Spot on

I read this interesting article yesterday in Campaigns and Elections magazine (sorry no link), by one of my professors, about the trend toward the Republican party by people under 30. Turns out, there are more Republicans, aged 18-29 and 30-40 then there are aged 50-60. In fact, the 50-60 age group is the one place where there are many less Republicans than Democrats.

The article doesn't mention 9/11, which, in my humble-just started my Masters program-opinion, is the main reason for the shift rightward among people in their 20's. Our parents (well, not my parents, but parents born in the US) had a break from history. There were no attacks on American soil in their lifetime. They don't understand the unfortunate necessity of war, especially when provoked to it. I think young people were shook by 9/11 in a way that older people weren't. The Republican party has a reputation of being realistic, and lately hawkish, and this appeals to many younger people who watched symbolic retaliations throughout the 90's and felt that they weren't enough.

With all of this in mind, I direct you to the New York Young Republican Club blog which lists right-leaning events in NYC. I've been more motivated lately to meet new people and attend more events and it's been really great. I've met a bunch of interesting people through the meetup site that aren't part of the established rightwing 'scene' in NY. This is the only way to grow the party and affect changes that we'd like to see. Get out there, meet people, vent about all the liberals in your life, be organized for 2004, have a good time. This doesn't only apply to New Yorkers. There are Bush2004 and Republican party meetups going on around the country. If there is not one going on near you, email me and I'll tell you some ways to start one and attract people to it.

This matters to me. I've thought many times about how I would've felt post-9/11 if Gore had been president. 'Terrified' springs to mind. Don't like the thought of a Dean presidency? Get involved.
# Posted 12:56 PM by Karol

Che Guevara t-shirts are amusing at the best of times, but this just kills me.
# Posted 12:39 PM by Karol

Headline: Arab Rulers Leery of New Iraq Role Model

Comment: Psha! Ya think?
# Posted 5:09 PM by Karol

Urg. I hate these dumbass celebrities that look solemnly into the camera for any cause that even remotely criticizes the president. This is just the latest. I bet that should they be criticized for their one-dimensional opinions, the irony of the fact that they're doing ads for freedom of speech will entirely escape them.
# Posted 12:19 PM by Karol

Wow.

Via The Corner
# Posted 5:39 PM by Karol

I have a friend who is a headhunter in NY and she is looking for someone to fill an interesting Executive Assistant position at a well-known foreign affairs organization. The pay is very good and if I wasn't in school full-time, I would be tempted to interview for it. The person they are looking for should know a good amount about what is going on in the world and be very professional and polished. If you're interested, drop me an email and I'll put you in touch with my friend.
# Posted 4:10 PM by Karol

Quote of the Day (and yes I do realize I'm a few days late):

Don't let anyone tell you that we're back to normal or anywhere near it.
As I got up out of the subway at Rector street, it looked normal: time to go to work. But come up on the streets, the the Trade Center is encircled with people who have stopped normal to remember when normal died.
-Jeff Jarvis
# Posted 4:05 PM by Karol

The photographer of the famous 'falling' picture of one of the WTC jumpers writes about his photo in the LA Times. It's a beautifully written piece (worth registering for access to read it):

Watching the tragedy unfold messed me up for a long time. I still take note of every plane I hear flying overhead, wondering if it's friend or foe. But neither the photograph nor the initial reaction to it disturbs me. People ask how I could coldbloodedly photograph someone dying. I never saw it that way. I made a photographic record of someone living the last moments of his life. And every time I look at it, I see him alive.

I have photographed dying. As a 21-year-old rookie photographer on a supposedly routine assignment, I was standing behind Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated. That time, there was no telephoto lens to distance me. I was so close that his blood spattered onto my jacket. I saw the life bleed out of him, and I heard Ethel's screams. Pictures that, shot through my tears, still distress me after 35 years. But nobody refused to print them, as they did the 9/11 photo. Nobody looked away.

I can't be the only one asking: My G-d. How is anybody over this?

Via Instapundit
# Posted 1:57 AM by Karol

WHY WE SUPPORT REVEREND AL SHARPTON FOR PRESIDENT

# Posted 1:52 AM by Karol

Powell rejects French timetable for Iraq

France has set up a 'timetable' by which the U.S should run Iraq. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has stated that a provisional government should be established in Iraq in a month, a draft constitution by the end of the year and elections next spring. The words 'who the hell do they think they are' spring to mind. Fortunately, Colin Powell seems to have picked up a thing or two since our last dealings with the Frenchies. Calling the plan "totally unrealistic", Powell, sounding positively 'neo-conservative', then reminded them "We've done a lot of liberation in Europe after other Europeans had occupied parts of Europe." Finally.

Israel Shrugs Off Criticism Over Arafat

"They're asking us to do nothing against Yasser Arafat. Has the world turned on its head?"-Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom
# Posted 1:24 AM by Karol

Mark Steyn on the quagmire-Vietnam-'but where is bin Laden' contingent:

Meanwhile, in Europe, the tinfoil-hat brigade has gone mainstream. Of course America hasn’t been attacked again. That’s because 9/11 was a neocon conspiracy to give Washington a pretext to grab Iraq’s oil and Afghanistan’s, er, rubble. The conspirazoids now include the Rt Hon Michael Meacher, MP, a man who until a few weeks ago was one of Her Majesty’s ministers of state, a fellow who sat at the Cabinet table with Tony Blair and discussed troop deployments. But now, with time on his hands, he’s frolicking merrily on the wilder shores of the Internet. In the Guardian on Saturday, he demanded to know whether US air-security operations had ‘been deliberately stood down on 11 September’ in order to facilitate the attack. Who would do such a thing? Why, Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie and the other sinister graduates of the Project for a New American Century.

Meacher is late to the Mad Hatter’s tea party. I’ve had a gazillion emails a day about this for almost two years. Condi Rice apparently warned all kinds of people not to fly on 11 September. If that’s true, it seems odd that Don Rumsfeld, one of the architects of the conspiracy, didn’t warn himself not to go to the Pentagon that morning. You’d think, being in on the plot, he’d warn himself not to be sitting at his desk as the plane sliced through the building. If Michael Meacher had had advance warning that a plane was going to slam into the Department of the Environment that day, would he have had the cojones to be sitting there dictating a memo to Miss Jones as the nose cone ploughed into the photocopier? Or maybe that’s just how well planned the conspiracy was: Rumsfeld knew the plane would hit the other side of the Pentagon well away from his office, so, if he coolly went to work as usual, he’d throw even expert conspiracy-sniffers like Meacher off the scent. Or maybe there was no Pentagon plane at all; it was a pure invention of the administration, as that French bestseller argued. Or maybe the Pentagon itself is just a thought-form generated by the microchip implanted in Meacher’s brain when he sat next to Dick Cheney at a G7 buffet lunch. Or maybe....

If 9/11 liberated the Bush administration to put into action its scheme to take over the world, then it also liberated the Western elites to embrace finally and wholeheartedly anti-Americanism as the New Unifying Theory of Everything. It didn’t have to be like that: the intellectual class could have sided with the women of Afghanistan or the political prisoners of Iraq. But the advantage of sour oppositionism is that whatever happens there’s always something to sneer at. If Osama pops up, see, he got away. If he doesn’t pop up, how do you know he didn’t get away? If he turns up dead, whoa, now you’ve made him a martyr, a thousand more will bloom in his dust.
# Posted 4:02 PM by Karol

For me, 9/11/03 was spent at a meeting in school, making a return at Bloomingdales, having a quick lunch with my boyfriend, going to a small dinner with Frank Gaffney, attending a NY Young Republican Club meeting, going for drinks afterward with Doug, Scott and others, meeting up with my friend who is visiting from Boston and finally heading home when it was already the 12th. I guess that it's right that I spent the day living my life but I really felt that I missed out on the rememberance side of this important day. I didn't get to read enough or think enough about it.

I caught up on a little of the writing from yesterday and, of course, Lileks has some of the best of it around:

Now I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon. The End of the World now looks like a comic-book premise, a Heston-movie conceit. We feared it would all be gone in a day, our world upended like an Etch-A-Sketch. What we never considered was a long, slow war, a conflict that burned and sputtered, skittered from one spot on the map to the other. The old wars were simple: the other side had accents, uniforms, nations, cruel habits and urbane sneers. The old wars took years. The old wars were in black and white. The old wars were monophonic, scored by Max Steiner, released by Warner Brothers, and the only proof they really happened at all was the small battered box in the back of Dad’s sock drawer, the box that held some oddly colored metal bars. The next war would be horrible, total, and short.

Two years ago today I was convinced that every presumption I had about the future was wrong. This war, I feared, would be horrible, total, and long.

Two years later I take a certain grim comfort in some people’s disinterest in the war; if you’d told me two years ago that people would be piling on the President and bitching about slow progress in Iraq, I would have known in a second that the nation hadn’t suffered another attack. When the precise location of Madonna’s tongue is big news, you can bet the hospitals aren’t full of smallpox victims. Of course some people are impatient with those who still recall the shock of 9/11; the same people were crowding the message boards of internet sites on the afternoon of the attacks, eager to blame everyone but the hijackers. They hate this nation. In their hearts, they hate humanity. They would rather cheer the perfect devils than come to the aid of a compromised angel. They can talk for hours about how wrong it was to kill babies, busboys, businessmen, receptionists, janitors, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers - and then they lean towards you, eyes wide, and they say the fatal word:

But.

And then you realize that the eulogy is just a preface. All that concern for the dead is nothing more than the knuckle-cracking of an organist who’s going to play an E minor chord until we all agree we had it coming.

I’ve no doubt that if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan goes up in a bright white flash there will be those who blame it all on Bush. We squandered the world’s good will. We threw away the opportunity to atone, and lashed out. Really? You want to see lashing out? Imagine Kabul and Mecca and Baghdad and Tehran on 9/14 crowned with mushroom clouds: that’s lashing out. Imagine the President in the National Cathedral castigating Islam instead of sitting next to an Imam who's giving a homily. Mosques burned, oil fields occupied, smart bombs slamming into Syrian palaces. We could have gone full Roman on anyone we wanted, but we didn’t. And we won’t.

Which is why this war will be long.
# Posted 1:52 PM by Karol

Banafsheh, the Iranian woman in the story with ANSWER, sends me an article from the Washington Times with the headline 'Memo shows Iraq, Iran tried to contact bin Laden'.

But wait, I thought Saddam was secular and Osama was religious and there was no way they would ever work together......
# Posted 1:12 PM by Karol

Sad news: Johnny Cash, dead at 71

Via Ken Wheaton
# Posted 12:35 PM by Karol

Howard Dean calls Hamas 'soldiers' in the 'war going on in the Middle East'. You know things are bad when Europe (who just recently discovered Hamas is a terrorist group) is to the right of the probable Democrat candidate for president.

Via LGF
# Posted 11:49 PM by Karol

Urg. It's just my luck that after my biggest blogging day, hits-wise, I would have some major problem with my domain server. If you're reading this this morning then you are probably one of the few that knows that you can reach this site by both www.alarmingnews.com and http://kashei.blogspot.com. Hope to be back online soon under the alarmingnews.com name.
# Posted 11:01 AM by Karol

I just want to say a quick welcome to all the readers I've had today. I'm nearing 5000 hits, up from my 100 or so a day, and its been really great. Thanks so much to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and James Taranto at Best of the Web (and maybe others I don't know about because my counters don't give me that info-so please email me if you've linked here) for linking the below post. I really feel that it is a necessary one for everyone to read. If any of the new visitors are in NY, or the surrounding areas, and would like to get involved with the democracy in Iran group, please drop me an email.
# Posted 3:58 PM by Karol

I mentioned a few months ago that I met with some people (including Ken and Yevgeny) who are interested in supporting the democratic movement in Iran. We've been in touch since then and have slowly begun thinking of some things we can do. Today I got an email from one of the guys in the group. He forwarded an email from an Iranian girl who is very involved in the democracy movement. The email literally took the wind out of me. I realize that I should not be surprised by the unbelieveable hypocrisy of the biggest anti-war group, ANSWER, but somehow the below disgusted me to no end.
This is the email:

Hi Everyone,

I've been working VERY hard on getting the word about the plight of the people of Iran, out, as you know.

Recently I contacted a group called A.N.S.W.E.R. COALITION which organizes marches. After having introduced myself and explained to them the situation in Iran (after 4 phone calls and messages) I was told that they won't help the Iranian activists and their friends in organizing marches against the Islamic Republic as they're afraid the Iranian student movement might be run by IMPERIALIST!!!!!

They claimed to be "intelligent" and very well informed though essentially they had NO IDEA what on earth I was talking about. They were not only unaware of the crimes committed by the Islamic Republic, they had never even heard that an organized group of hoodlums, called the BADR Brigade, trained by the KGB and Palestinians, armed and bankrolled by the Islamic Republic's ruling theocrats, were infiltrating Iraq to run a muck in killing American soldiers and destroy the future of Iraq! When I explained that the people of Iran are acting on their own but that encouragement from the PEOPLE of the west was crucial in holding anti-Islamic Republic demonstrations etc. (that's all I had asked them for: help in organizing demonstrations) the woman basically said that they won't help because their cause was to eradicate Imperialism! I explained that Iranian oil was being pilfered by member nations of the EU and other countries such as Japan, at which she replied: since we don't live in Europe or Japan, I cannot help! I guess imperialism is concentrated only in the U.S.!!!!! AND that Mullahs can't be "Imperialists!"

I then explained that Hossein Khomeini (Khomeini's grandson) is now one of the biggest opponents of the Mullacracy in Iran...She told me that he was probably being bought by Americans!!! In other words, she was convinced that there could be no dissent among the Mullahs themselves!!!!!

I told her about my father and other political prisoners in Iran (not to mention the number of people stoned to death, hung, assassinated, raped...), she thought for a moment and said that my father is probably a dissident and that the Islamic Republic was possibly justified in putting him in prison!!!!! I don't know, but doesn't that seem oxymoronic coming from someone working at an "activist/protestor" organization?????

Please contact these people and let them know how unbelievably misguided, tyrannical and hypocritical their attitude is and that in order to do the right thing, they must embrace the entire picture and not some random corner of it. Please help educate and properly inform these self-proclaimed defenders of humanity. Their phone numbers and e-mail are:

DC: 202/544-3389
NY: 212/633-6646
e-mail: info@internalionalanswer.org

Thank you.

Banafsheh
# Posted 12:25 AM by Karol

Looking for music blogging? Click here.

Looking for right-leaning events around NYC? Click here
# Posted 12:23 AM by Karol

Latest link to the blogroll: Slantpoint
# Posted 12:03 AM by Karol

Two really good reads:

Doug at Initial Misconceptions sums up the Bush speech in a spot on, funny paragraph.

Brendan Miniter asks where you were standing on 9/11 and more importantly, where do you stand now.
# Posted 11:16 AM by Karol

From Jay Nordlingers Impromptus:

'I think I'll simply note this event without comment — for if one doesn't understand the power of it, there is little anyone else can do to explain it: "Three Israeli F-15 jets piloted by descendants of Holocaust survivors circled [Auschwitz] to pay tribute to the victims" last week. "During the flyover, some 200 Israeli soldiers stood at attention at the former Birkenau death camp, adjacent to Auschwitz."

Predictably, some imbeciles at the Auschwitz Museum objected, decrying the flyover as a "demonstration of Israeli military might" at "a place of silence."

You're damn right it was a demonstration of Israeli military might: and, as such, it was a demonstration of the refusal to die. Far be it from me to speak for the dead, but I would be shocked if they objected — if they could know about it.

Oh, and, by the way: Why should Auschwitz be a place of silence? There's enough silence about genocide — don't you think?
# Posted 10:46 AM by Karol

Local Political News:

There is a Bush2004 meetup happening tomorrow night at the Auction House bar on East 89th between First and Second Avenues at 7pm.

More right-leaning events noted here.

Also, tomorrow is primary day. I direct your attention to two great candidates in Manhattan who are facing a primary tomorrow:

The first is Jennifer Arangio, a Republican on the Upper East Side. This is the first time in years that there is more than one Republican running in a City Council race in Manhattan and that in and of itself is pretty interesting. Jennifer is really dynamic and interesting. You can read more about her here.

The second is Pete Gleason, a Democrat in TriBeCa/Chinatown/Battery Park City. Pete is really an amazing candidate. He has been a firefighter, a policeman, a member of the Coast Guard and most recently an attorney. His opponent, Alan Gerson, has done some of the sneakiest political gaming I've seen. For more information on Pete visit his site. If you're a registered Democrat living downtown, come out and vote for Pete tomorrow.
# Posted 12:53 PM by Karol

Quote of the Day:

As for the Iraq situation? I’m stunned that a country whose face was held mouth-down in the mud for 30 years hasn’t spontaneously produced a civil society in six months. I don’t think they’ve even started thinking about a new national anthem. Let’s give it all to the French.

-James Lileks in a great post in which he also rips into Republicans who have been complaining lately that Bush isn't conservative enough (admittedly, I am one of these).
# Posted 11:02 AM by Karol

Weird search of the day:

'Al Qaeda Bay Ridge'

Bay Ridge is a neighborhood in Brooklyn where I went to high school.
# Posted 10:57 AM by Karol

How dumb do you have to be to be governor (hanging on by a thread) of an immigrant-heavy state yet make fun of your opponent's accent? Saying "you shouldn't be governor unless you can pronounce the name of the state", Gray Davis wants to go down in a blaze of glory as the dimmest leader around. Good job.
# Posted 10:49 AM by Karol

Hey, remember when I was deciding whether to write a letter to my old boss who happens to be in prison for murder? A movie about him, called Party Monster, is coming out today.
# Posted 12:48 PM by Karol

What did I do before Lileks? What did I read that made me nod my head the entire time? Who kept me amused and interested and enthralled?

Today, Lileks writes about the 'get over it already' call to those of us who have the nerve, two years on, to not be able to forget falling buildings and 3000 dead people. We're so lame yo.

Someone had commented about Lileks on Metafilter:

Funny how it's easy to disregard the Rwanda and Bosnia genocides and yet remain the eternal victim because of 9/11.

James Lileks: What the hell does he have to be angry about? He's Caucasian, male, and living in the richest nation in the world. He has more opportunities in one day than a Third World citizen has in a lifetime. Is he being targeted because of his ethnicity? Is he being thrown into a camp and being repeatedly raped? Is he being buried alive in a pit by hateful condotierres paid a pack of cigarettes a day?

The 9/11 victimhood seems to me an excuse for the Angry White Male to make a comeback. Except this time it seems to be justified, even if you weren't anywhere near the WTC. And that's the sick cancer festering within the American psyche.

Lileks responds (and yes it's long but I was afraid you wouldn't follow the link and read the whole thing and it's just that good):

This reminds me of a gentle tut-tutting I got from some guy on a webpage I stumbled across post 9/11 - he was just so . . . bemused at how I’d lost my grasp on reality. I had been describing my reaction to the men who’d kill my daughter for the glory of Allah: give me the gun, show me the cave. The author of the piece suggested I would be perfect for the role of the WW2 black-out warden who scolds people for half-closed windowshades.

Why, it’s almost as if I thought we were at war, or something.

Obviously the guy had no kids. I’m not saying childless people can’t have a visceral reaction to terrorists, or that parenthood has imbued me with a special glowing Field of Righteousness - but until you have children you can’t quite realize what you’d do to defend them, because the emotion comes from a place you didn’t know too much about. The weeks after 9/11 we all thought that we were in for more of this - more planes, more bombs, and come the winter, Smallpox. I would jerk awake from nightmares where Gnat had the pox. You do everything you can to keep them safe - then this.

I was nowhere near New York when it happened, of course. But you’d have to be unusually thick not to see that this was the start of something that would affect more than the lower portion of the island of Manhattan. I don’t know what compelled me to grab the videocam off the shelf and start shooting, but I’m glad I did, because what I caught captured something I needed to remember: the TV has the picture of the twin towers engulfed in smoke: my little 14 month old child is grinning with unbearable delight, holding out her Elmo phone. Hi! Hi! Hi! Jasper’s in the corner of the picture, on his back, paws up, whimpering; whatever I was giving off, he got. But Gnat was in Elmo-world, a happy little place in which she’d always be safe, and I’m wondering if her future will be all downhill from here.

At that point I thought the fires might go out. I thought the towers might be saved. Then they fell. And you knew that the future had just taken the wrong exit.

Angry? Almost two years later I’m still f*#king furious about it, if you want to know the truth. I’m not sure what emotion these people want me to have. An appropriate amount of sadness mixed with an appropriate amount of shame mixed with a soupcon of perspective and a dram of self-hatred? Can you send me the precise recipe, please? Because from where I stand, I see the two forces I thought the left deplored: religious intolerance and fascism. Together at last! Swirled into one cone! If Kluxers had flown planes into the UN building, these people would be insisting that America was bubbling over with millions of Bubbanazis, and the failure of the networks to mount Second Anniversary specials would be proof that the media secretly embraced the White Power agenda.

Again, I’ll ask the question: when did I overdo it? January 14, 2002? August 23rd 2003, 11:34 AM? Was that the point at which we were supposed to pack it all away in a box and store it in the attic with the newspapers and Time magazines? I pass a house every day that still has a Wellstone! sign in the front window. Should I knock on their door, and ask why they have the sign up? They’re white, male, living in the land of opportunity. Stop grieving. Stop it!

Wellstone died almost a year ago - by accident. Three thousand people died by design that day. Only a fool couldn’t help noticing what it meant: they want us all dead. They want a world in which my daughter is a slave - and even though they’ll never get it, they will kill someone else’s daughter a half a continent away just to make their point. They want a world in which there is no US, and the Bosnias and Rwandas are not only commonplace, but proof that their god is ascendant.

Sorry. No. I want a world where those who choose Western ideas can flourish and thrive. And by “Western” I mean that raped girls aren’t stoned. Gays aren’t crushed by rocks. Public cleavage doesn’t get you whipped. Jews and Lutherans and Sufis can sit on a bus together and it’s no big deal. Where citizens decide that if they don’t like their government, they try it again - and the recall pits an Austrian immigrant against a native-born man of Hispanic origin.

"The 9/11 victimhood seems to me an excuse for the Angry White Male to make a comeback. Except this time it seems to be justified, even if you weren't anywhere near the WTC. And that's the sick cancer festering within the American psyche."

There you go. The problem isn’t Islamist fascism. It’s the sick cancer of men with low melanin concentrations who can’t forget that picture of two strangers - one Asian, one Black - embracing in sobs in a bodega as the smoke and dust rolled down the street. This is why I left Metafilter right after 9/11. They don’t mind if you’re angry. You can be angry about important things, like Microsoft security lapses and Ashcroft crusades. But 200 stories of skyscraper falling to the ground? Thousands dead, ten thousand orphaned, ten million mourning?

Dude. Get a grip.

I have a friend who says 'blah blah' every time 9/11 is mentioned in any way. She is like, so over the whole thing and the idea that reprecussions from 9/11 are still happening (hello Iraq) is boring to her. No, really. She has said as much. I just can't get over it. I don't think I ever will. Walking up Fifth Avenue yesterday I saw a plane flying low toward the Empire State Building. And though the rational part of me understands that if and when we are attacked again it probably won't be a repeat of the planes into buildings scenario, the emotional side of me stops, waits for the plane to disappear past the skyscraper and then breathes out. It's a terrifying feeling to think that Americans are getting over it. It was precisely what I thought would happen while we sat on my couch that awful day and waited for news. My friends all said 'no, nothing will ever be the same again' but everything is much the same. Worrying about terrorism is so old news. Fear is what the Bush administration is promoting, not what grips your stomach every time you think of the jumpers making the choice to burn or fly. Our biggest problem is the not-so-bad-at-all economy, not the idea that there are people living among us who are planning our destruction. What has to happen for people to wake up? Do we have to lose a city? A coast? Majority dead? I mean, if 3000 people dying in one fell swoop doesn't arouse a want in you to defend yourself, what will? If I say I'm nervous on the subway, still (of course still), and you roll your eyes, which one of us has the problem? I'm not going to get over it and those that have frighten me. If watching death and destruction on your doorstep doesn't permanently mar your vision of the world and of your country, if it didn't change your opinion about war sometimes being necessary, if it didn't make you want to protect yourself and the people that you can't live without, you are someone I can not understand. And the sadder thing, for you, is that despite your moving on and not wanting to be afraid and being ready to compromise to achieve some false peace, the people that want me dead want you dead too.
# Posted 11:56 AM by Karol

Yesterday, I visited the main New York library on 42nd street. I was looking for one out of print book and one periodical. I found both and sat down at a long table to do some reading. I looked up and in my scope of vision there were a row of people using the internet. One guy was surfing porn. He was just clicking on pictures, pausing, looking at them really closely, then clicking on.

Now, I'm no prude. And when there was the issue regarding online access in the library, I felt that no firewall should be set up and people should be able to surf where they please. But. I mean really. Shouldn't there be some guidelines to what people should be blatantly searching at 5pm on a Thursday? I'm not even going to give you THE CHILDREN argument, why do I have to look up and see a guy gawking at a woman with her legs spread. It's a little distracting. So what's the solution? How can we maintain freedom for people to do what they please at the library while at the same time maintaining some degree of normal public behavior? What do y'all think?
# Posted 11:40 AM by Karol

Headline: Fox News gains, other news networks fall

# Posted 11:26 PM by Karol

The horror, the horror:

The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.

-Amir Taheri on a book called "The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad" by Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early '90s.
# Posted 1:22 PM by Karol

From Rod Dreher in NRO's Corner:

APPALLING SURVEY RESULTS
I don't know about you, but I totally missed the depressing results of a global survey taken this spring by the Pew Center for People and the Press. It found that by wide margins, people from Muslim nations did not believe that it was possible for the Palestinians' rights to be respected while Israel existed. Even more depressing -- no, not depressing, infuriating -- was the finding that the global figure that 71 percent of Palestinians surveyed trusted to "do the right thing" was -- wait for it -- Osama bin Laden.
# Posted 11:39 AM by Karol

Course at my school, no I'm not kidding:

CLSC 19 Hip Hop for Children

Fee: $40

Section: 1 Sunday 5:00:00 PM-5:55:00 PM AB CD
# Posted 1:33 PM by Karol

First, the French ambassador to Israel calls Israel a 'shitty little country' at Barbara Amiel's dinner party. He is surprised that dinner party etiquette didn't apply when Amiel publishes the comments in her newspaper column. He gets replaced and the new French ambassador wants to make clear immediately that he hasn't learned anything from his predecessor's mistakes so he calls Ariel Sharon a 'lout' and Israel 'paranoid'. He does this, also, at a party and is stunned when a journalist prints it since 'his comments were made during a private party and thus not in the public domain.' Is there anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size that can maybe be the French ambassador to Israel? Just wondering.

Via The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.

# Posted 11:43 AM by Karol

I've posted some new rightwing events on the NYYRC blog, in case anyone is interested.
# Posted 11:19 AM by Karol

I'm back! I hope you were all well entertained by the guest blog. I know I was.

My two big pieces of news:

1. I started my NYU graduate program in politics today and all of you commenters were right- I am probably the only non-liberal in the program. I can see it being an interesting year. I'm so excited about being back at school and the idea of focusing almost entirely on the practical application of politics (as opposed to say, my bachelors degree which was mostly in political theory) is pretty thrilling to me.

2. I got an email a few weeks ago from the UK publisher of a new book by the original Iraqi blogger and now Guardian columnist Salam Pax. Long time readers will know that I was (and am) a big fan of Salam's. I didn't always agree with his opinions but it was so nice and refreshing to have a true voice from inside Iraq before Saddam's government fell. Anyway, the publisher wrote and asked me if I'd like a free copy of the book. I figured they had found my site via a link in a post some time ago on Salam's site. I wrote back that I would like a copy. I received it today when we got back from Montreal and was completely surprised to discover that the reason I was contacted for a free copy is that Salam 'linked' to this site and also to Peter's old Pandavox site in the acknowledgements and blogroll section of the book. We're also linked in another place in the book. It's pretty weird, being mentioned, however in passing, by someone you've never met who lives in a country you've never been to. Anyway, the book website is here if you're interested.
# Posted 9:07 PM by Karol

I understand Nader-ites. I understand Dean supporters. I even get the Pat Buchanan vote. What I don't get, the political group I most don't undestand, are these people. If there is one meet-up Republicans should attend, it's this one.
# Posted 8:18 PM by Karol

Things not to say in an Interview

By Rufus Wainright

"For years, and I mean thousands of years, the gay man's mind has been treated as perverted, clandestine and dirty," he went on, "and speed reinforces and glamorizes that as an ideal. And with drugs, what's more dangerous is more sexually exciting. On that drug I had really horrible thoughts that turned me on. I had a few of those real gay lost weekends, where everything goes out the window, where you want to make pornos or you want to have sex with children. I mean, your mind is just completely ravaged."
# Posted 8:17 PM by Karol

Guest Blog Guest Blog Guest Blog Guest Blog Guest Blog
# Posted 1:55 PM by Karol

Mark Steyn has a hilarious, spot on piece in the Spectator today. Go read it, highly recommended.
# Posted 11:05 AM by Karol

The planets are in an unusual alignment. Not only are you getting two consecutive posts from me, but Mars is the closest its been to Earth in 50,000 years. If you get a chance, you should really go take a look while you can -- it's a beautiful sight.

I want to buy a telescope so I can see the polar caps and canals, but it's still very impressive to the naked eye.
# Posted 1:30 AM by Peter

As you probably already know, there was a blackout in parts of England today, including London. This comes exactly two weeks after the blackout that hit North America. Just as in the case here, British officials were quick to deny any traces of terrorism in today's power failure.

But is it too quick to dismiss both blackouts as a case of unfortunate coincidence? I've always been a little bit wary about official explanations for things; and as we learned in Iraq, both American and British officials have no qualms in "lying" to their citizenry.
It's a known fact before they took their plane ride to hell, the September 11 hijackers took dry run flights to survey airline security, flight crews, etc. It's highly possible they could cut power lines or hack into a power plant's computer system to overload its circuits, and then just sit back to see what happens. Perhaps the jihadis are in the final stages of planning their next attack and the blackouts of this month were just a test.

Just a thought.
# Posted 7:19 PM by Peter

P.S You have been checking out the guest blog, right?
# Posted 12:23 PM by Karol

I'm back from part one of my vacation and will begin part two tomorrow. I figured I'd give you all a little update on my adventures thus far.

Peter and I were looking for a beach vacation where we could lay on a beach, swim and that's pretty much it. We weren't looking for anything crazy, just a short, inexpensive getaway to relax. As it sometimes works out with trip planning, the best deal happened to be at a five-star hotel in swanky Palm Beach, Florida.

How swank is Palm Beach? The town's main drag has free valet parking. I ducked into a bar to use the restroom and there were flatscreen tvs installed in every stall. It's where the billionaires have their summer mansions. It was definitely something else.

We had a really great time and accomplished our main goal of doing little. The people in Florida, especially along the coast as they tend to be transplanted New Yorkers, were terrific. There were people in our hotel who had come from as far away as Britain and Hong Kong. At first, I wondered why anybody would make such a long journey just to lay on the beach. I don't think we would've chosen Florida if it wasn't a two hour flight away, but I can definitely see the appeal now of getting away from it all in such a mellow, pretty place.

Tomorrow we leave for our yearly Montreal trip. We're going with the drummer in Peter's band and his girlfriend. It should be a good time and I'll tell you all about it when I return.
# Posted 11:29 AM by Karol

Well kids, I'm off on vacation. As I've mentioned, there is a Spot On Guest Blog for your viewing pleasure. See you in September (unless I have the mad urge to post something from paradise-not unlikely)
# Posted 2:12 PM by Karol

I've been getting a lot of hits from people looking for a Manhattan liquor store open on Sundays (I covered this topic with dismay about a month ago). Since writing the rant about the stupid 6 day law, I've discovered one liquor store in Manhattan that is indeed open on Sunday. It is on Second Avenue between 75th and 76th Streets. It's called Woody's. Enjoy.
# Posted 1:45 PM by Karol

Just how dumb is the UN? Ken Wheaton has the scoop and it's pretty unbelieveable.
# Posted 12:05 PM by Karol

Bush good, Saddam bad, someone tell the left:

"Bush good, Saddam bad!" many Iraqis tell us emphatically--and repeatedly. I'm not sure how George W. Bush is faring with the American public, but he's got a lock on Al Hillah.

Iraqis routinely ask me to "thank Mr. Bush for freeing us of Saddam" and tell me, "We are very grateful, because you have freed us of our worst nightmare, Saddam Hussein." (A lot of Iraqis speak surprisingly good English because most studied it in primary and secondary school.)

It all reminds me of my experience a decade ago in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Most ordinary Russians, Poles and Czechs hailed Ronald Reagan as a hero for bringing down the "evil empire" when few people had the courage even to call it that.

In much the same way, ordinary Iraqis have a tremendous reservoir of goodwill for the president who coined the term "axis of evil"--and who then acted to eradicate a primary source of that evil.
-Report from John R. Guardiano, a marine in Iraq.
# Posted 12:51 PM by Karol

My best friend is a teacher. Recently, she told me a story about a friend of hers who is a teacher as well. Her friend had given out candy to the class and then left the bag with the remaining candy in her desk. She was dismayed and upset to find out that the kids were stealing the candy when she wasn't in the room. She has a drawer that has a lock but doesn't use it because she wants the kids to not want to steal the candy. My friend, ever the realistic, strong woman that she is, commented that of course they're going to steal the candy if she doesn't lock it up. In fact, she added, it's the only thing that she uses the locked drawer to store. They're kids. They're going to take candy if it is in plain sight. Duh.

Which leads me to the story of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq. Turns out, the US warned the UN that they were an easy target. The UN felt that too much security would create a barrier between this very effective organization and those whom it hopes to help. That, and they didn't want those American types hanging around. Now, aside from the fact that terrorists bombing the UN is, as my friend Bobby would say, 'pissing in their chips', I can't understand why the UN wouldn't listen to the Americans on this. How deep does their hatred of us have to be to let that hatred cost lives? Were we lying to them about there being a potential threat on them? What could their reasoning be? Unless, they felt that there couldn't possibly be an attack on them. After all, hadn't they supported Saddam staying in power? Hadn't they tried to stop those dastardly Americans? They had. Will they now wake up to the fact that the terrorists don't just hate Israel, they don't just despise Americans, they hate everything, all of us, anyone living in freedom. And if there is an opportunity to kill us, they will. They will take full advantage of the unlocked drawer, and they don't care where you stood on the war in Iraq or what you think of the fence in the West Bank.
# Posted 12:48 PM by Karol

Peter and I are going on vacation on Sunday. We'll be back around September 2nd. My idea for this blog while I'm away is to have a 'guest house' blog. It was supposed to begin when we leave on Sunday but some of the guest bloggers have already began said blogging. The site is Suitably Alarmed. More information can be had by, uh, visiting it.
# Posted 10:44 PM by Karol

I'm sorry to bore you with another blackout post, but this is just too funny:

"Let the criminal Bush and his gang know that the punishment is the result of the action, the soldiers of God cut the power on these cities, they darkened the lives of the Americans as these criminals blackened the lives of the Muslim people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Americans lived a black day they will never forget. They lived a day of terror and fear... a state of chaos and confusion where looting and pillaging rampaged the cities, just like the capital of the caliphate Baghdad and Afghanistan and Palestine were. Let the American people take a sip from the same glass," Al Hayat quotes the statement as saying.
"One of the benefits of this strike is that the US will not live in peace until our conditions are met, such as releasing all the detainees, including Sheikh Omar Abdulrahman, and getting out of the land of the Muslims, including Jerusalem and Kashmir," the statement continued.
While not specifying how the sabotage was carried out, the paper quotes the statement as contending that the blackout cost the US treasury no less than $10 billion, and to "break the hearts of US officials, just know that the cost paid by the mujahideen to sabotage the power plants was a mere $7,000. Die of sorrow!"

[Insert your own joke here]

If this is the new face of al-Qaeda, as those wacky jihadis warn, then keep it coming!
Except for the lack of running water, I found the blackout to be incredibly fun. As New York grew dark, I sat on our balcony and tried to eat as many ice cream sandwiches as humanly possible before they melted (I ate 10), had flashlight wars with neighbors I've never seen before or since, and joined in the merriment as our neighborhood was reduced to a mass of people behaving like little kids staying up past their bedtime at a slumber party. Then in the morning, before anyone else in our apartment was awake, I sat out on the balcony again and played solitary card games. The whole city was quiet except for one neighbor's battery-powered radio tuned to a classic rock station. Ah, I thought, summer doesn't get any better than this.
As soon as power was restored, the air conditioners and televisions roared back to life and the city was filled with noise again. But for more than 25 hours, I experienced a peace and quiet normally alien to New York City.
# Posted 2:11 AM by Peter

Comments

Urg. You're witnessing what happens when I read the New York Times at 1:30am.

So, in addition to the 'this doesn't happen that often but hey let's make it a big story anyway' piece below, the NY Times has two other articles that have caught my interest this morning.

The first is this one with the headline: For Ugandan Girls, Delaying Sex Has Economic Cost. Now, I think you all know that I'm not much of a social conservative. My big political issues are realistic foreign policies, toughness on crime on the local level and strong defense on the national one, privatization of schools, low taxes, smaller government, and free markets. Socially, I'm a libertarian. It's mostly because I don't care what people do as long as I'm not paying for it. From what I understand of AIDS prevention in Uganda, their teaching of abstinence has been an incredible success. AIDS rates are way down there. Other countries are beginning to use the Ugandan model of teaching 'abstinence first and condoms second' for their own AIDS education programs. Hysterical liberals, of course, hate this. Abstinence should never be taught lest conservatives are pushing their 'agenda' on somebody's sex life. Even if that agenda is saving lives. This headline is classic. The article reads as if the abstinent girls who don't get to be prostitutes suffer financially and we should feel sorry for that. Well, I am sorry. I'm sorry that the Times can't disguise its own agenda, even when lives are being saved, and even when it has to bring itself to endorse prositution to push it.

The other piece is an editorial by Paul Newman about the Fox News v. Al Franken lawsuit. For the record, I think Fox News suing Franken is absolutely ridiculous. For one thing, they've boosted this hack's book sales by 1000% for no good reason. But this Times editorial is just ghastly. The writing is so bad it hurts my head. Sample line: 'In claiming trademark violation, Fox sets a noble example for standing firm against whatever.' Am I reading Mad magazine here? It's supposed to be something resembling satire. It's written in third person, something I find incredibly annoying. It reads like the jokes some loser guy who thinks calling George W. Bush 'shrub', as if its the epitome of wit, would tell you. It's embarrassing.
# Posted 1:27 AM by Karol

Headline in the New York Times: Israelis Worry About Terror, by Jews Against Palestinians

No, that is not a joke.

Somewhere toward the end of the article, the Times deems it important to mention that 'the argument about whether Jewish vigilantism is justified can quickly become contentious. ' Gee, ya think? And why would that be? The Times explains 'one of the few points of agreement is that attacks by Israeli civilians against Palestinians are rare.' Really? How rare is it? Well, the Times goes on 'according to B'Tselem, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the last three years. At the same time, 328 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians inside Israel, and 190 more in the West Bank and Gaza.' And yet, there is a front page (with a photo) article about this rare occurence in one of the most influential newspapers in the world. Odd that.
# Posted 1:03 AM by Karol

So, I've had an eventful week:

1. Peter and I marked two phenomenal years together. It has been amazing and happy and I have to touch wood every time I think about it to keep from jinxing it.

2. To celebrate, we've booked a much needed vacation, two actually, the first of which is to Palm Beach, FL and will commence on Sunday. The second is to Montreal for Labor Day weekend. I've got some interesting blog plans that are shaping up for my time away. I'll keep y'all posted.

3. I'm going to graduate school in September. It was a last minute decision. I found a politics program that I fell in love with at NYU. The head of the department let me apply despite the deadline having passed. He also let me submit my LSAT scores (I was sure I was going to be a lawyer, but no) instead of the GRE scores that are normally required. I got two amazing letters of recommendations from two incredible people that I've worked with on campaigns. And I got in. I really didn't think I would. I've been hysterically happy since finding out. I'm going back to school. Woooohooooo. I was so surprised when I got the call about getting accepted. I just kept saying 'thank you, thank you' over and over. And while on the phone, my computer lost power. I thought that it was probably a blown fuse in my apartment. Yeah. That wasn't it.

4. The blackout. I'm happy that I wrote about it immediately after going through it. I've already started to forget that it happened. Things returned back to normal with amazing speed. I'm grateful it wasn't terrorism. Even without mass death, the knowledge that the terrorists could do something like this to us would've been unbearable.

Anyway, happy Monday.
# Posted 3:01 AM by Karol

Lileks on the media during the blackout:

But aren’t you angry that there wasn’t a Plan B for getting the electricity up sooner?” the reporter prodded. “Who do you blame?”

They didn’t really blame anyone. The reporter cut them loose. A while later I saw a reporter stop a man on a bike. He had a plastic sack with some food. He was going home; he had some friends crashing on the floor. "So you're pulling together, extending a hand to your fellow man," said the reporter, who was no doubt thinking: Pulitizer, or whatever the equivalent is for TV.

"Sure," said the guy. "I mean, someone turns on an air conditioner in Canada, it all goes down, whattaya gonna do."

The reporter cut him loose. I almost wondered if the reporters wanted this to be 9/11 lite, all the mass inconvenience with only half the panic. As far as I can tell, the big story was the outage, but the other story was "so, they dealt with it." You can't wonder if a TV producer was looking at the feeds, seeing the people just walking along, the cars waiting thier turns, and the producer's thinking: God help me for this, but would someone please throw a brick? We're dyin' here.

# Posted 11:52 AM by Karol

"People's reactions are just unbelievable," a Toronto waitress told a newspaper. "No-one's panicking. Everyone's cool. We're all helping each other. I love this."

"New York just can't get a break"
-Spot On reader Dawn Summers in hour 8, or so, of the blackout.

The lights just came back on and the Upper East Side erupted into a huge cheer. You could tell the power was back even though it was daylight-the whir of the energy gave it away immediately. It was really, really bad, I'm not going to say that it wasn't. But, it was really interesting and one of the few times in a person's life that can be marked clearly 'experience'. New York was amazing. It was alive for the first time in a long time. This summer had been so sluggish and the 2 years since 9/11 have been so melancholy and sedate. This jolted everyone back to life. Bars were packed. People were hanging out on stoops. Most people walking the streets were laughing, drinking, smoking (the smoking and 'open container' police were stationed elsewhere). It was the feeling of 'we're all in this together' but it wasn't as horrifying as the last time we had felt that. It was such a relief when it wasn't terrorism. It let people relax and almost enjoy it. I spent it with Peter and my friend "Dawn Summers". At around 1am, we drove to Brooklyn in Dawn's car to check on her mom, whom Dawn hadn't heard from since about 4pm (she was fine and at home). Driving around Manhattan and into Brooklyn without a single traffic light-wow. When am I ever going to do that again? Anyway, it was something else. It sucked, yes, and I'm glad to have come out of it, but I'm also partly glad for it having happened at all.
# Posted 6:28 PM by Karol

Doh!:

In June 2002, the liberal American Prospect magazine was hailing California as a "laboratory" for Democratic policies. With "its Democratic governor, U.S. senators, state legislature and congressional delegation," author Harold Meyerson gushed, "California is the only one of the nation's 10 largest states that is uniformly under Democratic control." In the Golden State, Meyerson said, "the next New Deal is in tryouts."
-Ann Coulter.
# Posted 12:19 PM by Karol

Lileks on the arrest of the missile dealer guy:

Arresting them is nice. Arresting them is civilized. Part of me, however, wonders whether it might not be better to dispatch some of the grim men who can kill you with a shoelace and a thumbtack from sixty paces, and have them hasten to hell a half-dozen black-market arms dealers, just to get the point across: Don’t. Or else. Go trade camcorders that fell off a truck; go back to dealing Marlboros with forged tax stamps. Oh, allright, you can sell machine guns. We’re feeling generous. But if you even think the words “surface to air missile” you will meet up with a fellow who not only had his nose sharpened to a lethal point, but can remove the nose and throw it at your jugular if need be.

As always, the whole thing is worth a read.
# Posted 1:58 AM by Karol

From Andrew Stuttaford at NRO's the Corner:

JUST SHOWING UP
Arnold Schwarzenegger:

"There comes a point when the people must demand more of our elected officials than just showing up."

The response from one Texan (suffering through the spectacle of his elected representatives holed up in New Mexico and Oklahoma).

“Oh, dare to dream.”

For those of you unaware, the Democrats in the Texan legislature have decided that since they can't win the votes they need to block a Republican redistricting plan, they're go to, uh, leave. And run. And hide. For the second time. Yes, really.
# Posted 1:47 AM by Karol

Via Realpolitik.
# Posted 11:44 AM by Karol

Alright, who's buying me one of these?
# Posted 1:55 PM by Karol

There is a Bush2004 Meetup today at locations all across the US and a few tiny ones in places like Madrid and Mexico City. If you go to the Meetup site you get the added bonus of seeing a really bad picture of me (my friend says I look like the Blair witch although I don't believe the actual witch ever made an appearance in that film).
# Posted 12:47 PM by Karol

I went to a small high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. My graduating class had 32 people in it. The size, along with the unusual chemistry between the oddest mix of people, leads me to still be in touch with most of my class. Nationality-wise, most of the big immigrant groups in Brooklyn were represented. The biggest groups were the Italians, Greeks and Russian-Jews. There were also a couple of third or fourth generation Americans, two Israelis, one Puerto Rican, one Irish, and one Palestinian. We were all good friends. We can call each other now, 9 years after we graduated, and it won't be strange at all.

So the Palestinian guy dropped me an email a few days ago after finding my name on Classmates.com. We emailed a few times and then spoke on the phone yesterday. I hadn't spoken to him since about 1995, sometime during my second year of college. Back then, I was moving to Scotland for the first time and he was getting married. Today, he's got two kids and twins on the way. He's a dad. This guy who used to shoot spitballs at people in class is a father. Weird.

Anyway, back in high school, he and I had a running joke. Whenever Israel would get mentioned in class, one of us would lean over to the other and say 'that's my land, you know.' The other one would then say 'no, no, you must be mistaken, it's my land.' It would invariably turn into a 'mine', 'mine', 'mine', 'mine'. We would be laughing the whole time. I was thinking, while talking to him, that we probably couldn't joke about something like this anymore. I wanted to ask him questions, I wanted to know how he felt about 9/11. Was he sickened? Did he feel any solidarity with the people in the Palestinian territories dancing in the streets? Did he feel more like an American these days or an Arab? On the flip side of that, I wanted to ask him if he had been mistreated at all since the attacks. What was that September like for him? How has it been since?

I couldn't ask anything like this. Some stupid inner voice was telling me that it would be (say it with me) 'racist' to even ask him questions like this. The truth is that we were good friends and still are. I have previously given the definition of good friendship to be that your good friends will never misunderstand you. They will always look at what you are saying in the best possible light. They will trust you not to be cruel to them on purpose and if offense is made they will understand that it is never intentional. I chickened out. I knew that he wouldn't take offense to my questions and yet I still could not ask them.

We're going to hang out sometime after his kids are born. He and his wife will come over for dinner. We'll sit on my balcony and I'll see if we can still be those silly kids in class, giggling and saying 'mine'.
# Posted 12:14 PM by Karol

Mark Steyn on Arnold:

Whether or not he'll win, nobody can say for certain: the rules of the recall election are as whimsical as a sudden-death gameshow round. The standard line is that it's a "circus", but pre-Arnie it was more of a freak show, filled by various unsatisfying midgets: the pornographer Larry Flynt; the diminutive ex-sitcom-player Gary Coleman; a bounty hunter from Sacramento; the extravagantly-endowed self-proclaimed "Love Goddess" Angelyne (she's a one-woman circus, if only in the sense that she has a big top); and the wannabe celebrity, obscure populist and rumoured fourth Gabor sister Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, best remembered in Britain (if at all) as Bernard Levin's ex-squeeze. But no matter how many little clowns pour out of the miniature car, it is the entry of the muscleman that has made this a circus worth seeing.

And:

Arnold made his first business investment at 19, using savings from his bodybuilding contests to buy a failed Munich gym. He turned it around. The first really big money he made in America in the early 1970s came when he and a fellow bodybuilder started a bricklaying business. He's one of a very few actors who was a millionaire before he ever acted. And, if you think it's no big deal being the world's highest-paid movie star, you try it - with a guttural German accent so thick you can barely do dialogue and a body frame so large you're too goofy for playing love scenes. From his gym to his mail-order company to his masonry business to his shopping malls, Schwarzenegger has shown a consistent knack for exploiting the fullest financial value from even his most modest successes. Who would you say best embodies the spirit of California? The guy who has made all his own money? Or the fellows who've squandered everybody else's?

I have a feeling that my non-American readers are going to grow tired of the Arnold story pretty quickly. They have to understand, it's been a quiet summer in America, news-wise, and the story of Arnold is definitely the most interesting one around right now. The story isn't that he is running, of course, it is that he has a very good shot of winning. Whatever I may think of the recall (and, again, what I think is that Californians should have been stuck with Gray Davis for his entire term after having voted him in under a year ago), this is turning into the most entertaining political story in some time.
# Posted 11:51 AM by Karol

Weird Search of the Day:

'how to spot a jew in a crowd'
# Posted 11:27 AM by Karol

For the Brits:

Apparently a couple of people are collecting stories about crap towns in Britiain to put into a book. No, Buckie is not on the list. Amazingly, Edinburgh is. Are these people drunk? I've been all over the place and I've never been to a more beautiful city.

On a different note, I was surprised to discover that the word 'orcs' is a commonly used one. I thought it was specific to one town in the northeast of Scotland.
# Posted 6:21 PM by Karol

Arnie is growing on me:

"I come from Austria, a socialistic country. There you can hear 18-year-olds talking about their pension. But me, I wanted more. I wanted to be the best. Individualism like that is incompatible with socialism. I felt I had to come to America, where the government wasn't always breathing down your neck or standing on your shoes."
-Arnold Schwarzenegger

Via The Corner.
# Posted 12:10 PM by Karol

Quote of the Day:

'Listened to much radio commentary today on the Arnie candidacy, and as usual there was much lamenting and rending of garments on the ironclad right; he’s not this, he’s not that, he said this, he sleeps with a Shriver, etc. I am always mystified by people who would rather die pure than live with imperfections. Every candidate will always disappoint, somehow. Any candidate with whom you agree 100% is probably unelectable. If your bumpersticker says DON’T BLAME ME, I VOTED FOR AYN RAND I'm not particularly impressed. ‘Cause she’s dead and none of that stuff is going to happen. Doesn’t mean we can’t keep the ideas in play, but if you don’t vote because no candidate vows to privatize the sewage systems and disband the Food and Drug Administration, don’t come crying to me when your marginal tax rate hits 71 percent.'

-Lileks with a point that can just as well apply to the ironclad left (Hi Deanocrats!)
# Posted 11:38 AM by Karol

Lileks is baaaack (as his subject for today, Arnie, would say). He writes about the California situation and also about the newly appointed, first openly gay Bishop. Ken Wheaton calls himself a South Park Republican. I think I've concluded that I'm a Lileks Republican. I've yet to disagree with Lileks on anything. On the issue of the gay bishop, what stood out for me (and for Lileks) is that the man left his wife and kids to go be with someone else. The fact that the someone else is a man is really irrelevant to me. Would this man be so accepted and elevated to the position of bishop had he left his wife for another woman? Why does being gay give him a moral pass? Anyway, go read Lileks, he writes a helluva lot better than I do, and he's got the bishop's number. Figuratively speaking.
# Posted 11:49 AM by Karol

It was 58 years ago this week when the United States used nuclear weapons against Japan. Today was the anniversary of Hiroshima and Saturday will mark the Nagasaki bombing.
Although the US had its reasons for the bombings -- American troops faced massive casualties should an invasion of Japan had taken place, and the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered unless they were utterly destroyed -- I'm still bothered by the indiscriminate killing of both innocent civilians and enemy combatants alike. Nuclear weapons are the most terrible thing imaginable, and the people of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not deserve their awful fate.
Earlier today I said a prayer for the victims of both bombings as well as a prayer that no one else will ever have to witness the same sort of horror experienced in Japan almost six decades ago.

Unfortunately, not everyone feels the same way. Iran is really close to building their first nuclear bomb, thanks in part to the generous help and support from Russia, China, Pakistan, and North Korea.
If that wasn't bad enough, North Korea is going to export missiles to Iran. Besides having the capability to strike Israel, the proposed missiles should be able to reach Europe as well. Given Iran's bed hopping with every terrorist under the crescent moon, there's no doubt such a bomb could be used to attack the United States as well.

I'd long been opposed to US military intervention in Iran, as I believe the Iranian people will take care of the mullahs by themselves. But an American-induced regime change is not the same as a surgical strike to take out their nuclear reactors and disrupt their weapons program. We already wasted our chance with North Korea. We can't repeat the same mistake with Iran.
# Posted 11:48 PM by Peter

California is out of control:

Arnold Schwarzenegger Announces Calif. Gov. Bid

Arianna Huffington will run in recall election

Gary Coleman on California ballot

Porn king Larry Flynt bids for California governor

I am completely against this recall election. California had an election last November, Gray Davis won. The fact that he is the worst manager of state finances in history is, to me, neither here nor there. Californians should have to live with their poor decision making. I want a do-over in the last NY Senate race but it doesn't look like I'm getting one, no matter how many signatures I get.
# Posted 10:51 PM by Karol

Al Sharpton says that 'the news media are dismissive of his presidential campaign because newsrooms are overwhelmingly white.'

Yeah. That's why.
# Posted 10:47 PM by Karol

Can someone run down some reasons for me, preferably based on logic, how it is to the benefit of 'peace' for Israel to release Palestinian prisoners? Especially in light of the fact that the move is being greeted with hostility and ungratefulness by the Palestinians? Ken Wheaton doesn't get it either.
# Posted 12:45 PM by Karol

Urg. I wrote a long post this morning about who knows what and just when I went to publish it, my internet provider failed to provide. They tell me there is an outage in my area. Now it's 10pm and after jonesing to be online all day, I'm signed on to Peter's computer from like, 1981, and connected to my beloved internet via, could you believe it, the phone line. Too annoyed at the snail's pace with which the pictures and words finally appear on the screen, I give up for today.

I'm just going to note that Peter's new music site now has a permalink on the blogroll (he let) as does the blog of the New York Young Republican club. Check the former to read about the music I'm subjected to daily (kidding, well, half kidding) and the latter to find out what rightwing conspiracy meetings are going on in NYC.

On a totally different note, I'd also like to direct your attention to one of my favorite blogs that has been on the blogroll for some time but that I haven't written much about. It and Lileks's site are the first things I read every day. It's View From The Wing. Gary, the site's host, is incredibly knowledgeable about all things travel. From what planes give you the most leg room, to what frequent flyer program is the best, to how to score upgrades and deals, he knows everything. I don't make a travel move without consulting with Gary these days (I owe him big as I'm sure I am very annoying). Anyway, go visit his site, you'll definitely learn something.
# Posted 10:15 PM by Karol

Quote of the Day:

"The Congressional Black Caucus blames all this on the legacy of colonialism, but it would be more accurate to call it the legacy of post-colonialism or prematurely terminated colonialism. The first generation of the continent’s leaders were those LSE-educated Afro-Marxists who did such a great job at destroying their imperial inheritance. By the time that crowd faded from the scene, the Cold War was over and nobody needed African puppets. So today West Africans find themselves in a land beyond politics. You can’t seriously talk of these factions as being Marxist or Maoist or Blairite. None represents any coherent political platform. The video of Samuel Doe’s sudden loss of hearing predates the equivalent scene in Reservoir Dogs by a couple of years, but that’s the valid comparison: these are criminal operations, not political ones. The only difference is that the ear-slicing of Sam Doe wasn’t accompanied on the soundtrack by ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’. That’ll be left for the US Marines to sing."

-Mark Steyn on Liberia
# Posted 1:23 PM by Karol

Lileks is the first person I read every morning. If you visit his site right now, there is a cartoon of a guy with a gun to his head and the words '08.04.03: the server crashed and took the whole #$*%# site down. Backups in progress. Thanks for your patience.' Even if he's not around, he still kills me.
# Posted 12:49 PM by Karol

If you're a rightwinger, living in NYC, and would like info on right-leaning activities going on around town, please visit the brand new blog of the New York Young Republican Club. I am, for now, its editor. If you know of any happenings that I should list, please drop me an email. The blog is also looking for people to, well, blog, so if you've got something to say posts are being accepted.
# Posted 11:37 AM by Karol

A joke from Jay Nordlinger:

A joke, making the Internet rounds (I edit a little): Three Americans and an Israeli soldier are caught by cannibals and are about to be cooked. The chief says, "I am familiar with your Western custom of granting a last wish. Before we kill and eat you, do you have any last requests?"

Dan Rather says, "Well, I'm a Texan, so I'd like one last bowlful of hot, spicy chili." The chief nods to an underling, who leaves and returns with the chili. Rather eats it all and says, "Now I can die content."

Al Sharpton says, "I'd like to have my picture taken, as nothing has given me greater joy in life." Done.

Judith Woodruff says, "I'm a journalist to the end. I want to take out my tape recorder and describe the scene here, and what's about to happen. Maybe someday someone will hear it and know that I was on the job to the last." The chief directs an aide to hand over the tape recorder, and Woodruff dictates some comments. "There," she says. "I can now die fulfilled."

The chief says, "And you, Mr. Israeli Soldier? What is your final wish?"

The solider says, "Kick me in the behind."

"What?" says the chief. "Will you mock us in your last hour?"

"No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the behind."

So the chief unties the soldier, shoves him into the open, and kicks him in the behind. The Israeli goes sprawling, but rolls to his knees, pulls a 9mm pistol from his waistband, and shoots the chief dead. In the resulting confusion, he leaps to his knapsack, pulls out his Uzi, and sprays the cannibals with gunfire. In a flash, the cannibals are all dead or fleeing for their lives.

As the Israeli unties the others, they ask him, "Why didn't you just shoot them? Why did you ask the chief to kick you in the behind?"

"What?" answers the soldier. "And have you SOBs call me the aggressor?"

Via Blissful Knowledge.
# Posted 11:19 AM by Karol

From Andrew Sullivan:

THE BBC VERSUS BLAIR: Here's how they spin quotes. What Tony Blair said at his press conference yesterday was: "There is a big job of work to do - my appetite for doing it is undiminished." Here's how the BBC described it: "Tony Blair has fended off questions over the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly - but acknowledged that trust in his government was an issue which he had to confront. Mr Blair, who said his appetite for power remained 'undiminished' despite his recent troubles, said he understood the 'very legitimate questions' to be asked over Dr Kelly's death." The war continues. (Via Oxblog.)
# Posted 10:48 AM by Karol

Quote of the Day:

"We hear your voice cry out in the desert, and we will never leave your side."

-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to the Israeli Knesset on July 30, 2003.
# Posted 6:09 PM by Karol

Google Search of the Day:

"Chirac not well brought up"

Well, I'd certainly agree with that (though, yes, I realize they were probably looking for information on the time Chirac warned Eastern European countries to side with France against America on Iraq with that phrase).

# Posted 12:53 PM by Karol

From BOTW:

The Associated Press reports that "the number of American tourists visiting France has dropped dramatically this year, by as much as 80 percent in the first half of 2003." The reason? France's Tourism Ministry attributes the decline "mainly to the weak dollar." Yeah, that must be it.
# Posted 11:18 AM by Karol

In that past few days, in the name of harmony or acceptance or whatever other bullshit word is being used these days to describe racism, segregation, and making sure people of different backgrounds never interact, there have been these two wonderful news stories:

Parents: White Teacher Should Not Teach Black History

NY to Open First Gay High School

Both of these situations are just nauseating to me. They create divisions according to race or sexuality where none should exist. Imagine the headline 'Black Teacher Should Not Teach White History' or 'NY to Open First All-Straight High School.' Liberals would be frantic. I dare liberals to defend these two moves. I dare them to defend the racist parents or a school that will cause children to make a choice as to whom they prefer to have sex with, at age 14.

I'm a very liberal person, in the classical sense, and am frequently asked why I consider myself, politically, a social conservative (or, more accurately, a libertarian). These cases are major reasons. I think liberals are playing with danger when they cut up our society into neat little pieces like this. Life has a lot of gray area. You can't make decisions based on someone's race. Would a half-black teacher be allowed to teach the class? What about a teacher with one black grandparent? Should sexually confused kids go to the gay high school? Should fat kids have their own school too (as the major reason cited for this school is the abuse that gay kids get in 'regular' schools)? Should redheads? What about kids with gay parents? What if only one parent is gay? Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Again, I would love to heard from people that can defend these moves. I would love to hear what such a defense would sound like.
# Posted 10:37 AM by Karol

A few days/weeks/posts ago, I said that I had missed out on all the hype that surrounded the HBO show 'Six Feet Under' when it first came out, and that I wished that I hadn't. I felt that all the articles about the show had been written before I started watching it and that I had no resources to delve into my favorite show to learn more about it or compare ideas with other fans. I got this idea from my friend, and sometimes guest blogger, Dawn Summers, who is obsessed with the now defunct show 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' (her moniker is a character on the show) and reads many articles and feature pieces about the show. I thought I'd like to do the same with what is quickly becoming my favorite show of all time.

I take it all back. Writing about tv shows is dumb because in order to say something more than 'this show is great' or 'this show isn't great', you have to make up nonsense to fill the page.

This article about the show in National Review, well, sucks. I think Radley Balko is a good writer and I usually read his articles with interest. However, this piece discusses whether the creator of the show, Alan Ball, is pro-life based on a couple of episodes, one of which showed an aborted baby in heaven.

Before you think 'Rightwing loons make everything political', it isn't just the Right. Balko quotes Boston Globe television critic Matthew Gilbert as writing 'By presenting Claire's ''choice'' as a baby, was Ball trying to make a big statement about fetuses and the morality of abortion?' He also quotes critic James Oliphant as writing 'All Aborted Babies Go to Heaven? Is that really what the show wants to say? It makes you wonder to which side of the abortion debate, if any, the show means to tilt.'

No, it doesn't make me wonder, I didn't think once about it until I read this article. What a stupid thing to notice in a show that is just classic, with unbelievable writers and phenomenal actors. The thing I remember most from the part of the episode that is up for discussion, is Claire running in the cemetary looking for her father's grave. She runs into her father's ghost and says 'where the fuck is your grave?' He tells her that she is way off. That's genius. That's different. It's got nothing to do with whether or not the writers of the show think abortion is murder or a choice.
# Posted 10:28 AM by Karol

Yesterday I had a few friends over to my apartment for dinner. We drank wine and ate good food on my balcony on a perfect summer night. The talk turned to politics and how one of my friends really dislikes George W. Bush. When pressed as to why she disliked him, my friend said that it was because he was too hard on Israel, that he was trying to broker peace where there was none and never could be. I told her she was politically to the right of the president. She laughed and agreed that she probably was but that was her big issue with him. I think it's amazing how outside the U.S our president is considered so hawkish and a pushover for 'the Jews', when in America he is considered by many to be too weak with the Palestinians and too eager to accept a false peace. Anyway, here is a great excerpt from Jay Nordlinger on Israel:

A word — a too-breezy word — on the Middle East. The president, and a lot of other people, object to the fence that Israel proposes to construct along the West Bank. They don't care about the fence along Gaza — because that's already there (and effective). They care only about this new one.

They care because a fence is icky, psychologically. Its symbolism is terrible. "Can't we all just get along?" (The answer is no.) These critics love to compare this fence to the Berlin Wall. "Tear down this wall!" Ha, ha, ha. Never mind that the Communists threw up their wall to keep their subjects in, and that the Israelis want to construct a fence to keep killers of their citizens out. Elementary logic does not apply when we're emoting and posing.

President Bush said, "It's very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank." Yeah, well, it's very difficult to develop confidence when, day after day, terrorists come in to murder you. Look, the aim isn't to join hands like hippies in a Coke commercial, singing about love. The aim is to achieve a kind of peace, or a lack of war and murder. We must keep things modest here (speaking of realism) — such a peace, cold and hard, not warm and fuzzy, would be achievement enough.

The fence is one of the most innocuous defenses the Israelis could devise. In fact, it's sort of a test of intolerance of Israel: You don't like it when the Israelis undertake retaliatory raids; you don't like it when they carry out "targeted killings"; you don't like it when they bulldoze the homes of terrorists; you don't like the myriad other methods the Israelis employ. Well, how about a fence? You object to that, too? Okay: Is there anything the Israelis might do, to protect their citizens, that would be kosher by you? No? I guess the Israelis just have to fold their tents and go home.

But where's home?

Moving on: When you see those photos of Abbas — Mahmoud, not Abu — smiling with President Bush, you just know they burn Yasser Arafat and his supporters. Arafat was the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House during the eight years of Clinton. Now he's holed up in Ramallah, with his fellow terrorists, one of whom was caught plotting the murder of Israeli citizens — using female homicide bombers — just the other day. It is the firmness of Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush that has made the emergence of Abbas possible — they have been the anti-appeasers. Of course, a great many people would rather swallow cyanide than admit this. If these detractors had had their way, Arafat would still be the Palestinian Number One, and chances of progress would be nil (instead of just slightly better than nil, which is what they are now).

I was particularly struck by something Abbas said about Israel's release of prisoners, etc.: "Some steps have been taken by Israel so far, but these steps remain hesitant." Hesitant! Hell, man, that's the least they are! One only hopes that they are not suicidal. Hesitant — for sure. You expected, what? Buoyant enthusiasm, given the course of history?

# Posted 1:41 AM by Karol

Newest link to the blogroll: The Unofficial Bush-Cheney 2004 Blog
# Posted 2:33 PM by Karol

From Rich Lowry in NRO's The Corner:

WHAT INTELLIGENCE FAILURE?

I’m all for every possible investigation into 9/11, and believe that both the FBI and CIA obviously could have done better jobs. But the focus on them, driven by last week’s 9/11 report, seems misplaced. Neither Louis Freeh nor George Tenet was president of the United States. We knew Afghanistan was a terrorist sanctuary. We knew bin Laden was a threat. According to George Tenet’s testimony, "as early as 1993, [CIA] units watching him began to propose action to reduce his organization's capabilities." We knew that he might target American civil aviation. The CIA warned as early as 1998 that al Qaeda had already conducted successful tests to elude security at a major US airport and that it had developed plans to hijack a plane on the east coast of the United States. All of this represents most of the important big-picture intelligence that we needed. What did we do about it? Almost nothing. That's a failure of policy, not intelligence.

I agree with him. I too favor a full investigation into what went wrong on 9/11. But, in that investigation, I want to see a full accounting of all the opportunities missed by the Clinton administration to deal with the people that seek to harm us.
# Posted 12:50 PM by Karol

Hmm:

'This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end.'
-Uday Hussein, as reported by Ala'a Makki, former director of Uday's tv station.

Via BOTW
# Posted 4:52 PM by Karol

Kay S. Hymowitz has a long, great article on Michael Moore. Worth a read especially if you consider Moore to be anything but a lying, hateful, paranoid man.
These are my two favorite parts:

In "Downsize This!," Mr. Moore attempted to elaborate on the theme of the downsized economy where "Roger and Me" left off, but the book's description of a rust-belt dystopia of pink slips and unemployment checks was out of date long before it hit the bookstores. By 1996, the number of jobs and heft of paychecks in the Midwest had improved markedly. In 1998, the Department of Commerce was writing that "more flexible, market-oriented companies have generated hundreds of thousands of jobs" in Michigan. A 2001 Michigan Economic Development Corp. report noted that with the exception of still-depressed Flint, the state's metropolitan areas saw an increase in personal income between 1989 and 1998, with income rising more than 20% in places like Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.

Stuck in the Walter Reuther past, Mr. Moore can make no sense of this. A while back, he was appalled when The Nation asked him to be part of a lecture cruise, "to hold seminars during the day and then dock at Saint Kitts at night!" he hissed derisively, as if it were still the era when plutocrats in tuxedos and women in gowns and diamonds dined on caviar and champagne with the ship's captain, while workingmen scrimped for a week's vacation at a dank lake bungalow. He seems not to know that plumbers from Milwaukee and secretaries from Akron fill Caribbean cruise ships these days (though probably not those sponsored by The Nation), and that factory workers often sport two cars--and a boat on a trailer--in their driveways. Our economic system has "got to go," he told Industry Central, before admitting, "Now don't ask me what to replace it with because I don't know." How convenient. He can dwell in his mythical land of Flint and never face the manifest truth that the system that downsized and restructured with such turmoil ultimately improved living standards for millions, while at the same time absorbing huge numbers of poor immigrants.

And:

Mr. Moore appears to give a good deal of money to unions and charities. But on the road he often stays at the Ritz or Four Seasons, like other movie millionaires. (And he is always on the road: though he loves to describe himself as a slacker, he endured a 47-city book tour for "Downsize This," a tour he made the subject of his disastrously narcissistic movie, "The Big One," and he hit scores of cities for "Stupid White Men.") Former employees have accused him of trying to stop them from joining the Writers Guild and, according to interviews conducted by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash, of creating working conditions that resemble a "sweatshop" and "indentured servitude."

In fact, there are plenty of indications that Michael Moore is not a compassionate, big-hearted man dedicated to social justice; he just plays one on TV. When asked by a reporter from the Arcata (Calif.) Eye in 2002 why he wasn't speaking at independent bookstores rather than at corporate chains, he exploded in a tirade that revealed his willingness to have his principles--in this case, his distrust of corporate power--take a backseat to his personal vengefulness. "You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups," he ranted. "They were the Republicans in town, they were in Kiwanis, the Chamber of Commerce--people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing-store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. F--- all these small businesses--f--- 'em all. Bring in the chains."
# Posted 2:56 PM by Karol