I am at best a half-hearted fan of George Allen. The “macaca” story was legitimate, if overblown [Edit: on second thought, I wouldn't say that story was overblown]. The investigation that outed his mother as a Jew was legitimate enough, though actually reporting on a harmless (if interesting) family secret as a major issue in a senate campaign was not. What is not legitimate journalism, though, are the present accusations of racist language, at least as presently sourced.
1) Allen has been running for office since 1979. He was five times elected to the state assembly, once elected to Congress, once elected governor, and in 2000 won a very, very tight race against an incumbent U.S. senator. A responsible journalist has to approach these claims, surfacing in 2006, skeptically.
2) This New York Times story headline says it all: “2 Ex-Acquaintances of Senator Allen Say He Used Slurs.” Of those two acquaintences, one of them offers a story (the origin of the nickname “wizard”) that three other people with direct knowledge of the matter say is wholly inaccurate. The trainer even says the nickname predated Allen at UVa. This same acquaintence tells a story of stuffing a deer head in some black people’s mailbox; the other person who was there is dead, and there’s no corroboration of a police report (not that I’d expect one from 1972 Virginia, but there’s got to be some standards for reprinting allegations of a hate crime) or any other sort. The other accuser’s story is disputed by Allen’s ex-wife.
Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, would not tell The Associated Press how he knew Allen used the n-word. He told Chris Matthews on MSNBC that he did not know whether it was true that Allen used the word frequently while in college.
”I’m simply going to stay with what I know is the case and the fact is he did use the n-word, whether he’s denying it or not,” Sabato said.
What do you mean, won’t say how he “knew”? Again, there’s got to be some standard for this sort of accusation. You’ve at least got to say, “I heard him,” or “A friend said he heard him,” or “I’ve got a recording,” or, “I know it based on other stuff he said and did,” or “Aliens told me.” But “responsible” journalists reprinting this sort of huey is a step beyond the pale. Naturally, that’s why it’s on Hardball and in the New York Times.
Apollo posted this at 12:44 PM HKT on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 as Journalism, Politics
If Jon Tester (H/T) keeps throwing out lines like this, Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) might hold on to his seat:
Tester sought to clarify:
“I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act, I want to repeal it. What it does, it takes away your freedom … and when you take away our freedoms, the terrorists have won,” Tester said.
He came back to the subject near the end of the debate, when Burns tried to link him to New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is, Burns said, pro-gun-control.
“With things like the Patriot Act,” Tester said, “We’d damn well better keep our guns.”
Who, for Pete’s sake, does Tester plan on shooting? CIA agents? FBI? Perhaps just the local sherriff? One need not be a fan of the USA PATRIOT act to think that Tester is two fries shy a happy meal.
Pet peeve: People feel compelled to say “excuse me” when passing others in the hallway. The hallway is plenty wide for two people, neither of us needs to alter our walking path for the other. Please do not seek excuse for existing in the same physical universe as me.
I was just waiting in line at the Rite Aid, and someone said “excuse me” when he walked behind me. I didn’t need to move to accomodate him; I wouldn’t have even noticed him had he not sought excuse. And it’s not like I was standing near a column or aisle, creating a narrow passage. There was at least five feet of clearance, and no one else around.
Apollo posted this at 11:13 AM HKT on Monday, September 25th, 2006 as Grumblin Mumblins
John Miller has a good article for National Review regarding the decline of military history as an academic field:
At first glance, military history appears to have maintained beachheads on a lot of campuses. Out of 153 universities that award doctorates in history, 99 of them — almost 65 percent — have at least one professor who claims a research interest in war, according to S. Mike Pavelec, a military historian at Hawaii Pacific University. But this figure masks another problem: Social history has started to infiltrate military history, Trojan Horse–style. Rather than examining battles, leaders, and weapons, it looks at the impact of war upon culture. And so classes that are supposedly about the Second World War blow by the Blitzkrieg, the Bismarck, and the Bulge in order to celebrate the proto-feminism of Rosie the Riveter, condemn the national disgrace of Japanese-American internment, and ask that favorite faculty-lounge head-scratcher: Should the United States have dropped the bomb? “It’s becoming harder and harder to find experts in operational military history,” says Dennis Showalter of Colorado College. “All this social history is like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark.”
In college I wanted to be a history major, but when I realized that most of the history courses were various types of social history that interested me not one whit, I went to political philosophy. There people still studied the big issues, instead of retreating into the myopia of social history.
Consider the case of Steve Zdatny, a history professor at West Virginia University. On his webpage, he lists World War I as one of his “teaching fields.” But he’s no expert in trench warfare or aerial dogfights. Here’s how he describes his latest scholarship: “Having recently finished a history of the French hairdressing profession . . . I am now in the opening stages of research on a history of public and personal hygiene, which will examine evolving practices and sensibilities of cleanliness in twentieth-century France.” His body of work includes journal articles with titles such as “The Boyish Look and the Liberated Woman: The Politics and Aesthetics of Women’s Hairstyles.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But when fashion history begins to crowd out military history, or even masquerade as it, the priorities of colleges and universities are clearly out of whack. “The prevailing view is that war is bad and we shouldn’t study bad things,” says Williamson Murray, a former professor who is now at the Institute for Defense Analyses. “Thank goodness cancer specialists don’t have that attitude.” The problem is most severe at first-tier schools. Two years ago, Coffman, the retired Wisconsin professor, pored over the faculties of the 25 best history departments, as determined by U.S. News & World Report. Among more than a thousand full-time professors, only 21 listed war as a specialty. “We’re dying out,” he says.
What I found in the few history classes I took was that the focus on social history was so intense that the actual facts of what was going on were ignored. Social history is only useful and interesting in context, it does not provide its own context. Often history professors teach this stuff because they themselves know the actual history well enough that the only things that interest them any longer are the minutiae of daily life. Students, though, do not know history, and social history without context is nothing more than meaningless factoids. “Did you know that 19th century English women…?” Military history is the hardest hit, but all non-social history has been in full-scale retreat for decades, at least in the academy.
Which is sad, because history is a big enough field that it should be able to accomodate all sorts of histories–social, political, diplomatic, military, etc. I think that social history is one of the least imporant, but I would not write it out of the universities. Most all of this is important and interesting stuff, but it should be easier for students to take courses on what actually happened in World War II than on the history of childbirth.
Apollo posted this at 10:22 AM HKT on Monday, September 25th, 2006 as Edjamacation
Amidst his passionate posts on torture, Andrew Sullivan invoked something interesting yesterday. In a post advocating that the McCain/Warner/Graham deal be shelved until the next Congress instead of voted on right away, he writes:
The quintessential conservative virtues are not moral certainty and instant legislation but prudence and deliberation, not faith but doubt, not a rush-to-legislate but careful checks and balances.
Does anyone who has followed his writing believe that Mr. Sullivan has advocated “prudence and deliberation” on the issue of torture? Admittedly, I do not read his every post as I once did, but I’ve read enough to confidently say that he has had not a moment of “doubt” on the subject, but rather he has engaged in single-minded moral bullying since this became an issue. And, since Mr. Sullivan indeed has “moral certainty” on this issue, since he has not “doubt,” but “faith” regarding his position, then bully for him. However, his opportunistic assertion that his opponents should have prudence on this topic (when he has none) is thought provoking. What is prudence regarding torture?
The prudent policy regarding torture is to torture the right people the correct amount. To my mind, much of this debate has focused on the incorrect question of how to treat detainees; instead, we should ask whom to treat badly. Stories of innocent people tortured are indeed heartbreaking, but all stories of innocent people being hurt are awful. We do not let stories of innocent people incorrectly sent to prison stop us from using incarceration as punishment (punishment, mind you; the president has never advocated coercive treatment as punishment, but rather to extract information). I do not believe it is prudent to allow stories of innocent people tortured for policitcal disagreements in tyrannical regimes that no longer exist persuade us on this topic. I won’t so far as to call them complete non-sequiturs, but I will say that the Soviets, Nazis, and Chileans also put innocent people in regular old prison, but no one ever trots that out as an argument against incarceration. I’ve yet to read an argument that persuades me that incarceration is 100% acceptable, but “torture” is 100% unacceptable; both of these strike me as matters of prudence, not absolute morality.
There is a place for harsh treatment* in interrogating captured terrorists. The war on terror is not a war to capture criminals, it is a war to kill terrorists and stop Islamo-fascists from attacking Americans. Using the criminal law “innocent until proven guilty” standard is inappropriate in many circumstances (e.g. people caught on a battlefield, or in a headequarters with schematics and bomb-making material). It seems to me like a matter of prudence that we don’t want to make torture a common policy by using it as punishment; it creates a class of torturers, and it harms our reputation by making us appear too violent. Likewise, having no torture is imprudent; we miss out on valuable intelligence, and it harms our reputation by making us appear weak and uncertain. One of our problems in the world is that we do not appear to be able to use violence judiciously. We have used too much in a few unfortunate instances (Abu Ghraib), but, as a general rule, we use too little (letting the Iraqi army disentigrate, not leveling Fallujah when the non-violent civilians had cleared out). Terrorists have been emboldened by our underuse of violence, not our overuse.
It seems to me that a prudent policy is to reserve coercive interrogation for a few people at the top of the organization, and only for a few days after their capture (while their information is still fresh), with harsher treatment the higher up the ladder someone is. To the extent that the new regulations appear to 1. restrict coercive interrogation to a few CIA prisoners, but 2. ensure that those few CIA prisoners actually will be interrogated coercively, then I think it appears to be a good policy. Sen. McCain, it seems, may have actually accomplished something worthwhile.
*The line of what is and isn’t “torture” is so arbitrary that I’m not terribly interested in getting into a discussion of the topic.
Media bias is a pet peeve of conservatives, but it has a good side. Namely, relentless negative coverage can weed out bad candidates. Political junkies like us have long been less than happy with George Allen, a mediocrity who once seemed likely to cruise to reelection and then perhaps to the presidency.
Matt Continetti has documented the saturation of coverage over Allen’s gaffes, and why it’s revealed Allen to be a lousy candidate:
There are a variety of reasons Allen’s encounter with Sidarth has become the defining moment in his campaign. One is the increasingly important role technology plays in fashioning our politics. Sidarth’s video gained an audience when he posted the “macaca” clip on YouTube, an Internet video clearinghouse. It was a group of loosely affiliated liberal bloggers who brought the video to the attention of traditional reporters. And the video lends itself to television, where a viewer can’t help finding it strangely compelling: the absurdity of a professional politician mocking a twenty-year-old campaign volunteer; the goofy, triumphant grin on Allen’s face as he welcomes “macaca” to America; the casual, unknowing ease with which Allen moves from committing a potentially career-ending gaffe to a canned discourse on fighting terrorists.
A second reason is the incredible amount of coverage the Washington Post devoted to the controversy. According to the Lexis-Nexis research database, prior to August 15, 2006, the only mention of “macaca” in the Post occurred in a June 2003 “Travel” piece that mentioned the famous monkeys of Gibraltar. Between August 15 and September 18, however, the Post mentioned the “macaca” incident some 44 times. During that time, “macaca” appeared in seven front-page (A1) news articles. It appeared in six front-page “Metro” (B1) articles. It appeared in no less than three editorials and one op-ed column. This sort of coverage is what reporters mean when they say “flood the zone.”
But a significant reason “macaca” took on a life of its own was the Allen campaign’s clumsy damage control. At first, the campaign ignored the story, then it said the publicity devoted to it was evidence of liberal media bias. The campaign said Allen might have been referring to Sidarth’s silly haircut, then said the senator had never heard the word before. When asked in a recent televised debate whether, growing up, he might have heard his mother say “macaca”—everyone seems to think that in North Africa “macaca” is an everyday word—Allen said, “I hope you’re not trying to bring my mother into this matter,” and ignored the question.
Yes, it’s hard to imagine a Democrat getting this kind of treatment. But since this piling on has very likely destroyed Allen’s presidential campaign, it means that better candidates, like Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, will get more exposure. It also means that candidates with ideas, like Newt Gingrich, won’t have to compete with the Allen’s anti-intellectualism. If Democrats got this kind of treatment, does anyone think thatKeithEllison, Mr. Nation of Islam, would have won his primary? It seems fair to say that the media’s bias against conservatives has ironically helped them by knocking off bad candidates like Allen, while protecting bad liberal candidates like Ellison.
Unfortunately, Media Bias usually looks like this
Still, media bias is a mostly bad phenomenom. Michelle Malkin wrote about the Associated Press’s problems:
On April 12, I learned from military sources that an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, Fallujah native Bilal Hussein, had been captured in Ramadi in an apartment with insurgents and a cache of weapons. This was news. I asked the AP for confirmation. Corporate spokesman Jack Stokes informed me that company officials were “looking into reports that Mr. Hussein was detained by the U.S. military in Iraq but have no further details at this time.” After reporting the alleged detention on my blog (michellemalkin.com/archives/005941.htm), I followed up several more times with AP over the past five months for status updates on Hussein.
No reply.
On Sept. 17, the Associated Press finally acknowledged that Hussein was being detained. The AP’s overdue revelation was likely part of an attempt to drum up sympathy for Hussein, who has made critical public statements against our troops in Fallujah, and undermine Bush administration interrogation efforts involving military detainees. The AP article not only confirmed Hussein’s capture, it also revealed (buried deep in the story) that it knew of Hussein’s capture from at least May 7 — when it received an e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner revealing bombshell details:
“The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. ‘He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,’ according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.”
In fact, the Pentagon said on Monday, after three separate independent reviews, the military had deemed Hussein a security threat with “strong ties to known insurgents . . . involved in activities that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing in that country.” Hussein “tested positive for traces of explosives.”
Let me repeat that: An Associated (with terrorists) Press journalist gets caught with an alleged al Qaeda leader and tests positive for bomb-making materials. That. Is. News.
Michelle Malkin’s incendiary Sept. 20, 2006 column about Associated Press is filled with innuendo, distortion and factual error. This is not surprising because AP has found numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Malkin’s online blog references to AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been detained in Iraq for more than five months by the U.S. military without being charged. Malkin would deny Bilal due process and the rule of law by trying him in her column and assuming his guilt by mere association.
Yet the AP felt no need to detail the “numerous inaccuracies.” It’s reminiscent of this old lightbulb joke:
Q: How many Straussians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. The light makes itself conspicuous by its absence.
What does the AP have to say about its five-month blackout on the news of Hussein’s detention, first reported on this blog and covered extensively in what it derisively calls the “so-called blogosphere”?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about the questions raised by National Journal’s Neil Munro over a dubious Hussein photo taken in October 2005 of a purported funeral image outside Ramadi disputed by the U.S. military?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about questions raised by milblogger Bill Roggio concerning another suspicious AP/Hussein-photographed scene in Ramadi of a favorite staging ground for terrorists?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about blogger Cori Dauber’s scathing critique of old AP television footage used to spread bogus reports of a fake “uprising” in Ramadi in December 2005?
Nothing.
What does the AP have to say about blogger Clarice Feldman’s post at the American Thinker on an Iraqi intelligence document that bragged about “one of our sources (the degree of trust in him is good) who works in the American Associated Press Agency”?
Nothing.
This, unfortunately, is why media bias is usually a bad thing. In an ideal world, the media would be impartial, opposed to evils left or right. As it is, we need to be vigilant, and Michelle Malkin is a one-woman-truth-squad.
It’s not about killing, it’s about broader, more pervasive forms of intimidation. If, say, I were to shoot a staffer for The Nation in the back in the name of National Review, you would expect at the very minimum my bosses here to suspend the column at least until I’d been acquitted at trial. If, instead of that, Rich Lowry and Kate O’Beirne were marching through the streets chanting “Behead the enemies of National Review!” and William F. Buckley were to issue a statement offering the publishers of The Nation the choice between conversion to conservatism, paying a poll tax to him, or death, and if it were rumored that Rick Brookhiser, John Derbyshire, and dozens of other “moderate” NR writers strongly disagreed with my decision to shoot the Nationguy but didn’t dare say anything, I think the reasonable person would conclude that the problem is more than just one fringe nutter.
I think a gangwar between The Nation and National Review could be a great deal of fun to watch. Jonah Goldberg going to the mattresses because of David Corn’s hit against Byron York—that’s entertainment! Incidentally, I suspect Derb would support the shooting, possibly buying Steyn ice cream afterwards.
You scored as Foreign Policy Hawk. Foreign policy hawks believe that the spread of liberty throughout the world is the historic mission of the United States, and that it is vital for our security. They can be found in both political parties, and are united in their desire for a large military and a highly assertive foreign policy.
A few years ago I was at a “peace” rally in Washington that was dominated by Palestinian and anti-Jewish militants. Aging hippies stood side-by-side with Arabs and Palestinians chanting “Long live the intifada.” In a rational world, it would have been surreal. I asked some of the Palestinians there whether they recognized Israel’s right to exist. Out of the dozen or so that I talked with, only one said yes, with the others giving answers that ranged from outright refusal to the more slippery “Why do I need to recognize its right when it already exists?”
Today in Arafatistan, in a move that could be a metaphor for the whole of the Islamic terrorist movement, the Palestinian prime minister said he will not be part of any government that recognizes Israel. “”We support establishing a Palestinian state in the land of 1967 at this stage, but in return for a cease-fire, not recognition.” This quite plainly implies more ambitious “stages” to follow, no?
This also creates the utterly ridiculous situation of Fatah being labeled “moderate.” I am a firm believer that, in democracies, people get exactly the government they deserve, so it tells us most of what we need to know that the Palestinian government is controlled by a radical terrorist group, with a moderate terrorist group trying to nudge its way in to give the government a respectable face. Remember that the old letters from Arafat that recognized Israel did not come from anyone representative of the Palestinian people, but rather from an aspiring tyrant willing to say most anything that would lead to his gaining power. Now that the Palestinians have elected their own government, we find out their true beliefs: Israel has existed for 60 years and possesses a military that long ago defeated the Palestinians and established dominance over its neighbors, but the Palestinians would rather make a completely pointless rhetorical point–by not “recognizing” a country they cannot defeat–than get on with their lives.
Apollo posted this at 11:04 AM HKT on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 as Arafatistan
Hugo Chavez’s speech seems to be having unexpected consequences. The Anchoress speculates:
Hmmmmm….sounds awfully familiar, that tripe. Bush is “an alcoholic?” That sounds like Martin Sheen (a “good Catholic” with enough 12-step exposure to know better than to take another man’s inventory) calling President Bush “a white knuckle drunk”
Bush is a “sick man with a lot of hangups?” That sounds like almost anyone at Air America, or on any lefty blog who pretends to sophistication by suggesting – like real bigots – that President Bush is an “uptight Christian,” simply because his moral values are not theirs.
Bush “walks like John Wayne?” Crap, the press has been caricaturing President Bush as a “cowboy” since before he was elected.
All Chavez is doing is repeating exactly the idiotic crap that the left has been spewing for 6 years. And the Democrats have who have encouraged the hate.
But maybe some on the left finally understand that while they’ve been having fun and laughing while calling President Bush every manner of ugly name and insult, dangerous people have been watching. And they have made a calculation: We can disrespect Bush and America will laugh with us. Bush is weak. America is once again the appeasing “weak horse” it was throughout the 1990’s and even before…when we could attack anything and be accountable to no one.
I’m sure Hugo, once he left the guffawing chamber of hyenas at the UN, was shocked to discover that most Americans were not laughing, that even some Democrats were not.
Chavez should realize that he’s blundered when even Castro suck-up Charles Rangel criticizes him:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his Bush-bashing to Harlem yesterday and earned a stiff rebuke from the New York district’s congressman, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, who is no fan of President Bush.
“You don’t come into my country, you don’t come into my congressional district and criticize my president,” Mr. Rangel, a Democrat, told stunned reporters on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Rangel, who is one of Mr. Bush’s harshest critics, said no foreign official should assume that “Americans do not feel offended when you offend our chief of state.”
He didn’t genuflect before Bush like Pelosi, Rangel et al.
He told it like it was!
Chavez referred to reading Chomsky’s Hegemony essay.
There was nothing wrong with Chavez’s speech. Most of the world feels that way.
But here was Hugo Chavez Wednesday to the General Assembly:
The “pretensions” of “the American empire” threaten “the survival” of mankind. The world must “halt this threat.” The American president talks “as if he owned the world” and leads a “world dictatorship” that must not be allowed to “be consolidated.” Bush will spend “the rest of [his] days as a nightmare.” The U.S. government is “imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal,” a “hypocritical” empire that only pretends to mourn the deaths of innocents. But not only the Mideast will rise. “People of the South,” “oppressed” by America, must “strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle.”
That’s not vague. It’s a call to arms.
The administration quickly moved to dismiss it: More bilge from the buffoon, more opera bouffe. We won’t comment or dignify.
The right doesn’t want to take him seriously (we don’t need more problems), and the left doesn’t want to see him clearly (we gave birth to that?). But Chavez’s speech achieved a great deal, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
He raised his own standing. He got the world to look at him. He emerged in the speech as heir to the dying Fidel Castro, who he was careful to note is still alive and kicking. Chavez doesn’t want to be the current Fidel, the old man in soft fatigues, but the Fidel of 1960, who when he went to the U.N. pointedly camped in a hotel in Harlem, and electrified the masses. Chavez even followed his speech with the announcement he was giving heating oil to the needy of the Bronx. You know what they said in the Bronx? Thanks! It went over big on local TV.
He broke through the clutter. Everyone this weekend will be discussing what he said–exactly what he said, and how he said it.
He shook things up. His speech was, essentially if implicitly, a call to resistance, by any means, to the government of the United States.
He broadened his claimed base. Chavez made the argument that it is not America versus Saddam or America versus terrorists but the American Empire versus all the yearning people of the world. He claimed as his constituency everyone unhappy with the unipolar world.
Ironically, Chavez’s blistering speech may prove beneficial to President Bush. Chavez probably thought that giving such a speech would hurt Bush in the polls, boosting his natural allies, the Democrats, and perhaps getting a more favorable administration in 2008. But he forgot that nobody likes it when a foreign leader criticizes their own leader. This is a key reason why Kissinger-style realpolitik doesn’t attempt to meddle with a country’s internal politics—it nearly always produces a backlash.
H.L. Mencken once observed: “God protects the blind, the drunk, and the United States of America.” Somehow, despite all of Bush’s and Republicans’ missteps in the past three years, I think they’re going to be all right. Having the right enemies can make life easier for you, and there’s no better enemy Bush can have right now than the blundering Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Chavez’s rant at the UN must be seen to be believed. He needs to switch to decaf in the morning. Thor Halvorssen provides a handy corrective:
Chavez has said the United States is “afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices,” yet Chavez has suffocated all dissent in his own backyard. Beyond rewriting the Constitution to bolster his legal power, he’s passed a law banning “the use of language deemed to be insulting to the President of the Republic.”
Indeed, any expression of dissent, public or in private, against any public official is punishable with prison.
Francisco Usón – a former minister in Chavez’s own Cabinet – recently drew a six-year jail term for expressing an opinion on television. Carlos Ortega – the president of Venezuela’s AFL-CIO-affiliated federation of workers – got a 16-year sentence for instigating a legal strike despite protests by the International Labor Organization of this unspeakable violation of human rights. (Ortega escaped from prison last month.)
Chavez claimed yesterday that the United States protects terrorism while his own government is “fully committed to combating terrorism and violence.” In fact, Chavez has demonstrably protected and armed the FARC terrorists of next-door Colombia. (He’s also presided during the greatest crime wave in Venezuelan history, with a death toll exponentially larger than any previous government’s.)
Chavez denounced capitalism as the generator of “mere poverty.” Yet, thanks to a capitalist oil boom, he has profited from the richest Venezuelan government in history – but squandered its wealth on a new Venezuelan oligarchy of petro-millionaires masquerading as government officials. Meanwhile, misery and malnutrition are at a historic high.
Chavez railed against Western-style democracy. Yet it was western style democracy that brought him into power (after his own armed coup failed) and may remove him in the end. This is why he does everything he can to hollow and weaken democratic institutions.
He has frequently praised the “participatory” models of Libya, North Korea and Cuba as ideal forms of government – countries where rulers, accountable to no one, torture, imprison and murder their opponents.
Can we all agree now that the United Nations is a worse than a farce—because at least a farce isn’t taken seriously? Still, given how somelefties love Chavez, perhaps all Bush needs to do to get some left-wing love is to start jailing his political opponents.
I checked Drudge today, and I saw a news story that seemed custom written for me:
A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal’s back, state media said Wednesday.
I must, though, get over my giddiness and down to business. As this blog’s undisputed expert on interspecies combat, it is my duty to comment on the fight. While man vs. panda is not a fair fight–one of the planet’s most spirited and creative fighters, versus a species bent on suicide–drunk man vs. panda seems like a hoot, and indeed it was.
“He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand,” and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.
The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.
“I bit the fellow in the back,” Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. “Its skin was quite thick.”
So with the addition of alcohol, the man was reduced from spirited beast to happy-go-lucky panda petter. On the other hand, the panda has been interupted from its most treasured activity, sleeping, so the 1/2 milliliter of adrenaline in its veins was pumpin’. A fair fight, if only they could have kept it up. Unfortunately, even with its dander up, a panda’s still a panda:
Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.
If only the fight had taken place in Australia, then onlookers would have cheered on their fellow homo sapien instead of pooping on this party. As it was, the panda was angry, so I’m sure the zookeeper had to splash the whole bottle of Dasani on him to get him to stop, but this is the downfall of matching up pandas in interspecies combat. They’re big enough to be amusing, they’re dumb enough to be amusing, but they’ve all the fighting spirit of…well, pandas.
I declare the match of panda versus drunkard to be a draw. Until next time, panda!
Apollo posted this at 8:30 PM HKT on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 as Science!
A man in Virginia breaths a small sigh of relief because prosecutors have decided not to charge him with the crime of being accidentally released.
His mistaken release was the result of confusion between jail and court officials over whether the charges against him had been dismissed. The charges had been dropped twice in Prince William Circuit Court but were pending in Prince William District Court when jail officials let him go. Broady was supposed to be awaiting a preliminary hearing.
So someone in the jail screwed up, and it’s news that this guy–who is, by the way, standing trial for murder–won’t get charged with a crime? In what sort of bizarro universe is that even a question? If a man’s in jail and the jailers tell him he can go free, it can’t possibly be his responsibility to say, “Are you sure about that? Maybe you should check to see if the charges were shifted to a different court.” This is the same county where, as faithful readers may recall, a Mexican immigrant spent a couple of extra months in jail because no one told him to leave.
Apollo posted this at 10:51 AM HKT on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 as Uncategorized
Ah, but this is why I admire liberals so much. They are prepared abandon their most heartfelt ideals in pursuit of that highest ideal of all, tolerance. And what could be more tolerant that accepting intolerance itself? Why, the more liberals defend homophobic, women-beating nun-killers, the more truly “liberal” they become!
