale envisioned in the president
Why, Yes
…yes, this decision is another blow to freedom, and property rights, and is another travesty by this court. At least Scalia voted the right way this time. This is one of the worst terms in my memory.
The Rest Of The Story
Keith Cowing has now posted a transcript from the Q&A portion of the Griffin talk on Tuesday. It’s quite interesting, with good questions (and answers) from Keith himself, Jim Muncy, Klaus Heiss, Lori Garver, Debra Lepore (of Kistler), Mike Lounge from Boeing, and others.
A Gitmo Primer
Lileks explains:
Q: What is Gitmo?
A: Contrary to what some suggest, it does not stand for “Git mo’ Peking chicken for Muhammad, he wants a second portion.” It stands for “Guantanamo,” a facility the United States built to see if the left would ever care about human rights abuses in Cuba. The experiment has apparently been successful.
It gets better.