Cynical Nation

...so screams a headline for this Reuters story on Drudge.

Do you suppose that maybe it's because he's... anti-abortion?

Don't know about you, but that'd be my guess. That would mean that he and I disagree on at least one issue. As I've said before, however, I don't give a rat's ass what his personal views on abortion are, so long as they aren't instrumental in determining how he rules on abortion-related issues.

As I've pointed out here and here, Alito has demonstrated to my satisfaction that he is capable of ruling on the matter without subordinating his jurisprudence to his personal beliefs, whatever they may be. I think even his critics would have to give him that. And that's good enough for me.

So he's pro-life. So what?

(BTW, I apologize for the light blogging of late. Today was an exceptionally busy day, work-wise. With any luck the storm has passed.)

Posted by BNJ at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

For all those people who couldn't understand why we conservatives were so enamored of sending John Bolton to the U.N.? This is why:

Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday's Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.

This condemnation--slamming Hizbullah by name for "acts of hatred"--marked the first time the Security Council has ever reprimanded Hizbullah for cross-border attacks on Israel. The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.

When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: "John Bolton," a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement.

What has confounded John Bolton's abundant detractors, both American and foreign, is how little he has lived up to their caricature of him as the fire-breathing, unilateralist, neo-conservative pit bull during his first four months as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"He's an intelligent person," says Ambassador Munir Akram of Pakistan, a Bolton opponent on any number of issues, most critically now over U.N. management reform. "He's articulate, and he's a tough negotiator. As far as I'm concerned, he's quite okay."

Mr. Akram then pays Mr. Bolton the greatest compliment possible from within the ranks of diplomats deeply suspicious of his motives for wanting the U.N, job in the first place. "I have no reason to believe he's here to destroy the institution," the Pakistani envoy says. "I can work with him."

That said, Mr. Akram and others remain far from viewing Mr. Bolton as their salvation, though that well may be what he represents. His appointment to the U.N. was the rough equivalent of Richard Nixon's visit to China, as he is determined to provoke needed change and has the hard-line credentials to sell skeptical congressmen on any agreed-upon reforms.

Senior U.N. officials "expect me to be is the U.N. ambassador to the U.S. and that isn't going to happen," Mr. Bolton says, in an interview. Yet he recognizes that he is the man most trusted by congressmen who have drafted a bill aimed at withholding 50% of U.S. funding for the U.N. if it doesn't make itself more effective and transparent. "If we have a good story on reform, I'll tell it to the Hill. If we don't, I'm not going to spin it. What they know is that I am is a tough negotiator for U.S. positions."

Posted by BNJ at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

...and likely faces prison. One down and 434 to go, I guess.

Posted by BNJ at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Over the holidays, some of my in-laws were, for whatever reason, musing about the household incomes of the average Wal-Mart shopper versus the average Costco shopper. You'd think that would be a fairly obscure bit of data to track down, right? But I did some Googling and, lo and behold, ot only did I find that very datum right off the bat, but it was embedded in a column from today's Washington Post that I think represents some of the clearest wisdom on the subject of Wal-Mart that I've ever read.

There's a comic side to the anti-Wal-Mart campaign brewing in Maryland and across the country. Only by summoning up the most naive view of corporate behavior can the critics be shocked -- shocked! -- by the giant retailer's machinations. Wal-Mart is plotting to contain health costs! But isn't that what every company does in the face of medical inflation? Wal-Mart has a war room to defend its image! Well, yeah, it's up against a hostile campaign featuring billboards, newspaper ads and a critical documentary movie. Wal-Mart aims to enrich shareholders and put rivals out of business! Hello? What business doesn't do that?

Wal-Mart's critics allege that the retailer is bad for poor Americans. This claim is backward: As Jason Furman of New York University puts it, Wal-Mart is "a progressive success story." Furman advised John "Benedict Arnold" Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart's products.

These gains are especially important to poor and moderate-income families. The average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco. Moreover, Wal-Mart's "every day low prices" make the biggest difference to the poor, since they spend a higher proportion of income on food and other basics. As a force for poverty relief, Wal-Mart's $200 billion-plus assistance to consumers may rival many federal programs. Those programs are better targeted at the needy, but they are dramatically smaller. Food stamps were worth $33 billion in 2005, and the earned-income tax credit was worth $40 billion.

Posted by BNJ at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Hey, it's been a tough year all around, but recent weeks have proven especially injurious to one of the American left's most cherished and enduring notions -- the myth of France as egalitarian utopia.

The latest indignity to befall our more enlightened brethren across the Atlantic is the freezing deaths of the city's homeless.

Still, sacred cows die hard, and this is probably not a fatal blow. A way will be found to blame Bush for even this (probably involving Kyoto and global... er... "warming..." or something) and then the liberals can all heave a collective sigh of relief and Paul Krugman can pen yet another op-ed piece about the inherent superiority of the French social system and all will once again be right with the universe.

Posted by BNJ at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

It's always fun to browse about on Google Video when you're bored. You never know what you're going to find. Check this one out, for example.

(Hat tip: Dean)

Posted by BNJ at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

I'm back, but it will probably take me a while to ramp up to full blogging speed.

Meanwhile, what did I miss? Obscure news items as well as harrowing personal tales of surviving family and in-laws are both welcome.

Posted by BNJ at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

So what's the deal with "open threads," anyway? Aren't all threads more or less open? I suspect it's blogger-speak for "I'm too lazy to think of something to post right now, so I'll just punt and call it an 'open' thread."

Well this one's a little bit different. I'm going out to the Left Coast for Thanksgiving this year, and I'm leaving tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn. I'll probably spend much of the rest of the day trying to get ready for the trip, so I probably won't be blogging here until after Thanksgiving weekend.

I hope everyone has a terrific Thanksgiving. I'll talk to you when I get back.

Posted by BNJ at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

If someone had told me a year ago that Joaquin Phoenix would play Johnny Cash in a major theatrical release and do his own singing to boot, I would not have known whether to laugh or to cry. See, I have been a huge Johnny Cash fan for literally my entire life. Some of my very earliest memories are of hearing his music and watching his television show. He was so distinctive in voice and style and manner that it's a daunting prospect to try to capture his essence on film. Handled badly, it could almost become sacrilege.

Even after reading a number of positive reviews, I approached the movie with trepidation. I need not have. "Walk the Line" was the most pleasant cinematic surprise since "Lord of the Rings." Phoenix positively channeled Cash's distinctive style and voice. And I have a whole new respect for Reese Witherspoon as well. She became June Carter, as anyone who remembers her from those pre-Johnny days can attest. Mother Maybelle was also uncannily accurate in both look and speech. It was almost like seeing an apparition.

If you're not a Johnny Cash fan, you should go see the movie anyway, simply because it's a great film. But if you are a fan, I can pretty much guarantee you'll get chills.

Posted by BNJ at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

I tend to treat birthdays as personal New Years -- a time to take stock of the year that just passed and to set goals and plans for the one to come. I don't mind getting older so long as I feel that I've made sufficient progress during the preceding year.

I was prepared for a downer of a birthday this year, since I hadn't accomplished as much in terms of the "big" goals (career, writing, etc.) as I had the previous year. But this morning, my wife asked me what my favorite memory of my last year had been. I started thinking about the good times, and I realized they were too numerous to list them all, let alone pick a favorite.

So it's going to be a great birthday after all. I'll try to accomplish more in the year to come, but meanwhile, I'm going to settle back and enjoy being one of those ages that people write songs about.

Posted by BNJ at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Professor Owens offers a timely history refresher on Vietnam in the days after Tet.

Americans and South Vietnamese scored major military successes against the North Vietnamese from 1968 to 1971, helping to stabilize the political situation in South Vietnam. This, combined with economic improvements, was solidifying the attachment of the rural population to the South Vietnamese government.
...
Their approach was no mere holding action, but a positive strategy for ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. They knew that U.S. forces would be withdrawn eventually, so they employed diminishing resources in manpower, materiel, money and time to maximize the ability of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves before the American withdrawal was complete.
...
Abrams' approach was vindicated during the 1972 Easter Offensive -- the biggest offensive push of the war, greater than either the 1968 Tet offensive or the final assault of 1975.

As the Northern forces pushed south, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) held on -- fighting well (with the inevitable failures on the part of some units) with massive American air and naval support. Then, having blunted the communist thrust, they recaptured territory that had been lost to Hanoi.

So effective was the combination of the ARVN performance during the Easter Offensive and following operations (Colby's Phoenix Program and LINEBACKER II -- the so-called Christmas bombing of 1972) that the British counterinsurgency expert, Sir Robert Thompson, concluded that U.S.-ARVN forces "had won the war. It was over."

But while the war was being won on the ground, it was being lost at the peace table and in Congress.

First, the same sort of domestic defeatism that is endangering our effort in Iraq today impelled President Richard Nixon to rush to extricate the country from Vietnam, forcing South Vietnam to accept a cease-fire that permitted the People's Army of Vietnam (the North Vietnamese) forces to remain in South Vietnam.

Second, the Watergate scandal changed the makeup of Congress -- which, in an act that still shames the United States to this day, then cut off military and economic assistance to South Vietnam.

Finally, President Nixon resigned over Watergate -- and his successor, further constrained by Congress, defaulted on promises to respond with force to North Vietnamese violations of the peace terms.

Posted by BNJ at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

So CRB doesn't have to watch C-SPAN any more, the Iraq troop resolution was defeated by a vote of 403 to 3. The three stupidest members of Congress are now officially:

Cynthia A. McKinney, D - GA
Robert Wexler, D - FL
Jose E. Serrano, D - NY

Posted by BNJ at 07:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

The day after "conservative" and "hawkish" Democrat John Murtha made headlines by calling for a troop withdrawal, the House leadership decided to bring the idea to a vote.

How did Democrats react? Here's a sampling.

"A disgrace," declared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"The rankest of politics and the absence of any sense of shame," added Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat.

"You guys are pathetic! Pathetic!" yelled Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass.

"It's a pathetic, partisan, political ploy," said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.

Added Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif.: "It's just heinous."

CRB, I'm glad I'm not watching it. Just reading the AP report was enough to send my blood pressure through the roof.

Posted by BNJ at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

I'm doing it again, watching C-SPAN waiting for them to vote on removing the troops from Iraq. Forty minutes to go until they vote on the resolution, I'm listening to these jackasses and my head is about to explode.

Dennis Kucinich is speaking now. Please help me.

Posted by CRB at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

In yet another baby step in the right direction, the House narrowly passed $50 billion in spending reduction. And when I say narrowly, I mean narrowly! It passed by one vote.

That's pathetic, people.

And you know what else is bad? Every Democrat voted against it. Every. Single. One. This is reminiscent of my recent list of a mere handful of Senators who had earned a modicum of respect on the issue of spending -- out of the 13 senatorial "heroes" I identified, only one was a Democrat.

Now let's be clear about this: The Republicans suck on the issue of fiscal discipline. They suck long and they suck hard, and that's one of the reasons why their poll numbers are in the shitter, and that so many fiscal conservatives like myself are feeling alienated and disaffected.

The Democrats would love for us to believe that they're prepared to assume the mantle of fiscal restraint, but with voting records like these, how can they have any credibility on that score? They can't. They don't. That's probably a big reason why no matter how low the GOP's poll numbers go, the numbers for congressional Democrats are still slightly worse.

A fellow disaffected Republican recently asked me, "Don't you feel like the Republican Party has left you? You know, like the Democratic Party left Ronald Reagan and Phil Gramm?"

Well, yes. I do feel exactly like that. The big, depressing difference, however, is that Reagan and Gramm had somewhere else to go.

Posted by BNJ at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Believe it or not, Haaretz has found a Frenchman who speaks with some common sense about the recent uprisings there. Even more surprising, he's erstwhile lefty intellectual Alain Finkielkraut. Here's what he's saying now.

"In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult -- Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese -- and they're not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character.
...
"We tend to fear the language of truth, for 'noble' reasons. We prefer to say the 'youths' instead of 'blacks' or 'Arabs.' But the truth cannot be sacrificed, no matter how noble the reasons. And, of course, we also must avoid generalizations: This isn't about blacks and Arabs as a whole, but about some blacks and Arabs. And, of course, religion -- not as religion, but as an anchor of identity, if you will -- plays a part. Religion as it appears on the Internet, on the Arab television stations, serves as an anchor of identity for some of these youths.
...
"Imagine for a moment that they were whites, like in Rostock in Germany. Right away, everyone would have said: 'Fascism won't be tolerated.' When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism. I'm 'color blind.' Evil is evil, no matter what color it is. And this evil, for the Jew that I am, is completely intolerable."

Posted by BNJ at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

I haven't yet written about the latest Bob Woodward revelations for a simple reason: I had no idea what to make of them. I still don't.

But tell me, am I the only one who's begun to wonder whether Bob Woodward is in fact a closet Republican? He surely disappointed the entire "BUSH LIED!!" crowd with his book Plan of Attack, in which he portrayed a skeptical president convinced of Iraqi WMD evidence by George Tenet, who assured his boss it was a "slam dunk."

Woodward has also been very publicly critical of Robert Fitzgerald and his entire Plamegate investigation. Scooter Libby's defense team will have to be pleased with this new information. It doesn't exonerate Libby outright, but it can easily undermine Fitzgerald's case against him.

But the big question is, why now? Closet Republican or not, I think Woodward has managed to piss off pretty much everyone in the world by his dreadful timing, if nothing else. The Kos Kids are pissed off because this might ultimately help Libby, and they'd probably prefer he'd kept his mouth shut. The Bush team and Fitzgerald himself have to be pissed off because he waited so long to talk. Joe Wilson's just pissed off, period, and so are a bunch of other reporters.

Once again, I feel like we're right back at Square One, and it seems like nobody knows a damn thing.

Posted by BNJ at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Count me in.

Posted by BNJ at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

...on the "Bush Lied!" meme. My favorite bit:

[T]he Iraq Liberation Act, during the Clinton-Gore administration, in 1998... which passed the Senate without a dissenting vote -- did expressly call for the removal of Saddam Hussein but did not actually mention the use of direct U.S. military force.

Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the "shocked, shocked" faction, we already know who you are.

And keep at it. Don't let up on this.

Posted by BNJ at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

There was an interesting aspect to this month's elections that was largely lost in the coverage of the Democratic "tsunami" in which the party was able to retain two governorships that it already had.

Still, I think it's pretty big news. By a comfortable margin, San Francisco voters decided to ban the sale and/or manufacture of firearms or ammunition within their city. Moreover, private citizens will no longer be allowed to keep handguns in their own homes, and will have until April 1 to surrender their guns to the authorities. In short, it's pretty much the most draconian anti-gun measures this country has ever seen, and the ACLU, which purports to defend the Bill of Rights, is nowhere to be found.

It's hard to understand why. I remember back in 1987, when Florida first voted to allow "concealed carry" permits. There was, of course, all the expected hyperventilation and hysteria about how Florida would become Dodge City, and there'd be mindless, rampaging shoot-outs in the streets.

Well that didn't happen, of course, and in the years since there has been a quiet revolution underway, as other states followed suit. Thirty-five states, a solid majority, now have some form of "shall issue" law for concealed weapon permits. (In addition, we should probably throw in the state of Vermont, which always allowed concealed handguns, even before they became trendy.)

Note that this revolution has coincided with the most dramatic reductions in violent crime rates of our lifetime. Now I'm not going to claim a causal relationship there, but that indisputable fact devastatingly undermines the gun grabbers' claim that liberalized handgun laws breed violence.

But for some reason San Francisco never got the memo. By preventing the sale of firearms and ammunition through legal channels, and by forcing law abiding citizens to voluntarily comply with the surrender ordinance, the city thus guarantees its criminal element (who will not surrender their guns) that their prey will henceforth be defenseless.

It's hard for me to understand how that can be a recipe for less violent crime. Time will tell, of course, and I may be wrong, but I am not at all optimistic about this.

Posted by BNJ at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Normally I try to keep my family out of this blog as much as possible, but I can't resist sending a shout-out to my brother-in-law, who won the National Book Award for his novel Europe Central last night.

Congratulations, Bill. I wish I could write half as well as you. I'll drink a pint or three in your honor today, and I look forward to sharing one with you in person next week.

Posted by BNJ at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Uh, guys? Here's a bit of unsolicited advice. If your goal is to marshal public opinion to stem global warming by making dire predictions, you might want to identify other potential threats besides, you know, shrinking New Jersey.

Posted by BNJ at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

And Jonah's found it for me.

(PS -- As with any drug, make sure you thoroughly read all the listed side effects before taking.)

Posted by BNJ at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

The older I get and the more years I spend as a student of politics, the more convinced I become that there is absolutely nothing new under the sun. The basic idea behind Intelligent Design is a case in point. It's been reformulated over the years, but at its core, the essential notion has been kicking around at least since Thomas Aquinas set forth his fifth proof for the existence of God.

The argument can be seductive -- what are the odds that certain highly complex structures and mechanisms could evolve as a product of random chance? It's reminded me of a great quote from one of my all-time heroes, the legendary physicist Richard Feynman. He was giving a lecture in Seattle once when someone employed the same fallacy, albeit in a different context. Feynman responded, "I had the most remarkable experience this evening. While coming in here I saw license plate ANZ 912. Calculate for me, please, the odds that of all the license plates in the state of Washington I should happen to see ANZ 912." Think about it.

Posted by BNJ at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Walking through the East Village last night, I saw a guy with a tattoo on his forehead that read, "Fuck you!" and one on his chin that read, "I'm from New York." I presume the two comprise a single message.

Anyway, I was thinking. If Splogging doesn't work out for me, maybe I should spend the next couple of years getting trained in the technology of laser tattoo removal. Something tells me that five years from now, I'd have more business than I could handle.

Posted by BNJ at 09:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Did Porkbusters claim a scalp? It's being reported that the Senate is defunding the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere."

It would be a mistake to attach too much significance to a single earmark, a mere vapor droplet in an ocean of red ink, but movement in the right direction, even baby steps, is a welcome thing.

Posted by BNJ at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Hey, guess what? Norman Podhoretz is not dead. Not only that, but he has penned an extremely helpful piece debunking the whole "Bush Lied!" lie.

I wasn't going to link to it initially, because many of his points have already been belabored on this site ad nauseum, but he has done such an amazing job of compiling all the facts into a single, concise essay that I'd encourage everyone to book mark it. We've got to keep on message, because there's a lot of disinformation out there.

I'm still disappointed that it's taken so long to mount a concerted response to this slander. My guess is that the White House thought it preferable not to keep the whole WMD issue front-and-center in the national debate, and therefore elected not to fight back. If so, it was a strategic miscalculation, and much damage has already been done.

Posted by BNJ at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

And I used to think Duke basketball fans were hardcore.

Loyal 10 Spot readers will recall an item a few months back about a Welsh rugby fan, Geoffrey Huish, who vowed to cut his testicles off if Wales upset England and then followed through. Well, the 31-year-old Huish is out of the psychiatric unit and now telling his story to the Sun. The tale, it seems, has gotten no less strange with the passing of time. Our favorite part: "Geoffrey, who says he has no history of mental illness, insists he was sober when he performed the DIY castration in his bathroom." We shudder to think what Huish is capable of when drunk. The account's most cringe-inducing detail is the fact that the self-castration took 10 minutes ("there was quite a lot of pain -- but I just kept going") because the cutters Huish used were dull. That hurt just to write.

Posted by BNJ at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

I like this ad. It doesn't contain anything really new or surprising to those who have followed the whole story, but the effect of watching the compilation of all these clips back-to-back is damned powerful. My only question is...

WHY WASN'T THIS DONE A YEAR AGO?!?!?!

Belated or otherwise, I'm glad our side is finally fighting back. I just hope they keep it up. Bloggers are great and all, but we need our political leadership to lead on this issue. Adam over at Sophistpundit has the right idea, I think. Let's hold their feet to the fire.

Posted by BNJ at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Everyone knows the secret to being a successful politician is ti... ti-MING... TI-ming... timing.

Okay, it's an old Steve Martin joke that was never that funny to begin with, and falls even flatter in written form. But still, he's got a point, and you gotta feel a bit sorry for this guy.

The last time I remember Al Gore making a serious policy statement on global warming, it was up here in New York, and it was about a kajillion degrees below zero, if I remember correctly -- metric. I remember my teeth were chattering on my way to work that day and my family jewels were hiding so far up near my tonsils that I wondered if I'd ever see them again.

Now his latest statement on the topic, in which he opines that global warming is a greater threat than terrorism, appears right on the heels of a horrifying suicide bombing that claimed 57 lives... in Jordan -- a target that isn't easily explicable by the conventional wisdom of either left or right. The death toll would have surely been much higher but for the fact that one of the suicide bombers failed to detonate properly.

That's astonishing, isn't it? Now pause for just a moment to reflect on how close Al Gore came to being our president on 9/11. Honestly, when Bush was running against Gore in 2000, I really didn't give a shit who won at the time. It's a good thing I didn't know then what I know now. If I had, I probably would have required Xanax to survive 32 days of the recount fiasco.

Posted by BNJ at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

It's already lunchtime, and I've only managed to muster one new post since Friday. My weekend was exhausting, and it's taking me some time to get back into the swing of things. There's going to be a lot I have to say this week, but it's going to take me a while to get back up to speed, so please bear with me.

Posted by BNJ at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

John Edwards, that is. He said so himself in yesterday's New York Times.

I was wrong.

Now I happen to think that John Edwards is about as slimy as they come, and no there's no doubt that this was a calculated, self-serving piece, and I (obviously) disagree with much of it.

Still, you have to give him credit for a few things.

• It's always refreshing to hear a politician admit he was wrong. Most of them usually are.
  
• He accepted responsibility for his own vote. He did not (for the most part) try to argue that "Bush lied" about WMD, and that gullible Senate Democrats were duped into going along for the ride.
  
• He did not try to re-write history (as did John Kerry, for example) by downplaying his Senate vote and trying to claim (quite implausibly) that he had always been against the war.
  

So why is John Edwards the only Democratic critic who's chosen the "take responsibility" route over historic revisionism? Perhaps because he's unemployed and feels he has less to lose. Perhaps the thought of this kind of public mea culpa is too frightening for seated, Democratic congressmen who will be seeking reelection at the end of their current terms.

Posted by BNJ at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

...that the president say stuff like this instead of leaving it to a bunch of dumbass bloggers like myself.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges," the president said in his combative Veterans Day speech.

Defending the march to war, Bush said that foreign intelligence services and Democrats and Republicans alike were convinced at the time that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and mislead the American people about why we went to war," Bush said.

He said those critics have made those allegations although they know that a Senate investigation "found no evidence" of political pressure to change the intelligence community's assessments related to Saddam's weapons program.

He said they also know that the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing Saddam's development and possession of weapons of mass destruction.

"More than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power," Bush said.

Posted by BNJ at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (125) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Maybe the most passionately divisive subject in American discourse today is neither abortion nor the war in Iraq. Maybe it's Wal-Mart. Anyway, next week will see the release of two competing DVDs on the subject. You can get some sense of the controversy by reading the reviews for both -- lots of "one stars" and "five stars" for each. Yep, we're a polarized nation.

Honestly, I don't enjoy shopping at Wal-Mart, and I do my best to avoid it whenever possible (although where I come from, it's one of the few places where you can still get an honest-to-God Icee.) But frankly, I don't understand all the ruckus.

To borrow an argument from the abortion debate: You don't like Wal-Mart? Don't shop there. Seems pretty simple.

Posted by BNJ at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Nicole Richie has a "novel."

Posted by BNJ at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Haaretz has an interesting piece about how the Pentagon reached out to the IDF to solicit help in getting a handle on the IED problem in Iraq. The article itself is interesting and well worth a read, but this part pissed me off no end (emphasis mine):

Officially, Centcom (U.S. Central Command) is barred from talking directly to Israel -- it is supposed to do so only through Eucom (European Command) or Washington.

Posted by BNJ at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

Here's some nice news from my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made a promise while he was a federal appeals court judge that he would judge a law student competition at Wake Forest University. While he has a new job, he's staying true to his word.

Roberts, who was confirmed to the U-S Supreme Court in September, will be one of three people who will judge a mock case involving two Wake Forest law students, who will pretend to be lawyers arguing before a federal appeals court. Two other appeals court judges will join Roberts.

Posted by BNJ at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

If there was any doubt that you did the right thing by rejecting an "Intelligent Design" school board, let me dispel those doubts with this.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

All eight Dover, Pa., school board members up for re-election were defeated Tuesday after trying to introduce "intelligent design" - the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power - as an alternative to the theory of evolution.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club."

Now listen. Whether or not the universe contains complexity of such a nature that cannot be explained via conventionally accepted mechanisms is a valid, scientific inquiry. My belief is that no outside intelligence is necessary to explain the observable universe, but I'm certainly not opposed to exploring the question. If we do, in fact, find aspects of reality that can't be explained by our current models of evolution, we need to know about that. Such a discovery could usher in a new and greater scientific understanding of the world we live in, much like the exploration of black body radiation anomalies led to the discovery of quantum mechanics.

But here's the problem. The ID movement has become hijacked, for obvious reasons, by creationists. For every researcher out there asking valid, scientific and philosophical questions, there are umpteen religious conservatives who are simply using the movement as a stalking horse to legitimize their agenda of shoehorning religion into the teaching of science.

The people of Dover rejected that, and bravo for them. Let the legitimate ID researches continue to ask their questions and publish their findings in peer-reviewed research journals. In the meantime, however, let's keep the hucksters and charlatans out of our schools, the way they did in Pennsylvania.

Posted by BNJ at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

To all who served, or are serving now (I know some of you read this site, for whatever reason) I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks for all you've done.

Posted by BNJ at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

By popular demand, CN presents more biting and insightful political punditry from Jennifer Aniston.

So how about those elections? (Democrats won some stuff, right?) Maybe now we can eliminate racism and inequality so we can be more like France.

And then there's the war in that country that didn't even have BMWs. Nice job, Mr. President... NOT!!

Posted by BNJ at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss

...when the waves...and the seasons...bring out their... dead... wait, how does that thing go? This isn't really a propos of anything, but today is the 30th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I know you've got to see Lake Superior in person to fully understand, but I've always been fascinated that a ship that freakin HUGE could sink... in a lake.

Oh well. Some of the underwater pictures of the wreckage give me the creeps. Like this one.

Posted by BNJ at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)|Discuss