A Second Hand Conjecture

For those on the political right who have bemoaned the lack of any real grassroots, online activism in support of Republican(ish) causes, there is a new project in the works just for you. Political blogging mavens Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffini, and Soren Dayton are getting ready to launch The Next Right. Ruffini describes this new project in comparison to those on the left:

It’s no secret that the right operates at a severe disadvantage to the left when it comes to building online political infrastructure. People point to ActBlue and Obama’s massive fundraising advantage, but the problem cuts deeper: netroots activists on the left have built critical mass around an idea that regular people on the Internet can get their hands dirty and remix Democratic politics. They not only raise money. They recruit candidates. They fund full-time investigative journalism to ambush Republicans. They act as a party whip, creating consequences for Democrats who, in their view, don’t act like Democrats. They volunteer and flock to states with key races. The right can build all the tools it wants, but without a narrative and a rallying point for action, it will be for naught.

[...]

It’s no wonder that Joe Conservative outside the Beltway feels that none of his self appointed “leaders” are listening to him. He looks to Washington and sees a leadership class that is too often arrogant, timid, divided, and technologically behind the curve. It’s no wonder why this year more than most his wallet has been sealed shut when it comes to supporting Republican candidates — even the good ones.

We’re calling the site The Next Right because much of this story will be written in the future tense. Our analysis will be as much about looking ten and fifteen years down the road as it will be about dissecting the mechanics of the 2008 contest. What are the coalitions, strategies, and tactics the right needs to win again? How does the party need to change to attract a generation of voters who could very well be lost to us if we don’t move fast? Where do we find the candidates who will lead a resurgent right in the 2010 and 2012 elections and beyond?

The group does not intend to start another punditry site, but instead to generate the tools necessary to promote grassroots movements on the right. The way Ruffini describes it makes me think they will be putting together all the tools one might need for a grassroots starter kit:

If you’re looking for pure-play opinion and link bait on sundry topics from Ann Coulter to Jimmy Carter/Hamas, you won’t find it here. What you will find is in-depth (often unabashedly technical) writing about the election, the polls, the strategy, and the issues. Our analysis will track truth and stay true to the numbers. But it will self-consciously serve a greater purpose — educating YOU to be your own political strategist and start doing something — whether that’s blogging about your local Congressional race or Democratic corruption in your state, organizing fundraising drives, and maybe even managing races or running for office yourself. Only a revival of civic engagement at the grassroots level will create a conservative future we want: one that is pork-free and robust in the defense of our country and its values. We can’t call a switchboard and wait for Washington to fix the mess. We have to do it ourselves, from the ground up, in every state.

It sounds interesting. They are looking for contributers as well, so if you’re interested and think you have the chops, drop them a line.

Tags: grassroots, Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffini, political activism, Republican politics, Soren Dayton, The Next Right

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One thing I’ll never understand about the military is how it looks to failed wars to prove the truthiness of its current strategy. What baffles me more is how earnest scholars, like Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, manage to revel in such silliness. Surely he knows what a failure is? To whit:

The whole process ought to be familiar to students of counterinsurgency. It is, in essence, an update of the old plan known as “concentration” zones or camps. The latter name causes understandable confusion, since we’re not talking about extermination camps of the kind that Hitler built, but rather of settlements where locals can be moved to live under guard, thereby preventing insurgent infiltration. The British used this strategy in the Boer war, the Americans during the Philippine war, and many other powers took similar steps in many other conflicts. In Vietnam they were known as “strategic hamlets.”

This was Boot in April of last year advocating the building of walls around ethnic zones to prevent bombings. Ignoring his advocacy of turning Iraq into an enormous concentration camp, he looks to the Boer Wars, the Philippines, and Vietnam to prove his point. Last I checked, they weren’t raging cases of victory (the Philippine-American War was a qualified victory, since an insurgency continued for well over a decade after the “mission accomplished”… how history repeats). He continues with such advocacy today:

It’s true that there are walls around Dora and other Baghdad neighborhoods. … But then there are walls around many gated communities in the U.S. too. The walls per se are not evidence of reconciliation, I’ll grant you that. But nor are they evidence that reconciliation is impossible. They are one of the important security measures implemented in the past year that is reducing violence and making possible political progress—which is real, whether you admit it or not.

The trick to this, of course, is that Americans choose to live in gated communities, and pay money for the privilege. We do not grant the citizens of Sadr City the same courtesy—we shut them in and declare victory. Boot is discussing coercion, not choice—the deliberate punishing of a community for the actions of a few.

Now in fairness, actual opinion amongst Iraqis, at least those willing to talk to soldiers, is mixed. None liked the walls when they were first installed, but some later came to appreciate the protection they afforded. All, however, according to my contacts, dislike the feeling of disconnectedness the walled communities generate. I’ve been under the impression that fostering disconnectedness is a bad COIN practice, no matter the security gains. And Boot isn’t selling this as a best-fit stop gap measure in the face of no other better ideas. He’s selling it as an unqualified good.

Nouri al-Maliki used to say that he didn’t want to wall off entire sub-cities for their own good; now that his election is in doubt, those beliefs have evaporated. How convenient for him. What is Boot’s excuse?

Tags: Iraq, military, tyranny

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Congress is behaving atrociously: cutting assistance to hungry children abroad right when food prices are spiking, and preventing competition amongst our sugar producers. There’s more, of course.

I normally scoff at the talk of “lobbyists” and “special interest groups.” I know several lobbyists, and the only thing that makes them special is they’ve learned how to play the game. And that’s fine to a certain degree—going back at least to the Federalist Papers, the Founding Fathers understood there would be groups passionately arguing their case before Congress. But this is moving well beyond the pale.

Tags: congress, lobbyists, WTF

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That’s what I took from Michelle Obama’s stump speech anyway (HT: Jim Lindgren):

She tells the story of a ten-year-old girl she met in Newberry, S.C., before that state’s primary. “It was in a little beauty shop, and we were having a rally — it was me and a bunch of women and a couple of brothers,” she recalls. After the rally, the girl came up to her and said, with great seriousness, “Do you realize when your husband becomes the next president of the United States, it will be historical?”

Everybody laughs; what a cute thing for a child to say. But then Obama asked the little girl what that would mean for her. “It means that I can imagine anything for myself,” the girl said.

The crowd begins to applaud; they think they’re hearing a happy, inspiring story. But that’s not where Mrs. Obama is going.

“And then that little girl started to break down in tears,” she continues. “She sobbed so hard. She was crying big, huge tears. And I had to think, why is this little girl crying so hard? And I thought, you know what’s going on? This little old girl gets it.”

There’s some stuff about how frustrated we all are and bar raising as well (although I think she meant “goal post shifting”). Oh, and there’s a little girl in all of us — who will allegedly cry if Barack Obama isn’t elected. That may explain Barack’s bowling scores.

Tags: crying, Election 2008, frustration, little girl, Michelle Obama, stump speech

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I haven’t had much time to grace the pages of ASHC lately, but I was skimming through Memeorandum and just couldn’t resist saying something about this little screed:

Wright issue will haunt conservative media elite

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Now that Sen. Barack Obama has denounced his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, many of his critics, especially those who call themselves conservative, are happy he has put the dashiki-wearing, American-criticizing former Marine in his place.

See, these same voices, many that are allegedly Christian, have reacted with glee by calling Wright a prophet of hate and a race baiter.

They hold themselves up to be so concerned about their fellow brother and sister, yet if you looked at their personal lives, I doubt you’d find many with African-American friends and associates (and I doubt their staffs are the most diverse in the world, but that’s another story).

But be careful what you ask for.

Martin goes on in this vein for the entire spleen-spewing piece, and basically warns conservatives that because they “gleefully” targeted Obama’s association with his (now former) pastor, they should expect the exact same treatment from liberals.

Because the article is so target-rich with fiskable material it’s difficult to say just which bit is more absurd than another, but Martin’s good-for-the-gander warning is no doubt top five. Particularly since it completely ignores the fact that Hillary Clinton pushed this issue as much as any “conservative,” that Obama’s mercurial explanations for his choice of pastor created much fodder for the press (and wasn’t well received by the voters), and that Wright himself kept the problem front and center. It also ignores the fact that liberals have been caterwauling about people like Hagee since McCain accepted his endorsement. In fact, Martin’s attempt to head his critics off at the pass completely undermines his point by tacitly acknowledging that liberals have already tried to tie the Hagee albatross around McCain’s neck:

Now that Wright has set the so-called standard for what isn’t acceptable for religious leaders, let’s see these same critics take their own kind to task for making absolutely outlandish comments.

But don’t stop there. Demand that candidates don’t seek counsel from them. Demand that Republican candidates not go to their churches and sit in their pews and accept their contributions. And if elected, make sure those same candidates don’t allow them access to the White House or halls of Congress. Turnabout is fair play, and that means guys like the Revs. Pat Robertson and John Hagee should not be sought out for their endorsements, and should be removed from any committees associated with a candidate or a political party.

Oh, I can’t wait to get the e-mails from folks who will say, “Yeah, but Obama was a member of the church.”

True, very true.

But if the marker is now saying anything unacceptable to the masses, then that should be the standard for any pastor: white, black, male, female, conservative or liberal. And any candidate, member or not.

I’ve read many of the columns and listened to the shows of these so-called conservative patriots, and few, if any, have said a word about conservative white pastors who have called for the overthrow of the government for not following Christian values (the late Francis Schaeffer, a little “g” God on the Religious Right), or who have called for the destruction of the Islamic religion of a number of Americans (Pastor Rod Parsley) and folks worldwide.

Martin’s analogy makes no sense, of course, which is why he simply waves his hand at the fact that Wright was Obama’s pastor for twenty-some years. That’s an inconvenient fact for his rant, so it’s mentioned without being addressed, and instead he tries to turn it into a racial issue. Martin is trying to set up the meme that Rev. Wright became an issue not because of his racist and anti-American utterings, but because he’s black. The problem, however, is that picking up an endorsement from a crazy, anti-Catholic preacher is just not the same as sitting in the church of a crazy, anti-American, white-hating, marxist-loving, Farrakhan-embracing preacher for over twenty years, not to mention personally choosing him as your spiritual mentor. The former says something about the state of politics for sure in that a candidate is essentially required to pick up such an endorsement in order to get the job. The latter says something about the candidate’s judgment and choice of company and nothing about the state of politics in general (although, I believe it does say something about being in politics in Chicago).

What’s really laughable about Martin’s, however, is his closing warning:

But to every politician, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican: Beware. The die has been cast. The repeated denunciations of Wright will now lead each and every single one of you to have your pastors’ oral and written words examined. If even one thing is said that can be construed as criticizing America or deemed hateful, then expect to see it on YouTube and replayed for millions to see. I suggest you go to your pastor now and say, “Please, watch what you say. I don’t want to have to denounce you on national television.”

To my media pals who are part of the conservative media elite, we’ll be watching. And listening. Let’s just see if you’re as willing to tear apart one of your own.

That’s like warning the seals that the sharks are out to get them. But Martin is a journalist so I guess something that’s been happening all along seems like news to him.

UPDATE: QandO links (thanks, McQ!) and in addition to displaying the many spelling errors in my post (now fixed) adds this admonition:

Watch for variations on this [racial] theme to continue to emerge from the left as the right continues to hammer the Wright/Obama connection.

McQ’s right that Obama backers will push this meme when convenient simply because of the general fear that people hold of being called a racist. On the one hand, it’s good that it has become so socially unacceptable to be a bigot, but on the other it is a shame how some people broadly employ the epithet, without regard for the consequences, simply to score cheap political points. In any case, expect the cry of racism to emerge whenever Wright is mentioned in the context of Obama’s lack of judgment.

Tags: Barack Obama, character, Election 2008, fitness, Hillary Clinton, Jeremiah Wright, John Hagee, John McCain, liberal media, media bias

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If being upside down on your mortgage isn’t bad enough, consider how many people are into large pickups and SUVs for more then they are worth. And now with gas prices climbing they want to get out of them.

The sale of new SUVs and pickup trucks has dropped precipitously in recent months amid soaring gas prices and a weakening economy: SUV sales for the month of April alone fell 32.3 percent from a year earlier and small car sales rose 18.6 percent. This fundamental shift comes against a backdrop of relentless gas increases, and growing concerns over the environment and US oil consumption, according to auto analysts and car dealers.

“The SUV craze was a bubble and now it is bursting,” said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on the automotive industry. “It’s an irrational vehicle. It’ll never come back.”

…

At the same time, consumers like Chrystall are flooding the market with used SUVs, trying to trade in hulking Hummers for compact Corollas, and getting thousands of dollars less than they would have just a few months ago. In April, the average used SUV took more than 66 days to sell, at a 20 percent discount from vehicle valuation books, such as Kelley Blue Book, compared to 48 days and a 7.8 percent discount a year earlier, reported CNW Marketing Research, an automotive marketing research company.

Get me a turbo diesel hybrid SUV that get’s 30MPG and I’d be interested in it. As a family hauler w/ toys trailered out back. Otherwise, my next new vehicle will probably be a turbo diesel sedan, and better get north of 40MPG.

Tags: bubble, bursting, SUV

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Published first at Registan.net, this is the culmination of some research I’ve been doing into the nature and history of Pashtun tribal militancy. It draws from a mixture of out-of-print ethnocgraphic and geographic surveys, as well as contemporary news accounts, and tries to make the case that much of the turbulence there is really not unique in an historical sense. As always, comments and discussion is welcome.

—–

There is a great deal of western unease about the potential cease-fire between some Taliban and tribal militant groups in the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan and the new civilian government. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-i Taliban and primary suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and sworn enemy of this month’s U.S. friend-of-convenience Maulvi Nazir, has registered interest in a cease-fire in Waziristan.

This is a major step, and indicative of the approach valued by the new civilian government: reconciliation, not confrontation. The usual suspects, namely the U.S., are all a-jitter about the prospect of a peace deal with the militants there. But there really is no reason to feel such deep concern. These sorts of cease fire agreements have a long history in the FATA area, and there really is nothing fundamentally new about the situation. In other words, such deep concern is overblown, and stems more from historical naiveté than anything else.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, British, History, military, Pakistan, Pashtunistan, Taliban

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Hmmm, oil states controlling production to just barely meet 35.6% of supply so they can keep prices high. That’s bad.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Clinton_OPEC_can_no_longer_be_a_cartel.html

“We’re going to go right at OPEC,” she said. “They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at,” she told a crowd at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.

“That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly,” she said, saying she’d use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.

But, wait till you see her plan for health care.

Tags: Clinton, Election 2008, Hillary, Hillary Clinton, OPEC, pandering

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This is the latest post in a running commentary on a new meme to emerge from the PR folks in Afghanistan: the security benefits of building roads. The argument, advanced by a few American reporters and one David Kilcullen, is that building paved roads reduces the IED threat and contributes to the security necessary for economic development. I find this highly inplausible, and the lack of evidence—across multiple reports from multiple reporters—deepens this suspicion. If I can arrange it with a magazine, I’m going to try to compile all of these into a single essay addressing the issue of journalist knowledge and gullibility, ethics, and what security really means.

Naturally, this was posted first at Registan.net, which is where you should be going for updates on the Forgotten War in Afghanistan, as well as the latest machinations in the still-simmering Former Soviet Union.

Remember David Ignatius’ pathetic excuse for reporting on Afghanistan? After a whole week in a few provinces in RC-East, he was making pronouncements about how the country was faring. Barnett Rubin properly called him out on this crap, but it’s worth looking at his ludicrous column and seeing if it might tell us anything.

Aside from the many facile references to Rudyard Kipling and British colonial administrators, and a curious inability to look at a map (Naray, in Paktya, is about 100 miles southwest of Asadabad, in Kunar… over Pakistani territory), there is a quite fascinating section.

Alison Blosser, a young State Department officer, is using a similar approach to help guide the Provincial Reconstruction Team for Kunar province, based south of here in Asadabad. An Ohio State graduate, she speaks fluent Pashto, which she learned before taking up her previous assignment at the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan. Dressed in a head scarf and body armor, she might be a modern version of Gertrude Bell, the celebrated British adventurer and colonial administrator of the 1920s.

Blosser and her colleagues have employed what they call a “roads strategy” to bring stability to Kunar. The biggest project so far was building a paved two-lane road from Jalalabad in the lush flatlands up the Kunar River valley to Asadabad. The road is a magnet for economic development in what had been an insurgent stronghold, and the PRT is planning new roads into what Blosser calls the “capillary valleys” where the insurgents have fled.

At least we now know who’s been pushing the Roads thing.

The tribal elders see the prosperity the new roads have brought and want the same for their villages. “We say, ‘Fine, but you have to guarantee security,’ ” Blosser says. That’s the essence of the counterinsurgency strategy U.S. forces are using in Afghanistan. As the military clears new areas, the PRTs follow quickly behind with roads, bridges and schools.

And by this, he directly contradicts what David Kilcullen was able to say with nary a critical peep from the professional counterinsurgency crowd. Whom to believe? I have no idea. Kilcullen says security follows roads. Ignatius says roads follow security, and then reinforce it. Ignatius’ version of causation makes more intuitive sense. But Afghanistan has a habit of defying intuition.

In either case, since Kilcullen is the supposedly serious thinker here, and Ignatius obviously is not, that places the burden of proof on Kilcullen (or anyone else who agrees with his version of causation) to build the case that roads equal security. Right now, there is precious little data and a great deal of pleasing talk in anecdotal generalities. Until there is an actual argument—involving evidence, which is noticeably lacking in Kilcullen’s writing on this subject—then no one can really say for sure.

And is Carlotta Gall the only reporter employed by an American paper to work off something other than official government press handlers?

This topic continues:
Of PR Campaigns and the Utility of Area Knowledge
War Is Peace, and Other Orwells at the Journal
A Practical Look at the Value of Roads
Learning from PRTs
The Strange Benefits of Paving Afghanistan

Tags: Afghanistan, COIN, gullible, Media, roads

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Robby and I got back to our roots a few weeks ago, garage band roots that is. We went to see the Fleshtones. Robby shared his thoughts over at Last Fm. I figure they belong here as well. First, my verdict. Maybe the most fun band ever live. Yeah, click the links, go listen to the music.

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Since forming thirty-plus years ago at the dawn of the punk era in New York, The Fleshtones are not only still together, but they still bring the Super Rock party to whatever bar they play in. It’s the same classic lineup they’ve always had, except for their “new” bass player Kenny (who has only been with the band since 1992).

Last night at the Spanish Moon, an embarrassingly small crowd of about 40 (which coincidentally seems to have been the median age of the audience as well–I saw lots of old friends from my Here Comes a Regular years) showed up for the masters of garage rock; many bands that count on lots of audience interaction might have felt deflated by the sparse crowd and come out flat. Not The Fleshtones. They don’t depend on a crowd to show up stoked, they instead always create the audience they want, enticing people to the front of the stage, frequently foraying out onto the floor of the club, constantly dancing, playing the whole time. It’s infectious. I don’t like to dance much, but The ‘Shtones have a way of loosening the locks on my joints.

To describe the specifics of their stage show (jumping up on the bar, the semi-choreographed stage moves, guitarist Keith Streng’s high kicks) makes it all seem cheesy and cliched to someone who hasn’t seen them live. Believe me, I’ve seen bands that do all that exact stuff, and they come off cheesy and cliched, like they’re aping the rock star moves they’ve seen. (For example, The Cynics. Nice records, but posers live.)

It’s hard to say exactly how The Fleshtones pull it off, except to conjecture that it’s because they’re not ACTING. They are rock stars in every way that matters, and professional entertainers to the core. It’s not so much that they do things differently from other down-and-dirty bar bands, they do everything that’s already been done better. The only other band of this genre that I’ve ever seen put on a show in their league was The Lyres.

The music, in itself, is competent guitar-and-farfisa garage rock, not significantly different from hundreds of other bands of this type. Listen to their records, yes; but they’re really all about the live show, the bright kinetic energy of which is all the more amazing considering they’re really kind of old. I mean, I first saw The Fleshtones in Baltimore about 1990; they had already been together about a decade and a half at that point. That show was 18 years ago, which is the same amount of time that passed from The Beatles‘ first singles until John Lennon’s shooting. And here we have the ‘Shtones, still bringing it to the stage with the same energy and enthusiasm they had back when I was a kid.

When they last played Baton Rouge, it was 1983. Singer Peter Zaremba promised to be back in another 25 years. “Tell your children,” he urged us. “Tell your children about The Fleshtones.” I would add to that, if you have children, don’t let them see The Fleshtones before you do: trust me, you’ll be embarrassed. And younger folks, don’t skip seeing them because you think they’re old. You’re right; they’re old. But you are guaranteed to have a good time at a Fleshtones show. You’ll leave sweaty, and tired, and grinning.

http://www.last.fm/event/547950

Tags: Fleshtones, Music

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I agree with one of the commenters over on HotAir…

How DARE they call us Indianans. We are called Hoosiers for some gawd damn reason, so call us that when you’re insulting us.

I dare him to come here and say that. It would be a tossup if he were beaten or laughed at. Mostly we’d probably laugh at him, and maybe tar-n-feather him. That’s what he deserves.

UPDATE:

Alright, seems to have been either a hoax, or a dirty campaign trick.

But I will stand by my tar-n-feathering for anyone who got Bill Clinton elected… or nearly any career politician.

One has to ask though, who ultimately benefits from an anti-Clinton attack based on doctored footage?

Maybe this is actually a reverse attack. Now that the ad has been shown to be faked (and quickly,) Hillary will gain some sympathy, because obviously Obama and his crew are using dirty tricks to attack Hillary. So, maybe Clinton operatives put out such an attack, simply because it could be easily defused.

Or, most likely, an army of one decided that this was a good ploy. Occams razor and all…

Tags: Clinton, Election 2008, Hillary, Hillary Clinton, Mickey Kantor

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Some political chaos going on in the Nevada Republican Convention. Ron Paul supporters amassed at the convention in hopes of taking it over and electing their own people as delegates.

Outmaneuvered by raucous Ron Paul supporters, Nevada Republican Party leaders abruptly shut down their state convention and now must resume the event to complete a list of 31 delegates to the GOP national convention.

Outnumbered supporters of expected Republican presidential nominee John McCain faced off Saturday against well-organized Paul supporters. A large share of the more than 1,300 state convention delegates enabled Paul supporters to get a rule change positioning them for more national convention delegate slots than expected.

This appears to be part of a wider strategy plotted by Paul supporters a few weeks ago.

HOW TO GET RON PAUL NOMINATED - ANYWAY
This is not the time to back off and just haggle about resolutions and platforms at state and national conventions. It’s time to FIGHT!

The strategy therefore must be to get as many Ron Paul delegates selected to represent their state at the National Convention.

That means our delegates need to stay low key.

Resolutions are a dead giveaway, especially when they are fought over things like opposition to the war, or abolishing the Federal Reserve and the IRS, all signature issues of Ron Paul.

So, the best plan is to shut up, move along, do what you ave to do to get selected, sign the pledge to “support” McCain (it doesn’t say you promise not to abstain!) and just get in short of outright lying, of course.

This seems to be a clear case of using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. They already voted, Paul supporters are trying to change the result after the fact. They’re coming off as unhinged loons. It’s a disservice to Dr. Paul.

Reportedly video here.

Tags: Nevada, republican convention, Republican primary, Ron Paul

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Only in America’s Army:

KHOST, Afghanistan — Pfc. Monica Brown cracked open the door of her Humvee outside a remote village in eastern Afghanistan to the pop of bullets shot by Taliban fighters. But instead of taking cover, the 18-year-old medic grabbed her bag and ran through gunfire toward fellow soldiers in a crippled and burning vehicle.

Vice President Cheney pinned Brown, of Lake Jackson, Tex., with a Silver Star in March for repeatedly risking her life on April 25, 2007, to shield and treat her wounded comrades, displaying bravery and grit. She is the second woman since World War II to receive the nation’s third-highest combat medal.

Within a few days of her heroic acts, however, the Army pulled Brown out of the remote camp in Paktika province where she was serving with a cavalry unit — because, her platoon commander said, Army restrictions on women in combat barred her from such missions.

It’s difficult to find a better summary of some of the fundamental contradictions of the Army today. Women can serve, and valorously, so long as they’re not lauded for it—then, they must be taken away from their units. But it’s the same thing for gays, too—serve your country, just don’t ever let anyone know what you really are. Sad.

I can remember being about 10 or 11 and hearing arguments about how we can’t use the military for “social engineering.” This was during the days when Bill Clinton was pushing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, when Tail Hook was the End of the Navy, and so on. I would think that same logic should apply now: the rest of society has moved on: like it or not, women are serving in combat duties, and they are doing so valiantly. The restrictions on their service, and in this case punishment for being too brave, make less and less sense every day.

Tags: DADT, military, women, WTFBBQ

7 Comments »

Let us remember what May Day has really represented RJ Rummell gives us the toll of The Red Plague:

As you can see, the total mid-estimate is about 110,286,000, an incredible total. It is around 65 percent of all democide over the same period, and is about three times greater than all the international and domestic war deaths, including the two world wars, Vietnam, Korea, and the Iran-Iraq War, to mention the bloodiest. This is the Red Plague driven by ideological fervor. The Black Plague, carried by fleas from rats and not by ideology, killed a quarter of the number the communists murdered.

There is much to dwell on in the table, if your stomach is up to it, and I will only note the most incredible estimates. The Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all time, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these (I know you’ve read the toll as 20,000,000, but it was only for the 1930s and has been mistaken applied to Stalin’s full and bloody reign 1928-1953). Most of the Soviet deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto.

Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the Cultural Revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer (I excluded the great famine of 1959 to about 1961 as nondemocidal – it alone cost about 27,000,000 lives). Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito’s Yugoslavia.

Obviously, the population that is available to kill will make a big difference in the total democide, and thus the annual percentage rate of democide is revealing. By far, the most deadly of all communist countries and, indeed, in this century by far, has been Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot and his henchmen likely killed some 2,000,000 Cambodians from April 1975 through December 1978 out of a population of around 7,000,000. This is an annual rate of over 8 percent of the population murdered, or odds of an average Cambodian surviving Pol Pot’s rule of slightly over 2 to 1.

Read the Whole Thing.

See also: Ilya Somin

Tags: communism, Democide, May Day

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John McCain gets my vote.

What exactly is the problem with the American health-care system?

The problem is not that Americans don’t have fine doctors, medical technology, and treatments. American medicine is the envy of the world. The problem is not that most Americans lack adequate health insurance. The vast majority of Americans have private insurance, and our government spends many billions each year to provide even more.

The biggest problem with the American health-care system is one of cost and access, and as a result tens of millions of individuals have no insurance. For example, we currently spend for about 2.4 trillion dollars a year on health care. A decade from now that number, under current projections, will double to over four trillion dollars.

The Obama and Clinton response to these problems is to promise universal coverage, whatever its cost, and the massive tax increases, mandates, and government regulation that it imposes. But in the end this will accomplish one thing only. We will replace the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of the current system with the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of a government monopoly. We’ll have all the problems, and more, of private health care — rigid rules, long waits, and lack of choices, and risk degrading its great strengths and advantages including the innovation and life-saving technology that make American medicine the most advanced in the world.

I have a different approach. I believe the key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves. To that end, my reforms are built on the pursuit of three goals: paying only for quality medical care, having insurance choices that are diverse and responsive to individual needs, and restoring our sense of personal responsibility.

Tags: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Health Care, John McCain

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Thanks to Don Boudreaux, I found this “Inconvenient Truth” about the struggles of the middle class. As readers here know, I have long been a bear on housing, but as always those who want their hands on our wallet can take any crisis or problem as a license to take from us. Todd Zywicki writes to the Washington Post:

In his April 27 op-ed, “Don’t Blame All Borrowers,” Robert H. Frank argued that the quest for better schools for their children has led many parents to overspend on housing. He cited “The Two-Income Trap,” a book by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, to make this argument.

But Ms. Warren and Ms. Tyagi’s own data do not support Mr. Frank’s claim. In fact, from the 1973 to 2000, the percentage of household income dedicated to mortgage payments actually declined. So where did all the money go? To taxes — which, all told, rose a whopping 140 percent in constant dollars.

In some part, this is a result of “the two income-tax trap”: When a spouse enters the workforce, he or she is immediately taxed at a higher marginal rate than one worker would be alone. But it is also because of increases in myriad state and local taxes, notably property taxes, which have risen along with real estate prices.

If Mr. Frank is concerned about the financial plight of the middle class, the answer seems clear: He should be arguing for a reduction in the tax burden, not about some chimerical “bidding war” for homes near good schools.

TODD J. ZYWICKI

Tags: Education, housing, taxes

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Yet another reason to read Steve Newton, you discover blogs with stuff like this on it:

But the secret reason why all white people love socialized medicine is that they all love the idea of receiving health care without having a full-time job. This would allow them to work as a freelance designer/consultant/copywriter/photographer/blogger, open their own bookstore, stay at home with their kids, or be a part of an Internet start-up without having to worry about a benefits package. Though many of them would never follow this path, they appreciate having the option.

If you need to impress a white person, merely mention how you got hurt on a recent trip Canada/England/Sweden and though you were a foreigner you received excellent and free health care. They will be very impressed and likely tell you about how powerful drug and health care lobbies are destroying everything.

Though their passion for national health care runs deep, it is important to remember that white people are most in favor of it when they are healthy. They love the idea of everyone have equal access to the resources that will keep them alive, that is until they have to wait in line for an MRI.

This is very similar to the way that white people express their support for public schools when they don’t have children.

Actually, the first paragraph for the first time made me wish we did have free health care!

Tags: Health Care, Humor, socialized medicine, white people

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Reading Instapundit I came across this story from BBC about a man who’s used a special powder of pig bladder cells to regrow the tip of his finger that he’d chopped off. I share the professor’s futurist view and optimism, but I’m not so sure that it’s warranted in this case.

You see, it’s not that unusal for finger tips to grow back, (Warning, graphic pictures at the jump) and from the pictures of the injury he doesn’t look to have lost that much. This seems to be the case of some hyping by the clueless media (and us bloggers too, mea culpa!).

However, this is not to say that this regenerative dust might not work, but we just don’t have a control group to compare this to. Would it have grown back slower? More deformed? More scarred? Not at all? We don’t know, but more science and testing will show us.

Tags: BBC, Lee Spievak, regenerative science, regrow finger

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Cross-posted from Registan.net, your one-stop shop for news and analysis of going on in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Thirteen months ago, I noted the problems caused by the U.S. State Department having dramatically different divisions than the military COCOMs.

The DoD considers Pakistan part of the Central Command, or CENTCOM (which includes the Middle East and Central Asia), but places India in the Pacific Command, PACOM. Meanwhile, the State Department places all of Central Asia in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, while neighboring areas like the Middle East are a part of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. How Africa policy is divided up is even more chaotic.

The end result is a confusing, bureaucratic mess, in which multiple and otherwise fairly independent military commands have to coordinate with multiple State Department bureaus to execute the President’s foreign policy goals, whatever they may be. (There is a side issue to this, which is that nearly 93% of the U.S.’s foreign policy budget is military and only 7% is diplomatic and aid, but that’s a larger post not entirely appropriate to this space.)

In that post I was lamenting the problem of considering Pakistan outside of its relationship with India, since Pakistan filters almost all of its foreign policy through the formulation of India as its primary threat.

It seems I’m not alone: Mountain Runner, an excellent blog about public diplomacy, linked to this paper on the ways the DOS needs to change to better adapt to the modern operating environment.

In order to increase American diplomatic power and improve interagency coordination, it is critical to create a diplomatic post on par with the military’s theater combatant commander, providing leadership and oversight, and coordination of regional diplomatic efforts with emphasis on crisis response, stability operations, and “soft power” projection. Placing some diplomatic expertise in the combatant commands, as is being done with USAFRICOM, appears to further the notion that the regional military commander is the “most influential USG representative” and in a “position of preeminence.” DOS must make bold moves to reorganize and revitalize its ability to project diplomatic power and lead the U.S. government’s interagency efforts overseas.

And so on. It’s a damned fine idea. Meanwhile, the State Department is gently reminding us that al Qaeda remains a threat to world security. Pity they can’t field any useful teams of agents to the region most likely to harbor future al Qaeda operatives.

Tags: Domestic Politics, government, policy, State, US

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The sin of omission that Hillary is committing with the re-telling of the Indiana plant moving to China (while not mentioning that it was sold to China during her husbands tenure,) is starting to gather some light. The following story was linked by the DrudgeReport today.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/story/35337.html

It’s a story Hillary Clinton loves to tell, about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

And it’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but didn’t.

If she were president, she says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support form working-class Democrats worried about jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.

What Clinton never tells in the oft-repeated tale is the role prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company, or that the sale was approved by the administration of her husband.

I’ve been following this since the 24th when I finally got around doing some investigation of the claims she made in her ad. And even noted that Senator Bayh of Indiana is complicit in her sin of omission.

And what is their excuse for not being concerned with the purchase in 1995…

Because “there were assurances made that production would stay in the United States,”

In other words, they promised not to move product