MAX BOOT: Give the Iraqi Parliament a break: “It is also mildly bizarre to see our lawmakers castigate the Iraqis for taking a summer recess when they themselves have just taken a break (the ‘spring district work period’), which occurred even as work on a bill to provide money for our troops went uncompleted. And that’s not the end of it. They are also preparing to take another siesta in August (the ‘summer district work period’).”
Archive for 2007
May 22, 2007
MICHAEL MOORE: The less you know, the more you like his films! And vice versa, apparently:
Michael Moore received a standing — and sustained — ovation following the screening of his latest documentary, Sicko, at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday. But some critics suggested that in censuring the U.S. health system, Moore was overly generous in his praise of other countries’. At a news conference, Canadian journalists harangued Moore for, as Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell wrote, making “it seem as if Canada’s socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo.” Apparently taken aback by the assault from the Canadian journalists, Moore said, “You Canadians! You used to be so funny! … You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?”
I don’t know, maybe three years on a waiting list for hemorrhoid surgery will do that to you . . . .
MY EARLIER POST ON THE ECONOMIST has brought a flood of emails from readers unhappy with its recent shift in tone. So I guess it’s not just me.
A BACKDOOR EFFORT to derail gun-carry legislation in Tennessee.
A.C. Kleinheider comments: “It is not just about killing the bill, though, it is about avoiding the floor vote. This is Tennessee after all. Yes, Democrats in urban centers would have no problem voting against a bill that extends gun rights. However, the Democratic caucus is not composed chiefly of those kinds of Democrats. The General Assembly has many, many rural legislators who simply cannot vote against a bill like Niceley’s. They may want to personally and most assuredly the party fathers and fundraisers would want them to but, if they want to stay elected, they cannot.”
TOM COBURN’S OFFICE EMAILS:
Today, Dr. Coburn informed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) of his intention to amend the Democrats’ resolution expressing “no confidence†in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales with a resolution expressing “no confidence†in Congress’ ability to balance the budget.
Heh.
UPDATE: Rand Simberg joins in the fun. Well, there’s a lot to lack confidence in! My personal favorite: “The Congress expresses no confidence in the ability of the Congress to even know what the content is of the legislation that it passes.”
IN THE MAIL: Dave Weinberger’s new book, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder.
Looks very good, and it’s certainly well-blurbed.
MORE ON MURTHA: “Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) submitted an earmark certification letter for the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) May 1, more than five weeks after the Intelligence Committee’s deadline and the day before the panel marked up its authorization bill, according to copies of the letter and the notice of the deadline sent to the entire committee. . . . House Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to sneak the project into the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill’s approved list of earmarks as a way to insulate it from being targeted for removal on the House floor, a charge Democrats deny. . . . Republicans have touted this latest incident as more evidence that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is failing on her promise to run the most ethical House in history. “
ANOTHER EMAIL FROM MICHAEL YON:
Yesterday I heard the big guns fire about 10 shots outgoing, but that could have been hitting targets 20 miles away. (Was daylight shots, so was not illumination.) Am not saying that all of Anbar is peaceful, just that I am seeing zero action where I am. Nothing at all for days. This might not seem like much, but it’s a very significant departure from the noise and smoke one can grow accustomed to here in Anbar Province.
Published a new dispatch from Maysan Province. After this, I’ll publish four more about our British friends, and then a substantial piece about the Marines I am with now.
The new dispatch, entitled A Small Battle in the Media War, can be found here. He’s also been reading Gen. Petraeus’ Ph.D. dissertation.
STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: “Muslims are not silent in the face of radicalism, extremism, and other ideologies that support terrorism from within the ranks of the Islamic global community, or umma. But Western mainstream media – the MSM – have proven unwilling or incapable of reporting to Western audiences on the personalities embodying the Islamic “counter-jihad,” the principles that impel them, or the daily facts of their struggle. When the battle for the mosque is invoked, it is too often done so by commentators who have no idea how this battle shapes up, where its fronts are located, or who represents each trend. . . . But the burgeoning fear of Islam in the West feeds the appeal of radicalism among Muslims, both inside and outside the Islamic world. Western media could play a significant role in alleviating the threat of a ‘clash of civilizations.'” I think that’s right.
FRED THOMPSON ON CORRUPTION AND THE U.N.: “When Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il have as much say in U.N. matters as the entire populations of Poland and New Zealand, you’re going to have problems.”
LIQUID COAL: “The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a feasibility study for a commercial 50,000-barrel-a-day coal-to-liquids facility in the Illinois coal basin. . . . The CTL plant design is projected to use 24,533 tons of high-sulfur bituminous coal daily to produce 27,819 barrels per day of diesel fuel that, with additives, could be delivered to end-use customers.” Plus chemical feedstocks. (Via Breitbart.com).
MORE PROTESTS IN IRAN. Gateway Pundit has a roundup, and video. I’m surprised these aren’t getting more play on CNN, etc.
IS THE RON PAUL BOOMLET OVER?
GALLUP ON GUNS — a weak spot for Giuliani:
Gun owners are a powerful force in American politics, and their influence is evident in both the legislative and electoral processes. In general, more gun owners identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party (53%) than identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party (39%), but there are enough gun owners in each party to make them a force in either party’s primaries and caucuses. An analysis of recent Gallup polling suggests that gun owners could be a considerable factor in the Republican nomination process, but less so in the Democratic process. Although Rudy Giuliani is the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Republican gun owners are less likely than non-owners to support him. On the Democratic side, both gun owners and non-owners rate Hillary Clinton as their top choice for the party’s presidential nomination by similar margins over the rest of the Democratic contenders.
In two polls conducted this month, Gallup asked partisans their preferences for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination and whether they personally own any type of gun. According to the polls, roughly one in three Americans are gun owners, including 41% of Republicans and 24% of Democrats.
Read the whole thing.
NINA PLANCK ON DEATH BY VEGANISM:
There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.
Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class†(from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class†(from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians. . . . An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not get the precious things they need to live and grow.
I liked her book, Real Food. And we did a podcast interview with her a while back, which you can listen to here. (Link via Dogwood Pundit).
UPDATE: I love this from the Amazon reviews, where a flamewar is underway:
The Vegans are on the attack… Planck just wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times today (May 21) discussing the lethality of unsupplemented Vegan diets (after yet another couple was convicted of murder for starving their infant by withholding animal protein.) But now it’s payback time, so the Vegans have come to try to destroy Planck for bringing science, not sentiment, to the subject of nutrition.
Politics and PETA won’t keep a baby alive when it’s deprived of the essential amino acids that can only be found in animal protein. And none of these Vegans have read Planck’s book…I have, and it’s good.
Yes, it is. I had a girlfriend who was on a vegan diet. She came down with Kwashiorkor. Luckily, the folks at Cornell Student Health diagnosed it quickly, even though it’s a protein-deficiency disease normally found in starving third-world children, because they had seen it so often among women on vegan diets.
FRED THOMPSON thinks the immigration bill will fail.
MORE EVIDENCE FOR A WET MARS:
A patch of Martian soil analyzed by NASA’s rover Spirit is so rich in silica that it may provide some of the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now. The processes that could have produced such a concentrated deposit of silica require the presence of water. . . .
“You could hear people gasp in astonishment,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the Mars rovers’ science instruments. “This is a remarkable discovery. And the fact that we found something this new and different after nearly 1,200 days on Mars makes it even more remarkable. It makes you wonder what else is still out there.”
Plenty of bang for the buck with this mission.
ELI LAKE: “How peace came to Baghdad’s Haifa Street.”
BOB KRUMM GOES TO GRADUATION AND WONDERS where the men are.
Some related thoughts here.
RURAL UNREST IN CHINA, over birth control.
SPAM-FILTERING YOUR FRIENDS?
The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart. . . . American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq’s middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power.
Read the whole thing.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS VISITS FINSBURY PARK, the neighborhood of his youth, and asks: “How did a nation move from cricket and fish-and-chips to burkas and shoe-bombers in a single generation?”
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS looks at what Mexican immigrants do for the economy.