Seattle voters have rejected a tax on coffee. You can read about it here (registration required).
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My faith in America is restored. My furtive bid to try to acquire a Green Card may be renewed again in anger, and the people of New Hampshire or Texas may yet hail me as one of their Britain-escaping sons. Yes, folks, the voters of Washington State’s Seattle have rejected the idiotarian espresso and latte tax, recently proposed, by a margin of seven voters to three. Good on you, Seattle. May the three out of ten of you who voted for it, be shipped out on a boat to Guardian-loving Britain, immediately, to see what it’s like to live under the corrupt welfare monolith you would so dearly love to create. September 17th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Last Friday, Alice Bachini blogged this:
It worked. She is now back in blogging business full time, newly energised and revitalised by having a new blog address without_any_underlinings_in_it_as_per_this, which apparently some people couldn’t get. (Although I notice that the archive links in the rest of this posting still have underlinings in them. If the links below still don’t work for you, go to the one in this paragraph to the top of the blog and scroll down.) There’s also a picture of Alice wearing a bikini and a fur coat, and there is practically no bikini visible at all. → Continue reading: alicebachini.com September 16th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Geez, governments can’t do anything right. I mean, your average paint-huffing teenager can grow decent pot, but not the Canadian government. With a multi-million dollar budget!
Words fail. September 16th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Rand Simberg has done another brilliant piss-take. Just imagine! Japan bombs Pearl Harbour and we go off and invade Italy! My, my…. September 13th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I did not post anything about the second anniversary yesterday but only because I logged on to find that Dale Amon had beaten me to it. I judged his sentiments to be so appropriate that they left me with nothing I could usefully add except the confirmation that Dale spoke for us all. As has the Dissident Frogman who has applied his exceptional talents to a stirring presentation of his own. From France with love (for a change). Puits fait, mon ami. September 12th, 2003 | Comments are closed
The second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is as good a time as any to take quick stock of progress in World War IV: (1) Afghanistan. The Allies (America and its ad hoc coalition) have driven the Taliban from power and deprived the Islamic terror network of one of its primary bases. The Islamists still in Afghanistan are now on the defensive, and are focussing, apparently, on trying to regain control of one of the world’s poorest countries, rather than exporting their theology to other countries. Despite ongoing difficulties, this is a clear win for the West because Afghanistan is less of a threat now than it used to be. (2) Iraq. Pretty much exactly the same analysis applies in Iraq. The Baathists are no longer funding any part of the Islamist terror network, and are no longer a potential source of WMD for the islamists. Based on current information, I would say that this is also a clear win for the West because Iraq is less of a threat now than it used to be. Ultimately, of course, Iraq still has miles to go, etc., but it certainly does not seem to be on course to be a net exporter of terror. Right now it is a net importer of terrorists, and that is fine be me – better to kill them in Iraq than in Iowa. (3) International Islamist terror network. Clearly on the defensive and less capable than it was before 9/11. Many of its leaders or members are dead, in hiding and emasculated, or in prison. Many of its resources, including terrorist havens, are gone. Recent attacks have been directed, not against Western targets, but against Middle Eastern and South Pacific ones. Offhand, I can’t think of any theaters where radical Islamism is stronger now than it was before 9/11. (4) Middle East. So far, it is hard to say that the Islamists have gained any ground even in the Middle East. Syria is going multi-party and has made some, admittedly not terribly significant, stand-downs in Lebanon. Arafat is isolated and his days certainly seem numbered. The Saudis have executed a number of their princes that had ties to al Qaeda, and seem to be going after al Qaeda with a little more credibility since it broke its promise not to operate in Saudi Arabia. Lots of fulminating and bitching about the Great Satan everywhere, of course, but that isn’t new and doesn’t really count on the debit side of the ledger. It is still early days, of course, but all told, I would say that the Middle East is certainly no more hostile to the US than it was, and in significant ways is less dangerous, if no more friendly, than it was. (5) Diplomacy. The common complaint is that the US has sacrificed or damaged many good relationships in order to pursue its war. I think that this is complaint is overstated, at best. Rather, World War IV has tested relationships and revealed which of them were shallow and weak. I am willing, on the whole, to say that the diplomatic front has been a break-even for the US. On the one hand, many erstwhile “allies” are more vocal in their criticism of us, and possibly even have withheld substantive aid that they might have offered a different diplomatic team. On the other, the UN has permanently devalued, the true colors of the transnational progressives have been revealed, and many of the other impediments to a new and much more functional international order have been weakened or cleared away. (6) Homeland security. Well, we Americans may or may not be marginally safer from terrorist attacks on our own soil than we were before 9/11. Its hard to say; in spite of the obvious idiocy of most of the high-profile homeland security measures, we haven’t had a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Measured against the baseline of 9/10/01, I think it is hard to say that we are much safer than we were. Measured against where we should be two years on, I would say that homeland security is a major disappointment. But the war won’t be won or lost based on America’s homeland security. That is purely a damage control issue, because no matter how good the homeland security is, we will surely lose the war if we do not succeed with our “forward defense” of draining the Islamist swamps where terrorists breed. The schwerpunkt of America’s offensive is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of those campaigns were crushing military and strategic victories for the US, victories that have not (yet) been frittered away. They may not turn into little Swedens, but there is really very little chance that either nation will return to being a terrorist haven bent on exporting mass murder to its enemies. That counts as victory in my book. At this point in history, the Islamists cannot defeat America, but America can certainly lose the war through loss of will and resolution. So far, the will is there. September 11th, 2003 | 56 comments - (Comments are closed)
At this precise hour and date two years ago an event changed history and seared eternal anger into the American soul. This flash multimedia presentation is the best remembrance I have found to date. It came out shortly after and I have from time to time reminded people of it. I cannot seem to get to the original web site for it at the moment. For the time being I’ve placed a copy on our server. Make sure you have tissue handy when you watch and listen. If you are an American, you will need them. On some far star a millennium hence, our descendants will pause and remember this date. We will never forgive and we will never forget. September 11th, 2003 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has claimed the Iraq campaign “is costing like Vietnam”. I’ll leave it up to the reader to compare budget requests for Iraq with the costs of Vietnam. Particularly of interest is the table showing the actual incremental costs: the amount spent on Vietnam over and above the normal defense budget. Keep in mind a few facts as you think about it. There is a bit of a difference in the value of a dollar between then and now. In 1965 you could still buy a comic book with a silver dime (debased coins had just been released that year). Vietnam lasted a decade and peaked at a half million troops. There were single day’s (certainly single weeks) in which the American death toll exceeded the losses in Iraq to date. The conditions in Iraq are very different from Vietnam. For it to become “a Vietnam” would require:
This all seems very unlikely. September 11th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here in the US, we have recently been diverted by the spectacle of a state Supreme Court judge defying the orders of a federal court in order to violate the Constitution. The state judge refused to move a gigantic copy of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, where its prominent placement and enormous size at least arguably amounted to “the [state] establishment of religion” in violation of the US Constitution. Now, this is just the sort of topic that seems to exert an irresistible compulsion on people to wander off into the tall grass of irrelevance, so I will leave aside the legalistic arguments about whether the placement of the Ten Commandments actually violated the First Amendment to the US Consitution as applied to the states via the doctrine of incorporation (and I beg the commenters to do likewise). While there are subcultures in the US that could undoubtedly recite all ten, I daresay most US citizens could not, although they are widely held in a kind of iconic way to represent the root of law and morality. Indeed, the claim that they are an historical source of US law was made in the campaign to keep them in the courthouse. Christopher Hitchens takes a look at what the Commandments actually say, and concludes that they don’t have much to do with morality or modern law at all.
It just goes to show that it never hurts to periodically reexamine first principles. With a little luck, I can probably get through the week without violating more than six (and no, it is none of your business which six). September 9th, 2003 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
From James Taranto’s ur-blog Best of the Web comes this tidbit (scroll down to the bottom):
Absolutely correct on all fronts. For years (and years) it has been a convention of US TV commercials that white men, and only white men, are portrayed as foolish boobs, and women, or men “of color”, are wise, clever, etc. I happen to believe that TV commercials can be high pop art and a wonderful oracle to consult if you want to know what the current zeitgeist is all about. I applaud the new willingness of the ad industry to poke fun at black men as a good sign that race is becoming a non-factor to many Americans, and I plan to keep an eye out for more examples of the same. September 5th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Let me go on record (to the extent someone posting under a pseudonym can go on the record) as someone who believes that President Bush’s domestic agenda has been very nearly a complete disaster, with the sole exception of his tax cut bill. Perhaps the only glimmer of hope for the future is that there seem to be some regulatory relief things happening “under the radar” within some of the major administrative agencies. On the legislative front, he has not vetoed a single bill, and has signed bills that dramatically increase domestic spending and increase national government involvement in all manner of things. He has refused to confront the Senate on its unconstitutional refusal to vote on his federal judge appointees. Essentially, the Bush White House has adopted a policy of giving the liberal/statist Democrats nearly everything they want in an attempt to neutralize their issues and appeal to their voters. As a political ploy, I think this will prove to be of dubious effectiveness at best (repeat after me: “American elections are won by mobilizing your base, not chasing the uninformed and apathetic “moderate/undecided” voters”). As a source of policy, it is disastrous. Even his tax cut had the effect of increasing the complexity of the tax code, stank of social engineering via tax policy, and in no way partook of genuine tax reform. While I disagree with the Bush-haters on their assessment of his intellectual capacity and management skills (the former is adequate, certainly by the standards of politicos, and the latter are quite sophisticated), and on their assessment of the war, I see little reason to support the Bush administration on nearly any domestic issue. I voted for the man, and I would rate this aspect of his administration as a major disappointment. September 4th, 2003 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
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