Centerfield

Open Thread

I'll start off with some BBQ. The Profesora and I started on a quest last night for good regional brisket. So far, my favorite is The Salt Lick. But even if we can't find a place that beats it, it's good to know about almost-as-good places that we don't have to wait two hours to get into (that is, alot of Central TX agrees with me).

We tried a little place that we pass alot down in SW Austin, Donn's BBQ. It was pretty good. On a 1-10 scale where 10 is Salt Lick and 1 is HS cafeteria BBQ sandwiches, I give them a 8, a notch better than Ruby's. There was no line, and the price was good, too.

We Better Establish a Right to Drive

Gun enthusisasts are often fond of the "...from my cold dead hands" perspective. Might car enthusiasts need to adopt a similarly hard line?

Driverless Cars On the way

As computers and sensors become smaller and more sophisticated, cars are handling more of the tricky and boring work of driving a car. Someday, they could handle virtually all of it....

Most of these systems only work at highway speeds. But some, like the system created by Continental Tevis for the Mercedes-Benz S-class, actually work all the way down to a dead stop. If you're stuck in stop-and-go traffic, you need never touch the brakes or gas. The car does it all for you. When the traffic clears, off you go.

The safety benefit of these systems is that they prevent a common cause of crashes - tailgating.

I've been waiting for this. My hope is that the inevitable outcome happens after I die.

Boldface emphases mine, BTW. Selling freedom for safety again. Most folks will love it, and eventually the voluntary will become the mandatory. Those riding in computer-driven cars will be forever blameless, most every accident the fault of human error, and the evil fools who want to drive their own cars will be marginalized.

Paranoid science fiction? Maybe. But less so today than yesterday....I think a good guess is that 50 or 100 years from now you'll be required to switch to autopilot in any area designated to be above a threshold congestion level. Cars unequipped with autopilot will not be allowed into the green zones. We may even see a marked diminishment in individual ownership, the demise of taxis, and so on. And of course, all the autocars in the public fleet will be equipped with cameras, both internal and external. And they'll be smelly.

Fascinating, Acid, Secret Twain Essay About Philippine-American War Hero

Twain apparently wrote and then suppressed a corrosive essay about a later Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the Philippines (hat tip, Free Frank Warner). I suspect that Twain largely has the right of it, too.

My sympathies lie mostly with the Filipinos in that fight because

Key Filipino leaders seem to have been allowed to think the US would let the Philippines go free, rather like the deceptive tactics practiced via Col Lawrence in the Middle East.

The Filipinos clearly wanted freedom, and

After the conquest, the Filipinos were treated unequally for decades. There was little democracy or liberty there.

Given those injustices, I feel the Fliipino rebels have to be regarded morally as freedom fighters, if only for the right to be oppressed by their own. In fact, the first set of rebels fought promulgated a much freer constitution than the US would allow there for decades. The Moros mentioned in the article were a different story; they fall more under the local oppression is better heading.

Whe the Filipinos were beaten, the US told them they weren't ready for this hard Democracy and Liberty stuff. No doubt Teddy Roosevelt felt it was above their racially inferior heads.

Posted by Jon Kay at 06:15 PM | Comments (14)

Two worlds

In the midst of all of the partisan fighting (i.e War in Iraq, DOJ firings, ...) this post at Gruntled Center really resonated with me.

Our daughter, who is having a wonderful time and learning a great deal, nonetheless feels the loss of ideological diversity compared to her high school. She said she is used to having Republicans to argue with; now she is at a school where even the head of College Republicans is a Democrat.

Beau Weston the blogger at Gruntled Center is a professor at a small-town college in Kentucky. He provides this counterpoint to his daughters experience

We met with one of our honored old teachers (at my daughter's school). Mrs. G. and I reminded him that he has said in an interview that country music seemed to be about a lost world, in which people married, raised kids, went to church, worked hard, honored America, and grew old together. Given a chance to talk about it, we offered that we lived in that world in small-town Kentucky.

I loved my college experience and I don't remember it as having so little diversity of opinion (of course, I was a bit more liberal then). My son complains about this issue also and he's at a large state university.
PS Prof Weston is a centrist Democrat (in case you assumed he also was right of center.)

Yet Another Obama Article

This one is about Obama's disadvantages so far with blue-collar voters. Its warnings about trouble there seem real, though Obama's manager is right so far to point out that it's still early. Still, I think Obama will have to spend particular effort showing comfort with and a good agenda for blue-chip voters.

The article also points out some history of candidates for the Democratic nomination casting themselves as thoughtful having trouble either for nomination or in the general. I've read the book referenced in the article about comparisons between warriors and priest as Presidents, but I don't think that's quite the dimension of Obama's vulnerability. I'd more say that Presidential candidates candidates with Obama's personality have been at a real disadvantage on the (D) side politics because of perceived shyness or arrogance.

And there's the generational thing. Clinton belongs to a bigger and older generation. The way Bill Maher put it was that he hated to think about voting for somebody so much younger than him. Though at least one 'Boomer on this blog has come out in favor of him, and he has at least some company. So that hurdle may not be so steep for him.

Can Obama win? Of course. But he has plenty to overcome. How's this last para for unhelpful comments? Next time I'll be sure and make a stupid sports analogy.

Score a Few for the Public's Common Sense

The Pew center reports that media interest far outstripped public interest in the US attorney firings:

Attorney Firings Stir Limited Public Interest

What were people much more interested in? The war, and the story of deficiencies at Walter Reed. So there's one for the wisdom of crowds. Maybe people can just smell inside baseball from a mile away. As one prone to worry about the lack of savviness of crowds and the dangers of relying upon intuition when issues may be complex, I find this a little bit consoling.

On a related note, I noticed yesterday that Hillary Clinton promised universal healthcare, thereby matching Barack Obama. Contra someone's recent claim that Obama was teflon and Hillary would get crucified for such a promise, it came and went without a boo. What I take from this is another point for the common sense wisdom of the public. Is the public savvy enough not to get bent by a promise that may be quite idle? Whatever we end up with in the way of healthcare reform come 2010 or 2012 or 2014, it'll be the product of a lot of input, feedback, and battling.

Maybe that's the base insight of the modern crowd when it comes to Presidents...that we're not electing a king or queen to do whatever he or she feels like, so we ought to remain both calm and skeptical in the face of wonderful and or outlandish promises.

A Good Sign in Northern Ireland

A good sign in Northern Ireland - return today of the power-sharing local govt worked out in the '90s (hat tip, Crooked Timber).

Hopefully it'll stick around longer this time.

Interestingly, I notice that, among other things, the UK had to offer to throw in $1B.

My 3-Year Mistake

Looking back, I'd say my biggest predictive mistake about Iraq was to guess that Republicans would care about law and order in Iraq. I could see that garrisoning more than a little of Afghanistan could be an invitation to a repetition of the Soviets' problems there, but I expected Iraq to be much better-policed.

OK, of course, that dig was unfair - it's mostly Rumsfeld whom we have to hold to account. Mostly. Of course, Bush has to be held to account for not holding feet to flames on the subject.

I do wonder why Rumsfeld was so uninterested in maintaining law and order in Iraq. Was he guilty of the wide US military prejudice of more interest in fighting than policing? Did he disbelieve in occupations? Or was he an idealistic libertarian? My guess, by the way, is #1, but I'm interested in other guesses.

By the way, though Rumsfeld seems to me to have managed to do astonishingly badly at postwar just about everything in Iraq, I'm still not in the "worst Defence Secretary ever" crowd. He did manage to do a pretty good job with the traditional part of war.

Tribute Open Thread

Friday open thread, so it's all good.

In tribute to a point in a thread downstream, our theme song for this thread is Robert Cray's "Playin in the Dirt," which was originally off his fantastic 1985 album False Accusations. Looking at the song list, this album is to my mind about as strong as his stellar signature one, Strong Persuader, which says an awful lot. Years ago, I saw him do a version of The Last Time (off of False Accusations) that literally sent chills down my spine. This is a guy with a stunning set of blues pipes, at least when he was in his prime, to go with a truly unique and very lyrical soloing style.

So we might as well enjoy it

Take it for what it's worth

Cause we're gonna get some on us

When we're playing in the dirt

It's the same old common story
It's happening all around
Ain't no doubt about it
One more ship is going down

There ain't no escaping
All the troubles on this Earth
We're gonna come up muddy, muddy, muddy
When we're playing in the dirt

We're gonna come up muddy. Says it all. So what's on YOUR mind?

Horse race thread

I'm embarrassed by my weakness, but I can't seem to avert my eyes from the daily coverage of the horse race. If you are similarly cursed, this thread is for you.

• A Look at the Polls of Mid-March
• Unease over '02 Iraq vote rattling Clinton campaign
• Edwards: Wife's cancer returns, campaign goes on
• New York Poised to Join Move to Earlier Primary
• Hillary ad traced to staffer of firm hired by Obama
• Poll: Fred Thompson Ties Romney in Ohio

My summary of the race at this point would be as follows: Giuliani is doing remarkably well and improving in the early polls, McCain appears to be regrouping, Hillary is proving that she is tough, Obama is learning about the Big Show, and Romney's ability to draw support is theoretical at this point. I also think that Al Gore has a surprise up his sleeve.

Bush Avoiding Email

Bush is showing a pattern of avoiding email.

You know, I have sympathy for Bush on this one. The problem with recording all emails and making them subpoena-able is that it allows no scope for getting broad advice on many ideas.

If Bush has a possibly-dumb idea (some would say he's had many), he does not dare email about it to any broad set of advisors. Nope - it has to be whomever's in the room. Otherwise he can be legally liable for any stupid first- or last-thing-in-the-morning idea. How many fewer dumb ideas would've been implemented if he or his staff could delete emails like most of the rest of us?

Some Smart Surging

Some smart things Petraeus is doing. In my opinion, Petraeus' operation against Sadr City is one of the most important changes. Al'Sadr made a poing of not firing at Coalition troops, so Petraeus' predecessors didn't fire back; that left al'Sadr free to do what they wanted to Iraqis.

And while we're talking about Iraq, here's an interesting article from Totten. Apparently, while Baghdad burns, Kurdistan has been taking advantage of its peace to build astonishingly. Most Kurds are hoping the surge fails. The long, long disorder got Kurdish hopes up of an Iraqi fracture. I like a united Iraq better because bigger countries are stabler than small ones.

UPDATE: link fixed - thanks for pointing out the error, wj.

Democratic Disgrace

According to the Washington Post, Democrats have loaded their "troops oput by 2008" bill with pet goodies in order to collect votes.

War bill includes tempting projects

House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year.

So far, the projects -- which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia -- have had little impact on the tally. For a funding bill that establishes tough new readiness standards for deploying combat forces and sets an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline to bring the troops home, votes do not come cheap.

But at least a few Republicans and conservative Democrats who otherwise would vote "no" remain undecided, as they ponder whether they can leave on the table millions of dollars for constituents by opposing the $124 billion war funding bill due for a vote on Thursday.

This is disgraceful. We're way PAST arguments about the appropriateness of Congress dictating the policy in the first place. We're into unethical persuasion here. If Congress is going to stick its fingers into the policy (which I have my doubts they ought to do anyway, after the first place of giving approval), then any vote about the nature of the policy ought to be arrived at without the ethical pollution of questions about funding for other unrelated projects.

And I could care less about any "business as usual" or goose/gander arguments. If the proposed policy can't stand solely on its merits and pass congressional muster, it ought to be a non-starter.

I'll say it again. These tactics DISGRACE the democrats.

Obama: Tastes Great or Less Filling

Over at Stubborn Facts, Simon is still banging the "not a centrist" less filling drum:

Another nail in the coffin of Obama's "centrist" credentials

Elsewhere, there are signs hardcore liberals aren't sure how great he tastes:

Still, the contrast between Obama's rhetoric and his votes in the Senate could damage his reputation among anti war liberals, some of his strongest supporters. John Cabral, a member of the Oak Park Coalition for Truth and Justice, an anti war group in suburban Chicago, said Obama now seems more concerned with avoiding Republican accusations of harming the troops than ending the war. "It's disappointing that he got swallowed up in the Senate in his two years there," Cabral said. "He didn't do some of the things we would have liked him to. He is worried about his political future."...

...Obama initially ruled out a 2008 presidential run, but shifted gears in January and formed a presidential exploratory committee and made his candidacy official last month. He has ramped up his criticism of the war since then and is now pushing a bill that sets a goal of withdrawing combat troops from Iraq by the end of March 2008. But unlike Kerry's withdrawal plan, Obama's bill would not set firm deadlines and would allow troops to remain in Iraq if the government meets specific benchmarks.

As last week's vote attests, Obama opposes using Congress's power of the purse to force the war to end. That's a deep disappointment to some liberals, who recall Obama as a Senate candidate speaking forcefully at antiwar rallies.

Read it all. Boldface emphasis mine. Mileage? Yours.

My mileage is that I agree with much of what he's said. I too thought the original decision was rash. It may have been clothed in deliberation, but my gut will always say Bush opted quickly for a disproportionate response, and THEN worked out the details. Especially because the nature of the "diplomacy" he conducted prior to invading Iraq stunk of undissuadability. And even thoough I'm not a benchmark guy, I appreciate the fact that Obama's plan is flexible. It shows me he's smart enough to understand that Bush's premise for the war then is not related to what's appropriate for the US to do now. Most of us agree that Iraq needs to start munching the carrot. If Iraq starts meeting the sorts of goals we know it needs to for its own sake, that's good news to MOST Americans, and I think that both Obama and Clinton are in that club.

Should United States Attorneys be Professionalized?

Most of my reactions on the attorneys have been like Brian's - e.g., it's inside baseball. But then I had a second thought - shouldn't the attorneys be professionalized? I mean, I'm not too comfortable with somebody deciding who's prosecuted who got that job by helping the winning political team. Especially since somebody with that description is likelier to help his own partisan team rather than being fair about who to prosecute.

Don't you dare change your mind!

An interesting change in position regarding the war is happening in AZ. Which Republican, you ask, has decided to publically express doubt about the present plans in Iraq.... Nope, guess again.... Give up? here you go.

While obviously not completely separating herself from the Democratic Party (a la Leiberman), Napolitano has once again struck a moderate tone. Maybe these Dems are on to something when they talk of the New West Democrats.

PS: "Janet, don't expect a cabinet position in the next administration."

Erin Go Open Thread

...may the road rise to meet you. One of the nicest salutations around, if you ask me.

St Paddy's odds and sods... according to the Irish bloke on the radio this am, the Irish don't drink green beer, and corned beef and cabbage is not a favorite. SPD is a big favorite here in Boston. The City of Boston even has a well-crafted cover holiday. Officially, 3/17 is "Evacuation Day," an official city holiday that everyone gets off in commemoration of the Redcoats evac'ing Boston roundabout the Revolutionary war. Everyone who works for the city. or, I think who works for the state within the city of Boston. But I'm sure it has nothing to do with Irish machine politics in the city of Boston back in the day. Nothing at all.

Anyone out there have any specialty local holidays like that?" Do New Orleanians get Pete Fountain's birthday off, or something? Chicago must have something.

Who has started their seeds? I'll start getting mine up in our south window this weekend, hopefully.

Baseball season starts in 17 days.

NCAA tournament thread

My pick is UCLA to win it all.

Blog that Brouhaha to death, AMIIGAF!

In a thread below, old friend WHQ wondered why we were talking about movies while the juicy US Attorney scandal was unfolding. So here's a thread for anyone who wants it, but if this story moves you, go ahead over to Stubborn Facts where they have been furiously blogging it to death.

Personally, I've found this to be a stunningly uninteresting insider baseball story, so that's why I haven't blogged it. As our colleagues at SF have pointed out (in excruciating detail) there's not much to the "scandal" in terms of say, illegal or unethically conspiratorial acts. 8 people serving in jobs that they hold only at the pure political whim of someone else more powerful have been turned over. US attorneys are patronage jobs, and they roll over regularly. Which facts make it even more uninteresting to me. To me and my friend the bored elf AMIIGAF (Ask Me IF I GIve A...).

Comments are open, but an enduring zero would please me just fine!

Why Communism Grew Big: WWI Mythology Part 1 of 3 (LONG)

WWI was so badly-fought on the Allied side, and saw so much guilt from the retributive terms ending it, that it resulted in an unbelievable amount of dangerous political mythology. These posts are about some of that. This one is about the rise of Communism. I spend less time on Fascism, as that I feel that's better-covered in courses and books.

From our post-Cold-War vantage point, Communism is hard to understand. At this point, it's obviously stupid and wrong. But you run into people even now who still believe in it or have a soft spot from believing in it when they were too young to know better. This post was inspired by this post about an extant Maoist organization. Iraq hawk Hitchens falls in the soft spot category. An interesting clue is his belief that Britain's entry into WWI was an evil act, despite the fact that it was a clear defense of fellow free countries against an evil aggressive tyrant not unlike Mr. Hussein.

Another thing hard for many readers of this blog to really get is a government acting so incompetently that people stop believing in its basic ideas. We've seen the Bush Administration make plenty of mistakes in Iraq, but, except in the minds of its opponents, nothing so bad as to make more than a few fools lose faith in democracy. In WWI, EVERY major Allied government fought stupidly enough for many of their citizens to lose faith. Russia experienced revolution.

While we're speaking of revolution, let's cue over to Communism's start. OK, there's the basic ideas we heard in school: ideas that capitalism causes such evil that it must be replaced with a communal economic system and the Western capitalist democracies are evil and imperialist. OK, the Imperialist bit was still true back in WWI (interesting how you kept hearing the Imperialism accusation decades after the last empire except the Communist one collapsed - but that's because all its street cred comes from WWI), but the rest of it never showed many signs of being true. Nonetheless, a big minority came to believe in it after WWI. So how did so many people come to believe? Well, many people had lost faith in the ways of thinking they were taught. And many of the Commies really were smart (unwise, but smart). And they had explanations for many problems, even if they never could be bothered to back them up with facts.

Back to the democracies fighting. Democracies traditionally fight better than our opponents. First, though we may find it hard to believe, our leaders are usually smarter, and dare have smart people working for them. Second, when mistakes are made, the resulting changing in who's in at least puts pressure on govts to acknowledge mistakes and fight better. I believe that exact dynamic is ongoing in Iraq, where the Administration has changed approach to, oh, yeah, maybe containing even the nasty gangs that don't shoot at us is worthwhile after all. And that happened in WWI, just not enough.

WWI was a rare case in which the antidemocratic forces fought smarter for a long time. They started with better artillery and strategy, and kept that lead long enough to come close to winning, right up until we invented tanks and finally got tank tactics right. Only then did the war turn around (and decisively). We won in the characteristic democratic way of outclevering the opponents, but only after year after year of being stupider. It was a very striking change from behavior shown beforehand.

The Allies also fought in a way that wasted millions of deaths. They sent hordes of soldiers into well-established machine-gun nests, to die. WWI was fought in a military era where the defensive dominated. Just an few hours of entrenching work and a few well-supplied machine guns would tend to result in a halt of the front in that region for much of the war. The Allies had trouble digesting that. They started with superior manpower and started throwing it at the Central Powers. Result: what superior manpower? The trenches budged little in response to the blood spilled in them.

There was even one leader, Churchill, who actually did understand it, but still had his stupid moment and threw men at trenches at Gallipoli. Gallipoli was initially a clever idea, badly executed, until the moment came when Churchy did the same as they were doing on the Western Front. Deep Sigh. Fortunately, Churchill didn't give up, and he ended up being a big patron in power for the tanks that came back and won it. The Al Gore of the Tank.

Again, we have something a little hard for most of us modern Americans to understand. We have the deaths of the few fallen giving their lives in Iraq. We have roughly 120,000 engaged in Iraq. We had millions in Europe in WWI. The other democratic Allies had huge fractions of their total young male populations in there. In Western Europe, a big fraction of the draft-eligible were dead or seriously wounded. Imagine if your son had died, and so had all the men in your next-door neighbors' family, and a tenth of the young men your neighborhood were dead. Imagine if just under half (UK) to 3/4 (France) were wounded or killed. And plenty had the whopping PTSDs, but they didn't know how to cure it and called it shell shock. Tolkien, who served in WWI, might've had it at one point - the fearful calls of his worst monsters, the thoroughly nasty Nazgul, are those of big artillery shells arcing in. We do know that several of his closest friends died in the war. Of course, it was spent in a good cause. But so stupidly! And that was a point that could not be missed.

The result was widespread rebellion. To be sure, for most, the response was like Eric Maria Remarque's, jotted down for the generations in All Quiet on the Western Front, bitterness and distrust of all things military - or like many who saw Vietnam happen, except among an even greater percentage of the population. But there was also a much bigger minority than before inclined to outright rebel against the ideas of democracy, capitalism, and evidence-based civilization that had put them in the horrid trenches. All of Europe and North America saw big, healthy Fascist and Communist movements after the war.

So why the uncharacteristically incompetent democratic fighting? Well, probably no two historians can completely agree on this point. In fact, we'll see that the myth-inspiring features of this war extend to historians for many years to come in the third part of this essay.

My theory is the "previous war" theory, molded to the context of the day. Most of the Allies' recent fights had been in the colonies, where the colonial state had the balance of forces and technology, and the resistance the advantages of guerillas. That's where Britain's high WWI commander, Kitchener, got his spurs. And those wars were won by laying down track, better artillery, machine guns, and cavalry. Though they saw plenty of machine guns in action, they never faced entrenched ones themselves. Except for the Germans, who'd been sporadically making war in Europe for a while.

Before WWI, Communism hadn't been tried anywhere but a few idealistic communes. Lenin was looking forward to WWI, though. He knew Russia's Nicky II would mess things up. And was he ever right. The rest of the Allies were able to supply enough ammo of the right types to their troops, and their generals were only moderately bad. Lenin rightly anticipated that WWI would mean the end of the monarchy, and successfully plotted to overthrow the democratic government that replaced it.

Communism didn't actually work, of course. Lenin became embittered, but of course he didn't let that motivate him to let go of power. Churchill made a nice snarky speech when the rouble was reintroduced (albeit under controls - can't trust that nasty currency stuff, even if it might feed the people...). Much of the history of Communism was figuring out how to feed enough of the right people to stay in power.

Another thing that didn't work was the pacifism that Lenin espoused. Here we have an actual historical case of an attempt to end war with an aggressive monarch by disarming unilaterally. The Germans were delighted. They seized lots of Russian turf, and imposed a harsh peace treaty with plenty of tribute. Lenin gave up and started the Red Army (nothing peaceful about that when I was growing up!).

The Great Depression is often given primary credit for encouring high rates of extremism. Of course, the Great Depression didn't exactly cut down on the numbers of Fascists and Communists, either, but WW1 is how Communists (USSR, during the war), and Fascists (Italy, in '22) first came to power. And very fascist-like groups could be found in Germany, with plenty of sympathizers throughout government. Though, of course, in Germany, clearly something was going on other than resentment at how bad Allied warfighting was.

In summary, we had a situation where Allied warfighting was so bad as to motivate rebellion and widespread mythmaking. In the next bit, we'll see how these made WWII and the Cold War much worse, and I'll wind it up with some skewed historical views of WWI.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of The Phantom, where he goes from WWI doughboy to WWII GI.

The Right Immigration Questions

Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe's token conservative, says that illegal immigrants are Here to Stay:

"What part of 'illegal' don't you understand?" seal-the-border types demand in high dudgeon, as though the fact that many immigrants break the law to come here is all we need to know about them.

Is it? Or is it at least as important to know why they come? And how they act once they're here? And whether Americans benefit from their presence?

If tens of millions of drivers consistently break the interstate speed limit, do we assume that they are all criminals who should lose their licenses and be banned from the highways? No: A more plausible explanation is that the speed limit is too low for safe highway driving and ought to be raised. By the same token, if hundreds of thousands of immigrants come here illegally each year, is it realistic to conclude that we have a massive crime problem for which a ferocious crackdown is the only solution? Perhaps it is the case instead that America's immigration quotas are simply too low for the world's most dynamic economy. And perhaps the persistent influx of industrious workers is not a plague to be cursed, but a blessing to be better managed.

Those are the right questions right there in paragraph 2. I don't agree with JJ more than half the time, but he hits this one outta the park, so read the whole thing. It's part 1 of 2, so presumedly part 2 looks at the answers to the questions posed here. Maybe those answers suggest the way towards a sensible and realistic reform of our currently schizophrenic patchwork quilt of immigration policies.

300 Review Grumble

Mind you, I've never seen the movie, and've been convinced by reviews not to see it, because I can't stand propaganda, and it's rightie propaganda to boot. But that doesn't mean I can't grumble at some of the silly history mistakes in rightie reviews. Oh, and before I alienate you righties (nothing fair and balanced about this post...), I am curious to learn why you make such a big deal of Sparta and/or how you came to start with it. I'd be curious to see some explanation. OK, back to automatic grumble mode.

Many righties seem to love this flick, while many lefties like me seem to hate it. The reasons are simple. (1) lots of righties are spoiling for war with Iran, a piece of turf that used to be called Persia and is the bad guys in this battle., and (2) many righties like to identify with the intolant, hierarchical, oligarchic Spartans and love the Battle of Thermopylae as an exemplar of Spartan virtues. Us lefties have no reason to like the flick. While we're revealing biases, believing in democracy (as shouldn't we all?), I like to identify with Athenians. I found the tale of the Battle of Salamis more interesting even as a kid. In Salamis, Athenian-led Greeks defeated the Persians at sea in an even better strategic setup decidedly more interesting than the battle the "300" is about, the Battle of Thermopylae.

Now, I think it's ironic that righties are so pro-Sparta, when Sparta's government was really amazingly like that of the Iran that we're blowing up war fever about: as I said, intolant, hierarchical, and oligarchic The only difference is that Iran is also theocratic. The Persians were a tolerant monarchy (Cyrus I was smart enough to realize he couldn't conquer the world without help from more than just his tribe). Wouldn't better bits of the Peloponnesian War be more appropriate? Oh, but, no, we're too busy glorying in how those undemocratic Spartans did in this battle.

The reason righties give to like this battle is that if it'd been lost, the greatnesses of Greek government, thought, and culture would never have been seen. That's true. But virtually all of those greatnesses came from the democratic Athens, NOT from Sparta. So, why isn't this movie about Salamis, which was just as hard-fought and even more important, instead? Oh, and plus, Salamis was a great underdog win for the West, and we'd get some fun boat action, too. But no.

Hanson, of course, is ecstatic over Thermopylae:

. . . a small, free people had willingly outfought huge numbers of imperial subjects who advanced under the lash.

What does Hanson think freedom is, anyway? The Spartans weren't free. The Spartans had to live...positively Spartanly, ahem. The Athenians WERE free (at least, much more), and it was their leadership that won the whole damned war. Hanson understands correctly that even Athens' democracy gave a big advantage (even though only male citizens could vote), but attributes the advantage to the wrong spot.

From The Idiom:

. . . Thermopylae was important for the survival of Western civilization and that, yes, there is indeed something distinct called Western civilization. That this civilization is characterized by pluralism, individualism, democracy, rationalism and reason. And that more so, the rest of the world does not necessarily share these values.

This review was better, because it then went on to point out that:

** It should be noted that the Spartans were in no way a democratic society. They were a militaristic, class-stratified, slave owning society that was ruled by hereditary elites that also had highly communistic overtones . . .

So, not to sound like a broken record, but why not why not Salamis? It was even an underdog thing as well - the Greeks were outnumbered 10:1 at sea and won the battle and the whole damned war, too, because Persia had to send their armies over water to invade Greece from Persia, and you can't do that if you don't have military control over the sea.

I've been building this on my chest ever since reading a bunch of books by Jerry Pournelle, decades ago, during the Cold War. The Cold War's major adversary was the USSR, another brutal, nasty oligarchy. And here Pournelle, a decided conservative, seemed to be worshipping Sparta, a nasty oligarchy just like the USSR. It just seemed wrong. But I had no blog at the time to grumble with at the time.

Drive That Last Nail Simon

Our esteemed colleague Simon, who usually blogs now over at Stubborn Facts, has blogged more than once on how much he likes Newt Gingrich. He always follows this up by acknowledging his inelectability, but the acknowledgement is awfully wistful, as though he's willing to be talked into believing in President Newt.

If there was any doubt at all, this ought to drive the last nail in the coffin:

Gingrich acknowledges affair during Clinton impeachment

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press.

"There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

Gingrich is a flawed guy who brings a lot of intelligence to the table of various national debates, and this shouldn't harm that.

Friday open thread

Speak and you shall be heard.

Transfats and Smoking: Why Can't We Worry About Something Real, Like Running In The Hall With Scissors?

I don't understand why we haven't yet banned running in the hall. After all, running in halls is a clear health menace. Millions of kids must've been hurt worldwide. There are certainly more deaths from that dangerous running with scissors than from transfats, or maybe even secondary smoke.

Write your Congressmen! ;-)

Let's take a look at secondary smoke. It's been pretty well shown that very high levels of secondary smoke exposure do have bad health effects. Certainly, warnings of the hazards are appropriate. Where the data ends is any good picture of how many people in our society are actually living with a substantially heightened risk. Remember, high levels of secondary smoke are needed to get the bad health effects. I feel that, in a free society, it's wrong to regulate something when little harm from it has been demonstrated (notice that I'm talking strictly about public smoking ordinances here).

Here's what is known. From the press release:

Children in families with lower income and education were more likely to have been exposed to cigarette smoking and were more likely to have experienced fair or poor health.

About two-thirds of young children in families with incomes of less than $10,000 were ever exposed to smoke compared to 36 percent of children whose family income was $40,000 or more, almost twice the risk.

What they're saying is that a study has been done that shows a correlation between secondary smoking and poor health, with the worst health and smoking in poor families. The problem is that poverty has been solidly and clearly shown to be a cause of bad health. So, are these children in worse health because of smoking or poverty? We don't know, until some study is done that controls for poverty and other confounding factors (does anybody know of one?). Thus, I feel public smoking regulation isn't appropriate, and I voted against it here in Austin (alas, on the losing side).

Declining Troop Levels

Robert Farley has an post on declining troop levels, motivated by a Max Boot post about how nobody else cares about defense anymore.

One thing little mentioned in either post is that one reason for the decrease is because troops in fact become exponentially more effective as time goes on, because of improving technology. Boot acknowledges increased effectiveness, then ignores it.

Now, there is some free riding going on here. Though European defence in fact remains strong and adequate for self-defense, they've been happy to lean on us to do the foreign interventions. Note, it's a bit of a compliment - no matter what everybody says, they'd fund independent forces suitable for intervention if they didn't trust us.

Note: I posted this earlier in a form I was unhappy with and deleted it. But I had to rebuild the blog to make the deletion take effect. So if you saw the earlier version during the rebuild, that's what happened.

Scooter Thread

Libby found guilty... Is the Vice President next? Will this embolden Fitzgerald? The folks at Fire Dog Lake think so, and the folks at Redstate hope, I mean don't think so.

You Can't Stop Genocide Without War

Brendan Loy points out that you can't reasonably be for ending genocide and against war at the same time.

Nuclear Proliferation Brushup

A week ago, just before leaving on my trip, I heard somebody give bad information about nuclear proliferation on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. And even, to my shock (they usually know better), saw it repeated in a recent Economist article. Since officials seem to be talking alot about this subject a lot, I thought I'd remind people what is and isn't true. I agree with Negroponte's estimate of no sooner than 2010.

The untruth making the rounds is that Iran can quickly make enough weapons-grade uranium for a weapon once they figure out how. BZZT!! On the NewsHour, this was retailed by Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, whose job it should be to know better.

The main reason the whole world doesn't have nuclear weapons is probably the fact that it's very, very expensive and hard to make enough of the right nuclear material that goes in a nuclear weapon. That was easily the biggest expense and time sink of the Manhattan Project, and it's been true for every other nuclear program, too, that didn't get its nuclear material from an existing nuclear power.

A high purity is required for weapons - 90% U239 in its case. For that reason, nuclear reactors use much less-pure uranium, so that it'd be to create get the good stuff from something as common as nuclear reactor fuel. If Iran really cared about energy over weapons, as it claims, it could buy the fuel for a small fraction of the price.

There are really only two kinds of nuclear material used to key nuclear explosions - Uranium 239 and Plutonium. Both are expensive to make. Plutonium is made via a breeder reactor, U-239 via concentration techniques, the most common of which is lots of high-speed centrifuges. It's not easy to build a breeder secretly, and it has a all-eggs-in-one-basket quality so the stealth method of choice for dictators fearing Western missiles is centrifuges. You need several thousands of centrifuges, set up in a complicated and expensive way, to get a reasonable conversion rate.

As of last fall, the IAEA's best guess was that Iran had in the low hundreds, and was still figuring out how to set them up. Even when they figure it out, well, 100 is enough to make a glow-in-the-dark watch or two per month.

So, Iran has a long way to go on its nuclear program. And there are technical barriers to overcome after the U239 is created. Hence, I tend to believe Negroponte's estimate of no less than four years before they can get weapons.

Striking 100 centrifuges would be a complete waste. There's no point in that kind of strike until they have thousands of centrifuges going.

Shouldn't the head of a nonproliferation organization be aware of the basics of nonproliferation? And why aren't we seeing more media skepticism. when this is so at odds with with the CIA's estimate? At least more background interviews with physicists?

Friday Soundtrack Open Thread

It's a cold, rainy, windy, Friday Morning in Beantown. The sky is crying, and IMO nothing suits that like gutbucket blues, so I'm on Muddy Waters 1947-55.

It's an open thread so it's all good. But if you want a starter, what's your friday soundtrack, or what's some of your favorite blues? BTW, if you have a chance to catch eiher the Muddy Waters or Ray Charles documentaries on PBS, do yourself a favor.

Don't Cross Your Donors

Cross debate costs College of William and Mary $12 million donation

WILLIAMSBURG, Virginia (AP) -- A longtime donor to the College of William and Mary is withholding a $12 million pledge because of the decision to remove of a cross from a campus chapel, the school said...

...Advocates of keeping the cross in Wren Chapel pointed to the school's founding 300 years ago as an institution of the Anglican Church. The cross, they argued, should be displayed not only as a symbol of faith but as an acknowledgment of history and tradition.

Nichol's supporters say the school, which has been public since 1906, is obligated to make people of different faiths feel comfortable.

Good. I hope this donor finds another good place for this money. Does "making comfortable" have to mean bending over backwards to eliminate every possibility of slight? I say no. Instead of removing the cross, they could have added other symbols to make the place appear multidenominational, if that fits the school's mission better. And they could have geared welcoming efforts more to how the chapel is run than what it looks like, instead of trampling on both history and the feelings of alumni.

I have no problem with the stated goal of the school here, I simply object to the clunky execution.

Big W for Good Guys

80 miltants killed, 50 captured.

A police official in the area, Ahmed al-Falluji, told Reuters news agency that 70 militants died in the fighting, and said three police officers also were killed. The statement from the Interior Ministry gave no information on casualties to Iraqi security forces or police.

The fighting started Wednesday afternoon when dozens of militants attacked the village, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Falluja, where local tribes have taken an anti-al Qaeda stance.

Iraqi good guys too:

American troops were not involved, a U.S. military spokesman in Falluja told Reuters.

A major power struggle is under way in the Sunni Arab-dominated province between Sunni tribal leaders and al Qaeda in Iraq militants, according to Reuters.

This sounds hopeful to me.

Edwards Wants Ask and Tell Policy

John Edwards is proposing the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in favor of letting gays and lesbians openly serve in the military. Don't get me wrong, I wish we were ready for that, but I think President Clinton did the right think by breaking his promise and compromising on this issue. Is there a lot of gray area with the current policy? Yes there is, but I think it is important to keep our eye on the ball here.

I also think this move by Edwards is unfortunate because I simply have a problem with politicians, especially those who don't have a clue about life in the military, making this decision. Many reasonable and intelligent leaders in uniform have told us to leave this issue alone, and I think it best we follow their advice. The military makes decisions all of the time about who should and should not be serving, and we shouldn't make exceptions to this so politicians can prove a point and possibly win some votes.

Yes, I am posting a lot of short posts because it has been too quiet around here and I am trying to spark some good 'ole debate. If you want more thoughtful posts, then write them. :)

Gore's Mansion

Things like this are why Al Gore will never be President. I like the man, always have. Didn't vote for him and sometimes wished that I would have. I think he is incredibly intelligent. I thought Inconvenient Truth reshaped the political debate over one of the most important issues of our time. The trouble is, Al thinks he is as great as I do, and it shows.

Because I have spent more time than most looking into Al Gore, I believe he is sincere when he talks about his son's accident, his sister's struggle with lung cancer and the susequent selling of his family's tobacco farm, as well as the moral significance of global warming. However, he has the personal financial resources to do what he is asking other Americans to do in regards to limiting energy consumption, and he doesn't. As long as stories like this keep popping up, it doesn't matter what I think, the electorate will never follow him. Sure he can reinvent himself, but how did that work for him last time?

Revamped Anti-War Plan

Does anyone else find this ludicrous? How can their be an anti-war plan from Congress that doesn't evoke budget cutting, the only anti-war action that Congress can take. Nancy and Harry look alot like, well, Newt and Trent. If the White House had any sort of political capability, the Democrats would be toast.