President Bush makes decisions based on principles

I transcribed this from an interview between President Bush and Foxnews' Brit Hume (actually taken from excerpts that Hugh Hewitt played of the interview).

Bush: I also remind them Brit that, uh, that Laura and I are sustained by the prayers of millions of people. Now that’s hard for some to, you know I guess, cue on.

Hume: You sense it?

Bush: Absolutely, and…

Hume: I know they tell you that when you see them out on the... [garbled]

Bush: I feel it!

Hume: You feel it?

Bush: Yeah.

Hume: How, how much in the terms of your daily…

Bush: I feel as if the load is not heavy, I guess is the best way to describe it. Somebody said to me, “prove it.” I said, “you can’t prove it.” All I can tell you is I feel it. And, um, it’s a remarkable country when millions pray for me and Laura. Therefore, I am able to say to people that this is a joyful experience, not a painful experience. And, yeah it’s tough. But that’s O.K. It’s tough times, and there’s a lot of big issues.

The interview continued with the following.

Hume: What role does your faith play in your good spirits, in the face of all these difficulties.

Bush: I, I, um, I think it, I think that, uh, I think that I know that my relationship with an almighty provides comfort. And strength during difficult times. Just like it provides comfort and strength at difficult times for others, as well. And um, so prayer matters to me, and the prayers of others matter a lot in my life, and um, so to those who worry about me I say, “don’t worry about me.” You know, we’re doing fine.

Hume: One last…

Bush: Yes it’s tough, and it’s tough because there are a group of murderers out there that are, you know. You know, think about this. Think about a world in which a young democracy is trying to get started and people kill innocent life to prevent it from happening. To me that says, we better deal with these folks now before they become even more emboldened, in which to strike out against the greatest defender of freedom on the face of the earth and that’s the United States, which they would like to try to do. And our job is to stop them from doing it, and at the same time lay the foundation for peace. I’m also strengthened by history, by my view of history. I realize there’s a lot of folks who have written off presidencies early in the presidency or before the presidency is over. And when in fact the long reach of history takes over, and people take a look back, they realize that the decisions made ended up making sense. And um, you know, I am, I want, I want people to understand this, when it’s all said and done, I will have made decisions on principles and I’m not changing my principles. And therefore, when I get back to Texas, after the presidency in two years, I’ll be able to look in the mirror and be proud of what I see.

Hume: Mr. President, thank you very much.

I appreciated his comments about how he can feel the strength from people praying for him. This made me feel as though I need to include the President and our government leaders in my prayers more often.

I especially like his statement that he makes decisions based on his principles. What a breath of fresh air in Washington. Someone actually trying to do what they feel is right, and not what they think will help their poll numbers or get them more power. He could be just saying what he thinks people want to hear, but I felt like he was speaking sincerly.

Comments on Casino Royale

The old married man's club (OMMC) convened a meeting last night to see the new James Bond film, Casino Royale. Very exciting movie. Lots of good action. The new bond is a definite improvement over recent actors. He isn't afraid to get banged up a bit or get his tux dirty. Rob came out calling it the BEST OMMC movie yet. It had a lot of what we go for (explosions, fighting, action, nice cars) but two things were conspicuously absent. While there were a couple of nice cars, Bond barely drove them. You had a total of about 10 seconds worth of Bond-esque driving before he totaled his MI6 provided car. The second thing that was missing was very attractive Bond-women. The two that he was attached to in the movie were really quite mediocre. I realized it is difficult to find a truly attractive english woman, but I'm sure they could have done better for Vesper. Overall though, I would say it was an excellent evening with the OMMC.
P.S. Not much in the way of tech-geek toys either.

I need to read this Victor Davis Hanson article later

Hugh Hewitt discussed this Victor Davis Hanson article. It sounded like something I should read later.

"Two quite antithetical views of the war on terror — and indeed, the entire American role in the Middle East — are now crystallizing."

VDH discusses these two views.

Manmade global warming: A case of selective data reporting

Its easy to prove that there is global warming and it is the results of human activity if you only report the data that supports your theory. The following is an excerpt from testimony by David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), to a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

"Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and distinguished guests, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor's degree in geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature and heat flow. In recent years, I have turned my studies to the history and philosophy of science. In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.

The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

In 1769, Joseph Priestley warned that scientists overly attached to a favorite hypothesis would not hesitate to "warp the whole course of nature." In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph.

Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed on this and other environmental issues.

Earth's climate system is complex and poorly understood. But we do know that throughout human history, warmer temperatures have been associated with more stable climates and increased human health and prosperity. Colder temperatures have been correlated with climatic instability, famine, and increased human mortality.

The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause--human or natural--is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria."

Good metaphor for the left's ranting about Bush

I thought the following quote from a Hugh Hewitt blog was rather humorous and to the point.

The Kossacks’ unrelenting hatred for all things Bush reminds me of an old joke:

A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and the shrink begins showing him some Rorschach pictures. The first is of a squiggly blob – the guy says it looks like two people making love. The next is a series of geometric shapes – the guy says it looks like two people making love. The last is a series of straight and squiggly lines – the guy says it looks like two people making love.

The psychiatrist says, “I think I’ve diagnosed your problem. You’re obsessed with sex!”

The guy responds, “Me? You’re the guy making all the dirty pictures!”

The term Kossack refers to a blogger at the Daily Kos

Christmas excitement mounts early at the Cheeve household

Much to my chagrin I didn't get the Christmas lights up this weekend while it was 70 degrees outside. I'm sure it will be cold and rainy next weekend when I finally find time to do it. My wife got some indoor decorations up at the end of last week and we will probably put up the fake Christmas tree tonight for our family home evening activity. The five year old, Dec, is really getting excited about Christmas. On Saturday he decided that he had better get some milk and cookies out for Santa. My wife tried to explain that it might be a bit early to do this, but he couldn't be dissuaded so she capitulated and helped him get the goodies together for the jolly old elf. When next I was aware of the scene nothing but crumbs and a few drops of milk remained. I began to wonder if perhaps the computer had ensorcelled me again such that I was held entranced by the ever flowing source of useless information right through December and the Christmas festivities. Dec informed me that he got tired of waiting and decided to let Sul have the cookies while he drank the milk himself. I’m quite sure that Santa was disappointed at not receiving these early treats, but I daresay that he will find another means of maintaining his less-than trim figure until the 25th rolls around.

Now where did I put that bowl of ice cream?

Card's views on Bush largely mirror my own

This essay by Orson Scott Card is a pretty accurate description of my own views on President Bush. I definitely agree with his repudiation of those from the "Smarty-Pants school of political thought" and their many attempts to unjustly demonize the President.

Doonesbury vs. America

By Orson Scott Card November 19, 2006

Does anybody here remember when Doonesbury was funny?

Never mind. It was funny this past Sunday, in a bitter, ironic kind of way.

The comic strip, by Garry Trudeau, shows a professor teaching a class, in which he compares two presidents -- Bush and Clinton. Of Bush he says, "The first president initiates a bloody, costly, unending war on false premises ... and approves covert policies of illegal detentions, kangaroo courts, extraordinary renditions, torture, and warrantless wiretapping of thousands of Americans."

Of Clinton, he says, "The second president lies about hooking up with an intern. Question: Which one should be impeached?"

The only reason Trudeau's little screed is worth answering is because there are a lot of bitter, angry Democrats who feel the same way.

So let's look closely at this point of view.

Bush As LBJ Plus J. Edgar Hoover

First, the description of Bush actually sounds far more like Lyndon Johnson with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spying on Americans, the IRS being used to issue punitive audits on Johnson's political foes, and our participation in the Vietnam War having been based on the dubious grounds of an attack on U.S. military vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Vietnam War did indeed seem endless, since our enemies had permanent safe sanctuary and infinite resupply.

But Trudeau must be given credit for consistency: He hated Lyndon Johnson, too.

In fact, if you look at what Trudeau says about Bush, you begin to realize that Trudeau needs Bush to look like Johnson, the old enemy of the aging anti-war Leftists of the 1960s.

Trudeau's Claims about the War

What about Trudeau's specific charges against Bush?

"Bloody," he calls the campaign in Iraq. But compared to other wars, involving similar numbers of troops and covering similar amounts of territory during similar amounts of time, this war is astonishingly bloodless, both in military and civilian casualties. It is the cleanest war in history. So it is "bloody" only in the sense that all war is bloody.

"Costly," he calls it. Well, yes. War isn't cheap. But again, "cost" should be measured against the alternative expenses -- what would it cost us not to have fought the war, or not to continue fighting it? I've written about that at great length; I won't repeat myself here.

"Unending," he calls the war. Well, until any war has ended, it is "unending," and then when it does end, it isn't unending anymore. Duh. But what he really means is that we can't announce the date of the end of the war. Again, though, in what war was the ending date announceable in advance? The only way to announce the end of a war is either to choose your own date of surrender (though if you choose that option, you lose the option of negotiating or choosing the terms of your own defeat), or to have the power to annihilate your enemies and announce the date on which you will use that power. I wonder which outcome Trudeau is hoping for?

"On false premises," he says we began this war. But that has not been proven -- weapons of mass destruction did exist in Iraq because Saddam used them, and the fact that we have found no evidence of their destruction and that Saddam refused to allow inspectors to have free access to verify their destruction suggests that wherever those weapons are now (and there is strong evidence suggesting they are in Syria), they definitely did exist.

As for nuclear weapons, we know that Saddam had such a program, and we also know that every other intelligence service was telling us that he was getting dangerously close to success. It turns out that either they were wrong, or Saddam disposed of the evidence of that program as he did his poison gas and biological weapons programs.

But when you lay the charge of "initiating" a war "under false pretenses," the implication is that it was a knowing deception. No one has any evidence that Bush knew or had any reason to know what can still not be proven today -- that Saddam has no nuclear weapons development program. So to imply that Bush knowingly got us into a war on false premises is not just a lie itself, it is a malicious slander.

Notice that what Trudeau doesn't say is that it's a losing war. Because he knows -- we all know -- that we're not losing it. We might be tired of it, but we're not losing it.

And we also know that Trudeau doesn't care about the troops that die in Iraq, because he has spent his career mocking and ridiculing the kind of people who volunteer for military service. Remember, he cut his teeth on opposing a war fought by draftees. But there are no draftees. There are only soldiers who actually believe in America -- and in defending America -- in a way that Trudeau has always sneered at.

Trudeau's Domestic Charges Against Bush

Now we get to the supposed violations of Americans' civil rights. "Approves covert policies of illegal detentions." The question of whether the detentions are illegal is still being debated; the detentions are hardly covert, let alone the policies allowing them. In fact, it's astonishingly open, given that we are in a war.

Unless, of course, Trudeau is referring to rumored detentions (and "extraordinary renditions"), which are apparently "covert" because there is no credible evidence that they have taken place. Since Trudeau has far less evidence of these detentions than Bush had of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, one is puzzled about the standard of evidence that should apply. Apparently cartoonists of the Smarty-Pants school of political thought can make slanderous charges without any evidence at all except rumors passed around by his Bush-hating friends, but President Bush is expected to know information that nobody else in the West knew and act accordingly.

"Kangaroo courts." Hmm. Since the complaint of the Left is that the detainees are not being brought to trial, one wonders where and when these kangaroo courts were held? Sounds like more of those wild-eyed rumors to me. But cartoonists can say what they want -- truth is just a joke to them.

"Torture," he charges; but that is a term with actual meaning. If any form of duress during questioning is "torture," it means that having a bright light shine in your face and being kept awake for a long time is the moral equivalent of castration and dismemberment. There are Americans who favor torturing suspected terrorists, but most of them are on 24.

What a strange moral universe Trudeau lives in, in which people who might know vital information about terrorist plots against American citizens cannot be questioned with any kind of pressure at all. Trudeau, apparently, thinks it is better to run the risk of letting ten thousand Americans die rather than cause any detainee any level of discomfort whatsoever. Because terrorists, to him, are simply ordinary criminals entitled to all the protections invented by judges back in the 1960s. War is no different from law enforcement. Terrorists are no different from shoplifters.

"Warrantless wiretappings of thousands of Americans," says Trudeau. Never mind that these were all Americans talking on the telephone with suspected terrorists abroad; never mind that the exposure of the program effectively removed the single most important tool we had to detect terrorist activity in time to prevent it. Never mind that nearly every President in recent years, Democratic or Republican, has done exactly the same thing, within the range of what was technologically possible at the time. Because Bush has done it, then it doesn't matter that it saves American lives. It is an evil crime for which Bush should be impeached.

Trudeau's Depiction of Clinton

And now the other side of his little moral balancing act: "The second president [Clinton] lies about hooking up with an intern."

Aw, yeah, that's nothing. Now, if Clinton had sent her dirty messages by IM or email, then he should have not just been impeached, but convicted and thrown out of office. But actually getting her to perform sexual acts on him, and then lying about it -- heck, who doesn't do that with underage sex partners who are in an almost infinitely subservient relationship with the most powerful man on earth?

And the lying -- never mind that it was under oath in a court proceeding. Never mind that the lie was not to protect national security in any way, but merely to obstruct his opponent in a personal lawsuit based on previous sexual misconduct. It just doesn't matter because it's kind of charming that Clinton's insatiable sexual appetite could not be controlled even when he was in the White House.

Because that just makes him a "babe hound," to quote Trudeau's comic strip. And the Left finds "babe hounds" rather charming. Unless they're Republicans, in which case they must be hounded from office immediately.

This is the moral universe of Garry Trudeau -- and of thousands, perhaps millions of others who subscribe to the Smarty-Pants school of moral reasoning. President Bush, whose actions have obviously been motivated solely by the desire to protect America from a genuine danger from bloodthirsty enemies, is worthy of impeachment for the crimes of (a) not always being right, (b) doing what other presidents have done, and (c) having national media figures hate him so badly that they will happily believe any vile rumor his enemies spread about.

President Bush's Motives

Of course I can hear the Smarty-Pants slander mill howling about my statement in the previous paragraph: "whose actions have obviously been motivated solely by the desire to protect America from a genuine danger."

So let me make that statement crystal clear. The danger was genuine -- the missing World Trade Center and the statements and actions of the terrorists before are proof of that.

As to Bush's motives, what other motive has anyone offered? That Bush started a war to benefit American military contractors? By that reasoning, we should never be able to go to war unless we are buying our weapons from our enemies, just to prove that American defense contractors won't profit.

Get a clue: Our defense industry is vital to -- get this -- our national defense! When we go to war, we buy materiel and contract for services from the corporations that have long been working with the Defense Department to develop precisely the goods and services we will need.

The other motive is, of course, oil. Bush was in the oil business. Because we went to war in an oil-producing country, Bush's oil-business buddies are profiting, say his enemies.

But the war has had no particular effect on oil prices. The rise in prices we had in the past year or so had far more to do with weather than war. Furthermore, since the entirety of Western civilization runs on oil, unfortunate as that fact may be (and I think it's a tragic, stupid mistake on our part), it is still true that there is no economic interest on this planet which would be a stronger motivation for war than to protect the oil supplies of the West.

Indeed, when we go to war with Iran -- and we will, if the ayatollahs continue to rule, whether we do it on the day of our choosing or the day they choose -- it will be, not over their nukes per se, but because of the ability those nukes will give them to hold the world's oil supply hostage.

Nevertheless, we know that oil has no bearing whatsoever on this war because Iraq's oil revenues are not going to Americans; they are not even paying for our effort to protect Iraq's fledgling democracy. They are flowing to the people of the defeated enemy state. If Bush had oil profits as part of his motive for the campaign in Iraq, he certainly bungled that one.

What Does Trudeau Want?

So when Garry Trudeau compares a perjurer for private gain who corrupts his office to have sex with a girl who had infinitely less power than he did, and a President who has taken enormous political heat to run the cleanest war in history against a stateless enemy that puts all existing laws and rules to the test, and claims that the latter is the one who deserves to be impeached, one can only wonder what kind of world Trudeau actually wants to live in.

Is it possible he really wants to live in a world in which terrorists can plot with impunity because government has no power to try to intercept their communications in advance or question anybody who does not already want to tell us information?

And then the terrorists can retire to safe havens with governments that openly promote terrorism yet cannot be touched because America "loves peace"?

And those governments can develop nuclear weapons with impunity because we cannot confirm with absolute proof whether they have such weapons programs unless and until we defeat them?

No, of course Trudeau doesn't want to live in that world. I think.

Trudeau and his Smarty-Pants friends have only one agenda: They hate President Bush and want to hurt him, and they don't care how many Americans they kill in the process.

Kill? They're not killing anybody ... are they?

Words Can Kill

Trudeau and those like him, who scream their hatred of President Bush and do everything they can to try to end this war with our own defeat, and the defeat (and likely deaths) of all those striving and struggling for democracy in the Middle East, are encouraging our enemies to go on fighting, killing American and Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

And now our enemies even have hope that if people like Trudeau once get their hands on power, then President Bush can be investigated by a hostile Congress. All our secrets will be laid bare for them to study and learn how to defeat us. And maybe President Bush will really be impeached. Then no President will dare to stand against our terrorist enemies or the states that support them.

Hey, Mr. Trudeau: These people were killing Americans even back when your beloved "babe hound" was President. Only your "babe hound" was too busy getting it on with Monica to do anything serious about it. And who can blame those who conclude that that's the way you wanted it? Who conclude that you hate America?

It's hard not to think that the Smarty-Pants elitists in Amerca hate what America has long stood for -- the primacy of the common man. They hate having us be a beacon of freedom for people everywhere. They hate having Americans shed their blood to bring freedom from tyranny anywhere on earth.

Because democracy is loathsome to elitists like Trudeau. They sneer at the thought that all those stupid Arabic-speaking people could ever have a working democracy, because they don't even like the working democracy America has. They believe government should be run only by Smarty-Pants like them, not by the unwashed masses who stupidly elect President who don't pronounce "nucular" the way they do.

So Trudeau, and his Smarty-Pants friends in the media, worked hard these past eight years to paint every action of President Bush as evil, to conceal every one of his many accomplishments, to brand as "extremist" every one of his moderate compromises designed to create unified government to work the will of the people. They have demonized him and it seemed to work -- the Democrats were able to squeak through a thin majority in both houses of Congress.

(Though one might point out that many of the freshman Democrats ran on conservative platforms that will make Nancy Pelosi puke if they actually vote that way once they're in office. And one might also point out that this voting shift is just about average for non-Presidential elections in the middle of a President's second term -- war or no war. And that there is still a huge number of Americans who will not tolerate any party that forces us to retire from this war in defeat -- especially if it leads to a triumphal resurgence of Islamicist terrorism worldwide.)

What Will The Democrats Do?

Now the subpoena power is in the hands of the Democratic Party. And even though any investigation of a war in progress is an unthinkably, insanely self-destructive move, destined to cripple our military effort and destroy our self-protective abilities, Trudeau and his friends expect them to do it. They want Congress to bring down this President.

For what crime?

Really, only one: Not being a Smarty-Pants like them.

No, let's be fair. I think there's another possibility: I think that Bush's real crime, in their eyes, is that while on the surface he's definitely not an intellectual as measured by today's elitists, he is in fact far smarter than his critics, and he is a far better President than any of their darlings like the moral cretins and intellectual stumblers that ran against him in 2000 and 2004, or the supposedly brilliant Rhodes Scholar do-nothing who preceded him for eight years of breathtaking incompetence in foreign affairs.

What the elitists can't forgive is that the American people proved the strength of democracy and the American Constitution by electing George W. Bush twice, despite all the slanders of the elitists who think they and they alone should make the decisions in America.

Well, they say, now democracy has spoken and we have the Democratic Party in control of Congress.

Yes. But which Democratic Party? If we count only Democratic candidates who ran as liberals, true to the ideals of, say, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, then that party does not have a majority in either house -- not even close.

Only if you add in the Democrats who claimed to be Republicans in all by name in order to get elected in conservative districts does the Democratic Party get its majority.

Only if you include Joseph Lieberman, who has apparently forgiven the Democratic Party for abandoning him in Connecticut and running somebody against him, do you get your majority -- and Lieberman supports this war. Lieberman knows what I know and only the Smarty-Pants are incapable of knowing -- that this war will be fought, and it's better to fight it in Iraq and Iran and Syria than in Sudan and India and Armenia, or in France and Germany and Britain, where the bloodshed will inevitably migrate -- and is already migrating.

So the only way President Bush will be impeached is if the Democratic Party reveals that all those conservative-talking candidates were liars.

Indeed, the only way this war will be prematurely ended is if the Democratic Party is able to get all of its members to vote for such a self-destructive course.

It might happen. The Democratic Party in recent years has proven to have iron discipline on too many issues.

But if that happens, then the Democratic Party will stand revealed as the party of deception, for that is not how it got its majorities in the swing districts and states.

We are winning the War against Terror -- or would be, if our enemies did not keep getting such constant encouragement from our deeply stupid and short-sighted "intellectual" elite.

I can't help but wonder. What sort of comic strip would Garry Trudeau be able to write for a newspaper in Tehran?

Well ... actually ... he could write the one he writes right now.

You're getting old when...

I just heard a funny story on my way into the lab this morning. A woman on the elevator was holding a typewriter and I jokingly commented that I couldn't believe people still used those things. One of the professors down the hall, who was also on the elevator, then told us that his son recently came upon their old typewriter. After playing with it for a bit, he turned to his dad and said, "This computer is really cool. When you type on the keyboard it prints out immediately."

Just finished Newt Gingrich's new book "Rediscovering God in America." Nice little tour of the Washington D.C. and the influence that religion has had on the establishment and growth of our nation. I'll try to get back to make more comments later.

Dennis Prager recently had an online debate about the existence of God with a prominent atheist named Sam Harris. Although not likely to change many minds either way, the debate is interesting. What annoyed me was the way that Mr. Harris made a particular point of demeaning the faith of member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, or at least he denigrated an uniformed and warped view of what Latter-day Saints believe. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to this, but it seems like Latter-day Saints have recently been at the receiving end of an increasing amount of undeserved criticism lately. Christopher Hitchens made some really rude and uncalled for comments about Latter-day Saints on the Hugh Hewitt show. When pressed by Hugh, Mr. Hitchens made a lame attempt to paint all Christians with the same brush, but it was clear that he has a particular beef with Latter-day Saints. Also, Article6blog has recently been covering Andrew Sullivan's mockery of Latter-day Saint beliefs and practices. It is possible that these attacks are all prelude to Mitt Romney's potential run for President on 2008. Hopefully people will think about the Latter-day Saints that they know and recognize this trash-talk for what it is.

Americans got a letter from President Ahmadinejad yesterday.
What has this guy been smoking?
I'm sure the people of Iran would appreciate it if he took his own advice in how to govern:
"It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.
It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.
It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war."
Maybe the Iranian religion police could be retrained to act as a "pleasant surprise patrol".
They could use their information gathering skills to discover people who are genuinely kind and charitable and reward them with flowers or a chocolate milkshake or something like that.

First post in a long time (years)!

I'm back, or at least I will be when I have something to say. Cool. Blogger now lets me put pictures in my blog. Here are the resident critters with their Halloween pumpkins.

A good article about John Kerry from National Review.

John Kerry’s America
What he said about us.

By William F. Buckley Jr.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the text of William F. Buckley Jr.'s June 8, 1971, commencement address to the United States Military Academy at West Point. The speech appears here as it is in Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches.

The morale in the armed services was low, reflecting the impasse and progressive demoralization in Vietnam, and especially the trial of Lieutenant William Calley for the massacre at Mylai. A drastic charge, flamboyantly made by decorated veteran John Kerry (now a United States senator from Massachusetts), had been rapturously received. Kerry ascribed to our soldiers in Vietnam uncivilized, barbarous practices. I devoted my talk to asking about Mr. Kerry's charges and reflecting on their implications.

A great deal has been written lately on the spirit of progressivism at West Point. I note that a generation ago, cadets were not permitted to read a newspaper, whereas today, each cadet room receives a daily copy of the New York Times. I know now what it means to be nostalgic for the good old days.

I read ten days ago the full text of the quite remarkable address delivered by John Kerry before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It was an address, I am told, that paralyzed the committee by its eloquence and made Mr. Kerry — a veteran of the war in Vietnam, a pedigreed Bostonian, a graduate of Yale University — an instant hero.

After reading it I put it aside, deeply troubled as I was by the haunting resonance of its peroration, which so moved the audience. The words he spoke were these:

"[We are determined] to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more, so that when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say 'Vietnam!' and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning."

"Where America finally turned." We need to wonder: where America finally turned from what?

Mr. Kerry, in introducing himself to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made it plain that he was there to speak not only for himself, but for what he called "a very much larger group of veterans in this country." He then proceeded to describe the America he knows, the America from which he enjoined us all to turn.

In Southeast Asia, he said, he saw "not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

A grave charge, but the sensitive listener will instantly assume that Mr. Kerry is using the word "crime" loosely, as in, "He was criminally thoughtless in not writing home more often to his mother." But Mr. Kerry quickly interdicted that line of retreat. He went on to enumerate precisely such crimes as are being committed "on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command." He gave tales of torture, of rape, of Americans who "randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war."

Mr. Kerry informed Congress that what threatens the United States is "not Reds, and not redcoats," but "the crimes" we are committing. He tells us that we have "created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who have returned with a sense of anger."

Most specifically he singled out for criticism a sentence uttered by Mr. Agnew here at West Point a year ago: "Some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse." Mr. Kerry insists that the so-called misfits are the true heroes, inasmuch as it was they who "were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to." As for the men in Vietnam, he added, "we cannot consider ourselves America's 'best men' when we are ashamed of and hated for what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia."

And indeed, if American soldiers have been called upon to rape and to torture and to exterminate non-combatants, it is obvious that they should be ashamed, less obvious why they have not expressed that shame more widely on returning to the United States, particularly inasmuch as we have been assured by Mr. Kerry that they have been taught to deal and to trade in violence.

Are there extenuating circumstances? Is there a reason for our being in Vietnam?

"To attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom . . . is . . . the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart." It is then, we reason retrospectively, not alone an act of hypocrisy that caused the joint chiefs of staff and the heads of the civilian departments engaged in strategic calculations to make the recommendations they made over the past ten years, to three Presidents of the United States: it was not merely hypocrisy, but criminal hypocrisy. The nature of that hypocrisy? "All," Mr. Kerry sums up, "that we were told about the mystical war against Communism."

The indictment is complete.

It is the indictment of an ignorant young man who is willing to condemn in words that would have been appropriately used in Nuremberg the governing class of America: the legislators, the generals, the statesmen. And, reaching beyond them, the people, who named the governors to their positions of responsibility and ratified their decisions in several elections.

The point I want to raise is this: If America is everything that John Kerry says it is, what is it appropriate for us to do? The wells of regeneration are infinitely deep, but the stain described by John Kerry goes too deep to be bleached out by conventional remorse or resolution: better the destruction of America, if, to see ourselves truly, we need to look into the mirror John Kerry holds up for us. If we are a nation of sadists, of kid-killers and torturers, of hypocrites and criminals, let us be done with it, and pray that a great flood or fire will destroy us, leaving John Kerry and maybe Mrs. Benjamin Spock to take the place of Lot, in reseeding a new order.

Gentleman, how many times, in the days ahead, you will need to ask yourselves the most searching question of all, the counterpart of the priest's most agonizing doubt: Is there a God? Yours will be: Is America worth it?

John Kerry's assault on this country did not rise fullblown in his mind, like Venus from the Cypriot Sea. It is the crystallization of an assault upon America which has been fostered over the years by an intellectual class given over to self-doubt and self-hatred, driven by a cultural disgust with the uses to which so many people put their freedom. The assault on the military, the many and subtle vibrations of which you feel as keenly as James Baldwin knows the inflections of racism, is an assault on the proposition that what we have, in America, is truly worth defending. The military is to be loved or despised according as it defends that which is beloved or perpetuates that which is despised. The root question has not risen to such a level of respectability as to work itself into the platform of a national political party, but it lurks in the rhetoric of the John Kerrys, such that a blind man, running his fingers over the features of the public rhetoric, can discern the meaning of it:

Is America worth it?

That is what they are saying to you. And that is what so many Americans reacted to in the case of Lieutenant Calley. Mistakenly, they interpreted the conviction of Calley as yet another effort to discredit the military. And though they will not say it in as many words, they know that if there is no military, it will quickly follow that there will be no America, of the kind that they know, that we know. The America that listens so patiently to its John Kerrys, the America that shouldered the great burden of preserving oases of freedom after the great curtain came down with that Bolshevik subtlety that finally expressed itself in a Wall, to block citizens of the socialist utopia from leaving, en route even to John Kerry's America; the America that all but sank under the general obloquy, in order to stand by, in Southeast Asia, a commitment it had soberly made, to the cause of Containment — I shall listen patiently, decades hence, to those who argue that our commitment in Vietnam and our attempt to redeem it were tragically misconceived. I shall not listen to those who say that it was less than the highest tribute to national motivation, to collective idealism, and to international rectitude. I say this with confidence because I have never met an American who takes pleasure from the Vietnam War or who desires to exploit the Vietnamese.

So during those moments when doubt will assail you, moments that will come as surely as the temptations of the flesh, I hope you will pause. I know, I know, at the most hectic moments of one's life it isn't easy — indeed, the argument can be made that neither is it seemly — to withdraw from the front line in order to consider the general situation philosophically. But what I hope you will consider, during these moments of doubt, is the essential professional point: Without organized force, and the threat of the use of it under certain circumstances, there is no freedom, anywhere. Without freedom, there is no true humanity. If America is the monster of John Kerry, burn your commissions tomorrow morning and take others, which will not bind you in the depraved conspiracy you have heard described. If it is otherwise, remember: the freedom John Kerry enjoys, and the freedom I enjoy, are, quite simply, the result of your dedication. Do you wonder that I accepted the opportunity to salute you?

A good article on why President Bush is not stupid from the American Thinker.


GWB: HBS MBA
February 3rd, 2004

President George W. Bush is the very first President to hold a Masters Degree in Business Administration. Even better (or worse, depending on your perspective), his MBA is from Harvard Business School, where postgraduate management training was invented in the early part of the last century, and which to many stands as a symbol of the good, the bad, and the ugly faces of modern management. Harvard MBAs indisputably lead more major corporations, receive higher starting salaries fresh out of school, and carry with them more elan and glamour than the graduates of any rival business schools "– facts which do not necessarily lead to admiration and love.

The comparatively small amount of attention paid by the political press to the President’s Harvard MBA partially reflects a generalized ignorance of, and hostility toward, the degree itself. More importantly, acknowledging that he learned any valuable intellectual perspectives would contradict the storyline that young W was a party animal, who coasted through his elite education, scarcely cracking a book. In other words, as the left never tires of claiming, he is too “stupid” to have picked up any tricks across the Charles River from Harvard Square.

This is patently incorrect. Having attended Harvard Business School at the same time as the President, graduating from the two-year program a year after he did, and then serving on its faculty after a year’s interval spent writing a PhD thesis, I am intimately familiar with the rigors of the program at the time, and the miniscule degree of slack cut for even the most well-connected students, when their performance did not make the grade.

There is simply no way on earth that the son of the then-Ambassador to China, or anyone else, could have coasted through Harvard Business School with a “gentleman’s C.” I never, ever heard of a case of an incompetent student being allowed to graduate, simply because a certain family was prominent. On the contrary, I did hear stories of well-born students having to leave prior to graduation. The academic standards were a point of considerable pride.

An inability to learn and apply the lessons of the classroom and the voluminous nightly study materials, from regression analysis to strategy-formulation to marketing to human behavior in organizations, was simply not tolerated. Grading took place on a strict curve, and those who found themselves on the lower range of the curve in too many subjects hit the dreaded “screen” and had to supply convincing rationales to the Academic Performance Committee as to why they should be allowed to attend the second year of the program, much less graduate. The screen was a vital component of the HBS quality assurance program, itself an essential method of protecting the value of the school’s MBA “brand.” Harvard Business School would no sooner voluntarily graduate an incompetent MBA holder than Coca Cola would ship-out bottles containing dead mice.

Accepting the premise that George W. Bush actually learned the lessons taught him at Harvard Business School, there are a number of characteristics of his administration which become far more understandable. Here are a few of the more important ways in which his Harvard MBA explains the way he governs.

The very first lesson drummed-into new students, as they file into the classrooms of Aldrich Hall, is that management consists of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. There is never perfect information, and decisions often have to be made even when you’d really prefer to know a lot more. Given this reality, students are taught many techniques for analyzing the data which is available, extracting the non-obvious facets, learning how read into it the reasonable inferences which can be made, while quantifying the risks of doing so, and learning the costs and value of obtaining additional data.

The job of the executive of to weigh probabilities in evaluating imperfect information; to assess the costs and benefits of acting or not acting; and to construct scenarios around the various possible time frames for taking action, taking into account the probable reactions of the other vital actors. That political opponents at home carp at him over his imperfect data at the time is no surprise, and no reason to regret his decision. The costs of not acting were simply too great, and the downside potential of erroneous information too low to prefer inaction. Better data would have been preferable, of course, but President Bush shows no sign of remorse for doing what he knows was the prudent thing under the circumstances.

A second broad and important lesson the President learned at Harvard Business School is to embrace a finite number of strategic goals, and to make each one of those goals serve as many desirable ends as possible. The truism of this lesson is that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. If you can’t focus on everything, then you need to be able to focus on those few goals which will have the broadest impact, leading to a future capacity to attain other desirable ends. No exact number of goals is the limit, but three is an awfully good number to aim at. Those goals should be mutually consistent, so that the step-by-step accomplishment of each one aids in the achievement of the others.

There is both evidence and logic to suggest that George W. Bush has chosen just a small handful of major goals. His current number one priority was thrust upon him: winning a complete victory in the War on Terror. There is no evidence that this was on his initial short list of priorities. But after 9/11, he made himself very clear, very quickly, that his priorities had drastically changed. He also set out a realistic time frame – decades – for this number one goal. From this broad goal cascade a series of subordinate tasks, from persuading dictators that it is in their interests to eschew support for terror groups, to strengthening American military, intelligence and domestic law enforcement capabilities, for example.

I think his second broad goal is to build a long-lasting pattern of Republican political dominance of government, by forging a new grand coalition of voting blocs, adding to the existing GOP stalwart groups (conservatives, low tax lovers, the traditionally religious, and small business owners) a substantial number of lower income, but upward-mobility-aspiring members of every group, including ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics, but also as many blacks as possible.

If there is any single theme which unites all these people, it is a belief in the American Dream. The freedom to improve one’s lot in life, along with the ability to marshal the necessary resources without hindrance by oppressive regulations, taxes, or other governmental interference, is one of the cornerstones of this coalition. The goal is not simply to attract poeple by serving their interests, but to convince them to identify themselves with the Republicans, as the political instrument of their dreams.

In the short run, issues of importance to the conservative base may seem to be getting short shrift: government spending, especially on expansion of entitlements and such amenities as the NEA, may help reach out to swing voters, but do not inspire the base. Look for President Bush to address his base directly, as well as symbolically, prior to the election. But understand that he will put more priority on the broad goal of reaching out to expand his voting support than he will on catering to his base, who will, when all is said and done, place so much weight on securing the Presidency for a War on Terror activist (see Goal #1) that they will turn out and vote for his re-election

A third major goal, closely related, is to get and keep the economy growing at a healthy pace. The President inherited an economy moving into recession as he took office. Then, 9/11 knocked the stuffing out of many industries, and dealt a huge financial and psychological blow to the nation. Aggressive tax cuts, augmented by cooperative Federal Reserve management of the money supply and interest rates, have now restored the economy to robust growth. Complaints about low job growth miss two points: that in the early stages of an economic recovery, employers defer adding staff, and that the economy as a whole is moving away from the full-time-job model of work towards independent contracting forms of work, thus omitting many people’s work (including my own) from being counted as a “job.”

A healthy economy which creates opportunities for work and self-advancement generates new members for the American Dream Coalition. A robust and successful conduct of the War on Terror secures domestic safety, encouraging investment and growth, and brings pride as an American to all groups in society. All of these factors encourage more people to identify as Republicans, securing the political goal of the President. The three goals mutually reinforce one another.

Another basic lesson young George W. Bush learned in the classrooms of Harvard Business School is that different managers have legitimately different styles of operating as executives. There is no “one right way” to manage. Successful executives develop a style which is true to their own nature, and which builds on their strengths. George W. Bush is a natural delegator, an executive who seeks the best possible people to work for him, instills loyalty (by practicing it himself), and then gives them plenty of room to operate. His “sins” as an executive have been, and are likely to remain those of a loose leash, allowing ineffective subordinates too much time and too much room. This is why it has taken him so long to remove certain cabinet officials.

The case study method as practiced at Harvard Business School features intense discussions of alternative plans for defining and then resolving the problems described in the B-school’s famous cases. A well-structured spirited discussion has the virtue of systematically revealing the implications of different courses of action, allowing deeper analysis, and ultimately leading to better decisions. President Bush’s preference for keeping senior advisors of different persuasions, such as Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz, reflects the value he places on hearing the best case made for alternative courses of action. Critics who speak of a power struggle which needs to be resolved in favor of one side or the other, completely miss the point.

One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out-psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.

By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.

Only time will tell, whether Saddam ever had any WMDs. Their non-existence has not been proven. Only time will tell whether or not Osama bin Laden (or his corpse) will be taken into custody by American Troops. Only time will tell whether or not Iraq will continue to make progress toward a transition toward a peaceful democratic government. George W. Bush knows much more information about these topics than his domestic political opponents do. At the moment, they are betting a lot of their chips on one side of these questions.

We will see by November who has the winning hand.
Thomas Lifson

Maybe my calls are having an effect. Today was the first time in quite a long time that I did not see any panhandlers standing at the intersection, which I called the police about yesterday.

Doing my part to annoy the panhandlers.

Every morning I get to drive by a number of these lazy, useless people, holding their cardboard signs containing some lame excuse why I should give them my hard earned money. Today I had another opportunity to annoy some of them. Lately they have figured out that if they push the crosswalk button at one of the main intersections on my commute, they can hold up traffic in the left lane, thus providing themselves with a captive audience. The other day I called the police station and found out that these losers are allowed to practice their deceipt as long as they do not disrupt traffic. I complained about their little crosswalk trick and the police told me that this was not allowed and they dispatched an officer to look into it. Today I saw the same pair of panhandlers but they had modified their little game. One of them would hold the sign while the other walked around the corner with a garbage bag like he was picking up trash. While I appreciate his sincere desire to make the world a cleaner place, I do not appreciate his pushing the crosswalk button every time he walked past it, so I called the police and complained about him again.

It annoys me that these con-artists prey on the gullible compassion of passing drivers, when they should be out working for a living like the rest of us, but I can usually just ignore them. When they find a way to really inconvenience me, am more than happy to return the favor.

There are a number of sites running discussions about Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's comments in an interview with the Associated Press. The ones I have seen are either mildly or strongly in favor of the gay agenda. In the interview Sen. Santorum said the following regarding an upcoming decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of antigay sodomy laws. "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything." He then added, "All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately." It seems the gay rights activists are up in arms about the way he equates homosexuality with acts such as incest, adultry and polygamy (How dare you equate our sacred cow with all of these other cows). In principle I would have to say that I agree with Sen. Santorum's idea that legitimizing one form of immorality will lead to legitimizing others, although being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I would not necessarily include bygamy and polygamy in that list (I am interested to know if Sen. Santorum would include all extra-marital sexual relations on his list). I also agree that immoral practices have deleterious effects on society. Mainly I wanted to comment on the fact that society is silly in how it wants to pick and choose which moral rights we should have. Currently, much of society says that it is OK to have pre-marital sex and to llive together without marriage. If children are born as a result of this, it is perfectly acceptable. The same two individuals may then acceptably split up and repeat the process with two other individuals. One of the individuals may even have sexual relations and possibly children with a third individual without splitting from the first, as long as there are no legally binding commitments involved, like marriage. However if a man enters a commited relationship like marriage with one woman and then decides to become commited to another woman, through marriage, without leaving his wife, even if the wife agrees to this, the man is looked down upon or even prosecuted. So it is perfectly acceptable to have a polygamous-like relationship as long as there is no real commitment to provide for any offspring resulting from that relationship. Sounds a bit silly to me.

This post at Rantburg comes with a pretty funny comment by the poster, Steve.

A section of the post from Reuters:
"Lebanon said on Wednesday it had arrested five people in connection with a booby-trapped car discovered outside a McDonald's fast food outlet and accused them of planning attacks on Lebanon's Western embassies. "We have five detainees so far who have confessed to placing a booby-trapped Renault car at McDonald's," Interior Minister Elias al-Murr told a news conference."

This is followed by the comment from Steve:
"A booby-trapped Renault? That's enough a smoking gun for me, on to Paris!"

Good stuff Steve :-)

Two bits about the Iraq war that caught my eye.

One from ScrappleFace:
"Looting Suddenly Stops in Baghdad
(2003-04-09) -- The looting in Baghdad stopped suddenly today as Iraq's largest organized crime family disappeared from the city.
Thousands of Baghdad residents entered government buildings in an attempt to retrieve some small portion of what had been stolen from them for the past 24 years.
"I got a big vase from one of Uday's offices," said one local woman. "It can never replace the family members Saddam took from me, but all of this stuff belongs to the people and it was taken from us without our permission.""

The other from The Sydney Morning Herald:
""They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them," Brigadier-General John Kelly said.
"But often they run into our machine guns and we shoot them down like the morons they are."
"They appear willing to die. We are trying our best to help them out in that endeavour," he said."

Another article that expresses my feelings as well or better than I could. This one is by Victor Davis Hanson and talks about how we can let our backstabbing, ex-allies know of our dissapointment with them.