Readers of this site will know that I posted an earlier defense of Lieutenant General W.G. 'Jerry' Boykin. In my ever-ongoing search for controversy, I went and asked a practicing Muslim what their read on Boykin's comments was. The answer came quickly, and it had several angles, two of which are listed below:

1. A negative effect on non-Christian servicemen.
2. The effect when he deals with Islamic counterparts in rest of world.

1. My conversational companion suggested Boykin's remarks tended to indicate that we had a 'Christian army', when this was obviously not the case. It was specifically mentioned that we had Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, et cetera, and (more generally) that it had a negative effect on those troops who don't show up for Sunday school.

I saw the point, but I'm not convinced. Maybe servicemen in the audience could weigh in on this; I'm not a soldier so I'm not entirely aware of the "world" in which the soldier lives and fights.

That point didn't sway me so much as the next one, and even then, the sway only came because I like to think of myself as looking at foreign policy and so forth through a cold-eyed realpolitik lense in the model of Richard M. Nixon and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger. (There is, of course, also present what one of my college professors noted as a 'Reaganistic idealism about the world that you seem to have woven with hard-nosed realism'. He was decidedly neither Republican nor conservative, so I'm not sure that it came as a compliment. However, I chose to take it as one.) Anyways, on to the next point:

2. I don't want to sound like I'm waffling on this subject, but we're in a new kind of war, one that isn't just us versus the Germans or us versus the Russians and whoever they could rope together. We're in a war with an enemy whose potential population base, if you will, could be upwards of a billion people scattered all over the globe and into our own country. Any one of those individuals who seeks to 'enlist' in the army of al-Qaeda doesn't have to make his way to the capital of al-Qaeda, 'jine the cavalry', and take up arms in a foreign land and fight on foreign soil. With the click of a mouse or a call on a phone, a man could serve al-Qaeda without ever leaving the comforts of home. This is a problem.

In the past, we had clearly identified nation-state actors to peg as the aggressors. Now, we face a nebulous foe with no centralized capital, no infrastructure of its own to pulverize with an air campaign, and no traditional formations to engage with our own superb conventional weapons.

Rather, we face a shadowy foe who strikes at his discretion and melts away into various corners of the world. Previously, if we wanted the U-boats to stop torpedoing American ships in the North Atlantic, we crushed Germany. That's a great model, but it doesn't help much against a supranational movement that reaches around the world.

To apply the previous model, one would literally have to invade every nation that harbored these al-Qaeda fanatics, and probably wind up garrisoning the bloody planet. That isn't going to work, for a variety of reasons. One of the largest problems is that these guys aren't clearly state-sponsored. If they were, rhe sponsor would probably suffer the fate of Afghanistan. Phrased differently, if there was for example, "Osamaland", we would have wiped it out and come home some time in December 2001, confident in the success of our mission.

Instead, the more economical, more practical, and more viable method is to work with the country that is "infected" with al-Qaeda members to purge the victim country, through legal, political, or military means. This means close coordination of American forces and assets with other-national assets, namely the victim country's security service, intelligence service, and perhaps the armed forces. That requires the American coordinator to be someone who can "do business" with whoever his (and I mean a man; I doubt a lot of these countries where a major al-Qaeda presence is going to take root would welcome the sight of a female general officer) counterpart is on the ground in the country.

If it's an Islamic country and Jerry Boykin goes there, the guy on the ground is probably not going to be as eager to cooperate with America in general or Boykin in particular. The al-Qaeda boys will be darned sure to get the message out that America has sent a man who hates Islam (the usual...) and is a crusader who's managed to survive the past nine hundred years and still marches under the banner of Richard the Lion-Hearted. Unfortunately, we cannot afford giving al-Qaeda the opportunity to say that---we can't give them any extra advantages that they don't already have.

Therefore, it is with considerable irritation and regret that I have to reverse an earlier position and suggest that General Boykin be reassigned in a manner that would get him out of the position he's in now, solely to deny al-Qaeda the opportunity to use him against the country I, and I am certain he, loves. I absolutely don't want the guy punished---just a 'tsk tsk, Jerry' and make sure his career survives, because the read on him that I've gotten is that this nation owes him a debt of thanks for many risky and dangerous missions.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the start of demolition upon the Pennsylvania Railroad's New York Pennsylvania Station. An article in the New York Times called my attention to it, and the article is a functional, if brief, read.

The demolition of New York Pennsylvania Station was an important thing on several fronts:

Legal, for it would lead to the emergence of the New York City landmarks law wherein places could be designated as cultural landmarks and thus earn a certain measure of protection from radical change being introduced by the owner. The corporate successor to the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Penn Central Transportation Company, went all the way to the United States Supreme Court to fight the landmarks law, ultimately losing. If you're interested, the cite is Penn Cent. Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (197 .

Cultural, in that it led to a repudiation of the relentless urban renewal fad of the 1960s and probably helped kick off the preservation movement nationwide. The eager mindset that readily condemned grand old facilities simply because they were not brand new for once actually had to take a step back. Unfortunately, that step was too late for Pennsylvania Station, but Grand Central Terminal was saved.

Railroading: Once upon a time, railroads spent a lot of money on their flagship terminals. Cincinnati Union Terminal is an example thereof; Washington Union Station and Grand Central Terminal also shows the sheer amount of money that a railroad in the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century would spend to create marble, glass, and iron monuments to themselves.

However, by the 1960s, the railroad industry in general and passenger rail in particular was in bad shape. Passenger service invariably lost money because the rail passenger was becoming a thing of the past. The ever-growing network of Federally-funded roads combined with the Federally-funded air travel industry to put significant nails in the coffin of passsenger rail. The situation got so bad that by 1971, President Nixon authorized the creation of the National Passenger Rail Corporation, popularly known as Amtrak. This Federally-funded agency took over almost all the intercity passenger rail service in America, and tried to maintain a bare minimum of service.

One could almost argue that the demolition of the above-ground Pennsylvania Station was a sign of the shift in railroad focus. No longer would the sprawling passenger terminals designed by men like Raymond Loewy signify the railroads. Gigantic computer-controlled freight yards, devoid of features in many ways, were the future. Amtrak's limited budgets would force them to either abandon the big passenger depots altogether, or would require massive investments from outside entities to preserve them. Indeed, the future Amtrak station would be something different, a product of the 1970s in that it was often small, cramped, and drab. The one I've been to near my law school is like that. It looks like a gas station or a bank from the road, and without the small Amtrak sign, would be mistaken for something completely innocuous.

There is, however, a bright spot in all of this: Plans are currently afoot to modify the operations now centered at the modern (underground) Penn Station, with some relocation to a nearby post office building above ground that approximates the look of the old station as built by Pennsylvania Railroad President Alexander Johnston Cassatt.* I'm not entirely sure what Penn Station v3.0 will look like, but it is good to see a renaissance of sorts in the architecture.

* A.J. Cassatt's other claim to fame, aside from being president of the "Standard Railroad of the World" was being the older brother of Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The early morning release of TAS has an article mentioning the tussle in Massachusetts over the constitutionality of the 'under God' clause in the Pledge of Allegiance. The instant case is brought by the mother of Miss Lisa Newdow, the girl whose life was irrevocably harmed due to her tender little ears hearing the words "under God" in the classroom.

Judge Kenneth W. Starr is representing Sandra Banning, the mother of the child. She reportedly contends that she personally sees no problem with the utterance of the full Pledge in schools. I suppose she's somehow trying to nullify the suit brought by her former husband, but I'm not entirely sure if she's doing this as the mother of the child or as an interested party, or what. Suffice it to say that there is a significant Constitutional component involved, because Judge Starr is her counsel. Whatever the details of the suit, I'm glad someone's fighting this particular battle, and I'm glad that he's the one doing it.

This article says several nice things about the judge, and I wanted to echo them. I've had the pleasure of meeting Judge Starr through the Federalist Society, and I have to say that I was mightily impressed with him. He, like many others I've met in law school, exudes a mighty competence that's almost eerie. It would seem that Judge Starr was hardly the bumbler or the salaciously-interested schoolmarm who bumbled his way through millions of taxpayer dollars and came up with nothing. (This is, of course, somewhat inconvenient for several memes in the recent American political culture, but pay it no mind.)

After having heard Judge Starr speak and a quick conversation with him, I came away with the impression that he was more than competent to perform his duties with regards to the Clinton inquiry. Similarly, I felt certain that the level of success that was achieved was due in large part to his skill as a lawyer. The Clinton legal defense was, in a word, competent. I do not mean by any stretch of the word that the Clinton legal defense had any merit to its claims, but they certainly managed to field some crack troops in defense of the Clinton position. Bottom line is that Judge Starr impressed me with tremendous knowledge of the law and its history, an excellent manner for communication, and a quick wit. I'll mark him as another in an expanding list of men and women I've met in law school who I'd rather not ever face at trial.

Hats off to Judge Kenneth W. Starr for working very hard and quite skillfully in an absolutely thankless role. Best of luck to him in this pending litigation; in my opinion, a victory in this case might serve as a thumbing-of-the-nose to the radical secularists.

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Princess Leia Organa's quip to Captain Han Solo in Star Wars* came back to me early this morning as I heard about the latest round of attacks against the Iraqi recovery infrastructure. After pondering that for a second, I realized what was going on, and that there was a historical parallel to this, one I dimly remembered from a class in Russian history:

Right about the time that the Russo-Japanese War was winding up (ca. 1905), Czar Nicholas II had committed to a program of some liberalization. From what I remember, things started to turn around somewhat, and things got "better" in Romanov Russia. People started believing in the government, and thus the imminent threat of revolution subsided.

The revolutionaries** were distinctly unhappy with this, because the peasant lake they swam in (to borrow from Mao Tse-tung) was being drained in direct proportion to the success of the liberalization program. Therefore, they had to take some action, and soon ramped up their campaign of terror and assassination.

Naturally, the government had to respond to this, and Nicholas' idea of response was to clamp down on the reforms et cetera that were being put into place. This response was a bad idea, and helped kick off a cycle of violence leading to the further undermining of the Romanov rule.

I think we face similar circumstances in Iraq. The yeoman work that L. Paul Bremer and company are doing is paying off, and Iraqis aren't necessarily supporting what seems to be some quasi-professional Baathist remnant operation. Iraqis are welcoming the Americans and are helping to forge a better future for Iraq. The Baathist remnant can not allow that to occur, so they're lashing out at anyone they can hit, to stop the improvement of the lives of Iraqis. This particular operation happened to turn an eye to the International Committee for the Red Cross.

The attack on the ICRC didn't make any sense in a present-day context, and I had to wait until I thought of the historical parallel*** to understand its significance. On the other hand, attacking the American compound earlier on made complete and total sense from a present-day context.

The overall point I'm trying to make is that the Baathists sat down and decided that things were going badly for them, perhaps even getting worse. They saw that Americans weren't going to be easy targets, and they probably thought of their prior success with the U.N. compound. They needed a symbolic hit on a bastion of improvement, so they chose the ICRC and set things in motion.

I believe the lesson is clear: We're doing something right in Iraq. The Baathists will continue to lash out and there will be more deaths. We might even wind up facing some new assault similar to the Tet Offensive. No matter what happens, the task for the United States and other groups operating in Iraq is to keep up the pace of reconstruction and complete the liberation of the Iraqi people. The more Iraqis that prosper under the new government, the less trouble we'll have from Baathists and when ten or fifteen million Iraqis have their stake in the new Iraq, we'll find that we're outstripping the madrasas in production of believers, and Secretary Rumsfeld might (I hope) see the ratio of costs move from American billions vs. Islamist millions to American hundreds of millions v. Islamist tens of millions. It's a long shot, but worth going for.

* Yes, Star Wars. I learned it that way through the 1980s, and I'll be darned if I grant cinematic recognition to the abominable prequels or the revisionist effort put in place by Lucasfilm to 're-brand' the original trilogy.

** For the most part anarchists and/or what we'd recognize as Communists, I think. I'm not entirely sure.

*** This is something I learned from President Richard Nixon. When in doubt, think about history. He once wrote that leaders needed a historical context to frame current events in, so that they could best comprehend the challenges and opportunities facing them. I don't place myself in the shoes of a leader needing Nixon's counsel, but historical parallels can provide useful advice for anyone.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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OK, so I was never a subscriber to The American Spectator back in its heyday, but they published P.J. O'Rourke, and he's the first political humorist I ever really enjoyed. Come to think of it, I used to regularly read the TAS website on a pretty regular basis, and I did read voluminous back issues of the magazine while killing time at my undergraduate institution. (I even read the David Brock articles; I'm not sure that should be admitted or not in light of his most recent past...)

Anyways, after some post-Clinton shakeups in the conservative media industry, the original Spectator helmed by R. Emmitt Tyrell went "away". I say "away" because it's been a long time since this went on and I don't recall all the details, but the end result is that RET and others were no longer calling all the shots at TAS.

There was an interim action fought by Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, dubbed The American Prowler, and it appears that things have come full circle: The cartoon turkey prowls no more, and the Spectator lives again "back where we started at the height of the Clinton glory". It's always good to have more conservative voices in the print media; celebrations all around. You'll find a permanent link to TAS under The Weekly Standard over on the right-hand side.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Something's occurred to me while reading Generally Speaking:

W.K. Clark may have increasing amounts of trouble as he advances through the field. Is this due to the Machiavellian doings of Karl Rove? No, at least not yet. (Muahahaha.) It is because one of the prime movers in the Democrat nominatklatura (there's you some made-up Russian) are the people who are reflexively opposed to any use of force by the United States of America.

These are the people who beat on bongo drums and consider themselves deeply intellectual for skimming Noam Chomsky and leafing through The Nation and who consider The New Republic a bunch of war-mongering Yankee imperialist dogs. The only time they like military force is when it's deployed against Americans, be they civilian or military.

You see, Wesley K. Clark used military force against Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic never fired a shot against Americans up until we started bombing him. If memory serves, Chomsky the Great deemed Operation ALLIED FORCE some sort of imperialist venture (schyeah, who would want Yugoslavia?) Ergo, Wesley K. Clark, in the fever swamp minds of these people, will probably take on the odium of George W. Bush.

One wonders what their response to Adolf Hitler would have been. I suspect that they would've hollered about how Hitler posed no imminent threat and how we had no right to go in with the British. After we found out that Hitler was turning lots of innocent people in Europe into landfill or fly ash, these very same anti-military types would probably want to know why it was that America didn't act. Or maybe not; they've never been good at accepting responsibility for their actions. Ask the dead of unified Vietnam or Khmer Rouge-era Cambodia about that.

Anyhow, General Clark's only recourse if he chooses to engage these people is to either read them out of the party as William F. Buckley did to the John Birch Society for my side of the aisle, or drown the crazies in votes, by bringing in previously "non-Democratic" constituencies to overwhelm the bongo-drum bong smoke defenses. It might be better for the country if he does the former, but I'm not sure anyone in the Democratic party is positioned to do such a thing.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Closing Statements/Final Thoughts:

Kerry: If we're supposed to stand up to special interests, does that include People for the American Way, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the radical secularists?

Edwards: A solid statement that unfortunately won't be heard, since he's not playing the George McGovern/Eugene McCarthy game. I can't decide if having that plan he kept referring to as 'written down' is a good thing or not. He's trying to make something of it, so maybe it will.

Sharpton: As always, fiery, but yawn. The vest is a plus, though.

Kucininch: Henry Agard Wallace, call your office---someone's stealing your act.

Braun: She stole Clark's "bait-and-switch" line, and she wants to take the "men only" sign off of the door to the White House. Sorry, hon. That'll happen, but it won't be a woman from your party. This line about being a clear alternative to President Bush 'cause she doesn't look like him is funny.

Dean: Blah blah. I'd like to see how Howard Dean's gonna chase the AFL-CIO and the NEA out of his administration. Special interests my foot.

Clark: My God! It's E.T.! More military metaphors and so forth. Nothing of substance.

Gephardt: Richard Gephardt, you are accused of the public mention of God. How do you plead? It wasn't a bad story, but I doubt full college attendance is going to dominate any future Administration's thinking. Dealing with North Korea and some of the people who want us dead will probably be important.

Lieberman: It's good to hear Democrats talking about the middle class as something other than a target for pillaging. Props for taking aim at Clark, because not everyone's going to tousle the golden general's hair.

To wrap this up, I would almost suggest that Lieberman and Gephardt came away impressing a Republican as credible candidates. Clark doesn't compete on their level, for obvious reasons. That doesn't mean he can't play, it's just a different game he's got to play. Still, Clark's got to get his visual act together---he looked like E.T. tonight, and that's not good. If he's going to play the "I'm the ultimate outsider" game, I think he's got to get better at deploying that when hit with a question like the deficit one. Admittedly, that dimwit moderator didn't help there---Carl Cameron seemed like the only one who had a clue as to how to run a debate.

I think I can see where Dean's appeal comes from and I like standing up for what you believe in, but when what Dean believes in strikes me as so desperately wrong, I don't give much credit. One of the Generally Speaking posters referred to Dean thusly:

Did you all notice how flat the "I'm for the Democratic wing of the Democratic party" and the comment on "standing up for what you believe, even if 70% of the nation doesn't agree with you," fell with the audience?

I think both of these notions ring alarm bells in Dem voters mind. Why? Because he sounds too much like the Democratic version of GW Bush!

There may be truth to that. There's another Weswatch to be written once I get this entered, so keep your eyes peeled.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Conventional Wisdom round of this is brutal. Dean came across well in his shot at Kerry, and Kerry did OK volleying it back. Gephardt got hit way below the belt. I think he got angry, and he should have. He ought to play on his experience, and he did. Most of these nitwits up there couldn't figure out real policy if they had to. I'd trust Gephardt, Kerry, and Lieberman on that regards---even if I would disagree significantly with where they wound up.

Kucininch's tete-a-tete with that idiot moderator is surreal.

Sharpton fails to understand the D.C. Statehood issue. Off-hand, Washington, D.C., if I remember correctly, is under the mandate of the Congress in terms of being governed. That's not by the hand of the evil white-wing Republicans of the 1980s, but by Constitutional order. Sorry, Sharpton.

Clark's answer was weird. I suppose it's folksy, and I reckon it'll work.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ack! "The Christian Right and the right Christians". I'm no fan of Sharpton, and the problem is that it's almost catchy. Lieberman's response remains pretty good, and I maintain that he's a solid candidate.

John Kerry, I'm not interested in what you think about Jerry Boykin. That was a lousy joke. Johnny K., I wouldn't talk about Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the rest; they're got more experience at the helm of the country than you do, and all the French your wife spouts can't give you the global perspective that we've got concentrated in the current administration.

DOMESTIC POLICY

Carol Moseley-Braun actually gives a good answer for once...wait. She was sounding decent until she started yammering about health care coverage.

OK, this guy asking about the money to rebuild America's cities is a nut. I personally am not interested in spending money on American cities---they've had their chance, and they have not led. Edwards panders to the cursed teachers' unions, but follows with something about home ownership, and that's a good thing.

This guy asking the question is a biased fool. There's probably a reason why he's not a national presence, and I think it got shown just then. Addiction to prescribed prescription drugs is not the same thing as willful addiction to something like crystal meth.

Kucininch's public education strategy is a bad idea. So's his full employment program, but at least he's honest about it: "A WPA-type program." Good to know that the real left hasn't had a new idea since 1933. Cancelling NAFTA and the WTO might be amusing for a couple of years, but I doubt it's a good policy.

Dean thinks Medicare/Medicaid is a solemn contract between the senior citizens of the country and Lyndon Baines Johnson. That's fine. I signed no such contract with Lyndon Johnson, and I'm not interested in upholding his end of the bargain.

Now we're away from this theater that keeps getting raved about to commercial break.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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John Edwards is doing OK in terms of the style of his answer, but God Almighty, what a weird substance. He's given a good style, one that won't necessary play well with the wackos in the audience.

Carol Moseley Braun displays why she's in the bottom: If it's dangerous there now, it isn't going to get any better when the only thing securing the country (i.e. the United States Army) leaves. For crying out loud.

Kucininch is a loon. No privatization---let the UN have it? NO. The Iraqis would never get anything out of it. Put up an Iraqi National Oil Corporation or something and use the profits for those people, not to put more carpet in the UN's office.

Clark's citation of McCarthyism is off-point, but it plays to the loons in the audience. This question could be, however, extremely important for the future of his campaign. I would point out the story about the British general refusing to start "World War III for [Clark]" when the Russians moved on that airport during Operation ALLIED FORCE. Methinks Wes would talk too much and fight too little. I understand that "Jaw jaw is better than war war" but there are times when you put someone on the floor in a fog. Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, and the like were men who deserved to be KOd in the first five seconds of the fight.

Gephardt took a good position here. Hamas, Hizbollah (or however you spell it) and their ilk aren't going to play nice. They'll play nice when they've been atomized. He's earning laurels as a real Democratic candidate, not a loon. Of course, in front of this audience, that's fatal.

Lieberman gives another solid answer. I will continue to think that he's one of their best men to put forward. Wow, that's a good one. I wouldn't mind a free and independent Palestine and Israel, but never on Arafat's terms.

Dean's foreign policy answer is perhaps decent. Kucininch's Department of Peace is supposed to be a domestic organization? O...K...Dennis, I think they call that the local police department. After having clashed with a few of his supporters once, I doubt Kucininch would have fought World War II.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I don't like this debate format.

Dean: Dodges the question by bashing Bush.

Kerry: Says we've got a fraudulent coalition. I suppose the United Kingdom doesn't exist, Mongolia doesn't exist, Australia doesn't exist, and so forth. Brilliant foreign policy, Kerry. Kerry wants someone else to get shot out.

Al Sharpton: Bah. "Bush roulette". Is this what the mighty civil rights movement has come to? Besides, this ain't no Vietnam. We never captured Hanoi, put Ho Chi Minh on the run, or laid waste to the North Vietnamese Army.

General Clark: If he said that February 2003 quote, more power to him. Bait & switch, eh? I haven't enough information to evaluate the accuracy of his remarks. No diplomacy and no leadership? Bah. We tried, you moron. Not a bad answer, but this is annoying. His 'support right, condemn wrong' was pretty good.

Gephardt: This is the first good answer that's been given all night. It's not an idiot's rabble-rousing remark (i.e. Dean et cetera) nor is it flat wrong, like Kerry.

Lieberman: Comes out swinging; that's great. Heh heh heh, right between the eyes for the (real) Hebrew Hammer! (sorry, Sid Rosenberg---Bernard McGuirk slapped you about, so you can't get that claim)

Edwards: "Never give George Bush a blank check" is not so bad.

Kerry's response to Lieberman is weak, IMO. There's a ridiculous theory that because we didn't go in with the bloody French somehow makes this...gah. Clark's response goes nowhere. Lieberman's still punching, and that's a good move.

They've skipped Kucininch and Braun so far---can't blame Fox but it's obviously problematic.

More in the next post. Bravo to Edwards for getting in there on their behalf.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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To steal from Sports Illustrated, this week's sign that the apocalypse is upon comes from talkingpresidents.com, a company famous for making a 12" doll of G.W. Bush and giving it an electronic chip that allows the thing to repeat famous Bush phrases. In their ever-expanding product line, the people of talkingpresidents.com have deigned to issue an Ann Coulter doll. I am, to put it lightly, amused. It earned an Anavel Gato-ish "Hmmph!" when I first heard it mentioned (by John Derbyshire, nonetheless) and I had to go hunting via Google to find out just what it was he was talking about.

Anyways. I do my part in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and occasionally chuckle at Miss Coulter's vituperative eviscerations, and I'll probably pony up the money to acquire one of these things. Once bought, it might get taken out of the box once or twice and listened to. On the other hand, I shudder to think what the fate of some of these dolls will be, whether they be expended in ersatz voodoo rituals by people who invoke the names of Al Franken and Michael Moore, or utilized in more base things. Or, it could be that Barbie and Skipper get their trendy materialistic Mattel liberalism challenged by the new teacher in the class, who Ken falls head over heels in love for, and as such must choose to Be a Man, instead of the neutered plastic thing he is now. Or maybe Ann could slap some sense into these thug-looking "Bratz" dolls that I keep seeing in toy stores.

Of course, if Annie C. was sold in a two-pack set with Laura Ingraham (depending upon which Laura they modeled) I'd be a lot more likely to order. Toss in the holy trinity of television news (FNC's Jennifer Eccleston, MSNBC's Natalie Morales, and CNN/HN's Rudi Bakhtiar) and you've got a sale.

Of course, it's also worth noting that talkingpresidents is marketing a Donald Rumsfeld doll. Hee hee. That's a trip. If the thing says, "There are things that we know, things that we don't know, things that we know we don't know, and things that we don't know that we don't know", I'm sold. A good bonus in that event would be for the thing to declare stuff "unknowable".

A Richard Nixon doll better be on the horizon, especially with "V-for-victory" arm motion action. Helicopter and Mrs. Nixon sold separately.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And now we turn to one of the reasons I really wanted to put a blog together, namely the candidacy of General Wesley K. Clark, U.S. Army (retired). Mind you, I've no intention of voting for him. My vote was locked up late in November 2000 when Governor George W. Bush became President-elect George W. Bush. At the same time, if the President goes down in defeat, I reckon the country could do worse (read Kucininch or Dean) than Clark. If the country was destined to have one of the current crop as President, I'd rather have Lieberman at the helm than any other of the opposition candidates.

That being said, here's a little something from the gang at clark04.com:

Clarktoberfest

Bring some spice to your Halloween parties. Host a Clarktober Fest at your home. Give your guests a treat after three years of being tricked by the spooky Bush administration.

Here are some fun ideas for your Clarktober Fest gathering:

Carve a Clark-o-lantern. Show your friends and neighbors whose plans have the teeth to change America.

This is followed by patterns to carve that Clark-o-lantern. That's right, a Clark-o-lantern. I've seen a lot of things in my life, and for crying out loud, that's ...I don't know. It's kinda stupid, but honestly, it's about time that someone had some whimsicality in politics. I'm not going to sneer at it, but I certainly won't be wasting a pumpkin on Wes.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A reader has pointed out that "Firebird" (whatever that is) and Microsoft's Internet Explorer (boo hiss!) render this site in a very odd way. It could be their particularities inherent to each browser, or it could be something in the oddball way that this mysterious blog thing works. Now for the obligatory Browser Compliance Statement, the likes of which haven't been seen since the mid-1990s:

"This site is designed for and looks best upon Netscape Navigator 7.0, available for free download from Netscape's Browser Central."

Once I dig up a 1997 copy of the Netscape Now! button that advertises Navigator Gold, I'll post it somewhere. Viva la revolucion.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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As Anthony Hopkins' Ian McCandless put it in Freejack, "Welcome to my mind."

This blog represents the preliminary end result of about two years of trying to figure out if I wanted in on the blog scene. The story is long and uninteresting, so I'll spare you the details.

I’m the anonymous chap posting under the name of “The Country Pundit”, a small-town conservative in the beautiful Commonwealth of Virginia. I started this blog to offer what I considered to be my unique mélange of positions, offered in oft-muddle-brained commentary that passes for incisive analysis. At times, I’ll probably enrage you, irritate you, or (hopefully) get you to say, “That ain’t such a bad idea!” On the off chance that I do one of those things, I expect to hear from y’all.

Movable Type supports 'categories' for posts, and I've drawn up the following list, for your edification: Culture, Defense, Law, Politics, and Religion. Several of those are the ones that you don't talk about in polite company, but go figure. There are other catgories at this point, but I've listed the big ones, and go from there.

Thanks for reading.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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