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February 29, 2008

For the man who has everything


The wife likes to burn scented candles, but it's sometimes a struggle to find scents that appeal to both of us; she leans towards "girlie," flowery sorts, while I prefer ... food, apple pie, pumpkin pie, maybe blueberry or pear.

So this ad is exactly what I'm talkin' about.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 27, 2008

Et tu, MoDo?


Maureen Dowd, the liberal columnist for The New York Times -- but then I repeat myself -- dipped her quill into a poison-filled ink pot before setting down to pen her latest screed on Hillary Clinton.

The coda of her campaign has been a primal scream against the golden child of Chicago, a clanging and sometimes churlish warning that “all that glitters is not gold.”

David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent whose interview with Hillary aired Tuesday, said the senator seemed “dumbfounded” by the Obama sensation.

She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.

Experience does not beat excitement, though, or Nixon would have been president the first time around, Poppy Bush would have had a second term and President Gore would have stopped the earth from melting by now.

Voters gravitate toward the presidential candidates who seem more comfortable in their skin. J.F.K. and Reagan seemed exceptionally comfortable. So did Bill Clinton and W., who both showed that comfort can be an illusion of sorts, masking deep insecurities.

The fact that Obama is exceptionally easy in his skin has made Hillary almost jump out of hers. She can’t turn on her own charm and wit because she can’t get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Obama not waiting his turn. Her sunshine-colored jackets on the trail hardly disguise the fact that she’s pea-green with envy.

After saying she found her “voice” in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We’ve had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It’s-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama’s. But the whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.

By threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain.

Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the “Saturday Night Live” skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.

“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC — a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist — are giving Obama an easy ride.

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Ouch.

You know things are looking bad when you've lost the Times' Queen of Mean. But Dowd does seem to understand Clinton a whole lot better than the candidate herself.

As someone who wants Clinton to clinch the nomination for reasons previously stated, I'm unhappy to see her doing so poorly.

But it's very difficult to resist taking just a little bit (okay, a whole lot) of pleasure in seeing such a smug politician with a colossal sense of entitlement whinge and whine about not being given what's rightfully hers.

To borrow a quote from a favorite fem-film of the '90s -- and one Hillary apparently hasn't seen in a while -- There's no crying in baseball!.*

Actually, I like A League of Their Own; it could be the last time I watched something -- anything -- with Rosie O'Donnell until the credits rolled.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Skynet update

Sarah Connor and her son would agree with this fellow.

Increasingly autonomous, gun-toting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

"They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

If we are not careful, [Sharkey] said, that could change.

Military leaders "are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. "I don't know why that has not happened already," he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

"I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don't have a place on the front line.

"Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement," he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. "And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger," he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

You think?

Fox has been running a documentary new sci-fi series Monday nights called The Sarah Connor Chronicles that touches on the potential pitfalls that come with fielding autonomous killing machines.

But that's just a silly TV show, right?

Isn't it?

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 26, 2008

America goes to war: B-25 factory

If you're a warbird fan like me, the sight of a factory filled to bursting with brand new B-25 Mitchell Bombers is breathtaking.

This is another in the series of beautiful wartime Kodachrome images available for viewing, thanks to the efforts of the folks at the Library of Congress.

As with so many of these photos, the color and clarity reveal details that strip away the intervening decades, often making it hard to distinguish between the 1940s and 2008.

Take a close look at the men in the picture (click on the photo for a larger version); the clothing and hair styles aren't particularly dated -- odd to think that they likely died of old age years ago, given how contemporary they look, albeit in an uncool, middle-America sort of way.

Still, it's the birds that captivate. What a sight.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A fool and his money

Dave Hardy notes more idiocy in the Bay Area.

Oakland offers $250 per gun. So two gun dealers clean out all their old junkers and turn in 60 guns for a cool $15,000. Followed by a bunch of seniors at an assisted living facility nearby, who probably weren't doing much in the way of robbery or crack dealing.

Same thing happened here some years ago. A certain dealer sent his folks to make the rounds of turn in points (they had a limit per person) and turn his pile of junkers into cash. I took an old and broken single shot shotgun down and turned an unsalable and unrepairable gun into a fistful of money. Gun collectors staked out the locations and if they saw someone with something valuable, offered them more than the turn-in price. Since the folks at the turn in locations didn't know one gun from another, they wound up buying dozens of BB guns at a hefty price.

I wonder if Oakland voters think they got good value for their hard-earned tax dollars. They do realize politicians were using public money, right?

What a waste of money -- and the occasional decent weapon.

Posted by Mike Lief at 06:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 21, 2008

Israeli troops: Racist because they refuse to rape Arabs

UPDATE

I received a number of e-mails from Israelis pointing out that the photo I posted was not the women responsible for the "Not rape = rape" thesis -- and that the poet Tal Nitzan is most definitely not the same Tal Nitzan responsible for that fine piece of "scholarship."

Ms. Nitzan also wrote to express her dismay at the mix-up, and I've taken the photo down and edited the post accordingly.

My apologies to Ms. Nitzan.


A shande (Yiddish, אַ שאַנדע) [shan'∙deh] — a disgrace; one who brings embarrassment through mere association (cognate with the German word Schande, meaning "disgrace", cognate with English "scandal").

If you grew up in a Jewish family of Eastern European origin, you've heard an elderly Bubbie cluck her tongue and shake her head about some outrage, saying it was "a shande."

The textbook definition gives you a sense of the meaning, but let me provide a real-world example, something so outrageous it brings shame to multiple groups and organizations, including Jews, pointy-headed academics and an institution of higher learning.

Meet our woman of the hour, Israeli graduate student, feminist deep thinker -- and leftist moonbat whackjob Tal Nitzan.

Nitzan submitted her doctoral thesis to the apparent libtards at Hebrew University.

And it was judged so insightful, so very excellent, that the faculty awarded it a prize for outstanding scholarship.

The title of her thesis?

“Controlled Occupation: The Lack of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict.”

She claims that the failure of Israeli troops to rape Arab women achieves the same goal as actually raping them; that the reluctance of Israeli troops to force themselves on Arab women is humiliating and evidence of Israeli racism -- a rather extreme example of Jewish anti-Arab discrimination.

The Canadian National Post's Barbara Kay writes:

I really don’t know how much longer satire can expect to carry on as a genre, given what passes for “scholarship” in the topsy-turvy world of academia. This pinch-me item just crossed my desk and of course I assumed it was a spoof. But I Googled the names of the academics involved and to my astonishment they are real, and this excerpt from the Israeli Shalem Centre newsletter is not a joke:

Prize Winning Sociology Thesis at Hebrew U.: Lack of Rape Among Israeli Soldiers Achieves Same Aims as Rape

A Hebrew University Sociology department M.A. thesis entitled “Controlled Occupation: The Lack of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict” notes that the relative absence of instances of rape by Israeli soldiers is an alternate method of achieving the same kind of degradation of Palestinian Arabs that would be achieved through a directed policy of raping Arab women.

The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that "the absence of directed military rape constitutes an alternative way of realizing the same political goals [usually achieved by directed military rape]. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we can see that the rarity of military rape only strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies inter-ethnic differences, just as directed military rape would have done.” The thesis, selected for publication by the university’s Shaine Center for Research in Social Sciences, was supervised by Hebrew University sociologist Eyal Ben–Ari and a senior lecturer in education, Edna Lomsky-Feder.

I’ve heard sociologists speak of “status anxiety,” but for originality and chutzpah, I have to admit that this thesis takes the cake. (“You seem gloomy, Fatima.” “What self-respecting Palestinian woman wouldn’t, Hamid? The Israeli soldiers were here to search the house – by the way, they found those rockets you hid in the baby’s toybox, sorry about that, but they didn’t make a single move on me. No rape, not even a lubricious wink or a pinch on the buttocks. Being non-violated like that, I feel so - I don't know - degraded. What am I to tell my friends…?”).

What’s next from Alice-in-Wonderland University? “Controlled Occupation: The lack of Random Bombings of Pizza Parlours in the West Bank”? Oh, those sly and underhanded Israeli soldiers. They certainly have psychological torture down to a fine art.

Academic libtards, eager to defend this idiot from attack, deride posts like this on the grounds that we're distorting the thesis, having failed to read the whole thing in all its layered, multi-culti glory.

Gerard Van Der Leun posts a lengthy analysis of the incredible story by an Israeli named Steven Plaut; it details not only the insanity that is eating the brains of Israeli leftists, but the even more deplorable reaction of the Hebrew University administration.

And he read the whole thing, too, in Hebrew.

Guess what?

It's as bad as guys like me have been saying.

Plaut says:

It began as just another exercise in political academic wackiness at the Hebrew University.

A graduate student claimed that the absence of any history of rapes of Arab women by Israeli Jewish soldiers proves that the Jews are racists and oppressors, people who do not even regard Arab women as sexually desirable. Such silliness is commonplace these days in academia, and ordinarily no one would have taken much notice. But the student at the Mount Scopus campus and her “research” were then awarded a university honor for her impressive “discoveries.” That drew media attention.

The matter has now become the worst recent scandal in Israeli academia because of the attempt by the heads of the Hebrew University to cover it up, in a manner a bit reminiscent of the worst days of Watergate. Maybe it should be dubbed Scopusgate. The scandal now rivals the “Toaff Affair” in Israel last year, in which a now-retired professor at Bar-Ilan University published “research” in which he claimed that medieval Jews used gentile blood for ceremonial purposes.

The very highest officials of the Hebrew University are themselves now implicated in a dishonest cover-up! The President of the Hebrew University, Professor Menachem Magidor, and the Rector Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch jointly issued a deliberately false “spin” announcement regarding the MA thesis of the student, claiming that the media had incorrectly described what was in it. Instead of repudiating the student and her “academic advisors,” Magidor and Rabinowitch closed ranks with them and insisted that Nitzan’s “research” represents serious scholarship. The Nitzan Affair simply shows how completely devoid of serious academic standards and quality controls parts of Israeli academia are today.

Hebrew University apologists tried to defuse the cries of outrage over the “research” by claiming that reports about it were all part of some sort of vast right-wing conspiracy. The first two media reports appeared on web sites, one Hebrew and one English, both associated with those on the Israeli Right. The apologists suggested that these were misrepresenting the thesis for political reasons. Then Magidor and Rabinovitch proclaimed that reading the entire thesis would show that it is a serious piece of scholarship. They obviously did not read it.

Well, I have now read the entire thesis (in Hebrew). [You can also, if you read Hebrew] It is not a serious piece of research. It is a disgrace and an embarrassment for all of Israeli academia. The descriptions of it on the two “rightwing” web sites were entirely accurate, and the heads of the Hebrew University simply lied about its contents, in a pathetic attempt at cover-up. While University apologists dismissed complaints about the thesis as tendentious misrepresentation of it by a vast rightwing conspiracy, the rallying in defense of the thesis by the Hebrew University administration and some professors looks a whole lot like a leftwing conspiracy to cover up.

[...]

Nitzan’s “thesis” is largely a collection of tiresome feminist rhetoric and postmodernist gibberish, not all of it related to rape. The thesis is 206 pages long and tries to appear scholarly by including many long “citations” taken from the fever swamps of radical anthropology and leftist sociology. One has to wade through it with suppressed nausea to get to its main points, and all of the main points are exactly as they were represented in the early media reports; they are at complete odds with the cover-up attempt by the Hebrew University.

Nitzan begins by noting that one should distinguish between organized military rape directly ordered by authorities as a matter of policy, such as in the Bosnian wars, and individual acts of rape by soldiers, which she labels with the nonsensical term “symptomatic rape.” She calls it that I guess because she wants us to think it is a symptom the “racist Zionist system” that is responsible for such crimes. She asserts that the first kind of rape is a form of political policy, whereas the latter kind (the “symptomatic”) is a “direct result of the blurring of social divisions and ethnic-gender barriers” (bear with me here! — SP). She confirms that the first form of organized rape has never been the policy of the Israeli army. She then says that the second form, individual “symptomatic rape,” has replaced the former as a method of humiliation and oppression of Arabs, even when - and especially when - Israeli Jewish soldiers do not do it at all! Hence, she concludes, NOT raping Arab women shows how racist the Jews are.

Nitzan cannot conceive of any rape that is not in and itself a form of establishing political control and defining political power. “Symptomatic rape” for Nitzan is a reflection of the intolerant distancing of the “dominant” group (Jewish men) from the “oppressed” group (Arab men and women). But she then completely turns this “thought” on its head by arguing that abstaining from rape is just as inhumane and oppressive as “symptomatically raping,” and in fact replaces it, because it just serves to reinforce the intolerant attitudes towards Arabs by Jewish soldiers, who think of Arabs as so inferior and horrid that they do not even feel a drive to rape them. Really. “Absence of rape is explained by the social condition in which there is blurring of attitudes towards gender power relations while at the same time social limits… are unambiguous and solid. (page 183)” While giving some shallow lip service to how the “question” of rape refusal is “very complex,” Nitzan’s own “answer” is quite simple and straightforward. And numbingly stupid.

Rape for Nitzan is not violent crime at all but rather is always a manifestation of political plotting by elites. She contradicts herself by noting that, come to think of it, Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women as individuals either. She then contradicts her own contradictions and claims that the absence of rape by Israeli soldiers is “designed” to achieve the same goals as organized mass rape in other countries and in other wars.

Her “conclusions” are that Israel is so racist and intolerably anti-Arab that abstaining from rape is part and parcel of its way to enforce rigid “lines of division.” She asserts that individual soldiers abstaining from rape represent an intentional policy of oppression roughly similar to when governments order mass rape, because in both cases the “policy” serves to subordinate and dehumanize the oppressed victim population.

The main significance of the thesis as an academic work is in the fact that it illustrates the total collapse of any semblance of academic standards at the Hebrew University. The “thesis” is not worth the disk space on which it is printed. Yet it was not only accepted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Hebrew University, the department in which the late pro-terror anti-Zionist extremist Baruch Kimmerling spent his career fabricating “Palestinian history”, but was even awarded a prestigious award, one evidently financed with contributions from the Shaine family. (I doubt the Shaines have any idea how their generosity was misused by the university!) Atrociously written and constantly contradicting herself, Nitzan would have been laughed out of any university maintaining serious standards, EVEN if she had been writing about a valid and legitimate subject.

[...]

The possibility that Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women because they are simply decent and honorable people, or under effective command by decent and honorable people, is automatically dismissed by Nitzan. After all, there are acts of criminal rape in Israeli civilian society, citing a radical feminist group claiming such sexual abuse is common in Israel, so this could not possibly explain the mystery. How the incidence of such civilian crimes rules out the obvious real explanation for the absence of rape by soldiers is not even the worst logical inconsistency by Nitzan and her supervisors.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:53 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 20, 2008

Judge throws (most of) the book at career DUI driver

Ohio's sixth-worst DUI offender got hammered (almost) into oblivion yesterday by a (mostly) unsympathetic judge.

A Hamilton man's 19th drunken driving conviction earned him eight years in prison and a lecture about his 30-year record, which ranks him among Ohio's six worst drunken drivers.

"You knew a long time ago that you had a problem with drinking and driving and you've never chosen to do anything," Judge Noah Powers told Stephen W. Wolf in Butler County Common Pleas Court during sentencing Tuesday.

Wolf faced up to 10 years in prison as a result of a hit-and-run crash in Fairfield Township last summer.

He's among four Ohio drivers with 19 drunken-driving convictions; two others are tied for the state record of 20 convictions.

Powers also imposed a lifetime driving suspension. But Wolf has disregarded suspensions since at least 1984.

Now 51, Wolf was first convicted of drunken driving in 1978, just before his 22nd birthday. Ohio law then allowed little jail time for repeat drunken drivers. Laws have toughened since.

Butler County Prosecutor Robin Piper said Wolf's eight-year prison term is proof: "This guy is the example that shows everyone that drinking too much and getting in a car can land you in prison for eight years. That ought to be long enough to sober you up."

Piper said he understands alcoholism is a disease. But, he said: "No disease makes you get in a car and drive. If you want to get plastered, stay home and get plastered on the front porch instead of climbing into a car and risking the lives of innocent people. Stay at home with your 12-pack."

Enquirer readers e-mailed to express outrage about Wolf's driving record and about his lawyer, Robert Qucsai, urging leniency.

Qucsai called his client "a broken man" who suffers from multiple sclerosis, leukemia and alcohol abuse - and needs help.

Wolf apologized for his actions.

But Powers noted that Wolf at first denied driving during the Fairfield Township incident.

"When I look at everything you've done in the past, your record doesn't warrant any further consideration," Powers said.

I'm glad the judge decided to give this defendant a break from the stress of drinking and driving -- Careful, you might spill your drink! -- but I'm always amazed when a recalcitrant, unrepentant repeat offender receives less than the maximum possible sentence.

This guy has been driving on a suspended license since 1984, suffered 19 DUI convictions -- his last one adding a hit-and-run collision to the mix -- and he still gets only eight out of a possible 10 years incarceration?

And this is after the judge told him, "[Y]our record doesn't warrant any further consideration."

Well, I guess it merited a little consideration. About two years' worth.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 19, 2008

Ex-FBI agent: Rape victims should lay there and take it

An ex-FBI agent says that rape victims run a serious risk of "escalating the violence" if they resist their attackers, advising them to not fight back and wait for the police to come to their rescue.

Just lay there and take it, ladies. Why make a bad situation worse by adding to the violence?

Did that make you spit up your coffee?

Good. It should, even if I've altered the actual quote just a bit to make a point.

The latest round of campus shootings hit close to home this past week, with a homicidal teen opening fire on a campus in a Ventura County middleschool, executing a classmate in coldblood. Add this to the shootings on a Chicago-area college campus, where a lunatic went off his meds and opened fire on a bunch of fellow students with a shotgun, and it's time for more navel gazing.

Some with a legal bent are suggesting that landlords and politicians who create so-called gun-free zones -- otherwise known as target-rich environments -- should be held strictly liable for the safety of the customers/students therein. Deny people the means of self-defense and you've created an obligation and responsibility for their safety.

Fail in that duty and you should pay.

And pay and pay and pay.

The other response, less litigious, is to allow concealed carry by otherwise eligible adults, the theory being that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

When the Illinois shooter stood on the stage, blasting double-aught buckshot into the seats -- and his classmates -- all they could do was cower and pray -- or run away. Had there been even one person carrying a concealed weapon, there was at least a chance that the killer could be stopped before he'd killed his fill.

Now, I know the usual bleating lament of the kumbyah sheeple, "Me no like guns! Guns bad! Guns scawy! Guns in school make mess in my britches."

It's hard to argue with this fact: gun-free zones have been a spectacular failure, preventing only those who like following the law from bringing weapons into areas where the firearms are Verboten! How many times do we need to see people murdered in areas where they've been told they cannot, must not act to protect themselves?

What about that bleating lament -- that guns in schools somehow corrupt the learning environment, poisoning the minds of our youth, turn edimicators into terminators?

Well, first let me say that when it comes to the health and welfare of the children dropped off at school each day, I'm far more concerned about the lead poisoning they're already getting at the hands of homicidal sociopaths, people who don't give a damn about rules and regulations -- just putting a bullet into the brains of those whom they deem the enemy.

Furthermore, when dealing with the fantasy-based crowd, I find it helpful to cite to the real world -- strange and exotic 'though it might be.

The Israelis suffered a number of attacks by Arab terrorists in the 1970s and early 1980s on schools, the terrorists bursting in on the unarmed teachers and their terrified wards, then opening fire with automatic weapons and lobbing grenades.

Unwilling to tolerate schools becoming designated killing fields, Israelis responded by stationing armed guards (often parents volunteering for the duty) at nearly all schools -- and arming teachers -- the ultimate first line of defense.

In the years since, there has been no successful, large-scale massacre at any Israeli school; between the guards and the teachers, the would-be attackers always end up being rather effective lead catchers.

Of course, this course of action requires a proactive mindset, one where "think of the children!" translates into something other than "do nothing but think of the children, then mourn for the children."

Which brings me to that ex-FBI agent I started talking about. Check out what he thinks we ought to do to make our schools safe, in an article from the local fishrap, The Ventura County Star.

Vincent Wincelowicz, a retired FBI official who is now a board member of the Denver-based Foundation for the Prevention of School Violence, said it's impossible to make schools totally safe.

"If someone is determined to get a gun on campus to shoot others, they will find a way," Wincelowicz said. Schools need to focus on finding and helping troubled students before they turn to violence, he said.

He said school shootings tend to occur more often in rural communities than in big cities. Urban schools are tuned in to the potential for violence and are better prepared to deal with it, he said.

"The key thing to remember is to always be prepared for the potential of violence and to stress intervention as much as possible," Wincelowicz said.

Folks, there's simply no way to anticipate which evil bastard is going to focus his nihilism on a classroom full of children, no way to know who needs that magical "intervention," who is the Grim Reaper in baggie jeans and a ballcap.

Although I do appreciate the way the G-Man also admits that there's no way to stop a determined criminal bent on mayhem from getting a gun onto campus.

The article then quotes a student in favor of relaxing the prohibition on people other than murderers carrying weapons.

Kristin Guttormsen is a senior at Washington State University and a member of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a national organization that advocates allowing university students and others to carry licensed concealed weapons on campus.

Guttormsen said the group formed after the Virginia Tech massacre in April, in which a student shot and killed 32 people and himself. She wonders if fewer people would have died if students had been armed.

"We feel that if someone has the legal right to carry a concealed weapon off campus, there's no justification for barring them from doing so on campus," Guttormsen said.

Sounds like a variation on the highly-successful Israeli defense model.

Check out the ex-FBI man's response.

Wincelowicz, however, thinks that's a bad idea. "Arming everyone escalates rather than de-escalates," he said.

Get that?

Taking action to fight back -- to act so that the students are not defenseless targets awaiting execution at the whim of a killer -- represents nothing so much as an escalation of violence.

I wonder if this pathetic excuse for a lawman -- who embodies every milquetoast stereotype of the ineffectual accountant with a badge, briefcase and gun -- really means that the desired result is a "de-escalat[ion]" of the violence.

Because I'm pretty sure that when the gunfire stops and the smoke clears (all on the shooter's schedule), that too represents a "de-escalation" in the overall level of violence -- at least as compares to what it was a few minutes before when the bullets were flying.

Does the resistance of the passengers on United Flight 93 -- who fought back and prevented the hijackers from flying the jetliner into the nation's capital -- represent an unfortunate escalation of violence?

And so that's where I started out, with the advice from an ex-FBI man to just lay back and enjoy the ride. Because whether its rape or murder or terrorism, fighting back just increases the level of violence.

What an idiot.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:22 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 18, 2008

New artist hits big with "New Soul"

I posted Israeli singer Yael Naim's video, "New Soul," after finding myself paying attention to the Apple commercials featuring the tune, more for the song than the computer.

If you haven't listened to it before, give it a whirl. After all, she's the first Israeli to break into the Billboard Top 10.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Books, books, books

Which [type of] book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

If you could bring three [fictional] characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

You are told you can't die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realize it's past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?


Come on, we've all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you've read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realize when you read a review about it/go to 'reread' it that you haven't? Which book?


You've been appointed Book Adviser to a VIP (who’s not a big reader). What's the first book you'd recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalize the VIP).


A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?


A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What's one bookish thing you 'discovered' from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?


That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she's granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather bound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favorite authors have inscribed their works?

Posted by Mike Lief at 04:36 PM

February 17, 2008

HD DVD about to go belly up

Aren't you glad you waited to upgrade from DVD to one of the new high-def formats? Engadget has the detail on when the loser is expected to flat-line.

We know it looks like HD DVD's death is a foregone conclusion at this point, but it isn't official until Toshiba says it is, and Ars is reporting that a number of their sources have pegged the impending announcement for within the next few days -- not weeks. Apparently HD DVD's future was in serious jeopardy even before Netflix dropped 'em, and the holdup on Toshiba's part now comes from the company's need to formulate its plans to shut down production -- which is no small task given the volume of hardware and media they were geared up to move.

Of course, out Tokyo way the party line's all the same. Our Japanese bureau checked in with Toshiba HQ, which was obviously on PR red alert since they responded to our query in nine minutes, and well well before business hours. The boilerplate response is about what you'd expect, though: "We are considering our future business policies and plans, and studying the market response [to recent developments]." Let's just get this thing over with already, okay Toshiba?

Sometime in mid-2007, I noticed that Costco started adding HD DVD and Blu-Ray DVDs to the movie display, each format wearing a distinctive colored cap on the end of the case -- red for HD DVD, and blue (what else?) for Blu-Ray.

I did my due diligence and found that videophiles preferred Sony's Blu-Ray for its higher storage capacity and better use of the interactivity made possible by the format, but HD DVD seemed like the eventual winner in the format wars, quickly signing up movie studios and getting its lower-priced players to market before the Blu-Ray folks.

It seemed like we were in for a repeat of the VHS vs. Beta wars, when Sony's superior design lost out to the cheaper and more widely licensed competition. An engineer once told me that if you had set out to create the worlds most complicated, Rube Goldberg-like mechanism to play a videotape, it would probably be less slap-dash than a VHS machine.

And then it all turned around, the HD DVD movies disappearing without fanfare from the Costco table sometime around Christmas.

I've seen a Blu-Ray movie at a friend's house, and it does look spectacular, but regular DVDs look pretty good on our 37" LCD when upconverted by the chip in our DVD player, and it would take a new front projector to realize the improvements in resolution Blu-Ray would make readily apparent on our 6-foot screen -- a cost we're not quite ready for just yet.

At least when we do decide to upgrade, the risk of picking an obsolete format will be gone. Too bad I didn't have such luck when I bought Mom a Betamax VCR back in the '80s.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Randal Simmons

LAPD Randy Simmons.jpg

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:54 AM

Notes from fallen SWAT officer's memorial

LAPD Randal Simmons memorial.jpg

A friend forwarded to me an e-mail from a Los Angeles Police Officer who attended Friday's memorial service for slain SWAT officer Randal Simmons. I thought it was worth reprinting portions of what he had to say about the day.

I am a PIII assigned to LAPD's Facilities Management Division. We're the ones that design and build new police facilities. I wanted to pass along some observations for people that weren't able to make it to Randy's funeral yesterday.

The services were set to start at 1100 hours, but the Department had asked that we get there sooner. When I rolled through Southeast that morning at 0600 hours, they were already leaving on a chartered bus going straight to the site. The Department shut down all N/B traffic on Vermont Avenue from south of Florence.

LAPD Randal Simmons motorcade.jpg

I parked on Vermont Avenue around 66th Street. Our cars were parked blocking N/B #1, #2 and #3 lanes, for blocks. I walked down Vermont Avenue to the Church. I was struck by how quiet it was out on Vermont Avenue. I've been out on Vermont during the day and night and it's usually just as busy and loud as any other major LA boulevard. But this morning, it was almost eerily quiet. The only sound was the distant thump of rotor blades on news helicopters in a high orbit, filming the scene. Some of the local residents came out, and were sitting quietly as we passed by. A few said hello, including small children that said hello to us. None of the questions about "is that the same stick they beat Rodney King with?" like we used to get back in the mid-1990's. Everybody was respectful and quiet, occasionally saying respectful or nice things to us or giving us a or sympathetic polite smile. If you said hello or good morning, you'd get it right back. People knew what we were there for.

LAPD Randal SImmons motors.jpg

We got into the service, and the inside of the Church was so large and vast, it reminded me of the dome built to house the Spruce Goose some years ago down in Long Beach. Seating for 10,000. All filled. There were separate sections for the family, in-state or out-of-state law enforcement and then further subdivided by LAPD divisions or units.

There was a moment that I think was noteworthy. Early on in the services, [LAPD Chief William] Bratton got up and was making introductions of the dignitaries that were there. The chief was speaking in hushed tones, almost a whisper. He noted the presence of the governor, the mayor, board of police commissioners, etc. It was very quiet. He made his way down the list and said "... former chief Bernard Parks, former chief Darryl Gates ..." at that moment, there were four huge Jumbotron TV's spread around the dome, and Darryl's face showed up on the screen. It was like an explosion. People (me included) literally jumped out of their seats applauding Darryl. This went on for about a full minute, cheering and applauding him. It's interesting to note that [in] today's LAPD, literally 50% of the officers have less than five years on the job. So most of them were probably all too young, or some may have literally been in diapers or not even born some 16 years ago, when he was ousted as Chief.

I've always felt like he got scape-goated by the city politicians that were looking to hang somebody, never mind the fact that they spent 20+ years undermining the Department and stripping our budget until we were so badly depleted that we didn't have the resources to do "community policing", footbeats, etc. These were the same people that would go on TV almost every night and rail against the latest outrage committed by the LAPD. They were on the city council, yet were throwing bricks at us, like they were outsiders looking in. I remember they seemed to rarely ever support their own police department.

I noted that Bernard Parks walked out of the ceremony alone, not long after this. He walked right by our section on his way out the door, and I noted that out of the hundred of officers he walked by, not one person smiled, waved or even acknowledged his presence. Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the guy.

I've seen a few of these kinds of events, and I wondered to myself early on if any references to the 1970's SWAT television show I remembered would come up. Sure enough, this was it. They played the theme to SWAT, with photos of Randy and other members of SWAT doing their thing. I know it might sound hokey, since we look at a lot of 70's era things today as kind of campy, but it really wasn't. It was really one of those moments when I was proud to be part of the LAPD. Not the "federal consent decree LAPD", but the "world-leader in law enforcement/ uniform and badge recognizable anywhere on the globe/ "go to guys" for all other police on the planet LAPD." Randy was one of those guys that made the LAPD legends a living and breathing reality, and not just some fake thing Hollywood dreamed up. He was the real deal.

What came next astounded me.

When the services were over, we piled out of the Church, and slowly made our way back to our cars. Took a little while, since there were so many of us. I remember walking out on to Vermont Avenue, and as I looked north, all I could see was a sea of blue uniforms, thousands of us, stretching from one curb to the other, and going up the road for blocks. I haven't seen this many LAPD officers in one place, at one time, since the DNC, almost ten years ago now. It was incredible.

LAPD Randal Simmons flag.jpg

We had cops there from all over America and even international. I saw San Francisco PD, lot of LA and surrounding counties police and sheriff's, out of state police and sheriff's departments, including guys wearing the gray uniforms with the old-style "bull harness" cross-straps on their Sam Brownes, I think from Vermont or other back east states. Canadian police. The Israeli's sent a SWAT team if you can believe it. Every kind of color combination of uniforms. Too numerous to list. It was just amazing. LAFD came out, and had a couple of full-length engines with the ladders in the up position, with a huge American flag.

We loaded up into the cars, and after some time went by, we slowly peeled off, going N/B on Vermont, all the way up to Slauson, then W/B on Slauson. People came out of their homes and businesses, THOUSANDS OF THEM, as we went by. There were dozens at every single intersection, usually standing near LAFD engines and crews that put on their Sunday best for us. Some had cameras or videocameras. But this wasn't lookie-loo crap at the scene of a bloody T/C [traffic collision]. These people waved at us. They carried signs supporting us and supporting Randy. They brought out AMERICAN FLAGS and held them up. AMERICAN FLAGS!!!!!! Every size, ranging from a small paper flag decoration I saw one grandmother holding up towards us, to full-size garrison flags you'd see in front of a military base. They held them up and waved them at us. I saw men, looked like had been veterans, that came out in civilian clothes and saluted us as we went by. I have been in dozens of other police processions over the last twenty years, in OC and LA and the only time I ever saw anything like this was in OC. I have never seen anything like this in LA on this scale. Ever.

It was simply amazing.

We finished the grave side services, in the same ways that are typical, Honor Guard, missing man formation, bagpipes from Emerald Society, twin buglers playing taps, etc. We did have something unique though, when they released approximately 70 white doves. Randy's daughter released
the first, and then they released the rest.

The graveside services were touching; most of us were crying for Randy until the end. When they were over, we filed out with only a little quiet conversation.

We'll miss Randy to be sure. He was an inspiring man and police officer.


Posted by Mike Lief at 11:33 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 15, 2008

Indiana Jones, where've ya been?


Well, here it is, the first trailer for the new Indiana Jones film.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was perhaps my favorite movie as a teen and young adult, and it's remained in my top 10 over the subsequent decades. It had everything: Nazis, a tough, wise-cracking hero with a snappy hat, supernatural forces that can melt men's faces, and the hottest leading lady in the history of cinema, as good with her fists and a gun as the leading man.

The second film in the series, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom had a fantastic opening sequence, but the film never recovered from the new girlfriend, the incredibly annoying and constantly shrieking Kate Capshaw. Indy ditched Marion Ravenwood for this?

Blech.

Of course, Capshaw got the last laugh, marrying director Steven Spielberg, so I guess someone was happy with the casting choice.

The third film, Indian Jones and the Last Crusade, added Sean Connery to the mix as Indy's father, along with a cameo by the soon-to-be-dead actor River Phoenix as the young Jones.

With Zeppelins and Nazis (again!) -- including a chance encounter with Hitler himself (he autographs a book for our nonplussed hero) -- and the interplay between Connery and Ford, Crusade was nearly as great as the first film.

And then ... nothing.

For years and years there were rumors of a fourth film, but the scripts never seemed to satisfy everyone.

When word came that production was about to being in 2007, my first thought was, "Man, Harrison Ford is old!" My second was, "Shia who?"

Harrison Ford is 65 years old. He was about 46 when he made Last Crusade; Sean Connery was 58 when he played Ford's father in that film, and there were a series of gags about how old Indy's father was, in a movie released in 1989.

So it's more than a little weird to realize that the leading man is now older than his cranky father was in the last film. And it's even stranger to look at recent photos of the two men; Connery, 77, looks better -- less craggy -- to my eyes than Ford.

And I'm still not impressed by this Shia fellow, who doesn't seem like anything other than eye candy for the teenage girls, a calculating imposition on the plot to draw younger viewers in. Interesting that there were no younger actors for us to relate to in the first and third film, just Indiana Jones.

On the other hand, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) is back, looking fantastic, notwithstanding the intervening quarter century.

Check out the trailer and tell me what you think.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

24 loses its creator

Joel Surnow, the cigar-smoking conservative who created the series 24 has called it quits, leaving the show in the hands of more traditional Hollywood types, who are already promising to "reinvent" the series.

One suggested plotline: Jack Bauer goes to Africa as penance for the so-called crimes he committed against terrorists freedom fighters; he'll build villages and hospitals for the helpless natives, maybe work in a shelter or kitchen, too.

I'm not kidding.

Jason Apuzzo pays tribute to Surnow, as well as giving a well-deserved Bronx cheer to the way liberal orthodoxy has screwed up dramatic TV and film.

[T]he real reason “24″ worked so brilliantly was because Surnow has a unique sensibility that understands ideological purity is the death of drama.

Before Hollywood started working for al-Queda my biggest complaint with them was how left-wing cliches were killing films and television. Once you know how the simple liberal mind works — once you crack that code – you can see plot-twists coming from a mile away. Liberal purity has created more cliches and ruined more thrillers and action films than I can even begin to count.

I don’t know the man, but Surnow seemed to consciously understand that over the decades a liberal socialization had taken place with television audeinces which would allow him to create truly shocking plot twists by playing on what we’ve expected from liberal Hollywood for decades and then turning those expectations on their ear.

Black presidents torture? Torture works? The bad guys really aren’t white? A black first lady is the villain? The hippie kid really is a snivelling punk? The protagonist loves his country? The guy who played John F. Kennedy is torturing his own son because his country comes first? Terrorism is always a bad thing? Non-white people are terrorists? Guns do good? And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

There have been many complaints that “24″ wasn’t truly conservative. True. But again, that’s a good thing because ideological purity ruins drama. You never knew what was going to happen on “24″ because the the plot wasn’t beholden to any ideology and this freed the creators to keep the twists coming from any direction.

It was the same thing with Law and Order for the first five seasons. L&O wasn’t a conservative show then, what it was was illiberal, and therefore dramatic and intriguing because you never knew where it would end up. It’s unwatchable today, not just because of its political correctness and strident case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, but the utter predictability of the plots which come with all that baggage.

But Surnow’s understanding of how to twist the genre conventions didn’t stop at ideology. I knew “24″ was something special during season one when Jack’s wife agreed to be raped in her daughter’s place and then it actually happened. What a horrific and anguishing moment that was, and in any other show the rape never would’ve happened because we’ve become so socialized to the conventions of the genre we all knew the “good” bad guy would stop the rape (because we’ve seen it a hundred times before) or something else contrived would save this character we cared about from such a terrible thing. But she was raped and it solidified our sympathy making her death at the end all the more heartbreaking.

More importantly that moment told us all bets are off; anything can happen to anyone. It completely undermined our sense of security about the entire cast. Nothing was sacred. Nothing’s off limits. And that is drama.

I heartily second the slam on Law & Order; the last eight years have essentially revolved around the premise that the bad guy is always: the rich white guy; the evil corporation; the anti-immigration nuts; the gun nuts; and, of course, the conservative -- and naturally hypocritical -- politician.

It reminds me of what Hollywood did to Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears, a novel about Jack Ryan trying to stop a terror cell of Arabs bent on nuking the Superbowl.

This was in the days before 9-11, when Arab-American groups insisted that it was a gross stereotype to portray middle-easterners as the kind of thugs who would blow up buses, pizza parlors, hijack airliners, or saw the heads off kidnapped journalists or non-muslim captives.

Where would anyone get that idea?

So the studio caved and changed the identity of the terrorists in the film to -- get this -- German neo-Nazis with a big grudge from the way we dissed der Fuhrer.

Oy vey.

Shortly after the film's release, a bunch of German neo-Nazis Arab Muslim terrorists killed more than 3,000 people in Manhattan, perhaps undercutting that "stereotyping" argument.

The last couple of seasons of 24 lost their way a bit, with Fox insisting that the bad guys couldn't always be, y'know, Arabs. Thus, we had the evil, mysterious big business types conspiring to start a war for oil.

Sigh.

With Surnow gone, there's no hope that Jack Bauer will return to what he does best: slaughtering jihadis and South American druglords by the bushel.

Mores the shame.

Posted by Mike Lief at 07:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 12, 2008

Understanding why the iPhone's different -- and special


"If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information; instead fix the design. And that is exactly what the iPhone platform has done." -- Edward Tufte

This is an interesting analysis of how the iPhone presents information in a way very different from other phones -- with a few suggested improvements -- from an expert in the graphical portrayal of data.

The video presentation by Tufte is extremely well done, highlighting the beauty of the interface, its elegance, if you will. While I'm quite satisfied with my Verizon 6800 (made by HTC), it doesn't compare to the iPhone's overwhelming cool-factor.

And while my 6800 can do most of what the iPhone does -- and a lot more, too, actually (like run Microsoft Office mobile versions of Excel, Powerpoint and Word) -- the Verizon phone is just an extremely capable mini-computer, not a paradigm-changing appliance.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the explanation of what the iPhone does differently, and why it's such a groundbreaking design.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Still Lost

The often infuriating -- but oddly engrossing -- series Lost is back on ABC, and if you're one of the viewers who've hung on, this may be the most interesting explanation for just what the heck is going on.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

In humor there is truth


From Crackle: Penn Says ... Joke Predicts the Future


Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame) tells a joke as part of his act -- and the audience's reaction gives him confidence that he knows which candidate is going to lose.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 10, 2008

The mother of all gun auctions


WINCHESTER MODEL 1897 WW11 TRENCH GUN (THIRD VARIATION) WITH US AND STANDARD ORDNANCE BOMB ACCOMPANIED BY KERR SLING AND BAYONET. SN 956113. Cal. 12 gauge. 20 3/4" cylinder choked bbl. Fine example of a WWII trench gun in fine original condition with the exception of a replaced buttplate. CONDITION: Receiver retains better than 90% of the original Winchester military blue with very minor scratches. Inspectors marks are present. Bayonet is in excellent condition with some very minor blood spotting throughout. Scabbard is also excellent. Mechanically sound. This would be a fine asset to any WWII or Winchester collection. 4-34042 BK2 (2,500-3,500)


When attorney Bruce Stern died last summer, he left behind perhaps the finest privately-held collection of military weapons -- including pristine machine-guns and sub-machine guns dating back to World War I -- in the U.S., if not the world.

The entire lot of 360 rifles, pistols, shotguns and automatic weapons -- representing the best of the more than 5,000 weapons amassed by the avid collector during his lifetime -- is to be auctioned off next month, the proceeds donated by Stern's estate to benefit the NRA's endowment.

The on-line catalog is astonishing; many of the guns are said to be nearly new, some are even unfired.

What I wouldn't give for a bottomless line of credit ... and to live in a state where the legislature hasn't banned damn near every one of the most desirable of these firearms.

Hmmm, Tennessee doesn't require that I take the bar exam ....

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Word no candidate wants to see in headline: "panic"

Although it's not an American paper, The Telegraph is widely read in the U.K. -- and online -- making this headline: "Hillary Clinton's advisers 'in a state of panic' " and its accompanying article cringe-inducing for the Clinton machine.

Hillary Clinton's most senior advisers are in a state of "panic" about her presidential prospects and are plotting to enlist Democrat leaders in Congress to thwart her rival Barack Obama's ambitions.

The Clinton camp is braced for Mr Obama to win a series of primary elections over the next three weeks, which they fear could hand the Illinois senator unstoppable momentum in the race for the White House.

Mr Obama has begun calling those "super delegates" - 795 congressmen and senior party officials who could break a dead heat - who are committed to Mrs Clinton, asking them to change their minds and help him wrap up the nomination.

As of tonight, the two candidates were neck and neck but Mr Obama appeared to be gaining momentum.

"He's saying: 'Hey, I won your state and I won your congressional district, why are you supporting her?'" a Democrat strategist revealed.

The Clinton camp hopes to stop the Obama bandwagon by winning Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4, after which Mrs Clinton is planning to call on party grandees including Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Harry Reid, the party's leader in the Senate, to persuade Mr Obama to stand down.

[...]

A senior Democrat who has discussed Clinton campaign thinking with a member of her inner circle said: "The Clintons are in a state of panic. She has to win both Texas and Ohio."

But he added that this might prove impossible if Mr Obama maintains his momentum and wins most, or all, of the nine contests which come before that.

Mr Obama won yesterday's primary elections held in Washington state and Nebraska, and is expected to do well in Louisiana.

He is also favourite to sweep Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC, which all vote on Tuesday, as well as Wisconsin and Hawaii, where he once lived, on February 19.

Only in Maine is Mrs Clinton confident, though Virginia and Wisconsin may also go her way.

[...]

Clinton aides believe that if Mr Obama does not deliver a knock-out blow before March 4, the advantage will swing back to her and she will argue for a deal in which uncommitted super-delegates unite behind her, to preserve party unity.

But the prospect of a deal behind closed doors, that could brush aside the views of voters in the primaries, is already creating fury in the party.

Donna Brazile, an African American strategist, said last week: "If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party."

But the Clinton camp fears that a failure to engineer a deal could lead to bitter battles at the Democrat convention in Denver in late August, which could even end with Al Gore, the former vice president, emerging as a compromise candidate.

"There's a five per cent chance of that happening, but that's five percent too high," the Clinton source said.

Mrs Clinton is also under financial pressure.

She claimed that she received $7.5m in donations after admitting lending her campaign $5m last week.

But the source claimed that her campaign is actually in far worse financial trouble than they are letting on.

My head wants Clinton to win the nomination (for reasons stated below) but my heart sings at the thought of the purple-faced rage that must be the emotion of the day in the Clinton house, with both past and would-be presidents aghast at their inevitable return to the White House looking suddenly rather less likely.

Heh.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Chrysler must be hurting

Just saw a commercial for the new Jeeps; they're offering the in-dash GPS systems as a no-cost incentive. That's a high-dollar, high-profit margin item, one that usually involves other options packaged together.

Sales must be down.

Way down.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Clinton's chutzpah

Hillary Clinton gave a speech yesterday after losing three primaries to Obama, and there was a line in it that made me laugh out loud at the unbelievable nerve of the woman.

She was working her way through a laundry list of socialist "progressive" talking points when she said this:

[paraphrasing] America deserves a president who understands that war is a last resort and not a first resort!

That line drew a rousing response from the audience -- all of whom I'm guessing have forgotten that Clinton voted "Yea" on the Iraq war when the Senate had a chance to tell Pres. Bush to "give peace a chance."

It takes brass balls to say that you're not a belligerent warmonger -- like those bloodthirsty Republicans -- when you've said that same war was necessary.

Now that's chutzpah; must be a family trait. Remember when her husband authorized the aerial bombings in the Balkans without getting approval from either the international community?

Or the U.S. Senate?

It's no wonder Obama's winning state after state: he's the ABC candidate.

Anybody but Clinton.

It seems that even Democrats aren't crazy about the idea of another bout of Clinton-style parsing, hair-splitting and prevarications.

Can't say I blame them.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 07, 2008

Mitt who?


So, Mitt Romney decide to call it quits today and end his race for the Republican nomination, essentially ceding the big prize to McCain.

I was never a Romney fan -- Thompson was my guy, until he decided that campaigning was just so darn inconvenient. But, as the field dwindled, he ended up being my pick as the least awful of the available choices.

And now, despite his money and once insurmountable-lead, he's history.

Patrick Ruffini offers an astute post mortem on the still-warm corpse of the late, great Romney Candidacy.

What Romney didn’t account for is that it would take more than being a CPAC, or Agenda Conservative to win the nomination. Country Music Conservatives — and frankly, most voters outside the Beltway swamp — don’t listen to your words; they listen to your tone of voice as you’re delivering those words. Do you get angry when you should? What’s your sense of humor like? For social conservatives, are you grounded in faith? And ultimately, are you the real deal?

This has nothing to do with being right on issues. It has everything to do with being authentic.

Any voter in the Agenda Conservative orbit got the Romney message: we need to stop McCain and Huck is a tax hiker, so vote Romney. This message actually affected a fairly large segment of the primary electorate: about 30%. As the kind of people who go to CPAC and think issues matter, bloggers like us are squarely in this orbit. Everyday, what we write has the opportunity to directly impact about 30% of the party — and more than that when we have other things in common with social conservatives or moderate hawks.

Romney’s capturing of this constituency is seen in the election returns. He was essentially the candidate of white collar salesmen driving around in the suburbs listening to talk radio. He got 46% in Oakland County, Michigan, 38% in Cobb County, Georgia, and 42% in Duval County (Jacksonville), Florida. Those were virtually his lone standout performances — and they came from the world most bloggers and radio hosts inhabit. Even those of us who are social conservatives rarely live in the rural South. And because of this cocooning, the conservative elite failed to understand how those voters could possibly have more in common with a Baptist minister with a Massachusetts millionaire. We can debate the LDS effect all we want, but even without it, Romney already had two strikes against him: that he was from the land of Kennedy and Kerry and acted like it, and that he was too white collar for a party that most of the bluebloods have left.

[...]

Despite these challenges, it was still a close call. As I said: a few thousand votes the other way in New Hampshire… But still: the ease with which John McCain won states like South Carolina and Florida has taken us all aback. It all boils down to Agenda Conservatives being nowhere near a majority of the party. Yes, John McCain was a weak frontrunner, but Mitt Romney was a weak challenger, and enough conservatives chose character and authenticity over issues to make the difference.

Romney's "authenticity" always struck me as a major weakness. Say what you will about McCain and Huckabee, there's no doubt that both men are comfortable with who they are -- even if that identity is often indistinguishable from that of a Democrat or a 21st Century Huey Long.

It seems to me that Romeny had a problem for which there was no good solution: He was Mitt Romney.

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Taxing corporations is a sign of economic illiteracy

Bill Katz was a talent coordinator on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show during it's heyday; now he's an occasional contributor at Powerline.

Today's piece uses Carson's rule that a guest has to have something to say as a springboard for politics and this year's presidential race.

Katz observes that the more articulate candidate usually loses the election, driving his point home with a number of examples from past races.

He does cite one instance where the more articulate candidate triumphed -- although he was derided by his opponents at the time -- and ever since -- as an amiable dunce. And in this excerpt from a speech he offers perhaps the best, most concise explanation why any politician who complains that corporations aren't paying their "fair share" of taxes is demonstrating an ignorance of basic economic theory bordering on encephalopathy .

“In the 34 years since the end of World War II, it has spent $448 billion more than it has collected in taxes -- $448 billion of printing-press money, which has made every dollar you earn worth less and less. At the same time, the federal government has cynically told us that high taxes on business will in some way "solve" the problem and allow the average taxpayer to pay less. Well, business is not a taxpayer; it is a tax collector. Business has to pass its tax burden on to the customer as part of the cost of doing business. You and I pay taxes imposed on business every time we go to the store. Only people pay taxes, and it is political demagoguery or economic illiteracy to try and tell us otherwise.”

That Pres. Reagan sure was a dope, huh?

Corporate taxes are the biggest scam in a system filled with Three-Card Monte grifts where the taxpayers are the marks -- and any candidate this election season who peddles this idiocy is depending on you watching the wrong card as she lifts your wallet.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 05, 2008

Super Tuesday


Well, wasn't that special?

Huckabee took a handful of states in the South, Romney took a few more than Huck (in the West and Mountain states), and McCain took a few more than both -- leaving McCain with a substantial lead in the delegate race.

He did it without my vote, 'though. California's GOP doesn't allow independents to vote in the primary, and I quit the Republican Party in disgust back in 2000, repelled even then by its pork-barrel ways.

So, when I went to vote, I had the option of getting the non-affiliated voter ballot, the American Independent Party ballot, or the Democratic Party ballot.

Who did I vote for?

Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, I know. I feel dirty.

But I have my reasons.

First, as between Clinton and Obama, I think the GOP nominee has a better chance of defeating her than him. Clinton is a tremendously divisive candidate, capable of rousing even a dispirited conservative electorate to come to the polls to vote agin' her, even if they've no one they particularly want to vote for.

Obama, on the other hand, is a more difficult proposition. Although a hollow man, given to spouting platitudes in a honied voice, with no noteworthy accomplishments to show for his career in politics, he is an inspirational figure, a tall, good-looking candidate who happens to be black. Obama is youthful and vigorous and, even if he doesn't really have anything substantial to say, he allows voters to use him as a receptacle -- a conduit, if you will -- for their aspirations and dreams, making him the candidate they want him to be. Obama appeals to voters' emotions, and that's a difficult connection to attack with logic or facts.

Given that the likely GOP candidate will be the cranky, old, red-faced white guy, the contrast with Obama is almost hilariously stark. McCain's experience advantage will evaporate in the heat and light of Obama's charisma like an open can of Ensure set next to the space heater at the old folk's home.

If, on the other hand, Clinton actually wins the White House, I'm convinced that she'll be a remarkably tough commander-in-chief for the war in Iraq.

Hear me out.

Clinton would be the nation's first female president, and if there's one thing we've learned about the Clintons, it's that they're ruthless when it comes to protecting their reputation, their legacy.

Given that the Democratic party has for the last forty years been thought of as the party that got us into Vietnam (Thanks, Kennedy and LBJ) and then cut off promised funding and military supplies to the South Vietnamese government -- leading to its downfall -- Clinton has an opportunity to re-write her party's reputation as the weak-kneed sob sister of foreign policy and national defense to the GOP's tough guy you can trust with your family's safety.

It's clear to me that Clinton will do anything to avoid having the history books note that America's first female president lost the war in Iraq and brought about a humanitarian disaster in the Middle East as a result of a feckless, reckless and precipitous flight from the region.

Clinton must be strong, following the footsteps of pioneers like Israel's Golda Meir and Great Britain's Margaret Thatcher -- both of whom were foreign policy hawks.

I don't care what Clinton's been telling her base about plans to leave Iraq shortly after she takes office; she's trying to win the nomination, and to do that she needs the anti-war Code Pink types, so she'll say whatever she must to win.

But when she takes office, she'll own the war, and although Democratic activists would like to be able to lay the blame for a military disaster at the feet of Pres, Bush, the reality is that the last year has gone very well, and there's no reason to believe that the situation will deteriorate between now and inauguration day next January.

That means Clinton will have to make the war -- and its outcome -- a part of her legacy, and trust me, she ain't gonna let a few campaign promises stand between her and victory.

So, the bottom line for me is this: Clinton might be the best candidate for the GOP to defeat, and if she wins, she might be the best candidate to safeguard American interests in the Middle East because of her need to protect her place in the history books.

How 'bout them apples?

Posted by Mike Lief at 11:45 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Hasidic Jews get a fair shake on House

Tonight's episode of House, the misanthropic doctor portrayed by Hugh Laurie, featured a storyline about a woman who becomes gravely ill at her wedding reception.

Nothing out of the ordinary, that; it could have been an episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. from the 1960s.

What made it different was the bride and her husband were Orthodox Jews, members of the Hasidic movement, and the portrayal of their faith, their customs and practices, was respectful and pretty accurate.

The doctors were skeptical about the woman's mid-life conversion to Orthodox Judaism, attributing her leaving a career as a heroin-using record producer for a life of religious observance as a symptom of mental illness, or perhaps a manifestation of a genetic defect.

Despite the initially mocking tone of the doctor's comments, there soon developed an appreciation for the couple's dedication to their faith -- and to each other.

In one scene, the husband was agitated at seeing his wife nearly naked as she was undergoing a series of tests, telling the doctors that he and his wife had hoped that the first time they saw each other like this would be when they celebrated their marriage together on their wedding night.

The female doctor tells him that he shouldn't be so upset: it's "sweet" that he's there for his wife and yet somehow manages to be embarrassed at the thought of seeing her nearly nude, considering the circumstances.

The husband turns on her and says, "Don't say that." You see, he doesn't think it's "sweet"; the modesty with which they live their lives is based on respect -- he loves and respects his wife, and there's nothing "sweet" or cute about wanting to preserve her dignity, her modesty, and have that first moment of intimacy together, the one they had so wanted to share under very different circumstances. It's difficult to convey the emotional intensity of the moment, but I found it arresting.

Later on in the show, when it looks like the wife will die unless she has surgery post haste, she says she wants to celebrate her first Shabbat with her husband before going under the knife, even if the delay kills her.

There's something about the lighting of the Shabbat candles, the prayers, the way the doctor and her husband helped hold her hands up to her eyes and gathered the light, that I found deeply moving, and when she thought she was dying and began to say the Shema, the holiest prayer in Judaism, I got chills.

This was simply the most sympathetic portrayal of Orthodox Judaism I've ever seen in a dramatic TV series, and I applaud the producers for their efforts.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 03, 2008

Surprisingly liberal


Law Professor Ann Althouse points out that, notwithstanding the preferences of the media, McCain hasn't yet won the nomination -- although you'd never know it from the coverage in the press.

If Romney won a caucus in the extreme northeast and nobody noticed, would it mean a damned thing?

Mitt Romney never wins, because every time he does, it doesn't seem to count. What a loser!

You know, the new Zogby poll has Romney ahead in California. That's after Schwarzenegger endorsed McCain. The McCain campaign has been good at creating the impression that McCain is inevitable. Would that tend to make Romney holdouts get in line in the name of party unity?

There are a lot of Republicans that hate McCain so much they don't even want the party that he would lead. But quite aside from that, I think it's awfully strange for McCain to be perceived as the clear favorite when his polling and vote count numbers are only in the low 30s. They are much lower than the second-place candidate on the Democratic side.

AND: The NYT has no story of any kind on the Maine caucus. Not even a squib.

As we head into Super Tuesday, it's good to clear our heads of the crap put out by the agenda-driven media; it's still anyone's election at this point, with the frontrunners in both parties neck and neck. McCain hasn't won his coronation place at the top of the ticket yet.

So maybe I won't have to choose between the liberal Democrat or the liberal (kinda' sorta') Republican.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

That's one cool cat

Nicolasa, a Peruvian cat that likes to hang 10 -- or is that 20? -- catches some waves with her owner. There are more photos here. Click picture for bigger version.

Posted by Mike Lief at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hygiene yields to political correctness

If you need to go to the hospital, I hope for your sake it's not in England, where nurses of a certain (ahem) religious background won't scrub properly.

Muslim women working at U.K. medical facilities are increasingly refusing to comply with the basic hygiene standard of rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, it was reported.

According to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, female workers are ignoring Britain's Department of Health rules requiring medics to be "bare below the elbow" because they consider showing any skin — outside the hands and face — immodest.

The guidelines were put into place to stave off the spread of infectious killer bugs like MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients, according to the paper.

Hygiene experts said the standard should hold for all workers— even if it goes against their religion.

"I don't think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally," Dr. Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London told the Telegraph.

Some fear the enforcing the rules will open the door to lawsuits charging discrimination against female Muslims working within the medical professions.

The Islamic Medical Association, for one, has issued a statement that "no practicing Muslim woman — doctor, medical student, nurse or patient — should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow," according to paper.

Now, am I to be accused of Islamophobia when I refuse to allow a member of my family to be treated by a Muslim, when organizations like the "Islamic Medical Association" proudly proclaim that basic medical hygiene will not be followed by its members?

While some are worried about lawsuits claiming religious discrimination from Muslims forced to expose their forearms, I can't fathom how they'd compare with the legal actions brought by patients -- or their survivors -- after they're laid low by entirely-preventable infections.

The appropriate response in a sane society would be, "Scrub to the elbows, every goddam time -- or you're fired."

But then sanity has long departed the U.K., when it comes to sucking up to you know who.

Posted by Mike Lief at 09:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

There used to be a Great Britain

The days when Britain was any kind of great are long gone, replaced by a PC paradise where multi-culti-besotted fools fall all over themselves in their rush to erase the last vestiges of Western culture.

The latest dispatches from Britain are, quite frankly, unbelievable.

From the Telegraph comes this report of yet another imposition of Muslim practices on society, paid for by the dhimmies -- er, infidel Brits.

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.

The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.

The decision has been condemned by the Tories, who accused the Government of offering preferential treatment to a particular group, and of setting a precedent that would lead to demands for further changes in British law.

Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband's bank account, if the family so choose. Under the deal agreed by ministers, a husband with multiple wives may also be eligible for additional housing benefit and council tax benefit to reflect the larger property needed for his family.

The ruling could cost taxpayers millions of pounds. Ministers launched a review of the benefit rules for polygamous marriages in November 2006, after it emerged that some families had benefited financially.

[...]

In Britain, bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Islamic law permits men to have up to four wives at any one time - known as a harem - provided the husband spends equal amounts of time and money on each of them.

The aggressiveness that Muslims are showing in seeking special accommodations in heretofore secular Western societies is matched only by the willingness of liberal elites to give them what they want.

Clayton Cramer predicts that we're next, thanks to an organization that's ordinarily hostile to religion -- so long as the offending religion is Christianity or Judaism.

As I have previously mentioned, the ACLU's president several years ago indicated that the ACLU would defend polygamy. I really don't see how the courts will say no once the ACLU files suit to demand legal recognition of polygamy. After all, other countries are doing it--and for the U.S. Supreme Court, that's certainly more important than our Constitution.

When will someone notice that the West is engaged in a slow-motion surrender?

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Media Bias Alert!

Courtesy of the awful Associated Press (via the Ventura County Star) comes this classic example of the bias the media will never admit it has.

Check out the opening of this article on the upcoming Super Tuesday votes, "Convoluted primary rules may make for a voter free-for-all."

WASHINGTON — When it comes to presidential primaries, Democrats and Republicans play by different rules.

One party likes to share. The other, not so much.

Isn't that precious? One political party believes in caring, sharing and fairness. The other is selfish and greedy.

Care to guess which party the AP deems the Care Bear Party, and which one is the party of Scrooge, Mordor and Doom?

It's entirely possible to write an impartial, fair article explaining the difference between the way Republicans and Democrats pick their candidates, without snark -- but to do that requires a journalist who isn't a partisan hack.

And that's apparently beyond the hiring practices of the Associated Press.

Lame.

Posted by Mike Lief at 08:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack