Monthly Archives: November 2004

Slandering the Red States

This morning’s New York Times Sunday Magazine has a column by Jim Holt that tries to channel the Democrats’ post-election blues in a more constructive direction. Forget about secession, Holt argues; stick up for states’ rights instead. [T]here is a less drastic survival strategy available to liberals in the coastal and Great Lakes states, one that involves neither emigration nor civil war. It is based on the venerable doctrine of »

More sour grapes

It isn’t just the hard left that’s beside itself over President Bush’s re-election; Andrew Sullivan isn’t taking it well either. He vents his displeasure by joining the chorus criticizing Bush for appointing to key positions people who share the president’s philosophy and hold his trust. Sullivan’s use of words like “toady” and “flunky” to describe these appointments reveals the vindictive nature of his piece. One can’t help believe that these »

What happened in Santiago?

Dafydd ab Hugh writes: Judging from your comments, I don’t think you guys realize the seriousness of what happened in Chile. Let me put it into perspective: the president has been marked for death by hundreds of terrorist groups; he is in a foreign country, one where there have been near contintuous riots against America and against him, personally, over the Iraq War; as he’s walking into a banquet hall, »

What do George Allen and the marines have in common?

To answer the question posed in the heading, check out the New York Times account of the Fallujah campaign linked below together with the Washington Times retrospective on the outcome of the senate campaigns in the election just past: “‘Coach’ Allen savors GOP senate victories.” Should you choose to accept this mission, you will learn in passing that “[n]ot since 1928 has the Republican Party enjoyed an 11-seat advantage in »

A hard day’s night

Perhaps it’s because the Sunday New York Times and Washington Post were put to bed too early to catch the story, but neither has an account of President Bush’s rescue of the Secret Service agent in Santiago last night. However, both the Washington Times and New York Post carry stories on the incident today. The Washington Times story is not to be missed: “In role reversal, President Bush rescues Secret »

The Fallujah campaign

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins was embedded with Bravo Company of the First Battalion, Eighth Marines in the Fallujah campaign. Although it has a few irritating tics, his report in today’s Times leaves no doubt that the marines have written a new chapter in their long history of courage and sacrifice: “In Falluja, young marines saw savagery of an urban war.” Meet, for example, Captain Read Omohundro: Time and »

What did Saddam, al Qaeda and Al Jazeera Have In Common?

Haider Ajina sent us his translation of an article that appeared yesterday in the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. The headline was: “Al-Zarkawi »

It’s a Small Story…

…but it illustrates why so many of us not only support President Bush as a politician with whom we agree most of the time, but love and respect him as a man: President Bush stepped into the middle of a confrontation and pulled his lead Secret Service agent away from Chilean security officials who barred his bodyguards from entering an elegant dinner for 21 world leaders Saturday night. Several Chilean »

Victory? What victory?

If the Fallujah campaign had been long and difficult, and had given rise to many casualties, the hysteria in the media would have been unrestrained. Instead, however, the Fallujah campaign was one of the most stunning successes in the history of urban warfare. Consequently, it has dropped off the media radar screen. Newspaper attention immediately turned, not to the important strategic advantages of depriving the terrorists of their home base, »

The Ba’ath find a new home

We apparently have yet to sound the bottom of French perfidy. In a development I have seen reported nowhere else, MEMRI has issued a mind-boggling special report on the resurrection of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party on French soil: “Anti-American Ba’th activities in Paris.” On a related note, the French broadcasting authority (CSA) announced on its site Friday that it has finalized an agreement with Hizbullah’s Al-Manar television, allowing Hizbullah to »

Miss World Update

Now that the election is over, politics can share the stage with subjects of greater intrinsic interest. Like beauty contests. The Miss World competition is heating up; the finals will be December 4. In the meantime, the contestants have assembled in China, and preliminary competitions are underway. Miss World Beach Beauty and Miss World Sports have been crowned. Miss USA, Nancy Randall, won Miss Beach Beauty; we wrote about her »

I Think It’s “B”

Greyhawk comments from Iraq on the controversy surrounding the shooting of a wounded terrorist in Fallujah. He poses a series of trivia tests; here’s the first one: Trivia test 1: Which of the following is an actual quote from Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi regarding the insurgents in Fallujah on the eve of the assault? A: “The insurgents have known for months that we’re coming – go ye now »

Casting its lot with the enemy

Caroline Glick makes a compelling case that in entering into a sham nuclear agreement with Iran, Europe has cast its lot with the enemy civilization: “H-hour has arrived.” »

It’s Bin Laden’s Fault

In a brief conversation with Geraldo Rivera yesterday, John Kerry said that he thought the bin Laden tape cost him the election: “Tough luck, senator,” Rivera said to Kerry, referring to the Democrat’s election loss. Trying to recount Kerry’s words verbatim, Rivera said Kerry responded by saying: “It was that Usama tape »

News Flash: Florida “Stolen!” Again!

Since the election, Democrats have offered various theories, all of them ludicrous, to attack President Bush’s victory. One of the more recent is a “study” done by some people at Berkeley which found that in certain counties in Florida, votes for President Bush increased faster than they would have predicted, based on 1996 and 2000 results. In those counties, electronic voting had replaced punchcards. The conclusion is obvious: Bush stole »

Homage to Mister Berryman

Few poets of note have a Minnesota connection. Once upon a time, however, Minnesotan Robert Bly was a respectable poet. Politics — specifically the Vietnam war — seem to have driven him nuts by 1967, at least insofar as his aesthetic judgment is concerned. That year Bly published The Light Around the Body, his second book of poetry. The book is full of dated antiwar polemics that sealed his reputation »

The man, in full

Ed Driscoll has filed a terrific eyewitness report on Tom Wolfe’s promotional appearance yesterday in San Francisco: “The man, in full.” »