According to the Miami Herald, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld keeps a piece of the jet that clobbered the Pentagon courtesy of al-Qaeda.

Somehow, I approve. On the other hand, the article also tells of people scavenging patches from the ruins of sworn officers' uniforms in the rubble. That's a) ghoulish and b) the desecration of a de facto war grave. (On a side note, I was irritated by the notion that the scrap metal from the target site in the city of New York was hauled away for disposal; it should have been held on to like Elendil and reforged into a new World Trade Center built to the specifications of the original, on the same site as if nothing ever happened.)

Read the whole thing by clicking here.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Diversionz.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is snipped from the preceding post in order to maintain the tone of the first.

If al-Qaeda did do it---still a possibility---then they've picked on the wrong people. If we assume that al-Qaeda is motivated by some sort of "anti-Crusader" mentality, then their action is somewhat rational but also kind of stupid.

What's rational? The Spanish are some of the last folks to have really given the Islamic/Moorish empire a bloody nose. Remember that as late as the 15th century, Spain was still possessed of a significant Islamic occupation presence. In fact, it would take until 1492 to complete the reconquista, the reconquest of Spain. For a brief capsule of that and the Alhambra of Granada, see here.

Ostensibly, the religious motivations for al-Qaeda would be avenging, (five hundred years later) the defeat of Islamic forces. At the same time, they haven't just tweaked the nose of the evil crusader country, they've hit a country that's got ruthless running through its history.

After all, it wasn't called the Spanish Inquisition for nothing. Pit and the pendulum, anyone? This is the country that coughed up Tomás de Torquemada. Given that this war against terror is one that is fought largely in the shadows, are you al-Qaeda men really sure you want your troops charging into that country? The land of Torquemada is also a country that has knitted into its cultural fabric the active enjoyment of a literal bloodsport, namely bullfighting.

I ask al-Qaeda again: Do you really want to mess with the guys who cleaned your clocks five hundred years ago, who produced a man whose name is synonymous with brutal torture, and who think a lot of ritualized slaughter? America's put a beating on al-Qaeda, but we've just got a penchant for porn and precision firepower.

Suppose al-Qaeda thinks it can take the Spanish in warfare and out-do them in brutality, slaughter, fire, whatever. That's nice, Osama. You've bagged about 200 people. Congratulations. The Spanish, on the other hand, pretty much laid waste to every indigenous population south of the Rio Grande and Florida, all for the greater glory of Spain, profit for the crown and self, and to save the souls of those Indians from the fires of Hell.¹ That, friends and neighbors, is destruction practiced as an art.

If given a choice between the all-stars of Islamic cruelty and the all-stars of Spanish conquistadors for the Brutality Bowl, I'll take Cortez & Company, thank you. These Spaniards'll tear you a couple of new orifices, right before they set fire to your flea-bitten hides, and all to the sights & sounds of flamenco performers. At this point for us, it's strictly business---for the Spaniards, it will be all personal.

Good luck and good hunting, Spain.

¹ And no, I'm not one of these indigenous-peoples whiners that considers Christopher Columbus the very devil of Hell. Besides, I'm more interested in what happened in 1607 at Jamestown.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I am, of course, conscious of the attacks in Madrid. It's a nice-but-nasty city, one where your lungs will instantly know that you're not in America any more once you disembark from your plane.

As usual, I've got something to say about the whole deal:

I was listening to NPR this morning and some fellow---not your usual sandalista---suggested that the discovery of the van was possibly a ham-fisted attempt to shift blame. His primary reasons for saying this were twofold:
-The tapes found in the van were religious sermons that were readily available and were not 'propaganda'.
-The ETA may not be monolithic; see some marketplace car bombing in Northern Ireland by the 'Real' IRA back in the late 1990s.

I agree with this man's reservations. Before I go further, let me say that I know precious little about the Basque struggle for independence, and was surprised to know that the French were in the fight against the ETA et cetera. That is not a back-of-the-hand against Paris; I had thought that the Basque question was solely a domestic Spanish issue. Learn something every day, y'do.

The point about the tapes is interesting to me. I would expect religious material in the hands of men about to commit terrorist acts would be something on the order of "DEATH TO THE ZIONIST PIGS AND THEIR CRUSADER ALLIES, ALLAH COMMANDS IT AND YOU WILL GET 72 COPIES OF SALMA HAYEK IF YOU DO THIS!" Conversely, I would not expect them to have tapes of a run-of-the-mill imam reading the five pillars of Islam or talking about how going to Mecca isn't really required if you can't make it, that Allah in his munificence would understand.

Of course, if it were a sophisticated operation by al-Qaeda forces, there might be incentives to try and cover their trail. I can think of a few, but I'll leave it to them to figure it out. No freebies, you dirtbags.

Secondly, the point about ETA factionalism is almost always true when you're dealing with politico-terrorist organizations. Invariably, there's always someone in the ranks who isn't happy that you've stopped bombing and started balloting, regardless of whether the goals of the group are being advanced. Some organizations probably kill dissenters like that, but they can't catch every one.

This problem even extended to the German National Socialists. Ernst Rohm, the leader of the Sturmabteilung (AKA the 'SA'), become dissatisfied with the actions of Adolf Hitler because the little corporal wasn't doing enough to further the socialist goals Rohm had embraced. Rohm had thought that he and his organization were the vanguard of the national socialist revolution, and thus wanted to be a big dog in the NSDAP's arrangements if not the big dog.

Of course, Hitler didn't like competition. Rohm made some public remarks---something about either continuing the original Nazi revolution or having another one---that got ol' Adolf angry, and so Rohm & Co. were purged in "The Night of the Long Knives", 10 June 1934.

That example is listed to show that even some of the best run groups of thugs have their problems and their "mob" to satisfy, unless you kill them. Given the probable resemblance of the ETA to every other politico-terror group, the aforementioned splinter possibility is given credence by me.

But what of the ETA disavowals? The BBC & NPR reported that 'reliable ETA contacts' (not their phraseology) had disavowed the attacks. That in and of itself is not conclusory. I see two possibilities:

a) They didn't do it, and were wanting to their story out in front that while "Yes, we kill Spaniards in the name of Basque independence, we didn't do this because we're not stupid." This would be intelligent damage control, because the ETA's name came up first in public discussion, sort of the ready wrongdoer. If the public got it in their minds that the ETA was responsible, the bombing Basques might get a visit from the Spanish military that otherwise would not have been made.

b) They did do it, and wanted to cover that up for whatever reason, like too much success. "Oops, we've killed too many." At this point, the ETA leadership would want to distance itself because it would not serve their purposes. It would attract the sort of rage that 11 September got from us. The ETA would like fear and weakness; instead, they would get fear backed by rage, which tends to lead to slaughter of the bad guys. If I were an ETA commander and we'd ordered the strike, I'd do my darnedest to back away. I'd hate to have the Spanish army turned loose on me with any remaining gloves off. Similarly, it would require carefully orchestrated political footwork in order to manipulate the circumstances to ETA's advantage at this point.

At the same time, it would be an interesting way to get on top of the Spanish terror heap; perhaps the ETA saw a useful opportunity in the 'failed' op to stick al-Qaeda with the blame and get them annihilated, so that everyone remembers the ETA and doesn't get distracted with a bunch of Arabs. I suppose it would be something on the order of, "We'll keep the license on killing Spaniards, thank you."

Further ruminations may follow. My second point in this post is now going to be a separate post, due to its less analytical content. The people of Spain are in my prayers.

UPDATE: Matthew Stinson's remarks and round-the-web research are here; go read them.

The Swanky Conservative has found this site about the ETA.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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1. What was the last song you heard?

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yes, this one's late as well. Today'll be a two-fer, catching up.

What was...

1. ...your first grade teacher's name?

2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?

3. ...the name of your very first best friend?

4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal?

5. ...your favorite thing to do after school?

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A source reports that the Virginia Museum of Transportation (www.vmt.org) is working on its exhibits again.

Their Norfolk & Western RPO (Railway Post Office) car is being restored. This is, of course, a good thing. The source tells me that new windows are being fitted and a new exterior painting will be applied. Long-range plans reportedly involve the interior restoration of the car so that it can be walked through. The interior of the car is considered "largely intact", and my source confirms this.

Railroads at one time were the means of long-range mail transport. These specialized RPO cars were placed at the head of the train, right behind the locomotives, as they were not open to anyone but their workers and perhaps the train crew. The workers would pick up, sort, and set out mail that was bound for anywhere all over the country, all while the train was moving. Large bags of sorted mail would be chucked from the speeding locomotives onto platforms at various stations in order to make the connection.

The U.S. Mail provided much revenue for the railroads in the waning days of passenger service, until the government decided to cancel the rail mail contracts, choosing trucks and airplanes as the mail delivery system instead.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've got a Sprint PCS cellular phone and have had it since the summer of 2001. I've been very pleased with their service for the most part, and I've just found something that I think is worth passing along:

SprintUsers.com, in their own words, is "a resource for Sprint PCS users to learn about the company's products and services - not shoved down your throats by corporate suits, but with suggestions and opinions from other customers just like you."

They have a wide variety of things to look at in terms of the SPCS system, and a pretty active message board that appears to have a lot of good information. I've bookmarked and will use it; thought I'd pass it along to the readership.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Victor Davis Hanson, who most of the Internet knows from his columns at National Review Online, now has a blog. Visit it at The Official Website of Victor Davis Hanson.

I got this, somehow, from the RSS feed at The Politburo Diktat, who got it from Horsefeathers. Tips of the Wisconsin hat to all involved.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There are occasional authors or pieces at National Review Online who have the power to inflict the Nelson Rockefeller effect known as "MEGO", i.e. "Mine Eyes Glaze Over" when they write and I read.

I don't generally keep track of the statistics for this, but Stephen Moore's new piece, entitled What's Wrong With Insider Trading?, must've set a record. I managed to get five paragraphs into it---not far---before immediately hitting the snooze button.

The killer quote: "Libertarians have long argued that insider trading should not be a crime..."

Heh heh heh. I'm not sympathetic to libertarian principles and I don't care for their influence. Libertarians have long argued that they aren't irrelevant, but that doesn't make it so.

And no, I don't like Stephen Moore, either. I'm not particularly fond of his assassination squad which operates under the euphemistic title of "Club for Growth". Mr. Moore, the Party doesn't need a fanatical batch of libertarians running around targeting standing Republicans for annihilation just because they disagree with you.

This does not operate as a defense of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who doesn't seem to be a good Republican. It does however operate as an indictment of an unelected and unaccountable latter-day Inquisition. I recently got a membership drive letter from the Club, autosigned by Stephen Moore. I read it for amusement, until I got to the fourth page. Then, amusement turned to outrage:

[Y]ou will be part of an organization whose goal is to defeat status quo incumbents.

One lesson we've learned from the Left is that if you really want to advance your agenda, take out an incumbent politician who opposes you. It's amazing how quickly cowardly politicians see things our way when they believe that their political careers are in danger.

Stephen Moore isn't happy just defeating Democrats. He wants to destroy any Republican that doesn't march to his tune, regardless of seniority or electability. I'm distinctly amused at his puffed-up air that sounds straight from The Godfather. Made any offers they can't refuse lately, Don Mooreleone? Or maybe Stephen's seen Enemy at the Gates. Unfortunately, where I winced at the site of NKVD/KGB political types gunning down the hapless Soviet infantrymen, Mr. Moore got some inspiration.

I also went back and read the letter again, because I thought something was missing. Mr. Moore brags and blows about wanting candidates who will, "fight relentlessly for cutting taxes, controlling federal spending, creating personal accounts for Social Security, ending the death tax, eliminating the capital gains tax, providing true school choice, and minimizing government's role in our daily lives". This is supposed to be part of "the way the world really works", coupled with "a strong economy and a strong America [as] one and the same".

Nowhere does Mr. Moore's screed mention national defense. Doubtlessly, his libertarian ivory tower does not consider defense because it is economically expensive. He doesn't say a thing about the fact that oh, a bunch of Islamists want us dead. Perhaps we are to defeat al-Qaeda with lowered taxes? Last time I checked, low taxes did nothing to stop modern day Mistel attacks against American skyscrapers.

Mr. Moore's political hit squad should be unwelcome in polite Republican company. I don't mind the idea of outside PACs exerting influence on our candidates, but I'd at least like for "conservative" PACs to phone home to Planet Earth on occasion.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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OK, here's the Captain Ed entry. I excerpted the Captain's comments in block quotation in order to set them off, and if he's got any problem with the representation of the original post and/or his remarks, I'll be glad to revise the presentation of content.

NB: Where Captain Ed uses the term 'Islamofascist', I use the term 'Islamist'. Insofar as I know, we're referring to the same group.

I may not have made clear my belief that absent 9/11, Bush probably would have never gone after the Islamofascists like he has since, or that he probably would have been only marginally tougher than Clinton. Politically, he would have lacked the mandate, and he would have been much more focused on building a broader political base for his legislative efforts.

I would tend to agree with this statement. I wouldn't expect a pre-11 September President Bush to have done much other than talk about being compassionate and cutting taxes, while offering lip service to defense and foreign policy. More hot air from Houston, if you will. The biggest impression I had was how I believed he had handled the EP-3E incident improperly, being too eager to be nice to the Red Chinese. ¹

Also, I'm not saying that I preferred the Thieu government that resulted from the Diem coup -- I'm saying it was a bad idea. I'm not sure I made myself clear in that instance. I think that the coup wound up embroiling us in that problem far more than was necessary, but once we set it in motion, we were left on the hook. A negotiated settlement could have allowed the partition to hold, and Diem may have gotten that. Maybe not. But Thieu and Giap certainly weren't interested in negotiation.

Fair enough; I had a feeling there was some sort of message getting lost in there. The 'problem' with Diem---don't get me wrong; I'm probably in the "sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem" category---was that he was in essence a Franco-Vietnamese Roman Catholic trying to hold together a Buddhist majority state. Sure he plays well with the foreign folks (like us) but he apparently couldn't get the whole country behind him.

As for negotiating with Ho Chi Minh, the only way that should have been done was through the use of a Ouija board. Any negotiation in which he was a party to would probably have failed invariably. Either the RVN or the DRV was going to have to win the war outright so long as he, and his disciples, were around. Unfortunately, the wrong side won that one. (By the way, John Kerry served in Vietnam. Brought to you by Kerry 2004. Gotta pay the bills.)

I think both the Diem and Thieu governments understood that the Communists had it in for them, but I'm wondering if the Thieu government (and its assorted participants like Nguyen Cao Ky or that 'Big Minh' character) understood that North Vietnamese victory meant more than just 'loss of power'. I don't quite get the sense that they---the Saigon leadership---were thinking about what the Communist victory would mean outside of the fact that they in Saigon would no longer be calling the shots. If these men had understood the stakes as they truly were, perhaps the infighting and coup-de-etat-of-the-week atmosphere might've lessened a bit and waited until the NVA had been dealt a bloody nose and the war was over.

Technically, Hungary occurred prior to the slice of time I laid out (since 1960), but yeah, I'd say sacrficing the Hungarians to keep the Soviets appeased was a mistake. In this case, as in Czechoslovakia, you still had one side willing to use military force and one side demonatrating it wasn't. I don't know if I'd characterize either as brilliant national-security moves, quite frankly.

I use Hungary and Poland as a way to show that when, the military equation favored us more, we didn't intervene. Toss into that a Republican President of near-unimpeachable military character (unless you're a John Birch man) and it effectively neutralizes, I think, any partisan value. In 1954-1956, we were not bogged down in a Southeast Asian sinkhole, and we were militarily superior to the Soviet Union. It's my impression that the Poles and the Hungarians were in a better position to have actually held out against the Soviets. Even so, both of those countries were effectively unreachable unless you landed troops from the Baltic Sea, drove through neutral Austria, or slugged your way east through East Germany.

There's the rub in all cases. N.S. Krushchev once referred to West Berlin as the 'testicles of the West' which he could squeeze with reckless abandon and we'd do what he wanted. I think some of the theories of the day included a slippery slope to war which began in Berlin. See The Sum of All Fears in paperback to recognize that. Keeping in mind that the Soviets would have regarded any intervention by the NATO powers in what could technically be described as Warsaw Pact business as an act of belligerence, I think we did the right thing in not getting involved.

But Country Pundit, you say, aren't you an anti-Communist? Yes, I am. But we couldn't have gone to the overt military aid of those folks in the 1950s and 1968 without provoking the Soviets. Our people were probably already worried about attracting Soviet attention in Southeast Asia, and I doubt the politicians of the time wanted to risk nuclear annihilation for the dubious cause of saving one Communist's butt from another.

The key thing I think you're overlooking here in your analysis is not so much that we weren't going to use force and the Sovs were, but look at the map. The Soviets could enter Czechoslovakia from friendly territory almost all around. We, on the other hand, would have to either cross enemy territory, violate a neutral, or take the risky step of coming in from the south of Czechoslovakia. How're we going to keep the troops supplied? How do we keep the Soviets from invoking some mutual self-defense clause in the Warsaw Pact and starting World War III?

An example: What would you have done if, during the French student riots of 1968, the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany decided to side with the students and capture France for the Warsaw Pact? They'd have to go through West Germany in the process and it would provoke a general war in Europe that could lead to the big nuclear exchange. Sending CIA in to mess with the situation would be something I might endorse, but sending the 82nd Airborne is not particularly a good idea in my mind.

My closing question on the Czechoslovakian Issue is this: What would you have done had you been the President in 1968?

Operation El Dorado Canyon was an easy call to make, since its mission was against a fixed target. I think it was a great idea and paid off handsomely, in that it kept Gaddafi in a box for the next 18 years. Why didn't the Reagan administration try the same philosophy against Islamic Jihad and Hezb' Allah? Why not go after the Iranians then, who were obviously funding and hosting these groups, instead of selling them arms to release our hostages? That's ineptitude. I understand we were fighting the Cold War, but you could make the same exact argument about Carter. By the way, I disagree with you about his options in Teheran; I think Carter could easily have gotten a declaration of war from that Congress had he pursued one.

EL DORADO CANYON was a good idea, but it was a risky operation. We didn't get cooperation from the French---the more things change, the more they stay the same---we lost some people, and it required a large amount of concentration of forces. I'd say it was good for a one-time event, but I doubt that the Reagan Administration could have gotten away with it for long in Congress.

For a variety of reasons, Iran was not a viable military target. We had to try at least something to keep Khomeini and his people from cozying up to the Soviets, which would have been A Bad Thing Indeed. Also, I have some vague notion that Reagan's people, if not Reagan himself, were thinking about a rapprochement between the United States and the Islamic Republic, kind of on the order of Reagan goes to Tehran, if not in actual form. Richard Nixon, in a ghost-written letter to the New York Times, compared the Iranian initiative to his China opening; he noted that it was a bold strategy that (I think) he liked and had it succeeded, would have been hailed as comparable to his 1972 Beijing visit. If we had been able to get Iran back in our corner, it would have indeed placed another pistol at the head of the Soviets, instead of waving about madly.² The Soviets knew this, and I doubt they would have sat idly by while the Sixth Fleet turned the Islamic Republic into a smoking hole in the ground.

Also, the Iranians were willing to play ball with us in funding the contras in Nicaragua. Remember that the Reagan Administration was tightly focused on stopping the spread of Communism in Latin, Central, and South America; Iran was a means to that end. Congressional Democrats were howling against stopping Communists down there (who could be considered subordinates of the Soviets); I can only imagine Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, and others in the Democratic majorities going ballistic over the notion that America was going to fight a much more nebulous enemy over the hostage thing.

And as for the hostages, I don't particularly recall---could be wrong---a large movement that said "KILL THOSE WHO TAKE HOSTAGES"; instead, I think more emphasis was placed by the electorate on getting them back home. There are, after all, objective limits to what can be done by a government in a Republic such as ours.

One could theoretically argue that our support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war was our backdoor way of dealing with the Iranians. In any event, I would like to note my support in the present day for the two-track policy, one where we shake their hands and kick them in the butt at the same time. It's the duplicity and ends-oriented thinking that I like for our people to be practicing; heck with this noble ideals stuff.

In regards to a Carter-era full-scale war with Iran, I have to note that I think it would be a A Bad Idea, whether Congress gave the declaration or not. Any meaningful response would have taken a while to gin up, and the Iranians hadn't wasted the Shah's military base in that worthless Iraq-Iran war. Pahlavi was one of the defense industry's best customers, and I bet the Islamic Republic could have put up a good fight. In 1979-1980, we weren't the cutting-edge superpower we are now; we'd have been fighting on similar material terms, I think. After a few dozen casualties, Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor probably would have been on TV declaring Iranian victory and American humiliation. A double whammy of that so shortly after Vietnam could have been distinctly problematic when the larger issue of fighting the Soviets came up.

I'd also like to stress that in the 1980s, we were making use of Islamic fundamentalists to some extent, inasmuch as we were using them to discover Soviet mines and test their helicopters on in a rocky little dump named Afghanistan. It is unlikely that Islamic terrorism was considered to be a real threat on a major scale such as we saw in this century.

With regards to beating on Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, perhaps it was thought that we'd best leave them be. These groups didn't necessarily cooperate (I don't think) and some of them were Soviet backed. Had we pursued a policy of direct hunting and killing, I daresay that these various Shiite groups would have found a new brotherhood in Allah to justify a) cooperation and b) taking weapons from the unbelievers in order to fight the infidels, i.e. us. Think the Iraqi situation now, except all over the Middle East and parts of Europe, and with the Soviets and their subordinates in Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany helping out.

All in all, I have to admit, you make a very good response to my post, although I still feel that I'm more correct than incorrect. And I finally got fisked by someone. Hmmm ... feels oddly good.

Well, I wish some others would weigh in on this because I think I'm holding a better hand than you are. That being said, I've enjoyed the exchange and I appreciate your remarks. I reckon we're doing what the blog bunch is supposed to do, so yippee skippee.

¹ What would I have done? Depending upon how important it was to the continued preservation of national technical means, I might have given the order to destroy it if possible. Be it Tomahawk by way of a Los Angeles or an F-117A/B-2A attack, that plane would have been bits and pieces. However, the fact that we didn't do it is circumstantial evidence suggesting that it either wasn't necessary or that it couldn't, for a variety of reasons---political or operational---be done. At the same time, the Red Chinese have to learn their lesson; their pilots like to feed on Navy aircraft.

At the same time, I would have liked to have seen someone issue an apology on the order of, "We're sorry that your guys are too incompetent to fly close formation with a lumbering ELINT aircraft" and go from there. The Red Chinese are going to be the real problem in the future, not these dirty Islamists. Enh, I digress.

² I have some notion that the Iranian policy (at one point) during the Khomeini-Rafsanjani years was to consider America the Great Satan (#1, baby!) and the Soviets the Lesser Satan, sort of a 'pox on the Zionist tools and the godless athiests of Russia!' notion. Of course this wasn't an ironclad policy but I think it would be accurate at least once or twice during the Khomeini period.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yeah, so I got home at like 11:30 or something and I didn't get to write the response to Captain Ed just yet.

Nevertheless, I walked outside and looked up into the freezing night air, and saw a brilliant moon high in the sky, illuminating surrounding clouds to a silver that only seems possible when the temperature's low. Perhaps the mercury in thermometers has fallen out of them and into the clouds? Poor verse perhaps, but it's the best I can do at the moment.

There are no orange lights from a foul city with crime on the rise and no sounds of wailing sirens. The only thing that disturbs the night is the wail of a Norfolk Southern K5LA horn as the Thoroughbred of Transportation thunders past my subdivision in the wee hours of the night, headed for points west.

There's a touch of snow in the air, and the wind's howling around and down into the chimney for the basement fireplace. There are no craven and despicable law students about, and I can look down at the garden/orchard or up at the forested land above my house and realize that I am home.

It's almost as if you could reach out and touch the face of God. Magnificent.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I appreciate Captain Ed's commenting upon my remarks; I'm glad he stopped by, and I'm glad Comrade Commissar mentioned it in dispatches.

A thought-out response will be issued probably late tomorrow, as I've got to take a road trip (Spring break, baby! Just me and the MPRE study book, yee hah!) to get to home and then I'll have him an answer.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 "mentioned in dispatches" LOL. Haven't heard that one since "The Man WHo Would Be King."

Posted by: The Commissar at March 07, 2004 03:45 PM (sP5Xb)

2 Heh heh heh. Thanks for the link and for commenting. I've never seen this movie, but I think I'm going to have to. Caine 'n Connery playing British soldiers? Whee! I've always liked trying to work some of those British-isms into the personal language, and it's fun to do it. If we're ever going to get this Anglosphere thing going, it's got to start somewhere.

Posted by: The Country Pundit at March 08, 2004 08:34 PM (yfAPC)

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In Which Derb Weighs in on Martha Stewart...

Readers are chiding me for my support of Martha: "Rich rhymes-with-rich... arrogant... female Kerry, DYKWIA?.... little people need protection in the market... integrity of the market... yada yada."

Well, fiddlesticks. I'm a conservative, and my first presumption is that my main enemy is State Power. This was an exercise in State Power, DYKWIA writ much larger than any individual in this country can write it.

Stewart's offenses were trivial, not worth prosecuting. Investor confidence? Insider trading? (Which she was not even charged with!) Gimme a break. The markets are a lottery, and the little guy enters at his peril -- always has, always will. "When the little guy gets in, it's time to get out," has been conventional wisdom on Wall Street since (very probably) the founding of the Republic. There is no way to control insider trading -- in fact, Wall Streeters will defy you to even DEFINE insider trading (the U.S. Congress, for one, gave up on trying). And in fact, a little guy who had held on to his Imclone stock would have been smarter than Martha--the FDA drug rejection that caused the stock to dive has since been reversed!

Arrogance? Yeah, this is arrogance, all right -- the arrogance of gummint prosecutors with too much time on their hands -- since they don't have the guts to pursue REAL federal crimes, like the hiring of illegal-immigrant labor -- hunting for a Great White Defendant to boast to their bosses about, and advance their careers in the federal-judicial bureaucracy -- the same bureacracy that is gradually stifling all our liberties, and wringing the vitality out of our economy. See BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. This is State Power run amok.

I'm a little guy, and I'm in the market. If the feds want to boast that they're doing ME any favors with this grandstanding, here's a message from this little guy to them: NO THANKS!

First they came for the haughty, slightly-dishonest millionairesses....

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The original post is here.

Once again, Johnny D. demonstrates why I like him. Even though Martha Stewart is probably a reprehensible human being---friend of Bill and all that---I never really heard what she did wrong. I found it ridiculous that she was being charged for making a false statement on the grounds of saying that she was innocent---or at least that was the media spin on it---and I just couldn't get enraged about her actions. "You are accused of saying that you are innocent. Life in prison." It don't work that way. The law, last time I checked, didn't punish a woman for proclaiming innocence, and the law does not expect the accused to stand out in public and proclaim guilt. (Admittedly, the entire case and the charge that got tossed are probably more complex than that, but we'll not let that stand in the way.)

One of the biggest reasons that I couldn't draw the long knife here is because Stewart reportedly was mean to Perky Katie Couric on NBC's dreadful Today show when Perky wasn't keeping pace in turkey stuffing. Anyone with the nerve to diss the Colon Queen can't be all bad. Heh heh heh.

Professor Bainbridge's writings on the Stewart case can be found here. I'm going on spring break tomorrow and I'll probably peruse everything he wrote; y'all probably should as well.

I hope she beats this rap. Her site discussing the matter can be found by clicking on the link. I checked out the site and I'm intrigued by the Other Voices section of the site. A quick browse through there reveals pro-Stewart columns from the pens of several conservatives, including Bill Safire, Jack Kemp, Paul Craig Roberts, and Emmett Tyrell. Several other people more or less on our side weigh in for her as well, including a libertarian from Cato and a Randian. As Alice once said, "Curiouser and curiouser". I wonder if these people were chosen in order to appeal to the pro-business wing of the political spectrum, because we might just save her butt.

There is still hope, and maybe that idiot juror's decision will be overruled. Clinton-loving dirtbag she may be, but I'd rather see sharp investors stay out of the dock, because I want at least one working for me in the future.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Folks who read the content here may have picked up on a certain level of discontent with the President. That's not surprising; I'm not entirely pleased with the course of the Bush Administration, and I don't give him a war-based pass on everything.

Does that mean that this blog backs Kerry? Nuh uh. Our version of Merv isn't worth John Nance Garner's warm bucket of spit, and I won't be voting for him. I once snarled at a Deaniac that my mind had been made up in late December 2000¹, and I've quipped words to that effect here as well.

With all that out of the way, I ran across a column by Will Saletan of Slate, the MSN effort at a webzine. Entitled "Confidence Man", its tagline is that the case for George Bush is the case against Bush as well.

Will Saletan's no stranger to "Orange is actually purple" arguments; I saw him on C-SPAN once hawking a book that said the pro-life conservatives had actually won the abortion debate and please stop complaining. Or something; I listened for fifteen minutes and was starting to wonder if I'd slipped into Animal Farm or something. Between the overly-eager host and Saletan's herky-jerky speech, I got lost and I don't think I got his point. That is, if he had one.

The entire Slate article is worth reading, if nothing else for amusement. Without going too deep into it, I'll say that I came away more willing to vote for the President, since I figure that the Merovingian won't do any better. Thanks Will Saletan! The Republican National Committee thanks you.

UPDATE: I visited Saletan's site for the book and it's pro-abortion conservatives that he says have won the war over abortion in this country. Well, whatever.

¹ Remember, had George W. Bush lost at the USSC, we might've had a different nominee in 2004.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There's a blogger named Captain Ed, who writes Captain's Quarters, and he also is known to be a writer at Blogs for Bush. The Commissar has spoken highly of him before, and he is apparently rather popular.

Anyways, he writes an anti-Kerry post over at Blogs for Bush, and it goes something like this: John Kerry has mouthed off, saying something about President Bush running "the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of our country."

Captain Ed responds thusly: "Apparently this hyperbole will be the foreign-policy slogan up through the convention, and perhaps beyond. Let's test this by looking at highlights of the past 40 or so years, which I assume would satisfy Kerry's "modern" qualifier."

He then goes on to break down a few of the foreign policy occurrences over the last forty-odd years, apparently demonstrating that the Bush Administration is the first one in nearly half a century that's shown any spine.

I disagree. Time for a good old fisking.

1961 - President John F. Kennedy implements a leftover plan from the Eisenhower adminstration of supporting a native insurgency in Cuba, but at the last minute and without warning the insurgents, Kennedy withdraws American Air Force support for the attack on the Bay of Pigs. The resultant disaster destroys any basis for improving US-Cuba relations and pushes Fidel Castro to seek protection from the Soviet Union. The USSR begins installing ballistic missiles in Cuba, leading to the worst crisis of the Cold War and almost touching off a nuclear war between the US and Soviets. The solution requires the dismantling of US missile bases in the Near East and may have contributed to the building of the Berlin Wall.

It is my understanding that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy negotiated the removal of PGM-19 Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles from their bases in Turkey, by meeting with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin. It's worth noting that the Jupiter IRBM was launched from fixed sites. If they're fixed, they can't maneuver. If you can't maneuver, then a missile or a bomber stands a half-decent chance of getting through and putting a several-kiloton-yield device on your launching apparatus, and then it's game over.

Now, I've been a Nixon man since I heard of the guy, and I take a back seat to no one in loathing the Kennedy family. If I could find an opportunity to kick John Kennedy, I would. The Bay of Pigs is an excellent example, and he deserves scorn for losing his nerve. [It is apparently an item of academic debate whether Kennedy's aggressive actions later on were an attempt to prove that he wasn't soft on Communism.] Thus, I'm no JFK fanboy and I scoff at "Camelot". But Captain Ed misses the mark badly here.

The Jupiter missiles had become redundant in terms of the American strategic nuclear deterrent. As fixed missiles, they were the most vulnerable of the triad¹ and weren't an entirely survivable weapons system. Enter the United States Navy.

By 1962, the United States Navy was capable of deploying its Polaris FBM-toting submarines in the George Washington and Ethan Allen classes to the Mediterranean to serve the same role as the Jupiter IRBMs. Soviet anti-submarine warfare in the Mediterranean was probably for naught at the time, so these Polaris boats were effectively invulnerable. Kennedy agreed to trade vulnerable fixed missiles for "Polaris—from out of the
deep to target. Perfect." Kindly explain to me how this is a failure, especially when we kept the trade quiet.²

1962-3 - The Kennedy administration tries several fruitless and laughable methods of assassinating Fidel Castro. They manage to stage a coup in South Vietnam, getting a government that is more inclined to fight the Communists than the preceding Diem government, which was more inclined to negotiation with Ho Chi Minh.

The misadventures of the Kennedys in trying to off Castro are probably too numerous to list. However, it's worth noting that Captain Ed misses the mark on the question of Vietnam. The 1963 coup that claimed the life of Ngo Dinh Diem, president of the Republic of Vietnam, didn't quite turn out like he thinks. Instead of the (admittedly somewhat bumbling) Diem government, we got twelve years of infighting, bickering, and posturing for position that probably didn't help the war effort. Maybe Ed got his terms confused, but the impression I got in a class on the war in college---taught by a veteran---was that the Diem assassination didn't help.

Ed's got some other oddities buried in this piece, and they're in the Extended Entry. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 08:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I was plowing through a backlog of e-mail late last night (or early this morning; the days are starting to run together again) and I found some good news:

Someone's going to be releasing the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century on DVD. Yeah, sure Gil Gerard can't act and some of the stories were awful, but this means Erin Gray on DVD. As Warner Wolf used to say on Imus in the Morning, "Baby, you've gotta love it!"

Woo hoo. Ostensibly, this would mean that the series release of Battlestar Galactica was to some extent a sufficient success. This is, to borrow a phrase which is probably trademarked, A Good Thing.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'd put the writings of the Derb up on the category list from day one, but I'd never really found anything to put in the category, mostly because it was either too contextual to reproduce outside of The Corner or because I forgot to.

Well, here's a gem that earned an Evil Calvin Grin:

I suppose it is "mean-spirited" of me, but I can't help wondering whether this Mayor [of New Paltz, NY, who faced criminal counts for illegal "marriage" licenses issued to homosexuals] would feel differently after spending time behind bars, knowing what we know about prison culture.

Heh heh heh. Mr. Mayor, you'll be sharing a cell with 'Tiny'. See? He likes you. I suppose the Purple Pundit will sooner or later whine about this, but TFB.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In the manner of Don Imus, I'm not even going to really get into the specifics of it all, but that idiot John Kerry has managed to sucker enough people into voting for him. I figure he's the weaker candidate than Edwards---would really like to have seen Bush KO the soon-to-be-ex-senior Senator from North Carolina, but doubt it would have happened---so I suppose it's a good thing that Kerry's the nominee, but gah!

At least the real Merovingian had Persephone to peek at---Miss Bellucci ain't half bad lookin'---whereas our ersatz Merv has his hideous French-lisping harridan from Algeria or wherever. Enh. Further proof that money means neither virtue nor beauty.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hrrm. It's 01 March, and I don't have a place to fly a kite. Bother!

Do people who aren't at the beach fly kites any more? I always fly one at the beach, just because it's absolutely relaxing and you're unobtrusive. It's also a way to talk to people, sort of. And mind you, strolling down the beach with a kite string in hand gives you an excuse to have your eyes fixed in a single direction for a while, which can be very er, rewarding when one's field of vision wanders back to some of the inhabitants of the beach.

Any graduate student guy independent enough to fly a kite on a partially-occupied beach ought to be interest just for the sake of being arrogant enough to do it, right? Right? (Yes, interesting in like call-the-cops-interesting. --Ed.)

Anyways. Two months and counting until graduation. Fear and loathing, here we come.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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