Worth reading - Gaza edition

From Col. Lang - a very interesting post on the structure of the IDF.

Also, lost in all of the moral analysis of the current mess (why must San Diego always get bombed by Tijuana in analogies?) is how Israel benefits from it's current engagement. The rocket attacks were bearable for quite some time - and no one goes to war out of principle anymore. The explanation of doing it while Bush is still in office doesn't seem to be that credible, Obama hasn't said anything different than Bush 43, and he has something to prove, so I imagine he would be even more agreeable to Israeli action than Bush (and as a reminder, Bush stopped the Israelis from bombing Iran a few months ago).

I suppose the War Nerd's explanation of the attacks being used to weaken Hamas so Fatah could eventually win their civil war has the most credence, but that has problems too.

Howard Stern makes himself useful

Via these questions to Obama supporters - basically he attributed McCain's positions to Obama and the people shown approved of them. Although perhaps there's some wisdom in this - we have ever fewer ways of gauging the future, and campaign rhetoric is harder to enforce (see Bush's 2000 foreign policy speeches, and every economic speech he's ever made) , so choosing on personality doesn't seem ridiculous...

A convincing case for Bush impeachment

is made by former Reagan official Bruce Fein on BloggingHeads. And for the record, I still prefer Bush over Kerry. It won't happen due to the fact that Bush was smart enough to enlarge presidential powers for all subsequent presidents, so no one will have the incentive to give any of them up.

Random insight from the ride back: Modern politics

The Bush administration has been like a movie version of a Jimmy Carter book, starring Steven Seagal, and lasting eight years.

Another Bush comparison

As it seems to be the theme for the week, there are odd similarities between Bush and the Ipod. Both are predictable progressions over what came before, people get far too worked up about them, and people use them to talk about themselves.

An odd parallel

Has anyone noticed that the descriptions of Barack Obama are similar to the descriptions of George Bush in 1999 and early 2000? The whole people-person, good listener, polite meme that's been going around the Blogsphere lately was said about Bush as well.

Maybe we're better off with massive egos who care far too much about their legacy (and Newt's running in 08!). Food for thought.

Funny line

I was reading part of the transcript of Rumsfeld vs the heckler (who's a moderately well known anti-Bush activist, I've heard him on Democracy Now before) here in Atlanta last week. I came across this gem:

CHILD: Mom, do you have an Altoid?
MOM: Yes, I think so. Look in my purse.
CHILD: I don'’t see any.
MOM: Oh, I thought I had some.
CHILD: LYING BLOODTHIRSTY MONSTER!

I've always wondered how is it possible that people can believe the government, particularly this one, is more capable of a grand conspiracy than a grand failure.

Interesting poll numbers

Bush hits 33% approval or so says Fox, and the affection isn't going anywhere else. Why isn't everyone happier about this? America is essentially having a libertarian perception of it's government (similar to the mid 90's actually). I'm thrilled, but the rest of the libertarian blogsphere seems to not notice this at all. It's odd.

Extremely well put

Instapundit on Wal-Mart

You know, to me Wal-Mart is a lot like George W. Bush. It's not that I'm that big a fan in the abstract, really, it's just that the viciousness and stupidity revealed in its enemies tends to make me view it more favorably than I otherwise would.

Which says it exactly right. For someone I didn't vote for and for a place I rarely go (and when I do, it's usually because of the hours, and not the price) I've spent a fair amount of time defending both. Ditto for the pro-lifers. Hmmm.

Finally Bush does something right

This sort of makes up for the steel tariffs, assuming he holds to it.

Report: Bush Says Gov't Might Not Bail Out U.S. Automakers

NEW YORK — President Bush is offering no encouragement to any U.S. automobile companies that might be thinking about turning to the federal government for a financial bailout.

"I think it's very important for the market to function," he said in an interview in the Thursday editions of The Wall Street Journal.

He said companies need to manufacture "a product that's relevant" and that his administration has discussed new fuel technologies with the nation's top two auto makers.

"As these automobile manufacturers compete for market share and use technology to try to get consumers to buy their product, they also will be helping America become less dependent on foreign sources of oil," Bush said.

He repeats this whole foreign oil canard, as did 60 minutes last week ("dependence" is a poor description of our current situation, which is wholly dependent on price anyway, also, we use less foreign oil (as a percentage) as the price increases) but there's been a lot of corporate welfare in this administration, probably more than Clinton's and it's nice to see it NOT happening somewhere.

Quote of the moment

From Tucker Carlson's blog

If Bush ends up being right about Iraq, it will be through luck and accident and God's grace, not through any skillful calculation of his own. Success there will make him a great president the way Powerball makes crackheads rich: they have the money to show for it, but they're not fooling anyone.

I don't quite agree with this, largely in that I don't think the current endeavor is something that can be done well. It's quite the zinger though.

Interesting

One of Bush's more useful qualities (for him) is the ability to draw the right enemies. Just as Clinton excelled at drawing out the right wing crazies, Bush draws out the left, and internationally to boot. This CNN article, Mugabe, Chavez slam U.S. at U.N. event came as no surprise. While it is not necessarily a good thing to be hated by people recreating Stalin's Ukrainian horror from the 30s, it certainly SEEMS like a good thing.

Zing

From Mark Steyn:

Bush, it seems ever more obvious, is the Third Wayer Clinton only pretended to be.

The Slicker reckoned that, to be electable, a Democrat had to genuflect rhetorically to some kind of sensible soccer-mom-ish center, and he was right, at least insofar as without him the Dems have been el stinko floppo three elections in a row. But Bush, for good or ill, believes in himself as the real Third Way deal: It's a remarkable achievement to get damned day in and day out as the new Hitler when 90 percent of the time you're Tony Blair with a ranch. The president is a religio-cultural conservative who believes in big government and big spending and paternalistic federal intervention in areas where few conservatives have ever previously thought it wise.

Thursday rapid fire

• Bush Urges End of Trade Tariffs, Subsidies - this would actually be a legacy worth remembering, and probably the first "Conservative" thing he's done (with the exception of the tax cuts) since becoming president.
• You Don't Save What You Don't Own - a nice summation of the bus thing in NOLA
  
• Trial Of The Century: Keillor V. MNspeak.com - Someone else approximately shares my feelings about Garrison Keilor
  
• Via the Agitator
  

  ...if I can't have a libertarian paradise where state power defers to social power, or use recent events to urge others to the wisdom of such a state of affairs, I'm willing to propose a second-best for America: replace the three branches of republican government with permanent joint rule by Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. Go on, tell me you could honestly do worse.

  From Colby Cosh
• I can't find a link to this anywhere, but Commie-Rocker Steve Earle sold one of his songs to be used in a truck commercial. It was quite the talk of the DBT email list (which I still read periodically)
• Since we don't hear anything about hurricane relief in Alabama and Mississippi can we assume that state and local government did their jobs there?

The natural life cycle of American causes

They begin in tragedy and end in farce.

Joan Baez performs for Crawford War protesters.

While there are many actual events happening (see Michael Yon and a A Day in Iraq for more), here in America we concetrate more on aging baby boomer nostalgia, taking the form of listing ways that Iraq is similar to Vietnam (oddly never comparing it to the Philippines, where we also fought a Muslim insurgency.). We're also careful to take note of both opinion polls and posturing, specifically this article which had the quote:

The protesters at "Camp Casey" can claim some victory for forcing Bush to talk so extensively about the military deaths when he'd rather focus on indicators of progress in Iraq. The campers' call to bring the troops home now dominated news coverage out of Crawford this week while Bush stayed on his ranch with no public events.

A fixed date withdrawal deadline vs a benchmark withdrawal deadline? Can we live with Hyper-federalism or an Islamic republic in Iraq? How far are we willing to go to capture bin Laden, and what if we're wrong? What kind of error rate in military endeavors are we willing to live with?

All these things pale in comparison to such gripping matters as the exact verbiage of a speech and who is on vacation.

Very well put

Jesse Walker, in a recent article in Reason

But if you haven't forgotten it completely, I'd like you to think back to that last week before the ballot, when many Democrats honestly believed that the polls were undercounting the "youth vote" and that this invisible demographic was going to put them over the top. Pretend, just as an exercise, that this fantasy really happened, and that a bunch of cell-phone-wielding kids elected John Kerry last November. Imagine that for the last six months, the Republicans have been searching their souls and spinning their wheels, trying to find out how they can get those fledgling voters for themselves.

One faction would claim that the best way to appeal to the young would be to muzzle every prominent Republican with a track record of appealing to the old. Another group would argue that the GOP needs to change itself more deeply—that it has to adopt youthful concerns as its own, just as soon as it figures out what those youthful concerns might be.

Yet another would insist the Republicans are already young and hip, and that the trick is to frame their message so the kids will understand this. They'd propose ads announcing that Karl Rove sends text messages, that Dick Cheney knows some real live lesbians, and that W. may be versed in the use of powders, wink wink; that running huge deficits is risky, just like snowboarding, and that Bush's favorite judges are totally extreme.

He also raises the Mother Jones quote of "worse than conservatives' pretense of moral superiority is liberals' pretense of superiority to morals."

He omits the media creating, and the Dems going along with, this whole artificial demographic of "Evangelical" and "People of Faith" when the perfectly good term "very religious" would do, but on the whole, a very good summation, of this whole crass endeavor.

Last of the old cell pictures

I found these old pictures on the cell phone so I figure I'll tell the story about them for prosperity.

Sometime last October Mark and I were out riding around downtown, afterwards we go to Moes' in Ansley. After we come out (this is in probably the most left-leaning neighborhood in a very Democratic city) we see this bumper sticker,



which really stood out in terms of humor and originality. All the other bumper stickers (on around 90% of cars) were fairly juvenile and stale.

We exchanged a good chuckle and I took the picture (note reflection).

Up comes a large steroidal guy who sees me taking the picture and goes "You want to see a good bumper sticker, look at this one". We then go to his car and he has this one.



He then mistook my saying "That's pretty good too" (which it is) for "Elaborate on the topic. Tell me all your feelings on immigration and how your background informed your opinion; don't omit anything. Go back generations in your family if you have to but make sure I understand your position completely."

Which he did for the next 20 minutes or so.