The Country Pundit

Groovy, Smashing, Yay Capitalism - LXG and NCC

In my continuing struggle against the collection of financial wealth, I have gone out and found the widescreen DVD of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and a model kit of NCC-1701 USS Enterprise as represented in her 1960s appearance.

Some time next year, I'll write my thoughts on LOEG, because that's a micro-den Beste of its own. Suffice it to say that I was favorably inclined towards the movie, and wished more had been done with it. To the model kit:

It's a snap-together model (yay!) that can be assembled and insignia-ed for seven variations. Parts are included to create Enterprise as she appeared in the first pilot, "The Cage"; the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", and as the regular series vessel. Deep students of the series will know more about this, but the cosmetics largely involve what you cap the warp nacelles with, and what the bridge looks like. Decals are included to also replicate USS Constellation, USS Exeter, USS Defiant, or ISS Enterprise as seen in "Mirror, Mirror".

I've got zero model-building ability (evidenced by a partially-completed Airfix 1/600 HMS Hood that's sat idle for two and a half years and a never-started 1/750 HMS King George V) but I might be able to pull this one off. If USS Constellation as seen in the 2260s ever arises, the readers will be notified.

At any rate, I found these items at the den of evil (no, not Barad-dur; I mean the greater evil in the Mid-west known as Wal-mart) for reasonable prices, and I may yet go back and get another Enterprise in order to have a couple completed ones. Hooray.

Happy New Year to all those who have read since this blog's incept date.

I Don't Want Dean

This shouldn't be, as James Bond once said, "Shocking". I vote Republican and I'm one of those annoying Southerners who bases his vote on God, gays, and guns. I also don't sneer at people who drive pickup trucks with gun racks and who display the battle flag of the Confederate States Army, provided they are of character. Of course, this makes me anathema to many of the sandalistas who seem to be rampant amongst the Democrats these days. Darn.

It is conventional wisdom among my intellectual brethren on the Right of the blogosphere to salivate eagerly over the prospect of running President Bush against Governor Dean. Some people believe that the potential scope of a Bush victory could rival Richard Nixon's 1972 thrashing of George McGovern.

That may be true. It is also hubris, and fate has a nasty way of punishing it. We wrote off a blundering, philandering, pseudo-intellectual buffoon from Arkansas in 1992. That mistake cost this country eight years of moral, spiritual, and civilizational decay when instead we could have been taking the war against Islamist terror to its warrens in foreign lands, and the name of Osama bin Laden could have been a footnote in a history book buried somewhere. '911' would be a number dialed on telephones, and would not symbolize the death of men like Richard Rescorla, or other individuals whose only crimes were that they sought to earn money and make a living.

Governor Dean presents similar problems, but those are not what concern me at the moment. I believe he will be defeated if he is the eventual nominee. I will do my part here in my home, casting a vote for George W. Bush. Virginia will do her part in standing in the ever-thinning ranks of those who stand for what is right and good, and send Dean's irrational ideology back into a dark corner for two more years.

However, I consider Dean's ideology to be poisonous, if not downright cancerous, and his most vocal supporters' beliefs trouble me with their words. They strike me as some sort of evil djinn, which once unleashed from a bottle into the mainstream of American politics, can probably not be recaptured. If indeed this is true, I certainly don't want it to be the case any more than it already is.

Dean's rantings regarding Presidential foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks belong on the fringes of the American political debate, and nowhere near the center ring. Indeed, they have no place under the big top in the American circus of politics. They more properly should be placed in a tent off to the edges of the circus, where only a fevered few travel. Even if they were true---and I do not believe that they are---such a truth could never be admitted. It would have to be concealed among those in the circles power, for such an admission could inflict near-mortal wounds to the body politic.

Dean has, unfortunately, taken up the rantings of the feverish, and will continue to grant them respectability. The threat this poses is to further fragment the American body politic, destroying the "sensible center" where reasonable men of Left and Right meet to discuss what must be done, and how it shall be done.

Dean and his ilk won't be happy to have a vibrant Republican Party on one side, and a vibrant Democrat Party on the other, with civilizational progress achieved through the essential tension between the two. They want the Republican Party defeated, and ejected from politics. This is not Western republican democracy. This is the banana republic single-party system theory, and it is un-American. A true American, devoted to our Republic, would eagerly support two vibrant political parties, either of which was at any point in time, capable of winning elections. To have it any other way probably thwarts our system at some level, and that, to steal from Martha Stewart, is "A bad thing".

For shame, Governor Dean. The people who propel you now are those whose voice should not be the voice of the Democrat Party. I don't want you getting the nomination. I don't want you or your kind to ever influence politics again. I want an adult at the lead of the Democrats as they come forward to challenge the Republicans for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

UPDATE: For what it's worth, I don't believe that a Nixon-style romp through the Republic is possible for George W. Bush, even if Howard Dean is the nominee. Nixon had the benefit of the Thomas F. Eagleton disaster for the Democrats, and McGovern had some real kooks surrounding him. Seeing pictures of the Senator listening seriously to Hunter S. Thompson in bug-eyed sunglasses doesn't make me think that McGovern was doing the right things operationally to maximize his admittedly slim chances of victory. Likewise, the Democrats of 1972 were suffering from the ruins of the post-1968 takeover by radicals who re-wrote the rules of nomination. Demoralized yellow-dog Democrats probably were organizationally demoralized and not eager to work for McGovern. Likewise, Nixon stood astride the country like a giant, and the media organs were a lot more concentrated, thus easier to manipulate. I also am not certain the population base and mix that Nixon used for victory exists today. The weakness of my analysis can be easily shown by a look at demographic trends and so forth, but I don't have that kind of information in front of me.

USC Sheds Its Conservative Image

When I first saw this article's tagline, I was worried. I thought for a minute they were talking about the University of South Carolina. But never mind that.

The next thought that went through my head was, Gina Goodhill? Sounds like a Bond girl. Let's see what she looks like. Hrrm. Not bad. Maybe that should say doffs her sweatshirt, but we won't get into that on a family-safe blog. Anyways, let's fisk into this, shall we?

[Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics director Ann] Crigler said that when she came to USC in 1988 she assumed the school would be very conservative.

Yes, and I'm sure you set straight to work fixing that, eh Ms. Crigler? Got to fight whitey and the power, I'm sure. Never content to control the entire State, but also you and your little dog too, hmm? I bet this change you've spotted warms your black little heart. Peh.

[USC Democrats president Deryn Sumner] said recruiting Democrats for the club has gotten easier every year. "Each incoming class is more politically aware and less conservative," Sumner said.

Thus breath-eth the old meme of conservative=stupid/ignorant/whatever. When I headed to my undergraduate institution, I was gradually more and more politically aware, and my loathing of the left---as opposed to people who ought to be Republicans, like Zell Miller---only increased. I think it had something to do with actually meeting some of the people who espoused left-wing ideas. Troubling, and downright puzzling. Greetings from Planet Reality, young collegiate Democrats!

Anyways, Miss Sumner also repeats the hoary old chestnut that "awareness"=Democrat voter. I suppose that's a good thing, because it shows us that she's a) unreasonable, and therefore does not need to be part of the conversation between adults on how best to run the country and b) ignorant of the lessons of reality---about half a country doesn't agree with you---and blinded by ideology. At any rate, I'm glad Miss Sumner has exposed herself as intellectually immature, so that we don't have to waste time trying to figure that fact out.

This article keeps getting better and better:

USC students are far brighter and much more discerning than they were when I first came here," [Richard Dekmejian, political science professor] said. "A lot of people don't know what's happened here, how the grade point average has gone up.

Yes, you stupid conservatives! Stop dragging our GPA down. Doesn't USC practice race-based discrimination in its admissions practices? If so, then how come these ostensibly-inferior students have managed to a) raise the GPA and b) torpedo the ranks of the stupid conservatives, all at the same time? At the same time, I'm tempted to suggest that grade inflation of one sort or the other, or the fear of grading a minority student down has led to the "increase" in student GPA.

Professor Dekmejian also believes that there is "strong opposition" to Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and that said opposition will lead many students to vote. I'll go out on a limb here and guess that he means that a vote, period, means a vote for a Democrat. He also steals a page from Terry McAuliffe's 2002 playbook (probably dug out of the trash somewhere) in regards to the 2000 presidential campaign as he notes that the election "strengthened students' determination to vote". This doesn't really apply to me, since I started voting in 1996 and have done so every single time, but I figure maybe somewhere some conservative college students noticed that the Democrats had sent the poster child for vote fraud (i.e. a Daley from Chicago) forward to champion their cause and decided to make sure that such racialist crap spouted about black disenfranchisement wouldn't sway future elections. Anyways, here's an interesting quip from ProfDek:

"Students are very aware that U.S. democracy has ... weaknesses," Dekmejian said.

Yes, weaknesses like allowing nitwits like him to play in the voting booth. I suppose the weakness that he sees is that this country is a republic and not a democracy, and so therefore there are occasional moments when someone other than Democrats win elections. Darn, those annoying elections that that annoying Constitution says we have to have! Surely, ProfDek would rather have enlightened sovereigns governing by their prior discernment of the general will than those annoying Republicans who occasionally do what the people shout and scream about long enough.

Mediocrity, thy name is USC's political science faculty.

Miss Sumner apparently got ahold of Terry McAuliffe's playbook as well:

"Everyone in general has been paying more attention just because the election of 2000 was so notorious and infamous. People are going to saying, 'Remember what happened four years ago,'" Sumner said.

This is America. Our electorate has trouble recalling what happened four days ago, much less four years. But if you want to go down that road, go right on ahead. It's proven to work, just like it did in 2002. Be my guest. I'd love to have enough Republicans in Congress to be able to override left-wing nitwittery, and enough to write men like Lincoln Chaffee off.

The next howler comes from the almost-aptly named head of USC's Dean movement. Miss Cao, perhaps you forgot to put the 't' in your name:

Bich Ngoc Cao, president of USC for Dean and managing editor of the alternative newspaper The Trojan Horse, said she saw previously uninvolved students participate in politics in response to the recall, and especially in response to Proposition 54, which she said made many students feel personally affected.

[Annoying California local politics snipped.]

"People I know are getting involved in really, really deep levels that I haven't seen before. It's dawning on people that if we don't do something this year, next year we're going to re-elect [President Bush]."

OK, so my snide remark about her name aside, let me mangle something from Star Trek: "Brave words. I've heard them before, from a horde of candidates. Their offices are all Republican now..." (Stop it. Just stop it. --Ed.) Her If We Don't Do Something quip sounds like it's amateur Hunter S. Thompson circa 1971, when he's going on and on about how the country, The Road, and a lot of other things are Doomed by 1976 if Nixon is re-elected. However, HST is a lot more interesting to read and laugh at than Miss Cao is.

It's good to know that America's campuses are still thinking like it's 1969. Miss Goodhill, continue polishing your craft and perhaps you'll be ready in a couple of years to take your place in the clueless pantheon of mindless journalistas robotically parroting the Democrat line as if it were your own creed. If you wise up in the meantime, a gal with a name like that ought to see if James Bond is busy for an evening.

Happiness

Happiness is a fully-configured Alco Century C630 for either the Norfolk & Western Railway or the Penn Central Railroad, installed in Microsoft's Train Simulator and pulling coal on the Delaware & Hudson Railroad's Susquehanna Division.

That makes sense to a handful of readers, but I got some Alco Centuries installed into Train Simulator today, and they're awfully fun to drive around. Brief historical note: Alco, the American Locomotive Company, built its last locomotive in the United States in 1969, driven from the market by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division and their proven GP/SD locomotives, and by General Electric's Universal series.

The Penn Central Railroad would go into the history books on April 1, 1976, after five years of bankruptcy. The Consolidated Rail Corporation, Conrail, would replace it. Conrail's locomotives are light blue and white, and most of the ones still around today say "CONRAIL QUALITY" on the flanks. Conrail itself was bought by Norfolk Southern and CSX in 1999.

The Norfolk & Western Railway, which has run past my house for decades, merged with the Southern Railway System in 1982 to form Norfolk Southern, the Thoroughbred of Transportation. Currently, NS locomotives form the backbone of my collection.

This has nothing to do with politics, other than that the Penn Central was widely regarded as a Republican railroad. Heh heh heh.

Updates to The Roll

I've been meaning to make a round of updates to the links, with additions and deletions. No comments necessary on deletions; additions marked below:

Charlie's Soapbox - The "blog" (I guess) of Charlie Daniels, a musician famous for, among other things, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and "Uneasy Rider". Charlie's spelling isn't the greatest in the world, but the point gets across. He loves his country and he's a believer in Jesus, and not much more beyond that needs be said. I've seen him twice in concert, and I've really enjoyed his show both times. Thus, I'm happy to link him up.

Matthew J. Stinson - Matt seems like an eminently reasonable guy, and he was one of the people who kept a piece of the "nitwit Austrian" thing alive, and it's about time I added him to the list.

Ipse Dixit - He put up with me when I posted something about Virginia being a Commonwealth and not a State; moreover his list of the Democrat and Republican views on Christmas behavior got me laughing. Mr. Harris, sorry I didn't do this sooner.

Swanky Conservative - This chap pointed me towards where I got Donald Rumsfeld in the "Which Member of the Bush Administration Are You?" (and promptly posted the results) and he's also got this, one of my favorite (i.e. most meaningful) editorial cartoons of recent. His post about The World's Largest Shotgun also got me laughing in the evil Calvin manner, and thus I decided it was time to correct an oversight.

Professor Bainbridge - Yes, another law-school tie-in. Fear not! I am not evolving this site into a blawg, mostly because I don't seem to have the intellectual wattage to do so. Go on Crossfire and embarrass James Carville? Perhaps. Snooker Democrats as best I can? You bet. Do anything more complicated than that? No. The Professor writes extensively about the world of corporate law, and that's about the only thing I've been truly interested in since I got to law school. (Thought you went up there to be the next Thomas E. Dewey, Mr. Certain-to-be-a-Prosecutor. --Ed.) He writes well and he writes interestingly; I usually wind up spending more time there than I actually have, so...any low grades are your fault, professor! Incidentally, he also does wine reviews, if you're in to that.

The Adam Smith Institute Blog - These Brits are good people, and they also know how to use e-mail. Lesson: Writing Christmas hellos to this author yields dividends.

And last, but not least:

The Mudville Gazette - Greyhawk runs this site; it's the home of MilBlogs, which I like and am a registered supporter thereof.

The Hunt for Hallmark Ornaments

So it's December 26, 2003.

Earlier today, I went to the local Hallmark shop in order to pick up some ornaments that had been deemed desirable but not at full price. It's regional policy of the Hallmark stores around here to cut prices on their Christmas ornaments by 50% in the day or so after 25 December, and I was going to take advantage of that.

This is what you call a cost control measure, despite the fact that Mom's winter purchases from Hallmark has to underwrite their fourth-quarter profits at some level. I have yet to figure out how to get Hallmark's board of directors to cut us in on the action in terms of dividends. I haven't looked, but they're reportedly a privately-held company, so buying stock or asking for options thereupon doesn't seem to be an option.

To get to where I'm going, here's an observation: You take your own life into your hands when you go to one of these sales and stand between women and bargains. I'm there trying to find a Bugs Bunny in a metal plane from the 1920s. These women are there to get their fourth and fifth example of Super-Duper Snowflake Barbie and so forth. These women are vicious. They take no prisoners and elbows can fly. About the only thing I can liken it to is the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Names of ornaments are called out and occasionally they're handed back. I usually do some of this, because I've got longer arms than the average participant in this melee, and because I've got a nice pair of sharp elbows. As awful as that sounds, these things are useful when dealing with the enraged horde of Hallmark shoppers.

Anyways, after about two hours of work, we managed to procure all but three of the ornaments desired. A quick tour around the other area stores delivered that which we were looking for, and so our ornament quest for 2003 is over.

Mr. Chairman of the Board, Mr. President of the United States, you're welcome for our stimulus of the national economy. I'll be expecting my dividend check in the mail.

Come See What Santa Brought!

Hooray. Although I had previously bought myself the best Christmas present I got this year (i.e. the complete first season of Battlestar Galactica) I did manage to get several things of note:

-The Adventures of Indiana Jones, widescreen edition. Woo hoo. Marian Ravenwood and Elsa Schneider, archeological babes of note. Unfortunately, either the sound mix on Raiders of the Lost Ark is bad or the settings on the family home theater system are bungled, because I can't hear the dialogue all that well.

-Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century by Bernard Ireland and illustrated by Tony Gibbons. This book, although a little on the slim side, is splendid for a quick-reference book on the subject. It's also got short essays on other battleship-related topics, like the loss of Repulse and Prince of Wales to Imperial Japanese aircraft three days after the successful IJN strike against Pearl Harbor. It's also got a color illustration of what a Montana-class battleship would have looked like had we ever finished one. Heh heh heh, these things just scream evil.

-Iowa Class Battleships - Their Design, Weapons & Equipment by Robert F. Sumrall. This is an older book, published by the United States Naval Institute in 1988. I've got the British edition of the book, printed by Conway Maritime Press, which adds to the cool of this tome. It's more than I ever wanted to know about the mighty Iowa-class battleships, and is a splendid reference for these last battlewagons for America's navy.

As you can see, I'm kind of fond of battleships. Suffice it to say that when I stand on the decks of USS North Carolina or USS Wisconsin, I'm prone to getting a big grin on my face as I wander these monsters from out of time. It's almost creepy seeing them, because nothing we've built since then carries the same visual menace as a battleship. John Lehman understood that, which is one reason we brought them back in the 1980s. The Soviet Union understood visual menace, and thus built the hulking Kirov-class atomic-powered missile-armed battlecruisers. Sure, aircraft carriers are wickedly destructive in their own right, but nothing says "Reach out and annihilate someone" like a shower of 16" shells being fired from 20 miles away. Heh heh heh. You can't look at a picture of an Iowa broadside without getting the big Calvin grin on your face.

Anyways, the relatives are over, so I'll hush now and get back to them.

Christmas Eve, Sort Of

Hrrm. Like everything else since I've gotten home from school, this is posted many days out of sequence. The entire Christmas season post-exams has been a blur.

Anyways, I had a nifty rah-rah Christmas message all composed and then I lost it in a browser crash. So therefore, a reconstructed, pared down message:

Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth, good will to men. To our folks overseas, I want y'all home as soon as possible. Be careful out there, as that sergeant on Hill Street Blues used to say.

Now, for something that (hopefully some will interpret positively: I went to my church's Christmas Eve candlelight service and got shanghaied into performing as a communion steward. I hate doing it, because you have to repeat a single phrase (in my case, "The body of Christ, broken for you") over and over, and because you've got to do everything right for each man, woman, and child who comes in front of you. Moreover, I had to work with bread. For reasons of sanitary concern, we wear these gloves, but my hands were too big for the things, and so I basically got to pluck chunks of bread out with these gloves on. The downside of that was that I had a pair of semi-rigid tongs since I couldn't move my fingers, so I managed to crush a lot of bread and make more of a mess than anyone else.

However, I do like, for some reason, dealing with the children whose parents bring them forward. They're usually short enough to where I've got to squat down and hand them their bread. It's a different thing than handing an anonymous adult a piece of badly-torn bread, and the kid's usually looking at you with big wide eyes. I don't know exactly how this gets through the either stoic or downright daffy persona I usually project, but it kind of warms the heart.

Enh. Now that I've done my Scrooge reformed thing for the day, time to warm up the Nike Hercules site and arm the W-31 warhead; I'm going to get that red intruder from the North if it's the last thing he ever does. That'll teach him to invade my airspace and not leave me what I asked for...

The King Has No Clothes

As stated in yesterday's solitary (and just published today due to continued forgetfulness) post, I did see Return of the King. On with the story: OK, so I got finished with that three and a half hour movie, and I'm left cold.

This was the grand movie that had been built up for about a year? Yawn. I didn't look at my watch, but only through force of will; certainly not through focus upon the screen. ROTK carried great hopes; I'd already been disappointed if not outraged by the flop of The Matrix: Revolutions and was counting on Peter Jackson to expunge the disappointing The Two Towers and do what Andy and Larry Wachowski couldn't, i.e. conclude a trilogy with a bang, not a whimper.

Obviously, I was expecting too much. Anyways, I've got several points to make:

1. I liked the summoning of the army of the dead. That was cool, especially when Aragorn et al looked around to see an entire city of green fog emerging out of the darkness. Of course, I'm a sucker for things like that, and I wish we'd seen more of their slaughter of the orcs at Minas Tirith. Of course, I think I also would have tried to figure out a way to talk them into following me to the battle at the Black Gate, if I'd been Aragorn. However, they did earn their reward, so I wouldn't have been hopeful on retaining their services.

2. I wasn't impressed at all with the Witch King, or the nine proper at all throughout this series. These great evils, these most dangerous lieutenants of Sauron, all billed as these engines of destruction, and they're militarily worthless. All they managed to provide at Minas Tirith was some token air support and some psychological warfare operations. Peh, I bet Sauron's Department of Defense is going to get in deep trouble for spending billions on the Ringwraith program. (At the same time, the element of fear in primitive troops can be an extremely useful weapon, but I would have preferred to see them lay the smack down and earn their keep.)

The Witch King, billed by Gandalf in the movie as Mr. Ultimate Bad-ass, State of the Bad-ass Art, was about as effective in combat as a Frenchman: Lots of talk, not much action. Gandalf's words built up the chief wraith as some sort of killing machine that would stride through the fields of battle leaving ruin, death, and despair in his wake. Instead, it's laid to waste (after a ridiculous speech) by Eowyn and Meriadoc, in what has to be one of the most anti-climactic moments of an anti-climactic movie. Admittedly, this movie does much to cement Eowyn as my second-favorite LOTR babe. Not only does she not have Steven Tyler's genes floating around in her (nor would I have to deal with Agent Smith as an in-law) but she's handy-dandy with a sword and doesn't run away when faced by an empty-helmet monster.

My response to them is on the order of C. Montgomery Burns: "Oooh, the Ringwraiths! I'm so scared! Ooooh, the Ringwraiths!" Bloody worthless they are, for all the build-up they get. Sauron should have just tried to create a team of agents; that would've been more effective and Hugo Weaving wouldn't have had to change his hair work. "Hear that, Mr. Elessar? It is the sound of Sauron; it is the sound of your death..."

3. Was it just me, or was Gandalf not much help? He's billed as "Mithrandir", the uber-powerful back-from-the-dead magician of all power, and capable of much smacking down. Other than swing a sword and talk a little bit, what's he do? He shines a light in the eyes of the evil fell beast that's stalking the remants of the Gondor Expeditionary Force as it retreats from Osgiliath. Even that's ultimately worthless in that all the men in that retreat save Faramir probably wind up dead after Denethor's Bright Idea goes badly.

In conversations with boy of heterophobic I figured out from his advice that Gandalf is more Merlin than Palpatine. Where I expect a veritable Dark Lord of the Sith, with enhanced combat abilities and blue lightning-from-the-fingers, remote strangulation, and the ability to move things with the Force, I actually get wise counsel and the like. Boy further tells me that the role of Gandalf's race is to counsel the people of Middle Earth in the war against Sauron. Gee, so they're like Henry Kissinger? Nothing's special about being a servant of the secret fire other than intelligence? Less Maia, more Mensa, I suppose.

Anyways. Since Gandalf's effectively immortal, I found it almost laughable that he was encouraging the men of Gondor to stand their ground against a large enemy force that was coming through the door. "Stand and fight!" "Yes, I suppose that's a noble statement for someone who can't die. Bloody well sour for the rest of us, don't you think?"

All of that in the face of the fact that both Gandalf and Saruman were capable of physical magic in the first movie---did Gandalf forget something while he was away?

At any rate, I prefer Ian McKellen as Richard Gloucester or Erik Lensherr. It would have been amusing to have seen him quip, "You forces of Sauron and your swords..." right before wreaking havoc on the assembled army as they approached Minas Tirith.

4. Speaking of Faramir, did he do anything important after telling Gandalf that Frodo was still advancing? Other than that foolish charge of his (yeah, a real man would have said, "Dad, I'm not going to die just for your depression! The enemy has had time to dig in and they are superior in number. Any attack against them by our forces would be a useless gesture. There is no captain here that is stupid enough to charge them") I can't really recall him being anything other than a sack of flour for immolation. On the other hand, I was really fond of Sean Bean's Boromir. I suppose he was the character with whom I could most identify, because I would have said the same things he did about the usefulness of the Ring. "Wait, we've got this super-powerful Ring thing here and there's Ultimate Doom stirring in the East for one last big push, and we've got the weapon to stop him, and we're sitting here talking?" To steal from Arthur C. Clarke's Walter Curnow as visualized in Peter Hyams' 2010, "The ayes have it".

5. Gollum/Smeagol annoyed me. He's the Jar-Jar Binks of the LOTR movie trilogy, and just about as annoying. Yes, yes, I know he's more important to the story than a jive-talking Gungan, but I got to the point where I dreaded seeing Frodo or Sam because I knew that annoying CGI monstrosity wouldn't be far behind. I agreed with Sam real quick in wanting to kill Stinker, and I wish he'd fallen down to Minas Morgul. (Admittedly, the look of that place and Frodo's wandering towards the city as the Ring led him was cool.)

Similarly, I think we already know what goes on with Gollum enough to know that he's a ruined hobbit who was corrupted by the Ring. The whole flashback sequence did nothing for me, and made me first want to look at my watch. That's never a good sign.

6. The score was nothing to write home about, and I wasn't fond of Annie Lennox's contribution. Admittedly, I remember nothing about it, or the score to The Two Towers either. On the other hand, "The Bridge at Khazad-Dum" and the music for Lothlorien are spectacular, along with the lament for the (not-so) fallen Gandalf.

7. In surfing around the blog world prior to the viewing of this movie, a distinct sense of "greatest film ever" was palpable. National Review seemed to be almost triumphant about the greatness of this film, as were several other conservatives. Not that I'm particularly susceptible to movie hype any more---The Phantom Menace cured me of that---but the standard Thompson-issue suspicion and paranoia kicks in when people keep swooning over something and I don't.

Where are the rousing speeches (Aragorn's speech fell flat because apparently Viggo Mortensen doesn't believe in what he said) that were supposed to inspire us against Islamist terror? Where was the thing speaking to our times et cetera et cetera? Sure I liked Theoden's address before the Rohirrim charged the orcs at Pelennor Field (muahaha, six thousand mounted cavalry against midget troops not smart enough to form square or to have automatic weapons, whee!) but I couldn't really see anyone delivering these remarks in the present day. They'd be laughed out of the venue. (Whether that's a good thing or not is the subject of a longer and much more morose separate post.)

Most importantly, where was Cate Blanchett? The entire sequence that took place in Lorien was enchanting. Heck, whenever she was on screen, I sat up in my seat with rapt attention, leaning forward with eyes wide open, staring in disbelief. I had great hopes for that sequence when Frodo was running from Shelob and he sees a quick vision to inspire him forward, but alas that led nowhere. Likewise, I was hopeful for her appearance at the dock with the rest of the crew in The End (Part III or IV), but she just stands there and shoots a weird glance off to the vessel. What was that glance all about, anyways? "Psst, we've got a keg on board"? Enh, the lack of substantive Galadriel really kinda dragged down this film, as it did the second one. Too much Arwen, I think...

In closing: Better than Revolutions, inferior to Jedi. Will be better than the third Star Wars prequel. That still isn't saying much, though. The Wachowskis can at least claim that one of their number was busy with a dominatrix and Lucas can claim that his last directorial success was Star Wars, but Peter Jackson's responsible for The Fellowship of the Ring, a movie which held me in thrall to its audio-visual presentation of an utterly compelling story. He follows that with these two movies?

I might buy the DVD---still don't own the Two Towers, period---and hope that repeating viewings will increase my enjoyment of this film. I am not, however, optimistic of that, unless I fast forward through all the sequences with Gollum.

UPDATE: Boy of heterophobic provided much Tolkein knowledge for the post, although he distinctly did not agree with my conclusions.

An Anti-Dean Blog

Jonathan Chait, of The New Republic and professed Bush-hater, has decided to throw up a blog dedicated to being a "Dean-o-phobe". Mr. Chait explains himself here, and the actual blog itself is here.

Current plans are to try and see Return of the King tonight. Hooray, I think.

Bother!

I've been browsing through some remarks at the Internet Movie Database in regards to this Angels in America thing that HBO has put on---haven't seen it, won't see it, don't care about homosexual theater¹---and it appears that Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep reportedly share some sort of mid-air kiss.

Well isn't that just special. I had hoped that the end of the 1990s would put an end to this radical chic thing of making grandiose statements with female homosexual expression, but I suppose that some people haven't gotten the memo about the turn of the century. Felgercarb, to steal a line from an old favorite television show.

I'd been moderately fond of Emma Thompson since seeing her as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in high school, and had been willing to overlook her turn as the ersatz Hillary Rodham Clinton in Primary Colors. But this, yech, banishment to the blacklist. There's no commentary necessary for Meryl Streep, whose last performance of note I considered to be The River Wild.

Sigh. Enh, just another reason to dismiss another downward notch in the cultural spiral. Once upon a time, good things came out of the theater and were celebrated. Why can't we have a cheerful and positive thing like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or something like that? Admittedly, it'd be Seven Husbands for Seven Brothers if written today, and the Pontipee brothers would all be into various things that one could have seen in Times Square before Giuliani cleaned it up. (Oklahoma with Hugh Jackman was on PBS earlier in the month, but you were too busy to notice. --Ed.)

Quoting Harry Turtledove's Robert E. Lee again: "Too bad! Oh, too bad!"

¹ Lemme get this straight: It's about Roy Cohn, evil Republicans, and isn't-it-awful-about-AIDS? Bah. We've already been down this road. It's the last twenty years of AIDS activist propaganda, for pete's sake, and, to steal a line from Michelle Branch, I just don't care.

The Colonel Comes to Jesus

Well, not really. I do expect that the sovereign leader of Libya will remain a devotee of the Islamic faith. Nevertheless, the Colonel's done something that I regard as intelligent.

Several points:

1. The Country Pundit is glad this worked without (publicly-known) direct military action. We're a little busy elsewhere, and don't need to be getting too many irons in too many fires.

2. TCP likes sanctions as part of a daily breakfast an overall diversified portfolio of diplomatic options that starts with "The United States would like to express its displeasure..." and stops just short of the shiny things in the silos.

3. Bouncing off of the point above, I'm not entirely sure when the relevant sanctions were put into place, and I'm not sure what they were put into place for. These sanctions things do, unfortunately, take a long time and you're never guaranteed that they'll do much other than enrich the local dictator and irritate the people he's ruling.

4. It's good that the United States is ready and willing to cut deals when the opportunity arises. The 'no regime change' for Libya in exchange for whatever it is exactly that the Colonel's giving up is a good deal, and we've made it before, with Castro. Leaving that nitwit in power down in Cuba was probably a decent deal in exchange for getting the Soviet missiles out of there. Admittedly, it wasn't too good for the Cuban people, but that can't be helped.

5. Both withdrawals of sanctions seem to have been intelligent moves. Call it the two-carrot approach if you will; the problem is that this doesn't always work, and so you have to keep a big stick laying around.

6. Hopefully the State Department had a positive hand in this, and can start pulling its weight instead of being like a dead-in-train locomotive.

7. Also, this may set a good example: Work with us, and you stay in power. Keep up your NBC program (or keep acting like you've got one) and we bring the hurt. Crude, not particularly subtle, but probably effective.

In summary: I'm glad this worked and so forth. I'm hopeful that "Libya" can stop being short-hand for "state sponsor of terrorism" and can move towards the group of nations who at least act like they've got a measure of civilization about them. Hooray for Washington and for London.

Orson Scott Card, Meet Margaret Thatcher

North Carolina-based (I believe) author Orson Scott Card had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, and it threw a couple of rhetorical bombs at his fellow Democrats. I thought it was a good column, from what appears to be a good man.¹

Some choice cuts:

[T]heir platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

I've often wondered something along that line m'self. Given that Clinton spent eight years hauling directly to the middle of wherever everyone else wanted to go (and seemingly regardless of the merit of any one position in any particular debate) you'd think the professional electoratsia in the Democratic National Committee would know how poorly superheated firebrand rhetoric plays. Lord knows they reminded our people time and time again of that.

The more I think about it, there must be some connection between this firebrand mentality and what appears to be more of a focus in base energizing and mobilization in current electoral politics (i.e. telling them what they want to hear; preaching to the choir) instead of doing what President Nixon might suggest, namely leadership in saying "This is where I am. I am right. Follow me." Of course, President Nixon also said that Republicans were to run to the right in the primaries and back towards the center in the general election; for all I know, Dean's people are holding that up to a mirror and reading it 'run left' and 'to the center'.

Anyways. Maybe I don't see a lot of this because I just don't care about Governor Dean. He's a novice and probably has the Federal-level governing ability implied by that. I'm personally still waiting for Joe Lieberman or perhaps John Edwards and Richard Gephardt to take off, and put adults back in charge of the Democratic Party. I don't want the Democrats marginalized as a party, primarily because I don't know who's most likely to take their place, and I don't like uncertainty at this level. Similarly, they force Republicans and conservatives to keep the intellectual power plants at full load. That's good for us and that's good for America.

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

Mr. Card, if you love your party, you might not want to wait until after this election. Although I certainly don't think sanity's going down without a fight in the Democrats, these Dean people are, to steal a phrase from Smith, like a virus. As one recent article on Doc Strange put it, "When most candidates commit gaffes, the money dries up. When Howard Dean commits a gaffe, the money comes flowing in."

This leads me to another point: Does the FEC have adequate oversight of these web-based donations? Several of us at the school were trying to figure this out, and we don't know where the law is on donations of that kind. Between the Clark and Dean types who'd post saying "I just gave $x to Wesley/Howard!!" and list their donation numbers, I'm almost convinced that election-cycle donation limits are being reached somewhere.

Next up, a nasty slap at Reuters, who usually deserves it:

Reuters recently ran a feature that trumpeted the "fact" that U.S. casualties in Iraq have now surpassed U.S. casualties in the first three years of the Vietnam War. Never mind that this is a specious distortion of the facts, which depends on the ignorance of American readers. The fact is that during the first three years of the war in Vietnam, dating from the official "beginning" of the war in 1961, American casualties were low because (a) we had fewer than 20,000 soldiers there, (b) most of them were advisers, deliberately trying to avoid a direct combat role, (c) our few combat troops were special forces, who generally get to pick and choose the time and place of their combat, and (d) because our presence was so much smaller, there were fewer American targets than in Iraq today.

Harrumph! Mr. Card, you've forgotten the primary rule of Reuters: Never let little inconvenient things like facts (e.g. what you've illustrated that counterpoint with) stand in the way of an ideological (probably trans-national or at the very least pro-European Community) bias. You got that? Now we see why you're just a (pretty prolific, good, and awarded) writer of books and are not a member of the Fourth Estate. Tsk tsk!

The old SSI wargame Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic used to have an animated officer to report hits on enemy vessels. If that little dude were here, he'd say "PENETRATING HIT, 16", TO GOOD SHIP LIBERALPOP". Mr. Card lands a bunch of large caliber hits on the whole "I'm not unpatriotic for calling Bush the equivalent of Hitler or for wanting Saddam Hussein to win" crowd:

Not at all--I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they "support our troops" all they like--but it doesn't change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Patriots like Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 when General George Catlett Marshall asked him to basically throw the election in order to preserve an American cryptographic advantage. I'd like to believe that I would have made Dewey's choice, but there are times when I get the feeling that a lot of politicians today wouldn't be real men such as Dewey. Or Marshall, for that matter. (NB, Wesley Clark: You would rise in my estimation if I thought you capable of standing within sight of Marshall or any other of our World War II leaders (even Admiral King) without being required by objective fairness to scream "Unworthy" while ducking your head if they drew near.)

I would not have chosen Afghanistan and Iraq to start with; Syria, Iran, Sudan and Libya were much more culpable and militarily more important to neutralize as sponsors of terror. (They say that Libya and Sudan have changed their tune lately, but I have my doubts.)

I don't necessarily agree with the first part of this sentence. After 11 September 2001, it was politically necessary to strike directly at al-Qaeda, and in a dramatic fashion that said "America chooses to slaughter her attackers". I understand and concede---in fact I agree---that targets of military importance ought to be struck, but we had to go and ring Osama bin Laden's bell, whether or not that helped the overall war effort. War is one of those complex things with public relations, political, and military components that often may not make immediate obvious sense. I believe that Mr. Card's statements miss the mark here. Striking the Sudanese may be necessary (and I think a good idea for what I keep hearing about their pro-slavery and anti-Christian policies), but it wouldn't have made a lot of sense in terms of getting revenge for the immediate 11 September attacks. The point is, however, moot in that we've already gone to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Card turns from noting the need for political unity in order to achieve victory and to the politico-media front, and after some ruminations, produces this gem:

And in all the campaign rhetoric, I keep looking, as a Democrat, for a single candidate who is actually offering a significant improvement over the Republican policies that in fact don't work, while supporting or improving upon the American policies that will help make us and our children secure against terrorists.

Well, I may disagree on several things with OSC in terms of domestic or even foreign policy, but at the same time, he appears to be what Margaret Thatcher once said of M.S. Gorbachev, "a man with whom we can do business". I don't expect everyone in this country to agree with me---since I'm human and automatically capable of error, this is a good thing---but I also don't have time for the types who foam at the mouth and who can't accept reasonable disagreement. That kind of behavior pretty much in my book cuts the foamer out of reasonable debate. Of course, this also has the effect of cutting many in the loudmouth wing---i.e. the Dean "Democratic" wing---of the Democratic Party out of the people whose input I'll listen to. So be it. One can only hope that the adults take control of the Democratic machine soon; much more of MoveOn and the Dean camp, and something will have to arise to take its place. That's not a good thing.

I am glad I've been reading Card since the last Gulf war; it seems that he's not only a good writer, but a good thinker.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Kevin Patrick at Blogs for Bush.

¹ Yes, that's right, I said that a Democrat was a good man. I'm from the rural South and I've been raised to speak well of good people, regardless of party affiliation.

Safire Strikes Back

Just when you thought it was safe to cheer the capture of Saddam, Bill Safire comes along and ruins it.

Bill's a Nixon man, and therefore the Country Pundit likes him. Anyways, to the points:

Why did he not use his pistol to shoot it out with his captors or to kill himself? Because he is looking forward to the mother of all genocide trials, rivaling Nuremberg's and topping those of Eichmann and Milosevic. There, in the global spotlight, he can pose as the great Arab hero saving Islam from the Bushes and the Jews.

While the Country Pundit knows that no right-thinking individual would believe that Saddam Hussein could claim the mantle of great Arab hero¹, the Pundit also knows that there are plenty of deluded people who would, as stated earlier, suggest that Saddam was doing his duty against the Zionist oppressor if he was caught in an Israeli sheep pen with his pants down.

I don't know the mind of Saddam Hussein, but one wonders if he has in essence surrendered himself to his fate. By this I don't mean surrendering to objective justice, heavens no. I guess I'm more wondering if he thinks he'll ever get Iraq back again, or if he's figured it's time to break out Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" after watching Young Guns II for inspiration.

Safire goes on for a little while longer, but closes with this gem:

We are not finished with this remorseless monster; Saddam will have his day in an Iraqi court. But so will the ghosts of poison-gassed Halabja and Iraqi children forced to clear minefields in Iran. The meticulous presentation of his offenses against humanity will demonstrate again that all that would have been necessary for the triumph of evil was for good people to do nothing.

I haven't made a final decision as to what the best use of Saddam Hussein would be, but as one of those pathetic individuals struggling through law school (And nowhere near the front of the class, either! --Ed.) I'd like to see him standing in a dock somewhere with a bill of indictment being read against him. Ideally this will be in the hands of a reconstituted Iraqi criminal justice system. Hopefully he'll be given as fair a trial as can be, in order to show the old coot how civilized nations go about the even-handed application of the rule of law, not of men.

¹ Setting aside for the moment the fact that those three words may be a contradiction in terms.

[Yes, this is posted late. I've had to write thirty-plus pages of pseudo-analytical legal text and take two exams in the last four days. Right now I'm happy to not be falling asleep on the keyboard.]

A Century of Flight

One hundred years ago today, the first powered heavier-than-air flight was achieved at 10:35 A.M. at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville Wright, of Ohio, was at the controls of the Wright Flyer.

The entire human race has benefited from the persistence and ingenuity of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Their invention and surrounding technological breakthroughs have helped knit countries together, saved lives, made possible dramatic increases in the mobility of people, and have spurred on the technological developments that would give rise to America's lunar landing and many, many, other marvelous wonders of technology.

We are honored and blessed to have had them among us.

Visit The United States Centennial of Flight Home Page for more on this monumentous occasion.

It is difficult at this point to say anything more; the magnitude of what these men wrought requires rhetorical skills greater than mine at present to describe.

WC's Humor in the WC

Heard on a local public radio broadcast:

Winston Churchill was not fond of his Labour Party successor, Clement Atlee, who launched a massive nationalization of various sectors of the British economy. One day, Churchill entered the bathroom at the House of Commons and saw Atlee there as well. Sir Winston promptly chose the farthest position from Atlee in order to continue his business, and was addressed by Atlee: "Feeling stand-offish today?"

To this, Churchill replied, (roughly): "I do so because every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."

Tee hee. WC's humor in the WC. Gotta love it.

This story has not, however, been independently verified.

Joe Lieberman, Man of History

I was reading The Politburo Diktat last night when I noticed an interesting post by our lovable Comrade Commissar on the future of Senator Joseph Lieberman, D-CT. The money quote:

But now, Angry Joe has set himself up as the "Un-Dean." Very clever. Very strong.

Reminds Commissar a little bit of another very strong, very clever "Comrade Joe." And remember who that Joe brought down.

Of course, Comrade Commissar is referring to our glorious Comrade Stalin¹. I agree (for the tongue-in-cheek purposes of this post) that Senator Lieberman reminds me of a historical tyrant who didn't mind slaughtering lots and lots of people to achieve his policy objectives. However, I disagree on who that tyrant is. Is that disagreement because comparing any American politician to Stalin is an outrage and unsupportable on the facts? Well, probably, but I had another angle in mind.

Harkening back to campaigns of previous years:

We've got reason to be scared of Joe, but it ain't because he's Stalin. Connecticut Joe may offer platitudes and warm fuzzy feelings about things, but make no mistake about it: Any Lieberman budget for defense will have an item for a project earmarked "SPACE STATION - ULTIMATE POWER IN UNIVERSE". He'll probably also have that wheezing and sighing physical wreck (no, not Darth Vader; I mean Ted Kennedy) alongside him to do his dirty work.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

¹ In all seriousness: Rudolf Rummel, of the University of Hawaii, has produced figures that show Stalin as being responsible for over 42 million deaths of Soviet citizens during his reign, enough to ensconce him as history's all-time mass murderer. See Freedom's Nest and Rummel's academic site for more of these chilling details. We hear much about the evils of Hitler, but precious little (thanks for nothing, Pulitzer Committee in re: Walter Duranty) about how Uncle Joe took tens of millions of lives indiscriminately. Guess Hitler should have gone whole hog and been an open Communist; he'd get a pass.

NB: Apologies for the grainy nature of that picture; I couldn't find a higher-resolution version of this which had previously been floating around the Internet in large quantities. Winston Smith, call your office.

Curse You, Allahpundit!

After a long and excruciating law school final in which I'll probably set the personal record for failure, I drifted by Allah Is In The House, and promptly became irate.

TCP's anger extends from Allahpundit's latest reporting on the Howard Dean endorsement list. Now, we all know that many entertainers and members of the coastal elites (of which I will be one, sooner or later; viva la revolucion...) don't have the brains that God gave geese, so they often go and do stupid things. Tom Cruise ditching Nicole Kidman is one of these things. Nevertheless, the Country Pundit would like to believe that people he counts as "enjoyable entertainers" aren't stupid. That's a complex and narcissistic calculation that occasionally needs a little bit of grandfather clausing or regulations exempting a specific individual. (Hoo boy, have you ever got that right. Two words: Sheryl Crow. What's next, your re-embrace of the Dixie Chicks? If this keeps up, you'll be worse than Imus. --Ed.)

Anyways, Allah's post brings me Photoshop edits of pictures shot at a Dean fundraiser where none other than Carly Simon performed for the little bugger and his crowd of Bush-haters. This is most unfortunate news, because TCP likes Carly Simon's work. Heck, I even own her last new album, along with that two-disc anthology that was recently released. ('course, that's two of the three albums of hers I own, and the other one's the Elektra compilation from the early 1970s) Heck, I even found an eight-track of the Elektra "Best of" and played it until the cursed thing broke, sometime in the late 1990s.

It strikes me as strange that a woman who would write a song desiring the arrival of a 'New Jerusalem' ("Let The River Run", from the Working Girl soundtrack) would also endorse and be all happy for a guy who doesn't seem to be all-fired eager to bring the hurt to people whose platform includes "death to Israel!" Admittedly, Simon's judgment on things other than music doesn't always go too well; she took part in a 1980 "rockumentary" called No Nukes, which was against atomic energy. I had managed to gloss over that by this point, but Allahpundit's post is going to require a little more spinning or generalized exception in order for me to not shelf another artist.

Anyways. Luckily for me, I'm at a point of "I don't care" when it comes to celebrity endorsements of candidates, so perhaps this one will slink under the radar. In the grand scheme of things, an endorsement from an ancient relic whose last hit came during the Reagan Administration doesn't matter; I believe I'd be best advised to let this one slide. Enh.

Visit his post (linked above) and laugh, if for no other reason than the rather clever quotes attributed to Governor Dean.

The Professionals Respond to Saddam, Part II

George Will, in today's Washington Post:

The tyrant's capture has triggered a predictable chorus from those who have consistently subordinated the interests of Iraq, and other things, to their agenda for aggrandizing international institutions. They say an international tribunal should have a role -- perhaps the role -- in the trial of Saddam Hussein. So it is timely to recall the Nuremberg anomaly.

Can I call 'em, or what? Admittedly, these people are so predictable that saying this would happen is of equivalent predictive value to "I'm going out on a limb here, but the sun's gonna rise. Be sure of it."

Mr. Will calls the inclusion of the Soviets in the Nuremberg Tribunal "grotesque" but also denotes that it was "necessary". The problem here is, of course, that he's right. It would have been very strange to the security situation of 1945 and 1946 for the Western allies to shut the Soviets, no matter how onerous their presence, out of the post-war punitive effort against the National Socialists. Perhaps the Soviet government didn't belong there, but the peoples under Stalin's heel deserved to be heard for what the Nazis did to them, and that was (in retrospect) the only justice they'd ever get, since nobody was going to say "Hitler down and Stalin to go". There would never be an "avenger of the bones" for the millions that Stalin killed, either in the Soviet Union or wherever the Red Army went. But I digress...

It might have been easier if Hussein had died resisting capture -- although that would have allowed the mythmakers, who are legion in that region, to envelop his memory with a nimbus of martyrdom. The fact that he was captured with a pistol he would not use even on himself makes it unlikely that he can seem bravely defiant in his trial.

I'm not so sure a heroic death for Saddam would have been useful. The mythmakers of which Will is correct in taking note of could probably spin Saddam's death even if he died with his trousers down in a sheep pen: "He died fighting the evil Zionist sheep! He gave of his dignity to punish them!"

The attempts of "internationalists" to hijack Hussein's prosecution are partly for the purpose of derogating the importance and legitimacy of nation-states generally. But Iraqi nationhood -- currently tenuous as a political and psychological fact -- can be affirmed by entrusting it with the trial. By serving Iraq's national memory, the trial can be a nation-building event.

Bloody internationalists have got it in for the nation-state for sure; I ran into that kind of thinking in college. Luckily, I could usually get away by being dismissed as the class dissenter when I'd grumble about the abrogation of sovereignty that supranational bodies inherently relied upon.

Final quote:

But perhaps Sunday's euphoria among the majority of next November's voters will cause Democrats to pause on their double-time march toward nominating the one serious candidate of whom it can be indisputably said that, were he president, Hussein would still be a president too.

Heh. Anger-powered Howard may have lots of trouble with the fact that we've actually caught Saddam. Oh well. Perhaps the nation will get around saying that they'd prefer Bush (or Bush Lite) to the Howard 'n Hussein ticket.

Anyways, that's it for the day. I've got a final today that I'm simply not optimistic about, and for which I have precious little reason to be hopeful. I found m'self once again saying, "Dear Lord, if you've got anyone on standby....I could use 'em."

The Professionals Respond to Saddam, Part I

Two columns this morning on what to do with Saddam, one from the illustrious John Keegan of England, and another from George Will of the Washington Post:

Sayeth Keegan:

Though the security situation is simplified, however, the constitutional situation is not. How to dispose of a fallen dictator is a problem of immense complexity for victor states.

You would bring that up, wouldn't you? Nothing in life is simple, bah.

Sovereign states shrink from disposing peremptorily of sovereign rulers. The process, whichever is chosen, always threatens to set inconvenient precedents. Since 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia created the principle that sovereign states, and therefore their sovereign heads, are both legally and morally absolute, there has been no legal basis for proceeding against such a person, however heinous the crimes he is known to have committed.

Bloody rot, these cursed precedents. However, insofar as I know, he's right. Civilization is so inconvenient at times.

Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito were all sovereign rulers, de jure as well as de facto. For another, there was no body of law under which they could be arraigned.

Another problem is that we have no use for Saddam. Mr. Keegan points out that America found a useful policy objective in retaining the Japanese emperor, whereas Hitler and Mussolini were dead before we got to them. Saddam does not have the benefit of the first case, and does not fit (although he may belong) in the second case.

None of these precedents seems likely to spare Saddam. He may, de facto, have been head of state but, by fleeing his capital and office at the outset of the last Gulf War, he effectively abandoned whatever constitutional status he enjoyed.

That's interesting. I didn't know that flight on the part of a national leadership abandons constitutional status. I would have thought prior to Mr. Keegan's remarks that the presumption of the custom would have been something to do with an exception for flight to evade capture in the event of hostilities, but go figure. Does that mean that President Davis abandoned his constitutional (supposing, I reckon, that you grant legitimacy to the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia) status when he fled the Confederate capital in the face of Grant's Army of the Potomac?

There may be some cultural thing of which I am not aware, that a leader is supposed to remain in the capital even if the invader's armies reach the capital, and the leader of the conquered state is supposed to acknowledge defeat, unfortunate reversal, etc. etc. and an end to the hostilities results. If anyone knows that, I'd appreciate the answer.

At present there is no death penalty in Iraq, but it seems possible that the Iraqi Governing Council will introduce one and Washington will undoubtedly wish to see Saddam dead. As he has brought death to so many innocents, it is a fate he unquestionably deserves.

That's pretty much the probable score. Keegan wants him dead, and I'm pretty certain that we'll see that at some point.

Day By Day, Today

Those of you who read Chris Muir's Day By Day (linked over there in the "CARTOONS" section) are probably aware of the antagonistic relationship between Damon and Jan.

With that in mind, see today's cartoon.

Now, everyone in the reading audience say, "Awwwwww" all together now, on three. Or not. Anyways, I read that and was amused. Congratulations, Jan. You've managed to perhaps drive off the object of your interest, but go figure.

Some Good News for Saddam

I ran across this today posted here:

Resized by me.

This is probably the best use of that insipid commercial's format, for what it's worth. Tee hee hee.

Several Saddam Points

Hrrm. Now might be a good time to remind people of the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia:

Sic semper tyrannus.

Anyways, I've been mulling over the Saddam situation and I've got several points:

1. It's good that we've got him, dead or alive. This takes the wind out of Howard Dean's sails when he says "...blah blah haven't caught Saddam or Osama." Make that "haven't caught Osama...yet", Dr. Strange.

2. Unfortunately, the clock is now ticking and the European Union is now keeping score. The longer we hold this individual, the more pressure that will probably be exerted upon us by Old Europe to treat him as an international criminal, that we should send him to the Hague or the International Criminal Court. This is, of course, not the way he should be handled in my opinion, but that doesn't mean that the power-hungry bureaucrats of the aforementioned organizations won't be clasping about in order to get their hands upon the prosecution (or not) of Saddam Hussein. That this should be resisted goes without saying, but these efforts could complicate an already complex situation.

3. What do we do with him now? My first instinct is to get information from him, then take him out to a ditch and shoot him. The next thing is that we might not want to do that, because he may be of use to us. I don't know exactly how, but I'm not employed at high levels of DOD, CIA, DIA, or State. I'll leave potential uses of a captive Saddam Hussein to the people who are paid to think of those things.

I'm not fond of an automatic reconvening of the Nuremberg Tribunal (Nuremberg II: Fun in Fallujah), because as Terry Moran points out, there are some problems with the Nuremberg model. (The old saw of "pot calling the kettle black" vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany is one of them, although I haven't read any legal criticism on the things.) I am in favor, however, of him being tried by Iraqis. The problem there is that it doesn't seem to be possible, due to the (apparent) fact that the Iraqis don't have a post-Saddam judicial system set up yet. I suppose the way around that is some sort of special tribunal.

Whatever the means of trial, Saddam Hussein will probably wind up dead. Therefore, the important thing is to deny him a martyr's death. Whatever happens to him must be carefully calculated, probably by Iraqis or other experts in the Arab Islamic culture, so that there is maximum psychological damage to our opponents. A little bit of 'shock and awe', if you will. The problem for me is that I don't have a clue as to what would deliver that while simultaneously extracting some punitive result.

Suffice it to say that I'm very glad he's been captured, and I hope that this quells some of the noisier Democratic carping. My personal hope is that this in some way moves the Iraqis closer to freedom and sovereignty, and our boys (and girls!) closer to returning home.

Hooray

We got him!

Saddam Hussein has been captured.

Details are sketchy to me at this point since I just basically fell out of bed to answer the phone, but that's the CNN link and that's all that I've got at the moment. Hooray and all that. Bloody rot, mother calling me to get me out of bed.

He looks like Jerry Garcia or something with that Santa Claus beard. Too bad, so sad, you murdering bum. Hopefully we've got him and we've got the right one, so now the Iraqis can rest a little easier and look forward to the future of their country without this monster.

Huzzah and praise the Lord.

A Patriotic Rock

Found on a MUSH, somewhere across the Internet: Some chap in Iowa has painted a patriotically appropriate tableau on a rock. It's got various quotes from history on it, and seems like one of those spontaneous expressions of patriotism that pop up where people love their land. If I were to wax poetic, I'd say it was the manifestation of that which is the deep regard of a free man for his land and those who help protect his freedom.

I don't have a whole lot more to say about it, so go on over and check out On a Rock in Rural Iowa.

Rich Lowry, 'Buckley Brat'

As tipped off by Mr. Lowry himself, there's an article detailing a little bit about his background and the process surrounding his latest book, an indictment of President Clinton for misadministration of the country. (No, this isn't going to be one of those Corner book bleg things.) Although Mr. Lowry had the good sense to go to a school in Virginia, he chose one of the public universities and thus had to swelter in Charlottesville.

Nevertheless, I've always been a little suspicious of Rich, and he finally gives me solid reasons to support that suspicion:

Growing up in Arlington, Va., Mr. Lowry was "rambunctious" and "always dirty and sweaty," more contrarian than troublemaker: When everyone was going on about Star Wars, he didn’t join the herd.

Not only did he got to the University of Virginia, but he grew up in Northern Virginia (more like occupied territory; sooner or later we've got to force the Washington D.C. occupation army out of there...) and didn't like Star Wars.

Lowry, surrender your card in the conservative pantheon right there, bub. Going to U.Va. and growing up in NOVA can be forgiven under the right circumstances (working for the Virginia Advocate goes a long way) but not being a Lucas fan in the 1970s is unforgivable.

Hee hee. For another article on or about Mr. Lowry's latest exploits, (but from a suspect source) see here.

A New Front in Conservatism?

This came in the e-mail on Wednesday. The folks over at the ACU¹ have been critical of the currently-dominant right (that is to say the conservatism practiced by the President and his Congressional allies) for the last little bit---I read that memo Devine mentions; I didn't necessarily reject its conclusions---and it appears that they've decided to take their disagreement to a new phase of activity. A lot of these disagreements may just be turf wars and illusory tempests in a teapot, but I'll let more wiser individuals make that decision in this case. At any rate, here's the substance of what Donald Devine had to say:

TO: American Conservative Union Activists

FROM: Donald Devine, American Conservative Union Foundation vice chairman
and editor of http://www.conservativebattleline.com/

SUBJECT: Publication of a new conservative on line journal of opinion to
be called ConservativeBattleline, located at
http://www.conservativebattleline.com/.

Posted by Country Pundit at 12:47:14 | Comments (0)

A New Front in Conservatism?

This came in the e-mail on Wednesday. The folks over at the ACU¹ have been critical of the currently-dominant right (that is to say the conservatism practiced by the President and his Congressional allies) for the last little bit---I read that memo Devine mentions; I didn't necessarily reject its conclusions---and it appears that they've decided to take their disagreement to a new phase of activity. A lot of these disagreements may just be turf wars and illusory tempests in a teapot, but I'll let more wiser individuals make that decision in this case. At any rate, here's the substance of what Donald Devine had to say:

TO: American Conservative Union Activists

FROM: Donald Devine, American Conservative Union Foundation vice chairman
and editor of http://www.conservativebattleline.com/

SUBJECT: Publication of a new conservative on line journal of opinion to
be called ConservativeBattleline, located at
http://www.conservativebattleline.com/.

Posted by Country Pundit at 12:47:14 | Comments (0)

Friday Five 11 December 2003

So I'm going to participate in the Friday Five thing. Here goes:

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?

Absolutely. The only thing bad about the East Coast snowstorms last season was the damage to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. Snow rules the world, man. Having a permanent home in the mountains of Virginia usually makes it possible for me to get at least a little snow. Snowy weather (i.e. cold & crisp with battleship gray skies and ice crystals on the trees can make for absolutely magnificent visuals, even moreso at night when a full moon reflects off of a fully-covered ground. Gotta love it.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?

The ideal celebration? As far as I know, it involves my home, suitably decorated, with copious appropriate seasonal music (Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Karen Carpenter, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and lots of other stuff heard the last couple of decades while growing up...) With all that, throw in some snow, and bring over the long line of friends I've had so far. Some are, unfortunately dead. Some are lost to me in the United States somewhere, and several of them have grown apart from me, but several I'm still in touch with.

At that point, everyone has the de rigeur Christmas food, with lots of things like Flav-o-Rich boiled custard, and so forth, because it's a Christmas party, eh. The more amorous folks have access to a mistletoe-rigged doorway---at least one of my old friends loved trying to corner women under the thing, if I remember right. The sight of him trying desperately (but usually succeeding, blast it) to steal a kiss from various girls in his life was always funny.

I'm not very sure of the details, but all this involves a good time telling stories, and just being together, eh. Of course, I'll cap off the whole thing by either going to bed, writing a rambling post to the blog about the whole thing, or trundling off to a late-night service at my local church.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?

Yep. One of them involves spending a lot of money at the local Hallmark store on ornaments with Mom---I'm convinced that we underwrite their fourth-quarter earnings to a degree. Another one's the gradual transformation of household decorations from Thanksgiving to Christmas. That takes literally all month, so usually the decorations are left up into January.

We also usually see the extended family and whatnot, although that isn't always a pleasure.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?

Help the needy? What do you take me for, a liberal? Hah. In all seriousness, I don't do much else other than donate money to the most excellent Salvation Army kettle people.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?

A G.I. Joe hovercraft from the mid-1980s! Santa didn't bring me one when I asked for it, and now I don't believe in him, so I'll be a sour bink until the last part of the movie, when one mysteriously appears under my tree. Well, actually, I'd rather just have "no regrets". That'd be the best thing, 'cause I could procure darn near everything else on my own.

OK, so there you have it. TCP's first Friday Five, and perhaps the start of a long-running trend.

More On This Austrian Nonsense

I've been reading more about these Austrians and their contempt for reality a unified national defense system under the auspices of the United States Department of Defense, and the following has occurred to me, out of the goodness of my heart. (And what was that about your relationship with that woman, Miss Lewinsky? --Ed.) This is an analogy and one formed at 0200, so make of it what you will:

Austrians, at least from what I've seen, are kind of like the pushy passengers on board RMS Titanic who demand to know why it is that we're not on course for New York City. When you try to explain to them that well, we're on course for the bottom of the North Atlantic, they get all huffy and start calling you names. When you ask them to help lower the lifeboats and evacuate passengers, they fuzz up and refuse, continuing to go on about how they're supposed to be going to New York City.

Unfortunately, the analogy runs awry here because the people who didn't get in the lifeboats from Titanic drowned, whereas we're stuck with people like Karen De Coster and Llewellyn Rockwell, and there's no ocean to conveniently drown them in. (That's a joke. I don't advocate drowning my political opponents. Instead, I wish them long life and health, so that they may see their ideas fail and mine succeed. Yay.)

Call me a statist or whatever (I'd prefer that to be capitalized since I'm quite fond of Virginia) but I'm not crazy about asking a private security firm to handle the front-line defense of the 48 continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii, plus everywhere else our people are. There are some things that just don't turn a profit at the end of each quarter, and I think the DOD's one of those things.

Oh well. I'll have links to this stuff sooner or later.

An Ivy League Bleg

OK, so I'm checking my e-mail, and I find that a Harvard student's got a request for conservative bloggers with a hankering for poll taking: He's in a class full of liberals (At Harvard? Who'da thunk it? --Ed.) and he needs some help showing that people approve of Adam marrying Eve, not Adam marrying Steve. Mr. Barrett wants to see "the Establishment"¹ pass the proverbial brick, and your humble correspondent (Hey now! We can't tell obvious lies in print! Cut that out. --Ed.) concurs, in his own Hunter S. Thompson fight-the-power way.

So here's the action y'all can take: Click here to see his post on the subject, and here to vote in the poll. The Country Pundit is recommending a vote for the third option, so have at it.

This is merely a prank to be used against Ivy League schools, and to shock the kinds of people who want universities to divest themselves of Israeli holdings since the Israelis have this nasty habit of standing up for themselves against Islamist terror. Hee hee.

¹ Once upon a time, that was supposed to be us, wasn't it?

TCP Goes to War (Virtually)

OK, so I'm engaged against a pair of opponents to the Bush Doctrine (broadly) over at Blogs for Bush. The topic of interest is the denial of contracts for Iraqi reconstruction to French, German, and Russian firms. Broadly, I support it. These guys oppose it.

If you're interested, drop over to Comments: The Axis of Weasels upset over Iraq contracts and see your humble correspondent in action!

Confidential to Tom Tomorrow: CHICKENHAWK PRIDE, BABY!

Wal-Mart v. Art

This is strange:

The Oconee County [Georgia] Wal-Mart was under siege Friday night by a guerrilla performance art project staged by University students for their Studio Art 2810 final.

While I enjoy hearing about problems that befall Wal-Mart, I'm also slightly wishing that someone had fallen while running away from the store or something. This appears to have been some sort of group effort in order to get a grade. The teacher ought to flunk the lot of them for being inane, but that would probably require a showing of academic courage and resolve.¹

Another choice tidbit:

"Our one guideline was to not break any laws, because the intended purpose was that we didn't want to break any laws but we wanted new (policies) to have to be made," Kubie said. "I think we were pretty responsible in the way we executed our overall plan. There was no permanent damage and very little cleaning to be done."

Son, let me explain something to you: Performance art disruptions don't force new policies, other than to cause more trouble for people within your demographic. All you've done is irritate a Wal-Mart manager. You say that there's no permanent damage? How noble! Some poor employee's going to have to clean up after you, and all he's going to think about is how much he hates you. These little punks ought to be assessed the costs of cleaning whatever "temporary" damage was done. Good grief.

I wish my undergraduate days had been this easy. I suppose I was too busy trying to figure out just what the difference was between the various formulations of the categorical imperative, Mill v. Bentham, and lots of other high-brow crap that's been absolutely useless once I got clear of the presidential handshake on graduation day. Oh well.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to DiVERSiONZ.

¹ Perhaps if they'd gone to the local mosque and protested Islamist terror, then we'd see some outrage in academia. Of course, it probably wouldn't matter because the mosque's staffers probably would have wasted the students, being the religion of peace and all.

Let's Talk About a Great President...

OK, furthering this Google war:

Let me tell you about a great President, one who worked the Democrats into a lather and had huge marches against him demanding an end to hostilities. This all happened as a backdrop to this President's great foreign policy achievements and geopolitical strategizing.

From secret flights to secret files, this President's administration is assured a place in the history books.

Am I Austrian or Not?

Preliminary Disclaimer: The Country Pundit's degree is in Political Science, and he only had one economics class in college. Although I received a high mark, it was not that I was so good but rather that everyone else in the class had to be reminded to breath at times, when they came to class. Therefore, these great "theories" of economics are largely alien to me.

That being said, I recently took a test to indicate whether or not I was an Austrian in terms of personal economic belief. After half an hour or more of working on the thing, I still made at least one mistake in marking it. Some of the questions are so abstract that I didn't understand them very well, and my personal answers occasionally ran to the "For pete's sake, who cares about the details? The point is is that it happened..." school of thought best espoused by Smith in The Matrix: Reloaded right before he (and his clones) attack Mr. Anderson.

Anyways, the score I got was (more or less) 55. That places you as a Chicago-school devotee, and this was refreshing. Why's that? Well, it shows I've learned something at law school, and I'm happy to identify with the "law and economics" concept that Judge Richard Posner (and a lot of other really intelligent people) fall within. Admittedly, I defaulted to liking any answer where there was a positive suggestion of the merging of law and the economy (must've been that inherent Randian [yuck!] self-interest at work) and so maybe I didn't take the thing in an "honest" frame.

Why am I writing all this? Because it's important to know from what angle some of the next few posts may be about. Broadly, they're about people who would probably fit within the little-l libertarian political sphere. They consider themselves "Austrian" economists, under the lineal descent of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek.

I won't go farther, primarily because I'd have to expend more neurons now than I'm willing to. Future posts on this will be forthcoming, because it seems that the "Rothbardians" (devotees of one Murray N. Rothbard, an economist of this "Austrian" school) don't like fighting Islamists. Of course they'll howl about this not representing their positions and so forth, but when I try and slice through their turgid and abstract prose, I don't always see clear-and-cut support for American victory over the Islamists.

TCP's favorite Rothbardian stance: National defense should be handled by private companies. No word on whether or not these chaps have read the Constitution.

Anyways, this whole trend may be over, but I'm not sure. We shall see; perhaps long-term investigation of things is something I might be good at.

The Country Pundit's Place in Middle Earth

I've actually got substantive content for today, but I'm clearing a backlog of quiz results that piled up over the weekend. Here's today's:

Numenorean

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Bother. I'd prefer to be one of the folks hanging out in Lothlorien amid Liz Fraser vocals, softly filtered camera lenses lit by eerie amounts of white light, lots of snotty people with bows and arrows, and a barefoot Cate Blanchett.¹ Of course, having a fanboy's attraction to Lothlorien means that I've got like zero scenes of interest in the last two Lord of the Rings movies. They're just not as cool as the first one, for whatever reason. Of course, if the rumors of the return of the ringwraiths are true, then that'll be cool.

Anyways, this test comes, one or two steps removed, courtesy of Julie Neidlinger, and she gets the tip of the Wisconsin hat.

¹ Be still, my beating heart. True story: I was in the theater watching FOTR with an early-in-the-release-date crowd, and of course there were the obligatory fanboys, who made noise throughout the flick like "That's not the Balrog!!!!" and who probably had a heart attack when Liv Tyler (Look, in twenty years she'll look like daddy. Talk about coyote ugly!) came onscreen. Luckily for me, they shut up (for whatever reason) when Miss Blanchett drifted onto the screen, and let me sit there, watching in rapt attention watching Galadriel do the whole "witch of the woods" thing. Call it the Reeves-Skywalker Response: "Whoah. She's beautiful." Celeborn, you lucky devil.

A Lousy Emperor and a Rat Pack

It's a slow day, and thus quiz results will be posted en masse.

First up:

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
Rum and Monkey.

See the Extended Entry for further details, some of which are quite shocking, and aren't me at all. This one came courtesy of DiVERSiONZ.

Next up, a retro-identity question:

I forgot where that one came from.

There are some other ones to be posted shortly, hopefully with attribution. If anyone knows where the Rat Pack one came from, I'd appreciate a holler.

You are Gaius Caesar Germanicus - better known as Caligula!

Third Emperor of Rome and ruler of one of the most powerful empires of all time, your common name means "little boots". Although you only reigned for four years, brief even by Roman standards, you still managed to garner a reputation as a cruel, extravagant and downright insane despot. Your father died in suspicious circumstances, you were not the intended heir, and one of your first acts as Emperor was to force the suicide of your father-in-law. Your sister Drusilla died that same year; faced with allegations that your relationship with her had been incestuous, you responded, bafflingly, by declaring her a god.

You revived a number of unpopular traditions, including auctions of properties left over from public shows. When a senator fell asleep at one such auction, you took each of his nods as bids, selling him 13 gladiators for a vast sum. You attempted to have your horse, Incitatus, made into a consul and hence one of the most powerful figures in Rome. It was granted a marble stable with jewels and a staff of servants. At one point you forced your comrade Macro to kill himself - in much the same vein as your father-in-law - accusing him of being his wife's pimp. You, of course, were having an affair with said wife at the time.

Things went from bad to worse. When supplies of condemned men ran short in the circus, you had innocent spectators dragged into the arena with the lions to fill their place. You claimed mastery of the sea by walking across a three-mile bridge of boats in the Bay of Naples; kissed the necks of your lovers, whispering sweet nothings like "This lovely neck will be chopped as soon as I say so,"; dallied with your sister's lover and made her pull her unborn child out of her womb prematurely. Towards the end of your reign, you had a golden statue of yourself made and dressed each day in the same clothes you yourself wore. When you eventually died, the terrified people of Rome refused to believe that such a cruel reign could ever end, and believed you to be alive for years afterwards.

EDIT: More than three years later, the Caligula extended data were placed in block quotation.

Wasting Time at spacefem.com

I no longer know where these came from, unfortunately.

A Galactica Post

I stopped in at the local Borders bookstore today, and while wading through the gobs of latte-sipping bobos, I managed to find a most wonderful thing, a 25th anniversary edition of the original soundtrack to Battlestar Galactica.

This means about zilch to most of the audience, but nevertheless, I thought I'd start trying to get the word out. I own the 1999 Royal Scottish National Orchestra version; bought that several years ago, but it's not the same. For obvious reasons, the score I'm used to hearing is decidely not what's on the RSNO disc. I do, however, concur in the judgment of the Filmtracks review and suggest that you ought to pick up the RSNO release, because it is objectively a good recording.

This disc is the original Stu Phillips/Los Angeles Philharmonic recording from 1978 remastered at 96k/24-bit (whatever that means), presented with an extra track that happens to be a disco version of the Galactica main theme. Yeah, er...whatever. I can't imagine anyone in a disco doing those weird dances to such a thing, but then I had a hard time believing Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was redone into a reasonably successful club tune in the 1990s, too.

Liner notes are from Mark Altman, co-publisher of Cinefantastique, a veteran sci-fi movie magazine; Glen A. Larson, the creator; Stu Phillips the composer; and Richard Hatch, who played Apollo on the series. Most of 'em are worth reading, so for once the liner notes aren't annoying.

Glen Larson apparently still believes the premise of the show, that "life here began out there" and that "there may yet be brothers of Man who even now fight to survive far, far away amongst the stars..." Moving back to reality, Larson also says he's negotiated the feature film rights and suggests that a movie will be around soon. Here's hoping he's a) right and b) uses as much of the 1970s look as possible, because there's something special about it; for whatever reason, the look of the show is distinct and appreciable.

I did, of course, snap this disc up without a second thought, and if you're a fan of the series or like the late 1970s sci-fi soundtrack genre in general, I'd recommend purchasing it. It's been a decent year for Galactica fans, what with the original series on DVD and the Sci-Fi remake starting tomorrow. I don't get either of them, 'cause I'm broke for the latter and don't get Sci-Fi. This is unfortunate, because I'd be watching if my lousy local provider gave me such things. I'd gladly trade Lifetime and Bravo for it, if you bums are listening.

NB: Galactica gave us two of the Holy Trinity of 1970s TV Sci-Fi Babes in the persons of Maren Jensen's Athena and Jane Seymour's Serina. The third is, of course, Erin Gray's Colonel Wilma Deering in the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. [It goes without saying that Carrie Fisher's Leia Organa reigns supreme in the grand scheme of things, though.]

A Dime's Worth, Redux

I took a trip through the Blogs for Bush blogroll, and I've found that I'm not alone on the Reagan dime issue. Various statements:

Matthew J. Stinson writes:

[P]utting Reagan's face on the dime strikes me as excessive Reagan-worship on the part of some conservatives.

Michael of discountblogger.com writes:

I'm with the Democrats on this one. The coin is fine the way it is. If you want to play politics, do it with on your own dime. Don't so it with mine.

Chris Lawrence of Signifying Nothing says,

I agree...that the idea of replacing FDR with Ronald Reagan on the dime is true, unadulterated idiocy, which—given some Republicans’ worship of all that is Reagan—borders on idolatry.

These may or may not be representative of Republican sentiment as a whole, but at least I'm not like John Anderson in 1980, off in my own little world and wondering what's going on. I do, however, apparently remain alone on the question of booting John Kennedy off the half-dollar and replacing him with Ronald Reagan. If President Reagan's already out of communication, then the appropriate time would be the first issue year after his death, I would reckon.

Suburban Blight has a poll on the subject; check it out if you're inclined.

RIP AUSA Jonathan Luna

Today's news that makes you want to lay the mantle of civilization down and go inflict some horrific levels of pain: Sources: Slain prosecutor was tortured.

Assistant United States Attorney Jonathan Luna, age 38, was murdered probably early Thursday morning, and his body was found somewhere in Pennsylvania. His car was found idling in a creek, with Mr. Luna's remains stashed beneath it. Two snippets:

Sources said the killing was brutal. Torture wounds were found on his torso, and he had been stabbed as many as 36 times.

An autopsy conducted by a forensic pathologist found that Luna "died of fresh water drowning and multiple stab wounds of the neck and chest," Walp said.

Luna was alive but incapacitated when he was thrown in the water, Walp said.

Mr. Luna leaves behind a wife and two children.

I don't know all the facts of this case, nor do I have any personal connection to it. Nevertheless, I do not like it when law enforcement personnel are killed. If I had Richard Bay's speech to Helen Gamble on an old episode of The Practice, I'd probably be reading it now---the bottom line is that men and women who serve the law enforcement system are, in their own way, part of the thin veneer of civilization that divides us from the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Any attack upon them probably in some way constitutes a move towards what Hussein's Iraq stands for.

I am, of course, angry and ranting about this, probably absent a lot of logical rationality, but at this point I don't care. It would be nice to be able to catch the responsible parties and inflict upon them the John "Without Remorse" Kelly hyperbaric treatment, following that up with a quick trip to the local mulching machine in the back yard, a la the last few minutes of Fargo. This is where we can learn from the Baathists: Insert the responsible party into the machine feet-first.

The Country Pundit is not pleased.

Soviets Map Iraq

The map-makers at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square have done it again! This time, these heroes of socialist labor have come through with a map of Iraq.

Go check it out, gentle readers. But look while you can; Reynoldssia will be casting its lean and hungry look upon this place, seeking to expand the blogosphere revolution and further liberate (heh heh heh) fraternal blogospherist comrades from...something. Uphold the dictatorship of the blogospheriat!

You've got to admire effort such as this.

A Dime's Worth of Difference

CNN reports that there's a move afoot to replace Franklin Roosevelt's visage on the dime with that of Ronald Reagan. Nancy Reagan, however, does not agree with this move. In her denial of support, she stated that, "When our country chooses to honor a great president such as Franklin Roosevelt by placing his likeness on our currency, it would be wrong to remove him and replace him with another."

Furthermore, Mrs. Reagan noted that she did not think President Reagan would have agreed with this either, and that she hoped the proposed legislation would be pulled.

Two points:
1. What's with the move to name everything after Ronald Reagan? If this keeps happening, the country's going to wind up looking a whole lot like Charleston, West Virginia, where every third or fourth thing you see has Senator Robert C. Byrd's name on it. (Including the local Ku Klux Klan membership roll...) President Reagan has an aircraft carrier, an airport, and lots of other places named for him. From time to time, I get the sneaking feeling that this is some sort of twisted loyalty test for some. Enh.

2. I've got a better idea: Rather than yank Franklin Roosevelt (who, while doing a lot of other things wrong, had the good sense to back Churchill, oppose Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini, and to pick Harry Truman instead of Henry Agard Wallace for VP) I propose we get rid of a really worthless president on the currency of the United States: John F. Kennedy on the half-dollar.

That is, of course, my opinion.

Unfortunate News

The stalwarts at Right We Are! are closing their doors. This is unfortunate, because I did enjoy stopping by on a semi-regular basis to see what those two were up to.

Of course, the classic Vargas-style artwork adorning the website didn't hurt either.

There doesn't seem to be any indication of a planned return to operations, so it may be time to salute them for their contributions and move forward. Bah, I hate watching blogs close.

Respectful tip of the Wisconsin hat to the gals of Right We Are!.

Miserable Failure

This is a case of partisan retaliation against some in the left who tinker with Google's results: Miserable Failure. See Ipse Dixit for more information.

You can go about your business. Move along, move along.

CVN Charles de Gaulle

It appears that the French navy is having second thoughts about its flagship, the atomic-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. An un-verified account at strategypage.com indicates that the French are considering retiring the vessel, because of various problems.

Whether the report of French intentions is true or not, there are demonstrable problems with the vessel, and the article (which is probably a temporary one) goes through them. In brief:

1. It's expensive. Big deal. Make your economy something other than a revenue generator for a welfare state, and you'll be able to afford as many carriers as your European state will want.

2. CdG is slower than her half-century-old predecessors Foch and Clemenceau. Why that is, I haven't a clue. You'd think that a late 20th century atomic plant could provide enough raw shaft horsepower to outrun a 1950s (at best) steam plant, but apparently not. The difference in speed is significant; the Foch and her sister are reported by Warships1.com to be capable of 32 knots (a touch faster than Admiral Arleigh Burke, don't you know, but see n1) while CdG is only reported as being capable of 27 knots. Maybe CdG can run that speed longer than the Foch, but I'd be nervous about not having a fast ship.

3. Problems with the propeller design. Apparently, CdG's screws aren't working right (I think she either threw a blade or a screw proper at one point in trials) and so leftovers from the earlier CV program have been implemented.

4. Inadequate reactor shielding. Were he alive today, Admiral Rickover ("the kindly old gentleman"---of those three terms, only 'old' was supposed to be accurate) and in the service of the French navy, would have thrown an absolute fit. Per the article, the amount of leakage (be it particles or whatever; I'm not a nuc) is five times the allowable annual exposure to radiation. Good God! The appellation Hiroshima is supposed to apply to a city in Japan or to a Soviet ballistic missile submarine, not to a carrier in the West! This has been reported elsewhere to have been fixed, but the fact that it was a problem at all is troubling. I'm sorry for the poor guys who had to work next to that plant.

4. Problems with the deck design. Yes, like "It's too short to operate your AEW platform of choice." If memory serves, CdG had to have her deck lengthened (probably at considerable cost and effort) in order to operate the Grumman E-2 Hawkeyes delivered.

The blurb goes on to say that the French would like to get in on the new Royal Navy nuclear carrier program, and add a third unit to the order. That's not such a bad idea as long as the UK's shipwrights get the contract to build the thing and make money off of it. However, Glenn Reynolds tells of a further option that is a bad idea, namely joint Anglo-French operation of the completed vessels. Humbug to that, I say. [Tasteless joke about Mers-el-Kebir snipped.]

To make this a little more clear to American readers, the Charles de Gaulle is comparable in size to our Wasp-class LHDs, which are amphibious assault ships. It's worth noting that we don't try to use those vessels as aircraft carriers for the launching of conventional fixed-wing platforms.

And no, I don't hate the French navy. Once upon a time, they came to our assistance off the Virginia Capes at a place called Yorktown. They also had two pleasant-looking battleships, the Richeliu and Jean Bart.

Additional thanks to Emperor Misha I of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler for bringing this back to my attention. Some of the comments for that posting reveal other problems, but I'd prefer that Misha get the traffic for the works of his visitors. Go read.

n1 According to Shield of the Republic, a post-WWII history of the U.S. Navy, the "31-knot" moniker was derogatory in nature, because Burke's destroyer group, beset with mechanical or other operational difficulties, was supposed to be capable of more than that. The public, not knowing any different, thought it was a grand name and turned it into a positive. Admiral Burke was, by several accounts, a good man to work for on-balance, and I believe America's navy was well served by his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations.

UPDATE, 02 MARCH 2005: This has remained one of the more popular articles in the TCP archives. The strategypage link is now inoperative, but it appears that this article is more or less the "survivable" version of the report that I first commented upon. The current article makes no reference to a plan to retire the carrier, but I stand by my then-current reporting, because I distinctly recall seeing a sentence or two about it. The statement was accurate for 05 December 2003; whether it is accurate for 02 March 2005 is a completely different matter.

Thanks to the Commissar

I've been examining my SiteMeter reports lately (classified due to embarrassing content) and I'm finding several things, none of which are good:

1. Traffic is dropping off dramatically. At this rate, I'll be reduced to trying cheap measures like Google tricks mentioning a certain hotel-chain heiress "socialite" who's got herself an infamous videocassette and a television show. That or talking about a certain "King of Pop" (to quote the words of an Iraqi torture-meister from Three Kings).

Well, I've got some integrity even in defeat, so I'll not mention either of those two in order to drive up the traffic.

2. Comrade Commissar's map of the blogosphere is generating the only significant amount of traffic to this site. For that, I'd like to thank him. On a side note, it appears that some folks are describing their particular "cities"; sooner or later I'll get around to telling everyone what the dreary city of Kountrypundsk is like.

3. Not necessarily SiteMeter-related, but my standing in the TLLB Ecosystem is collapsing. This is a bad thing. The need to create compelling content is problematic, and I'm going to have to address it. As Winnie-the-Pooh says, "Bother."

A Blue State/Red State Stupid Question

I've been meaning to ask this for quite a while (i.e. more than three years) but have never really gotten around to it. So here goes:

Exactly who made the decision to switch the party-representative colors for State victories in the 2000 election?

If my (admittedly faulty) memory serves, the Republican Party was always signified with blue, and the Democratic Party was signified with red. Wiseacre observers could note that Labour in the United Kingdom was also symbolized by the color red, and usually make some crack about the two primary left-wing parties of the UK and US were linked to Communists.¹ Conversely, the Republican-voting States were supposed to be blue, somehow symbolizing the 'blue-blood' WASP sensibilities of the party as a whole.²

Of course, this was reversed for the 2000 election, and it's played havoc with my personal preferences in the matter. I liked being symbolized by blue. It's the primary color in Virginia's flag, and it's one of the colors of both my undergraduate and graduate institutions. Blue is, in a word, a favorite color.

Instead, I'm now stuck with red. Paul Begala writes some fatuous column about how the 'red' States stood for anger or something and how every State that voted for George W. Bush was a seething hotbed of intolerance, racism, oppression, hatred, and probably pet torture, and I thought it didn't apply.

Anyways. Three years on, the 'red State, blue State' thing is firmly embedded in the body politic, and I don't understand why. I'm a conservative, for crying out loud. I don't like change, especially when it comes "out of the blue" (no pun intended) and reverses a time-honored tradition.

Just about the time you get used to something, someone goes and changes it. That's probably a universalizable maxim, but recognizing that fact doesn't necessarily mean that I like or willingly accept that fact. Augh.

¹ Full disclosure: I made jokes along this line about it being highly appropriate for the Democrats to be symbolized by red, the official color of Communism.

² Or something like that; at the point where I heard the description, I wasn't particularly listening to what the other side had to say.

Network Nitwittery

It appears that CNN has gone and done it again, demonstrating a marked inability on the part of its reporters to figure out what's important about a situation. From a transcript of coverage of the 46-0 Fedayeen loss recently:

[Walter] RODGERS: Once again, it shows that while the United States claims it controls the battlefield, it's actually the guerrillas who generally tend to dictate where the battles will be fought and that battlefield is constantly shifting.

Walt, Walt, Walt. A very simple principle for you: It doesn't matter if the battlefield constantly shifts at your will when you lose. It's not necessarily important to be the one who starts the fight. It is, however, of vital importance to be the one who wins the fight. When the other man is face down in the dirt and never getting back up again, that's when you determine who's the victor.

When you lose 46-0, you don't call that "control of the battlefield". (I'm tempted to call it "stupid".) If the Fedayeen are going to pick fights that end up like this, I'm willing to let them do that all they want.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Greyhawk over at Mudville Gazette; I suggest going there and reading the rest of his piece.

The X-Quiz Result

Spurred on by John of Argghhh!!!'s post on the subject, I went and partook of Quizilla's bandwidth yet again. The result?

You are Professor Charles Xavier.

You are a very effective teacher, and you are very committed to those who learn from you. You put your all into everything you do, to some extent because you fear failure more than anything else. You are always seeking self-improvement, even in areas where there is nothing you can do to improve.


Which X-Men character are you most like?

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to John of Argghhh!!!, even if I have mysteriously disappeared from his blogroll.

NB: John, the Fonda-Clinton thing you've got is inaccurate at one level: Thirty-five years ago, Jane Fonda was close to being a babe. Hillary Clinton has never been a babe. She's always been, from the evidence I've seen, in the "If she were the last woman on Earth, the human race will shortly be extinct" category. Even thirty years ago, at the height of the left-wing feeding frenzy called 'Watergate', she was something to write home about as being a horror you've seen.

Mrs. Claus, Part Deux

I have arrived: James Lileks and I were thinking about the same thing after watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I am of course filing suit for anger infringement.

Sayeth Lileks:

I also don't think Mrs. Claus should be played by Heidi Klum in a white-fur thong, stroked by buff oiled-up elves. Think of the children, I say. Think of the children.

The weird sound you hear is the laugh track of the two protagonists from Beavis and Butt-head, MTV's last gasp of socio-cultural relevance. Huh huh huh...cool. Mr. Lileks, I agree with Mister Green in saying that you're wrong. I, like Mister Green, couldn't find much complaint with a fur-clad Klum as Mrs. Claus, so long as I'm the Mr. Otherwise, of course, this is absolutely shocking and shouldn't even be conceived much less blogged about.¹

However, if Heidi Klum wanted to audition for the part, there'd be no objections from me. No objections whatsoever, your honor.

To close, the only acceptable Mrs. Claus that I've seen was on film was Elizabeth Mitchell's Carol Newman in Tim Allen's The Santa Clause 2. She was a babe, right up until the CGI got ahold of her. It's unfortunate that her latest series got cancelled/put on hiatus, but maybe she'll turn up elsewhere, preferably not in Kerry Weaver's shower.

¹ This is to be read with the manner, accent, and style of John Cleese, preferably in Fawlty Towers appearance.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Mister Green for the story.

Students Against North Korea

Just when you thought the collection of stupid student groups might be subsiding:

I present to you proof of the opposite: Students for War.

These folks are, in their own words, "working to build support across America for military action against the murderous regime of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il."

As Don Imus says, "Jesus God Almighty!" I understand that college is a time when idealism trumps reality for a lot of people. The 1960s are a testament to that, and I do not particularly condemn the occurrence, so long as the student grows out of it.

However, the mindset of "54-40 Or Fight!" is dangerously inapplicable in the atomic age. I'm certain that anyone who's reading this will probably ask, "But Country Pundit, you didn't sweat military action against Iraq! What's the difference?" The answer is this: Atomic weapons and a billion people.

Saddam Hussein's best shot during the recent war was to fire off some antiquated Scud-type SRBM derivatives. What's the harm, barring a chemical or gas payload? Not too awful much unless he gets lucky. They're supposed to be closely related to the German V-2 of 1944---once upon a time (and therefore unattributable at this point) I heard a quip that the people a Scud was aimed at didn't have to worry about it hitting, but anyone else in the cardinal direction of the thing's flight path did.¹ An HE warhead only does so much damage, after all.

Change this around a bit: We're told that the NKs are working on missiles to carry their putative products of their strategic weapons program. That's Not Good. When a nation has atomic weapons, the bloody rules change. One doesn't barge in with bellicose rhetoric and great sweeps of visible efforts at changing public opinion. Furthermore, you don't do something that'll irritate a neighbor who has defended the North Koreans against Americans before, especially when that neighbor has atomic weapons as well. Correspondingly, you don't want either of those parties to be getting nervous about an impending American invasion.

My preferred model for dealing with this involves talking. A lot of talking. Winston Churchill's "jaw jaw is better than war war" applies here, because the NKs have nothing to lose if war comes, if I understand their mindset right. Their society's crumbling, the regime will be doomed in a war, and they can go down while taking lots of Americans, Japanese, or South Koreans if a missile commander gets the word. I don't want that to happen. I'd rather alter Captain Edward Jellico's famous dictum² and play slick, not stupid.

Yes, I said talk. I'd prefer to have my enemies asleep when and if it is deemed necessary to strike. That strike must be unequivocal, absolutely successful, and be the proverbial bolt from the blue. I would prefer the scenario constructed in Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor as a model. No noise, no nothing until it's time for Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush to address the nation and relate to us that the North Korean atomic weapons capability no longer exists.

These students for war could benefit from not tipping our hand. Admittedly, I doubt the Bush Administration is going to be swayed by a student movement, but the last thing we need to do is to keep this in public view. I'd almost want to trust the cold-eyed men at the Pentagon with this and thus sucker-punch the NKs. No sense giving their paranoia something to feed off of. In the words of Khan Noonien Singh, "Let them eat static..."

¹ This may be horribly inaccurate; the Scuds that I'm aware of at least managed to get near their theoretical targets, but I have no way of knowing the real-world accuracy/CEP of the thing.

² His famous dictum is "I don't want to talk about it. Get it done." The title for this is open for debate; arguably another one of his good remarks was ordering Roddenberry's fantasy LCDR Deanna Troi to dress like an officer instead of Julie Newmar. Not that there's anything wrong with dressing like Julie Newmar, but one would rather not see that on a serving officer whilst on duty.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Glenn Reynolds.

The Joys of Blog 0002

Another out-of-the-blue link courtesy of N.Z. Bear's Ecosystem:

A site called DiVERSiONZ has seen fit to place me in their blogroll. Their tagline is "Daily Tours to News, Views, Issues & Amusements", and it's an interesting site.

I haven't quite yet nailed these folks down on the partisan landscape, but I'll comply with the Commissar's broad dictates and mention them, along with an eventual (read: today) linking on the right.

Thanks to the people over there.

Why Arabs Don't Win Wars

Four years ago, long before we had any idea that a bunch of fanatics would make mine Mistel using Boeing airliners, Colonel Norvell De Atkine, U.S. Army (ret.) wrote a piece entitled "Why Arabs Lose Wars" for the Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum.

There's no way I could possibly summarize this tightly-written and very interesting piece, so I'll cheat and reproduce the section headers:

False Starts
The Role of Culture
Information as Power
Education Problems
Officers vs. Soldiers
Decision-making and Responsibility
Combined Arms and Operations
Security and Paranoia
Indifference to Safety

This has both historical and contemporary value in understanding the nature of formal state forces that American forces may find themselves in conflict with in the near future. Some of it's downright creepy or weird, and other parts will leave you chuckling at the stupidity or incompetence of these guys, and will go a long way towards explaining why the Israelis always win. (Note: This does not reject the premise that they're the Chosen People who have a deal with the Man Upstairs. It probably confirms that premise, because it is utmost providence that the numerically superior Arab powers are so fundamentally stupid when it comes to making war.)

Read it, and enjoy.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to baldilocks, from whose sidebar I found this.