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Archive for October, 2007

Hollywood’s war

Posted by Richard on October 31, 2007

The bad news is that Hollywood is relentlessly cranking out film after film intended to undermine support for the war against Islamofascism. The good news is that Americans are avoiding these propaganda pieces in droves. Most recently, Babel, The Kingdom, and Rendition have all bombed at the box office.

But it's not just that film-makers are making anti-war movies. They've also gone out of their way to avoid portraying the most believable and likely villains around today, Islamist terrorists, even if it meant rewriting stories like Tom Clancey's The Sum of All Fears to kowtow to the demands of CAIR (unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism-financing operation). The film version replaced the Islamist terrorists in Clancy's novel with cartoon neo-Nazis.

Michael Fumento noted the difference between Hollywood then and now:

In 1942, Hollywood went to war. It began pumping out countless movies designed both to entertain the public and bolster its will to fight. A lot of them were cheap, hokey, or both. But even in a nation that seemingly needed little reminder of the dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor or the evils of the Nazis, they kept drilling home the message that we must persevere no matter the costs or the duration.

Well that they did. President Franklin Roosevelt lived in constant fear that the public would turn against the war. Indeed a Gallup Poll taken just five months before Germany’s collapse and long after the American public began learning of the horrors of the Holocaust, showed about one-fourth did not want to drive on to unconditional surrender.

Fast forward that reel to the post-9/11 era. Just how many Hollywood movies (not documentaries) have been made in which the bad guys are Islamist terrorists that do not specifically concern the Sept. 11 attacks? If you have to guess, guess “none.”

Read the whole thing. As Fumento observed, Hollywood seems bent on convincing us that either Islamist terrorists aren't really a threat or that they're no worse than we are.

Also, read Ed Driscoll's Hollywood Nihilism, which argues that the change in Hollywood predates 9/11 and Bush ("who's the real enemy," indeed).

It's really remarkable (and disgusting) that Tinseltown — with its well-known predilection for hedonism, its commitment to feminism, its enthusiastic embrace of alternative lifestyles, and its general "do your own thing" attitude — has consistently sided with the most barbaric, mysogynistic, intolerant, and repressive religio-political movement on the face of the earth, a movement that would, given the chance, behead or stone to death practically every last one of them. 

Driscoll be damned, I blame Bush.  

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Stossel on global warming

Posted by Richard on October 31, 2007

ABC's 20/20 recently featured another great segment by John Stossel. This time, Stossel had some questions about global warming and Al Gore's claim that "the debate's over." In a related column available at The Atlasphere, Stossel noted:

If you must declare a debate over, then maybe it’s not. And if you have to gussy up your agenda as “our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level,” then it deserves some skeptical examination.

Stossel pointed out that Gore's film overstates the predicted sea level rise by an order of magnitude or more, that polar bear populations aren't threatened, as Gore claims, but stable or increasing, and that Gore's dramatic picture of an historic correlation between CO2 levels and temperature concealed the fact that warming always came before a rise in CO2 levels. He had other questions, too:

If it’s all man’s fault, why did the Arctic go through a warm period early last century? Why did Greenland’s temperatures rise 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they are rising now?

The media rarely ask such questions.

Stossel wanted to ask Gore these and other questions, but the Goracle refused.  

Stossel also spoke with some of the scientists who've been marginalized by Gore and his acolytes, ignored by the press, and in some cases even threatened. They made it clear that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) isn't the impartial body of scientists that it's portrayed to be by the media. Members were carefully selected by the governments involved, and many aren't even scientists, they're activists.

If you've looked into this issue as I have, none of this is news to you. But Stossel does a fine job of briefly and clearly raising these issues in a way that may cause open-minded viewers to question some of the conventional wisdom. The 8-minute video is well worth watching and sharing with your friends and family: 

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More bad sports news

Posted by Richard on October 30, 2007

The Broncos failed to turn the corner tonight. That's a pun, sort of. I remember when the Broncos signed Dré Bly, people were talking about how awesome the Broncos' pass defense would be. Bly and Champ Bailey are widely acknowledged to be the two best cornerbacks in the NFL, and among the best corners ever to play the game. Some fans salivated over how many INTs the two of them would collect, while others speculated that opponents wouldn't even try to throw deep against them.

Bret Favre burned each of the super corners for a long TD. The second, against Bly, went for 82 yards and ended the shortest overtime in NFL history — one play, 15 seconds, Packers win. 

But really, the Broncos blew this game in regulation. As time was winding down, they failed to punch it into the end zone for the umpteenth time this season. Trailing by 3 with the ball on the five, 3rd and 2 with 20-some seconds to play and no time outs, Cutler ran for the first down — one of the stupidest plays ever.

Fortunately, the kicking team was able to pull off another miracle and line up in record time, and Elam tied the game with no time on the clock. But why, oh why, not try another pass into the end zone? The one on 2nd down to Marshall just barely failed. Assuming you don't screw up and throw an interception, at worst an incomplete pass stops the clock and makes the field goal a little less iffy. At best, you win the game.

And if they'd won in regulation and avoided the overtime, they'd have avoided the embarrassment of having the whole Broncos organization convinced that Green Bay would run on first down when Mike McCarthy and Bret Favre had other plans. 

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Good news, bad news

Posted by Richard on October 29, 2007

First, the good news: Football fans attending the Broncos-Packers game Monday night at Mile High won't face the traffic nightmare that had been predicted for downtown Denver.

Now, the bad news: The hoped-for traffic nightmare isn't going to materialize because 50,000 fewer people will be heading for downtown Monday evening. There won't be a Game 5 of the World Series. The Red Sox swept the Rockies.

Bummer. But a great year for the Rockies nonetheless. They won the pennant in near-miraculous fashion, at one point just one strike from elimination. They can be proud of how far they came this year, and they're a young team.

The storybook ending will just have to wait. 

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Vols come back, Rockies don’t

Posted by Richard on October 28, 2007

I admit it — I gave up on the Rockies trailing 6-0 and switched to the Tennessee – South Carolina game. I'm glad I did. The Vols led 21-0 at halftime, but completely collapsed in the second half, giving up 24 unanswered points. Trailing by 3 with a minute and change to play, they sucked it up, got within field goal range (barely), and freshman kicker Dan Lincoln tied the game from 48 yards out. In overtime, they scored another field goal from 27, and then held the Gamecocks. The 40-yard field goal to tie was wide, and the Vols had a critical win to keep their conference hopes alive.

Back to the Rockies. It looked hopeful when they made it 6-5, but once again the pitching just wasn't up to the job. Seeing the hand writing on the wall, I started drinking heavily in the 8th. Rum and Fresca, my low-cal fave.

Sox win 10-5, take 3-0 lead. Details are in your morning paper. Bummer. Time for a nightcap. Or two. Buffalo Trace, a damn fine bourbon:

Light bronze in color with streaks of gold, Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey bears a complex aroma of vanilla, mint, and molasses. Its taste is pleasantly sweet and contains notes of brown sugar and spice that give way to oak and leather. The long and dry finish has significant depth. When enjoyed with water, flavors of toffee, dark fruit and anise are revealed.

How 'bout them Vols?

UPDATE: Line of the night, from a hometown fan at a local watering hole: "Even if they [Rockies] lose, we still get to live here, and they have to live in Boston." I'll drink to that. 

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Islamofascism awareness

Posted by Richard on October 26, 2007

I completely forgot that this was Islamofascism Awareness Week, featuring speeches and other events on college campuses across the country. It's sponsored by David Horowitz's Terrorism Awareness Project. Participants included Horowitz, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq, Tammy Bruce, Daniel Pipes, Cyrus Nowrasteh, and Nonie Darwish.

On many campuses, the leftists took time out from supporting feminism, GLBT issues, tolerance, and peace to ally themselves with the most mysogynistic, homophobic, intolerant, and violent religio-political movement on the planet in an effort to silence discussion and criticism of that movement.

At Emory University, they succeeded. The university administration chose not to remove the protesters, implicitly stating that their freedom to "speak" (i.e., shout, harass, and disrupt) trumped scheduled speaker David Horowitz's freedom to speak (and the rights of those who came to hear him). So the lecture was terminated and police escorted Horowitz away. 

At other campuses, they tried, but failed. Horowitz was allowed to talk at George Washington, mainly because the conservative Young America's Foundation was in charge of the event and controlled ticket distribution. So folks like these had to protest across the street instead of attacking the stage:

 jihad klan

 The 1389 Blog has lots of info and links about the left's censorship efforts on various campuses. Incorrect University is chock full of related entries, with lots of video clips. Including a Democratic Party strategist defending the leftists who forcibly silence opposing viewpoints as "people who are desperate to having their voice heard." Yeah, right, because leftist ideas are never given a chance to be heard on college campuses.

Muslims Against Sharia commented on Nonie Darwish's appearance at Berkeley (emphasis in original):

… As usual, Islamofascists and their Dhimmi supporters have shown their unwavering resolve to crush any type of dissent. One the members of the "Students for Justice in Palestine" claimed that the purpose of the "Islamofascism Awareness Week" is to reinvigorate anti-Muslim and anti-Arab campaign. Given the fact that the speaker, Nonie Darwish, is both Muslim by birth and Arab it truly shows the depth of brainwashing on campus.

Not only that, but Darwish is from Gaza, so she's Palestinian, too. But to the left, only radical Islamists are authentic Muslims, only those who despise the West are authentic Arabs, and only crazed Jew-hating murderers are authentic Palestinians. 

The Dhimmi AwardIn recognition of the efforts by Berkeley's leftist students and faculty to defend Islamofascism, Muslims Against Sharia gave Berkeley The Dhimmi Award.

Muslims Against Sharia looks like a pretty fine group of people. Here's an excerpt from their manifesto:

Islam, in its present form, is not compatible with principles of freedom and democracy. Twenty-first century Muslims have two options: we can continue the barbaric policies of the seventh century perpetuated by Hassan al-Banna, Abdullah Azzam, Yassir Arafat, Ruhollah Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, etc., leading to a global war between Dar al-Islam (Islamic World) and Dar al-Harb (non-Islamic World), or we can reform Islam to keep our rich cultural heritage and to cleanse our religion from the reviled relics of the past. We, as Muslims who desire to live in harmony with people of other religions, agnostics, and atheists choose the latter option. We can no longer allow Islamic extremists to use our religion as a weapon. We must protect future generations of Muslims from being brainwashed by the Islamic radicals. If we do not stop the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, our children will become homicidal zombies.

Bravo, and best wishes to these brave Muslims. 

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Libertarian BDS

Posted by Richard on October 25, 2007

Last week, I noted yet another bad case of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS): in the run-up to the SCHIP veto override vote, California Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark declared that we're sending troops to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement" and that "Bush just likes to blow things up."

A couple of days ago, under pressure from his own party and facing censure for violating House rules, Stark apologized. That greatly upset the anti-war crowd, including at least some libertarian elements. Megan McArdle noted that "anti-war libertarian flirtation with the Democratic party may be even shorter than I expected," to which commenter Paul Zrimsek replied wickedly: 

There's literally dozens of votes down the drain. And all to appease maybe a few million people who believe Congressmen shouldn't behave like jerks.

McArdle's post linked to an angry rant by Jim Henley at the libertarian Unqualified Offerings (emphasis added):

Here’s the thing to realize: Pete Stark is a powerful guy. I won’t argue that he’s one of the Secret Masters of the World or anything, but California’s most senior Congressman, ranking member on some powerful committees, has a lot more status and access than you or I do.

And his own party leadership joined their supposed minority opposition in rolling Pete Stark in his own shit. The message is clear. Whatever you want to call it – The War Party, the Beltway Consensus, the institutional structure of contemporary American politics, the Movement, whatever – will not brook consequential dissent. Individual congressmen aren’t that consequential, but they matter a lot more than anyone blogging.

“There are five thousand people in the world,” Mr. Van Arkady told Lauren Slaughter. The rest of the story is devoted to her discovery that she is not one of them. The last thing he tells her is, “You can still be killed.” Pete Stark probably isn’t one of the five thousand either. But he knows some of them. He’s too close to get away with loose talk. And he can still be killed, though it rarely comes to that, because it doesn’t have to.

If you like that over-the-top expression of BDS, check out some of the 100 or so comments, including this gem from co-blogger Thoreau:

So what’s in the file that they showed him? Dead girl? Live boy? Or is it just surveillance footage of his family, followed by statistics on brake failures in the model car that his kid drives? Or a document showing some problems on a tax return, followed by data on prison rape?

These people are not just deranged, they're remarkably stupid, too. Why would the Republicans coerce Stark into apologizing? Crazed, offensive remarks like that by your opponents are a gift that keeps on giving — for fundraising, motivating your base, putting other Democrats on the spot, … Republicans were probably hoping that Stark would make more such outrageous statements.

Later, after feeling the wrath of McArdle's "minions," Thoreau (and then Henley) walked it back a bit, acknowledging that Stark's apology wasn't necessarily coerced by Republican physical threats or blackmail (heck, it could have been Democratic threats or blackmail — they're all part of the same "ruling consensus"). But in acknowledging that he may have been "too paranoid," Thoreau tossed off the phrase "if both parties view it as beyond the pale to call the Emperor for what he is" — thus asserting that Stark was "speaking truth to power" when he claimed that soldiers die and things are blown up for Bush's amusement.

If that's not a serious outbreak of BDS, I don't know what is. I don't even want to venture into the comments accompanying those two newer posts. 

I can certainly sympathize with the plight of Stephen Green, who tore up his Libertarian Party membership card without finding anything with which to replace it.

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Game 1 of the World Series

Posted by Richard on October 25, 2007

No, I don't want to talk about it.

Hey, did you see CSI: New York tonight? That was an interesting cyberworld story. A contract killer murdered a girl who was popular in Second Life in order to assume her online identity, and then used it to lure the congressman she was hired to kill. Pretty entertaining.

And the ending wasn't a blowout. 

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Hurdle delivers smackdown

Posted by Richard on October 24, 2007

For the umpteenth time in the past week, some brain-dead schlub of a sports reporter today asked Rockies manager Clint Hurdle to speculate about how harmful the team's eight-day layoff before the World Series was. This time, Hurdle had the perfect response: "We will not apologize for winning quickly."

Pow! 

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Bad news for Democrats, good news for Iraq

Posted by Richard on October 24, 2007

The Democrats' ongoing effort to declare defeat in Iraq has suffered another setback with yet more confirmation that the Petraeus Plan is working well:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilize the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

Of course, this is Reuters, so reporter Aseel Kami felt compelled to insert a bit of random, pointless buzzkill: 

The ministry released the new figures as bomb blasts in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul killed five people and six gunmen died in clashes with police in the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala south of the Iraqi capital.

Imagine the previous sentence rewritten by someone not rooting for the other side: 

"The ministry released the new figures as two new office buildings were dedicated in Dohuk and Erbil International Airport announced expansion plans to accommodate the growing number of direct flights from Vienna, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Stockholm, Dubai, and other European and Asian commercial centers."

Critics would object, "that's propagandizing!" Exactly. And that's what Aseel Kami's version is, too. Ah, well, what else is new?

It looks like the Democrats' latest attempt to undermine the war effort isn't succeeding, either. They sought to anger Turkey (whose bases and support the U.S. and Iraq badly need) by bringing up an alleged Ottoman Empire genocide from 90 years ago (while doing nothing about genocide today in Darfur and increasing the likelihood of genocide tomorrow in Iraq).

At first, it appeared to be working. The Turks became angry at us and threatened consequences. Soon, they were rattling their sabers regarding the long-standing problem of terrorist attacks into Turkey by the PKK, hiding out in rugged northwestern Iraq. Now, it seems that all sides have agreed that the PKK are murderous communist scum who in no way represent the interests of democratic Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran:

Iraq today vowed to do all it could to disrupt the activities of PKK fighters sheltering in its northern border region with Turkey as international pressure intensified on Ankara and Baghdad to find a way of avoiding a Turkish invasion.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's Kurdish foreign minister, said after talks in Baghdad with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babacan, that both Iraq's central government and the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) in the north were committed to reining in the PKK.

"We will actively help Turkey to overcome this menace," said Mr Zebari. He said Iraq would send a security and political delegation to Turkey for more talks, and promised full cooperation with the Turkish government "to solve the border problems and the terrorism that Turkey is facing through direct dialogue."

This isn't surprising to anyone who read what Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (a Kurd) said a couple of days ago:

In a speech that I recently made in Al-Sulaymaniyah, I openly stated that the Kurds do not believe that the PKK's military acts in Turkey or Iran can serve the Kurdish people's interests. Indeed they undermine their interests. We believe that armed action hurts democracy in Turkey and hurts Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party [AKP]. This party is a new democratic feature that wishes to build a new Turkish society that makes room for Turkey's Kurds and the other ethnic groups in the country.

The AKP recognizes the existence of a Kurdish people and a Kurdish cause. It adopts a friendly attitude towards using the Kurdish language in the media. Furthermore the recent parliamentary elections were free in the Kurdish areas and led to the election of patriotic Kurdish deputies to parliament. The AKP won more than 60 percent of the Kurdish vote, which means that they are happy with it. This means that carrying out armed actions against this party serves only chauvinist forces in Turkey.

Regarding the presence of PKK combatants in Iraq, our constitution clearly forbids the continued presence of foreign armed forces on Iraqi territory or using such forces to launch armed attacks on neighboring countries. …

I wish to state that we are willing to operate within the tripartite committee with Turkey and the United States to put an end to the PKK's activities in Iraqi Kurdistan and to confine them to the Qandil Mountains [in Turkey]. At any rate we do not want to allow them to benefit from the current situation.

Apparently, The New York Times was paying no attention to Talabani's remarks or Babacan's visit to Iraq, or to the Kurdistan Regional Government's unambiguous condemnation of violence and terrorism and commitment to democracy, peace, and friendly relations with its neighbors. Either because they're behind the curve or just determined to ignore anything remotely positive, the NYT editors eagerly embraced doom and gloom today (emphasis added): 

The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse. Now Turkey is threatening to send troops across the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases, after guerrillas killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers. This latest crisis should have come as no surprise. But it is one more widely predicted problem the Bush administration failed to plan for before its misguided invasion — and one more problem it urgently needs to deal with as part of a swift and orderly exit from Iraq.

Since I'm not a highly-paid editor with a Columbia j-school degree, it's not immediately apparent to me how we urgently deal with the PKK problem as part of a swift and orderly exit from Iraq. Is the NYT suggesting that American troops depart overland to the north and west? 

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Nothing beats SEC football

Posted by Richard on October 21, 2007

If you stayed with that lopsided ALCS game, you missed one hell of a football game on ESPN. There's nothing better than SEC football, as demonstrated again tonight by LSU and Auburn. The second half was tremendous, and LSU's final-second, come-from-behind victory? Well, you just had to see it to believe it.

.
.
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No, I don't want to talk about the Tennessee-Bama game. 

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Texter hits train

Posted by Richard on October 19, 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving up I-25 minding my own business when the car to my left started to drift into my lane. I leaned on the horn and slowed down. The other car recovered and remained in his lane, but through the rear window, I could see that the driver was holding his cell phone at the top of the steering wheel and punching keys without pause.

That was the first time I became aware — because of the close call — of the "texting while driving" phenomenon. Now conscious of it, I've since noticed a couple of other instances. So far, thank goodness, I haven't seen the level of distraction exhibited by texter Robert Gillespie of Eugene, Oregon. He ran into the side of a freight train that he failed to notice while texting. 

As a libertarian, I'm convinced we have far too many laws and regulations. But I've long argued, semi-tongue-in-cheek, that there's a case to be made for a "misdemeanor stupidity" statute for behavior that's just too dumb to tolerate. This "texting while driving" crap makes me wonder if there should be a "felony stupidity" category as well.

What's going on here? Are we breeding common sense and even the drive for self-preservation out of the gene pool? This is stupid squared, it's apparently astonishingly common, and it gets people killed.

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SharePoint Embraces Web 2.0

Posted by Richard on October 19, 2007

This news probably means nothing to you if you don't work in a corporate environment where people are struggling with (and sometimes arguing over) a multiplicity of tools for collecting and sharing information. But if you do, and especially if Microsoft's SharePoint figures into your workday, this news from yesterday might be of interest:

Today Microsoft is announcing two strategic partnerships, with enterprise software company Atlassian and RSS solutions vendor NewsGator. The partnerships link togther Microsoft's SharePoint product with Atlassian's wiki collaboration product Confluence and a new offering from Newsgator called 'NewsGator Social Sites', a collection of site templates, profiles, Web parts and middleware for SharePoint. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a key product for Microsoft – it has collaboration, business intelligence, content management, search and "social computing" capabilities (Microsoft's term for 'web 2.0', according to this page on Microsoft's website).

The aim of the partnerships is to add more "social computing platform" capabilities to SharePoint, which up till now has mainly been promoted as an "enterprise productivity platform". In other words, Microsoft is adding more web 2.0 functionality (e.g. collaboration, personal publishing) to SharePoint, using best of breed web products from Atlassian and Newsgator.

I haven't used Confluence, but I'm familiar with several other wikis. The wiki concept is neat, and they're great for notes, informal documentation, or random nuggets of information linked loosely to each other. But unless someone with free time and organizational skills is managing them, they tend to become just big piles of stuff. SharePoint, OTOH, imposes structure and is good for managing more formal documents, especially MS Office files, but it's not exactly ideal as a low-overhead way of creating, sharing, and updating rapidly changing information.

Atlassian's SharePoint Connector plug-in for Confluence sounds pretty cool — linking and content-sharing between the two (so much integration that you can edit a Word doc in Confluence), a personal wiki and blog for every SharePoint user, and a single search mechanism for the whole mess. The latter, if it's a good search tool, is a big deal. One big headache with multiple information stores is finding things.

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SCHIP override fails, BDS worsens

Posted by Richard on October 18, 2007

The House this morning failed to override the President's veto of a Democratic bill mandating a massive 140% expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) — which, despite the name, is a federally-funded program that covers many adults (adults are the majority in some states), and despite the tear-jerking tales of poverty and need, has replaced private insurance for many families with incomes of $60,000, $70,000, or more.

But before the vote, Rep. Pete Stark exhibited yet more serious symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome (Michelle Malkin has a video clip), which is becoming increasingly virulent and appears to be completely resistant to treatment (emphasis added):

A longtime war critic, Stark said the president couldn't find $35 billion to expand SCHIP but at the same time had requested an extra $200 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq.

"Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old, enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement," Stark said.

"President Bush's statements about children's health shouldn't be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress. I urge my colleagues to vote to override his veto," he continued.

The President, meanwhile, despite six years of evidence to the contrary, still clung to his childlike faith that if he just showed enough compassion by throwing money at Democratic causes, people like Pete Stark would grow to like him. Bush originally proposed "only" a 20% expansion of the SCHIP program, which led to accusations of child murder. Now, he says he's ready to negotiate a "compromise" bill with the Democrats. I suppose that means expanding the program somewhere between 20% and 140%. 

Given today's muddled moral and intellectual climate, I suppose it's fruitless to insist that a State Children's Health Insurance Program, if it must exist, ought to exist — and be funded — at the state level.

But the President just won the initial fight over SCHIP, despite a huge, multi-million-dollar advertising and PR campaign by Democrats and their supporters. If he had any cojones or commitment to the principles of fiscal responsibility and limited government that his party supposedly represents, he'd counter-offer with a bill cutting funding by 20% and limiting coverage to children only, and to households in the bottom two quintiles of household income (lower and lower middle classes). Or at least the bottom half of household income — jeez, that's not exactly harsh!

If you own a $300,000 home, commercial property, a Volvo SUV, a Suburban, and an F250 pickup, you should have been buying your own damn insurance. 

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Atlas at 50

Posted by Richard on October 17, 2007

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was published fifty years ago this month, and naturally, The Atlasphere remembered. Read Yaron Brook's column about how influential the novel has been, but why it hasn't changed the world as much as it could — or should. Brook noted that last year Atlas Shrugged sold over 130,000 copies — more than when it was first published.

Then, if you're a film fan who likes Rand, read Bob Bidinotto's long and revealing feature piece about Atlas the movie. The news is terrific, with what sounds like a great screenplay, producers, director, and cast. Bidinotto's bottom line:

I want to emphasize this as strongly as I can: These people are all absolutely committed to doing a great film, faithful to Rand’s story, characters, and ideas.

At long last, I really think this film will be made — and in a way that Ayn Rand would have liked.

Shooting is scheduled to begin early next year, and the film should be in theaters in 2009. 

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