Running Dog

A question of trust

2010-01-28T06:17:00.003-05:00

It’s a given that all politicians lie at one time or another. Americans generally don’t expect our politicians to be truthful on small matters. What we want is leadership we can trust to do the right things, who will tell us the truth on the issues that matter.
Nixon still had the support of a majority of Americans until he admitted he had lied, repeatedly, about Watergate. A week later he resigned.
Most Americans didn’t much care about Bill Clinton’s philandering, or even his perjury. But his weasel words on the meaning of the word “is” permanently damaged whatever trust he had left with the public. Clinton was lucky: he never had to speak to the country on an occasion like 9-11 or Katrina.
I never shared and don’t understand the deep dislike of George W. Bush that developed in the last few years of his Presidency, but I suspect a lot of it stemmed from a growing lack of trust. More and more people doubted that he could be believed, or be trusted to do the right thing.
Reagan, even when it was clear that he had been deceptive (Iran Contra) never lost the people’s trust. Conversely, most Americans in 1980 probably still believed that Jimmy Carter would never lie to them. But they no longer trusted him to make the right decisions.
Obama has shown a consistent habit of breaking promises and stretching the truth. He attended Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years but never heard Wright’s more incendiary comments. Bill Ayers was just a guy in the neighborhood. Obama’s government will be open and transparent, with bills posted on the web before they are voted on and Congressional negotiations on C-Span.
The Dianne Sawyer interview is the latest. Does he seriously expect us to believe that he would rather be a good one term President than a mediocre two term President?

I read this as a slap at W and Bill Clinton. But my fear is that, in the not too distant future, Obama will need Americans to trust him to make really hard decisions, to believe him when he speaks to the country in a moment of crisis. And we will need to trust that we have a leader who has the depth, wisdom, and maturity- and the smart advisors- to make hard decisions. A year in, I do not have that confidence in him, and I fear what will happen in a real crisis.

Carter lost the public’s trust after malaise, cardigan sweaters, the Iran embassy takeover, and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. He wasn’t dealing with attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Napolitano said after the Christmas Day near miss that ”the system worked.” Eric Holder wants to try terrorists in New York City, and reads Abdelmotallab his Miranda rights. This is thunder from a distant but approaching storm. More than just trouble for the Democrats in November 2010, no matter how much or in what direction Obama pivots, it bodes trouble for all of us.

I wrote this before the SOTU. Nothing to change. I'll just add a quote from a comment over at Tigerhawk:

This POTUS is a dangerously disingenuous dilettante and a growing disgrace to the office.

Damn, I wish I'd said that.

In the wake of the Massachusetts earthquake...

2010-01-20T05:57:00.003-05:00

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said last night it would "only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Brown is seated."

For the first time in my life, I'm proud to have Jim Webb as my U.S. Senator.

Three Cheers for Scott Brown

2010-01-19T23:38:00.003-05:00

... with respect to those who wish to harm us: I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation. They do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.

(Senator-elect Brown's victory speech, January 19, 2010)

Quick punditry: Three issues elected Scott Brown:
Obamacare; the Christmas near miss airline bombing (and Janet Napolitano's declaration that "the system worked"); and the Administration's plans for civil trials of terrorists.
Major media covered the last few days of the campaign but as far as I could tell, no one outside Massachusetts reported what Brown said in his stump speeches. I'm guessing he spoke as much about national security as he did about health care.

Martha Coakley was right about one thing: 2010 will be hell for the Democrats.

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance.

2009-12-28T19:45:00.002-05:00

The bad news: Terror cells in Yemen. Al Qaeda bomb plots. Massive demonstrations and violent repression in Iran. North Korea’s nuclear program may be farther advanced than previously suspected.

It’s multiple three a.m. phone calls, and the President is busy golfing in Hawaii.

But there is some good news. The Senate just passed a historic health care bill. And since Obama promised to be the last President to deal with health care reform, the problem must have been solved. Maybe Obama and Congress can move on to other issues?

Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan

2009-12-28T19:27:00.003-05:00

There will be lots of blame to go around when al Qaeda succeeds where Abdulmutallab failed and brings down an airliner, or commits an even more heinous atrocity. (Wager: Obama and Napolitano will blame Bush.) Here are my two chief culprits:

(1) The Flying imams and their attorneys. Removal of six Muslim imams from US Airways Flight 300 at the Minneapolis airport on November 20, 2006, resulted in a lawsuit against the airline and the airport, and a 2009 out of court settlement. This effectively stopped any initiative by American airline employees to exercise judgment and common sense, and deny a boarding pass to someone, who, say, had an Islamic sounding name and paid cash for a one way ticket from Amsterdam to Detroit, with no checked baggage. Twenty quatloos says the airlines have all established corporate policy: Do not risk a lawsuit because of a passenger’s ethnicity, country of origin, or assumed religious faith. If TSA does not flag him, let him board.

(2) DHS. Yes, Napolitano is an easy target. Political correctness does not begin to describe the sheer obtuseness of the redefinition of terrorism as “Man caused disasters.“ It’s not just a euphemism, it’s a state of mind. In November 2009 I heard a senior DHS staffer describe the Department’s mission as preventing and responding to natural disasters, like earthquakes and hurricanes; and man caused disasters, “like a dam break.” With that perspective, the 2800 deaths in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 were the result of poor engineering design. It’s no wonder Secretary Napolitano’s initial reaction to the attempted Christmas bombing was “the system works.”

President Obama has gone out of his way to avoid any associations with President G. W. Bush's war on terrorism. Obama doesn’t want to talk about terrorism, any more than he wants to make decisions about Afghanistan. As Dan Riehl notes about Obama’s statement today (emphasis added):

This has to be the most perfunctory speech the orator in chief has ever given. He's literally reading a press release and it shows. It's as if the issue doesn't even interest him at all.

The people who write rules for TSA have far more knowledge about terrorist threats, motives, and methodologies than will ever become publicly available. Given that, I still can’t comprehend the ban on in flight GPS systems, nor the prohibition on holding anything in a passenger’s lap for the last hour of the flight. If you’re on a nine hour trans-Atlantic flight, eight hours have passed, you see land out the window that is definitely not Greenland, and the plane is starting to descend, doesn’t that give you a clue as to where you are? For that matter, why not simply wait to ignite the explosive device in your underwear until the flight attendant asks you to hand over your blanket and pillow?

Al Qaeda's hallmark, from 9-11 to London to Madrid, has been multiple simultaneous attacks. One bomber who gets through security is like one cockroach in your kitchen: there are plenty more that you haven't noticed.

I see a bad moon rising.

Ski Mount Ida

2009-12-19T14:13:00.004-05:00

Unfortunately, the lift is down.

The Christmas blizzard of 2009

2009-12-19T14:07:00.006-05:00

Biggest storm in the DC area since 2003

Max Baucus and the battle to save marriage

2009-12-07T21:24:00.005-05:00

Let me say upfront, I'm against gay marriage or civil unions. I believe society has good reason to uphold the ideal of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, till death do you part. Even if that ideal is not reachable, it is a goal to which we should strive and one we should encourage our children to reach for.

But that said, when a United States Senator is cohabiting with his former State Director; when the Max Baucus/ Melodee Hanes relationship began when both were still married; and when eyebrows are raised only at the ethics of Baucus' job recommendation for his sweetie; well, at that point, the battle to save marriage is over. Forget locking the barn door. The horses are already galloping a mile down the road.

More anecdotal evidence:
One of my good friends is a Presbyterian minister. When he began his career, thirty- some years ago, most couples he married were in their early twenties. By the late 90's, most were in their late twenties or early thirties.

The (PCUSA) church I attend routinely admits as new members young engaged couples who are, as we said coyly in the innocent 80's, POSSLQ's (person of the opposite sex sharing living quarters.)

In the last ten years, most major American corporations have extended medical coverage to their employees' unmarried partners, whether gay or straight. The policy has little to do with an enlightened appreciation of human rights and the benefits of cultural diversity. It's simply a way to enhance employe recruitment and retention.

"Emptiness and the City": A link from NRO on unintended consequences of the sexual revolution.

I doubt that our culture is less innocent or more licentious now than we were back in the 1980's or the 1960's or the 1940's. We may be more honest, or we may simply have greater opportunities than we did in the past; yet I have trouble seeing either as a good thing. And while the 21st century communications network may make fooling around easier, it has its own perils, too. ("Can you please take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and may be calling you.")

From Genesis: "A man leaves his father and mother, and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh." The Hebrew word translated as "cleave" or "unite" means to cling -- to be glued. It's a commitment to permanence.

We are approaching the point at which the only reason for marriage is the tax deduction. And at that point we have lost something sacred.

How Obama treats U.S. Allies, v 2.1:

2009-11-30T19:38:00.000-05:00

Less than a week after honoring India with his first state dinner, Obame offers Pakistan expanded strategic partnership.
I know the US walks a delicate balance in working with Pakistan, and I suspect the timing of this has more than a little to do with Obama's Afghanistan speech tomorrow, but still, with smart people like Obama, Biden, and Hilary Clinton in charge, I expected our foreign policy to have a bit more nuance.

Amateurs in charge

2009-11-28T20:54:00.008-05:00

Unbelievably, we now have a worse example of egocentric self promotion than Balloon Boy's parents. Every component of the story is over the top: the drop dead gorgeous blond wife who spent seven hours in a salon prepping for a night out; the press spokesman who provides quotable quotes that skate the truth; the sheer chutzpah- or idiocy?- of crashing a White House dinner and the amazing fact that they pulled it off. Fifteen minutes of fame is fourteen minutes and fifty- nine seconds too long for people like this.

The Salahis' meeting with President Obama reminds me of both Michael Fagan, (who breached security at Buckingham Palace in 1982 for a ten minute conversation with Queen Elizabeth 2 in her bedroom), and German teenager Matthais Rust, who eluded Russian air defenses to land his plane in Red Square in 1987. How on God's green earth do these things happen? Successfuly crashing a State dinner seems just one more bit of evidence that the grown ups- or as Peggy Noonan more diplomatically puts it , the wise men and women- are not in charge anymore.

Noonan thinks that the pictures of Obama bowing are becoming iconic. I'd argue for the photo above.

What ever happened to Aunt Zeituni?

2009-11-21T09:07:00.006-05:00

History will judge Barack Obama’s presidency better than any of us can today, but one of his campaign's signal accomplishments was to singlehandedly kill public financing of Presidential elections. The campaign developed an enormously successful fundraising operation, with no accountability and apparently no means to determine if donors were American citizens or used their own names.

Besides characters such as Doodad Pro, Obama's most famous illegal contributor was his Aunt Zeituni Onyango, found living on an expired visa in a Boston housing complex. The Times noted, early on, that since "Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign (that) would indicate that she is a US citizen." (Can you say journalistic naivete?)

The potential fundraising fraud was a minor kerfluffle at the end of the campaign. The RNC asked for an investigation, the FEC promised one after the election, and the campaign vowed to immediately return all illegal donations (without explaining how they could tell which ones were illegal). After Obama's victory, everyone lost interest.

Why? Perhaps there is no story here. Perhaps there really were only a handful of illegal contributions. Or perhaps both Obama's supporters and opponents see the campaign's fundraising success as the brave new world of politics. It worked well, so don't rock the boat. We'll use the same methods.

There were multiple causes for President Nixon's downfall, but two may may be applicable. Woodward and Bernstein's investigations were driven by Deep Throat's advice: Follow the money. And it was not the dirty tricks, but the cover up, that turned so many against Nixon.

If half the energy that has been spent on birth certificate research had gone into chasing the money, what would we find? A year in, some of Obama’s supporters are becoming disillusioned. Maybe some of them have stories to tell. Perhaps they will tell them to this decade's Woodward and Bernstein.

What ever happened to Aunt Zeituni? She found a sympathic immigration judge and is apparently still in Boston.

Heads to explode...

2009-11-17T07:38:00.003-05:00

What's the northern Virginia equivalent of Sarah Palin- a conservative, gun toting female politician who bears a Down syndrome child, doesn't bother to read the New York Times, and by her mere existence and political success drives the Left barking dog crazy?

How about a former clerk to Clarence Thomas running for Congress against Jim Moran (D, MBNA) on a platform of fiscal conservatism/national security/ethics - who also happens to be gay?

Meet Matthew Berry. Fifty years ago, a Democrat Congressman from the South could only be defeated if he were caught in bed with a dead woman or a live man. Given CD 8's past support of Moran, neither of those would be likely to have much effect on his re-election chances.
It will be interesting to see how the tolerant, inclusive Alexandria/Arlington Democrats react to a gay, Clarence Thomas Republican.

The election is a year away, and Berry may face primary opposition, but who knows? Nobody thought Bill Clinton would be defeated when he ran for his second term as governor of Arkansas in 1980.

What is Obama thinking? (What, is Obama thinking?)

2009-11-14T14:08:00.005-05:00

I’ve seen this question several places in the last couple of days, in response to Eric Holder’s plans for Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s NYC tour; the President sending the Afghan plans back to the drawing board; and the unemployment summit scheduled for next month. (What do I have to do to get invited for a beer at the White House?)

I’ve got no inside information, just some thoughts:

Andrew McCarthy at NRO argues that the KSM trial is part of a Holder/Obama plan to appease the left and ruin the CIA, as a substitute for trying Bush and Cheney for war crimes. While he makes some good points, we should never ascribe to malice what we can chalk up to incompetence or stupidity.

Criminal trials for terrorism are consistent with eight years of Bill Clinton, and with John Kerry’s comment in his 2004 presidential campaign, (that he hoped we would get back to where terrorism was merely a nuisance.) The first WTC bombing? Put the blind sheikh on trial. The USS Cole? Bomb an aspirin factory in Sudan. The East Africa embassy bombings? Increase embassy security and warn Americans against travel to certain spots. Terror as crime has an easy solution- law enforcement, apprehension, trial , punishment. War is messy, and anyway how do we know whom to declare war on, and when or how we will win? Besides, moving KSM and his buddies to New York City is one more step in closing Gitmo. (The President will keep at least some of his campaign promises.)

Treating terror as a law enforcement issue has two big drawbacks. First, it didn’t have much success in reducing terror in the 1990’s (whereas declaring a war on terror after 9-11 seems to have been effective at preventing further attacks in the US.) Second, what are the chances we would have apprehended KSM had we not overthrown two rogue governments and put significant military assets in the area? Pakistan’s (limited) cooperation is not out of the goodness of their hearts.

Neocons are frequently accused of lacking nuance. I fail to see the nuance in treating terror as a criminal matter.

What of the Afghan (lack of) strategy? The past few months are a classic example of policy- making by leak. There’s a huge debate raging within the Adminstration. McChrystal wants more troops. Biden thinks we can just use UAVS, and invade Pakistan if necessary. A large contingent of Democrats wants us to withdraw quietly and quickly. The Karzai government makes a good target (let’s ignore the fact that any Afghan government will be crooked , except by Chicago standards, and that Karzai is a cleaner, more democratic politician than, oh, Putin or Mubarak or Ahmadinejad.)

I think Obama really does not know what to do. Imagine that Axelrod and Rahm arranged the trip to Dover as good PR- but that Obama saw the caskets, met the families, and was genuinely moved by the losses. Does anyone really know how that would affect his decision making?

There are domestic political considerations at work, to be sure, but much more is going on. The always entertaining but unreliable Debka had two big stories last week- that the Obama- Netanyahu face to face focused solely on Iran; and that there was a joint Israeli/American/ Jordanian/ Egyptian intelligence meeting in Amman. Whether Debka has solid sources or merely made both stories up, both have the ring of truth. Farther east, the stability of Pakistan looms as an issue with enormous potential impact on our Afghan policy.

An Israeli (or American or NATO) strike on Iran’s nukes, or another Iranian revolution, will send shock waves through and beyond the Mideast. If you know the rules of the game will change before the new year, delaying a decision on Afghanistan makes sense.

Then again, maybe I’m too much of an optimist.

Noted without comment

2009-11-11T16:31:00.003-05:00

Sumo wrestlers on bikes.

Lynn Woolsey, churches and politics

2009-11-10T20:49:00.006-05:00

From Ace of Spades

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey is suggesting that the IRS revisit the Catholic church's tax-exempt status (because) the role the bishops played in pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

It's not a new argument. Gay rights groups argue "if the LDS church insists on meddling into political affairs they should not be allowed to hold a tax exempt status." Opponents of Jerry Falwell''s Moral Majority expressed similar fears twenty years ago about religious groups' involvement in politics.

The only thing missing from Lynn Woolsey's concern is a knowledge of history. Is she unaware of the Catholic bishops' support for nuclear disarmament? The involvement of mainline American Protestant denominations in the nuclear freeze movement in the eighties? Perhaps she never heard of the Reverend Dr.Martin Luther King. Fifty years ago he led the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott. King's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church frequently hosted rallies during the boycott. Along with other Southern church leaders, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight segregation; they were joined in the early sixties by many northern white church leaders. Church involvement in the civil rights movement was not peripheral; it was critical. It was certainly, as Lynn Woolsey says of the Catholic bishops' role in the Stupak amendment, "more than advocacy."

Fifty years ago, segregationists such as Ross Barnett and George Wallace argued that churches had no role to play in politics. Lynn Woolsey is in good company.

If loving you is wrong…

2009-11-09T18:38:00.003-05:00

I’m developing a man crush on this guy.

First Senator Joe Lieberman, who heads the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, announced he was launching a congressional investigation to find out whether the Fort Hood attack last week was preventable, calling it the “most destructive terrorist act committed on American soil since 9/11.”

Then he ripped the public option in the health insurance reform bill.

If the public option plan is in there ... I will not allow this bill to come to
a final vote. I believe the debt can break America.

If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Lieberman’s statements reminds me of the furor when Washington National Airport was renamed for Ronald Reagan. Sure, it’s the right thing to do; but what’s almost as satisfying is the people whom the action is sure to irritate.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

2009-11-09T18:32:00.002-05:00

We’re renovating some newly leased space adjacent to our office. The contractor was in the other day checking the plans for which partitions to move. I interrupted his work. “Excuse me, but I’ve always wanted an excuse to say this. Mr.Gorbachev,” I pointed, “ tear down this wall.”

He was old enough to be as amused as I was.

One tribute from Mario Rubio in NRO:

As Ronald Reagan said, “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because
the U.S. was too strong."

Thank you, President Reagan. You did an exceedingly good thing, and it’s a pity how little credit you are receiving, twenty years on.

The Magic Number is 41

2009-11-07T15:43:00.004-05:00

With a House vote (maybe) today on health care reform, and all the Republicans lined up to vote against it, Nancy Pelosi can lose 4o votes of her 259 seat majority and still pass the bill. The curent tally per Jim Geraghty at NRO is 22 Democrats who have said they will vote no, and 7 who seem poised to do so. 69 Democrats have recently expressed opposition to the bill.
The final vote may hinge on parliamentary maneuvers on two key issues. Pro choice Democrats want a prohibition on insurance funding for abortion. Hispanics fear a GOP amendment to bar undocumented workers from purchasing insurance. The House leadership will be busy making deals, right up until the final vote-- if it occurs this weekend.
The Democrats have to get the bill out this weekend; any more time allows more analysis, more polling, more angry phone calls from constituents to wavering Democrats. If there is no vote, or a "no" vote, this weekend, I call the bill dead.
Whatever the House passes will bear little resemblance to a final Senate bill; and the reconciliation process will give House Democrtas in marginal districts one more thing to worry about.
If Pelosi can't pass this, I expect a coup in the House leadership. Steny Hoyer is a smart guy. Obama will need someone to blame, and it will be hard to pin failure on 177 Republicans.

Proud member of the Virginia Taliban

2009-11-07T07:21:00.002-05:00

One benefit of living in Alexandria is the entertainment value of having Jim Moran (D-MBNA) as our congressman. Last Monday, at a Creigh Deeds rally, Moran compared Virginia Republicans to the Taliban.

I mean, if the Republicans were running in Afghanistan, they’d be running on the
Taliban ticket as far as I can see.

A McDonnell campaign spokesman, in what has to be one of the most charitable explanations ever, said that Moran was seeking to rally voters who are unexcited by their own candidates.

I see a great T shirt opportunity.

The GOP ain't dead yet.

2009-11-05T18:55:00.004-05:00

Two quotes afterthe 2009 elections:

Ed Gillespie at the Washington Post:

McDonnell laid out a steady stream of policy initiatives rooted in a commitment to lower taxes, less regulation and innovation. Too often, however, Republicans don't "finish the sentence" and remind voters outside our base why such conservative policies are better. McDonnell's campaign attracted crucial independent voters by focusing on the benefits of his policies.

Ramesh Ponnuru, TIME

Republicans' principal problem in recent elections has not been that they are too far right, or not far right enough... The problem has instead been that voters have not thought Republicans of any stripe had answers to their most pressing concerns.

Democrats have run against George W. Bush for eight years. While successful in 2006 and 2008, it didn’t work in 2004 and it sure didn’t work in 2009. A year of Obama, Pelosi and Reid has given the American people a pretty clear idea of what the Democrats are for, not just what they were against. Hope and Change looks like unlimited spending; a health care plan that is long on smoke, mirrors and promises and short on specifics; Treasury officials who don’t pay their taxes; an antipathy for dissent; Presidential advisors who “speak truth to power” without realizing that they are the power structure now; and an incoherent foreign policy based more on dreams and expectations than actual plans or results.
But, hey, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize!
All that may keep voters from supporting Democrats; but it is not enough to make them support Republicans. We have to finish the sentence.

I see three areas where Republicans must reach a consensus to move forward;
· What are we for?
· How do we bridge the party’s divide on social issues, and unite on all the issues where we agree?
· Are we Glenn Beck populist bomb throwers, or are we serious about winning elections and governing?

Here are some suggestions on what the GOP could be for:

Strong national defense and homeland security, with a recognition that America’s concerns do not end at the shores of the continental United States. We aren't all neocons or internationalists; but we can be neither isolationists nor apologists for all of America’s past evils . We should be willing to negotiate with anyone who will talk to us in good faith, while realizing that not everyone fits that description. ( Ronald Reagan: “Trust but verify.”) The President of the United States (once known as the leader of the Free World) must protect and defend the interests of the United States. If he doesn’t, no one else will. We will work with allies and friends; but we will capitulate to no one.

Civil rights and civil liberties. How do we make sure that while our government is protecting us, they are not infringing on our freedom? On a different level, we benefit from having an enormous amount of data on our behavior stored on the computers of Google, Safeway and Travelocity. How do we make use of technology and still protect the individual's right to privacy?

A belief in equality of opportunity, with no guarantee of equality of results

Free trade.

Tort reform.

Energy independence. This is more than just drill here , drill now; it is developing solar and wind power where they make sense, even if it is off Nantucket. It is new, safe nuclear; it is Yucca Mountain. (Sorry, Senator Ensign.) It is increasing energy efficiency everywhere we can.

Tax reform, earmarks reform, and entitlement reform. We’ve had national dialogues on race. How about one on the fact that we have to pay for the services we want?
· Residents of metropolitan Washington DC should not expect to have their highways expanded, their broken water mains repaired, and their teachers and police officers paid, from revenue raised in Walla Walla, Washington. Or vice versa.
· We must limit government spending, whether it is for new fighter jets or bridges to nowhere. We can't fund everything, we need to make wise choices.
· Everybody should pay taxes, not just "the Rich." We should all be invested in the American system.
· The tax code should be fair, simple and transparent. Economic decisions should not be made on the basis of lowering one’s tax liability.
· Entitlement reform is the third rail of American politics, but if Bill Clinton could enact welfare reform, why can’t the GOP tackle entitlements?

Immigration and border control. We are a nation of immigrants; as long as our economy needs inexpensive labor, it will find its way here. At the same time, we have to find a way to control our borders. There’s no easy fix on this one but it is an issue we need to honestly discuss and try to address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
None of this is easy. But we’re smart people. We put a man on the moon. We invented the microchip and the PC and the IPOD. In fifty years we went from the Montgomery bus boycott, to Watts and Detroit, to the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr, to Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and President Barack Obama. We can do this.

Social issues, for the most part, are secondary to me. National security trumps everything else. Yet I know that social conservatives, and those who disagree with them, have valid concerns. Can we agree to disagree? Or, even better, can we find common ground on some issues –that we don’t care what two consenting adults do in their own homes; that government should neither require nor prohibit employers from providing benefits to their employees’ spouses or unmarried partners? That people in New York City may have valid reasons for gun control, which have no relevance to residents of Gage County Nebraska? That religious groups can provide terrific services to those in need, but should not be forced to support practices they disapprove of?

The GOP has come back from defeat before, in 1980 and in 1994, in both years winning contests that no one expected Republicans to win. We can do the same in 2010. But we have to finish the sentence. We don’t have to have a Ronald Reagan or a Barack Obama; we have to offer the American people something to believe in.

I don't feel very secure....

2009-11-05T18:53:00.003-05:00

I was at a speech by a DHS assistant secretary last week. He noted that the DHS mission was to respond to disasters, “whether they are man-made, like dam failures, or natural.”

So 9-11 was like a dam failure?

What if the GOP sweeps?

2009-11-02T20:17:00.003-05:00

I'm by nature an optimist. I want to believe that Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie and Doug Hoffman will all win tomorow, and even that David Harmer will beat Garamendi in the California 10th CD special election. Heads will explode, and the spin from Robert Gibbs will make Linda Blair in The Exorcist look like a piker.
Two results if that happens:
1) Health care reform, and Cap and Trade, are DEAD. Congress may pass a health care bill but it will bear no resemblance to the most recent proposals from Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi. The President, in a rare moment of candor, will blame the failure on Congress's lack of quick action in August.

2) The Obama Administration will renew its war on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the GOP, and expand it to other major media outlets. Valerie Jarrett will continue to "speak truth to power" (ARGGH!) but be more roundly ridiculed.

It would be fun to watch the meltdown, except that it is the United States government. This may be worse than Jimmy Carter.

In Defense of the RNC (but not Dede Scozzafava)

2009-11-02T18:42:00.003-05:00

The Republican National Committee has taken a lot of flak for their initial support of Dede Scozzzafava as the GOP's candidate in New York's 23rd Congressional district special election. I've got no special knowledge of the workings of the New York GOP, and the third, fourth and fifth parties that (as I understand it) can allow candidates to stand for election on more than one party label, seems to be straight out of a banana republic. In hindsight, from this distance, the NY GOP's pick of Scozzafava as their nominee looks as smart as buying Bear Stearns stock last August.

But let's cut the RNC some slack. There are no national political parties*. The RNC and the DNC are committees of two people from each state, a national chairman, and a small staff. The parties meet every four years at their national conventions but otherwise the Republican and Democrat parties are actually fifty-one separate state organizations, along with the elected officials who claim a D or R by their names (and rarely agree 100% with their party's official platform.) The RNC assumes that the New York state party will support its presidential candidate every four years , whomever he or she is; the New York state party assumes that the RNC will support the candidates which the party chooses for state and local elections.

Is it a good system? It beats the alternative: multiple parties where coalition governments are the rule. (Think Italy or Israel). It usually works, with occassional oddities: Joe Lieberman, defeated in the Democratic primary, victorious as an independent. He's an IINO. Or Texas Congressman Greg Laughlin, whom the GOP recruited to switch parties in 1995. A year later he lost the primary to Ron Paul. And then there's Arlen Specter, or Jim Jeffords.

When the national parties interfere in local party decisions, bad things happen. The DNC struggle with the establishment Southern Democrats from 1964 to 1972 changed the Solid South, from Texas to North Carolina, from all- D Senators to five Democrats and fifteen Republicans. Before that, the intra- party feuds over slavery killed the Whigs and birthed the GOP.

Chuck Todd just portrayed the Hoffman- Scozzafava feud as "massive infighting" between the GOP establishment in DC and the grassroots. He's smart enough to know better. The civil war is mostly at the local level. Michael Steele expected the New York GOP to pick the best possible candidate; his responsibility was to support the local party.

As for Dede Scozzafava, I agree with NRO: she owes the GOP $900,000.

*Excepting the CPUSA, ANSWER, and the LaRouchies.

Women with big......drums

2008-06-03T20:30:00.002-04:00

From the Washington Folk Festival at Glen Echo Park , May 31, 2008.

The Batala Percussion Band started in Washington, DC in June, 2007. We're an international all women band, that plays Afro-Brazilian / Samba-Reggae rhythms.

Senator Clinton isn't ending her campaign anytime soon

2008-04-09T20:53:00.002-04:00

Conventional Wisdom six months said Hillary Clinton would coast to the Democratic party nomination and the Presidency. Today's CW: she can't win and will surely drop out after Pennsylvania or North Carolina.
This morning Clinton loyalist Lanny Davis ("speaking only for myself", he notes) pens a Wall Street Journal op ed on Obama's Minister Problem. There is nothing new here. Davis asks the same questions that were asked when Wright's sermons first became famous, but he warns the Democrats,

This issue is not going away. If many loyal, progressive Democrats remain
troubled by this issue, then there must be even more unease among key swing
voters....If Mr. Obama doesn't show a willingness to
try to answer all the questions now, John McCain and the Republican attack
machine will not waste a minute pressuring him to do so if he is the Democratic
Party's choice in the fall. But by then, it may be too late (emphasis added).

Whoever wins the popular vote in Pennsylvania and North Carolina wll be hailed as a victor, neither candidate will come away with a huge delegate lead. Senator Clinton has no reason to quit unless and until the superdelegates start to turn to Senator Obama. She has every reason to hold on until a convention credentials committee in Denver decides what to do with the Florida and Michigan delegates. (Both Senators Obama and Clinton probably have a few lawyers on retainer to file injunctions at that point, too.)

Lanny Davis's op ed is a warning: the Clintons are not going to go away.

I expect interesting campaign news before the Pennsylvania primary.

The Car Bomb at the Guggenheim

2008-03-30T15:56:00.003-04:00

I love NewYork City. I love to walk the streets, watch the people, listen to the little snippets of conversation. But sometimes it feels like an alternate universe.
We visited the Guggenheim on Friday. Primary exhibit is Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang's I Want to Believe.
It's not surprising that the Guggenheim describes the exhibit in the sort of dense prose that seems to have lost any meaning.

Cai Guo-Qiang is internationally acclaimed as an artist whose creative
transgressions and cultural provocations have literally exploded the accepted
parameters of art making in our time.

Nor is it a shock that the Guggenheim has turned over most of the Museum to an ardent admirer of Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. These folks probably have Che T shirts too.

I've got to admmit, the exhibit is fascinating. Cai Guo-Qiang uses gunpowder as an art form. He specializes in "explosion events": he has strung explosives around the Tate Gallery in London, (and on the East Rver in NYC, among other spots), set them off, and recorded it all on film. This is more than just a fireworks show- no damage done but you know what it represents. (While watching one of the videos on Friday, a man behind me commented, "it's shock and awe in Baghdad.")

The centerpiece of the exhibit is Inopportune: Stage One, which

presents nine real cars in a cinematic progression that simulates a car bombing,
occupying the central atrium of the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda.

It's riveting. What baffles me is that the Museum introduces the exhibit by stating that they have allowed Cao to invade the building. They are proud that they have allowed him to explode a simulated car bomb in one of the leading art museums in a city where Islamic terrorists killed nearly 3000 people six and a half years ago.

I wonder what Cao thinks of Tibet?

NYC six years on.....

2008-03-30T15:47:00.002-04:00

We took a quick tourist trip to New York City this weekeend; rode the PATH train in from New Jersey. It was our first visit to lower Manhattan since 9-11. The train pulled into the station in the middle of the WTC pit; we walked out to the street, looking at the hole in the ground, stopped at one point and gazed silently. I thought, this is holy ground.
After a long minute my wife turned to me and said simply:
"McCain."

TEOTWAWKI?

2008-03-30T15:44:00.002-04:00

Another sign of the impending apocalypse: Giant mutant pink flamingos.

I blame Bush- Cheney.

Denver in August: Panicked Democrats turn to Lord Palpatine

2008-02-12T22:01:00.004-05:00

David Freddoso at NRO does Delegate math for Dummies

This is the outcome Democrats dread most, the one likely to cause hard
feelings more than any fair-and-square election victory ever could. The
salvation of the Democratic system has previously been the propensity for
voters to unite around a winner early ... This time, the Democratic race has
come down to just two candidates, either of whom could win. It is going into
the late states, no matter what. It is an undemocratic game in which the
voters are mathematically incapable of picking the winner without the help
of unelected party elders.

He has a lot of company in this opinion. This looks to be the first party convention since 1976 (Ford and Reagan) in which the nominee has not been sure thing before the delegates gathered.

I've thought for the last six months that Hillary Clinton would not be nominated. I'm still not sure she will be, but I think the Democrats, at the wire, will pull back from nominating a two- year Senator from Illinois. There are too many flashpoints inthe world right now. Before August, one or more will ignite, and foreign policy or terror or both will be more on voters minds than the economy.

Senator Obama would make an exciting peacetime presidential candidate. In a time of war, the Democrats will want someone more experienced.

But it still may not be Hillary.

Hillary and Barack fight all the way to the convention. It gets nasty. After the first ballot, with neither a winner, the convention lights go out as spotlights illumine the podium. The curtains behind the podium part and Al Gore descends a staircase, a halo above his head, his Nobel in one hand, his Oscar in the other. The crowd goes wild, drowning out Bill Clinton's cries of anguish. Hillary rushes the stage but is restrained by the Secret Service. Gore and his Veep Obama are nominated by acclamation.

More voter suppression in Bush's America

2008-02-05T20:12:00.001-05:00

Throughout Virginia on Super Tuesday, voters showed up at their usual polling places only to find them closed, Fox News reports.

By noon, the State Board of Elections had received about 400 calls, many of them
from callers asking why their polling places were closed.

Virginia's primary is next Tuesday ,February 12.
A half dozen people also showed up at a Milwaukee polling place on Super Tuesday to vote. Wisconson doesn't have a primary today either.

Thoughts on Super Tuesday and beyond

2008-02-05T06:15:00.000-05:00

McCain could put Romney away today. Romney can slow McCain's momentum, but it will take more than a Romney victory in California. Is the groundswell of anti McCain sentiment enough?
On the Democrat side, a draw in popular votes and delegates today - even a narrow win for Hillary- counts as a victory for Obama, no matter how much the Clintons spin it. Obama has the momentum. Watch for the the gloves to come off in the Clinton campaign. This one really may go to a convention floor fight, and some great television.

Down the road, who do the nominees pick as veeps? If the Clintons go nuclear to stop Obama, Hillary- Obama is unlikely. If Obama wins, to maintain the change mantra he needs to turn to someone else; the same 40 some odd percent of Americans who don't want a Clinton back in the White House, don't want them in the Vice President's home either.
VP's have been chosen for geographic balance (Kerry- Edwards, Kennedy- Johnson) and for party unity (Reagan- Bush). It seems George W. Bush chose Cheney because he liked him and thought they would work well together. (Why did George H.W. Bush pick Dan Quayle?) Bold moves are usually seen as desperate pandering: think Reagan - Schweiker or Mondale- Ferraro.

If McCain or Romney go up against Obama or Clinton, it's arguable that they need to pick a woman, or an African American, as VP. Yet the potential candidates look either politically untenable (Condi Rice, Colin Powell) or are Quayle/ Ferraro political nobodies (J.C Watts, Michael Steel, Alan Keyes.) And would a Michael Steele do the ticket any good?

For both McCain and Obama, the VP choice is critical. If McCain is nominated, his age ensures we'll see stories this fall about President Reagan's Alzheimers. For Obama it is his first major appointment. He needs some foreign policy gravitas to complement all the change. The Democrats have won twice since 1964: Carter, (post- Nixon), Clinton, (post Cold War). Are voters ready to trust the Democrats again in a dangerous world?

The Republicans have one advantage: they go last. If there is a fight at the Democrats' shindig in Denver, the GOP may be able to take advantage of it.
Prediction:
McCain- Giuliani
Obama- Richardson.
But six months is a long, long time.

Does Bill Clinton want to be the President's spouse?

2008-01-31T20:29:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports on a friend of Bill's who's done far better than a $100,000 gain on cattle futures.

After Kazakh mining deal, financier donated $31 million to Clinton charity.

Bill Clinton, ex-President and Senator's spouse, doesn't have to look for fundraising opportunities. They just come to him. Most of them probably avoid media attention. As the President's spouse, the money may not dry up, but it will certainly be tracked more closely. What's the opportunity cost of living in the White House again?

Maybe it's so high that with the economy a campaign issue, it makes Bill Clinton say that

We have to slow down the economy to fight global warming

The Kennedy endorsement

2008-01-29T07:03:00.000-05:00

The Kennedy family's anointing of Barack Obama as the true heir of JFK must be particularly galling to Bill Clinton. He was supposed to be the Second Coming of JFK. Bill's most cherished political (and personal?) icon is the photograph of himself at Boys Nation, shaking hands with President Kennedy.
Barackomania seems to be another recurrence of America's quest for a knight in shining armor. Whether Obama can fulfill that role for longer than it takes some intrepid investigative reporter (with help from James Carville) to expose details of the Senator's days in the Illinois legislature is a good question. Obama's similarities to JFK are few. Kennedy represented generational change. He had interesting rhetoric but was vague on details. Both come from ethnic groups that one can argue are on the verge of assimilation into mainstream America. (See, for example, How the Irish Became White.) But beyond that?
JFK was a war hero, fifteen years after the end of the Good War. I'd argue that much of his popularity while in office resulted from the Cuban Missile crisis, (just as George W. Bush enjoyed a surge of support after 9-11.) He captured our imagination with the Apollo program. Our guesses on what Kennedy would have done, had he lived, on Vietnam, civil rights, and economic policy, depend as much on our own political views as on any real knowledge of the choices he would have made. Kennedy only became a god after his assasination. That is not a model that many would choose to emulate.

Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Senator Obama invokes our memories of her father and our dreams of Camelot. But for thirty years, Ted Kennedy's name and his legislative ideas have beene a key component of successful Republican fund raising letters. Senator Kennedy's endorsement may win Obama the nomination; but he will need to distance himself from the Ted Kennedy wing of the Democratic party to win in November.

Quests for knights in shining armor- whether one is looking for a spouse or a Presdent- tend to end badly. Let's hope for a gentle letdown from Barackomania.

Shooting themselves in the foot?

2008-01-24T06:46:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting use of money.
Liberal Group Plans Yearlong Anti-Bush Campaign With Goal to Deny Positive Legacy

one goal is to make sure Bush does not enjoy a resurgence in public approval
that could help Republican congressional candidates and the Republican
presidential nominee in this year's elections.

Funny thing, it all goes back to Reagan who

became a rallying cry for conservatives and their ideology. Progressives are
still living with that.

The Democrats can't run against Bush this year. He isn't on the ballot. They need to give voters a reason to vote for them. And whoever the Republicans eventually nominte, he will not run as another Bush
It's just that much more money that they can't spend on Obamary.

Back yard wildlife

2007-12-27T18:46:00.000-05:00

A Christmas eve visitor.

The dogs went berserk.

Paul and LaRouche: Cults?

2007-12-27T18:25:00.000-05:00

Twenty five years ago a buddy and I were walking through Houston Hobby airport when he spotted the LaRouche table (back then his vehicle was the "U.S Labor Party") and walked up to them. "OK, what's your theory on who killed JFK?" he asked.
"We don't have a theory. We know."

Ron Paul and his supporters seem cut from the same cloth. Dr. Paul has no doubts, no nuance. All that is wrong with America can be fixed if we just follow the Constitution. The abortion debate disappears when the states are allowed to decide it. Our economic problems are solved when we return to the gold standard. There really are simple solutions to complex issues. And Ron Paul is the LAST chance to save America.

Or so it seems from reading Dr.Paul's supporters on the web. Whether gold standard monetarists, 9 11 truthers, white supremacists, or his more sane supporters, all have a certainty that few other campaigns can match. What's interesting about the Paul cult is its inclusiveness. This is a big tent party. LaRouche was a Stalinist; his campaigns were a cult of personality with a fixed ideology. Everyone drank the same Kool aid and followed the Dear Leader. Paul is more like a Unitarian New Age cult. There is room for different opinions; but only Ron Paul can save America.

The Paul campaign can't keep all its divergent groups together for long. And no one is quite as bitter as an ex cult member. But Paul's campaign may still give us another six months of cheap entertainment.

Bhutto's assassination and the US primaries

2007-12-27T18:07:00.000-05:00

John Podhoretz calls it right: The end of the Primary's Holiday from History.

The murder of Bhutto moves foreign policy, the war on terror, and the threat of
Islamofascism back into the center of the 2008 campaign.

So who benefits?
For the Republicans, for the typical Republican primary voter who will want a foreign policy hawk, it helps Giuliani and McCain. Perhaps Romney and Thompson. It does Huckabee no good.
But it gives a boost to the 21st century Lindberghs ("Let Europe deal with Europe's problems"). It will hurt Senator Clinton in the primaries. It may boost Ron Paul's support, despite insane statements like this:

Ronald Reagan would be ashamed.

After Fidel, what?

2007-12-20T23:16:00.000-05:00

Fidel Castro surprised nearly everyone when he announced a week ago that he might give up power. As far as I can tell, no one took the statement at face value. Does it mean he is finally dead? Or is he recovering and putting out bait to see who agrees with the idea and needs to be arrested?

The past seventy years provide multiple examples of how dictatorships end.
Nazi Germany and Tojo’s Japan: Ruins
Soviet Union: The farce of the 1991 coup. Sixteen years later…
Franco: Peaceful death, peaceful transition
Romania: Ceasescu’s violent end
China: Tiananmen 1989. Some regimes don’t just fade away

What does Cuba look like after Fidel? If history is a guide, the conventional wisdom is probably wrong.
Will Cuban cigars still be a hot commodity when they are easily available in the U.S?
Does Cuba become a foothold for Hugo Chavez or the Chinese? A new center for the Colombian drug trade? A tropical Las Vegas?
Will a free Cuba induce massive immigration to Florida and points north; or will first-, second- and third generation Cuban Americans return to the island?
If Cuba’s health care system is as good as we’ve been told, it will be a lure for retirees-- Florida with cheap medicine.
Guantanamo may close.
NAFTA may expand.

There are at least a couple of sure things.
Havana will make a great stop for cruise lines.
Free Cuba will certainly attract missionaries- Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, LDS, Scientologist. The expected rise of religion in Russia, post 1991, has tempered neither nationalism nor capitalism. Secular missions- Amway, Mary Kay Cosmetics and Starbucks- may be more successful.

It’s a future that could head in almost any direction. Castro has been in power for nearly fifty years. A majority of Cubans and Americans have never known a Cuba without Fidel. Can any of us predict what it will become?

It’s more than a rhetorical question. The Mariel boatlift in 1980 brought 125,000 Cubans to the United States. The influx of refugees, and the riots at Camp Chaffee Arkansas, added to the public’s malaise with Jimmy Carter, and helped first term Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton lose re- election in the Reagan landslide. Whatever happens after Fidel will affect us all, in ways large and small.

As an engineer, I’ll close with my dream for a free Cuba. I want the design contract and toll concession for the Florida Straits bridge- tunnel.

So much for Solidarity

2007-12-20T23:13:00.000-05:00

First Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien crossed the writers' picket lines. Now Stewart and Colbert are coming back. Will they use scab writers? Illegal aliens ? Or outsource the writing to India?

Huckabee and gastric bypass surgery

2007-12-13T05:52:00.000-05:00

Mike Huckabee’s weight loss scam

Vanderleun calls it a blog hit.

I’m not a Huckabee fan. There are plenty of serious issues for which Huckabee can, and should, be criticized. He’s fourth or fifth on my list of candidates I’d support, behind Giuliani, Thompson and Romney but still well ahead of Ron Paul.
But this is just indecent.
I haven’t read the whole 10,000 words, and I don’t plan to do a point by point analysis , but Plutarch lost me at the marathon and fuel belt.

The marathon prowess that Huckabee often touts is not so likely to be an example of exercise inducing weight loss, as it is the expected result of (bariatric) weight loss permitting exercise.
While running marathons Huckabee is shown carrying that energy supplementation, that is both expected of, and associated with, bariatric marathoners.

I’ve run 26.2 miles. Trust me, you get hungry. I carried snacks with me. That’s evidence I had gastric bypass surgery?

100% of wife beaters are men. I‘m a man. Therefore….

And I really want to see the evidence that running marathons is an expected result of bariatric weight loss.

That Governor Huckabee took a vacation and didn’t reveal where he was going seems to be the same sort of argument.

If you have a good argument you don’t need to pile on.
The whole article reminds me of the poor schnook who built a model of the World Trade Center from chicken wire and proved that fire does not melt steel. He’s even got graphs. In color.

I don’t really care whether Romney believes Jesus is Satan’s brother; or Hilary seduces twelve year old boys. The personal lives of some of the candidates (in both parties ) are a little tawdry. But if we can’t win elections based on issues, we don’t deserve to win.

If Plutarch’s “research” is true, yes, Huckabee is toast.

I call BS.

Global warming causes blizzards; school children and teachers rejoice.

2007-12-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Snow on Mount Ida

National Review online notes that Global warming saps hurricane strength.

It apparently causes heavy snow too.

My office has a project in upstate New York; a team just spent a week there. (Tragically, I was unable to go.) On their return they reported the area is having snow earlier and heavier than usual. It's global warming. Lake Erie hasn't frozen over yet; so the open water generates more lake effect snow.

The first computer game I ever purchased was SimEarth. It was a cool little toy. The user's guide included a long appendix on the Gaia hypothesis, with a discussion on what might cause an ice age. Snow has a high albedo; it reflects a lot of sunlight, which reduces the energy in the atmopsphere and cools the earth. More snowfall, less melting.

Global warming causes glaciation.

The good news is, the rising sea level will fall.

Breaking news: Earthquake in Bali. I blame all the Gulfstreams parked there for the UN Global Climate conference.

Annapolis is not Munich

2007-11-27T21:30:00.000-05:00

Let's get serious. The Annapolis conference will not accomplish its stated purpose (although it may have benefits that no one now wants to discuss publicly) but it is not Munich. Here are six reasons why:
1. Israel is the strongest military power in the Mideast. No one else comes close.
2. Israel, with the support of the United States, two months ago pulled off a stealth raid on some sort of facility of in Syria. (Would Neville Chamberlain have helped the Czechs bomb a German munitions plant in 1938?)
3. Yet Syria is still attending the conference. That must make for interesting conversation in the men's room.
4. Despite the public posturing (Arab leaders assume if they are photographed shaking Olmert's hand, they will wind up like Anwar Sadat), who do the Saudis and the Gulf States fear the most?
a) Israel's nuclear weapons
b) the US Navy
c) a nuclear armed Iran.

5. Israel and the faction of the PLO of which Abbas is, for the moment, the nominal leader, have agreed to agree. Ho hum. No one- not Condi Rice nor George Bush nor Olmert nor any of the Quartet, the Arabs, or Abbas- expect any results. The can has merely been kicked down the road. Given the alternatives, that is not a bad option.

Abbas is in the same situation that Arafat was. One can debate whether he can control the Palestinian groups who send splodeydopes to Tel Aviv discos, but chooses not to; or whether he really wants peace but can not control the "militants". It makes no difference. What stops Palestinian terror is good Israeli intelligence, police work, and the IDF. Abbas is irrelevant.

6. What's the point of Annapolis? Maybe it is just feel- good photo ops. Maybe it is a wish that talking can't do any harm and may do some good.
Maybe it is about more than Israel and the Palestinians. See #4 above.

I heard a couple of talk radio callers today suggest that Olmert be replaced with Netanyahu. I don't like Olmert either, but I get pissed when the French or Germans try to tell Americans who we should elect as President.

There is a story that President Reagan decided not to attend Andropov's funeral when he was told he would not be allowed to dance on the grave. Olmert has been in politics long enough that he probably does not care that the Arabs will not shake his hand. Yet if I were Olmert, or George Bush, I would like to shake Assad's hand, look him in the eyes, grin, and squeeze just a little harder.

What does wartime look like?

2007-11-17T14:11:00.000-05:00

One benefit to living in DC is that the lunchtime professional /civic group rubber chicken meetings tend to have more interesting speakers than in , say, Topeka. Last week at an engineering group, the guest speaker was in charge of new construction for the Department of State. "I try to protect our employees from incidents like this", he noted. (1998 US embassy bombing, Nairobi.)
Later on he said "this is wartime." I had heard the same statement a week before from the Director of Public Works at one of the large Army bases near DC. He could not understand why local transportation and environmental agencies were not more cooperative with the Army.
From their perspective, they are right. I have to disagree.

If we were really at war we would be rationing gasoline and tires.
We' might be rationing meat and sugar.
We'd probably be rationing computer chips.
There would be a draft.
We'd have secure borders. There would be still be a lot of resident aliens working here but we would be keeping track of who and where they are.
Taxes would be a lot higher; government services, for most of us, would be a lot lower. Few would complain.
Bipartisanship would mean something. Politics really would stop at the water's edge.

The State Department employee made another comment, in passing, that makes me
wonder if he had heard something recently that stuck with him, or if he had
just been to one too many security briefings that week.

We need to prepare the American people to respond to chemical and biological attacks. The government has not done a very good job of that and we should. It 's
going to happen.

Ron Paul: America's Paul Belien?

2007-11-13T13:44:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul was first elected to Congress in a 1975 special election. In the next five years he ran several fiercely contested races for the seat, against the same opponent; as I recall he won in '75 , lost in '76, won in '78 and '80. I was a volunteer in his first three campaigns.

Paul's supporters were mostly very conservative Republicans- people who had not yet forgiven Eisenhower for beating Robert Taft in the 1952 presidential primary; and for whom Barry Goldwater was an even greater hero than Ronald Reagan. Paul 's supporters also included a fervent group of gold standard libertarians; I heard several long lectures on von Mises economics. ( I'm an engineer: Zzzzzzzz.)

Now, this was Texas in the mid 70's; it wasn't Birmingham 1962, but it wasn't politically correct California of 2007 either. We used to entertain ourselves at college by calling one of Houston's two Dial a Nazi recorded phone messages. One claimed to be the Texas branch of the American Nazi party; the other claimed it was the Houston Klan chapter.

There were a few folks among Paul's volunteers who, if you talked to them for very long, were quite upfront about their white supremacist views. They sounded a lot like the recording on the Dial a Klan line.

I never understood Dr. Paul's appeal to those folks. I never heard him say anything remotely racist. On the other hand, while volunteering for a half dozen other candidates in the mid 70's, I never ran into anyone else who was as viciously racist as those few folks in the Paul campaigns.

So stories like these are not a surprise:

Ron Paul and the neo Nazis

Paul responds on Nazi gold

Hutton Gibson for Ron Paul

Neo Nazi organizes Ron Paul Youtube gaming

Is Ron Paul the American equivalent of Paul Belien and Vlaams Belang? Paul has supporters in his current Presidential campaign who are 9-11 truthers; he also has supporters who are white supremacists or neo Nazis. His failure to distance himself from them does him no good. And his supporters' response to these stories is a coy wink. It's either

If people who hold views that the candidate doesn't agree with, and they give to
us, that's their loss

I just wonder how difficult it is to get a PO box in W. Palm Beach under someone
else's name (or even just lie on the online donations) especially seeing that a
very prominent member of the anti-Ron-Paul squad that made a point to land on
Fox News and call Ron Paul 'cerifiably insane' (and then went on to brag about
it) also happens to live in... wait for it... W. Palm Beach, FL.

(Both comments from the first link above)

People, people. You can't have it both ways. Get your story straight. And if Paul's campaign can't keep track of who is giving them money, they will be in big trouble with the FEC.

UPDATE: "Vlaams Belang" corrected. My humble apologies.

Rudy, Fred and Mitt are not Ronald Reagan.

2007-10-22T06:39:00.000-04:00

And they should not try to be.
Don't get me wrong. I think Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents. But whoever wins in 2008 will face completely different challenges than he did.

2008 is 28 years since Reagan was first elected President, and 20 years since he left office.
JFK in 1960 invoked the New Deal but promised the New Frontier.
Reagan in 1980 did not invoke Eisenhower's 1952 campaign (though I knew several Reagan supporters in 76 and 80 who also proudly wore Taft buttons from his 1952 campaign.)

While Reagan understood Russia as the Evil Empire, he knew no more about Islamofascism than anyone else in 1986. After the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut he pulled our forces from Lebanon. Under his watch Robert McDermott took a a cake to Iran.

To win in 2008. the Democrats need more than "I'm not George Bush". And the Republicans need more than "I'm not Hilary Clinton and I'll be the next Reagan."

What will Baby Assad do now?

2007-09-13T07:36:00.000-04:00

Assad has his gonads in a vise. Syria admitted the IAF blew up something, and escaped unscathed. If he retaliates, he hand Israel the opportunity to do much more serious damage.
If he doesn't, he looks like a wimp to democracy reformers, fundamentalists, his military, his neighbors, anyone anti- Assad. How long can he hang on to power?
Here's the first rational explanation I've seen for why Israel seems so reluctant to act when provoked (like the last Qassam.) The status quo is not good, but it is better than the alternatives if the status quo is disturbed.
That Israel acted points out just how dangerous they considered the Syrian whatever-it-was facility.
Interesting times indeed.

The next Chernobyl?

2007-09-11T12:36:00.000-04:00

Disasters- real, potential or imaginary- hold a strange and morbid fascination, particularly when observed at a comfortable distance. Whether it is Katrina, the Christmas 2004 tsunami, or the Next Great California Quake, there is something in our response beyond horror or compassion. As the great Southern writer Walker Percy says in Lost in the Cosmos (fair use quote):

A fellow commuter tells you of the news bulletin..San Francisco has
suffered the long awaited major earthquake, casualties are estimated at 200,000.
Why is your fellow commuter so excited that even as he shakes his head
dolefully, his earphones come loose?....

Imagine you are a NATO colonel defending Greece against a Soviet attack.
You are in a bunker in downtown Athens. A missile attack is under way. Half
a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next
will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light catches
the portico. Are you bored ? Can you see the Parthenon?

If real disasters are not big enough, potential ones -huge, world changing cataclysms- are the stuff of block buster movies. California's Big One pales in comparison to the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, flooding Miami, New Orleans, Venice and Bangla Desh.
But there are more likely catastrophes, with consequences just as grave.

China is in an unprecedented economic boom, with all the ingredients for a massive train wreck: manic growth, rampant corruption, a large and unskilled labor force, rapid technological change, and a political system with little transparency or responsiveness to its people. The recent toy and food scares are good examples of the problems that China faces; but the potential for massive infrastructure failure is the disater waiting to happen.

Besides poor maintenance, there are four chief causes of infrastructure failure: design errors due to inadequate skills; construction errors due to inadequate skills; shoddy design to meet a budget or schedule; and shoddy construction for the same reasons. Consider the enormous amount of current construction in China- dams, nuclear power plants, bridges, highways, stadiums, entire new cities being built from scratch. Given the corruption in Chinese government and business, the frenetic pace of construction, and the level of skills in a low wage workforce recently moved from the rural villages, how many of those four magic errors exist in the typical Chinese construction project?

The 1999 Izmit, Turkey earthquake killed 17,000 people; many casualties were caused by the collapse of new, poorly built high rise apartment towers. Past disasters in China have had death tolls unimaginable by Western standards: the Shaanxi quaake in 1556 killed 830,000. The 1976 Tangshan quake killed 255,000. The Banqiao dam failure in 1975 killed over 200,000.

It's been said that the Soviet Union collapsed because of Matthias Rust's plane flight to Red Square, the Afghan war, and Chernobyl. An economic recession in China would put severe strains on Chinese government and society. A disaster like Banqiao, Tangshan or Chernobyl, with the resulting economic and social effects, could bring upheaval. If Tian an Mien 1989 is an indicator, the breakup of the Chinese empire would be far more brutal than the Soviet collapse, and the impacts even more far reaching.

The comfortable dog

2007-09-07T21:24:00.001-04:00

Rove, you magnificent bastard!

2007-09-07T07:18:00.000-04:00

Karl Rove, wearing dark glasses and an obviously fake mustache, sits down next to Norman Hsu on the Zephyr and introduces himself. Hsu , who had looked very uncomfortable, becomes even more uneasy.
"Relax," says Rove. "I just want to talk. You'd be surprised how many people want to talk to you."
Hsu giggles nervously. "Actually I wouldn't be surprised at all."
"Yep, James Carville is camped out at Denver Airport with a couple of former linebackers from the Angola prison football team. He's being trailed by three goons from the Peoples' Liberation Army." Hsu looks paler.
Rove pulls out a cell phone. "As it happens, I have their numbers on speed dial. " He smiles and waits for a minute. Hsu isn't giggling.
"Or, you can talk to me and my friends here." He motions to a sinister man with short hair and a dark suit down the aisle, and his comapanion, an even more severe looking young woman.

"FBI, " Rove whispers. "And then, it's witness protection time, baby!"

Hsu gets up, walks down the aisle and sits between Rove's agents. "Be sure you tell them everything," Rove says, tapping his cell phone. He walks the opposite direction, whistling. "My work here is done."

The train speeds into a tunnel.

The Wind in the Heights

2007-09-06T21:54:00.000-04:00

America's best essayist has reposted a story from September 2001.

The Beautiful Sharpshooter

2007-09-06T21:51:00.000-04:00

Or, more crudely, hot women with guns.
From Seraphic Secret, late last year.

"What happens when you guys have an argument?"
"She wins," the Sharpshooter's husband says with no humor whatsoever.

Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?

2007-09-06T21:26:00.000-04:00

Syria claims to have shot at Israeli jets.
Cited all over the blogosphere today, and given varying degrees of credibility.
Charles Levinson thinks that whatever actually took place, both Israel and Syria are trying to downplay it and cool tensions.
The incident reminds me of Michael Oren's account of the Egyptian media in the 1967 war (from Six Days of War.) On the first day of the war, Cairo radio and newspapers reported the stunning success of Nasser's military. The Egyptian air force was bombing Tel Aviv as Egyptian tanks approached the city.
None of it was true. It wasn't just a matter of misinterpreting facts. It was simply made up. The IAF had destroyed most of the Egyptian air force on the ground and the Israeli army was smashing through the Egyptian lines in the Sinai.
As the Russians used to say,

There is no truth in Pravda

GOP straw poll

2007-08-29T22:54:00.001-04:00

Here's a GOP straw poll. FWIW, Fred is winning.
But Ron Paul is not in the poll.

Will the 2008 primaries be a long horse race?

2007-08-29T20:58:00.000-04:00

The conventional wisdom is that with the front loaded primaries each party's race will be over by the end of February.

But it's the first Presidential race since 1952 when neither the sitting President or Vice President is running. That explains the large candidate field. It's also one of the rare years in which each party has serious choices between its head and its soul.

The Democrats' soul is wth Al Gore. He really won in 2000. (Truth be told, for many Democrats their soul is with Ned Lamont, a true believer who beat a reviled incumbent Senator in the primary. That primary victory is all that matters.) If Gore won't run, Edwards or Obama or Dodd make a good stand in.

The Democrats' head is with Hilary Clinton, the heir to Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council, a group the liberal Democrats hate even more than they hate George Bush. This is the group who managed the only two Democratic presidential victories since 1976.

The Republicans face similar head/ soul choices. Karl Rove's genius was in welding evangelical social conservatives, small -l libertarian fiscal conservatives and big business Republicans into a winning coalition in a post Cold War world. 9-11 returned us to an era when national security matters, and Americans are unsure they can trust Democrats on the issue. This year the Republican soul may belong to Mike Huckabee, a solid social conservative with a populist bent; or to Sam Brownback or Tom Tancredo. The head? Rudy and Fred, and maybe Mitt. The Republican Big Tent that Rove built may not be able to stay together.

There is no reason that the winner of the Iowa caucus or the New Hampshire primary will go on to win the next three or six or ten primaries. It's possible that the campaigns in both parties produce two or three front runners without a clear leader; and two or three strong second tier candidates. If no clear front runner emerges, the second tier candidates may suspend their campaigns as they run out of money, yet stay in the race to make a deal- or with the hope of becoming everyone's second choice. The race, in either party, could go right up to the Convention.

If the race does last beyond the first month of primaries, the danger to Senator Clinton is that she will still need to cast votes in the Senate. Her day job will take time away from the campaign, or allow her opponents to argue that she is neglecting her duties. Far worse, voting yes or no on specific issues presents too many opportunities to anger convention delegates, or November voters.

Predictions? Not Clinton nor Obama. The Democrats go with their soul; the Republicans with their head- and the potential for a serious schism.

Castro's parting gift?

2007-08-29T20:47:00.000-04:00

I recall a magazine article twenty years ago that speculated Fidel had gotten hold of a few Chinese suitcase nukes. (I'm not sure I believe in the existence of such things as real threats but let's not spoil the story.) As his last deathbed act, with the knowledge if not approval of the Chicomms, he detonated them in several US cities, and one in Red Square as lagniappe.
This was back in the day whe we we were certain the Chinese were crazy, and we did not worry about radical Christian fundamentalists or rogue states getting nukes. Still, it brings to mind tyrants who, like Jim Jones, can't go out alone; they must take as many of their own people with them as they can.
Hitler and Saddam fit the profile. You could argue Stalin and Mao did. Kim Jong Il and Fidel might, but let's hope not.

Smoke, fires, plague DC metro two days running

2007-08-28T07:16:00.000-04:00

WMATA is baffled by two days of unprecedented and unexplained incidents. which closed multiple stations in the system Sunday and Monday evenings. Metro staff discounts terrorism, but wonders if the cause is not just random or accidental. From WaPo:
"This is not normal," Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. said. "This is highly, highly irregular."

Gee, you think so?

I suspect aliens. The bug eyed monster, we- come- to- serve- humanity- and- we- like- them- well- done kind.

Will Bill torpedo Hilary's campaign?

2007-08-23T05:47:00.000-04:00

A couple thoughts on the Michelle Obama "If you can't run your own house" kerfluffle:
1. It's awfully naive to ask if personal attacks are "fair" in a political campaign. But if Obama doesn't know it yet, he's going to learn that payback is a bitch.
2. The shoe that everyone is waiting to drop is the next Bill scandal. If I were working for Edwards or Gore (or Giuliani or Fred Thompson), I'd be trolling a squad of young ladies for Bill Clinton, like chum in the water, with photographers (or lawyers) ready if he takes the bait.

Any good campaign knows even more about the the candidate's weaknesses than her strengths. I expect that a couple of Hilary's staffers are assigned full time to watch Bill. I envision them as ugly lesbians (so there is no chance at temptation) with really bad attitudes.
Hmm, definite possibilities for a novel here. Joe Klein may already be on it.

Stephanapoulos and the Republicans

2007-08-05T22:15:00.000-04:00

Illegal aliens and amnesty, the surge in Iraq, riots in Pakistan, Hamas in Gaza, unrest in Lebanon, Iranian nukes, a dysfunctional Congress, infrastructure that is literally falling apart.
What is George Stephanapoulos's first question to the Republican candidates?
He asks about Brownback's robocall attack on Romney and abortion.
That's all it took for me to turn off the TV.

If the Democrats are lucky then American's honeymoon from history- our six year respite from terror attacks on US soil- will last until November 2008. Still, I don't imagine abortion rights will be the top issue for many voters in 2008 in either party.

Inquiring minds want to know

2007-08-05T21:51:00.000-04:00

This is a late pile on but it's hard to resist.

Barack Obama's comment on sending troops to Pakistan may have been a mistake
but it is one he is standing by. His website (no, I won't link to it) notes:

We must stop fighting the wrong war and start fighting the war we need to win.
.... We must reinforce our mission in Afghanistan with additional troops. We
must press Pakistan and President Musharraf to close down terrorist training
camps .... If Musharraf acts, we will stand with him. But if Pakistan will not
act against Osama bin Ladin and the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans, we
will.

It will be interesting to see how big the Democratic party constituency is for a candidate who promises to send more troops to Afghanistan and to invade Pakistan, to boot. What I want to know:

Does Obama intend to act unilaterally?

If not, how many members of the UN Security Council must approve before we send troops to Pakistan?

If Musharraf is overthrown and a Taliban style government takes control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons (as big a nightmare to New Delhi as to Tel Aviv), would Obama support a strike against the Pakistani nuclear facilities? He says he would never use American nuclear weapons; would he support India if they used their own?

It’s whats for dinner…..

2007-08-05T21:40:00.000-04:00

One of the more annoying aspects of today’s environmental movement is the unwillingness to admit any progress. Yet it is hard to find any measure of environmental quality where the United States and Europe have not made tremendous leaps in the last thirty years- in air and water quality, recycling, hazardous waste cleanup, and protection of wetlands and other wild and scenic resources. The killer London fogs of a half century ago are gone. The Hudson and the Potomac, if not pristine, are much cleaner than forty years ago. The level of environmental regulation of personal, business, and municipal activities in 2007 is stunning when compared to 1967.
Perhaps the most striking example of environmental progress is the comeback of species recently consider endangered, if not on the verge of extinction. Forty years ago, both the American alligator and the bald eagle seemed to be on their last legs. But by the early 1990’s it was not uncommon for homeowners in Florida and New Orleans to find alligators in their back yard swimming pools.
Eagles, too, are thriving, and have adapted well enough to human presence that a pair (dubbed George and Martha by construction crews) nested in the shadow of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge construction here in Alexandria.

Other wildlife are thriving too. Deer have become common in the DC suburbs and occasionally snarl traffic in downtown Washington. Bears and coyotes have been sighted in the ‘burbs too.
We have an uneasy relationship with wildlife. Bambi is cute until he nibbles all your azaleas. The alligator in your pool in Tampa may decide your cat looks tasty.
We have friends who raise papillions on a small acreage ten mile south of the Wilson Bridge. They frequently see eagles, who seem to have a healthy interest in the
dogs.

Papillion: It’s whats for dinner.

The enemy of my enemy is.. probably still my enemy

2007-07-09T06:21:00.000-04:00

It's definitely a Monday.
Al Qaeda in Iraq threatens Iran

The leader of an Al Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against
Iran unless it stops supporting Shiites in Iraq within two months

They should be careful:

Tunneling Near Iranian Nuclear Site Stirs Worry

The sudden flurry of digging seen in recent satellite photos of a mountainside
in central Iran ..is the back yard of Iran's most ambitious and controversial
nuclear facility, leading U.S. officials and independent experts to reach
another conclusion: It appears to be the start of a major tunnel complex inside
the mountain....On Friday, an IAEA spokeswoman confirmed that the agency has
broached the subject with Iranian officials.

Cue music: Ride of the Valkyries.

Happy Fourth!

2007-07-05T07:03:00.001-04:00

We walked up to the Rt.1 overpass a few blocks from the house last night and joined a couple hundred of our neighbors. That venue, five miles from the Washington Monument, provides a clear view of the fireworks show on the National Mall. (And it is a lot easier to get home afterwards.) An added benefit: the smaller fireworks all around the horizon, in other parts of DC, in suburban Maryland, out in Fairfax County. It was a good show.
Happy Fourth of July. Thanks to all who keep us free.

Clairvoyance or just a keen grasp of the obvious?

2007-07-01T17:45:00.000-04:00

This is a long way around to a point, so bear with me...
One of the annoying things about many political and religious arguments is the absolute certainty with which each side holds its view. My example today is the notion in liberal Protestant circles that because the gospel of Mark quotes Jesus's prediction that the Temple would be destroyed, it must have been written after the Temple's destruction in 70 AD.
I'm not even an amateur Biblical scholar; but to any Jew in Jesus's time and place with even a casual knowledge of Jewish and Roman history, of the brutal Roman suppressions of Jewish revolts, this was not a prediction but a foregone conclusion. You knew how things were going to end; the question was, what would happen next?
So, here are a few foregone conclusions:
1) Hamas and Hizbollah will continue to shoot rockets at Israel. A couple years ago they were killing Jews in tens and twenties in homicide attacks; now they can only kill in ones and twos. As soon as they have the means to do so, they will attempt to kill Jews in the hundreds or thousands.
2) Not all Islamofascists are bungling idiots. Sooner or later they will succeed in a catastrophic attack- in London or Glasgow or New York or Washington.
3) There will be another Mideast war, maybe not this month or this summer but soon. A rational Bashir Assad would not attack Israel directly; a conventional Israel- Syria war will be like Godzilla meets Bambi. Is Bashir Assad rational? Is Hamas or Hizballah or Ahmadinejad?
4) Musharraf's governement in Pakistan will fall, and be replaced by something worse. A really nasty pro west strong man or more likely, a Taliban.

The questions is, what will happen next? What will we- the Israelis, British, Americans, Indians- do?
Old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.

My big sister Barbara in happier times.

2007-06-25T22:45:00.000-04:00

1954- May 11, 2007
Rest in the loving arms of the Lord.

May was a tough month.
As a boomer, I’ve long believed that there is a song for every occasion. Here are two.

Mary Chapin Carpenter: My Heaven

Nothing shatters nothing breaks

Nothing hurts and nothing aches

We got ourselves one helluva place

in my heaven.

No one's lost and no one's missing

No more partings just hugs and kissing

And all these stars are just for wishing, in my heaven.

There's neighbors, thieves and long lost lovers

villains, poets, kings and mothers

Up here we forgive each other, in my heaven.
For every soul that's down there waiting,holding on, still hesitating

We say a prayer of levitating, in my heaven.
You can look back on your life and lot

But it can't matter what you're not

By the time you're here, we're all we've got

In my heaven.

And Lyle Lovett: Last of the Family Reserve:
When I saw the ambulance screaming down Main Street
I didn’t give it a thought
It was my uncle Eugene
He died on October the second, nineteen eighty one

And there are more I remember
And more I could mention
Than I could ever write in a song
But I feel them watching
And I see them laughing
And I hear them singing along

And we’re all gonna be here forever
So mama don’t you make such a stir
Just put down that camera
And come on and join up
The last of the family reserve

Jim Moran and earmark reform

2007-06-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

My Congressman, Jim Moran, was asked at a District meeting earlier this spring if he would support earmark reform in the new Congress. He replied that he was proud of the funds he brings to northern Virginia.
Apparently not that proud. Via Winds of Change comes a report that Anderson Cooper had his interns ask all the members of Congress to list their earmarks.

Moran declined.

An arrest in Hit

2007-06-01T06:44:00.000-04:00

Michael Yon reports on the Coaliton arrest of Iraqi police general Ibrahim Hamid Jaza in Hit. Yon's report, like everything he writes, is a great story.
All I can add is that I have met LTC Crissman; I worked for several years with his father Cris, a retired Army engineer. LTC Crissman's actions on duty are amazing; but knowing the family, not surprising.
As Yon puts it, "you don't abuse people."

Thaks Doug, for all that you and your men and women do.

Smeagol the Regal Beagle

2007-04-30T21:45:00.000-04:00

My nephew Zach's new pup

2007-04-26T07:31:00.000-04:00

More stifling of dissent in Bush's America.
Michelle Malkin reports that the good people over at Talking Points Memo are calling for David Broder to resign.
Did he call Rosie a nappy headed ho? Assist Mike Nifong in the Duke lacrosse prosecution? Write Rudy's alleged speech saying a Democrat President would mean another 9-11?
Naw. he just compared Harry Reid to Alberto Gonzales.
The TPM folks figure if he isn't senile, he must have been bribed or blackmailed.

By the way, I went to college with Mr. Gonzales. He was pretty quiet but one of the less geeky kids in a very geeky student body. If I were he, I'd be offended by Broder's column.

Last Sunday's run

2007-04-25T06:04:00.000-04:00

The GW Parkway classic 1o miler. A perfect day to run and a personal record:
1:22:22
I'm obnoxiously proud.

2007-04-22T21:40:00.000-04:00

There is evil in the world...

Shortly after President Kennedy’s assassination, two Washington journalists ran into each other.
“We’ll never laugh again, “ one said.
“Oh, of course we’ll laugh again," responded the second. “But we’ll never be young again.”

For most of us who live in the First World, life is mostly good. Few of us worry about having a roof over our heads, or enough food to eat, or finding a decent job. And for most of us, no matter how much we complain, our Government really is there to help us.
Yet each of us has a time when we finally become adults- when we discover that while the world we live in is full of joy, there is also pain, and sometimes evil. For some this discovery is individual - a parent or child is suddenly struck by illness or death. For American society, every few years we are reminded of the evil in the world, and know that we will never be young again.

I’m a Christian, but more rational than mystic. Yet I find it unnerving how the Biblical stories of Jesus casting out demons track with what anecdotal knowledge I have of mental illness. Why do schizophrenics hear voices telling them not to take their medication?
Eighteen months ago the Virginia Tech shooter disturbed enough people that he was referred to a hospital. Upon his release, by all accounts he stopped his behavior- he hid inside himself, giving no warning of his madness, until Monday April 16.
What do we do when faced with the evil of a Tim McVeigh or Mohammed Atta, a Charles Whitman or Seung Hui Cho? Curling up in a fetal position on the couch, or finding solace at the bottom of the ice cream carton or the gin bottle, is tempting. Where can you find safety if comfortable suburbia is Columbine, and bucolic rural academia is Blacksburg?
For myself and my family, we try to live in faith, not fear; to go out each day and use our skills and talents in the best way we can; to know that while there is evil in the world, there is also great good.
Some days that is easier to do than others.

A last thought: Tom Mauser, whose 15 year old son Daniel died at Columbine High School, observes in today’s Washington Post:

I think it is important to avoid referring to the killer by name or
ethnicity. He should be simply "the killer." He should be afforded no special
recognition, for he deserves none. Instead, the names of the victims should be
mentioned often, and their loss should never be forgotten. We best honor them by
celebrating their lives, reading about their accomplishments and doing good
things in their name.

2007-04-22T19:34:00.000-04:00

In memoriam
Ross Abdallah Alameddine, 20, Saugus MA
Jamie Bishop, 25, Blacksburg VA
Brian Bluhm, 25, Cedar Rapids IA
Ryan C. Clark, 22, Columbia County GA
Austin Cloyd, 18, Blacksburg VA
Jocelyn Couture- Nowak, 49, Blacksburg VA
Kevin Granata, 46, Blacksburg VA
Matthew G. Gwaltney, 24, Chester VA
Caitlin Hammaren, 19, Middletown NY
Jeremy Herbstritt, 27, Bellefonte PA
Rachael Elizabeth Hill, 18, Richmond VA
Emily Jane Hilscher, 19, Woodville VA
Jarrett Lee Lane, 22, Narrows VA
Matthew J. LaPorte, 20, Dumont NJ
Henry Lee, 20, Roanoke VA
Liviu Librescu, 76, Blacksburg VA
G.V. Loganathan, 51, Blacksburg VA
Partahi Lumbantoruan, 34, Indonesia
Lauren McCain, 20, Hampton VA
Daniel Patrick O’Neil, 22, Lincoln RI
Juan Ramon Ortiz, 26, Bayamon, Puerto Rico
Minal Panchal, 26, Mumbai, India
Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, Woodbridge VA
Erin Peterson, 18, Fairfax County VA
Michael Pohle, 23, Flemington NJ
Julia Pryde, 23, Middletown NJ
Mary Read, 19, Fairfax County VA
Reema Samaha, 18, Fairfax County VA
Waleed Shaalan, 32, Zagazig, Egypt
Leslie Sherman, 20, Fairfax County VA
Maxine Turner, 22, Vienna VA
Nicole R. White, 20, Smithfield VA

May God grant peace to their families and friends and to the Virginia Tech community.

2007-04-11T07:07:00.000-04:00

If I ever meet you in public, you will need a new nose, lots of beefsteak for black eyes and perhaps a supporter below. You are a guttersnipe!

So said President Harry S. Truman to music critic Paul Hume, in response to Hume's review of Margaret Truman's singing.

The Rutgers women's basketball team will meet with Don Imus. Why? To mete out the punishment Truman considered? Doubtful. No, the team has been "physically and emotionally spent and hurt" by Imus's remarks. Imus apologized. Does the team expect more contrition? Hugs?
Call his sponsors. Tell them that you won't buy products that support a man who entertains his audience by insulting others. Then get on wth your life.
He called you mean names. He's a gutter snipe. You're on the Rutgers womens' basketball team that played at the natonal championship. Unless it's on a basketball court, why meet with him?

About ten years ago a local professor noted that while discrimination does still exist in America, he tells his students

You say you're oppressed? You're not oppressed. You're at Georgetown.

2007-04-09T07:30:00.000-04:00

Nicholas Cage, Al Gore, and the Masonic conspiracy.
Much attention has been given to the pervasive Masonic influence on the U.S. government; and recent investigations have revealed the mysterious Masonic symbols at Denver International Airport. See, for example, this and this feeble effort to refute current investigations.

Surprisingly, there is little awareness of the Masonic artifacts around the Washington DC area, or their relationship to the ongoing power struggle between the Masons and their foes: the Wilsonian Democrats, the British royal family, and the Zionist Occupation Government. Much investigation remains to be done, and the full story is too dangerous to disseminate publicly, but a few highlights can be provided:
First there are the Forty Masonic Boundary stones, set in place when the District of Columbia was surveyed in 1791 and 1792.

On each stone, the side facing the District of Columbia displayed the
inscription "Jurisdiction of the United States and a mile number. … The third
and fourth sides displayed the year in which the stone was placed …and the
magnetic compass variance at that place.

These stones, placed in accordance with the Masonic ritual derived from ancient Druidic and Egyptian lore, generate a powerful magnetic field which focuses the earth’s energy within the District of Columbia. This focused energy field, controlled by the Masons, assured the country’s growth and power for over 200 years and enabled the Masons to maintain their control over the government.

For reasons not yet known, (perhaps the effort to "protect" the remaining stones by enclosing them in steel cages; the steel cage acts as a Faraday box, diverting the stones’ electromagnetic energy into the ground and reducing the energy field they collectively generate), by the late 19th century several of the stones were lost or deteriorating, leading to a decline in the Mason’s influence, and resulting in the election of Woodrow Wilson, who plunged America into war with Germany, the heirs of the Knights Templar tradition, on the side of the British royal family.

Attempting to re- exert control, the Masons in 1922 constructed in Alexandria Virginia the so called “George Washington Masonic Memorial”, a replica of the Great Lighthouse at Alexandria Egypt. This structure, only 200 feet outside the original boundary, enhances and focused the stones’ energy and also serves as a control tower for the Masons’ activities.

National Treasure, the 2004 Nicolas Cage movie, was a largely factual account of Masonic influence. The sequel, now being filmed, may reveal more of the Masonic secrets. It will include scenes filmed at the “George Washington Masonic Memorial”:

the Alexandria shoot is being kept super hush-hush. …"It's very exciting," said George Seghers, director of the temple. …this is the first Hollywood movie to be filmed here. But I can't say much more than that.”

The struggle between the Masons and the ZOG/ British royal family has continued for the last 90 years. In 1961 the Woodrow Wilson Bridge was constructed almost on top of the southern boundary stone at Jones Point Park- the site of the original lighthouse at Alexandria. A replacement for the bridge, now under construction, is even closer to the lighthouse and to the remaining southern boundary stone, one of the most powerful due to its corner location, and now also threatened by rising water of the tidal Potomac due to alleged “global warming.”

Many questions remain.
What is the connection between the Carlyle House in Old Town Alexandria, a few blocks from the Masonic Memorial, and the Carlyle Group, a known front organization for the British?

Why were Gavrilo Princip, Lynette Fromme, and John Hinckley all carrying postcards from the Masonic Memorial when apprehended after the assassination attempts on Archduke Ferdinand, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan?

Is Al Gore’s campaign against global warming an effort to save the southern boundary stone- or a red herring to distract attention?

The blogosphere has focused more attention to the ongoing Masonic- British conflict and their insidious influence. Both liberal and conservative blog readers have taken notice. A recent post at Little Green Footballs noted :

“Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide” -- W. Wilson
I would say the same about the Goracle, but he is too friggin' busy
invoking the Global Warming Druids moonbats who while away their time seeking Masonic symbolism underneath the Denver International Airport cubby holes. This, combined with their obsessive need to link anything, and everything, to a supposed Zog uberconspiracy.

2007-04-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

An Iranian hostage recalls his time in Teheran.
Via Tigerhawk (who adds a good story from Guests of the Ayatollah.)
God bless the USMC.

2007-04-05T07:01:00.000-04:00

Former President James Earl Carter, 82, received the Ridenhour "Courage Prize" yesterday at the National Press Club as the latest Iranian hostage crisis was wrapping up.

"As a matter of fact, I went through the same ordeal earlier," he told a British questioner with a smile. "Four-hundred forty days instead of 16 days -- but all of our hostages came home safe and free, also."

The moment that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

Seems I'm listening to a bad oldies radio station.

2007-04-05T06:50:00.000-04:00

April 2008, Nancy Pelosi in Damascus

Israel is ready to engage in peace talks... Mr Assad is ready to resume the
peace process as well

Where have I seen this movie before? 1938. Munich. Neville Chamberlain.

Peace in our time.

2007-04-03T22:44:00.000-04:00

Things are different inside the Beltway.
As Congress goes through the latest iteration of debate over Congressional representation for District of Columbia residents, I could argue the merits of various plans, from full statehood to retrocession. But I’d like to propose a slightly different outlook.

I lived in Texas and Arkansas until I was past thirty. I’ve lived in Northern Virginia, inside the Beltway, for almost twenty years now. I can assure you, things are indeed different inside the Beltway.

Washington’s proximity affects its suburbs. The Northern Virginia suburbs care little about what happens south of the Rappahannock; the rest of the Old Dominion returns the sentiments. Northern Virginia, year after year, sends more money and gets fewer services back from Richmond than other parts of the state.

In Texas, if you are interested in politics, you work in local campaigns. Maybe you run for city council or the legislature. After a term or two you move up to state senate or Congress, or maybe Governor. (Unless, of course, you’ve been managing the Texas Rangers.)

If you grow up in, or attend college in, or move to Arlington Virginia, and you’re interested in politics, you get a job on Capitol Hill. If you’re a policy wonk you work your way up through EPA or Justice. If you’re a smart lawyer with good connections you lobby on K Street. The best politicians in northern Virginia don’t go into local politics.

DC residents routinely complain, with good reason, that Congress interferes in what limited self government the District is allowed. But Congress interferes in suburban Virginia and Maryland government, too; usually with the approval of the local Congressional constituencies. It’s not just the amazing amounts of funding that local lawmakers direct to the DC suburbs; (my congressman, Jim Moran, was asked at a neighborhood forum in January about earmark reform. He responded that he was proud of the projects he brings to the 8th District.) Nor is it the support that local Congressmen give to their constituents, many of whom are government employees. (A top priority: make sure the District never institutes an income tax on commuters.) Again and again, local transportation and land use issues that anywhere else would be solved at a local or state level, here are decided in Congress.

I. Imagine you are a Civil War buff. A local developer is building a mall on private land adjacent to a nearby Civil War battlefield park. The County zoning board has approved the project, despite the protests of historic preservationists. What do you do?
Well, if the project is on the outskirts of Atlanta or Nashville you are probably out of luck. If it is 1988 and the project is William Center in Manassas Virginia, you mobilize preservation and conservation groups in Washington, 30 miles east. You marshal your supporters on Capitol Hill, organize a nationwide media campaign, and in a few months Congress buys the site for $134 million. The developer walks away a richer man; the County loses $23 million in annual tax revenues; local residents have 800 acres more open space, paid for by their fellow Americans, most of whom will never set foot on it.

II. In 1992, Virginia governor Doug Wilder and Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke announced plans for a new football stadium on an abandoned railroad yard in Alexandria. The deal had been arranged quietly by the Governor, with no local input. The response by local residents was quick.
“I work in the EPA. They will never get the permits to clean the site up.”
“I’m on (Tenth District Congressman) Tom Davis’s staff. We’ll kill this on the Hill.”

It took six weeks for Cooke and Wilder to abandon their plans.

III. Dulles Airport, 25 mile west, connects to DC by the Dulles Access Road. The road’s sole use is airport access; once you get on it, just inside the Beltway, you can’t exit until you reach the airport. In the late 80’s Congress allowed Virginia to build a toll road in the right of way, parallel but without connections to the access road, to serve the burgeoning suburbs. Several years later, as growing traffic clogged the toll road, the State proposed allowing carpools to use the access road. Congress vetoed the plan: increased traffic on the access road might reduce easy access to the airport. For some reason, Congress is less concerned with easy access between downtown LA and LAX.

Yes, things are different in DC. I’ve always believed the Constitution bars Congressional representation for DC, to prevent local residents from exerting undue influence on the Federal government. It makes sense, then, that the solution to DC voting rights is to give the residents of the DC suburbs the same rights as DC residents. Make Alexandria city and Fairfax, Arlington, Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties part of the Federal enclave.

2007-04-03T06:37:00.000-04:00

Back on the road after a week's hiatus- 3.5 miles, 29:15. Nice morning, cool, high 50's. Ran into a neighbor with whom I used to work - we're not even casual acquantances but our paths collide every six months or so; we did the 30 second update.
A benefit to living in the same house for over 16 years: You don't know everyone around you but you recognize a lot of the folks you see day to day.

2007-03-29T19:50:00.000-04:00

2007-03-28T23:57:00.000-04:00

The best parts of a race
The start, when the pack justs starts to spread out so you can actually run, but you're still in a crowd. I always feel as if I'm in a bad Japanese movie, one of the extras being chased by Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster or Nancy Pelosi.
The Post Race. Carb loading. Shiner bock is best but anything will do.

2007-03-28T23:15:00.000-04:00

Admiral Stockdale: "Who am I ? Why am I here?"

Why Running Dog?
1. Running Dog Imperialist Lackey is too long.
2. You may have guessed, I'm a Dog Person. The Wife is, even more so. In our house "You dog " is a term of endearment, not a pejorative. (At least that's what she tells me.)

At age 40, about a year after the kids were born, it was time to get serious about regular exercise. I started running three or four times a week. I enjoy it, and it keeps the stress and cholesterol down. I've done three ten milers (best time 85 minutes) and a marathon (4:24.) Not bad for a guy who became a jock in middle age.

Daniel Lyons writes in the latest Forbes magazine on easy blogging with Blogger. I've considered it for awhile. so here I am.

What will this be about? Running. Politics. Silliness. Kids. Travel. The GWOT. Life. Heck, I don't know, really. I'm making this up as I go along.
More boring gratuitous personal stuff follows. You've been warned.

I'm a civil engineer in a consulting firm with offices in Old Town Alexandria.
"What did you do at work today Dad?"
"Sent lots of emails, talked on the phone to clients, shuffled papers, went to too many meetings."
It's a good career. I've had a part, if only a small one, in projects like the Springfield interchange, the new Wilson Bridge, the new NAVSEA headquarters at thw Washington Navy Yard, and Pentagon Metro bus station.
I've been married for over fifteen years. The Wife teaches AP English and plays with an Irish band.
We have twin daughters, 12. They are terrific kids.
I grew up in the Southwest, went to Rice University, and then lived in Texas for ten years before moving to Virginia.
As George Will wrote,

Visitors may consider Rice the Harvard of the Southwest. Rice students
prefer to think of Harvard as the Rice of the Northeast.

I have a core sample of the Edwards aquifer on my desk; it's my own little piece of Texas.

2007-03-28T21:58:00.000-04:00

Watson the Wonder Dog and Sweet Polly Purebred