Sunday Scan

Kicking Some Ashcroft

Speaking to a large group of home-state Republicans in Missouri yesterday, former AG John Ashcroft defended the president's surveillance efforts:

"The president of the United States has been among the most respectful of all leaders ever engaged in the responsibility of fighting for freedom,'' Ashcroft said, and has been "most respectful in terms of respecting the civil liberties and rights of individuals while engaged in the important task of fighting for freedom."

Ashcroft said Woodrow Wilson monitored "all calls into and outside the United States'' in World War I, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt had "all traffic coming into and going out of the United States'' monitored in World War II.

Wilson's and Roosevelt's policies are a matter of historical record, and they were more intrusive than the more pin-pointed policies technology allows Bush to pursue. I have no doubt that Wilson and Roosevelt would have done the same, if they had the technologies available to them, because presidents tend to believe in the Constitution.

Nevertheless, that didn't stop the BDS crew at Think Progress:

Dirty Hippy: Down is up. Black is white. The surge is working…… Heckuva job. ****heads…….

Ralph the Wonder Lama: Oh yeah, Hitler

Bullsmith: Ashcroft, like Bush, spits on the Bill of Rights when he spews such obvious falsehoods about such important issues.

The first lefty to post a comment included "the surge is working" as one of Bush's lies. He was corrected a bit later by Frank M, noting that it working. That generated:

Crap, just when I thought we might have some peace a poster like Frank MORON shows up. **** off ******.

Some things never change.

A Little More Lefty Looniness

Surely you've read of Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner's action against the Marines -- denying them permission to conduct urban warfare training after the troops had ridden for four hours from their base in Michigan to Toledo. Here's the story, if you haven't.

So what's the lead-off commenter on the link above got to say about this sorry state of events? Here's what Neo Conned opines:

Urban Warfare training in preparation for who, the American populous? Good for the mayor- training s/b on on the bases/facilities.

Just another example to acclimate us to a military dictatorship. Oooooh, Al Qaeda gonna get ya- oh i forgot there is no such animal, just false flags prepping us for Haliburton camps.

Military dictatorship? No al-Qaeda? I guess Dennis Kucinich isn't the only certifiable loon to come out of Northern Ohio.

Microsoft (And Curvy)

Isabel Vogel was hired by Microsoft in Germany a few years back -- surprising her because she was a woman with children. Says Spiegel:

She knew that making it this far was already a victory. Despite her stellar background, she wouldn't have stood at a chance at most other companies.

For all its European enlightenment -- so exalted by the Left -- Germany isn't as enlightened as America, and it takes companies like Microsoft to show them the errors of their way by hiring people like Vogel and letting her:

She has served as a shining example for other young women in the company since then -- and as evidence to her employer that its woman-friendly personnel strategy is working. "If we don't manage to recruit women now, we'll be facing massive problems in less than five years," says Achim Berg, the general manager of Microsoft Germany, referring to the challenges of a shrinking population in Germany.

Ah, enlightened Europe! Stop having babies, resist hiring women, keep up the old face ... and let the Muslims procreate, subject their women to serf-like bondage while mocking America all the while.

Speaking Of Power Women ...

In the last week, not one, not two but three books have been published in France charting the romance of president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni -- and there's some pretty good scuttlebutt about Carla's butt and how very effectively she's used it, like this:

The authors quote Bruni telling a friend that although she would not vote for him, she had “the hots” for Sarkozy during the election campaign last year. The former top model, whose conquests included Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, the rock stars, and Donald Trump, the American property billionaire, told another friend before meeting Sarkozy: “I want a man with nuclear power.”

Whoa ... that puts foreign affairs in a whole new light, eh?

The Next Greenie Gotta-Have-It

What could be greener?

Just strap on your own knee-powered power generator, take a walk, and generate the juice for your next cell phone call, GPS query for the locale of the day's global warming demonstration or electronic nose-hair trimming session!

This prototype unit, described in Science Daily, weighs 3.5 pounds and generates a bit more power than it takes to crank it while walking. Figure the units will become lighter and more efficient as good ol' Yankee ingenuity is applied to them, and they may become Greenie as in Army Green.

It's easy to see soldiers being issued these, so after a day of maneuvers, they've got a plug-in device to power their equipment. Pretty cool.

In The Interest Of Accuracy

Here's an actual correction that should help clarify the newspaper's relationship to Mark Steyn:

The Ottawa Citizen and Southam News wish to apologize for our apology to Mark Steyn, published Oct. 22. In correcting the incorrect statements about Mr. Steyn published Oct. 15, we incorrectly published the incorrect correction. We accept and regret that our original regrets were unacceptable and we apologize to Mr. Steyn for any distress caused by our previous apology.

Glad we got that all straightened out. (Source)

The City Of Lights (And Rain)

Incredible Daughter #1 is in Paris for the next 10 days on a French/French History class trip with her Chapman University colleagues. She's got the spiffy new camera we got her for Christmas and a writing skill she inherited from somewhere ... and she's putting it all together on her Historical Paris blog.

She's only just arrived and she's already got some great stuff up -- 32 photos, some interesting history and more than a little cultural analysis.

On the cultural analysis front, here's a bit of art that's not too sympathetic to America ... art that's hanging in her hotel room (which I am paying for?!):

But it's worth it, because she's also seeing this:

Her next post will be after her trip to the Louvre, so be sure to bookmark her blog for a while and keep up with her adventure. (And leave a comment; it'll give her a thrill!)

Sunday Scan

Saul Alinsky's Playbook

What do you make of a quote like this, from Mike Huckabee?

"Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives ... were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party."

As a Christian social conservative, I think it's just not true, since there are a lot of conservative Christians in the GOP in positions of authority. President Bush, for example. At NRO, Mark Levin feels the same way, and has found the right way to put it:

Huckabee continues to use his faith as a weapon against those who question not his faith, but his political populism — much of which he shares with secular progressives. And he is clearly hoping to stir up resentment among Evangelical Christians against the other elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party as a way of encouraging them to vote in the caucuses and primaries. This is a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky's playbook. Of course he wants us to believe the Reagan coalition is dead because he cannot win with it intact. But he cannot win either the nomination or presidency with the narrow focus of his appeal. This is why I find Mike Huckabee's tactics and candidacy so deplorable.

In the primaries, we are not voting for who we want to win our local primary; we are voting for who we think should be our next president. That's why Huckabee is not even on the margins of my consideration for the Cal primary.

As much as I wish Huckabee was the pastor of my church, were he just a pastor, I wouldn't have him as the pastor of my church, given the dishonorable way he's running his campaign. (hat-tip: memeorandum)

France Offers Atoms To Arabs

Give 'em an inch of nuclear technology, M. Sarkozy, and they just might take a mile.

Nicolas Sarkozy might be a Bush ally of sorts -- after all, he's touring the Middle East at the same time W. is -- but he has that cavalier Gallic attitude about selling nuclear technology. If it brings money to France, how bad can it be? Read this from BBC and ponder:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has begun a Gulf tour, during which he is due to sign an nuclear co-operation deal with the United Arab Emirates.

He has arrived in Saudi Arabia and will go on to Qatar and the UAE over the next three days. All three are seeking to develop civilian nuclear programmes.

Mr Sarkozy has said the Arab world should have the same rights to such programmes as other states.

France has already signed nuclear agreements with Algeria and Libya.

Mr Sarkozy said the sale of such technology could foster trust between the West and the Muslim world.

Or a terrifying thermonuclear nightmare of obliterating consequences. Your choice.

But if that's the way it's going to be, then any nation threated by the thought of Sunni theocracies having nuclear power -- be it bombs or reactors -- should also have it. Ethiopia, the Balkan states, Central African states like Kenya and the Congo Republic.

Fine and dandy. Atoms for all. But just this, Nicolas, mon ami, the first time one of 'em screws with an inspection, the whole program must be withdrawn and their facilities destroyed. No more Irans, no more North Koreas.

All That Glitters

Here's a long list of celebrity contributions to political campaigns. Yes, folks, it's true: Movie stars like Obama best. The contribution edge over Dem runner-up Clinton includes such glitterati as Jennifer Aniston, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry, George Clooney, Larry David, Morgan Freeman, Leonard Nimoy and Brooke Shields.

Almost completely, black entertainers are lined up behind Obama. Starlets overwhelmingly put race ahead of gender ... you don't really think they're poring over the issues with the intensity they pore over scripts, do you? Exceptions (not counting those who contribute to multiple campaigns) are: Quincy Jones (Clinton) and ... oh, that's it; Quincy Jones.

GOP donors? Well, that's pretty easy: Pat Boone (Brownback and Romney), Jerry Bruckheimer (McCain, natch), and Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler and Ben Stein, all for Giuliani.

It's not at all curious that the most curious contributor was SNL major domo Lorne Michaels, who gave $4,600 to Dodd and $2,300 to McCain. I'm trying to figure that one out.

Now Be Nice!

Sacramento, like many cities around the country, is facing fiscal hard times: Budget shortfall, huge and costly infrastructure needs and various local controversies that are stymieing the city's vision and future.

So here's what Sacto mayor Heather Fargo said in a State of the Downtown speech:

We each need to change one light bulb to a compact fluorescent because it's good for the environment. Oh, and be sure to walk more and drink tap water to promote a "green Sacramento."

If politicians think Greenie platitudes will fix anything, they should ready themselves for legions of voters who are green around the gills with Greenie platitudes. Or, as SacBee columnist Marcos Breton put it:

There is no political risk in promoting the idea of a "Green Sacramento." It's like saying we should all be nice to each other.

Ouch. Breton is right on here, but way off course here:

When you have a room full of large-scale developers, as Fargo did, why not use your pulpit to educate them on how "green" building materials can be cost-effective too? Why not show them that they can still make their money and build projects that are better for the environment?

The arrogant little pencil-chewing twit! Who knows more about the economics and benefits of green development than builders? They started the movement in the 1970 energy crisis, putting their existing and planned buldings through rigorous energy audits and investing in more energy technologies that would pay for themselves.

Who do you think has saved more energy in the last couple decades, free market building owners who are seeking lower costs, or power-hungry bureaucrats who are seeking to force their view of reality on the world? Of course, a newspaper columnist, so far removed from reality, would wrongly think the latter.

Curses, Foiled Again!

Fars, the Iranian Propaganda Ministry news service, is not a trustworthy news source to put it mildly, so I'll give US fencer Ivan Lee the benefit of the doubt, but hardly a pass, on the comments he made while participating in a fencing competition in Iran recently. According to Fars, here's what Lee said:

"If the Iranian people and government posed a problem (for us), the US fencing team would never take a second trip to Iran," Ivan Lee, who is currently in Iran to attend the 2008 International Fencing Competitions in Iran's Persian Gulf island of Kish, told FNA on Sunday.

"Everyone analyzes issues by using his own mind and logic; we know that all the negative propaganda against Iran is unreal and, thus, we attended Iran's international competitions for a second time," he said.

Feint is the word, Ivan, feint. The Iranians showed you something that wasn't real in order to make you miss what was real. Anyone who thinks for a moment that a repressive, totalitarian regime would let any visit get a brush with reality has had one too many épée hits on the cognitive organ. (Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Lee is a saber fencer, but épée is such a cooler word.)

And Now From The Euro-Libs

It's not enough that some SCOTUS members think it's just fine to cite European Community law in their American legal decisions. Now Euro-Libs are asking for the right to vote in US elections. From an editorial in the Brussels rag De Standard, courtesy of Brussels Journal:

American presidential elections are not “home affairs.” American decisions have repercussions all over the globe. The American mortgage crisis affects banks in Europe. The insatiable American demand for oil makes the Arabian sheiks rich. The American refusal to care for the environment causes the North Pole ice to melt and coastal areas in Asia to flood. A weakened dollar and an immense budget deficit affect the global economy.

Hence, the world should be given the right to vote. Because the current situation is a blatant case of taxation without representation, against which the Americans rebelled in 1776.

Never mind that Brussels would be a Nazi nation were it not for decisions we Americans made as part of our "home affairs" sixty years ago; Europe can do no harm. It does not pollute, it does not have financial woes, it has never seen its currencies falter. Its efforts to impose a multicultural political mindset on the planet, and to spend our way out of the alleged human causes of global warming does not, apparently, also represent taxation without representation.

Did we have a say in any of that foolishness? Not that I recall. (hat-tip: What Bubba Knows)

A Chair By Any Other Name

The must-read read of the day is Armando Iannucci's column in The Guardian on Barack Obama and American politics. By the time you read this, at the beginning of the third paragraph ...

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it's because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere.

... you'll be hooked.

Iannucci does a lovely spoof on Obama-speak by suggesting that this is how Obama would rhetoric to death a chair:

'This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl's behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America's huddled arse.'

The problem with Obama and all our politicians is that that's enough; one must never bother with the harsh facts of what you're actually going to do about the chair, or be brave enough to say nothing needs to be done by government about the chair; one only has to stir the feeling of "chair" that's in all of us.

I can share two more lovely lines from the essay without giving away too much of your future enjoyment of it:

American politicians take time out from their busy lives to makes speeches that sound empty; British politicians fill the emptiness of their lives with words that make them sound busy.

And

The chair, by the way, was made in China.

We're All Gonna Die!

And I'll be 40,000,057 years old when it happens, according to this report in Science Daily.

Well, actually, that will be when Smith's Cloud impacts the Milky Way (the pink burst in the image above). Our sun is noted a bit to the right, so I'll probably have a few more years to spend with the grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grand, grandkids.

Smith's cloud, which if flush with hydrogen (enough to fire up a million suns), is a bit bigger than a puff in the sky: eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide. It's 8,000 light years away and is rushing at us at 150 miles per second (a tad faster than my German V8).

And that's something that's close to us. No wonder SciFi writers have to invent hyperspace and worm holes to get their heroes from here to there.

It's really too bad we won't be around when Smith's Cloud hits, since this is what it'll look like, according to astronomer Felix Lockman:

When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it'll look like a celestial New Year's celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy.

Shoot. It'll be a real shame to miss that!

Y.O.U.E.* Riot In France (Again)

Youths Of Unknown Ethnicity rioted last night in France.

The Telegraph's report wanders to the 16th of its 17 paragraphs before tossing in the word "immigrant," as close as the story gets to accurately reporting on another round of Muslim youth riots in France.

The circumstances are familiar. In 2005, two youths fleeing police were electrocuted when they cut through an electrical substation, sparking (pardon the pun) a season of burned cars, wrecked businesses, and cell phone-managed hit-and-run attacks that drove the French crazy.

Last night, two youths on a moped and a police car collided, generating a night of the same sort of havoc.

And on both occasions, the press was hard pressed to be honest about who was rioting, focusing on economics not ethnicity or religion. These may indeed be riots stemming in part from France's economic and social bias against Muslim immigrants, but they cannot be wholly and fairly reported unless what's preached at the local mosques is also reported.

Anyway, here's the police car that was involved in the collision with the moped. Apparently it was chasing the Y.O.U.E.s at high speed, passed them, whipped a speedy U-turn, and hit them head-on.

Will this be enough evidence of false rioting to allow the Sarkozy government to bring a quick stop to the unrest? If not, will Sarkozy deal with the rioting more effectively than his predecessor? Will the media ever use the phrase "Muslim youths?"

Stay tuned.

The Left's Thoughtful Response To Sarkozy

"Sarko fascist! The people will have your hide!"

With that, the Left in France welcomed Nicolas Sarkozy as their duly, and overwhelmingly, elected leader.

If 54% [corrected; thanks, Joe] of the folks voted for him, then who are the people who would have his hide? The minority. Or to make it simpler for these Franco-lefties: le (or is it la; I never can remember!) minorité.

And it shows. The Reuters report that provided the lead-off quote says the largest demonstration was attended by 300 to 400 anti-democratic whiners. (Well, that wasn't their exact words.)

Presumably, the other anti-Sarkozy folks, afraid that their cushy, government-supported lives might soon get tougher, were either too lazy to show up, or they found that demonstrating isn't in their job descriptions.

Elsewhere in France, about 100 students have started a strike, hopeful of recreating the glory days of 1968, when student protests shut down the nation and created the generation of "leaders" that succeeded in nearly destroying France with their Socialistic hogwash.

C-SM will go boldly into prophet-land here: Just as there was no second Woodstock, there will be no second '68 student strike. As in "has been."

Sarkozy: A Good First Impression

As first impressions go, this NYT photo of newly elected French Prez Nicolas Sarkozy is pretty darn positive -- shades of Reagan and W. And not too many shades of the snooty M. Chirac.

It's hard to read today's NYT report on Sarkozy without a smile. Was reporter Elaine Sciolino wincing as she wrote this?

There must have been relief in the White House on Sunday that President Bush didn’t have to call Ms. Royal to congratulate her.

After all, she said during the campaign that she would never genuflect before Mr. Bush the way she suggested her opponent had done. She tried to tar Mr. Sarkozy as an imitator of what she called Mr. Bush’s phony compassionate conservatism. She even told a Hezbollah lawmaker in Lebanon last December that she agreed with him when he talked about the “unlimited dementia” of the Bush administration.

Such well-publicized Bush Hatred Syndrome manifestations of Royal were well known and vigorously discussed prior to the election, and she was creamed in the election. Of course, Bush and America were not the centerpiece of this election; the failure of Socialistic Democracy was, so even though Sarkozy is Bush's new best friend in Europe, it's not going to be a fawning friendship:

Addressing his “American friends,” Mr. Sarkozy said, “I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need her, but that friendship is also accepting the fact that friends can think differently.”

Sarkozy has spoken of France's failures in Vietnam and Algeria and said he would never have supported French troops in Iraq.

That's fine, because Iraq is only one front in the hot and cold wars against terrorism. To have a strong man in France, even if it's only to lay out a different course for Europe, is as Chuck Schumer -- Chuck Schumer! -- said, “It would be nice to have someone who’s head of France who doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction against the United States.”