Best of the Web Today - February 9, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
America's Winning Streak
Not so very long ago, American opponents of the Bush administration were rejoicing in the election victories of anti-American or anti-Bush candidates in such countries as Germany, South Korea and Spain. They've been awfully quiet of late, and little wonder: In recent months President Bush has been doing very well in elections around the world.
In October, Australians resoundingly re-elected the pro-American government of John Howard, and Afghans voted for the first time. In November, of course, President Bush won a second term, a prelude to the triumph of last month's Iraqi elections.
There's more: Yesterday "Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's center-right coalition government retained power in the general election," Agence France-Presse reports from Copenhagen. Denmark has troops in Iraq, "something a clear majority of Danes are opposed to" according to AFP, but this wasn't the main issue in the election, which centered on immigration and taxes.
The AFP report has a wonderfully whiny quote from Mogens Lykketoft, head of the losing Social Democrats: "It's a very unreasonable and unfair result and it pains me that we have to deal with the center-right government, supported by the DPP [Danish People's Party], for another four years." No doubt John Kerry* feels his pain.
Columnist Greg Sheridan of the Australian notes another recent victory:
So here's the scenario. A conservative prime minister, much reviled by the liberal press and disliked personally by all the left-wing intelligentsia, sends hundreds of his country's troops to Iraq in support of the US operation there and in the next general election wins a victory far beyond expectations.
John Howard, right?
No, the scenario was played out by Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand last weekend. . . .
Thaksin did not send troops to fight the Iraq war, but despite its being generally unpopular he did send two consecutive troop deployments of 450 soldiers for the peacekeeping phase. And despite some Thai fatalities he did not bring his troops home until the scheduled end of the second six-month deployment.
An exception of sorts is Ukraine, whose newly elected President Viktor Yushchenko says he will withdraw the country's troops from Iraq. Yet the Bush administration supported Yushchenko's challenge when the party in power tried to steal the election. Promoting democracy is in America's interests even if the democratic process sometimes yields results we don't like.
The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge.
Fleeing for Good
Sen. Mark Dayton, the Minnesota Democrat who fled Washington in October because he feared a terrorist attack but returned after President Bush's re-election, is leaving the capital for good. St. Paul's KSTP-TV reports Dayton will retire from the Senate after just one term:
Dayton had been seen as vulnerable in a run for a second term. Late last month, a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found Dayton's approval rating had fallen to 43 percent.
Dayton's departure from the race presents a major opportunity for Republicans in a state that has become increasingly more friendly to GOP politicians. Among those considering bids were Congressmen Gil Gutknecht and Mark Kennedy, as well as former Senator Rod Grams, who lost to Dayton in 2000.
Minnesota is a longtime Democratic bastion in presidential races, last backing a Republican in 1972. But in 2002 the GOP won races for both senator and governor, and John Kerry's margin last year was only 3.5%. You can bet the GOP will be eyeing this seat.
Getting Prickly
The Chicago Tribune declined to publish Monday's Prickly City comic strip, which made a joke at Ted Kennedy's expense, Editor & Publisher reports. In the strip, one character says, "Did you hear what Ted Kennedy said during the Condoleezza Rice confirmation? 'They lied and people died.' " The reply: "Wow! Ted Kennedy said that? Was he driving?"
The Trib says it pulled the strip not out of sympathy to Massachusetts' senior senator but because Kennedy didn't actually utter the quote. Cartoonist Scott Stantis says his syndicate fouled up:
Stantis said he knew "They lied and people died" wasn't a direct quote from Kennedy. The cartoonist condensed and paraphrased what Kennedy had said into those five words, and didn't put them in quote marks before sending the strip to Universal. The syndicate, according to Stantis, inserted the quote marks.
"Of course, they have an absolute right to edit their newspaper," Stantis said of the Tribune.
Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
The Good Old Days Are Here Again
If you're nostalgic for the 1990s, check out the article in today's New York Times about the indictment of a fund-raiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton:
In August 2000, Bill and Hillary Clinton attended a Hollywood fund-raiser billed as a tribute to a president ready to leave the White House after eight years and a first lady seeking to establish herself as a force of her own in American politics.
The guest list reflected the glitter of the occasion: Cher, Diana Ross, Brad Pitt and Patti LaBelle, to name just a few. But a person who later emerged as perhaps the most memorable--to the Clintons and their associates, anyway--was a well-connected figure with a checkered past who helped organize the event. He is Peter Paul, a man who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and trying to defraud Fidel Castro's government out of millions of dollars in 1979, among other things.
Mr. Paul said he spent nearly $2 million of his own on the fund-raiser as a way to curry favor with Mr. Clinton, and photographs show him chatting with Mr. Clinton at a dinner table, having a discussion with Mrs. Clinton and striking poses for the camera with both of them.
Associates of the Clintons say the couple did not know of Mr. Paul's troubled past at the time, and in the months after the event, Mr. Paul turned on the Clintons, later urging investigators to look into the fund-raiser.
Clinton lawyer David Kendall makes an appearance in the article, as does gadfly legal group Judicial Watch. Ah, it takes us back. Still, anyone who tries to defraud Castro can't be all bad.
Also amusing is the "Times News Tracker" box on the right side of the Web page, which offers the following topics: "Clinton, Bill," "Clinton, Hillary Rodham" and "Frauds and Swindling."
Slavery: Blame America First
In a review of a PBS documentary called "Slavery and the Making of America," Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales weighs in with this observation:
In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush said Americans should congratulate themselves on turning "the abolition of slavery" from a dream into reality. Now there's a man who sees the glass half full, no matter what. He'd like to view slavery, the foulest blight on the history of this great nation, as something positive, a real victory for Our Way of Life.
Of course, if Shales were capable of nuance, he would see that it is true both that slavery was the foulest blight in American history and that its abolition was a real victory for Our Way of Life. Slavery, after all, was not just an American phenomenon, as Thomas Sowell points out:
To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery--which encompassed the entire world and every race in it--is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong. In the late 18th century, that question arose in Western civilization, but nowhere else.
It seems so obvious today that, as Lincoln said, if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. But no country anywhere believed that three centuries ago.
Treating slavery as a peculiarly American evil reflects a weird sort of self-loathing ethnocentrism, an attitude that one's own country can do no right.
Eine Kugel, Ein Dummkopf, Ein Kuttner
Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect and a columnist for the Boston Globe, endorses Howard Dean for chairman of the Democratic National committee and compares the disorganized Democrats unfavorably with the GOP:
The contrast with the unified Republican machinery is striking, where, as some obscure German didn't say, there is ein Bush, ein Rove, and ein party.
Get it? President Bush is just like Hitler! Or, uh, maybe not just like Hitler. After all, the Nazi expression was "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer." So we guess Bush is just like the German people, Karl Rove is just like the Nazi regime, and the Republican Party is just like Hitler.
Anyway, let's not overanalyze here. The point is that in some way, President Bush and the GOP resemble Hitler and the Nazis. The amazing thing is that even though Bush has been in office four years and Rove spells his first name with a K, Bob Kuttner is the first person ever to think of making this comparison.
Yet not everyone on the Angry Left agrees with the Nazi analogy. Baltimore's Mayor Martin O'Malley thinks Bush is more like another Osama bin Laden, the Washington Post reports:
O'Malley yesterday compared President Bush's proposed budget cuts to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying that Bush, like the al Qaeda hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has launched an assault on America's cities. . . .
"Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most," O'Malley said. "Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the United States. And with a budget ax, he is attacking America's cities. He is attacking our metropolitan core."
This isn't a new theme from O'Malley; as we noted, back in June he said: "I remember after the attacks of September 11, as mayor of the city, I was very, very worried about al-Qaida and still am. But I'm even more worried about the actions and inactions of the Bush administration."
Kidnap Mastermind Confesses
The SITE Institute reports that "an Iraqi by the nickname of 'al-Iraqi4' " claims to have masterminded the "kidnapping" of "John Adam," an action figure actually called Special Ops Cody. Here's the message, which SITE says was posted on "Jihadist message boards":
In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Most Compassionate,
Soldier John Adam is [only] a toy.
I am a 20-year old Iraqi young man. I am unarmed, independent and do not belong to any party or group. I apologize to all the parties and everyone, for I meant nothing by that [no harm].
The picture was a scheme that I made up with a toy that I bought with $5.
Today I am announcing that this news was made up, and that the picture was of a toy that I worked on with the help of some children.
I cannot provide any information about me because, as I mentioned earlier, I am unarmed, and any information about me might jeopardize my life and the lives of my family [members].
My apologies to everyone.
The Number 10 Is Unconstitutional!
It turns out there's someone nuttier than the Ninth Circuit. Ryan Donlon, "who was admitted to practice before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June," is suing the circuit, alleging that "the certificate admitting him contains the court's seal which unlawfully contains what he believes is a tablet object representing the Ten Commandments," reports the Associated Press.
According to the AP, "Cathy Catterson, the court's clerk, said the seal highlights a woman, known as 'the Majesty of the Law' who is reading a large book. At her feet is a tablet with 10 unreadable lines on it--what Donlon believes is the Ten Commandments." Catterson acknowledges that the tablet has "the same shape" as the Ten Commandments, but "you can't read the text of it."
Just to keep us safe from religious influence, perhaps the court ought to ban from federal property any list of 10 items, including the Bill of Rights, Roger Ebert's list of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time, and David Letterman's Top Ten Ways to Make Religious History More Entertaining (No. 2: "Epic new film: 'The Ten Commandments Broken By Darryl Strawberry'). This would apply to state and local property too, though some might argue that would violate the Nth Amendment.
Then They Spat, Now We Cheer
Yesterday's item on the divergent reactions to Vietnam and Iraq veterans brought many responses from readers eager to tell their stories, and we thought we'd publish a sampling. This one is from David Kruger:
I travel for business. In the past two weeks I have witnessed American Airlines giving empty first-class seats to soldiers and an entire terminal (in Denver) giving a plane full of disembarking soldiers a standing ovation on a busy Friday night. I pity those both here and abroad who don't understand that this public, spontaneous, unrehearsed and heartfelt honoring of our men and women in uniform is a privilege enjoyed only by the proponents of a just cause.
Chris Mallow tells a similar story:
This past summer, I was traveling on business to Atlanta. As I was walking through the terminal in preparation for my departing flight, I passed a large group of soldiers, at least 100, all in battle dress, holding their gear, waiting patiently in line. Seeing that they were checking in for a domestic flight, I assumed they were on their way home, so I asked where they were headed. All responded with the same answer: "Afghanistan."
I don't know any active soldiers personally. All of the military people I know have long since retired. However, all I could do was marvel at these men. While the group was somewhat subdued, all were very pleasant, none somber or sad. Most were talking pleasantly with each other as they killed time in the line. They were a true slice of America--many different colors of hair and skin, many different accents (I heard at least four as I passed by), all standing together. They knew where they were going and why, and they did it willingly, for all of us.
All I could do was shake as many hands as possible, smile, and thank them for going. I felt prouder to be an American at that moment than at any other moment in my life.
Steven Liston, a physician, recounts his Vietnam-era experience:
I, too, was spit upon and called "baby killer" in September 1971, in the San Diego airport, while wearing my Navy uniform. That was ironic, in that I was on pediatrics as a medical intern at the San Diego Naval Hospital at that time, hopefully helping save babies' lives.
The airport Super Bowl ad brought me to tears, not of pain remembering my experience, but from pride in today's American patriots.
Kenneth Millspaugh had a bad experience with beer nearly four decades ago:
Anheuser-Busch's Super Bowl ad spoke loud and clear to me. As a 19-year-old Army private training at Fort Belvoir, Va., in 1966, I visited the nation's capital. Walking down the sidewalk, I approached three of the city's young citizens. As I passed, I felt beer running down my back. The "youth" challenged me, "Hey, soldier boy." Not a welcome sign.
With a beer-soaked back, I walked away, and thankfully they did not follow. They had me surrounded, the poor bastards. Now, 39 years later, I get a vicarious welcome from Anheuser-Busch. God bless America, and thank God I lived to see it.
And Tom Reynolds sums up the differences between then and now:
My son is a Marine reservist who was called up to serve in Kuwait and Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and liberate his millions of victims. Upon his return, we took a family vacation in December 2003, which found us having dinner one night at the Hollywood and Vine restaurant in Disney-MGM Studios. Being myself a veteran and proud father, I asked the staff if they had something special I might arrange to commemorate his return.
To my surprise, they made a very extravagant presentation and involved the rest of the restaurant's guests. They gave my son a standing ovation.
Later, as he chided me for causing him embarrassment, I told him I didn't do it for just him. I did it for the other guests too. Despite what some foolish pacifists or the head-in-the-sand media think, many people need and want to acknowledge our servicemen. Soldiers are applauded entering JFK or disembarking a plane in Portland by a citizenry both thanking the individual and making a public statement of support for the values for which this country stands.
To me, the Anheuser-Busch ad is successful because it reflects a current attitude and practice the media won't report. The war in Iraq isn't Vietnam; it's not a quagmire, and it's not something the media are going to spin as dishonorable or as a failure.
What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Expert: Sexual Predators a Menace"--headline, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, Feb. 9
It's Not the Crime, It's the Coverup
"[Virginia's] House of Delegates passed a bill Tuesday authorizing a $50 fine for anyone who displays his or her underpants in a 'lewd or indecent manner.' "--Associated Press, Feb. 9
"A Collection of Briefs From the State Capitol"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 8
Where Are the Rest Deployed?
"Most of the Air Force's 58 Predators are deployed around the world, but officials could not discuss the locations."--CNN.com, Feb. 9
No One's Done That in Almost 2,000 Years
"Williams Holds Out Hope for Reversal of Execution"--headline, Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, Feb. 9
Look Out Below!
"American Tosses Pillows Off Most Domestic Flights"--headline, USA Today, Feb. 9
Don't Know What a Slide Rule Is For
The New York Times science section has a series of letters about the Larry Summers kerfuffle, ending with this one, from Sandra Roche of New York:
Many years ago, after taking the G.R.E. [Graduate Record Examination], I discovered that there were two sets of norms for reporting my math scores--as a woman, and as a "person."
As a woman, my scores were in the high 90th percentile; as a "person" in the mid-80th percentile.
What's the message? That as far as math was concerned, I might be a smart woman, but just an average person. I did not pursue a career in math.
Assuming the scores are normally distributed, the average would fall near the 50th percentile. Roche's score actually was well above average; the difference between the two percentile rankings means only that a large majority of those who scored better than she did were men.
If Sandra Roche had pursued a career in math, she might have known that. |
