Out on a limb at Mike Lief.com

The fact that the Democrats are trying to accomplish this bit of legislative skullduggery without attracting attention (i.e., without a press conference choreographed by Pelosi and her pals) speaks volumes about how much -- or how little -- the Dems can be trusted on the national security issue.

UPDATE: Well, it's official. The Democrats killed the "John Doe" provision.

John Hinderaker notes:

This is a good example of how Congress really works.

The "John Doe" measure passed the House on a 304-121 vote, which means that many Democrats didn't want to go on record as opposing the measure. Instead, they killed it quietly in conference committee.

So now Democrats in "swing" districts--those must be the ones where voters take seriously the risk of terrorist attack--can tell voters that they voted for the measure, and take no responsibility for the fact it never became law. This dodge is as old as the Republic.

It also shows the importance of party affiliation. If the Republicans still controlled Congress, a majority of conferees never would have voted to strip "John Doe" protection out of the bill.

Pathetic. Even if we don't suffer another attack, moves like this give the Stupid Party GOP an issue with which to hammer the Dems during the next election cycle. And the Dems deserve it, too.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:33 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Shallow analysis from anti-war "statesmen"

Tony Blankley takes issue with the cut-and-run Senators – and succinctly states the issue on which they ought to be focused.

He is, to be charitable, less than impressed with their reasons for declaring defeat and going home.

I haven't seen such uncritical thinking since I hid under my bed sheets to get away from the monsters back when I was 3 years old.

Whether they are talking about war weariness, grief over casualties, fear of their upcoming elections, disappointment with the current Iraqi government or general irritation with the incumbent president: What in the world do such misgivings of U.S. senators have to do with whether we should continue to advance our vital national security interests?

None of these senators has even addressed the question of whether the U.S. is safer if we leave Iraq than if we stay. Isn't that the key question? The question is not whether the Iraqi government deserves American sacrifice on their behalf. Our sons and daughters are not fighting, being grievously wounded and dying for Iraq — but for American vital interests. If this were just about Iraqi democracy, I might join the screaming for a quick exit.

But if al Qaeda can plausibly claim they drove America out of Iraq (just as they drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan) they will gain literally millions of new adherents in their struggle to destroy America and the West. We will then pay in blood, treasure and future wars vastly more than we are paying today to manage and eventually win our struggle in Iraq.

Our staying power, unflinching persistence in the face of adversity, muscular capacity to impose order on chaos and eventual slaughtering of terrorists who are trying to drive us out will do more to win the "hearts and minds" of potentially radical Islamists around the world than all the little sermons about our belief in Islam as the religion of peace. As Osama bin Laden once famously observed, people follow the strong horse.

We have two choices: Use our vast resources to prove we are the strong horse; or get ready to be taken to the glue factory.

When Blankley mentions Bin Laden’s “strong horse” quote, he omits the context; it was prompted by the Clinton administration’s quick exit from Somalia in the aftermath of the “Blackhawk Down” battle, wherein the U.S. Army lost less than 20 GIs.

Despite the courage of the 1st Mountain Division and men like U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Randy Shugart and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, both of whom won the Medal of Honor, and despite the vast number of enemy killed at relatively little cost, the fact that the U.S. rapidly withdrew from the African nation led bin Laden and his terrorist jihadi cohorts to surmise that America – and Americans – didn’t have the fortitude to fight and win the long war, that despite our weaponry, wealth and size, we lacked the stamina and civilizational self-confidence to stay the course.

Bin Laden concluded that we were a paper tiger, the weak horse.

Fleeing Iraq will prove that we’ve learned nothing in the intervening years, and serve to further embolden our enemies.

Too bad our so-called statesmen are too short-sighted to see it.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2007

A river of ice

The glacier terminates at the water's edge, but as the ship moved past I could see the rest of it, a river of ice stretching miles, disappearing into the mist at the base of the mountains overlooking Glacier Bay.

Perhaps the highlight of the cruise (aside from our close encounter with the Killer Whales) was the time we spent in Glacier Bay, the Zuiderdam's captain skillfully maneuvering us near the massive ice cliffs, the immense weight of the centuries' accumulation of snow squeezing all the air out, compressing the very structure of the crystals until they absorbed all light, reflecting only blue back at us -- giving the glaciers their distinctive, azure hue.

We were out on the veranda as we entered Glacier Bay, my wife bundled up with a blanket on one of the chairs while I occasionally ducked back into our stateroom to warm up, the temperature dropping rapidly as the wind blew across the ice.

We looked forward along the starboard side of the ship and watched the shoreline glide by, the massive vessel's master swinging the bow to port, revealing the Margerie Glacier bit by bit until the entire, gargantuan ice cliff lay before us.

It's difficult to get a sense of just how massive the glacier is until you have something in view that provides some scale; in this instance, a trawler with some sightseers moved between us and the ice. The face towers 250 feet above the water and extends 100 feet below the surface, stretching a mile along the shoreline.

I took a closer look, zooming in with my camera. The ice contains layers of dirt acquired over the centuries, millennia -- and is scored, pitted, riven with crevasses and caves. I forgot how cold it was, mesmerized by the play of light over the surface, trying to take it all in.

It was magnificent.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 16, 2007

Glacier watcher

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:31 PM

The New York Times should be ashamed

http://www.kerenmalki.org/photo.htm

http://www.kerenmalki.org/Press/Press_Listing.htm

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDcyNDU3ZTdhMTVmMjg4YTVmNTdmMDM0MTI3NTExOTY=

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/arts/television/27genz.html

“Hot House,” Shimon Dotan’s absorbing look at Palestinians held in Israeli jails, is full of remarkable interviews. Prisoners talk about how they issue orders to followers on the outside via smuggled cellphones. A former Palestinian newscaster, Ahlam Tamimi, recalls the day she dropped a suicide bomber off at his target, then coolly went on television to report on the resulting bombing.

Mr. Dotan, who grew up in Israel, is so successful at revealing the world inside the prisons, where about 10,000 Palestinians are held, that by the end of “Hot House” you may feel more than a little annoyance at the two sides in this endless conflict. These enemies know each other absurdly well. They learn from each other, and talk openly about doing so. Yet they can’t seem to break the cycle: a cat and mouse addicted to their own game.

The film, shown tonight on Cinemax, is centered on the 2006 Palestinian elections; some of the prisoners are members of Parliament. And it has a timeliness to it because life in the prisons mimics life outside: there is a Hamas faction, a Fatah faction and so on.

Mr. Dotan too often lets the prisoners he interviews spout the usual hogwash (“We treat all human beings as brothers,” says a Hamas inmate), but he also zeros in on what makes the prisons so fascinating. “The Israel security service does such a good job that the whole military, political and social leadership is here,” says Col. Ofer Lefler, a spokesman for the Israeli Prisons Authority.

And that leadership isn’t making license plates. Prisoners talk about how they have used their time — decades, for some — to learn more about their own cause. Some entered as boys, but now, through newspapers, television and talks with other inmates, they know what they were fighting for back then.

They pursue university degrees — in Hebrew. “The Palestinian prisoners have turned the Israeli jails into academies and universities,” says Samir Masharawi, a Fatah leader.

The Israelis, in turn, learn about the Palestinians by watching the prison populations. The film, though, is necessarily ambiguous as to whether all this will lead either side to be more accommodating or will simply result in smarter warriors.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The role of the intellectual in society

This is an interesting take on the role of the Left -- and the ever-so-much-smarter-than-the-rest-of-us literati and educational elites.

Since about [1960] everyone describable as an “intellectual” has lived in a state of chronic discontent with the existing order. Necessarily so, because society as it was constituted had no room for him . . . The intellectuals could find a function for themselves only in the literary reviews and the left-wing political parties.

The mentality of the American left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality . . . And underlying this is the really important fact about so many of the American intelligentsia—their severance from the common culture of the country.

In intention, at any rate, the intelligentsia are Europeanised . . . In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought.

America is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an American and that it is a duty to snigger at every American institution . . . It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any American intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “The Star Spangled Banner” than of stealing from a poor box . . . If the American people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Islamo-Fascists judged that they were “decadent” and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible.

Pretty incendiary stuff, eh? However, it wasn't written recently.

Nor was it authored by a neo-con -- or any other kind of conservative.

As a matter of fact, it was published 66 years ago, from the pen of socialist George Orwell. I made a few alterations (substituting "American" for "Briton," "Star Spangled Banner" for "God Save the King") to mask the fact that he was actually taking on England's pro-appeasement leftists in the dark days of early 1941, when Great Britain stood alone against Hitler and Stalin -- and not today's Democrats and the Hollywood, media and academic elites.

You can read Orwell's piece here. The parallels between his time and our own are quite striking.

Via Rod Dreher.

Posted by Mike Lief at 05:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Police brutality

You've never seen anything like this video from the interrogation of a suspected serial killer.

Caution: Contains harsh language; may not be suitable for children or the easily offended.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wild Bill Guarnere

One of the remaining Band of Brothers is recovering from a heart attack.

Details and a picture of "Wild Bill" can be found here.

I hope he makes a speedy recovery; men like Guarnere are living reminders of the last time our nation was truly unified in a fight against evil -- and the personification of courage and honor.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Should we stay or should we go now?

Commenter Bill H. was on a tear this weekend, offering his take on the leadership of Pres. Bush, as well as the reasons for going to Iraq, not to mention how the military campaign is being fought, and the bleak prospects for the civilized to triumph over the barbarians in the region.

It's impassioned stuff, and while I don't agree with all of it, I appreciate his insights.

Austin Bay has considered the impact of an American surrender retreat and come up with what he considers seven likely alternative future histories for Iraq -- and the Middle East -- after we make a hasty exit.

1) THREE NEW COUNTRIES

(2) REGIONAL SHIA-SUNNI WAR

(3) TURKEY EXPANDS

(4) SHIA DICTATORSHIP

(5) CHAOS: The region becomes a cauldron. Iraq shatters into ethnic enclaves, a few “new Mesopotamian city states” managing to control oil fields. Iran and Turkey exert “regional influence” over eastern Iraq and northern Iraq, respectively, but concerned about confrontation between themselves or provoking sanctions from Europe and the US, neither send their military forces in large numbers beyond current borders . Terror attacks and intermittent fighting afflict neighborhoods throughout Iraq. Local warlords rule by fear and make money either smuggling oil, drugs, or arms. This tribal hell is a perfect disaster—the kind of disaster that allows Al Qaeda to build training facilities and base camps for operations throughout the Middle East and Europe.

(6) “GANG UP”

(7) SURPRISE—THE IRAQI CENTER HOLD

There's more here; read the whole thing.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 13, 2007

Amazing sights

We were on a high-speed catamaran out of Ketchikan, heading out for a four-and-a-half hour tour of the fjords, when we spotted a pod of Orcas.

The captain cautioned us that every minute we spent stopped took away from our time in the fjords, as this wasn't a whale watching trip.

The unruly passengers agreed that we didn't give a damn what the trip was supposed to be; there were whales to be watched.

And what a view we had!

An adult Orca took a look around (I presume to see if the coast was clear), before being joined by one of the younger members of the pod.

I'm not sure if the youngster just changed sides, or if another young whale came up and nestled next to its parent, but it sure looks like he was snuggling with the adult.

They hung around for about five minutes, lollygagging in the misty fjord, rolling over, flapping fins and spouting plumes of steam into the cold air.

And with the flick of a massive tail, they were gone.

Posted by Mike Lief at 01:34 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 12, 2007

I've flown the coop ...

Glacier Bay gulls. Panasonic DMC-TZ3, 1/1000, f3.3, -1/3 stop, ISO 100.

So postings are sporadic. More pictures and stories to come.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 11, 2007

The world didn't want a Gorebasm

Thomas Lifson has a biting analysis of Al Gore’s global warming nag-fest and its inability to attract many to attend – or bother watching on TV.

My very favorite excuse for low attendance at the much-ballyhooed worldwide Live Earth global warming concerts yesterday came from Johannesburg, where concert organizer John Langford "believes extremely cold weather ... kept people away from the concert."

Well I suppose that if you are trying to whip up fears about global warming, cold weather does tend to dampen enthusiasm somewhat.

Of course, the global warming enthusiasts have already tried repackaging their rhetoric of doom, so Langford found himself musing, "... we've had a strange winter ... is it climate change?"

The brilliant stroke claiming that any weather at all is evidence that something is very wrong works on idiots, ideologues, and children too young to remember every year it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

But evidence is accumulating that most normal people are fed up with being lectured about the need to conserve energy by people who fly in private jets and own multiple mansions. Fifty-six percent of the British public, for instance, believes that global warming fears are "exaggerated."

[…]

Meanwhile, pillars of the scientific establishment are showing early signs of buyer’s remorse for having climbed aboard the bandwagon before the evidence was really in. It wouldn't be the first time that the common sense of ordinary people is way ahead of the experts.

The collapse of the global warming hot air balloon promises to be one of the most interesting spectacles of the next few years. Despite the overwhelming support of powerful corporations, formerly trendy cultural figures, and many governments, the truth will out.

In the meantime, there will be no worldwide shortage of irony and hypocrisy as the privileged try to sell sacrifice and conservation to those who lead more modest lives in the name of a poorly-substantiated alarmist theory.

I too am awaiting the embarrassed mea culpas from the credulous global-warming ninnies. It hasn’t escaped my attention that “global warming” has been taken out of the game as of late, replaced by its much more non-specific cousin, “climate change,” a term of such amorphous qualities that it means absolutely nothing.

And meaning nothing in particular, “climate change” can be used to describe everything, which makes it synonymous with “America” and “Americans,” who can be credited for nothing good in the world – and blamed for everything that ails Mother Earth.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Is he stupid?

To say I am disappointed in Pres. Bush’s leadership is an understatement. From his failure to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to rally the nation to war; to his boneheaded proposal to put port security in the hands of an Arab-owned company; his nomination of unqualified crony Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court; to the immigration debacle and his attacks on conservatives, he’s missed no opportunity to prove his critics correct on any number of points.

But the one thing I’ve never thought is that the man is dumb.

John Derbyshire, having had a chance to cool off, agrees – and has an explanation.

Some impertinent readers, to this effect: "Derb—-You say in your May Diary, of GWB, that 'The man's an idiot.' Then in your June Diary you tell us that 'W is an intelligent man.' Well, which is it?"

[Me] Pah!—everybody's a critic. I plead being mad as hell with W at the end of May, more calmly reflective a month later.

For future reference, here's that I think about the man's mind. He's well above average in intelligence. You don't get a degree from Yale—not even with a C average—unless you're fairly smart. Psychologist Linda Gottfredson, working from W's published test scores, estimated his IQ at 125, which would put him around the 95th percentile (meaning that W is smarter than 19 out of 20 Americans). Charles Murray pegged him a tad lower, but still up in the 90-somethingth percentile.

On the other hand, my rather strong impression is that while the president CAN think, he DOESN'T, much. The Iraq blunderings, the poverty of his off-the-cuff oratory, the endless repetition of tired, empty cliches long discredited, the Harriet Miers fiasco, the stupid squandering of his small remaining political capital on that major-stupid immigration bill... not much thinking there that I can see.

This isn't so surprising—that a person CAN think but WON'T. You see it a lot, actually, though usually among people with undemanding jobs. A sort of mental sloth often sets in as you get older—the intellectual equivalent of middle-age spread.

I feel it myself rather strongly—a great reluctance to think. If I wasn't chained to a computer trying to support my family, I doubt I'd have a thought from one week's end to the next. For a chap like W, who has never in his life had to wonder whether he's going to be able to meet this month's car payment, mental sloth must be an even stronger temptation.

And of course, instinct will get you a long way. A seat-of-the-pants Chief Executive can out-perform a high-IQ one—we all know that. Trouble is, your instincts have to be RIGHT, and W's mostly aren't.

I think if Bush had not run for reelection, he’d have left office known as the man who stepped up in the aftermath of 9-11 and kept the nation safe in the years following; now, his legacy is in question, not because he’s stupid, but because he’s stubborn – and perhaps foolish.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 10, 2007

He wants to laugh

Clayton Cramer says that "I Want To Laugh..."

But I dare not. Over at a blog called "Gun Toting Liberal", where they were discussing the former British jihadist who says that Islamofascism isn't driven by foreign policy, one reader posted this chilling comment:

You are right that many people just don’t get it about terrorists. The receptionist at my work once said she was sure that if we could just sit down with the terrorists and bake some chocolate chip cookies together we could work it out.

I was stunned beyond [belief] at her statement. The whole breakroom at work went dead silent and she didnt even notice peoples reactions. But this is a common thought of many.

And the really scary part is that they vote.

There are a lot of people so clueless that I wonder how they buy bread at the market without assistance.

Yeah, cookies and a cup of warm milk will solve all our differences.

I weep for the death of Western Civilization at the hands of barbarians -- and empty-headed We-Are-The-World morons who offer their necks to the jihadis' blades as a show of good faith.

THWACK!

Thump!

Idiots.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

He wants to laugh

Clayton Cramer says that "I Want To Laugh..."

But I dare not. Over at a blog called "Gun Toting Liberal", where they were discussing the former British jihadist who says that Islamofascism isn't driven by foreign policy, one reader posted this chilling comment:

You are right that many people just don’t get it about terrorists. The receptionist at my work once said she was sure that if we could just sit down with the terrorists and bake some chocolate chip cookies together we could work it out.

I was stunned beyond [belief] at her statement. The whole breakroom at work went dead silent and she didnt even notice peoples reactions. But this is a common thought of many.

And the really scary part is that they vote.

There are a lot of people so clueless that I wonder how they buy bread at the market without assistance.

Yeah, cookies and a cup of warm milk will solve all our differences.

I weep for the death of Western Civilization at the hands of barbarians -- and empty-headed We-Are-The-World morons who offer their necks to the jihadis' blades as a show of good faith.

THWACK!

Thump!

Idiots.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Flying the scary skies

I haven't been aboard

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:07 AM

July 09, 2007

Like something out of Greek mythology

Victor Davis Hanson does such a stellar job saying what I’ve been thinking, that I don’t see any point to reinventing the wheel.

Greek mythology often encapsulated an entire culture's worst fears and depravities — and over centuries of story-telling became ever more complex and layered and bizarre.

But what is strange about reading Michael Yon's graphic descriptions from Iraq is that al Qaeda (or its kindred) seems almost in a single generation to be outdoing a millennium of savagery present in Greek history and myth.

You have to go to Thucydides's Mycalessus to find a parallel of wiping out even the animals of a small village.

On Friday, Yon reported that al Qaeda served up a son for dinner to his own family— a barbarism reminiscent of Atreus (hence the "curse" on the House of Atreus) cooking (sans feet and hands) and then serving his twin brother's sons to their unsuspecting father Thyestes. So Yon reports a revolting modern-day Thysestean feast:

The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11-years-old.

As [U.S. Army] LT David Wallach interpreted the man's words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment.

I asked Wallach, "What did he say?"

Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

What is striking about all this savagery—whether with the filmed beheadings of Westerners in Iraq to the recent flaming Johnny Storm human torch at Glasgow, screaming epithets as he sought to engulf bystanders and ignite his canisters — is the absolute silence of the West, either distracted by Paris and i-Phones or suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome and obsessed with Guantanamo.

It is hard to recall an enemy so savage and yet one so largely ignored by rich affluent and distracted elites as the radical jihadists, as we have to evoke everything from mythology to comic books to find analogies to their extra-human viciousness.

For a self-congratulatory culture issuing moral lectures on everything from global warming to the dangers of smoking, the silence of the West toward the primordial horror from Gaza to Anbar is, well, horrific in its own way as well...

The ability of anti-war (and anti-American) Americans to ignore the brutality of our enemies – while simultaneously finding innumerable ways to blame us for their savage ways – is astonishing.

Feeding a family their own son? Barbarism and cruelty rivaling anything in history or mythology is happening right now, and the only sane answer is implacable, irresistible force; breaking the spirit of the enemy with the steel of our men’s weapons, no surrender, only a pig fat-coated grave. These are the unlawful combatants the ACLU and its fellow travelers would grant full access to the U.S. courts; they deserve only a swift battlefield execution, a more merciful end than the one they gave the inhabitants of the Iraqi village decimated by Al Queda – and ignored by the MSM.

Exhibit A of the press' failure is the continuing resistance of said MSM to follow-up on Michael Yon’s reporting (cited above); he’s this century’s Ernie Pyle, and nobody is providing better –- hell, even comparable –- coverage of the fighting in Iraq, to their everlasting shame.

You have a duty as an American voter to try and better understand facts on the ground; reading Yon’s dispatches is a good start.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 08, 2007

UPDATED: Definition of chutzpah

[Fred] Thompson ... commented on his and Matalin's role in aiding Scooter Libby, saying, "I didn't know Scooter, but I knew an injustice when I saw one, and wasn't afraid to say so." He continued by joking, "If nothing else, we've apparently convinced the Clintons that it really is a bad thing to lie under oath," — to which he received heavy applause from the crowd.

Via Jim Geraghty.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No story too big too ignore!

Proving once again that there’s no reason to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times if what you want is – erm, what do they call it? -- news, readers of blogs like GatewayPudit are finding out that the trainwreck known as Mayor Villaraigosa is even worse than they knew.

The LATimes apparently has missed the news (there’s that word again!) that the reason why his Telemundo hot tamale let it slip that she and the married mayor were an item is because Hizzoner was already off her and on another – this time a Korean clothing designer who somehow ended up on the L.A. Planning Commission – and the Mayor.

Strange, no? Best part is that the local Korean-language papers picked up on the story, which was studiously ignored by the Times, allowing the dominant fishwrap to continue in its self-chosen role as the paper of last resort when you want to know what the hell is happening in L.A.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Adventures in haircare

It takes a child to find the key point of the Silky Pony’s adventures in haircare.

Just ask Patterico's kid.

This is an actual conversation I just had with my seven-year-old daughter Lauren:

Me [speaking to my wife]: John Edwards spent $1250 on a haircut.

Lauren: Why would he waste that many dollars on a haircut?

Me: I don’t know.

Lauren: Is he dumb?

Good question, Lauren. It’s not exactly that he’s dumb; Edwards is just acting out the secret life of all liberals in politics, in that he wants to tell us how to live our lives, while remaining free to live his as he wishes, hectoring and lecturing the great, unwashed masses about the injustice of “Two Americas” as he spends money like a French king, admiring his silken tresses in his Hall of Mirrors.

What a maroon.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tinseltown tales

The Wall Street Journal offers movie buff (and TCM host) Robert Osborne’s list of the five best books about Hollywood by or about the biggest of Tinseltown’s bigwigs.

1. "The Name Above the Title" by Frank Capra (Macmillan, 1971).
This is the best show-business autobiography to date, bar none, written by a man who for many years was one of only three directors in Hollywood (the others: Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock) whose name meant as much on a marquee as any star's.

The life of Frank Capra (1897-1991) is a dazzling American success story, filled with more peaks than plateaus. But by the time the three-time Academy Award-winning director was 64, "the Marquis de Sade had taken over the movie industry," he writes, and "the kind of people I once ate for breakfast were maneuvering me out of pet projects I wanted to do and out of the studio I had helped build into a major company." So Capra called it a day. Regrettably, for us. What he has to say about his time in the sun is filled with all the verve and intrigue of a great mystery novel.

It’s shocking to think that Capra spent his last 30 years without the opportunity to direct a single film. Now, it’s not even noteworthy when directors like Clint Eastwood produce some of their best work well into their seventies and eighties.

2. "Memo From David O. Selznick" edited by Rudy Behlmer (Viking, 1972).

Apparently no one ever wrote more memos, with carbon copies, than producer David O. Selznick (1902-65). The memos flew out of his office at an alarming rate, whether he was pondering the casting of "Gone With the Wind" ("Would Warners give us a picture a year with Errol Flynn if we give him the lead?") or telling Ingrid Bergman how much makeup to use.

Deftly assembled by Hollywood historian Rudy Behlmer, "Memo From David O. Selznick" shows us how the obsessively hands-on Selznick was able to produce so many outstanding movies--in addition to "Gone With the Wind," he was behind "Dinner at Eight," "Nothing Sacred" and "Rebecca." It also makes clear why people ran screaming whenever a messenger showed up with another memo from DOS.

It’s men like Selznick that make me nostalgic for the “Golden Era” of filmmaking, when the studio system was cultivating stars and turning out future classics in astonishing numbers. It’s a shame he died relatively young; who knows what he could have done with all that talent and twenty more years.

4. "Lion of Hollywood" by Scott Eyman (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

Soon after MGM's big boss, Louis B. Mayer, died in 1957, his name became a symbol of Hollywood hierarchy at its most monstrous. I have always found this confusing, since many of those who knew Mayer well and worked for him were fond of the man who shepherded "more stars than there are in heaven."

[…]

Eyman's meticulously researched book never panders to Mayer but does a great deal to balance our perceptions of him. Along the way, we learn how a boy born in Russia in 1882 joined a generation of refugees, glove salesmen and other ambitious young men to start an American industry. The empire they built was dictated much more by need and passion than meanness and malice.

How quintessentially American, that a Russian Jewish immigrant created the cinematic images that defined “All-American values” for two generations of moviegoers.

There are more recommendations; I’ll probably read them all (or at least add them to my Amazon wishlist).

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Green is the new yellow

Jack Shafer, Slate’s media expert, often takes conservatives to task, but recently his acerbic pen skewered the latest manifestation of William Randoph Hearst’s yellow journalism. Shafer notes it’s got a new color, and takes his own employer to the woodshed for publishing eco-propaganda.

Yellow journalism now comes in a new color: green.

Often as sensationalistic as its yellow predecessor, green journalism tends to appeal to our emotions, exploit our fears, and pander to our vanity. It places a political agenda in front of the quest for journalistic truth and in its most demagogic forms tolerates no criticism, branding all who question it as enemies of the people.

Not all green journalism harangues, but even the gentlest variety sermonizes, cuts logical corners, and substitutes good intentions for problem solving. For an example of creepy gentle green journalism, there's no better example than the “Slate Green Challenge," a series that Slate started publishing last fall in conjunction with TreeHugger.org.

I've got no fundamental quarrel with TreeHugger. They're propagandists who are "dedicated to driving sustainability into the mainstream" and don't really pretend to be journalists. My bitch is that Slate, which ought to know better, boarded the trendy greenwagon to publish the group's flawed, if well-meaning, guide to reducing carbon dioxide from one's "diet."

[…]

There's not much in the TreeHugger-Slate package we haven't heard a million times since the first oil embargo: Install storm windows. Insulate. Weather strip. Keep the furnace settings low and the AC settings high. Turn things off. Buy energy-efficient appliances and cars. Avoid unnecessary trips. Carpool. Don't waste.

But that's not good enough for the green worshippers at TreeHugger, whose aesthetic is ascetic. The series counsels readers to decarbonize by resisting new purchases of cotton clothes—unless of the organic variety—and to seek fibers made of hemp, bamboo, ramie, linen, silk, and lyocell (wood pulp).

In greenifying Christmas, one must give up the carbon gluttony of Xmas cards, Xmas wrapping paper, Xmas trees, and electrified Xmas decorations. "If you're decorating with candles, choose the ones made from soy wax or beeswax," the article seriously advises. And, if you must eat, TreeHugger says, eat locally and organically, and avoid processed food and meat.

[…]

I don't mean to suggest all greenies are well-meaning dolts or propagandists.

But I do. The science doesn’t back up their hysterical Gore-basm induced efforts to make us live like aborigines, eating all-natural, free-range grubs, with sticks, tree bark and gravel for roughage.

The dishonesty of their agenda is revealed by their resistance to building nuclear power plants, the ultimate low-carbon energy source.

Anyhow, good for Shafer – and shame on Slate.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 06, 2007

It's not just me

Rod Dreher asks on the Dallas Morning News editorial board's blog why more "moderate" Muslims aren't reclaiming their religion from the terrorists -- and cites to a couple of Muslims who feel the same way.

I keep banging on about why it's important to address Islamic theology, and to not hold back on challenging the ideas driving Islamic radicalism. Which means having to get a lot more specific in questioning Islamic theology. If you don't believe me, listen to a couple of prominent Muslims arguing the same thing.

Dreher quotes former jihadi Hasan Butt, who I previously discussed here, then posts a passage by Irshad Manji, a Canadian reformer.

Although the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, it is important to start making a more important distinction: between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones. Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam but deny that Islam has anything to do with it. By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions, effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations.

To do so would be admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there.

Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for reinterpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice that their monopoly is over.

The media, as has been observed time and and time again, really doesn't get religion, so we tend to avoid serious engagement with it, beyond platitudes and notions. We can't afford this.

Dreher's right about the media's inability to competently report on religion. If you're getting your information on Islam from the legacy media (i.e., the local fishwrap) and not on-line, you're seriously uninformed.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Best headline ever

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:54 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Can Islam be reformed by (diffident) moderate Muslims?

An insider asks, "Where are the moderate Muslims who will purge Islam of its radical, violent fringe-elements?" Unfortunately, they seem to be silent -- and the presumption that they constitute a silent majority seems based more on Western hopes and fears than any empirical evidence.

According to Australian psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed, Muslims interested in peaceful coexistance with non-Muslims are not in the mainstream of Islamic society throughout much of the world, and more and more educated young Muslims are attracted to the murderous ranks of the jihadis.

[W]ith hindsight, I can see that what we now call extremism was virtually the norm in the community I grew up in. It was completely normal to view Jews as evil and responsible for the ills of the world. It was normal to see the liberal society around us as morally corrupt, its stains to be avoided at all costs. It was normal to see white girls as cheap and easy and to see the ideal of femininity as its antithesis. These views have been pushed to more private, personal spheres amid the present scrutiny of Muslim communities.

But they remain widespread, as research in Britain showed earlier this year: up to 50 per cent of British Muslims aged between 15 and 29 want to see sharia law taken up in Britain.

[...]

At its core, Islam is deeply sceptical of the idea of a secular state. There is no rendering unto Caesar because state and religion are believed to be inseparable. This idea then interacts with centuries-old edicts of Islamic jurists about how the land of Islam should interact with the world of unbelievers, known as dar ul-kufr. The modern radicals then take it further, declaring that since, with the exception perhaps of Pakistan and Iran, there are no Islamic states, the whole world is effectively the land of the unbelievers. As a result, some radicals believe waging war on the whole world is justified to re-create it as an Islamic state.

They go as far as reclassifying the globe as dar ul-harb, "land of war", apparently allowing Muslims to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In dar ul-harb, anything goes, including the killing of civilians.

While it may appear absurd to most, this nihilistic but exclusivist world view is clearly attracting significant numbers of young Muslims. British police have suggested the latest attacks and foiled plots may have involved teenagers. But the obvious absurdity of the set of ideas is still grounded in Islam, which, regardless of how theological experts argue, can be interpreted in many ways.

Muslim communities must openly argue precisely what it is they fear and loathe about the West. Much of it centres on sexuality. This is the first step in rooting out any Muslim ambivalence about living in the West. But thereafter, the argument must proceed rapidly to Islamic theology and all its uncomfortable truths - from its repeated glowing references to violence, its obsession with and revulsion at sex and its historical antipathy to the very possibility that reason can exist as separate from God.

It doesn't help that the West and its multiculti pusillanimous political "leaders" insist on chanting "Religion of Peace," instead of insisting that Muslims take a long, hard look at why so many of their own are drawn to this death-cult-like interpretation of their faith.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Those Jews are so bloody smart -- why is that?

This is the intellectual equivalent of Thunderdome, letters to the editor savaging Charles Murray for his theory on the genetic basis for the stastical anomaly of high IQs in the Jewish populace, and his thoughtful responses.

Posted by Mike Lief at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 05, 2007

High falutin' docs cut down to size

John Derbyshire isn't buying into the "how can doctors -- who are so intelligent -- be terrorists?" meme going 'round in the aftermath of the attempted car bombings and jihadi-BBQs in the U.K.

I'll confess I'm getting a bit of cognitive dissonance with all this comment about how astounding it is that the latest batch of Brit Islamo-terrorists should be doctors. Barry Rubin in the NY Post: "Consider ... the kind of people who become doctors—relatively intelligent, well-organized, hard-working."

Really? I attended a British university with a large and famous teaching hospital attached. The medical students were pretty widely regarded as the dumbest on campus, and as the heaviest drinkers and stupidest pranksters. Of the five or six student rock groups, the medics' was the loudest and worst. (Its name was "Perry Stalsis and his Abdo Men.") My subsequent experience of doctors has done nothing to erase those early impressions. Sure, medical students have to memorize the names of a lot of little parts. So do auto mechanics.

More to the point, we learned almost six years ago that the hijackers who murdered thousands of Americans on 9-11 were well-educated, monied sociopaths from privileged backgrounds, schooled in the West, denied nothing but wanting nothing more than to kill infidels.

Derbyshire's critique of physicians and their shortcomings reminds me of the derisive military slang for doctors: chancre mechanics.

Now we can say that they bring their medical expertise to the bomb-maker's table, using the knowledge of the human body acquired from years of education and training and using it to devise better ways to eviscerate, disembowel, exsanguinate and disassemble those same bodies.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 04, 2007

Happy Fourth of July!

We celebrated America's birthday at the Hollywood Bowl with family, food, wine, and music by Sousa, Copland, Grofe and others, with tributes to Gene Autry and John Wayne by the Cowboy Balladeers, Riders in the Sky.

The box seats were terrific, close enough to see the performers without needing to use the Jumbotrons off to the sides of the stage. The weather was sweltering when we arrived (110 in the Valley), but within 10 minutes the sun dipped behind the trees bordering the Bowl and the temperature fell at least twenty degrees.

It had been years since my last visit to the Bowl, and a number of changes had been made; the supposedly sound-enhancing gigantic orbs that used to festoon the ceiling of the arch were gone, replaced by a flying-saucer-like array in the center of the structure.

The sound was awesome, a tremendous improvement (if memory serves), and the light show painted a constantly-shifting wash of color over the curves and crisp lines of the shell.

The music? The conductor was new to me; enthusiastic and energetic. The fellow sitting in the box in front of us commented that the maestro would probably become quite renowned -- just as soon as he started shaving.

I've always wondered just how large a role the guy waving the baton plays in the success of an orchestra, as opposed to the -- what do you call them? -- oh, right, the musicians.

Anyhow, the concert began with a rousing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, with fireworks shooting into the sky at first mention of Rockets' Red Glare. The audience rose to its feet as soon as the first notes filled the air, and darn near everyone sang along.

As the orchestra began its Western-oriented program, Dad and I had a whispered debate over the composer of the piece.

"Grofe," Dad said.

"Elmer Bernstein," I replied.

"Nope, it's Grofe; I'm positive," he said.

"Sorry, Chollie, it's the theme to The Magnificent Seven, by Bernstein," I replied.

Then we both shut up and enjoyed the performance. For the record, Dad knows many things -- golf, all things pharmaceutical, Brooklyn trivia -- but when it comes to movie trivia, the torch has been passed.

Sorry, Pops. Then we heard Copland, then Grofe (Dad turned to me and said, "I was just listening ahead.").

There was a musical tribute to John Wayne, after a video montage of scenes from many of his films, with the Philharmonic playing John Williams' score from The Cowboys.

After intermission, Riders in the Sky took the stage, the close harmonies of Ranger Doug, Woody Paul, Too Slim and Joey the Cowpolka King filling the amphitheater (and putting a smile on my Dad's face).

They performed numbers by Gene Autrey and other greats of the Depression-era, then did a medley of hits from their Grammy-winning albums, including the children's favorite, Woody's Roundup.

Dad turned to me when they left the stage and said he wished there's been more of the Rider's own songs, which made me glad, for I'd hoped that he'd like them as much as I did.

The evening finished with a spectacular fireworks show, set to the music of John Philip Sousa -- also a favorite of mine, thanks to Dad playing the U.S. Marine Corps Band long-playing record throughout my childhood.

All in all, a great way to mark the 231st anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.

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July 03, 2007

The well-dressed lawyer

As the nation slow roasts in the summer heat, an on-line legal website asks its readers whether seersucker suits are an acceptable choice for the sweltering courtroom advocate, as well as inquiring if global warming justifies short-sleeved shirts.

The results?

For the record, I like seersucker suits, although I haven't owned one since the mid-80s -- which is also the last time I owned a short-sleeve dress shirt, although I never wore the one with the other.

Seersucker always reminds me of lawyers from the 1920s, ceiling fans turning lazy circles in a stuffy courtroom, bored observers slowly fanning themselves as they watched a witness sweating in agony on the stand.

Of course, one can only hope that the modern-day seersucker-clad advocate evoked shades of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, rather than Austin Pendleton in My Cousin Vinnie.

Be sure to scroll down and check out the comments from the lawyers -- you may be surprised to learn there are some strong opinions on the subject.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The homicidal doctors from the "Religion of Peace"

Contrary to what the see-no-evil politicians want you to believe, the jihadis who are trying to bring death and destruction into the heart of Western civilization are most definitely not poor, uneducated, victimised members of our racist societies.

In a development as damaging to the Hippocratic Oath as the participation of Dr. Josef Mengele, M.D., in the Holocaust, it seems that seven physicians are participants in the plot to detonate car bombs across the United Kingdom.

And these would-be killers are smart -- smart enough to be amused by how our politically correct politicans and journalists help them in their quest to establish a worldwide Califate.

A former jihadi published an opinion piece in a British paper, and it makes for bracing reading.

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology -- I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

... though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same. For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war. Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away. This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own.

The cancer is spreading to the healing class, and our reluctance to speak the truth -- exemplified by the brainless blathering about a "Religion of Peace" from Pres. Bush -- is the carcinogenic ingredient making the problem worse.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

That's gotta sting

While Hillary Clinton seems like the candidate most likely to win the Democratic nomination, given her experience, Machiavellian political skills and vast gobs of cash, and yet she has -- ahem -- a rather hard time making the sale to voters who haven't drunk the Clinton Kool-Aid.

Just ask Jim Geraghty.

"Best Part of a Hillary Clinton Presidency? You Mean Besides January 20, 2013?"

Gallup didn't phrase it this way, but I will.

When asked the open-ended question, "suppose Hillary Clinton is elected president in 2008. In your view, what would be the best or most positive thing about a Hillary Clinton presidency?"

The single most popular answer was, "nothing," with 28 percent.

[...]

When asked, "what would be the worst or most negative thing about a Hillary Clinton presidency?", only 12 percent said "nothing."

The answers "Too liberal/socialist" and "Bill Clinton would be back in the White House" tied at 10 percent each, with "Not qualified/would not succeed" at 9 percent.

The next four reasons were all bunched together -- "just don’t like her" and "Clinton scandals/baggage" at 7 percent each, and "Country not ready for a woman president" and "Clinton's views on Iraq" at 6 percent each.

She seems to be both the most qualified of the Dems, as well as the most universally loathed -- an interesting combination.

Should make for a fascinating campaign.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why'd the amnesty fail?

In what is perhaps the best post-mortem on the death of the Illegal Alien Amnesty, pollster Scott Rassmussen says his "first law of politics ... that America’s politicians aren’t nearly as important as they think they are," has been confirmed.

The final Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll before the vote found that just 22% of Americans supported the legislation. No amount of Presidential persuasion, Senate logrolling, and procedural tricks was able to overcome that solid bi-partisan lack of public support (although it’s breathtaking to consider how close a determined leadership could come to passing such an unpopular bill).

The real mystery in all of this is why the Senators and their cheerleaders didn’t anticipate the public response. Perhaps they fell in love with their own rhetoric and forgot how it might sound to others.

Near the end of the debate, supporters of the doomed legislation often stated that the status quo is unacceptable. Most Americans would agree on that point. In fact, they might even hold that feeling more strongly than the Grand Bargainers of the Senate -- 72% of American voters believe it’s Very Important to reduce illegal immigration and enforce the borders. But controlling the border was never a focal point of the Senate debate. Instead, the Senators spent most of the time debating the fine points of various approaches to legalizing those who are here illegally. For voters, those topics were definitely a second-or-third tier aspect of the issue.

Because the Senators and the White House never showed much enthusiasm for reducing illegal immigration, only 16% believed the Senate bill would accomplish that goal. Forty-one percent (41%) thought passage of the legislation would actually lead to more illegal immigration. In other words, even though voters consider the status quo unacceptable, they had every confidence that Congress could make a bad situation worse.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of this basic fact. Outside of 46 Senators, hardly anybody thought the legislation would work. That’s why it was defeated. It wasn’t amnesty or guest-worker programs or paths to citizenship that doomed the bill. Each of those provisions made it more difficult for some segments of the population to accept. However, a majority would have accepted them as part of a true compromise that actually gained control of the border.

In that environment, the only way for political leaders to prove they are serious about enforcing the border and reducing illegal immigration will be to do it. That’s the next logical step in the immigration debate.

But it's a step that the Bush Administration -- and the Amnesty backers are loathe to take.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

iPhone: To buy or not to buy?

Interesting review of the iPhone from someone who's not afraid to criticize Apple when deserved -- and who knows the company well.

Bruce Tognazzini was hired at Apple by Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin in 1978, where he remained for 14 years, founding the Apple Human Interface Group. He has been a harsh critic of many of Apple’s later innovations, including the notorious round mouse (“farcical”) and the Macintosh Dock (see: Top 10 Reasons the Apple Dock Sucks). He is almost as stingy with his compliments as his partner, Don Norman. That makes his continuing take on the iPhone, largely positive, most unusual.

What does Bruce think about the latest must-have from Jobs and Company?

On June 29, 2007, the long-awaited iphone was released. Was it worth the wait? Is it all it's cracked up to be?

Yes.

There is no mistaking that this is a first-release phone, both in the hardware and software. However, it is an Apple first release, equivalent in many respects to the fifth or sixth release quality we have come to expect from other major computer technology players.

The "fit and finish" of the device are extraordinary, both in terms of industrial design and human-computer interaction.

He goes into some detail about the areas where Apple has fallen short of the mark, although still producing a product far better than the competition. The final section sums up his thoughts on the question facing anyone enticed by the iPhone: To buy or not to buy? -- and touching on what is perhaps the biggest drawback about taking the plunge.

I have been so excited by the technology of the iPhone that I want to buy one even though, for me, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not talking about the typing problem. Even at my advanced age, I suspect I can deal with that with sufficient practice.

No, it's the fact that AT&T has not bothered to build a cell tower within five miles of my house. As Verizon says, "it's the network." Verizon goes were we go and AT&T does not.

If the iPhone were on the Verizon network, I would already be a proud owner. I will certainly be the proud owner of the first video iPod using this interface, even if I can only connect to the net via wi-fi. Finally, I'll have an alternative to those long, lonely walks from my couch to my desk.

Traditional cell phones are dull, limited, and at end-of-life. iPhone is glorious, and it is only the beginning.

AT&T's the deal-killer for me.

Read the whole thing.

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I am Sicko of Michael Moore-o

Michael Moore, the corpulent, greasy, toad-like master-propagandist for Socialists everywhere, has unleashed yet another skillfully-made yet deeply deceptive piece of agitprop, turning dinner conversations to the latest argument that less capitalism and more state-run, free-market bashing programs are good for whatever ails us.

Someone at a family gathering this weekend asked if I'd be seeing Sicko.

"Why would I want to do that?" I asked.

"Well, it's very well reviewed," said an aunt wearing a t-shirt decrying all the people the U.S. has killed in unjust wars, "and shows how bad our healthcare system is."

"No thanks," I said, "I'm not interested in subjecting myself to the Socialist Leni Riefensthal, nor in contributing a dime to his personal wealth."

The reference to Hitler's favorite propagandist filmmaker produced the kinds of expressions usually reserved for biting into a caramel crunch, only to find you mistaken the litterbox for the candydish.

As to those reviews, why don't we turn to that conservative bastion, MTV, and the ranting, knee-jerk neo-con, Kurt Loder.

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000 people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools...

As a proud socialist, the director appears to feel that there are few problems in life that can't be solved by government regulation (that would be the same government that's already given us the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles)...

The problem with American health care, Moore argues, is that people are charged money to avail themselves of it. In other countries, like Canada, France and Britain, health systems are far superior — and they're free.

[...]

What's the problem with government health systems? Moore's movie doesn't ask that question, although it does unintentionally provide an answer. When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they're inevitably forced to ration treatment. This is certainly the situation in Britain.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune this week, Helen Evans, a 20-year veteran of the country's National Health Service and now the director of a London-based group called Nurses for Reform, said that nearly 1 million Britons are currently on waiting lists for medical care — and another 200,000 are waiting to get on waiting lists. Evans also says the NHS cancels about 100,000 operations each year because of shortages of various sorts. Last March, the BBC reported on the results of a Healthcare Commission poll of 128,000 NHS workers: two thirds of them said they "would not be happy" to be patients in their own hospitals.

James Christopher, the film critic of the Times of London, thinks he knows why. After marveling at Moore's rosy view of the British health care system in "Sicko," Christopher wrote, "What he hasn't done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have."

Moore's most ardent enthusiasm is reserved for the French health care system, which he portrays as the crowning glory of a Gallic lifestyle far superior to our own. The French! They work only 35 hours a week, by law. They get at least five weeks' vacation every year. Their health care is free, and they can take an unlimited number of sick days.

It is here that Moore shoots himself in the foot. He introduces us to a young man who's reached the end of three months of paid sick leave and is asked by his doctor if he's finally ready to return to work. No, not yet, he says. So the doctor gives him another three months of paid leave — and the young man immediately decamps for the South of France, where we see him lounging on the sunny Riviera, chatting up babes and generally enjoying what would be for most people a very expensive vacation. Moore apparently expects us to witness this dumbfounding spectacle and ask why we can't have such a great health care system, too. I think a more common response would be, how can any country afford such economic insanity?

As it turns out, France can't. In 2004, French Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told a government commission, "Our health system has gone mad. Profound reforms are urgent." Agence France-Presse recently reported that the French health-care system is running a deficit of $2.7 billion.

[...]

Having driven his bring-on-government-health care argument into a ditch outside of Paris, Moore next pilots it right off a cliff and into the Caribbean on the final stop on his tour: Cuba.

[...]

Fidel Castro's island dictatorship, now in its 40th year of being listed as a human-rights violator by Amnesty International, is here depicted as a balmy paradise not unlike the Iraq of Saddam Hussein that Moore showed us in his earlier film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." He and his charges make their way — their pre-arranged way, if it need be said — to a state-of-the-art hospital where they receive a picturesquely warm welcome. In a voiceover, Moore, shown beaming at his little band of visitors, says he told the Cuban doctors to "give them the same care they'd give Cuban citizens." Then he adds, dramatically: "And they did."

If Moore really believes this, he may be a greater fool than even his most feverish detractors claim him to be. Nevertheless, medical care is provided to the visiting Americans, and it is indeed excellent. Cuba is in fact the site of some world-class medical facilities (surprising in a country that, as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar noted in the Los Angeles Times last month, "imprisoned a doctor in the late 1990s for speaking out against government failure to respond to an epidemic of a mosquito-borne virus").

What Moore doesn't mention is the flourishing Cuban industry of "health tourism" — a system in which foreigners (including self-admitted multimillionaire film directors and, of course, government bigwigs) who are willing to pay cash for anything from brain-surgery to dental work can purchase a level of treatment that's unavailable to the majority of Cubans with no hard currency at their disposal. The Cuban American National Foundation (admittedly a group with no love for the Castro regime) calls this "medical apartheid." And in a 2004 article in Canada's National Post, writer Isabel Vincent quoted a dissident Cuban neurosurgeon, Doctor Hilda Molina, as saying, "Cubans should be treated the same as foreigners. Cubans have less rights in their own country than foreigners who visit here."

As the Caribbean sun sank down on Moore's breathtakingly meretricious movie, I couldn't help recalling that when Fidel Castro became gravely ill last year, he didn't put himself in the hands of a Cuban surgeon. No. Instead, he had a specialist flown in — from Spain.

And that's why I have no interest in seeing Fatso's Sicko.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 01, 2007

This is the enemy; this is Evil

Michael Yon continues covering the war against Al Queda in a way that simply ought to shame the Associated Press, The New York Times, and the rest of the MSM.

Read his account of the terrible slaughter of Iraqi civilians by the terrorists, with pictures and prose that hit you in the gut like a sucker punch.

This is the enemy.

This is Evil.

War is the answer.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Da Bees!

I was standing in the backyard, gazing on the Trumpet Vines covering the fence, purple and scarlett blooms erupting in an explosion of color. Moving in for a closer look, I spotted movement inside one of the flowers.

I found myself face to face -- er, mandible with a worker collecting pollen. He studied me for a moment with his multi-lensed, inscrutable compound eyes, then dismissed me with a contemptuous shake of a leg and flick of a wing, zooming on to his next bloom.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Give me a break

The Los Angeles ABC affiliate just ran a segment on the morning news about the dangers of -- wait for it -- fireworks!

Viewers were treated to video of mannequins being subjected to their hands being blown off, heads disappearing with a BANG!, clothes bursting into flame, and any other mayhem you can imagine.

The moral of the story? Only a reckless fool would celebrate the nation's birthday with these unbelievably dangerous explosives.

In a rare moment of unexpected insight, wit and truthfulness, anchor Robert Holguin exclaimed, "What kind of fireworks are they using?"

Which is exactly what I was thinking. I grew up using fireworks, as have American boys for more than 200 years -- not to mention the Chinese who've celebrated the New Year with strings of 'crackers for more than two thousand freakin' years!

Honestly, this is like the Reefer Madness approach to drugs: use the absolute worst-case scenario to try and scare people away from engaging in what is really low-risk -- but undesirable to societal nannies -- behavior.

Neither I nor anyone I know lost essential body parts in gore-flecked explosions, nor did we char portions of our anatomy into carbonized hunks of ash and bone. The tests used to ooga-booga the public were essentially rigged, with the dummies obviously subjected to the a-bomb of firecrackers, the M-80.

Folks, even kids know M-80s are dangerous; we never fooled around with those bad boys, preferring to have fun with countless ladyfingers tossed, hurled, stuffed in toy models, and just plain old lit in the street.

Is there no activity that escapes the attention of the safety absolutist, so intent on eliminating all risk -- and all fun -- from childhood?

Bastids.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack