Can you believe this?
"An African-American civil rights spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the new computerized voting machines "terrify" her, and that blacks are "afraid of machines like that."
If this isn't blatant racism I don't know what is. What's next, "blacks are confused by the big words on the ballot," or "blacks feel uncomfortable standing in line with so many whites at the polls?"
We may as well settle in for many months of crying and infighting if the Democrats lose. They've already convinced themselves that there's no way they can be defeated in a fair election, so they've set the stage for a scandal. Who cares if they insult every black person in America in the process? This is about taking the country back, right?
It's a pretty good strategy by the Democrats. It makes it so that Republicans have to win by landslides or the election will be considered fraudulent. When the electorate is walking away from you, you have two choices: Change your platform (yeah, right) or rig the game in your favor. Here's to hoping that Kerry gets smoked by such a massive margin that all of the crying and accusations won't matter.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
I ripped this off from NRO's Corner. How many times have we had this discussion here?
SIGH [Jonah Goldberg]
One more for the how liberals see themselves file. What I love about these explanations (We good. They bad. They simple. We complex.) is that they are so dualistic and simplistic in their us-versus-them-ness at the same time they righteously denounce that kind of thinking. From the novelist Roland Merullo in today's Boston Globe:
At their essence, conservatives are on guard, bristling, armed with a righteous anger, prone to mockery of their enemies, sure of themselves, unwilling to criticize America, especially by comparing it to anyplace else. The attacks of Sept. 11 only confirmed their world view: We are constantly at risk.
Liberals are mannered, sensitive, armed with intellectual cynicism, self-critical, eager to learn from other cultures, wanting there to be no pain in the world. The attacks made them sad and angry, too, but their reflex was more pensive than vengeful.
If I were John Belushi, I'd smash this guy's guitar against the wall.
SIGH [Jonah Goldberg]
One more for the how liberals see themselves file. What I love about these explanations (We good. They bad. They simple. We complex.) is that they are so dualistic and simplistic in their us-versus-them-ness at the same time they righteously denounce that kind of thinking. From the novelist Roland Merullo in today's Boston Globe:
At their essence, conservatives are on guard, bristling, armed with a righteous anger, prone to mockery of their enemies, sure of themselves, unwilling to criticize America, especially by comparing it to anyplace else. The attacks of Sept. 11 only confirmed their world view: We are constantly at risk.
Liberals are mannered, sensitive, armed with intellectual cynicism, self-critical, eager to learn from other cultures, wanting there to be no pain in the world. The attacks made them sad and angry, too, but their reflex was more pensive than vengeful.
If I were John Belushi, I'd smash this guy's guitar against the wall.
I've been watching O'Reilly's 3 part interview with the President over the last two days (part 3 is tonight) and I've noticed something interesting: The president is not an idiot. Sure, I've been a supporter of his for a while now, but even I have come to expect him to fumble questions, repeat simple talking points, and occasionally look like a deer caught in the headlights from time to time. I was somewhat taken aback in this interview when the president was, in addition to being his usual likable self, quite eloquent and displayed a detailed grasp of many issues. Not that I didn't think the president didn't understand these issues before, it's just that I thought him incapable of expressing this verbally. At first I thought Bush's good performance might just be due to the fact that he's comfortable with O'Reilly and Fox in general, but I think it goes deeper than that. This experience to me speaks of how effective the MSM has been in portraying Bush as a dope. Even people like me, who support Bush, kind of expect him to come off as an idiot in venues like this. O'Reilly didn't exactly hammer him, but he asked tougher questions than John Kerry has fielded in many months, and Bush answered them very well, often going into a surprising amount of detail and talking over O'Reilly many times when he tried to contradict Bush. It makes me wonder what kind of impression we'd have of the president if we could really see him in action behind the scenes without the media spin. Like Reagan, Bush has been labeled the fool, and many people take that as fact. Of course, this plays right into Bush's hands, because the lowered expectations make it so that even a mediocre performance in the debates surprises everyone. If the same president shows up for the debates that was interviewed by O'Reilly, John Kerry is going to have his hands full.
Check out part 3 of the interview tonight. You might be surprised.
Check out part 3 of the interview tonight. You might be surprised.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
BURQAS AGAIN – AND GOOD OLE UNCLE ADOLF
A short update on the Burqas in Belgium story. In the Eastern Belgian town of Maaseik, pop. 20,000, the past week some 5 Moroccan women have been signalled wearing burqas Taliban-style. This has caused quite some unrest among the locals, and today, this means one week after the facts, Flemish Minister of Internal Affairs Marino Keulen ordered his administration to draft a police regulation forbidding wearing the burqa in public.
Keulen, acting upon the adage that if it looks like a tent, speaks like a tent (*) and is fastened up like a tent, it is probably a Muslim woman, said: “I think it’s normal that non-identifiable people in the streets conjure up an image of insecurity. The burqa also can’t be considered a normal religious symbol.”
The Vlaams Blok noted dryly on its website that Maaseik is only the second case. It appears that in Molenbeek, a western borough of Brussels, burqas are being worn already longer. Especially in shops in the Zuidstraat and Brabantstraat they seem to go swiftly over the counter, underscoring the frantic efforts of our Muslim brethren to integrate themselves in western society.
Luckily we still have the European entertainment sector, in casu German movies, to cheer us up a little: the opening week of “The Downfall” (Der Untergang), about Hitlers last days in his bunker in Berlin, drew almost half a million people. The film recounts the story as seen from the viewpoint of Traudl Junge, one of Hitlers secretaries. Playing Herr Hitler is Swiss actor Bruno Ganz. The film is different from earlier ones dealing with the subject in that it also shows Hitlers human side (sic), and so we can see him like granpa Jones giving Goebbels children a ride on his knee (sniff!!! How touching!!!). The Holocaust? Oops, we almost forgot that!!! Luckily some smartass managed to throw in some prose dealing with that footnote somewhere between the happy end and the names of the cast.
(Uncle Adolph having a bad hair day)
Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhh… Napoleon ruined his country, got its territorial integrity damaged and made a million French women widow – not to speak of the much worse carnage inflicted in virtually every European country. Today he rests in the Panthéon under a top-heavy sarcophagus and is considered a demi-god.
If you ask me, in 50 years the site in Berlin where Uncle Adolph traded this earthly valley of tears for 72 virgins will be adorned by a 20-foot statue of Germany’s Last True Action Hero.
MFBB
(*) (i.e. keeps its piehole shut)
A short update on the Burqas in Belgium story. In the Eastern Belgian town of Maaseik, pop. 20,000, the past week some 5 Moroccan women have been signalled wearing burqas Taliban-style. This has caused quite some unrest among the locals, and today, this means one week after the facts, Flemish Minister of Internal Affairs Marino Keulen ordered his administration to draft a police regulation forbidding wearing the burqa in public.
Keulen, acting upon the adage that if it looks like a tent, speaks like a tent (*) and is fastened up like a tent, it is probably a Muslim woman, said: “I think it’s normal that non-identifiable people in the streets conjure up an image of insecurity. The burqa also can’t be considered a normal religious symbol.”
The Vlaams Blok noted dryly on its website that Maaseik is only the second case. It appears that in Molenbeek, a western borough of Brussels, burqas are being worn already longer. Especially in shops in the Zuidstraat and Brabantstraat they seem to go swiftly over the counter, underscoring the frantic efforts of our Muslim brethren to integrate themselves in western society.
Luckily we still have the European entertainment sector, in casu German movies, to cheer us up a little: the opening week of “The Downfall” (Der Untergang), about Hitlers last days in his bunker in Berlin, drew almost half a million people. The film recounts the story as seen from the viewpoint of Traudl Junge, one of Hitlers secretaries. Playing Herr Hitler is Swiss actor Bruno Ganz. The film is different from earlier ones dealing with the subject in that it also shows Hitlers human side (sic), and so we can see him like granpa Jones giving Goebbels children a ride on his knee (sniff!!! How touching!!!). The Holocaust? Oops, we almost forgot that!!! Luckily some smartass managed to throw in some prose dealing with that footnote somewhere between the happy end and the names of the cast.
(Uncle Adolph having a bad hair day)
Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhh… Napoleon ruined his country, got its territorial integrity damaged and made a million French women widow – not to speak of the much worse carnage inflicted in virtually every European country. Today he rests in the Panthéon under a top-heavy sarcophagus and is considered a demi-god.
If you ask me, in 50 years the site in Berlin where Uncle Adolph traded this earthly valley of tears for 72 virgins will be adorned by a 20-foot statue of Germany’s Last True Action Hero.
MFBB
(*) (i.e. keeps its piehole shut)
Monday, September 27, 2004
BURQAS IN BELGIUM - MUSLIM ASSIMILATION IN EUROPE AN APPARENT SNAFU.
I’d love to talk about something else, but my rants these days seem to center around one issue. I get the impression that in due time, and maybe sooner than you think, it will become the no.1 issue for the western World.
Yesterday I had a post on Turkey’s bid to join the EU. By coincidence, our pal Chrenkoff in Down Under decided to share some thoughts on the same subject too. As you will notice he, unlike me, takes a rather moderate stance.
Rather, he’s so keen to offer us a little piece of history, namely the key role the Polish King John III Sobieski played in smashing the Turks before Vienna in 1683 with a cavalry army of a.o. Polish Hussars. I gather that Arthur’s seemingly positive inclination toward the Turks stems from the respect the Ottoman’s in later times still payed their erstwhile foe, the Polish, for after Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria by the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries (the three so-called Polish Divisions), the chef de protocol at the Ottoman Court still paid homage to a nonexistent Polish Ambassador at the occasion of the yearly summoning of the Ambassadors and consuls in Istanbul, and reportedly kept doing so till the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Nice story, Arthur. The question that stuck with me however is the one you posed at the end:
This is what's at stake here: will Europe be able to Westernise its Muslims before the Muslims succeed in Islamicising Europe.
Arthur, I think the question is answering itself already:
a.) A story from Italy, courtesy MSNBC:
ROME - An Italian woman who is married to an Arab man and converted to Islam, has been ticketed twice in the past week for wearing a burqa in her small village in the province of Como.
The dispute, which may eventually reach Italy's highest court, highlights growing unease in this staunchly Catholic country over a growing Muslim population.
Many Italians are unhappy with the impact of immigration from Islamic countries. Prior to the controversy in Como, there was a public outcry when a judge agreed last October to a Muslim activist's demand that a crucifix be removed from his son's classroom wall.
b.) A story from Belgium, a reader’s letter in some Belgian newspaper:
Jan Creemers, (CD&V) mayor of Maaseik, gets phone calls from worried citizens on the subject of several Muslim women who venture out only in burqa anymore. Are the people from Maaseik afraid of veiled women? I think not, but you can pose yourself questions on dress articles like the burqa, chador and niqab, all very covering pieces of clothing. That you want to dress demurely is something only commanding respect. But I think one should always remain recognizable. By the way, what will one do with the photo on the new identity papers? With or without burqa?
Burqas in Belgium… now already.
I don’t feel well.
MFBB
I’d love to talk about something else, but my rants these days seem to center around one issue. I get the impression that in due time, and maybe sooner than you think, it will become the no.1 issue for the western World.
Yesterday I had a post on Turkey’s bid to join the EU. By coincidence, our pal Chrenkoff in Down Under decided to share some thoughts on the same subject too. As you will notice he, unlike me, takes a rather moderate stance.
Rather, he’s so keen to offer us a little piece of history, namely the key role the Polish King John III Sobieski played in smashing the Turks before Vienna in 1683 with a cavalry army of a.o. Polish Hussars. I gather that Arthur’s seemingly positive inclination toward the Turks stems from the respect the Ottoman’s in later times still payed their erstwhile foe, the Polish, for after Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria by the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries (the three so-called Polish Divisions), the chef de protocol at the Ottoman Court still paid homage to a nonexistent Polish Ambassador at the occasion of the yearly summoning of the Ambassadors and consuls in Istanbul, and reportedly kept doing so till the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Nice story, Arthur. The question that stuck with me however is the one you posed at the end:
This is what's at stake here: will Europe be able to Westernise its Muslims before the Muslims succeed in Islamicising Europe.
Arthur, I think the question is answering itself already:
a.) A story from Italy, courtesy MSNBC:
ROME - An Italian woman who is married to an Arab man and converted to Islam, has been ticketed twice in the past week for wearing a burqa in her small village in the province of Como.
The dispute, which may eventually reach Italy's highest court, highlights growing unease in this staunchly Catholic country over a growing Muslim population.
Many Italians are unhappy with the impact of immigration from Islamic countries. Prior to the controversy in Como, there was a public outcry when a judge agreed last October to a Muslim activist's demand that a crucifix be removed from his son's classroom wall.
b.) A story from Belgium, a reader’s letter in some Belgian newspaper:
Jan Creemers, (CD&V) mayor of Maaseik, gets phone calls from worried citizens on the subject of several Muslim women who venture out only in burqa anymore. Are the people from Maaseik afraid of veiled women? I think not, but you can pose yourself questions on dress articles like the burqa, chador and niqab, all very covering pieces of clothing. That you want to dress demurely is something only commanding respect. But I think one should always remain recognizable. By the way, what will one do with the photo on the new identity papers? With or without burqa?
Burqas in Belgium… now already.
I don’t feel well.
MFBB
France and Germany say they won't be part of John Kerry's multilateral Iraq coalition.
These silly Europeans clearly don't realize what a diplomatic wizard Kerry is.
These silly Europeans clearly don't realize what a diplomatic wizard Kerry is.
Here's Arthur Chrenkoff with another roundup of things that are going well in Iraq.
Warning: This may come as a shock to those who rely on the mainstream media for their "news."
Warning: This may come as a shock to those who rely on the mainstream media for their "news."
Sunday, September 26, 2004
TURKEY ALMOST IN THE EU WAITING ROOM - AND BEN NEVIS
You may or may not know that I’m rather reluctant, not to say hostile, at the idea of Turkey joining the EU. That is because of Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development) Party being in power now for two years. A lot can be said about Erdogan’s so-called moderate face of islam but to me he’s rather like a wolf in sheep’s clothes. In the nineties he got jailed in the then strictly secular Turkey for reciting an inflammatory poem about minarets and bayonets. He has sent his daughters to the US because Turkish law forbids them to wear hijabs in state schools. Once his AKP Party came to power a trick was applied by his predecessor Gul to get him Turkish PM (because of said poem and other Islamist activities the post was denied him). In Spring 2004 his party, which has the majority of seats in Turkish Parliament, tried to force a law through Parliament granting students from the religious Imam Hatip schools easy access to Turkish universities. Apart from the fact that their religious formation does not prepare them for scientific, law or medical faculties, it is beyond doubt that these religious zealots upon arriving on campus will start harassing female students.
Apparently Mr. Erdogan confuses the fact that you have the majority of seats in a democracy with the right to enforce your views on minorities. Seeing that he faced stiff opposition not only from the opposition but also from the President, the Army General Staff and industry he backed off – but vowed to pick up the case in 2005:
To those who opposed the bill, especially President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and the Office of the Chief of General Staff, he said: "This debate is not about the system. It is about how institutions work. We came to power with the support of the people. You have to accept the will of the majority."
The content and tone of the speech were aggressive. He indicated that the YOK bill had been postponed for now, while more the important matter of laws dealing with the European Union would be tackled.
Then there has been the very recent struggle to introduce a harsh law enforcing heavy sanctions on adultery into Turkish penal law. I guess that with all the election frenzy over there you heard nothing, but over here in Europe it made headlines. Now mind you, I’m not advocating to approach the issue of adultery on a light note. It’s just that I’m sure that if this bill was passed the situation for women in Turkey would have worsened considerably. Over the past month there have been fierce protests from women's rights groups against the proposed law. Given that a recent Amnesty International report stated that 50% of Turkish women are beaten by their husbands, I can understand why they are worried.
The hot and potentially divisive issue as to whether Turkey should outlaw marital infidelity will feature high on the agenda of talks between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheguen on 6 September. Verheugen is scheduled to spend five days in Turkey for talks aimed at confirming Ankara's readiness to open membership negotiations.
There you have it. I’m sure that you’re all aware that Turkey desparately wants to join the EU. On October 6, thus within one week, an EU report is expected assessing if Turkey may or may not be admitted in the EU Waiting Room depending on the reform of its law and its meeting a certain set of EU-defined set of standards concering human rights, involvement of the Army in politics and economy-related issues. It is clear Erdogan and the AKP dropped the law so that their chances on a favorable report would not be jeopardized.
And indeed, the past week the Turkish government dropped the harsh clause concerning adultery from the reformed penal code. There was a little prodding from EU Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, responsible for enlargement. He confronted Erdogan and it seems to have worked. Today the Turks announced the new version of Turkish penal code, from which the clause has been dropped. To be sure, the issue was but one of many within the process of reforming Turkishpenal code. In short the focal points are:
*Assaults on women will be more heavily punished
*Rape in marriage recognised
*Life terms for perpetrators of "honour killings"
*Jail terms for the sexual molestation of children, trafficking of human organs and the pollution of the environment
*Tougher measures against perpetrators of torture
*Corruption in government to be tackled
*Proposal to criminalise adultery dropped
Now, while these are all good measures, the show put up by Erdogan and his AKP over the past year have convinced me that this man is NOT a true Democrat. Time and again he has tried to abuse the AKP’s majority to try to force Sharia-inspired laws through Parliament. If you ask me, it’s crystal-clear that the fact that the EU was watching, pending the necessary reforms to meet admittance conditions, made him tone down his rhetoric a bit and back down – but just temporarily.
I fear for the day that an AKP-dominated Turkey joins the EU. Luckily true admittance can at its earliest be expected by 2015. Let’s hope the US’s democratization effort in the ME has by then proceeded far enough to encourage large swaths of the younger Turks not to follow the siren’s song of an anachronistic movement that will ultimately ruin the great achievement of that truly great Turk Mustafa Kemal, more commonly known as Ataturk, founder of te modern Turkey. I agree on a lot of issues with President Bush, but he should stop pressing the EU to swiftly welcome Turkey in its club.
Ok, it’s heavy stuff for a Sunday evening so let me stop on a lighter note. In Scotland I climbed the UK’s highest mountain, the Ben Nevis, for a second time (the first time being in September 2003). At 1,344 m you will proably be smirking when I use the term “mountain”, especially Mark/CO who has the Rockies in his backyard, so to speak. Still the impression it leaves is majestic, as the slopes start virtually at sea level. The nearby town Fort William lies at the northern edge of Loch Linnhe, which is in fact a narrow sea-arm protruding inland. Climbing it gives you the same sensation as climbing a 3,000 m Swiss Alp from a valley bottom at 1,700m. Anyway, since it’s the highest peak the view from above is magnificent. Despite its modest height, the rather northerly latitude forbids vegetation on its summit, which as a result is a barren desert of rough boulders. Using the tourist path I managed to reach the top in 2h50 minutes, which is considered a fairly good time. If you ever venture to Scotland and you are reasonably fit, be sure to climb it.
MFBB
You may or may not know that I’m rather reluctant, not to say hostile, at the idea of Turkey joining the EU. That is because of Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development) Party being in power now for two years. A lot can be said about Erdogan’s so-called moderate face of islam but to me he’s rather like a wolf in sheep’s clothes. In the nineties he got jailed in the then strictly secular Turkey for reciting an inflammatory poem about minarets and bayonets. He has sent his daughters to the US because Turkish law forbids them to wear hijabs in state schools. Once his AKP Party came to power a trick was applied by his predecessor Gul to get him Turkish PM (because of said poem and other Islamist activities the post was denied him). In Spring 2004 his party, which has the majority of seats in Turkish Parliament, tried to force a law through Parliament granting students from the religious Imam Hatip schools easy access to Turkish universities. Apart from the fact that their religious formation does not prepare them for scientific, law or medical faculties, it is beyond doubt that these religious zealots upon arriving on campus will start harassing female students.
Apparently Mr. Erdogan confuses the fact that you have the majority of seats in a democracy with the right to enforce your views on minorities. Seeing that he faced stiff opposition not only from the opposition but also from the President, the Army General Staff and industry he backed off – but vowed to pick up the case in 2005:
To those who opposed the bill, especially President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and the Office of the Chief of General Staff, he said: "This debate is not about the system. It is about how institutions work. We came to power with the support of the people. You have to accept the will of the majority."
The content and tone of the speech were aggressive. He indicated that the YOK bill had been postponed for now, while more the important matter of laws dealing with the European Union would be tackled.
Then there has been the very recent struggle to introduce a harsh law enforcing heavy sanctions on adultery into Turkish penal law. I guess that with all the election frenzy over there you heard nothing, but over here in Europe it made headlines. Now mind you, I’m not advocating to approach the issue of adultery on a light note. It’s just that I’m sure that if this bill was passed the situation for women in Turkey would have worsened considerably. Over the past month there have been fierce protests from women's rights groups against the proposed law. Given that a recent Amnesty International report stated that 50% of Turkish women are beaten by their husbands, I can understand why they are worried.
The hot and potentially divisive issue as to whether Turkey should outlaw marital infidelity will feature high on the agenda of talks between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheguen on 6 September. Verheugen is scheduled to spend five days in Turkey for talks aimed at confirming Ankara's readiness to open membership negotiations.
There you have it. I’m sure that you’re all aware that Turkey desparately wants to join the EU. On October 6, thus within one week, an EU report is expected assessing if Turkey may or may not be admitted in the EU Waiting Room depending on the reform of its law and its meeting a certain set of EU-defined set of standards concering human rights, involvement of the Army in politics and economy-related issues. It is clear Erdogan and the AKP dropped the law so that their chances on a favorable report would not be jeopardized.
And indeed, the past week the Turkish government dropped the harsh clause concerning adultery from the reformed penal code. There was a little prodding from EU Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, responsible for enlargement. He confronted Erdogan and it seems to have worked. Today the Turks announced the new version of Turkish penal code, from which the clause has been dropped. To be sure, the issue was but one of many within the process of reforming Turkishpenal code. In short the focal points are:
*Assaults on women will be more heavily punished
*Rape in marriage recognised
*Life terms for perpetrators of "honour killings"
*Jail terms for the sexual molestation of children, trafficking of human organs and the pollution of the environment
*Tougher measures against perpetrators of torture
*Corruption in government to be tackled
*Proposal to criminalise adultery dropped
Now, while these are all good measures, the show put up by Erdogan and his AKP over the past year have convinced me that this man is NOT a true Democrat. Time and again he has tried to abuse the AKP’s majority to try to force Sharia-inspired laws through Parliament. If you ask me, it’s crystal-clear that the fact that the EU was watching, pending the necessary reforms to meet admittance conditions, made him tone down his rhetoric a bit and back down – but just temporarily.
I fear for the day that an AKP-dominated Turkey joins the EU. Luckily true admittance can at its earliest be expected by 2015. Let’s hope the US’s democratization effort in the ME has by then proceeded far enough to encourage large swaths of the younger Turks not to follow the siren’s song of an anachronistic movement that will ultimately ruin the great achievement of that truly great Turk Mustafa Kemal, more commonly known as Ataturk, founder of te modern Turkey. I agree on a lot of issues with President Bush, but he should stop pressing the EU to swiftly welcome Turkey in its club.
Ok, it’s heavy stuff for a Sunday evening so let me stop on a lighter note. In Scotland I climbed the UK’s highest mountain, the Ben Nevis, for a second time (the first time being in September 2003). At 1,344 m you will proably be smirking when I use the term “mountain”, especially Mark/CO who has the Rockies in his backyard, so to speak. Still the impression it leaves is majestic, as the slopes start virtually at sea level. The nearby town Fort William lies at the northern edge of Loch Linnhe, which is in fact a narrow sea-arm protruding inland. Climbing it gives you the same sensation as climbing a 3,000 m Swiss Alp from a valley bottom at 1,700m. Anyway, since it’s the highest peak the view from above is magnificent. Despite its modest height, the rather northerly latitude forbids vegetation on its summit, which as a result is a barren desert of rough boulders. Using the tourist path I managed to reach the top in 2h50 minutes, which is considered a fairly good time. If you ever venture to Scotland and you are reasonably fit, be sure to climb it.
MFBB
Friday, September 24, 2004
HERMAN AND THE LAND OF DANGEROUS FELINES.
All right Herman, after having read this I will forgive you for JUST ONE DAY that you, a politician pretending to be center-right and a defender of the free market, are in fact the biggest “employer” in the southwestern corner of Oost-Vlaanderen because of the tens of thousands of dumbass nitwits who would be too stupid to cut off the noose round their neck if someone gave them a knife you helped to a pussy job on some dusty desk in Brussels. I also forgive you for JUST ONE DAY, and this time I eat my heart out, for being such an ardent belgicistic *sslicker to the Royal Family who despise your mother tongue and whose Queen can’t speak three words of Dutch in a row even if she lives in our Magic Kingdom for over forty years and Flanders is Belgium’s economic locomotive…
(A confident Herman, left, explaining to some former Eastern Bloc bloke, probably from Kakapipistan, why Belgium will always have better chocolates and beer than the rest of the world combined.)
The fella in question is Herman De Croo, Chairman of the Belgian House of Representatives, in Dutch parlance “De Kamer” (the other part of Belgain Parliament being the senate (De Senaat). This is what he said just recently:
Bush heeft ballen aan zijn lijf
"Ik ga het cru zeggen: Bush heeft ballen aan zijn lijf, Kerry niet. Bush weet wat hij wil voor de gemiddelde blanke Amerikaan; Kerry is de man van het wazige discours van 'enerzijds anderzijds' omdat hij als Democraat de multiculturele en andere minderheden bijeen moet vagen uit alle hoeken, wil hij de verkiezingen winnen. Ik heb een lang gesprek gehad met de campagneleider van Al Gore. Hij zei: 'Je mag van Bush zeggen wat je wil, maar hij is niet idioot. Hij luistert naar zijn adviseurs, en het zijn de beste. Al Gore was ook geen idioot, maar hij luisterde niet'. Ik denk dat Bush het gaat halen. En ik ben er niet tegen."
Herman De Croo, geïnterviewd door Steven Somers in Het Laatste Nieuws van 18 september 2004
dinsdag 21 september 2004 @ 20:24 - Geen reacties - - 0 Verwijz
Translation:
I'm gonna tell it like it is: Bush has balls, Kerry hasn't. Bush knows what he wants for the average white American; Kerry is the man of the clouded blah-blah-blah of "on the one hand - on the other hand", because as a Democrat he has to scrape together the multicultural and other minorities from all corners, if he wants to win the elections. I had a long conversation with the campaign leader of Al Gore. He said: "Of Bush you can say what you want, but he is no idiot. He listens to his advisors, and they are the best. Al Gore was no idiot either, but he didn't listen." I think that Bush is gonna make it. And I'm not against that.
(Herman De Croo, interviewed by Steven Somers in "Het Laatste Nieuws", Sept 18, 2004 issue)
Hat tip to Luc Van Braekel, Belgian Entrepreneur and ICT-Consultant, man of infinitely high intellectual capabilities AND Belgian Anti-Idiotarian BloggEr (BABE).
Oh, btw, dunno if you heard it but our Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt had a rough ride. His car, an Audi A8, swerved off a turnpike just south of Ghent, rolled over several times and left the would-be EU Chief with bruises and two broken ribs. If you ask me, either the driver was thinking too much of sex (you know how Audi drivers are) or a jihadist cat had climbed aboard and attacked the poor fella, in which case he should simply have made a U-turn on that turnpike, presto.
Finally, a A Belgian woman has given birth to the first baby born after an ovarian tissue transplant, a medical breakthrough that brings hope to young cancer patients whose fertility may be damaged by treatment.
Doctors led by Professor Jacques Donnez, head of the Department of Gynaecology and Andrology at the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, removed and froze ovarian tissue from Touirat in 1997, when she was 25. This unprecedented event, the culmination of 10 years of research by Professor Donnez and his team funded by the Televie and the FNRS, brings immense joy to the parents for whom this baby represents a true miracle," the hospital said.
All right Herman, after having read this I will forgive you for JUST ONE DAY that you, a politician pretending to be center-right and a defender of the free market, are in fact the biggest “employer” in the southwestern corner of Oost-Vlaanderen because of the tens of thousands of dumbass nitwits who would be too stupid to cut off the noose round their neck if someone gave them a knife you helped to a pussy job on some dusty desk in Brussels. I also forgive you for JUST ONE DAY, and this time I eat my heart out, for being such an ardent belgicistic *sslicker to the Royal Family who despise your mother tongue and whose Queen can’t speak three words of Dutch in a row even if she lives in our Magic Kingdom for over forty years and Flanders is Belgium’s economic locomotive…
(A confident Herman, left, explaining to some former Eastern Bloc bloke, probably from Kakapipistan, why Belgium will always have better chocolates and beer than the rest of the world combined.)
The fella in question is Herman De Croo, Chairman of the Belgian House of Representatives, in Dutch parlance “De Kamer” (the other part of Belgain Parliament being the senate (De Senaat). This is what he said just recently:
Bush heeft ballen aan zijn lijf
"Ik ga het cru zeggen: Bush heeft ballen aan zijn lijf, Kerry niet. Bush weet wat hij wil voor de gemiddelde blanke Amerikaan; Kerry is de man van het wazige discours van 'enerzijds anderzijds' omdat hij als Democraat de multiculturele en andere minderheden bijeen moet vagen uit alle hoeken, wil hij de verkiezingen winnen. Ik heb een lang gesprek gehad met de campagneleider van Al Gore. Hij zei: 'Je mag van Bush zeggen wat je wil, maar hij is niet idioot. Hij luistert naar zijn adviseurs, en het zijn de beste. Al Gore was ook geen idioot, maar hij luisterde niet'. Ik denk dat Bush het gaat halen. En ik ben er niet tegen."
Herman De Croo, geïnterviewd door Steven Somers in Het Laatste Nieuws van 18 september 2004
dinsdag 21 september 2004 @ 20:24 - Geen reacties - - 0 Verwijz
Translation:
I'm gonna tell it like it is: Bush has balls, Kerry hasn't. Bush knows what he wants for the average white American; Kerry is the man of the clouded blah-blah-blah of "on the one hand - on the other hand", because as a Democrat he has to scrape together the multicultural and other minorities from all corners, if he wants to win the elections. I had a long conversation with the campaign leader of Al Gore. He said: "Of Bush you can say what you want, but he is no idiot. He listens to his advisors, and they are the best. Al Gore was no idiot either, but he didn't listen." I think that Bush is gonna make it. And I'm not against that.
(Herman De Croo, interviewed by Steven Somers in "Het Laatste Nieuws", Sept 18, 2004 issue)
Hat tip to Luc Van Braekel, Belgian Entrepreneur and ICT-Consultant, man of infinitely high intellectual capabilities AND Belgian Anti-Idiotarian BloggEr (BABE).
Oh, btw, dunno if you heard it but our Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt had a rough ride. His car, an Audi A8, swerved off a turnpike just south of Ghent, rolled over several times and left the would-be EU Chief with bruises and two broken ribs. If you ask me, either the driver was thinking too much of sex (you know how Audi drivers are) or a jihadist cat had climbed aboard and attacked the poor fella, in which case he should simply have made a U-turn on that turnpike, presto.
Finally, a A Belgian woman has given birth to the first baby born after an ovarian tissue transplant, a medical breakthrough that brings hope to young cancer patients whose fertility may be damaged by treatment.
Doctors led by Professor Jacques Donnez, head of the Department of Gynaecology and Andrology at the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, removed and froze ovarian tissue from Touirat in 1997, when she was 25. This unprecedented event, the culmination of 10 years of research by Professor Donnez and his team funded by the Televie and the FNRS, brings immense joy to the parents for whom this baby represents a true miracle," the hospital said.
Don't say that this isn't a magic kingdom.
MFBB
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Friday, September 17, 2004
CONFESSIONS OF A BELGIAN MIND.
(the following post started out in the comments section as a response to the Krauthammer article Scott linked to. When it got a little out of hand I decided to post it here)
Haaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Finally something from Krauthammer. You know, the last time I read him in Time Europe was some weeks before OIF started, in February 2003. I can testify that, over the course of one year, Time has banked sharply to the left, joining the anti-Bush hysteria. And this has become SO obvious in the latest issues. Let me enlighten you on the following columns by Joe Klein, leftwing columnist and Clinton biographer:
1° Sept 20 issue: "All you have to do is believe"
top quote: Bush seems to believe what he says, even if it doesn't always match reality.
2° Sept 13 issue: "Tearing Kerry down"
top quote: Bush at the convention, an effective though sometimes sleazy affair
3° Sept 6 issue "What the Swifties cost America"
top quote: The Swift Boat imbroglio overshadowed Kerry's meeting in Philadelphia
4° August 30 issue "Kerry in a Straitjacket"
top quote: The Swifties' ability to dominate the news with incendiary nonsense is, I believe, a direct result of Kerry's unwillingness to dominate the news with tart, controversial substance by challenging the President on Iraq.
5° August 16 issue "America divided? It's only the Blabocrats"
top quote: A flying squad of Vietnam veterans - not directly related to the Bush campaign - launched a slime attack on John Kerry's war record.
6° August 9 issue: "The audacity of hope"
top quote: Kerry is not going to bug out of Iraq or abandon the broader war against Islamist radicalism.
Huh Joe? But he just said it was the wrong war at the wrong place during the wrong time????
etc. etc. etc. quack quack quack...
Anyway, you get the picture. I took a Time Europe subscription some 3 1/2 years ago. Back then it was reasonably balanced and Klein had columns spaced several weeks or more apart. Over the last 1 1/2 month ago, he's in every issue, becoming more hysterical every week. I'm seriously beginning to regret having renewed my subscription. I get enough Dubya hatred in my own press already. On the ferry to Scotland I bought a copy of "Stern", a leading German magazine and it was almost literally steaming with hatred against the Prez. One thing keeps me from throwing Time Europe overboard, that's that the nonpolitical stuff is quite good. But if I could, I'd swap it for Kristol's The Weekly Standard. Just don't know if I can get it over here.
Alright, now over to the article Scott linked to. Well, it's a brilliant exposure of how Kerry's flipflops have to do rather more, imho, with opportunism than with not being able to take a stance. Not that he has convinced me yet he IS able to take a stance! But the example with voting against the 87 billion $ to support the troops is neatly explained here as an attempt to quell Dean's surge back in those early days. I don't know how it is with you, but it's the first time that I see it in this light. I mean, revealing how Kerry's shifting opinions have everything to do with the most obvious political trend in a particular timeframe makes you see it all in a different perspective. Well, if I would live in the States I would now be even less inclined to ever vote for Kerry. A fella who is shifting positions on any given issue because he can't make up his mind is one thing. A guy who shifts positions to please a target group at a time it seems appropriate is even worse.
I mean, you have guys who can't decide whether they will go after Stella, Susan, Lauren, Sherilyn, Cindy or Jessica. I can sympathize, oooooh yessir, I can, not in the least because I once was in a simila....
... forget about that!
And then you have guys who first take one wife because in a particular time frame it seems the right thing to do, and then decide for another one when, well, when they like to smear their French fries with something else than mayonaise.
Nah, thanks. Then I'd rather have a cowboy please.
MFBB
(the following post started out in the comments section as a response to the Krauthammer article Scott linked to. When it got a little out of hand I decided to post it here)
Haaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Finally something from Krauthammer. You know, the last time I read him in Time Europe was some weeks before OIF started, in February 2003. I can testify that, over the course of one year, Time has banked sharply to the left, joining the anti-Bush hysteria. And this has become SO obvious in the latest issues. Let me enlighten you on the following columns by Joe Klein, leftwing columnist and Clinton biographer:
1° Sept 20 issue: "All you have to do is believe"
top quote: Bush seems to believe what he says, even if it doesn't always match reality.
2° Sept 13 issue: "Tearing Kerry down"
top quote: Bush at the convention, an effective though sometimes sleazy affair
3° Sept 6 issue "What the Swifties cost America"
top quote: The Swift Boat imbroglio overshadowed Kerry's meeting in Philadelphia
4° August 30 issue "Kerry in a Straitjacket"
top quote: The Swifties' ability to dominate the news with incendiary nonsense is, I believe, a direct result of Kerry's unwillingness to dominate the news with tart, controversial substance by challenging the President on Iraq.
5° August 16 issue "America divided? It's only the Blabocrats"
top quote: A flying squad of Vietnam veterans - not directly related to the Bush campaign - launched a slime attack on John Kerry's war record.
6° August 9 issue: "The audacity of hope"
top quote: Kerry is not going to bug out of Iraq or abandon the broader war against Islamist radicalism.
Huh Joe? But he just said it was the wrong war at the wrong place during the wrong time????
etc. etc. etc. quack quack quack...
Anyway, you get the picture. I took a Time Europe subscription some 3 1/2 years ago. Back then it was reasonably balanced and Klein had columns spaced several weeks or more apart. Over the last 1 1/2 month ago, he's in every issue, becoming more hysterical every week. I'm seriously beginning to regret having renewed my subscription. I get enough Dubya hatred in my own press already. On the ferry to Scotland I bought a copy of "Stern", a leading German magazine and it was almost literally steaming with hatred against the Prez. One thing keeps me from throwing Time Europe overboard, that's that the nonpolitical stuff is quite good. But if I could, I'd swap it for Kristol's The Weekly Standard. Just don't know if I can get it over here.
Alright, now over to the article Scott linked to. Well, it's a brilliant exposure of how Kerry's flipflops have to do rather more, imho, with opportunism than with not being able to take a stance. Not that he has convinced me yet he IS able to take a stance! But the example with voting against the 87 billion $ to support the troops is neatly explained here as an attempt to quell Dean's surge back in those early days. I don't know how it is with you, but it's the first time that I see it in this light. I mean, revealing how Kerry's shifting opinions have everything to do with the most obvious political trend in a particular timeframe makes you see it all in a different perspective. Well, if I would live in the States I would now be even less inclined to ever vote for Kerry. A fella who is shifting positions on any given issue because he can't make up his mind is one thing. A guy who shifts positions to please a target group at a time it seems appropriate is even worse.
I mean, you have guys who can't decide whether they will go after Stella, Susan, Lauren, Sherilyn, Cindy or Jessica. I can sympathize, oooooh yessir, I can, not in the least because I once was in a simila....
... forget about that!
And then you have guys who first take one wife because in a particular time frame it seems the right thing to do, and then decide for another one when, well, when they like to smear their French fries with something else than mayonaise.
Nah, thanks. Then I'd rather have a cowboy please.
MFBB
Charles Krauthammer has the best rundown of Kerry's positions on Iraq that I've seen so far.
Here's a challenge for you Kerry folks: Read this article with an open mind and then come back here and tell us why you think John Kerry would do a better job in Iraq and the War on Terror. This is a serious request; I have absolutely no idea how someone could come to this conclusion with knowledge of Kerry's record. Educate me.
Here's a challenge for you Kerry folks: Read this article with an open mind and then come back here and tell us why you think John Kerry would do a better job in Iraq and the War on Terror. This is a serious request; I have absolutely no idea how someone could come to this conclusion with knowledge of Kerry's record. Educate me.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
SCOTLAND 101: PICS AND PICTS.
Well, as you may have noticed, your servant is back! And with some pics of the beautiful Scottish landscape to entertain you. But since in Scotland you can also almost literally drink history, I thought I’d do well to enlighten you a bit on how this all in all little remote corner of Europe came to be what it still is today, one half of the "United Kingdom"! That’s right, the very notion "UK" has become so common that most people hardly stand still at its deeper meaning, namely that Great Britain is the Union of the English and Scottish Kingdoms (for lack of space we will just forget about Wales and Northern Ireland, okay?). Also, you know very well the British flag, don’t you? That’s not the English flag, it’s the flag of England and Scotland United, which is why it is called "Union Jack"!
Now before Scotland became a kingdom itself, its relevant history in a broader European context began with Roman involvement. There was then of course no talk of a kingdom. Society was organized with the famous clan system as cornerstone. Clan comes from clann, a celtic (gaelic) word, which means in fact "children". The clann’s "boss" was called the "Chieftain" and now that I come to think of it, in fact England played ultimately rather fair in respecting its erstwhile foe for, like I said, it deliberately diluted its identity within the framework of a united kingdom, but also many words and terms and icons were allowed to find their way into British parlance. The former main British battletank e.g. was named "Chieftain". Other gaelic words which have become immortal are "ben" for a mountain and "loch" and "glen" to respectively describe the typical long and narrow Scottish lakes and valleys. Also of interest is the gaelic word for Scotland, which is Alba (and from which "Albany" is derived, as in "Duke of Albany". Now you also know the scottish roots of the name of New York's capital).
The Romans had quite a hard time with the rough people in Britain's northern corner and especially with a particular Highland tribe, or conglomerate of clans, namely the Picts, from the latin pictus, meaning those who are painted. (the Picts painted themselves blue. No connection whatsoever with Smurfs though). The Romans won their battles, and here certainly Agricolas crushing victory over Algacus in 84AD at Mons Graupius (from this word comes, through a medieval printing setting error, the notion Grampian Mountains) comes to mind. Nevertheless at some point they considered the north of Britannia not worth the investment in troops and money and left it to its own devices beyond the famous Wall constructed by Hadrian (around 123 AD), still visible today along the "official" English/Scottish border. The real history freaks will know that this was not the end of Roman involvement in Scotland and for a while the Romans were still active futher north and even built another wall, Antonius’ Wall, between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth.
Between 400-430 the Romans finally left the British Isles. About one century later immigrants from Ireland established themselves along Scotlands northern and western shores, and only now, since they were called Scots, makes the terms by which we refer to the area their entry into our vocabulary. Apart from the Picts already present in the Highlands and these newcomers, other constituents in the crazy smorgasbord of peoples populating the area finally to be known as Scotland, were English tribes poring in from the south and Germanic ones who came from oversea. Another Irish immigrant, the Christian missionary Saint Columba managed around 563, year of his arrival on the famous island of Iona, to unify the Scottish tribes warring amongst themselves. When finally in 843 a fella named Kenneth McAlpin was able to ally the Scots with the Picts some first resemblance of a Scottish nation was born.
Ok, enough for this first chapter. Enjoy the pics, the first one is of Loch Shiel at Glenfinnan, where the last Stuart, whom history chose to immortalize through the nickname Bonnie Prince Charlie rather than by the flattering denomination "Young Pretender", set foot on land in summer 1745. It was the last attempt to wrestle Scotland from the British Crown and ended, although initially successful, in utter defeat at Culloden, not one year later.
The second pic is the so-called Queen’s View of Loch Tummel, allegedly named after Queen Victoria since she enjoyed this very view during a visit in 1866. Other sources however state that the queen in question is rather Isabella, spouse of the medieval King Robert The Bruce.
MFBB
Well, as you may have noticed, your servant is back! And with some pics of the beautiful Scottish landscape to entertain you. But since in Scotland you can also almost literally drink history, I thought I’d do well to enlighten you a bit on how this all in all little remote corner of Europe came to be what it still is today, one half of the "United Kingdom"! That’s right, the very notion "UK" has become so common that most people hardly stand still at its deeper meaning, namely that Great Britain is the Union of the English and Scottish Kingdoms (for lack of space we will just forget about Wales and Northern Ireland, okay?). Also, you know very well the British flag, don’t you? That’s not the English flag, it’s the flag of England and Scotland United, which is why it is called "Union Jack"!
Now before Scotland became a kingdom itself, its relevant history in a broader European context began with Roman involvement. There was then of course no talk of a kingdom. Society was organized with the famous clan system as cornerstone. Clan comes from clann, a celtic (gaelic) word, which means in fact "children". The clann’s "boss" was called the "Chieftain" and now that I come to think of it, in fact England played ultimately rather fair in respecting its erstwhile foe for, like I said, it deliberately diluted its identity within the framework of a united kingdom, but also many words and terms and icons were allowed to find their way into British parlance. The former main British battletank e.g. was named "Chieftain". Other gaelic words which have become immortal are "ben" for a mountain and "loch" and "glen" to respectively describe the typical long and narrow Scottish lakes and valleys. Also of interest is the gaelic word for Scotland, which is Alba (and from which "Albany" is derived, as in "Duke of Albany". Now you also know the scottish roots of the name of New York's capital).
The Romans had quite a hard time with the rough people in Britain's northern corner and especially with a particular Highland tribe, or conglomerate of clans, namely the Picts, from the latin pictus, meaning those who are painted. (the Picts painted themselves blue. No connection whatsoever with Smurfs though). The Romans won their battles, and here certainly Agricolas crushing victory over Algacus in 84AD at Mons Graupius (from this word comes, through a medieval printing setting error, the notion Grampian Mountains) comes to mind. Nevertheless at some point they considered the north of Britannia not worth the investment in troops and money and left it to its own devices beyond the famous Wall constructed by Hadrian (around 123 AD), still visible today along the "official" English/Scottish border. The real history freaks will know that this was not the end of Roman involvement in Scotland and for a while the Romans were still active futher north and even built another wall, Antonius’ Wall, between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth.
Between 400-430 the Romans finally left the British Isles. About one century later immigrants from Ireland established themselves along Scotlands northern and western shores, and only now, since they were called Scots, makes the terms by which we refer to the area their entry into our vocabulary. Apart from the Picts already present in the Highlands and these newcomers, other constituents in the crazy smorgasbord of peoples populating the area finally to be known as Scotland, were English tribes poring in from the south and Germanic ones who came from oversea. Another Irish immigrant, the Christian missionary Saint Columba managed around 563, year of his arrival on the famous island of Iona, to unify the Scottish tribes warring amongst themselves. When finally in 843 a fella named Kenneth McAlpin was able to ally the Scots with the Picts some first resemblance of a Scottish nation was born.
Ok, enough for this first chapter. Enjoy the pics, the first one is of Loch Shiel at Glenfinnan, where the last Stuart, whom history chose to immortalize through the nickname Bonnie Prince Charlie rather than by the flattering denomination "Young Pretender", set foot on land in summer 1745. It was the last attempt to wrestle Scotland from the British Crown and ended, although initially successful, in utter defeat at Culloden, not one year later.
The second pic is the so-called Queen’s View of Loch Tummel, allegedly named after Queen Victoria since she enjoyed this very view during a visit in 1866. Other sources however state that the queen in question is rather Isabella, spouse of the medieval King Robert The Bruce.
MFBB
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Nice. Borders employees actively discussing sabotaging sales of "Unfit for Command".
A tip o' the hat to Little Green Footballs.
A tip o' the hat to Little Green Footballs.
I realize this is supposed to be shocking and really get the strength of the author's feelings across to the reader. I actually laughed out loud.
Pathetic.
EDIT: Thanks to Jamie for reminding where I saw this story originally. Best of the Web
And so it's not hard to imagine that on November 3rd, if the election can be called by then, there might be a sort of grim mass exodus from this sad planet should Bush pull this election out. My generation may be particularly vulnerable to the urge to lay back in a warm bath and open up their veins as chants of "Four More Years" echo horribly from every 24 hour cable news station.
Pathetic.
EDIT: Thanks to Jamie for reminding where I saw this story originally. Best of the Web
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
This is for all of you who think we need socialized medicine in the US.
"Some provincial premiers -- notably Ralph Klein of Alberta -- say one obvious solution is to increase the use of private clinics and hospitals, where people would pay for treatment."
Duh.
"Some provincial premiers -- notably Ralph Klein of Alberta -- say one obvious solution is to increase the use of private clinics and hospitals, where people would pay for treatment."
Duh.
Monday, September 13, 2004
What a goddamned liar. This statement by John Kerry earlier today is completely and utterly untrue.
So, tomorrow for the first time in 10 years when a killer walks into a gun shop, when a terrorist goes to a gun show somewhere in America, when they want to purchase an AK-47 or some other military assault weapon, they're going to hear one word: 'sure'.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
On a day where the rest of the country was remembering the tragic attack that led us into the War on Terror, John Kerry was also talking about war. Unfortunately, Kerry was talking race warfare.
I've got two problems with Kerry's remarks: First, Kerry shows a distinct lack of class making these remarks on the anniversary of 9/11, when everyone else seemed to be taking a day off in remembrance of the tragic events of that day. While I'm sure this was calculated to try and get people's minds off 9/11, could he have not waited until Sunday morning to come out with this? Second, Kerry is dredging up one of the great myths of the 2000 election, that millions of black votes went uncounted, and it was the Republicans that were responsible. Anyone that still believes this yarn is beyond help. Nobody has ever offered a shred of evidence to prove this charge. Even Jesse Jackson: Race Warlord Extrordinaire came up completely empty on the night of the election when asked point blank by Sean Hannity to produce one single disenfranchised black voter.
It's now obvious that the Kerry campaign is extremely desperate, but I'm not as excited about this as some people are. Anyone crazy enough to float fake military documents and dig up past lies to drum up racial tensions is probably capable of anything. Look for Kerry's minions to come up with dozens of charges of voter fraud and disenfranchisement after the election. By sheer coincidence, all of these cases will happen in key battleground states. The Democrats believe the Supreme Court chose the last president. They will try to use trial lawyers to choose the next one.
I've got two problems with Kerry's remarks: First, Kerry shows a distinct lack of class making these remarks on the anniversary of 9/11, when everyone else seemed to be taking a day off in remembrance of the tragic events of that day. While I'm sure this was calculated to try and get people's minds off 9/11, could he have not waited until Sunday morning to come out with this? Second, Kerry is dredging up one of the great myths of the 2000 election, that millions of black votes went uncounted, and it was the Republicans that were responsible. Anyone that still believes this yarn is beyond help. Nobody has ever offered a shred of evidence to prove this charge. Even Jesse Jackson: Race Warlord Extrordinaire came up completely empty on the night of the election when asked point blank by Sean Hannity to produce one single disenfranchised black voter.
It's now obvious that the Kerry campaign is extremely desperate, but I'm not as excited about this as some people are. Anyone crazy enough to float fake military documents and dig up past lies to drum up racial tensions is probably capable of anything. Look for Kerry's minions to come up with dozens of charges of voter fraud and disenfranchisement after the election. By sheer coincidence, all of these cases will happen in key battleground states. The Democrats believe the Supreme Court chose the last president. They will try to use trial lawyers to choose the next one.
Friday, September 10, 2004
Anyone who thinks we can negotiate with the kind of people who put this little boy through hell are hopelessly misguided.
"And I intend to have not just a Department of Health and Human Services, but a Department of Wellness." John Kerry
I'm speechless. Talk amongst yourselves.
Here is a link.
I'm speechless. Talk amongst yourselves.
Here is a link.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
This is why even John Kerry would not have gotten France on board for the war on Iraq.
On April 8 came the downing of Air Force Maj. Jim Ewald's A-10 Thunderbolt fighter over Baghdad and the discovery that it was a French-made Roland missile that brought down the American pilot and destroyed a $13 million aircraft. Ewald, one of the first U.S. pilots shot down in the war, was rescued by members of the Army's 54th Engineer Battalion who saw him parachute to earth not far from the wreckage.
Army intelligence concluded that the French had sold the missile to the Iraqis within the past year, despite French denials.
A week after Ewald's A-10 was downed, an Army team searching Iraqi weapons depots at the Baghdad airport discovered caches of French-made missiles. One anti-aircraft missile, among a cache of 51 Roland-2s from a French-German manufacturing partnership, bore a label indicating that the batch was produced just months earlier.
In May, Army intelligence found a stack of blank French passports in an Iraqi ministry, confirming what U.S. intelligence already had determined: The French had helped Iraqi war criminals escape from coalition forces — and therefore justice.
I stumbled across this article on absenteeism among workers in the US auto industry. This isn't the normal DowneastBlog fodder, but check out these gems:
"Absenteeism among hourly workers in the automotive industry runs about 10 percent annually, about three times higher than in other industries, according to a study published this year by the Automotive Supplier Action Committee, a trade group. At some Big Three plants, absenteeism runs as high as 20 percent."
"Line workers receive up to five weeks of vacation and 17 paid holidays. When plants are idled for retooling or slow sales, workers also collect pay."
"During last year’s contract talks, Chrysler sought and won stricter disciplinary practices to lower absenteeism. The new contract reduced the limit of unexcused absences from 12 to eight before a worker gets an unpaid month off. Previously, it took nine no-shows to get a written warning."
These have to be the most spoiled workers in America, and they complain more than anyone. How many days of unexcused absences would you accept from an employee before firing them? I don't think I'd make it to 2.
One thing the article fails to mention: This could all be solved by getting rid of the unions and allowing workers to compete for jobs. Simple.
"Absenteeism among hourly workers in the automotive industry runs about 10 percent annually, about three times higher than in other industries, according to a study published this year by the Automotive Supplier Action Committee, a trade group. At some Big Three plants, absenteeism runs as high as 20 percent."
"Line workers receive up to five weeks of vacation and 17 paid holidays. When plants are idled for retooling or slow sales, workers also collect pay."
"During last year’s contract talks, Chrysler sought and won stricter disciplinary practices to lower absenteeism. The new contract reduced the limit of unexcused absences from 12 to eight before a worker gets an unpaid month off. Previously, it took nine no-shows to get a written warning."
These have to be the most spoiled workers in America, and they complain more than anyone. How many days of unexcused absences would you accept from an employee before firing them? I don't think I'd make it to 2.
One thing the article fails to mention: This could all be solved by getting rid of the unions and allowing workers to compete for jobs. Simple.
It looks as if Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry is back.
Good, just keep her talking.
Good, just keep her talking.
Ok, I haven't linked to Le Grand Maître des Grands Lunettes in a while, so here he is.
This is a nice companion to the Walter Williams piece a few posts down. If you read this and still think that the president should punish American companies that outsource to other countries, you get a wedgie. And a swirly.
This is a nice companion to the Walter Williams piece a few posts down. If you read this and still think that the president should punish American companies that outsource to other countries, you get a wedgie. And a swirly.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Making fun of Southerner's accents probably isn't conducive to getting votes. That is probably why this Zell Miller quote from the GOP Convention was pulled from the Kerry website rather quickly:
You can see the original page here.
Looks as if Jacques Six-Pacque needs to work on indentifyin' with the common man. I don't know what the problem is, after all, he has his man-servant help him put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, non?
106. Miller: “…Against the Trident missile, against, against, against. This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Speeutbawlls?”[Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]
You can see the original page here.
Looks as if Jacques Six-Pacque needs to work on indentifyin' with the common man. I don't know what the problem is, after all, he has his man-servant help him put his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, non?
Can someone explain Kerry's Iraq policy to me?
Seriously, because he sure as hell doesn't seem capable.
Seriously, because he sure as hell doesn't seem capable.
Walter Williams exposes the truth behind John Edwards' "two Americas." Actually, there are two Americas: one that pays taxes and one that doesn't.
"When all of the dependents of these income-producing households are counted, there are roughly 122 million Americans -- 44 percent of the U.S. population -- outside of the federal income tax system."
The next person who says "tax cuts for the rich" gets a wedgie.
"When all of the dependents of these income-producing households are counted, there are roughly 122 million Americans -- 44 percent of the U.S. population -- outside of the federal income tax system."
The next person who says "tax cuts for the rich" gets a wedgie.
"John Kerry's biographer today called on the presidential candidate to release his military records and warned a Navy investigation into his medals could prove to be the 'death knell' of his campaign.
In the past, Kerry has said he could not release some documents because of contractual obligations to Douglas Brinkley, author of 'Tour of Duty.' Brinkley said he has no contractual claims to any of the papers."
And while he's at it, he should release his medical records.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Putin gets it.
"Why don't you meet Osama Bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?"
Take notice, appeasers: adapt or become extinct. That fence you're sitting on is about to be set on fire.
"Why don't you meet Osama Bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?"
Take notice, appeasers: adapt or become extinct. That fence you're sitting on is about to be set on fire.
Monday, September 06, 2004
We need more Muslim outrage like this.
It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.
Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.
Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.
What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?
These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.
This post from The Corner seems like a good, commonsensical idea to me.
If an illegal immigrant is injured while working on private property, instead of absorbing the costs of his treatment (which they cannot reclaim from state Workmen's Comp schemes since the worker is not covered), hospitals and municipalities should sue the property owner to recover those costs. A few well-publicized prosecutions like this -- even unsuccessful ones, which could still cost the defendant a bundle of money in legal fees -- would have homeowners clamoring for guarantees from home-service contractors that their workforce does not include illegal entrants.
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Wow 2.
I think it is starting to dawn on the Europeans that appeasement doesn't really work. Let's hope so.
(German Foreign Minister Joschka) Fischer spelled out three conditions to ensure a prosperous and peaceful Middle East and therefore to guarantee Europe’s security: reforms, solving the Middle East conflict and stabilising Iraq.
“If you put all three together it is quite clear we need American leadership, America in the driver’s seat,” Fischer said.
I think it is starting to dawn on the Europeans that appeasement doesn't really work. Let's hope so.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Did you say bounce?
I found this an interesting testament to the kind of person John Kerry is.
ASSHOLE.
I found this an interesting testament to the kind of person John Kerry is.
Kerry bounced the ceremonial first pitch during last night's Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway Park, but he said he was just going easy on the National Guard soldier and Iraq war veteran standing in as catcher.
"I held back," Mr. Kerry told reporters early this morning, on the plane ride after the game. "He was very nervous. I tried to lob it gently."
The ball bounced at the feet of Will Pumyea, the 23-year-old who served tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq as a military police officer in the Massachusetts National Guard. The soldier fumbled for the ball beneath his legs, but managed to come up with it.
ASSHOLE.
Let's see who wins the spin battle on this one.
While these aren't the spectacular numbers from a few months ago, they seem to refute the predictions of the economy sliding backwards. This will be interesting...
While these aren't the spectacular numbers from a few months ago, they seem to refute the predictions of the economy sliding backwards. This will be interesting...
Yeah, the Republicans brought hate to NYC.
More like bring out the hate in the sensitive, caring liberals...
A featured performer at a National Organization for Women rally accused President Bush of having "savagely raped " women "over and over" by allegedly stealing the 2000 presidential election.
Poet Molly Birnbaum read aloud to a crowd of feminists gathered in New York's Central Park on Wednesday night, as part of a NOW event dubbed "Code Red: Stop the Bush Agenda Rally."
"Imagine a way to erase that night four years ago when you (President Bush) savagely raped every pandemic woman over and over with each vote you got, a thrust with each state you stole," Birnbaum said from the podium. (If something is pandemic, it affects many people or a number of countries.)
More like bring out the hate in the sensitive, caring liberals...
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS…
Tomorrow Thursday my wife, our daughter and me are going on vacation to Scotland. As I’m typing this, with roughly 1 hr plus of paperwork still to do before venturing to bed, it occurs to me what a lucky bastard I am. Before the advent of the Internet, I used to think I had a pretty good idea of what was going on in the world. When, though, I state that thanks to my broadband connection I’m seeing world events from a virtual front seat, I still may be seriously overplaying my hand. As sure as the earth is round, too many machinations and undercurrents in society still escape my view, and too many topics just catch the eye without my brain connecting the obvious dots and grasping the true relevance of what I see.
Yet for all that, the Internet has proven itself a wonderful tool. At worst it has turned my happy relative ignorance into an uneasy realization that we truly live in a world in turmoil, a global battleground of ideologies, and that’s not even counting the plethora of mundane-or-rather-not-so-mundane problems facing the majority of earthlings: proper nutrition, health care, lack of freedom etc… etc…
At best though it has opened the door for new friends across the globe, and notably in the United States, where over the past year I finally found large numbers of people who thought and spoke as I do – or liked to do, since over here in the Old Continent very few qualify as people to whom I’d refer as being “on my side of the fence”. I’ve stated this several times and it may even start to bore you, but you in America, where despite the omnipresence of liberal media, rightwing views are carried by at least half of the population, have no idea whatsoever what it means to live in an “intellectual” environment where political correctness is the New Religion. When I was invited by Kerry Dupont to post on Downeast, a whole world opened up for me, a world where the decade-old lies with which I had been bombarded since childhood (as a twelve-ear old I had to learn that Julius Nyerere, notorious for screwing Tanzania’s welfare, was “The Torch-Bearer of Africa”) were effectively exposed as the senile rantings of pony-tailed, woollen-sock wearing, frustrated and hypocritical do-gooders locked in May 1968.
I like to live my life the way I do it: working hard, loving my family, raising our kid and hopefully kids, planning and securing my and my family’s future, renovating the country house I bought in 1997, trying to make my business flourish, reading and studying, enjoying the beauty of my country and continent, both its natural as its architectural enigmas… I was raised in a family where hard work was considered one of the highest virtues and laziness was something to loathe… and when all the work was done, I truly learned to appreciate the reward of a vacation meant to come to rest, breathe other air (often in Switzerlands mountains) and simply enjoy being healthy and young.
As I am preparing for this long-awaited break from the often demanding work, anticipating to venture out in the grandiose scenery of Scotland’s mountains, glens and lochs, I’d like to wholeheartedly thank those people who are on the forefront of defending our civilization from a murderous ideology that wants to cast hundreds of millions back in the seventh century. In a very real sense of the word I feel that those nineteen year-old troopers in Iraq, the security personnel back in the States and in my own Europe, and all those from far or close involved in fighting this “War On Terror”, because that’s what it is, a War On Terror, are fighting to preserve our - my - way of life. And I’m tremendously grateful for that. Not knowing which readers care about religion and therefore a bit reluctant to invoke God, I find it nevertheless appropriate to share with you that I’ll surely take some time to go into a church and save a prayer or two for all those out there, men and women, following orders, taking responsibility and putting their lives at risk. Thanks for all that.
If all goes well, we’ll be back on September 14th. Thanks for the company, Kerry, Tom, Scott, Mark, Jamie, Stacy, JohnL, LarryF, Kevin, Drazil, John, Arthur and all those I might forget.
Tomorrow Thursday my wife, our daughter and me are going on vacation to Scotland. As I’m typing this, with roughly 1 hr plus of paperwork still to do before venturing to bed, it occurs to me what a lucky bastard I am. Before the advent of the Internet, I used to think I had a pretty good idea of what was going on in the world. When, though, I state that thanks to my broadband connection I’m seeing world events from a virtual front seat, I still may be seriously overplaying my hand. As sure as the earth is round, too many machinations and undercurrents in society still escape my view, and too many topics just catch the eye without my brain connecting the obvious dots and grasping the true relevance of what I see.
Yet for all that, the Internet has proven itself a wonderful tool. At worst it has turned my happy relative ignorance into an uneasy realization that we truly live in a world in turmoil, a global battleground of ideologies, and that’s not even counting the plethora of mundane-or-rather-not-so-mundane problems facing the majority of earthlings: proper nutrition, health care, lack of freedom etc… etc…
At best though it has opened the door for new friends across the globe, and notably in the United States, where over the past year I finally found large numbers of people who thought and spoke as I do – or liked to do, since over here in the Old Continent very few qualify as people to whom I’d refer as being “on my side of the fence”. I’ve stated this several times and it may even start to bore you, but you in America, where despite the omnipresence of liberal media, rightwing views are carried by at least half of the population, have no idea whatsoever what it means to live in an “intellectual” environment where political correctness is the New Religion. When I was invited by Kerry Dupont to post on Downeast, a whole world opened up for me, a world where the decade-old lies with which I had been bombarded since childhood (as a twelve-ear old I had to learn that Julius Nyerere, notorious for screwing Tanzania’s welfare, was “The Torch-Bearer of Africa”) were effectively exposed as the senile rantings of pony-tailed, woollen-sock wearing, frustrated and hypocritical do-gooders locked in May 1968.
I like to live my life the way I do it: working hard, loving my family, raising our kid and hopefully kids, planning and securing my and my family’s future, renovating the country house I bought in 1997, trying to make my business flourish, reading and studying, enjoying the beauty of my country and continent, both its natural as its architectural enigmas… I was raised in a family where hard work was considered one of the highest virtues and laziness was something to loathe… and when all the work was done, I truly learned to appreciate the reward of a vacation meant to come to rest, breathe other air (often in Switzerlands mountains) and simply enjoy being healthy and young.
As I am preparing for this long-awaited break from the often demanding work, anticipating to venture out in the grandiose scenery of Scotland’s mountains, glens and lochs, I’d like to wholeheartedly thank those people who are on the forefront of defending our civilization from a murderous ideology that wants to cast hundreds of millions back in the seventh century. In a very real sense of the word I feel that those nineteen year-old troopers in Iraq, the security personnel back in the States and in my own Europe, and all those from far or close involved in fighting this “War On Terror”, because that’s what it is, a War On Terror, are fighting to preserve our - my - way of life. And I’m tremendously grateful for that. Not knowing which readers care about religion and therefore a bit reluctant to invoke God, I find it nevertheless appropriate to share with you that I’ll surely take some time to go into a church and save a prayer or two for all those out there, men and women, following orders, taking responsibility and putting their lives at risk. Thanks for all that.
If all goes well, we’ll be back on September 14th. Thanks for the company, Kerry, Tom, Scott, Mark, Jamie, Stacy, JohnL, LarryF, Kevin, Drazil, John, Arthur and all those I might forget.
Paul Begala with some typical liberal sputum.
Lots of accusations being pushed as facts with no actual evidence to back it up.
Sounds about par for the course.
Lots of accusations being pushed as facts with no actual evidence to back it up.
Sounds about par for the course.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
WAR AND DISHONOR.
Kevin and other people on the left side, THIS IS THE ENEMY.
Don't you dare come to tell me the actions of your government have only encouraged and emboldened this human trash.
The Middle East is like a decrepit shack full of rattlesnakes and cockroaches in your backyard. You could it let it rot and wait for it to deteriorate to the point where the vermin ventures out and creeps into your house via the back door. Or you could go in and clean up the place. If you do the latter you can surely expect the creeps to crawl out from under damn near everything you touch and for a while it may look as if you had better left things alone.
Right now we are at that stage. We see the worms squirming in the daylight. What do we do now Kev?
Do we call it quits and leave the shack to harbor the vermin further? Oh, but now you have disturbed it, like a wasp's nest. Remember, if you close that shack's door, that does not mean the worms cease to exist.
Or do we proceed and look forward to making the place useful and pleasant again? Well, I'm not going to embellish it. I fear the democratization of the Middle East is going to be a long, hard slog.
Once again though, I'm reminded of Winston Churchill addressing Neville Chamberlain who chose to have the Czech Republic raped by the Nazis instead of confronting them:
YOU HAD THE CHOICE BETWEEN WAR AND DISHONOR. YOU CHOSE DISHONOR AND YOU WILL GET WAR.
Choices like that should be obvious.
God, those poor men. May I invite everyone to save a prayer for them and their relatives?
Kevin and other people on the left side, THIS IS THE ENEMY.
Don't you dare come to tell me the actions of your government have only encouraged and emboldened this human trash.
The Middle East is like a decrepit shack full of rattlesnakes and cockroaches in your backyard. You could it let it rot and wait for it to deteriorate to the point where the vermin ventures out and creeps into your house via the back door. Or you could go in and clean up the place. If you do the latter you can surely expect the creeps to crawl out from under damn near everything you touch and for a while it may look as if you had better left things alone.
Right now we are at that stage. We see the worms squirming in the daylight. What do we do now Kev?
Do we call it quits and leave the shack to harbor the vermin further? Oh, but now you have disturbed it, like a wasp's nest. Remember, if you close that shack's door, that does not mean the worms cease to exist.
Or do we proceed and look forward to making the place useful and pleasant again? Well, I'm not going to embellish it. I fear the democratization of the Middle East is going to be a long, hard slog.
Once again though, I'm reminded of Winston Churchill addressing Neville Chamberlain who chose to have the Czech Republic raped by the Nazis instead of confronting them:
YOU HAD THE CHOICE BETWEEN WAR AND DISHONOR. YOU CHOSE DISHONOR AND YOU WILL GET WAR.
Choices like that should be obvious.
God, those poor men. May I invite everyone to save a prayer for them and their relatives?
This pretty much sums up my opinion of protestors.
Protests are by and large a massive waste of time. No wonder they seem more popular with a certain side of the political aisle. Anyone with a job and a life is probably too busy to attend.
Protests are by and large a massive waste of time. No wonder they seem more popular with a certain side of the political aisle. Anyone with a job and a life is probably too busy to attend.
What's your platform?
OK, folks, here's your chance to be president. List the top 5 initiatives of your presidency. Here's mine:
1) Abolish the IRS, replace all income taxes with either a flat tax or national retail sales tax. Include a constitutional amendment that outlaws the income tax and prevents all "progressive" taxation.
2) Begin the process of legalizing drugs. Begin with marijuana and study the results of this phase and apply it to other drugs over time. As drugs become legalized, release all non violent drug offenders from prison whose sentences are associated with that drug. Split the money saved between the taxpayers and drug treatment programs. Phase out the treatment programs over time and let private entities handle this over the long run.
3) Privatize social security. Set a cutoff age where people can still receive benefits consistent with the current system, and then force everyone else to handle their own SS dollars.
4) Maintain or increase defense spending, but work to eliminate needless bureaucracy and waste in the Pentagon. Prepare for inevitable confrontation with Iran and North Korea.
5) Greatly expand investment/ incentive in all American energy resources. Bring nuclear back big time. Drill for oil wherever we can find it. Temporarily utilize our massive coal reserve. Achieve complete energy independence within 10 years.
OK, so there's really about 50 more of these, but that will do for now. How about you candidates?
OK, folks, here's your chance to be president. List the top 5 initiatives of your presidency. Here's mine:
1) Abolish the IRS, replace all income taxes with either a flat tax or national retail sales tax. Include a constitutional amendment that outlaws the income tax and prevents all "progressive" taxation.
2) Begin the process of legalizing drugs. Begin with marijuana and study the results of this phase and apply it to other drugs over time. As drugs become legalized, release all non violent drug offenders from prison whose sentences are associated with that drug. Split the money saved between the taxpayers and drug treatment programs. Phase out the treatment programs over time and let private entities handle this over the long run.
3) Privatize social security. Set a cutoff age where people can still receive benefits consistent with the current system, and then force everyone else to handle their own SS dollars.
4) Maintain or increase defense spending, but work to eliminate needless bureaucracy and waste in the Pentagon. Prepare for inevitable confrontation with Iran and North Korea.
5) Greatly expand investment/ incentive in all American energy resources. Bring nuclear back big time. Drill for oil wherever we can find it. Temporarily utilize our massive coal reserve. Achieve complete energy independence within 10 years.
OK, so there's really about 50 more of these, but that will do for now. How about you candidates?
Monday, August 30, 2004
I just love this.
If you're John Kerry, this has to scare the crap out of you. Bill Clinton OWNED the MTV crowd in both of his elections. He even said after being elected for his first term that he would not have been elected if it wasn't for MTV. This demographic has always been a gimme for the Democrats, but it looks like the times they are a changin'...
If you're John Kerry, this has to scare the crap out of you. Bill Clinton OWNED the MTV crowd in both of his elections. He even said after being elected for his first term that he would not have been elected if it wasn't for MTV. This demographic has always been a gimme for the Democrats, but it looks like the times they are a changin'...
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Saturday, August 28, 2004
From the Miami Herald.
“John Kerry had just pumped up a huge crowd in downtown West Palm Beach, promising to make the state a battleground for his quest to oust President Bush, when a local television journalist posed the question that any candidate with Florida ambitions should expect:
“What will you do about Cuba?
”As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.
'I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'' Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning. Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: ``And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.''
”It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote -- as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.
”There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.”
”Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.”
LAETITIA CASTA, COMPETITION AND NEELIE KROES.
Yesterday, a well-known Maine citizen aka Tom the Blog Dictator expressed concerns over the EU’s Competition Department opening an investigation into a Microsoft and Time Warner agreement that would effectively put them in charge of Contentguard.
To clarify what Contentguard does: well, with the arrival of the worldwide web, companies had the possibility to online offer hitherto unknown amounts of digital info, whether it be audio, text, video, games, business information or whatever. Of course a lot of these data can’t be copied or used right away. So the owners of web information and service providers effectively need a powerful software tool for the description, interpretation, and enforcement of rights to use any web resource.
Well, Contentguard is a company offering such a software tool. It developed XrML 2.0, which stands for eXtensible rights Markup Language, and which can be used to extend the range of rights-enabled business models applicable to digital content and web services. Learn more about XrML on www.xrml.org. It’s worth to take a brief look. Technical description here. XrML is an XML-based (XML = HTML’s successor) usage grammar for specifying rights and conditions to control access to digital info and services. XrML’s predecessor was DPRL (Digital Property Rights Language). DPRL in fact became XrML when the lisp-style metalanguage used to construct DPRL was replaced with XML.
Now, with the undreamt of stream of copyright-eligible info on the web, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) market promises to become a vast business in itself. Apparently SuperMario, or the EU’s current Competition Commissioner Mario Monti, saw in the Microsoft/Time Warner initiative another attempt of that vile Bill Gates to dominate a market THAT HAS YET TO DEVELOP!!!
It’s stupid, I admit it. But hold your fire.
Instead, cheer up and answer the following question: what do the following personae have in common?
They are both women. They are both European. They are both defenders of the free market. They are both older than 25 and younger than 64. They both can be found on the net, here for instance for Miss Casta and here for Mrs. Kroes. They both were on board, Mrs. Kroes was on the Supervisory Board of Lucent Technologies BV, Volvo and New Skies Satellite NV and Miss Casta must in her life definitely have been on board of some ship, I mean, when you’re 26 years old one can’t imagine you have never been on some ship, no? They both make men shiver, they both live in a country which is a neighbour of Belgium... the similarities are striking... know what I’m sayin'?
Anyway, without worrying too much about the digital rights management of Tech Central Station I will let them do the talking:
More importantly, there is good news for supporters of the free market: several of the most important Commission jobs have gone to center-right politicians with experience in - gasp! - the private sector. The most crucial assignment - and arguably a more important job than the presidency itself - is that of competition commissioner. The current occupant, Italian Mario Monti, is perhaps most famous for thwarting a couple of high-profile US mergers (WorldCom-Sprint and GE-Honeywell) and for relentlessly pursuing an antitrust case against Microsoft. Monti was successful early on in his tenure at breaking up state monopolies and forcing governments to stop subsidizing anemic business sectors. But lately he has racked up a pathetic record of blocking innovation and letting countries such as France prop up ailing industries.
Replacing him in the new Commission line-up will be a Dutch woman, Neelie Kroes. She's not only a member of the Netherlands' pro-free-market liberal party (VVD), she's also got significant private sector experience, including service on the boards of Lucent Technologies and Volvo. It's too early to tell whether she'll make a real difference in EU antitrust policy (which has grown increasingly ham-fisted of late), but at least she figures to have more sensitivity to the competitive business environment than did the bookish Monti.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to point out that the recent snafus of SuperMario have shed a bad light upon the EU’s Competition Department. Personally, I DO think it can fulfill an important role in Europes business landscape. Just take a look here and don’t tell me you disagree.
Competition is a basic mechanism of the market economy and is a simple and efficient means of guaranteeing consumers a level of excellence in terms of the quality and price of products and services. In order to be effective, competition assumes that the market is made up of suppliers who are independent of each other, each subject to the competitive pressure exerted by the others.
Of course the excesses of this spring have left a drab impression of what an EU Commissioner for Competition stands for. But believe me, there’s a vast array of cases in which its role should rather be lauded than castigated. This very spring I had a post (Kerry will doubtlessly remember) on the EU Competition Department fining the Charleroi-based low-cost airliner Ryanair for having unrightfully received vast amounts of money from the Wallonian Regional Government, which caused an unfair advantage for Ryanair compared to other low-cost carriers such as Virgin: AEA Welcomes European Commission’s Ruling that Payments to Ryanair by Charleroi Airport are State Aids.
My conclusions at the end of the day:
1° Phew. Monti is leaving the scene.
2° In his place as EU Commissioner for Competition comes a true defender of the free market, Neelie Kroes.
3° The EU Competition Department, when it’s not losing itself in pointless cases, is necessary.
4° Not all that comes from France is bad.
MFBB
Yesterday, a well-known Maine citizen aka Tom the Blog Dictator expressed concerns over the EU’s Competition Department opening an investigation into a Microsoft and Time Warner agreement that would effectively put them in charge of Contentguard.
To clarify what Contentguard does: well, with the arrival of the worldwide web, companies had the possibility to online offer hitherto unknown amounts of digital info, whether it be audio, text, video, games, business information or whatever. Of course a lot of these data can’t be copied or used right away. So the owners of web information and service providers effectively need a powerful software tool for the description, interpretation, and enforcement of rights to use any web resource.
Well, Contentguard is a company offering such a software tool. It developed XrML 2.0, which stands for eXtensible rights Markup Language, and which can be used to extend the range of rights-enabled business models applicable to digital content and web services. Learn more about XrML on www.xrml.org. It’s worth to take a brief look. Technical description here. XrML is an XML-based (XML = HTML’s successor) usage grammar for specifying rights and conditions to control access to digital info and services. XrML’s predecessor was DPRL (Digital Property Rights Language). DPRL in fact became XrML when the lisp-style metalanguage used to construct DPRL was replaced with XML.
Now, with the undreamt of stream of copyright-eligible info on the web, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) market promises to become a vast business in itself. Apparently SuperMario, or the EU’s current Competition Commissioner Mario Monti, saw in the Microsoft/Time Warner initiative another attempt of that vile Bill Gates to dominate a market THAT HAS YET TO DEVELOP!!!
It’s stupid, I admit it. But hold your fire.
Instead, cheer up and answer the following question: what do the following personae have in common?
They are both women. They are both European. They are both defenders of the free market. They are both older than 25 and younger than 64. They both can be found on the net, here for instance for Miss Casta and here for Mrs. Kroes. They both were on board, Mrs. Kroes was on the Supervisory Board of Lucent Technologies BV, Volvo and New Skies Satellite NV and Miss Casta must in her life definitely have been on board of some ship, I mean, when you’re 26 years old one can’t imagine you have never been on some ship, no? They both make men shiver, they both live in a country which is a neighbour of Belgium... the similarities are striking... know what I’m sayin'?
Anyway, without worrying too much about the digital rights management of Tech Central Station I will let them do the talking:
More importantly, there is good news for supporters of the free market: several of the most important Commission jobs have gone to center-right politicians with experience in - gasp! - the private sector. The most crucial assignment - and arguably a more important job than the presidency itself - is that of competition commissioner. The current occupant, Italian Mario Monti, is perhaps most famous for thwarting a couple of high-profile US mergers (WorldCom-Sprint and GE-Honeywell) and for relentlessly pursuing an antitrust case against Microsoft. Monti was successful early on in his tenure at breaking up state monopolies and forcing governments to stop subsidizing anemic business sectors. But lately he has racked up a pathetic record of blocking innovation and letting countries such as France prop up ailing industries.
Replacing him in the new Commission line-up will be a Dutch woman, Neelie Kroes. She's not only a member of the Netherlands' pro-free-market liberal party (VVD), she's also got significant private sector experience, including service on the boards of Lucent Technologies and Volvo. It's too early to tell whether she'll make a real difference in EU antitrust policy (which has grown increasingly ham-fisted of late), but at least she figures to have more sensitivity to the competitive business environment than did the bookish Monti.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to point out that the recent snafus of SuperMario have shed a bad light upon the EU’s Competition Department. Personally, I DO think it can fulfill an important role in Europes business landscape. Just take a look here and don’t tell me you disagree.
Competition is a basic mechanism of the market economy and is a simple and efficient means of guaranteeing consumers a level of excellence in terms of the quality and price of products and services. In order to be effective, competition assumes that the market is made up of suppliers who are independent of each other, each subject to the competitive pressure exerted by the others.
Of course the excesses of this spring have left a drab impression of what an EU Commissioner for Competition stands for. But believe me, there’s a vast array of cases in which its role should rather be lauded than castigated. This very spring I had a post (Kerry will doubtlessly remember) on the EU Competition Department fining the Charleroi-based low-cost airliner Ryanair for having unrightfully received vast amounts of money from the Wallonian Regional Government, which caused an unfair advantage for Ryanair compared to other low-cost carriers such as Virgin: AEA Welcomes European Commission’s Ruling that Payments to Ryanair by Charleroi Airport are State Aids.
My conclusions at the end of the day:
1° Phew. Monti is leaving the scene.
2° In his place as EU Commissioner for Competition comes a true defender of the free market, Neelie Kroes.
3° The EU Competition Department, when it’s not losing itself in pointless cases, is necessary.
4° Not all that comes from France is bad.
MFBB
Friday, August 27, 2004
For all those who thought that opposing the invasion of Iraq would keep you safe from terrorism, there's this.
More EU silliness.
Hat tip to Little Green Footballs
This week, the European Union's (EU) European Commission (EC) opened an investigation into a Microsoft and Time Warner deal that would give them control of digital rights management (DRM) company Contentguard.
The crime? Future domination of a market that does not yet exist.
If you're confused or angered by this, then you must not be a socialist or an EU commissioner. So step outside yourself for a moment, you capitalist dog, and try to see things from the EC's side of the table.
Here's what the EC claims: "It appears to the Commission that the transaction might possibly create or strengthen a dominant position by Microsoft in the market for Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions."
Hat tip to Little Green Footballs
One more reason I like UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party):
Yesterday UKIP London went into action over this issue, by announcing publicly that they were supporting the Paris bid for the Olympic Games 2012. They unfurled a banner outside City Hall and wore t-shirts with pro-Paris slogans for the photocall. (Whether the French, who, presumably, have also looked at the figures and the empty stadium in Athens, are quite as happy with that support as one might wish them to be, is another question.)
Thursday, August 26, 2004
More Kerry storytelling. Boy, is this clown ever in the wrong line of work.
John Kerry speaking at a Martin Luther King day celebration in Virginia last year said, quote, "I remember well April 1968, I was serving in Vietnam. A place of violence. When the news reports brought home to me and my crew mates the violence back home and the tragic news that one of the bullets flying that terrible spring took the life of Dr. King." That date, of Dr. King's death, was April 4, 1968. According to kerry's website, it was not until November 17, 1968, that he reported for duty in Vietnam.
Has the Left completely lost it or what???
Anything less than 100 million shouters is a horrific failure? Well, I'm looking forward to it.
Hey people, serious. This is insane (scratching head, looking puzzled, letting out deep sigh)
On another note: I bought a magazine on (a.o.) US Marines in Iraq. Ok, it was a French magazine (Raids) but it's prety good. Great photos, accurate reporting, no particular stance taken). There wer several photos of Marines in combat situations with the old Vietnam-era M-79 grenade launcher. I was really surprised these one-shot things were still in use. I mean, I thought all grenade launchers today came attached to the barrel of an M-16. What are you supposed to do in a fluid combat situation when you have shot your gun? I guess that if it's still on the USMC's inventory it must be pretty good for its intended purpose.
Anything less than 100 million shouters is a horrific failure? Well, I'm looking forward to it.
Hey people, serious. This is insane (scratching head, looking puzzled, letting out deep sigh)
On another note: I bought a magazine on (a.o.) US Marines in Iraq. Ok, it was a French magazine (Raids) but it's prety good. Great photos, accurate reporting, no particular stance taken). There wer several photos of Marines in combat situations with the old Vietnam-era M-79 grenade launcher. I was really surprised these one-shot things were still in use. I mean, I thought all grenade launchers today came attached to the barrel of an M-16. What are you supposed to do in a fluid combat situation when you have shot your gun? I guess that if it's still on the USMC's inventory it must be pretty good for its intended purpose.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
If this is true Kerry is more of a douchebag than I thought and as Scott has mentioned, someone should just follow him around with a microphone.
KERRY: "Why are all these swift boat guys opposed to me?"
BRANT: "You should know what you said when you came back, the impact it had on the young sailors and how it was disrespectful of our guys that were killed over there."
[Brant had two men killed in battle.]
KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."
Monday, August 23, 2004
"A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red's sense of authority but also blue's association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers."
"The concept of purple as a replacement for red is a pretty good idea," said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of five books on color. "You soften the blow of red. Red is a bit over-the-top in its aggression."
Good lord.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Ok, so other than their respective military careers, what do we all think of Kerry and Bush, and why do we plan on voting the way we do? For me, it's still the same as it was many months ago. I trust GWB more with the War on Terror and with the economy, and the guy who is going to raise my already ridiculous taxes is always going to have a hard time getting my vote. There's lots of other pros and cons, but they don't add up to much in light of those issues.
So what's influencing everyone else, other than military records?
So what's influencing everyone else, other than military records?
Saturday, August 21, 2004
New EU chief urges greater effort in Iraq. This is a very good thing, hopefully he will be able to effect some positive change.
Friday, August 20, 2004
THE DUTCH IN AL-MUTHANNA/IRAQ.
As most of you know, Belgium’s northern neighbour, The Netherlands, is part of the "Coalition of the Willing" and has as such done its share by sending a troop detachment of about 1,300 men to keep Iraq’s southern province of al-Muthanna secure. Now while this contingent may seem small in comparison to the area to be controlled (somewhat 1,5 times the surface of The Netherlands itself, which is roughly 40,000 square kilometres), one has to keep in mind there is only one major city in the north of al-Muthanna, and that’s as-Samawah. The rest is mainly desert.
At the handover of power from the CPA to Iraq’s current interim government under President al-Yawer and PM Allawi, Dutch Parliament voted for prolonging the stay of its troops till after the January 2005 elections.
The photo was taken on or around March 9, 2004, and shows a joint patrol by Army Infantry (42nd Battalion Limburgse Jagers) and Koninklijke Mariniers. No Humvees, but Landrovers and Mercedeses.
A brief overview of how the detachment is composed:
a.) Its infantry component is formed by the Tweede Mariniersbataljon (2nd Battalion Marines) under Lt. Col. Richard Oppelaar. It fields around 650 men. Note that unlike the Marines in the United States, who form their own arm, Dutch Marines are subordinated to the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Navy).
b.) A loose collection of Koninklijke Landmacht (Army) engineer, communications and security units
c.) The Koninklijke Luchtmacht (Royal Air Force) participates to the so-called NLDETIRAK II with an air transport unit of three Chinook CH47D helicopters and approximately 90 men, and an air attack unit of six Apache helicopters with roughly 100 men, both units based at al-Tallil airbase.
d.) Two small units of the Koninklijke Marechaussee (Military Police)
Al-Muthanna province is not known for harbouring hard-core religious groups or ex-Baathists, so the Dutch were able to pull of a good job with few men. But those days seem to take an end. In May of this year, the Dutch contingent suffered its first fatality when Sgt. Steensma died in a grenade attack. Then came a lull, until the recent outbreak of unrest caused by al-Sadr’s insurgence stirred things up here too: there was an attack on a patrol vehicle in the neighbourhood of ar-Rumaythah, some 40 kloms north of as-Samawah. A rather fierce gunfight reportedly ensued in which a Dutch emergency unit, the so-called Quick Reaction Force, was called upon, as well as some of the Dutch Apaches. Two insurgents were killed. And just lately, on the 15th of August, a 29-year old Dutch MP was killed.
Personally I think the Dutch contingent is quite capable, especially since the bulk of it is formed by a Marinier Bataljon, which in the Dutch armed forces is considered an elite unit. It is therefore all the more deplorable that the recent spate of attacks immediately results in unrest on the homefront, with relatives of soldiers openly calling for the troops to come back and leftist political parties demanding the government put an end to the Dutch operation. While in my car this evening I heard on Dutch radio that the commander in Iraq called upon the homefront not to panic (!), since "most Iraqis are still glad the Dutch soldiers are around".
I’m not downplaying the Dutch losses, but I find this apparent frenzy among the Dutch civil scene highly disturbing. When you are a military man, you know the risks. You know that you can be called upon to do your duty and have to go where your government sends you to. Apparently large swaths of the Dutch population do not see it this way and think the Army is for sunshine soldiers only. Never mind that the Iraqi local government and the councils of towns in the region have pleaded for Dutch troops staying a while longer. It’s just another manifestation of European lameassitude. For when the time that we Europeans are able to distract ourselves from our cosy lifestyle, face the fact that we live in a world of risk, and take up responsibility? Just imagine, the recent fatality led ALL political parties except the liberal (mind you, over here that’s rightwing) VVD to ask for a Parliamentarian Debate on safety in Iraq (read finding reasons to cut and run). One word says it all people: Sitzpinklers.
MFBB
As most of you know, Belgium’s northern neighbour, The Netherlands, is part of the "Coalition of the Willing" and has as such done its share by sending a troop detachment of about 1,300 men to keep Iraq’s southern province of al-Muthanna secure. Now while this contingent may seem small in comparison to the area to be controlled (somewhat 1,5 times the surface of The Netherlands itself, which is roughly 40,000 square kilometres), one has to keep in mind there is only one major city in the north of al-Muthanna, and that’s as-Samawah. The rest is mainly desert.
At the handover of power from the CPA to Iraq’s current interim government under President al-Yawer and PM Allawi, Dutch Parliament voted for prolonging the stay of its troops till after the January 2005 elections.
The photo was taken on or around March 9, 2004, and shows a joint patrol by Army Infantry (42nd Battalion Limburgse Jagers) and Koninklijke Mariniers. No Humvees, but Landrovers and Mercedeses.
A brief overview of how the detachment is composed:
a.) Its infantry component is formed by the Tweede Mariniersbataljon (2nd Battalion Marines) under Lt. Col. Richard Oppelaar. It fields around 650 men. Note that unlike the Marines in the United States, who form their own arm, Dutch Marines are subordinated to the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Navy).
b.) A loose collection of Koninklijke Landmacht (Army) engineer, communications and security units
c.) The Koninklijke Luchtmacht (Royal Air Force) participates to the so-called NLDETIRAK II with an air transport unit of three Chinook CH47D helicopters and approximately 90 men, and an air attack unit of six Apache helicopters with roughly 100 men, both units based at al-Tallil airbase.
d.) Two small units of the Koninklijke Marechaussee (Military Police)
Al-Muthanna province is not known for harbouring hard-core religious groups or ex-Baathists, so the Dutch were able to pull of a good job with few men. But those days seem to take an end. In May of this year, the Dutch contingent suffered its first fatality when Sgt. Steensma died in a grenade attack. Then came a lull, until the recent outbreak of unrest caused by al-Sadr’s insurgence stirred things up here too: there was an attack on a patrol vehicle in the neighbourhood of ar-Rumaythah, some 40 kloms north of as-Samawah. A rather fierce gunfight reportedly ensued in which a Dutch emergency unit, the so-called Quick Reaction Force, was called upon, as well as some of the Dutch Apaches. Two insurgents were killed. And just lately, on the 15th of August, a 29-year old Dutch MP was killed.
Personally I think the Dutch contingent is quite capable, especially since the bulk of it is formed by a Marinier Bataljon, which in the Dutch armed forces is considered an elite unit. It is therefore all the more deplorable that the recent spate of attacks immediately results in unrest on the homefront, with relatives of soldiers openly calling for the troops to come back and leftist political parties demanding the government put an end to the Dutch operation. While in my car this evening I heard on Dutch radio that the commander in Iraq called upon the homefront not to panic (!), since "most Iraqis are still glad the Dutch soldiers are around".
I’m not downplaying the Dutch losses, but I find this apparent frenzy among the Dutch civil scene highly disturbing. When you are a military man, you know the risks. You know that you can be called upon to do your duty and have to go where your government sends you to. Apparently large swaths of the Dutch population do not see it this way and think the Army is for sunshine soldiers only. Never mind that the Iraqi local government and the councils of towns in the region have pleaded for Dutch troops staying a while longer. It’s just another manifestation of European lameassitude. For when the time that we Europeans are able to distract ourselves from our cosy lifestyle, face the fact that we live in a world of risk, and take up responsibility? Just imagine, the recent fatality led ALL political parties except the liberal (mind you, over here that’s rightwing) VVD to ask for a Parliamentarian Debate on safety in Iraq (read finding reasons to cut and run). One word says it all people: Sitzpinklers.
MFBB
Kevin posted this link about Iran's threats to the US in the discussion below, and I thought it deserved it's own space, so let's continue this discussion here.
We're going to have to deal with the Iranians sooner or later; I vote for sooner. And in a big way too.
We're going to have to deal with the Iranians sooner or later; I vote for sooner. And in a big way too.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
It's George Bush's fault that the America's basketball team is doing so poorly in Athens. This and other brainless observations from the always open minded Maureen Dowd, who incidentally makes it to the top of my "Political Pundits That I'd Like To Spank With A Canoe Paddle Covered In Toothpaste" list.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
"The (Sierra Club) report said the Bush administration "has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the ground zero community. Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States."
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
I did not know that President Bush replaced every single employee in the EPA with political appointees.
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
I did not know that President Bush replaced every single employee in the EPA with political appointees.
Monday, August 16, 2004
More lameassitude from the Kerry camp.
Liar or just incompetent - it doesn't bode well(well actually, it does for me).
Liar or just incompetent - it doesn't bode well(well actually, it does for me).
BARROSO PRESENTS NEW EU COMMISSION, THE EU'S "GOVERNMENT"
Ok, I guess you were not exactly waiting for it but here it is: the distribution of portfolios in the new European Commission, the EU’s "gumint". There are 25 of them, Chairman Barroso included. The smarter ones among you (could it be I’m not holding my breath) will already have noticed 25 is also the number of EU states in the new, enlarged constellation. Indeed, until 2014 every member state has the right to delegate one commissioner, regardless of its relative power. So Slovenia, population 2 million, gets one commissioner, and Germany, population 80 million, too. Seeing that the US gumint does not count 51 ministers must have ringed a bell though, since after 2014 the number of commissioners will be reduced to 18, regardless of whatever or how many states will join still.
Whether you like it or not, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso has given a fairly good impression as a man of deeds, not words till now. Dismissed by many observers as your typical colorless compromise figure at the time of his appointment, he has so far proven he’s nobody’s stooge. He wanted one third of commissioners to be females, he got them. The local powerhouses, rightfully fearing their voice would be diluted, wanted "constructions" still granting them power – Barroso did not budge. E.g., in the previous Commission the big countries had two commissioners. Germany, backed by the UK and France, asked for the new Commission a "Supercommissioner" to take charge of all aspects of economic performance, read it asked for a commissioner to whom several other commissioners wouild be subordinated. Barroso quickly made it clear he and no one else would decide on his team’s composition. Anyway, here it is:
Chairman of the European Commission: José Manuel Durao Barroso, former PM (Portugal), centre-right
Transport Commissioner/Vice Chairman: Jacques Barrot, former Minister of Work (France), rightwing
Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner/Vice Chairman: Rocco Buttiglione, former Minister of European Affairs (Italy), centre-left
Administrative Affairs, Audits and Anti-fraud/Vice Chairman: Siim Kallas, former PM (Estonia), centre-right
Corporate Sector and Industry/Vice Chairman: Guenter Verheugen, former EU Commissioner of Enlargement (Germany), leftwing
Institutional Relations and Communications strategy/Vice Chairman: Margot Wallstrom, former Commissioner of Environment (Sweden), leftwing
Economy and Monetary Affairs: Joaquin Almunia , former Minister of Employment and Social Affairs (Spain), leftwing
Fishery and Maritime Affairs: Joe Borg, former FM (Malta), rightwing
Environment: Stavros Dimas, former Commissioner for Social Affairs and Employment (Greece), rightwing
External Relations: Benita Ferrero-Waldner, former FM (Austria), centre-left
Education, Formation, Culture and Multilinguality: Jan Figel, former State Secretary OF Foreign Affairs (Slovakia), centre-left
Agriculture and Rural Development: Mariann Fischer-Boel, former Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fishery (Denmark), centre-right
Budget and Financial Progrmmation: Dalia Grybauskaite, former Finance Minister (Lithuania), no party
Regional Affairs: Danuta Huebner, former Minister of European Affairs (Poland), leftwing
Energy: Laszlo Kovacs, former Foreign Minister (Hungary), centre-left
Competition: Neelie Kroes, former Minister of Traffic and Waterworks (Netherlands), centre-right
Health and Consumer Protection: Markos Kyprianou , former Minister of Finance (Cyprus), centre-right
Trade: Peter Mandelson, former Minister of Trade and Northern Ireland (Great Britain), leftwing
Internal Market: Charles McCreevy: former Minister of Tourism, Trade and Social Affairs (Ireland), rightwing
Science and Research: Janez Potocnik, former Minister of European Affairs (Slovenia), centre-right
Information Society and Media: Viviane Reding, former Europarlementarian (Luxembourg), centre-right
Enlargement: Olli Rehn, former Advisor to Finnish PM (Finland), centre-right
Work, social affairs, Equal Chances: Vladimir Spidla, former PM (Czech Republic), leftwing
Taxes and customs: Ingrida Udre, Chairman of Parliament (Latvia), centre-right
And, last but not least (snicker):
Surveillance of Salmon populations in Lofotian fjords: Louis Michel, Eternal Dimwit Par Excellence (Belgium), Maoist in disguise
As you can see I did a little research on the place of our beloved EU-bosses and bossettes and the result comes as a moderate surprise to me. Always struggling with the slightly different notions of a right-and leftwinger on either side of the Atlantic (e.g., over here a "liberal" is considered a moderate rightwinger, whereas you would call our "socialists" half-communists), I have decided to distinguish four categories, namely "Rightwing" (conservative), "Centre-Right" (liberal), "Centre-Left" (Christian Democrats, Social-Democrats) and "Leftwing" (socialists). Not taking into account Lithuania's Mrs. Dalia Grybauskaite, who reportedly has no political affiliation, I've come to the following results:
Rightwing: 5 Commissioners
Centre-Right: 7 Commissioners
Centre-Left: 5 Commissioners
Leftwing: 7 Commissioners
In other words, Left and Right are neatly divided 50/50 in this new EU-Commission. I never did such an inquiry for the previous Commission, but I bet the Left was stronger represented. Anyway, this rightwing transition, coupled with the fact that Mr. Barroso is moderately pro-American (his predecessor Romano Prodi was not), should give you Americanos some hope for the future. And of course, the political process will be influenced too by a European Parliament in which France's and Germany's voices have significantly lost weight and have been effectively replaced to a certain extent by the rather pro-American voices from the new countries in the East.
Just have some patiece yet, as the new EU-Commission will only assume EU leadership in autumn, if I'm not mistaken at about the same time a new US President gets elected. So if Bush wins, as I hope and still expect, then a case can be made that slowly but irresistibly the Western World is turning more conservative (sorry, Kevin). This process should not come as a surprise given the the dawning realization among a majority of western voters that our common problems, a.o. immigration, need firmer solutions.
I would also not exclude that many people for whom "liberal" issues were never a problem, are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the ever-more prominent alternative lifestyles which our media more and more display as the norm. I'll give you just one example: this weekend my wife watched on dvd "Under the Tuscan Sun", with Diane Lane (she's getting older btw, although she's still quite a broad). Diane finds out her husband has an adulterous homosexual affair, she divorces, her lesbian friends, of whom one, who is Asian, is pregnant (father unknown), organize a trip to Italy with her with a gay group, she buys a house and has an affair with a smooth-talking Italian who bangs another woman twenty miles further down the road, blah blah blah... are you still following???
Anyway, I get the disitnct feeling that a growing number of the "conventionals" are not taking it for granted anymore that we should swallow the ads for alternativo lifestyles, and want some "traditional" values re-emphasized. This is not just a gut feeling, the Belgian story of the rising relevance of the rightwing "Vlaams Blok", once a political pariah, may very well be a study in microcosm of a rightwing trend in the Western World.
Ok, forget that sermon, I was talking about Barroso and crew. Let me finish by saying that Barroso, on the press conference on which he presented his equipe, also made clear what his two main aims were: making the EU by 2010 the most competitive economy in the world, and maing it better known among European citizens. If he succeeds, then by that time we may feel ourselves a little more like Europeans and a little less like Slovaks, Italians, French or whatever. I might hope so.
MFBB
Ok, I guess you were not exactly waiting for it but here it is: the distribution of portfolios in the new European Commission, the EU’s "gumint". There are 25 of them, Chairman Barroso included. The smarter ones among you (could it be I’m not holding my breath) will already have noticed 25 is also the number of EU states in the new, enlarged constellation. Indeed, until 2014 every member state has the right to delegate one commissioner, regardless of its relative power. So Slovenia, population 2 million, gets one commissioner, and Germany, population 80 million, too. Seeing that the US gumint does not count 51 ministers must have ringed a bell though, since after 2014 the number of commissioners will be reduced to 18, regardless of whatever or how many states will join still.
Whether you like it or not, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso has given a fairly good impression as a man of deeds, not words till now. Dismissed by many observers as your typical colorless compromise figure at the time of his appointment, he has so far proven he’s nobody’s stooge. He wanted one third of commissioners to be females, he got them. The local powerhouses, rightfully fearing their voice would be diluted, wanted "constructions" still granting them power – Barroso did not budge. E.g., in the previous Commission the big countries had two commissioners. Germany, backed by the UK and France, asked for the new Commission a "Supercommissioner" to take charge of all aspects of economic performance, read it asked for a commissioner to whom several other commissioners wouild be subordinated. Barroso quickly made it clear he and no one else would decide on his team’s composition. Anyway, here it is:
Chairman of the European Commission: José Manuel Durao Barroso, former PM (Portugal), centre-right
Transport Commissioner/Vice Chairman: Jacques Barrot, former Minister of Work (France), rightwing
Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner/Vice Chairman: Rocco Buttiglione, former Minister of European Affairs (Italy), centre-left
Administrative Affairs, Audits and Anti-fraud/Vice Chairman: Siim Kallas, former PM (Estonia), centre-right
Corporate Sector and Industry/Vice Chairman: Guenter Verheugen, former EU Commissioner of Enlargement (Germany), leftwing
Institutional Relations and Communications strategy/Vice Chairman: Margot Wallstrom, former Commissioner of Environment (Sweden), leftwing
Economy and Monetary Affairs: Joaquin Almunia , former Minister of Employment and Social Affairs (Spain), leftwing
Fishery and Maritime Affairs: Joe Borg, former FM (Malta), rightwing
Environment: Stavros Dimas, former Commissioner for Social Affairs and Employment (Greece), rightwing
External Relations: Benita Ferrero-Waldner, former FM (Austria), centre-left
Education, Formation, Culture and Multilinguality: Jan Figel, former State Secretary OF Foreign Affairs (Slovakia), centre-left
Agriculture and Rural Development: Mariann Fischer-Boel, former Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fishery (Denmark), centre-right
Budget and Financial Progrmmation: Dalia Grybauskaite, former Finance Minister (Lithuania), no party
Regional Affairs: Danuta Huebner, former Minister of European Affairs (Poland), leftwing
Energy: Laszlo Kovacs, former Foreign Minister (Hungary), centre-left
Competition: Neelie Kroes, former Minister of Traffic and Waterworks (Netherlands), centre-right
Health and Consumer Protection: Markos Kyprianou , former Minister of Finance (Cyprus), centre-right
Trade: Peter Mandelson, former Minister of Trade and Northern Ireland (Great Britain), leftwing
Internal Market: Charles McCreevy: former Minister of Tourism, Trade and Social Affairs (Ireland), rightwing
Science and Research: Janez Potocnik, former Minister of European Affairs (Slovenia), centre-right
Information Society and Media: Viviane Reding, former Europarlementarian (Luxembourg), centre-right
Enlargement: Olli Rehn, former Advisor to Finnish PM (Finland), centre-right
Work, social affairs, Equal Chances: Vladimir Spidla, former PM (Czech Republic), leftwing
Taxes and customs: Ingrida Udre, Chairman of Parliament (Latvia), centre-right
And, last but not least (snicker):
Surveillance of Salmon populations in Lofotian fjords: Louis Michel, Eternal Dimwit Par Excellence (Belgium), Maoist in disguise
As you can see I did a little research on the place of our beloved EU-bosses and bossettes and the result comes as a moderate surprise to me. Always struggling with the slightly different notions of a right-and leftwinger on either side of the Atlantic (e.g., over here a "liberal" is considered a moderate rightwinger, whereas you would call our "socialists" half-communists), I have decided to distinguish four categories, namely "Rightwing" (conservative), "Centre-Right" (liberal), "Centre-Left" (Christian Democrats, Social-Democrats) and "Leftwing" (socialists). Not taking into account Lithuania's Mrs. Dalia Grybauskaite, who reportedly has no political affiliation, I've come to the following results:
Rightwing: 5 Commissioners
Centre-Right: 7 Commissioners
Centre-Left: 5 Commissioners
Leftwing: 7 Commissioners
In other words, Left and Right are neatly divided 50/50 in this new EU-Commission. I never did such an inquiry for the previous Commission, but I bet the Left was stronger represented. Anyway, this rightwing transition, coupled with the fact that Mr. Barroso is moderately pro-American (his predecessor Romano Prodi was not), should give you Americanos some hope for the future. And of course, the political process will be influenced too by a European Parliament in which France's and Germany's voices have significantly lost weight and have been effectively replaced to a certain extent by the rather pro-American voices from the new countries in the East.
Just have some patiece yet, as the new EU-Commission will only assume EU leadership in autumn, if I'm not mistaken at about the same time a new US President gets elected. So if Bush wins, as I hope and still expect, then a case can be made that slowly but irresistibly the Western World is turning more conservative (sorry, Kevin). This process should not come as a surprise given the the dawning realization among a majority of western voters that our common problems, a.o. immigration, need firmer solutions.
I would also not exclude that many people for whom "liberal" issues were never a problem, are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the ever-more prominent alternative lifestyles which our media more and more display as the norm. I'll give you just one example: this weekend my wife watched on dvd "Under the Tuscan Sun", with Diane Lane (she's getting older btw, although she's still quite a broad). Diane finds out her husband has an adulterous homosexual affair, she divorces, her lesbian friends, of whom one, who is Asian, is pregnant (father unknown), organize a trip to Italy with her with a gay group, she buys a house and has an affair with a smooth-talking Italian who bangs another woman twenty miles further down the road, blah blah blah... are you still following???
Anyway, I get the disitnct feeling that a growing number of the "conventionals" are not taking it for granted anymore that we should swallow the ads for alternativo lifestyles, and want some "traditional" values re-emphasized. This is not just a gut feeling, the Belgian story of the rising relevance of the rightwing "Vlaams Blok", once a political pariah, may very well be a study in microcosm of a rightwing trend in the Western World.
Ok, forget that sermon, I was talking about Barroso and crew. Let me finish by saying that Barroso, on the press conference on which he presented his equipe, also made clear what his two main aims were: making the EU by 2010 the most competitive economy in the world, and maing it better known among European citizens. If he succeeds, then by that time we may feel ourselves a little more like Europeans and a little less like Slovaks, Italians, French or whatever. I might hope so.
MFBB
Sunday, August 15, 2004
Stop me if you've heard this one before. Questions about John Kerry's truthfulness.
Just more fuel for the fire.
Just more fuel for the fire.
Here's a somewhat more scholarly response to Bruce Bartlett's column which was not kind to the FairTax (are you guys getting sick of this yet?) Again, this is a linked file, not a web page.
I'll give this organization credit; they are extremely responsive to requests for information and seem very well organized. I've yet to really stump them on any aspect of this plan, and I've tried many times, often with critiques I've heard on this blog. There's still some cheerleader in this response, but it seems pretty solid. I hope Bartlett responds. I'd like to see more public debate on this topic.
I'll give this organization credit; they are extremely responsive to requests for information and seem very well organized. I've yet to really stump them on any aspect of this plan, and I've tried many times, often with critiques I've heard on this blog. There's still some cheerleader in this response, but it seems pretty solid. I hope Bartlett responds. I'd like to see more public debate on this topic.
"Iran's world judo champion Arash Miresmaeili refused to compete against an Israeli Sunday, triggering a fresh crisis at the Olympic Games where race, creed or color are barred from interfering in sport.
The International Judo Federation (IJF) failed to agree how to deal with the politically explosive issue at an emergency meeting and said it would hold further talks Monday."
Let's hope the Olympics aren't run like the U.N. and the Iranian team is sent home. Call me a pessimist, but I somehow doubt it will happen.
Actually, I want the Olymics to kick them out AND bomb the Bushehr nuclear facility.
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