AN ANNIVERSARY LOOK at the Huffington Post.
Archive for 2006
May 10, 2006
President Bush should make it clear that further foreign aid distributions to Egypt will be made conditional on Mubarak’s willingness to lay the groundwork for a democratic and free state. That process should begin by a demand for the freedom of the Egyptian bloggers arrested this week during a pro-democracy protest. If Mubarak is unwilling to tolerate free and peaceful dissent among his people, then he is undeserving of the $2 billion per year in US foreign aid he receives. If he wishes to have his son Gemal inherit his presidency rather than laying the groundwork for a truly open and democratic election, then we should not support that choice.
Our national interests are now best met by ending the system of autocracy in the Middle East that fuels resentment and terrorism. President Bush has been right in noting this link time and time again in his speeches. It is time for him to put his money where his mouth is. If we truly believe that the solution to terrorism is the expansion of democracy and human rights, Egypt gives us an opportunity to illustrate our commitment to those values through action. We must put diplomatic pressure on the Mubarak regime until they begin to show a true commitment to civil society and democracy in Egypt.
Indeed.
UPDATE: Here, by the way, is an automatic interactive petition on the blogger question.
SOME THOUGHTS ON CIVIL RIGHTS IN VIRGINIA.
GAY PATRIOT: “1994 all over again? Wasn’t it 1980 all over again in 2004?”
LEADERS UNITING TO DENOUNCE TERRORISM in Iraq: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.
SEX TOYS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE, er, down under. (Via TaxProf)
SCIENCE FICTION UPDATE: The other night I finished Fred Saberhagen’s new novel, Ardneh’s Sword. As the title suggests, it’s a sequel of sorts to his Empire of the East,
JUDGE LUTTIG HAS RESIGNED THE BENCH, and gone to work for Boeing.
BIG PHARAOH: “I just got information that the Egyptian embassy in DC was bombarded with e-mails demanding the release of Alaa and the others. Good job.”
He continues: “We are also suggesting you to contact David Welch, Assistant Secertary and head of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. His email is: ”
INTO SPACE on a giant slingshot.
BUSH’S PROBLEMS AREN’T ONLY BUSH’S — the New York Times reports:
The political situation has not helped some of the more prominent members of the Democratic Party. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush’s opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election.
And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush’s more vocal critics.
(Via NewsAlert). I wonder how Hillary’s polling? More seriously, I think we’re seeing a general meltdown in support for the entire governing class as the result of a perception (which is largely true) that it lacks the seriousness and self-restraint necessary to run a major nation.
UPDATE: A contrary view.
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: So we were doing a podcast interview with Ken Mehlman, and he was responding gamely to pressing questions on the Bush Administration’s problems, but we kept losing the connection. Then we lost dialtone for a few minutes. BellSouth couldn’t explain why, and it’s fixed itself now. We’ll try to reschedule and finish the interview soon — I think you’ll find it very interesting — but jeez. I remember a line from A. Bertram Chandler: “At the mercy of a single fuse.” So much that we do these days is like that.
UPDATE: Reader Christopher Grayce emails:
When you note that many things depend on a single fuse, what you’re saying is the system is efficient and is thought to be highly reliable. These are *good* things. In the old days stuff was more reliable, and there were more backups, both mechanical and human. But it was much slower and far less flexible. Dinosaurs are reliable, but they’re not nimble.
So, you know, being more dependent on a single fuse is a sign of technological progress. Like the fact that we don’t need to carry full-size spare tires around anymore, and most people don’t need to learn how to jack up a car on the freeway and change a tire.
Good point, though I’m pessimist where technical things come, and have lots of backups for most stuff. But the phone is pretty much a single point of failure.
MAX BOOT ON EGYPT:
If Bush wants to show that he is still serious about promoting “the expansion of freedom,” he could begin by making an example of Egypt.
Mubarak is reputedly one of Washington’s closest friends in the Arab world, yet he has been among the most brazen in defying Bush’s demands for greater openness while force-feeding his 78 million subjects a steady diet of anti-American and anti-Semitic drivel. His vow to hold multiparty presidential elections produced a suspect ballot last fall in which he secured 88% of a feeble turnout. Afterward, he consigned his chief challenger, Ayman Nour, to five years’ hard labor on trumped-up charges of forging signatures to qualify for the ballot. The subsequent parliamentary election was even more dubious; ruling party goons used violence and fraud to keep the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition group, from winning too many seats. Now Mubarak’s minions are roughing up peaceful demonstrators who support brave judges in their demand for greater independence and less electoral fraud.
Why, oh why, is this repugnant regime still getting $2 billion a year in American subsidies? Take the money away from Mubarak and give it to democracy-promotion programs across the Middle East. That would be a shot heard ’round the world. Failing such a signal, the dictators will become bolder and more brazen in defying what Bush once called “the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity.”
Bush could make a modest start by demanding freedom for imprisoned Egyptian bloggerAlaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam.
WILL VEHRS HAS BEEN SUSPENDED FOR TEN DAYS for blogging uncomplimentary things about the economic situation in Martinsville, Virginia.
Now the Bacon’s Rebellion blog is going after Virginia Delegate Ward Armstrong, D-Henry, who’s the guy behind the suspension.
I’m not ready to call down plagues of locusts on Martinsville as part of some elaborate scheme of vengeance, but you can take it right from me, and some people in Tennessee, that it’s a bad idea to mess with bloggers:
Nearly 100 VF Imagewear, Inc. employees will lose their jobs by the end of 2006 as the company shifts work and adjusts to the expansion of another facility, according to a release from the company.
VF announced Monday that it plans to move a “substantial amount of the work being performed” in the Distribution Center on Joseph Martin Highway in Martinsville to accommodate an expansion at an existing facility in Henning, Tenn.
“As a result, the Martinsville location will make a reduction in its current workforce,” the release states. . . . The two business segments currently distributed from Martinsville will be shifted to the Tennessee facility, including the Government/Public Sector and Services Sector, according to the release.
Just a word to the wise!
LES JONES: “The consequence of Europeans not having children is that their elaborate social welfare system and free healthcare are liable to collapse in a generation or two as a consequence of their birth rate being below replacement level. They obviously know where babies come from, but it’s less clear they know where adults come from.”
JOSH TREVINO: “Tonight, I see that the Heathers are guffawing amongst themselves because a man they dislike, one Jeff Goldstein, has admitted to being on anti-anxiety medication.”
Ah, the compassionate left. Jeff craps bigger than them, and I’m sure he’s big enough to take this stuff. And to dish some out. And I guess it’s a good time to mention that it’s still pledge week at Protein Wisdom.
REPUBLICANS ARE IN TROUBLE, but Democrats aren’t in a very good position to capitalize on it, according to Thomas Bray:
Democrats hope that George Bush’s miserable poll numbers will help them reclaim control of Congress this fall. But polls also show that the Democratic Party’s overall approval ratings are almost as deep in the tank as the Republican rating. Voters may be expressing dismay at the alternatives.
That would be understandable. The relentlessly partisan House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, as Speaker? Sen. Robert Byrd, the ancient king of pork from West Virginia, as head of Senate appropriations? Gasbags like Patrick Leahy and Teddy Kennedy back in charge of judicial nominations?
Or how about John Conyers, the Detroit-congressman-for-life who would automatically become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? Nancy Pelosi has promised that one of her first acts as House Speaker would be to unleash a series of investigations into the Bush administration. As it happens, Conyers has given us a taste of what life would be like under the Pelosi reign of terror.
And Rep. Jack Kingston’s office forwards an article from Roll Call by David Winston:
Behind the Democrats’ hubris is the growing buzz around Washington, D.C., that “it’s 1994 all over again,” only this time, it will be Republicans thrown out on their collective ears. It isn’t.
That’s not to say this isn’t going to be a tough, competitive year. Republicans are facing a strong challenge that shouldn’t be underestimated, but the political dynamics of this election are not the mirror image of 1994, as Democrats would like us to believe.
The antics of Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) coupled with the ethical cloud now hanging over Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) and William Jefferson (D-La.) and even Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) make it difficult, if not impossible, to take seriously the “corruption” diatribes we hear regularly from top Capitol Hill Democrats.
But despite what are admittedly grim poll numbers for Republicans, Democrats know that there is another dynamic that could well be a more decisive factor in the fall election: the disconnect between the center-left ideology of the Democratic Party and the center-right ideology of the electorate.
The GOP’s only hope lies in the Democrats’ managing to look even worse. Sadly, that might just pan out.
MICKEY KAUS says that Bush’s poll drop is all about immigration:
Thanks presumably to Iraq and Social Security he was down to his base of 45 percent or so–and then he willfully did something that pissed off half of them. It seems pretty simple.
Yes, though that process really started with Harriet Miers and the Dubai Ports deal.
UPDATE: More evidence that Kaus’s analysis is right.
May 9, 2006
ANGLOSPHERE UPDATE: “India and US to explore the Moon.”
MARK TAPSCOTT writes on why conservatives are abandoning Bush and the GOP: “Put another way, they’ve done pretty much what a Democratic president and Congress would have done had the election of 1994 not prompted Bill Clinton’s hollow 1995 State of the Union proclamation that ‘the era of Big Government is over.’ . . . That is what we get with incumbents who don’t have to worry about getting re-elected, thanks to all those incumbent protection measures they’ve passed over the years. It has produced a culture of political and legislative corruption that infects both major parties and renders Congress incapable of doing what the nation so desperately needs on critical issues.”
UPDATE: More anti-Bush anger, this time over immigration. They’re actually talking impeachment over his non-enforcement of the immigration laws.
JOEL ROSENBERG LOOKS AT A DIFFERENT SORT OF RADICAL MUSLIM:
Were Dr. Ahmed Abaddi merely a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered professor of comparative religion in his native Morocco, his views would certainly be welcome, but not particularly newsworthy. However, Abaddi is actually in a position of some influence. As Morocco’s Director of Islamic Affairs and senior advisor to King Mohammed VI, he is responsible for overseeing his country’s 33,000 mosques. And he’s not just talking about a new approach to Muslim relations with the West. At the direction, and with the blessing, of his King, Abaddi has already taken a number of concrete—and controversial—steps.
Read the whole thing.
BROTHER-IN-LAW UPDATE: Various people have asked how my brother-in-law is doing and the answer is, well and not well. He’s been doing radiation treatments and tolerating them fairly decently. The downside is that, after much back-and-forth, the oncologists at Vanderbilt have decided that he should have chemo starting after the radiation, which is news nobody wanted to hear.
Thanks to my earlier bleg, my sister got in touch with a number of first-rate oncologists who specialize in this very rare cancer. They were quite helpful, but, alas, nobody knows how to just make it go away.
JAMES LILEKS OFFERS A RATHER UNIMPRESSED TAKE on the Ahmadinejad letter to Bush.
TOM SMITH: “Here is my plan: I am going to set up a web site where lawyers, law professors, or in fact, just about anybody, can vote on what they think the most important, influential U.S. Supreme Court cases have been in certain areas of law. The idea is the exploit the Condorcet jury theorem/Wisdom of Crowds effect to get a really deeply authoritative list of such cases. I have some money to do this, so I am not just flapping my jaws here.”