Bill’s Blog

“Not for the politically correct.”

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DrudgeReport.com

• DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe Accuses Bush of “McCarthyism”

• Congo Rebels Accused of Cannibalism in Ituri District

• Phil Donahue Shows “Anti-war” Nature in Commencement Speech

• One Out of eight at St. Joseph’s University Commencement Walk Out on Rick Santorum Speech

• Jessica Lange Condemned Bush Policies in Commencement Speech

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“DNC chairman accuses Bush of `new McCarthyism' by questioning rivals' patriotism.” San Francisco Chronicle (AP). May 17, 2003.

National Democratic chairman Terry McAuliffe accused President Bush on Saturday of unleashing a "new McCarthyism" by vilifying people who oppose his policies.

Washington Post link to same article

Criticizing the policies that are winning the War on Terrorism because you want America to lose isn’t patriotism. The Democratic Party, including its de facto leader Slick, is full of people who worked against America’s war effort in the Vietnam Era.

“McCarthyism” is the abuse of power in fighting Communist, as opposed to the Left’s definition that all anti-Communism is “McCarthyism.”

“Congo rebels accused of cannibalism.” Anova. May 19, 2003.

Congo rebels have been accused of cannibalism during more than a week of tribal fighting that killed scores and forced thousands to flee.

Church leaders and residents in Bunia, the capital of the Ituri district, said that Lendu tribal fighters killed civilians and combatants, cutting open their chests and ripping out hearts, livers and lungs.

Superstitious beliefs, inexplicable hatred and a desire to settle old scores were the driving forces behind the acts of cannibalism, said Father Joseph Deneckere, a Belgian priest who has lived in Congo since 1970.

“Donahue Gets Crowd Riled Up At N.C. State Graduation.” WRAL: North Carolina. May 19, 2003.

Donahue told the graduates that the rights and privileges in the Constitution have been eroded.

Without mentioning George W. Bush, he said only Congress can declare war and not the president. He said basic liberties are being undermined by the war on drugs and by a "trend toward to the sword rather than a trend toward civility."

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"Take a liberal to lunch," he said. "Take a Dixie Chick to lunch."

Two congressional resolutions have given Bush the authority to wage war.

As if being “civil” towards someone who is trying to kill you was a rational course of action.

Bergstrom, Bill. “Protesters Walk Out on Santorum Speech.” Washington Post (AP). May 18, 2003.

About one in every eight graduates walked out of Sunday's commencement at Saint Joseph's University before the keynote address by Sen. Rick Santorum, who recently infuriated gay groups and others with derogatory remarks about homosexual behavior.

This is a Jesuit school, no less. Perhaps they’re teaching them to tolerate homosexuality so they’ll learn to like the pedophile priests.

Crabtree, Peter. “Actress Jessica Lange speaks to Marlboro graduates.” Barre Montpelier Times Argus. May 18, 2003.

Lange went on to condemn the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic policies. She likened the war in Iraq to Richard Nixon’s “ruthless” bombing of Vietnam. She said executive orders and judicial appointments were eroding women’s rights.

The bombing of North Vietnam caused far less collateral casualties than the American bombing campaigns of WW II. For example, the B-52 raids on Hanoi in late 1972 caused only 1,200 civilian deaths. Of course, this didn’t keep the “anti-war” types from portraying it as worse than Dresden or Hiroshima.

Nixon had to use the B-52’s in order to get the Vietnamese Communists to sign the peace treaty.

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 OpinionJournal.com

• Digital “Tail” Gives America’s Armed Forces Much Sharper “Tooth”

• Best of the Web Today

  • Racial Leftist Claims No Race Issue Involved in Jayson Blair Scandal

  • True Story of Moose Becoming Part of New York Times Political Culture

  • Desultory Manner in Which Civil Authority is Being Restored in Iraq Threatens Peace

  • Slick Says Bush Not Spending Enough Time on Domestic Issues

  • Independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont Attacks “McGovern–Mondale” Wing of Democratic Party

  • Wine Wholesaler Wants to Stifle On-Line Wine Sales to “Protect Children”

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Den Beste, Steven. “The Digital Warrior A tribute to the men who make the Information Age military work.” OpinionJournal.com. May 19, 2003.

The modern U.S. Army actually has an even lower tooth-to-tail ratio, and some who look at the raw numbers may think that it's a sign of bloat and mismanagement. It isn't. It's actually the key to our success. The reason the tail have grown is that they help make each tooth man more effective in combat. One tooth and 10 tail are a lot more deadly than 11 tooth with no tail.

I've referred to the U.S. military as being the first true Information Age force, as distinct from the Industrial Age armies used by nearly everyone else (though the British are straddling the boundary).

…

The Fourth "high tech" Mechanized Infantry Division takes this to a new level, because every vehicle in the division is part of a broadband digital network. It isn't just the commanders who have that clear picture of the battlefield; everyone's got it.

This is an outstanding column on the importance of good logistical support.

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FrontPageMag.com

• Tale of Soviet Defector Victor Kravchenko

• Study Indicates That Police Abuses Aren’t Based on Race

• Affirmative Action and “Diversity” Lead to Ethnic Separatism in Universities

• A Reasoned Discussion on Islamic Countries Can Become Democratic

• The Saudi Regime Is Unstable and May Collapse

• Canda Rejects Asylum Application of Lebanese Man Who Helped Israel

• Ask Aunt Sophie: Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Jayson Blair Scandal Lampoon

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Amazon.com link to I Chose Freedom

Kravchenko, a mining and steel engineer, was a mid-level official in the Soviet lend-lease office in Washington, D.C., when he sought asylum in 1944. At the time, the Soviet Union was still a U.S. war ally, and many Americans were willing to give the benefit of the doubt to "Uncle Joe" Stalin. Kravchenko wanted to shatter those illusions. His defection was front-page news and prompted debate at the highest levels of government, up to and including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stalin demanded that he be turned over as a traitor—an automatic death sentence. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover urged FDR to let him stay. On April 13, 1945, the day after Roosevelt died, Kravchenko received notice that his application for asylum had been granted.

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FrontPage

The “preferential treatment” was in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Race is not a factor in the attitude of cops toward suspects according to a recent study. In fact, in at least one city, the cops show more regard for blacks than they do for whites.

The research was conducted by three criminologists, and published in the August 2002 edition of Criminology, the Journal of the American Society of Criminology. This study is the academic equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction for the race-baiting, cop-hating, social activist/trial lawyer complex. Yet, not one word about it was mentioned in the media-not even the putatively "conservative" media of talk radio or Fox News Channel.

…

The researchers defined abusive behavior by cops as that which referred to the "citizen’s identity are unambiguously gratuitous, and illegitimate. Such things as derogatory statements, slurs, or ignoring the citizens questions." The professors determined that the attitude of the suspects, the environment of the encounter, and the age of the suspect were a better indicator of the attitude of the cops toward the suspect than race. As Professor Mastrofski told me "…in general if a suspect is nasty, then he will be treated nastily."

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FrontPage

The New Segregation
By Michael Fletcher
Are all-black graduation ceremonies healthy for campus race relations? More>

When the concept of civil rights was sold to the American people they were told that the goal was to “integrate” blacks into American society.

Instead, it has led to an ethnic Balkanizations, which is probably a symptom of the “civil rights” movement becoming a socialist movement.

But some opponents of affirmative action argue that although many of the nation's colleges now have substantial minority populations, those students often operate in parallel worlds that are frequently defined by race or ethnicity. They attend the same classes, these opponents say, but they often are members of separate fraternities, sororities and cultural centers, they study in separate groups, they eat at segregated dining tables and they unwind at separate parties.

If Islamic society is to become prosperous, free and democratic, a true reformation must take place within the Arab nations. The Arab governments of the Middle East must remove theocratic Islam as the most dynamic, element within their borders. Gradually secular education, respect for other faiths and the reflective gift of self-criticism must blossom to produce a harvest of individual liberty. How likely is such a reformation in today’s Islamic societies? And can Islam institute such reforms without betraying its very nature?

This is a long article, but it is excellent. Among the matters discussed are:

• The vulnerability of the Saudi oil production to terrorist attack.
• The role the Saudis play in the world oil market, including oil embargoes.
• The corruption of the Saudi royal familiy
• The phenomenal growth of the Saudi royal family fueled by polygamy
• The impoverishment of the Saudi people by their high birth rate
• The Saudi royal family’s self-defeating attempt to buy off the religious fanatics
• The economic power of the Saudis over the US

Good quote: “A middle class stabilizes society. Saudi Arabia's middle class is imploding.”

… But the country is run by an increasingly dysfunctional royal family that has been funding militant Islamic movements abroad in an attempt to protect itself from them at home. A former CIA operative argues, in an article drawn from his new book, Sleeping With the Devil, that today's Saudi Arabia can't last much longer--and the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous.

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FrontPage

This indicates that Canada has become so Left-wing that it considers Zionism as a “crime against humanity.”

Canadian political and media elites have a soft spot for Hezbollah. Last December, recall, our Foreign Ministry sought to block the murderous Lebanese outfit from being branded a terrorist organization because -- notwithstanding its long list of bomb attacks against Western targets -- the group's non-military wing engages in various humanitarian and political activities. When Hezbollah was banned anyway, the CBC tried to impugn the decision. …

A great lampoon of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and his role in the Jayson Blair scandal.

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No articles today.

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Jewish World Review.com

• Colin Powell’s Diplomatic Errors on Israeli–Arab Conflict

• Jayson Blair Scandal Due to Ideology of Publisher

• Columnist Steve Young Displays Ignorance of JFK

• JFK Jokes Inspired by New JFK–Intern Revelation

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Indeed, after the fiasco that resulted from his insistence on seeking UN approval for the war in Iraq, Powell might very well have wondered whether he should have chosen the route of academia over statecraft. Many Americans, undoubtedly, would have been grateful for such a choice.

…

On your recent lecture tour in Damascus, you said that Syria had closed the offices of various terrorist groups, even though Syria and the terrorists deny it. This means that either you are wrong, in which case your reliability as an arbitrator is of dubious value, or they are wrong and can not be counted on to tell the truth.

…

And yet, despite the fondness you proclaim for Jews, you seem to have no compunction about coming to the Jewish state and telling thousands of its residents they should leave their homes because the Arab world considers them "illegal Jewish settlers".

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JWR

There's another problem newspapers must face: the impact on coverage when the publishers and owners of newspapers sign on to the spreading ideology of "diversity." Times Publisher Sulzberger talks constantly about his paper's deep and enduring commitment to diversity and once made the preposterous statement that "diversity is the single most important issue" facing the Times. Diversity, which has morphed into a quasi-religious civic ideology, is a broad belief system, one that Times reporters and editors can't examine with ordinary journalistic skepticism. As author Peter Wood writes in his new book, Diversity: the Invention of a Concept, the diversity movement is an attempt to alter the root assumptions on which American society is based, chiefly by downgrading individual merit and common standards in favor of separatism and group rights. In other words, diversity is a political position, not just a feel-good term or a call for hiring more minorities. By committing itself so strongly to one side of the argument over diversity, the Times undermines its mission to present news disinterestedly.

One black reporter said at the Times's mass meeting that there are two important views on race among whites in the Times newsroom, Upper West Side liberalism and southern guilt. She has a point about the white liberal monoculture of the Times. It is hard for staffers to buck the paper's ever hardening party line on racial issues, built around affirmative action, group representation, and government intervention. Reporters do not thrive by resisting the deeply held views of their publisher and editor (in this case, Sulzberger and Alabama-born, lifelong racial penitent Howell Raines).

When opinionated publishers are heavily committed to any cause, the staff usually responds by avoiding coverage that casts that cause in a bad light. Credibility fades. It's happening at the Times now, and at other papers, too.

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JWR

JFK, a man of great wealth and power, used family connections not to duck serving his country or place him in some sort of Nation Guard capacity, but to obscure his medical record (and medical defects) so that he could serve in World War II. His subsequent war record and PT-109 heroics are of legend, as well as a pretty decent film.

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But whether Democrat or Republican, flawed or moralist (or both), the revelation of a young man's selfless effort to fight against tyranny no matter the pain or risk, makes his asking us not to question what our country has done for us, but to ask what we can do for our country seems now more than ever, not to have been a politically-orchestrated, made-for-television, political photo-op moment, but rather a reminder of the true depth of his own character. And for that he did not fail.

Pappa Joe got JFK a cushy posting in Naval Intelligence in Washington. JFK was packed off to the Pacific to prevent an espionage trial after he had an affair with probable Nazi spy Ingrid Arvad.

Kennedy commanded the only PT boat that was rammed by a Japanese warship. He narrowly escaped a court martial in this incident.

The “ask not what your country can do for you” quote was pure propaganda. As conservative columnists noted at the time, JFK’s inaugural speech was full of “what your country can do for you” social programs.

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JWR

Jack Kennedy took narcotics in the White House and slept with a young intern, writes Robert Dallek in An Unfinished Life. It calls JFK's judgment into serious question. Only a guy who was out of his mind on drugs would cheat on Marilyn Monroe.

Jack Kennedy took narcotics in the White House according to historian Robert Dallek's new book, An Unfinished Life. He also had an affair with a teenaged intern. It's safe to say that Dan Quayle has compared himself to Jack Kennedy for the last time.

Amazon.com link to An Unfinished Life

Excellent humor.

Sounds like “you’re no Jack Kennedy” is now a compliment. Dan Quayle should have shot back at Lloyd Bentson with JFK’s adulteries when he used this line in the 1988 vice presidential debates.

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JWR

 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
 (Subscription Site)

• In the news

  • Senate Intelligence Committee Member Mentions Al Qaeda Infiltration of Saudi Security Forces

  • Zimbabwe Expels British Journalist in Spite of Court Order

  • Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume Demonstrate for MLK, Jr. Holiday in Greeneville, SC

• U of A Fayetteville Special Collections Aide Scholars

• AEA and Farm Bureau Lobbyists Get Most of Their Agendas Passed in Gerneral Assembly

• Bob Schwabach Review of Roxio PhotoSuite 5 Mentions Biased Reviews on Amazon.com

• Editorial Laments Lack of Parking in River Market District, Promotes Parking Deck

• George Will: McCain-Feingold Based on Bogus Study

• Charles Krauthammer: Iraqi Economy Destroyed by Saddam

• Meredith Oakley Recalls the “White Lights”

• Letters

  • “Anti-war” Types Enjoy Prosperity Undreamed of by Impoverished Iraqis

  • Gene Lyons Misstated That “Retired Soldiers Agree”

  • Gene Lyons as Destructive Nihilist

  • Christianity Not Reponsible for Wars

  • Poultry Industry Provides Bad Jobs

• Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb), suggested that the terrorist attack on Riyadh was due to Al Queda’s penetration of Saudi security forces.
• British journalist Andrew Meldrum was expelled from Zimbabwe in defiance of a court order and said that the Zimbabwean authorities were “desperate to stifle free expression.”
• Jesse Jackson and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume led a 3,000 person demonstration in Greeneville, SC, to pressure Greeneville County to create a MLK, Jr. holiday.

This seems likely since Saudi Arabia is the home of Wahhabism.

Suppression of free expression was one of the things the people who supported the anti-government Rhodesian rebels wouldn’t do when they came to power.

MLK, Jr. was an extreme Left-winger who supported the Vietnamese Communist war of aggression in Indochina. Having a holiday honoring a person who promoted mass murder and genocide is a bad idea.

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ArkDemocrat

Poverty in the United States became far less concentrated in the 1990s as public housing projects were torn down and millions of poor people left urban slums for other neighborhoods, a new study of Census Bureau data says.

The number of people living in high-poverty neighborhoods declined by 2.5 million, or 24 percent, to 7.9 million in 2000 from 10.4 million in 1990, the researchers said.

…

"Concentrations of poor people lead to a concentration of the social ills that cause or are caused by poverty," Jargowsky said. "School districts are often organized geographically, so the residential concentration of the poor frequently results in lowperforming schools."

…

The number of blacks living in high-poverty neighborhoods declined by more than one-third, to 3.1 million in 2000 from 4.9 million in 1990.

School busing for integration has the long-term effect of driving out people who don’t want their children attending school with poverty culture children. Busing initially decreases the concentrations of poverty culture children but in the long term it turns all of a city’s schools into “lowperforming” schools.

Discusses J. William Fulbright papers in University of Arkansas Special Collections Division.

The Arkansas Education Association and the Arkansas Farm Bureau are among the interest groups that persuaded lawmakers in the 84th General Assembly to enact most of their legislative agendas.

But representatives of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association and Citizens First Congress didn’t do as well with lawmakers this year.

Those interest groups and others — the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and AARP-Arkansas among them — provide lawmakers with pieces of legislation to consider each session.

The second problem is who’s actually doing the reviews. A spokesman for Amazon.com admitted a while back that a glowing review of one of its books was written by the author’s sister. Furthermore, they acknowledged that other reviews were sometimes written by parties who had a connection with the product. The reverse is also true: Some negative reviews are written by people associated with a competing product.

We took a trip to the River Market in downtown Little Rock the other day, and we couldn’t find a decent parking space.

Blatant hypocrisy here; the Democrat touted every one of the developments that led to the parking shortage.

Aspecial three-judge panel has produced four opinions totaling 1,600 pages attempting to decipher the McCain-Feingold campaign regulation law and decide if it is compatible with this inconvenience from the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law. . . abridging the freedom of speech."

This is what happens when politicians expand restrictions on who may engage in political advocacy, when they may engage in it, how much of it they may engage in, and what they may say. The task of squaring that policing of speech with the First Amendment invites intellectual corruption. Fortunately, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson dissects the debasement of scholarship for partisan purposes by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. Congress and now two judges have largely based their approval of McCain-Feingold on the Center’s meretricious "research."

There is a large and overlooked truth about the American occupation of Iraq: Whereas in postwar Germany and Japan we were rebuilding countries that had been largely destroyed by us, in Iraq today we are rebuilding a country destroyed by its own regime.

…

Iraq today is a social, economic, ecological and political ruin not because of allied bombing, but because of Baath rule. Since 1979, Saddam managed the economic miracle of reducing by 75 percent the GDP of the second-richest oil patch on the planet. That takes work. Saddam’s capacity for destruction was up to the task. He reduced the Shiite south to abject poverty. He turned a once well-endowed infrastructure to rot by lavishing Iraq’s vast oil resources on two things: weaponry and his own luxuries. And in classic Stalinist fashion, he destroyed civil society, systematically extirpating any hint of free association and civic participation.

The history of the Twentieth Century has shown that in most cases the biggest victims of dictatorships, including Communist dictatorships, are the dictators’ own citizens.

It’s important to remember the White Lights, because, truth be told, they planted the seeds of what passes for today’s legislative reforms in Arkansas. Frankly, I think it’s something of a mess now. Too many members on too many committees run by too few people with too little legislative experience.

But such was not the original intent of the White Lights. All they wanted was a voice in the Legislature’s budget-making process. Denied that by the closed shop that was the Joint Budget Committee, the bastion of the true power brokers in the General Assembly, they banded together to block the passage of appropriation bills on the floor of the House.

Which they did day after day until the old boys started taking them seriously.

There followed, not immediately but nonetheless inevitably, their own seats at the budget table, and then at the Legislative Council table, and then at all the other tables, and then more tables. Then came term limits.

PBMs are middlemen who buy drugs from the big pharmaceutical companies and sell them to employers and health plans. These drug brokers were created to handle billing and record-keeping functions and to bring down the cost of prescription drugs to consumers. Instead, they’ve expanded like kudzu on Miracle-Gro.

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