As the international community dithers over Darfur, private military companies say they’ve got what it takes to stop the carnage, if only someone would hire them. — The Boston Globe Why is that not a good idea? Could they possibly do a worse job than the UN? OK, you could raise objections regarding accountability and the responsibility of the international community, but . . . ”This came up a long time ago. People were saying that if we use private sector in the Congo, the international community will never get its act together,” says industry spokesman Doug Brooks. ”But that was 3 million dead Congolese ago. The international community isn’t going to wake up no matter how many people you kill. I think that it would be a good idea for the international community to get its act together. But we’ve got to find another way.” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Politics
Between the Two of Us, We Know a Lot of Stuff
My boy repeats something he just heard on the Angels-Twins telecast: “The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.” Sensing a teaching moment, I ask him, “Do you know who Hubert H. Humphrey is?” “No,” he says. “But you do, so it’s all right.” Read more →
Cartoon Violence
Of course you know this means war. — Bugs Bunny Muslims are offended by cartoons portraying them as violent fanatics. Naturally, they’ve responded with violent fanatacism. I’ll say one thing for these people, they know how to stage a lively protest. Yesterday, a few protestors got so enthusiastic that they had to be killed. Hamshahri, a prominent Iranian newspaper, has launched a cartoon counter-offensive: a competition for Holocaust cartoons. Hey, I’ve got an idea! You have a drawing of Hitler standing at a podium, big swastika behind him, addressing a packed hall of Nazis, and he says “I think I may say, without fear of contradiction . . .” HA HA HA HA HA! (Okay, I stole that from an old New Yorker cartoon, but how many people in Iran take the New Yorker?) Read more →
Which Side Are You On?
There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a ‘peace’ movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as ‘progressive.’ — Christopher Hitchens Read more →
Soak the Rich — Colleges!
A core value of American liberals is the importance of redistributing wealth from the prosperous to others, through highly progressive taxes and transfer payments. Which leads to a question: If redistributing wealth is a good idea for workers, companies, individuals, and families, then intellectual consistency suggests it should be equally valid for institutions like colleges and universities. Right? Read more →
Republicans Cause Sneezing?
My son is standing in the kitchen like he’s about to make an announcement. Suddenly . . . “Ah-CHOO!” “Geez, man,” I say, “you just sneeze like that without making any effort to lift your hand up and block it?” “Did the people in New Orleans make an effort to block Hurricane Katrina?” he asks in a loud voice. “NO! They just let it happen and blamed President Bush!” Read more →
Not a Grim Task at All
They [Islamist radicals or, as Hitchens calls them, Islamo-fascists] gave us no peace and we shouldn’t give them any. We can’t live on the same planet as them and I’m glad because I don’t want to. I don’t want to breathe the same air as these psychopaths and murderers and rapists and torturers and child abusers. Its them or me. I’m very happy about this because I know it will be them. It’s a duty and a responsibility to defeat them. But it’s also a pleasure. I don’t regard it as a grim task at all. — Christopher Hitchens Read more →
Lurch to the Right, Lurch to the Left
. . . we don’t need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party. — Sen. John F. Kerry Read more →
Fighting Words
The NCAA has put together a list of colleges with “hostile and abusive” team nicknames, including the Illinois Fighting Illini, the Utah Utes and the North Dakota Fighting Sioux. Remind me again why Fighting Illini, Utes and Fighting Sioux are hostile and abusive, but Fighting Irish, with a dopey guy prancing around in a leprechaun suit, is okay? Read more →
Jesus at a Republican Fund-Raiser
I want to say to the meek: Once we finally get rid of the death tax, you’re not inheriting anything. — Jesus Christ Read more →
The Democratic Dilemma
A Democratic shift to the right risks inflaming the party’s Angry Left base, while a shift to the left would surely cost the party whatever support it has left from normal people. — Best of the Web Today Read more →
One Thing We Agree On
The West reveals here a hatred of itself, which is strange and can be only considered pathological; the West is laudably trying to open itself, full of understanding, to external values, but it no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. — Pope Benedict XIV, “If Europe hates itself” Read more →
Often-Repeated Lies
A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. — Lenin As the GOP drifts further to the right, and becomes more starkly the party of the wealthy, it is gaining support among the working class. I have never seen a wholly satisfactory explanation for this trend, which now spans two generations. . . . Republicans, of course, will argue that it’s simply the working man’s understanding that the GOP has the better argument, i.e., that the best way to help the working class is to shower the rich with tax breaks. But the Bush administration has been showering the rich with tax breaks for more than four years, and the working class has nothing to show for it. — Timothy Noah, “Conservatism As Pathology” Read more →
We’ll Kill Them Too
I remember being told less than two years ago that if you kill Osama bin Laden, thousands more bin Ladens will rise in his place. I didn’t think so myself; he looks like a one-of-a-kind guy to me, as does Saddam Hussein. But if people rise up to take his place they’ll be killed as well. There are more of us than there are of them, and we are smarter, cleverer and more tolerant; and we, too, believe that our culture and civilization mustn’t be offended, defamed, raped and defiled. — Christopher Hitchens Read more →
Bush vs. Kerry
A photographic comparison Read more →
A Pretty Good One-Sentence Analysis of Blogs
True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. — Randell Beck Read more →
Clarence Thomas, Judicial Nincompoop
Clarence Thomas is back in the news . . . During a recent Meet the Press appearance, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, questioned Thomas’ competence as a Supreme Court justice and was subsequently accused of racism, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen if you say anything critical of a black man, woman or child. Read more →
Things NOT to Do in North Korea
Ask why Kim Jong Il is the only fat man in the country Read more →
Redefining Race
MILWAUKEE — A radio talk show host drew criticism Thursday after calling Condoleezza Rice an “Aunt Jemima” and saying she isn’t competent to be secretary of state. — Radio Host Calls Rice ‘Aunt Jemima’ The host, who is white, also called Colin Powell an “Uncle Tom.” He added that he has a long history of commitment to civil rights and support of the black community. Read more →
Worse Than it Looks
I noticed a few days ago that a map of the recent election results shows Democratic voters relegated to the fringes of the country. It turns out that if you look at an election map by county rather than by state, the situation becomes even more extreme, and even the blue (Democratic) states turn mostly red. A coworker of mine refers to Republicans, somewhat derisively, as “Bible Belt” voters. If that’s true, then — as you can see from the map — the Bible Belt now runs from the Hudson River to the Hollywood Freeway. Read more →