Boca Town Center Mall a Crime Magnet?

Boca Raton's giant Town Center Mall is now being abandoned by shoppers as the Simon Security & Boca Police have abandoned customer safety in the past.

Two years ago a "gentleman" Rolex bandit stalked the mall & robbed customers in a low-key style until he was arrested. Then last August, a youngish mom was jumped in her car in the parking lots---which are diminishing rapidly as new extensions of the mall appropriate more parking space---forced at gunpoint to drive to an ATM, then forced to hand over $600 to the bandit, who tied her & her two-year old child in a neck-wrist hog-tie mode. The media & police did not take the crime seriously, and my daughter happened to hear about it only because one of her friends worked at the mall.

This coverup of the August crime is inexcusable. The fact that Simon & the Boca police dept. did not take seriously the woman's testimony that she & her two-year old had been abducted demonstrates a callous disregard for public safety.

As it happened, my home in the Colonnade was robbed by five Jamaicans in May of last year. They were also traced to Overtown [I believe] by Det. Horowitz, who did a great job in apprehending the gang leader.

The roofers at the time working across from our pool were Jamaican & I told the police that our house & an adjacent one robbed a few days later were a result of the Jamaican roofers---I saw one pointing to the house that was subsequently robbed & talking excitedly while unnoticed doing pool exercises.

Result---no follow-up of the Boca police was done on that, even though we took the license number of the W.Palm Beach truck & phone # of the firm & offered it to the investigators.

The roofers were working for about a month and a rash of robberies broke out in the Colonnade.

I knew they were Jamaican [I heard their argot from the pool on several occasions] as were the robbers of my house, whom I caught flagrante delicto. Again, Det. Horowitz DID care about the robbery, unlike the Boca police.

As a result, I & my wife & daughter are out of $4000 in coins & jewelry & iPods & other tech stuff. They left my wedding ring on the floor.

The fellow was sentenced last month to a few months in jail. I was told there is no way to get our property back except to sue the delinquent Jamaican kid.

Boca Raton detectives were good, but the other police were lackadaisical and dismissed my complaints.

Our neighbor who was robbed a couple of days after us moved out to another more safe jurisdiction....!

Between the Boca cops & Palm Beach courts, we are regarded as a nuisance if we are a victim of a robbery or mugging.

South Florida is a bit of paradise, but the serpent lurks in every tree.

MSM Consigns Edwards Mystery to Memory Hole

Rielle Hunter again exits stage left as John Edwards continues his Teflon progress to the primaries. If this were a Republican candidate, dozens of reporters would vie for more details.

I'm reminded of Oscar Wilde's response to a fellow author who asked about what to do about a "conspiracy of silence" concerning his candidacy for a literary prize.

Oscar's pithy advice: "Join it."

However, if Edwards manages to survive the pre-Super Tuesday rush to judgment, this vignette should be examined more closely, as he already appears to be hypocritical far beyond the normal two-faced norm of major candidates!

UPDATE: Oops, Mickey Kaus has a characteristically brilliant sum-up of the overarching Weltanshauungs in conflict in the USA, as propounded in Room Eight by Jerry Skurnik. The gist in a few well-chosen words is that there are two electorates, the rabid liberal "intelligentsia" now whipped into daily frenzies by blogs, and the stay-at-home Joe Six-Packers who couldn't care less. The MSM used to provide fodder for the former, the latter were affected by union leaders & bread and butter issues. Now "Rielle Hunter" is the most "hit upon" google site at MSN, yet no MSM will mention her name---nada, rien, kein, etc. Check the two links for adjectival assurances.

Really Rielle will bubble to the surface again, as her tummy gets deep into the third trimester. And inquiring minds will continue to sleuth it out, no matter how hard the suits at NYT, Time Inc, Newsweak, & the alphabet networks & cables play the triple monkey denial routine.

Putin's Real Hero May be Stalin

Time 's Man of the Year issue has an interesting article by Simon Sebag Montefiore concerning Putin & the long-time Russian historical tradition of "autocracy tempered by assassination."

History lives in Russia. Stalin was obsessed with history and based part of his style on the brutal Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. "The Russian people need tsardom," Stalin said. When he walked around the Kremlin, he reflected, "Ivan once walked here." Now Stalin has become the best barometer of Russian leadership style. New state textbooks hail Stalin as "the most successful Russian leader ever" and a state builder along the lines of Peter the Great and Bismarck.

Putin has one unexpected connection to the past: his grandfather was a chef who cooked for Rasputin, Lenin and Stalin. Half of Stalin's huge library, with marginal notes in his red crayon, remains in Putin's office, and when he is bored, it is said, he takes down a book and discusses the notes with his visitors. Ironically, Stalin the Marxist—born a Georgian cobbler's son—has become the icon and prototype of the strong Russian Tsar, the hero of a resurgent, capitalist Russia.

Reassuring, isn't it?

The Guardian has another reassuring article on Vlad the Empoisoner [another trick he picked up from Stalin & Beria, who inherited their poisoning traditions from when the Iranian Shahs ruled Georgia and imparted their own Borgia/Medici/SunKingatVersailles court poisoning tradition to that distant satrapy in the 18th century. Now lil Vlad has Polonium 210 to work with!] who has amassed a fortune making him Europe's wealthiest man:

According to Panfilova, the "randomised" corruption of the 1990s has given way to the "systemic and institutionalised corruption" of the Putin era. Members of Putin's cabinet personally control the most important sectors of the economy - oil, gas and defence. Medvedev is chairman of Gazprom; Sechin runs Rosneft; other ministers are chairmen of Russian railways, Aeroflot, a nuclear fuel giant and an energy transport enterprise.

Putin has created a new, more streamlined oligarchy, his critics say. "The crown jewels of the country's wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin's inner circle," Vladimir Rzyhkov - a former independent MP - wrote in Monday's Moscow Times.

Before his death, Tolstoy famously predicted that Soviet Communism would generate "Genghis Khan with a telephone." Stalin certainly lived up [or down] to that prediction, killing more than 40 million Russians through ideology and incompetence.

Vladimir Putin appears to be Peter the Great with a portfolio. Oh yes, and a pharmacopeia to deal with his enemies that glows in the dark!

US Women's Fecundity Increases

ABC News reports that America's moms are reproducing at a rate well above that of other advanced industrialized nations. Much higher than Italy and Russia. The US has a reproductive rate of 2.1 per family [or mother per lifetime] as opposed to 1 in Italy & .33 in Russia. Even without cash & tax incentives, which many EU countries supply, US moms are ensuring that by 2040, there will be 400 million Americans, as opposed to about 110 million Russians. Wonder who won the Cold War now?


AEI has more stats and an interesting paragraph on "American Exceptionalism:"

Given the almost gravitational pull of social aging and population decline on Western population profiles during the coming generations, one of the most surprising findings of the UNPD report is how very resistant the United States looks to these common trends. America’s demography looks very different from that of other developed countries—thus, in important respects, America may not share their demographic future.

For a developed country, America’s fertility levels today are remarkably high. Apart from tiny Iceland, the estimated total U.S. fertility rate in the late 1990s was actually the highest in the developed world: just over 2 births per woman per lifetime, versus an average of 1.4 births per lifetime for the rest of the grouping. America’s changing ethnic composition (according to the Census Bureau, Hispanic-Americans now equal African-Americans in total numbers) accounts for part of this difference—but only part. "Non-Hispanic white" American women are currently having 1.7 births per lifetime.

By both historical tradition and current practice, the United States is favorably disposed toward immigration: In the late 1990s, America took in almost half of all the newcomers absorbed by the developed countries. Thanks to these twin characteristics—relatively high fertility and relatively high levels of immigration—the United States is set to chart a different course from the rest of the Western world in the decades ahead.

For one thing, America’s population, while aging, is nonetheless likely to remain distinctly younger than the rest of the West’s. The UNPD’s "medium" scenario illustrates the point: In 2050, median age in America would be about forty-one years (it’s currently thirty-six)—but in the rest of the West, it would be over forty-nine years. No other now-developed country would have such a young populace: In fact, in these projections America’s age profile would be far closer to that of the future Mexico than that of the future Europe. If social aging is a worry, the United States will have to worry that much less.

Unlike the rest of the West, moreover, the United States is poised for continued population growth over the coming decades. Again, the "medium" scenario is illustrative: Where other developed countries as a group shrink by 15 percent between now and 2050, the United States grows by about 40 percent—more than any other now-developed nation.

Today America is the world’s third largest country; fifty years from now, in the UNPD’s "medium" scenario, it is still third (after only India and China). But the relative balance between the United States and other areas would also shift in some interesting directions. There are now two Americans for every Russian. In 2050, the ratio would be four to one—and there would also be almost four Americans for every Japanese. Even if the current membership of the European Union were to form a single state, its projected 2050 population would be significantly smaller than America’s. To the extent that population matters in international affairs, America’s demographic prospects would seem to support—or even enhance—U.S. global influence in the years ahead.

Of course, the ABC TV story had to have the obligatory bleat by a skeletor look-alike named Paul Ehrlich moaning than these children will buy cars and otherwise participate in a capitalist economy---contributing to global warming and God-knows what else. Ehrlich had that eunuch look of die-hard lefties & lifetime loo-zers.

Thankfully, Death-warmed-over urban degenerates like Ehrlich do not represent the mass of American people---whose collective wisdom Bill Clinton used to sing the praises of incessantly, until they voted in the Republicans.

Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax/Scam Debunked by 400 prominent scientists

The elaborate Leftist Takeover Attempt of capitalist economies is shredded by a Senate Committee Research Paper presenting dissenting voices among many prominent scientists to the scam being promoted by socialist wannabe nanny-state economic tsars. Evidently the ultimate goal is to tax the very air we breathe, if we are in an economically successful [i.e. capitalist] economy.

Examples of “consensus” claims made by promoters of man-made climate fears:

Former Vice President Al Gore (November 5, 2007): “There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat.” (LINK) Gore also compared global warming skeptics to people who 'believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona' (June 20, 2006 - LINK)

CNN’s Miles O’Brien (July 23, 2007): The scientific debate is over.” “We're done." O’Brien also declared on CNN on February 9, 2006 that scientific skeptics of man-made catastrophic global warming “are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually.” (LINK)

On July 27, 2006, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein described a scientist as “one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.” (LINK)

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC view on the number of skeptical scientists as quoted on Feb. 20, 2003: “About 300 years ago, a Flat Earth Society was founded by those who did not believe the world was round. That society still exists; it probably has about a dozen members.” (LINK)

Agence France-Press (AFP Press) article (December 4, 2007): The article noted that a prominent skeptic “finds himself increasingly alone in his claim that climate change poses no imminent threat to the planet.”

Andrew Dessler in the eco-publication Grist Magazine (November 21, 2007): “While some people claim there are lots of skeptical climate scientists out there, if you actually try to find one, you keep turning up the same two dozen or so (e.g., Singer, Lindzen, Michaels, Christy, etc., etc.). These skeptics are endlessly recycled by the denial machine, so someone not paying close attention might think there are lots of them out there -- but that's not the case. (LINK)

The Washington Post asserted on May 23, 2006 that there were only “a handful of skeptics” of man-made climate fears. (LINK)

UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland on May 10, 2007 declared the climate debate "over" and added “it's completely immoral, even, to question” the UN’s scientific “consensus." (LINK)

ABC News Global Warming Reporter Bill Blakemore reported on August 30, 2006: “After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate” on global warming. (LINK)

The Complete Senate Report is interesting and instructive to any sincere seeker after the truth of global climate change, its causes and real dimensions.

The grunts of religious maniacs like Al Gore and Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland [with whom I had lunch while I was working for Amoco Corporation] to the contrary notwithstanding, Dr. Richard Feynman was correct when he said that the scientific community was in grave danger of being corrupted by "Cargo Cult Science."

UPDATE: More dissenting opinions on the AGW "consensus" a former US Vice President drones on about here.

Wish I had a Photo on-line of this specimen of Marketing Genius

Volokh Conspiracy has the ultimate multi-cultural take on religious observace---ala New York City.

Click on the link for the delicious surprise!!

Canadian Muslim Whiners Want to Muzzle Free Speech

NRO has a great piece by Stephen Kurtz on the ridiculous lawsuit against Macleans by some Muslim victimhood-purveyors.

Today, the Muslim law students who have lodged a human rights complaint against Maclean’s, have published an article defending themselves in Canada’s National Post. They claim to be believers in the marketplace of ideas, merely seeking a chance to respond to Mark Steyn. What they don’t say is that they have demanded the right to a cover story in Maclean’s, with full editorial control over content and art.

Imagine NR, after publishing, say, a cover story critical of Al Gore’s movie, being forced by a government body to allow Gore to write a cover story in rebuttal, with full editorial control. Imagine Gore running his legal case against NR for free, while NR is forced to shoulder court costs. And don’t forget that Canada’s Human Rights Commissions have the ability to compel apologies. Imagine NR’s editors being forced by a government body to apologize to Al Gore for refusing to give him control over their own magazine, or even for the content of one of their critical articles. Of course, the complainants against Maclean’s have nothing to say about these issues, all of which have been sharply raised by their so-called human rights case. Actually, Maclean’s already has published a rebuttal to Steyn by Canadian Muslims. It’s called "Mark Steyn has a right to be wrong."

The Canadian Human Rights Commission is an Oprahfied nanny-state abomination that calls words the same as sticks='n=stones & is a farcical precursor of what left-wing Democrats want to infect the USA with---a bunch of "hate crime" legal entities whose real long-term target is the First Amendment, but the short-term goal is shutting off conservative talk radio whose provocative criticism of left-wing flimflammery so enrages the agitpreppie ultra-left. Here is the U.S. State Dept on the anti-democratic tendencies in the Great White North:

Canada Restricts Freedom of Speech.--

The U.S. Department of State reports on human rights activities in foreign countries, including Canada.

The March 6, 2007 report on Canada is quite matter-of-fact in disclosing limits on freedom of speech:

Freedom of Speech and Press . . .

The Supreme Court has ruled that the government may limit free speech in the name of goals such as ending discrimination, ensuring social harmony, or promoting gender equality. It also has ruled that the benefits of limiting hate speech and promoting equality are sufficient to outweigh the freedom of speech clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is the country's bill of rights incorporated in the country's constitution. . . .

Inciting hatred (in certain cases) or genocide is a criminal offense, but the Supreme Court has set a high threshold for such cases, specifying that these acts must be proven to be willful and public. The Broadcasting Act prohibits programming containing any abusive comment that would expose individuals or groups to hatred or contempt. Provincial-level film censorship, broadcast licensing procedures, broadcasters' voluntary codes curbing graphic violence, and laws against hate literature and pornography also impose some restrictions on the media.

A 2001 Report on Human Rights in Canada trumpeted how much easier it is to bring a human rights complaint to a Human Rights Commission than to a regular court:

Canada’s domestic human rights protections can be divided into two categories:

1) traditional civil liberties and due process rights, fundamental freedoms, and political rights, which consist essentially of constraints on governmental and legislative action; and

2) anti-discrimination laws, which prohibit discrimination on various grounds in society generally, and which apply to both public and private actors.

The application of the first category of domestic human rights protections is largely entrusted to the courts. The second category of rights, by contrast, is at least in the first instance enforced by specialized administrative bodies (i.e., the various human rights commissions).

Both the ordinary courts and the human rights commissions offer adjudication on individual complaints regarding human rights violations as well as various judicially enforceable remedies where violations are made out. However, in theory at least, the human rights commission model offers a number of advantages over the traditional courts. Typically, human rights commissions:

·are comprised of persons with expertise in human rights;

·have a broader institutional mandate, which includes promotion of and public education about human rights;

·are more accessible to complainants (they have less formal procedures and, more importantly, if they accept the complaint, the commissions will usually investigate and pursue it on behalf of the complainant);

·can initiate their own reviews of policies and practices, even where no complaint has been filed, and can issue public reports accordingly; and

·are obliged to report regularly to Parliament or to the provincial or territorial legislature, as the case may be, not only on their own operations, but also on the state of human rights in their respective jurisdictions.

I contend that the mushy US left pushing the soft "multicultural" agenda is actually concealing a real threat to American democracy, if the way it is enforced begins to resemble the Canadian model to the north.

Clinton Inc Attack on Obama Intensifies

The New York Times is one of the Clinton mafia's strongest support groups, and is combining with [C]linton [N]ews [N]etwork to shoot down the only viable opponent she has in Iowa.

Her loathesome hubby is out and about stepping on her positive messages, but the fellow who coined the phrase "politics of personal destruction" demonstrates now that he was projecting his own political methods when using that against his Repub opposition.

In fact, any opposition is anathema to this pair of entitlement barons as they careen down their career path towards what may be a bad end.

Jake Tapper at ABCNews has the latest invention in the Clinton arsenal of nastiness.
The first-ever website dedicated exclusively to attacking a single opponent---votingpresent.com---is supposed to represent the superiority of a dynasty that claimed "I smoked marijuana, but I didn't inhale."

Watch how this plays out, as it could be the end of the J.R. Ewing of national politics and his spouse.

Colossal Phony Hypocrite Edwards to be Outed Again?

Mickey Kaus has an interesting take on the VERY pregnant Rielle Hunter:

What to expect when you're expecting: Drudge teases the National Enquirer ... Update: The Enquirer posts the gist..... One initial point: There's no reason to conclude this story was planted by one campaign or another. I'm familiar with how the initial Rielle Hunter/Edwards rumors, true or not, got to at least one news outlet--and no campaigns, Dem or GOP, were involved. It was a story going around--I'd been hearing it for months. Not all rumors are plants. And some are true. Even in the Enquirer. .. P.S.: Here's an earlier analysis of the potential effect of this scandal on Edwards--and Hillary. It doesn't seem all that complicated. Until recently, Edwards not very subtly put his wife's illness. and his loyalty to her, near the center of his campaign. In the process, he said:
Click Here!

In so many ways, you're the guardians of what kind of human being, we're going to have as president. ... And you get to judge us.

and, on 60 Minutes:

[E]very single candidate for president, Republican and Democratic have lives, personal lives, that indicate something about what kind of human being they are. And I think it is a fair evaluation for America to engage in to look at what kind of human beings each of us are, and what kind of president we'd make.

Backfill: Here's Jerome Armstrong's initial Rielle Hunter denial ("completely unfounded and ridiculous") ...

Update: Many readers report the story has disappeared from the Enquirer's web site. I don't know why, but you can't be too paranoid when Ron Burkle might be involved. (If it hurt Edwards, the story would potentially devastate Burkle's candidate Hillary, who needs Edwards to beat or dilute Obama in Iowa. That's why it's crazy to suggest that Hillary's camp planted it.)

Just in case, I've saved my cached copy. You can do it too!.

Yes, a last-minute Edwards debacle will redound to Obama and not Hillary.

Edwards appears to be finally demonstrating what a shallow ambulance chaser he is.

Anne Applebaum Spanks Saudis, then Spanks NOW

Gulag should be essential reading for all schools in the USA. Anne Applebaum's Pultizer Prize winning book on Stalin/Lenin's horrific system of slave labor camps demonstrates Socialism with a Kim Jung-Il twist.

But the Saudis' systematic downgrading of the status of women is hardly in line with Islamic traditions, though in backwaters like the Kingdom & Pakistan, this persecution prevails. Chalk it up to barbarism---honor killings in Canada show how irredeemably retarded elements of Islamic culture remain today.

But Anne goes on to castigate the self-absorbed morons at NOW:

Unlike American blacks, American women have not had to grapple with issues as basic as the right to study or vote for a long time. Instead, we have (fortunately) fought for less fundamental rights in recent decades, and our women's groups have of late (unfortunately) had the luxury of focusing on the marginal. The National Council of Women's Organizations' most famous recent campaign was against the Augusta National Golf Club. The Web site of the National Organization for Women (I hate to pick on that group, but it's so easy) has space for issues of "non-sexist car insurance" and "network neutrality," but not the Saudi rape victim or the girl murdered last week in Canada for refusing to wear a hijab.

The autism of the American womens' movements is well nigh narcissistic:

The reigning feminist ideology doesn't help: The philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers has written, among other things, that some American feminists, self-focused and reluctant to criticize non-Western cultures, have convinced themselves that "sexual terror" in America (a phrase from a real women's studies textbook) is more dangerous than actual terrorism. But the deeper problem is the gradual marginalization of "women's issues" in domestic politics, which has made them subordinate to security issues, or racial issues, in foreign policy as well.

Anne argues that NOW and other womens' organizations should expand their horizons:

American delegates to international and U.N. women's organizations are mostly identified with arguments about reproductive rights (for or against, depending on the administration), not arguments about the fundamental rights of women in Saudi Arabia or the Muslim world.

Let's move beyond the Andrea Dworkin screeching to some sort of balanced view of womens' rights around the world.

Time Magazine's top ten Top-10 lists

James Poniewozik has an amusing little thought about Top-10 Lists that reminded me why I have FARK on my blogroll:

If You Put Numbers on It, People Will Read Anything, However Trite, Trivial and Insipid, from Beginning to End.

Sarkosy Busts French Abstract Deconstructionism

Bill Clinton brought a little jesuitical French thinking into the American political vocabulary when he mused on how "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

Here is The Economist:

OF ALL the novelties of France under President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the more arresting is the decline of the abstract noun. In the past, no French leader would make a speech without liberal doses of destiny and history. In one speech Mr Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, squeezed 13 abstract nouns—unity, liberty, humanity and more—into a single sentence. He was almost outdone by his prime minister (and part-time poet), Dominique de Villepin, who came up with the declaration: “Globalisation is not an ideal, it cannot be our destiny.”

The contrast with the wordcraft of Mr Sarkozy is instructive. In his first big foreign-policy speech, he managed in 18 pages to utter neither the word glory nor the word grandeur. Unlike his British counterparts, who favour verbless sentences, Mr Sarkozy is a verbaholic. According to a linguistic analysis of his campaign speeches by Damon Mayaffre, of the University of Nice, one of Mr Sarkozy's most frequent words is I, usually followed by the verb want.

Anyone who has lived there and learned the language and the history of the country knows their love of mystification resembles getting high on their own farts.

Libération, a left-leaning newspaper, to ask, “Is jogging right-wing?” It even moved a philosopher, Alain Finkielkraut, to implore the president to take up the promenade—a “spiritual experience”—and to give up jogging, which is mere “body management”.

One doubts that Finkielkraut ever jogged, or got the endorphin high that rapid exercise gives an athlete. His dismissive tone reflects the other-worldly arrogance of an intellectual elite/class rapidly fading in France and hopefully about to do the same in the USA. More Economist musings on Sarkozy:

As for France's famously rigid school curriculum, he has little fondness for it. Too much time is spent, he has declared, “on doctrine, theory and abstraction”, and not enough on practical applications. How long will it be before he has a go at the national motto, a veritable wealth of abstraction: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?

Wellington famously observed that "the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." Let's hope France realizes that her true potential may be mens sana in corpore sano and that the Cafe class begins to roll up its sleeves and put its shoulder to the wheel.

UN Official Sobs as Bali-Hoo Encyclical Proclaimed

Son of Kyoto appears to be stillborn or at least a mutated offshoot with extra appendages and missing limbs. You can be sure the Pact is a hoax when certified whack-jobs say things like:

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn hailed the Bali deal as "an historic breakthrough" and a "huge step forward" in tackling climate change.

However, grown-ups sounded caution:

But Prime Minister Gordon Brown sounded a note of caution. "The Bali road map agreed today is just the first step," he said. "Now begins the hardest work."

Industrial Powerhouse Papua New Guinea rebuked the US delegate & said that he would lead the world in a save-the-planet crusade.

The moonbats were fluttering and squeaking noisily, but as the London Times link notes, most level-headed Greens [there are some] admitted that the entire exercise was probably just another farce, although the moronic US MSM got swept up in the hype & was proclaiming the dawn of the Age of Aquarius for a short while.

The most hilarious comment came from a nanny-stater as the nervous breakdown of Yvo de Boer was termed merely a soap-opera episode:

Political adviser Matthijs Spits said: "We Dutch can become quite emotional --surprisingly so for other nations who think we are cold."

Yeah, Matty boy. Other nations think you cheese-heads are a lot of things more ridiculous than "cold."

Princeton Student Beat Unconscious for Conservative Views

The Princeton Tory has a blog on a Junior at Princeton beaten for his conservative views.

These Ivy League thugs and hooligans remind one of the state of civil war after WWI in Germany when gangs of leftist and rightist toughs did battle in the streets. The violence actually may have convinced a young agitator named Adolph Hitler who was flirting with Socialist ideas to switch from Bolshevism to his own brand of "National Socialism," a brand of state-dirigisme not allied to the Trotskyite internationalism that toughs in Munich were advocating. Ben Hecht, an American journalist, actually rented a plane to fly some Bolshevik agitators from Berlin to Munich during a railroad strike---the leftists carried gold bullion, Hecht avers, to sponsor a series of violent uprisings subsequently put down by rightist gangs & a rightist government led by a German Field Marshal was installed instead.

The Princeton agitpreppies are obviously of the same stripe as their Bolshevik forebears. Of course, the Mainstream Media won't pick this up unless it is brought to court, or an intrepid radio talk-show host picks it up. Don't think O'Reilly or Hannity will touch this one.

As usual, any misdeeds on the Republican side or the right are trumpeted and exaggerated or, like Plamegate, made up of whole cloth and then turned into "process crimes."

Like Anthropogenic Global Warming, Leftist Hyperbole is peddled by using polls and spurious "science," without any apparent accountability.

One hopes that the transformation of our universities into propaganda factories will be halted before the academicide left completely destroys its credibility.
UPDATE:
lHilariously, the NYT refutes a story it never ran in the first place. Now if it were the other way around, you can bet a LIBERAL getting cold-cocked would be on the front page and the refutation would be below the fold on page 20-something.

But maybe we can use the Evan Thomas rule vis-a-vis Durham: the narrative was correct in principle, let's just say the facts didn't measure up to the story!

Robo-Love Will Change our Evolutionary Tastes?

John "Accelerating Evolution" Hawks has a great piece on how robots will succeed actual humans in the next half-century, as Honda and other Japanese firms speed up the technology.

I've been telling people this week that there is some sense to which the evolutionary future will be determined by the cultural impact of technological changes -- genetic engineering being the most prominent example.

Now comes this:

[T]here will soon come a day when people fall in love with robots and want them for companions, friends, love objects and possibly even partners for sex and marriage.

That day is imminent, [writer David] Levy writes, especially the sex part. By the middle of this century, he predicts, "love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans, while the number of sexual acts and lovemaking positions commonly practiced between humans will be extended, as robots teach more than is in all of the world’s published sex manuals combined."

Well, that's one more thing, isn't it? If you're more likely to fall in love with a robot, will you be less likely to have children? And if so, will that mean that over many generations, robot-revulsion genes will be selected?

I'll tell you what, if they make Haley Joel Osment-looking robot children, I'm already revulsed!

Or the Ashley Olson duo! You can have anorexic, bulemic, or even buff chiseled robots, but I'm sticking with flesh-and-blood Jessica Simpson clones!

Putin's Grandpa: Chef to Rasputin, Lenin, Stalin & Lil Vlad

Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote a book: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar which is a treasure trove of amazing factoids. Among the juicy footnotes is the taciturn Grandpa Putin, who was houseboy/chef to Rasputin in the Czar's regime, Lenin & Stalin in the Communist era, and perhaps fed his grandson, Tiny Vlad, tidbits before the young poisoner became president.

Again and again, Montefiore's book details the depravity and bloodlust just beneath the cozy Gemutlichkeit of the Kremlin's inner circle, as the wolves circle to get closer to Alpha-Predator Stalin, who becomes an avatar of his heroes Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, and surprisingly, the two Poison Shahs, Nadir Shah and Shah Abbas, who ruled Georgia in the 18th c. and taught the natives the black arts of venomous court intrigues.

In the words of The New Yorker:

Any biography of a tyrant runs the risk of humanizing its subject to the point of appearing to mitigate his crimes. But Montefiore's intimate portrait actually throws the coldhearted murderousness with which Stalin pursued and defended power into sharper relief. The book—much of it based on fresh archival material—moves smoothly between detailed sketches of everyday life at the Kremlin and accounts of the paranoid and sanguinary scheming that determined Soviet politics. This juxtaposition captures the vertiginous quality of life in Stalin's court, where no allegiance was permanent. Just as strikingly, Montefiore shows how Stalin, a "master of friendships," used charm to win the support of members of the Party's inner circle (many of whom ended up regretting it). This haunting book gets us as close as we are likely to come to the man who believed that "the solution to every human problem was death."

Like I, Claudius or histories of the Borgias and Medicis, Stalin's era will persist as an emblematic icon of how human nature and great illegitimate power & secrecy invariably result in hidden murders and human suffering.

Fred Thompson "Apologizes" to Huckabee

Karen Hanretty has a nice little smackdown of Mike H's bizarre resolutions, including his request for a lifting of the embargo on Cuba. In particular I like:

"We apologize for pointing out that as Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee offered in-state tuition to illegal immigrants"

Mitt Romney's excellent riposte: "Mike, that's not your money," is the key to this tax and spend Republican who is levitating like Jimmy Carter and Ross Perot into the pantheon of Southern Goofball candidates, one that Al Gore has recently raised to Nobel commanding heights of lunacy.

Reid an Osama fan? USA Today Rebukes Dingy Harry

Harry Reid is such a liability that a prominent liberal-but-sane female blogger confided in me in a private e-mail last month that she thinks the Dem Sen Majority Leader is a liability to his party. So does USA Today:

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, seem lost in a time warp. They could try to impose new benchmarks that acknowledge the military progress. Instead, too many seem unable or unwilling to admit that President Bush's surge of 30,000 more troops has succeeded beyond their initial predictions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who in the spring declared the war lost, said last week that "the surge hasn't accomplished its goals." Anti-war Democrats remain fixated on tying war funding to a rapid troop withdrawal. Yet pulling the troops out precipitously threatens to squander the progress of recent months toward salvaging a decent outcome to the Iraq debacle.

No one in Iraq is covered with glory, except our wonderful fighting men who persist while traitorous cowards like Reid try to undercut them on the home front. Republicans keep lowering the bar, and Iraqi politicians like Maliki continue their second-rate performance in nation-building. USA Today has the following summary:

What's needed is acknowledgment that the surge is achieving what was intended: not complete military victory but enough stability to make political compromise possible. What's missing is Iraqi will to take advantage of the success.

So far, the Iraqis have missed just about every benchmark that Congress set early this year and Bush promised to enforce. Too often, they just don't seem to be making an effort. Those benchmarks included passing laws on sharing oil revenue, allowing more former Baath Party members into official jobs and holding provincial elections.

To some degree, the positive "bottom up" developments mitigate that failure. The Sunnis, for instance, have abandoned their political isolation and now want to participate in the government. But the Shiites' persistent resistance to letting them in makes a case for new, meaningful benchmarks, not trivial certainties such as simply passing a budget, one of the requirements the White House has set.

Beyond benchmarks, the military progress has been paralleled by a less aggressive stance by Iran, creating another opening. Iran has enormous influence in Iraq, particularly in Shiite regions. More aggressive diplomacy of the kind advocated by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group would help — even a regional conference such as the one the United States recently hosted in Annapolis, Md., to restart Middle East peace talks.

Despite Harry Reid's encouragement, Al Qaeda is marginalized. In addition, Iran is lessening its covert involvement and the Sunni tribal chiefs have switched sides. But old feuds persist, and settling scores inside Iraq's political thickets still has priority over a final settlement.

A regional conference sounds far-fetched, but perhaps it would shut up the loo-zers like Reid & some Dem candidates whose statements on Iraq & withdrawal seem to advocate precipitous surrender at the very moment when our blood & treasure have procured an opportunity to "seize the moment," as USA Today recommends.

USA Today's editorial writers have far more foreign policy wisdom than political hacks inside the Beltway.

New President Medvedev Putin-Lite?

The Economist has a good piece which basically demonstrates that Putin-2 under Medvedev may not be as peaceful as the business-oriented apparatchiki's bland resume indicates. It turns out that Putin may run for parliament, get elected, get appointed Prime Minister, and continue to run Russia from the Front Office.

The Kremlin line is that the teamwork between Mr Putin as prime minister and Mr Medvedev as president will guarantee stability, creating a good base for more liberal reforms. Mr Putin has hinted that more state companies will, sooner or later, be privatised. So far, this has sounded more like a redistribution of property, rather than liberal reform.

As for Mr Putin, he seems still to be keeping his options open. If he becomes prime minister it is hard to imagine him answering to Mr Medvedev. Whatever the form, Mr Putin will be more popular and more powerful than his protégé. Under the constitution, the president has control over the army and the security services, but this could easily be changed by a parliamentary vote. In any event Mr Putin is unlikely to part with power. More surprises could be in store, even the revival of a once-touted plan for a union with Belarus that might let Mr Putin stay president.

The Kremlin's machinations have revealed a simple truth: that the authoritarian system created by Mr Putin in the past eight years does not allow an orderly transition of power from one elite to another. Kirill Rogov, a political analyst, points out that elections, which in a democratic society act as a mechanism for rotating power, have in Russia become a mechanism for preserving it.

This reverses the biggest achievement of Boris Yeltsin's short-lived, imperfect democracy: a peaceful transfer of power. The manner in which Mr Yeltsin handed power to Mr Putin in December 1999 was not ideal, but he did step down and let somebody else take charge. Mr Putin seems unable to repeat that. Indeed, so as to hang on to power, he may be prepared to undermine the institution of a strong presidency that he helped to create.

For all the talk of stability, Russia is in some ways less stable than it was. Mr Putin has been lucky to enjoy an oil boom that filled up state coffers and fanned economic growth. But the underlying economy has not been diversified or restructured. Inflation is running in double digits, domestic gas and electricity prices need to be raised and the outlook for the world economy is suddenly gloomier. Yet the biggest danger for Russia remains political.

Parenthetically, I'm currently reading Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, which is a goldmine of information on how a one-party state rapidly became a secret-police state---pushed by Stalin's purges, the NKVD was Murder Incorporated on a Hitlerian scale as the Party Elite attacked the Party itself. The problem lies in means and methods, and the KGB inherited the mentality of the NKVD, which in turn was an "Organ" created by Stalin & Beria, two Georgians strongly influenced by the "poison-poison" culture derived from the 18th century rule of Georgia by Iran, and its poison-Shahs Nadir Shah and Shah Abbas, whose Borgia-clone courts fascinated Stalin no end as he wrote the curriculum for Georgian primary & secondary education.

Beria was an experienced poisoner, a real expert, and Section 13 of the KGB inherited his expertise in murder by deniable means. Putin has evidently been seeped in this culture and Polonium 210 has succeeded Beria's potions in the political pharmaceutical arsenal wielded by Vlad, the Empoisoner. The Economist sums it up:

Russia has traditionally had only one centre of power: the Kremlin. There is but one precedent for a strong prime minister and a weak head of state. This was 100 years ago when Pyotr Stolypin was prime minister under Tsar Nicholas II. Stolypin dealt ruthlessly with political protesters to push through reforms to make Russia a leading European power. His catch-phrase was: give Russia 20 years of peace, and you will not recognise it. But it all ended badly. Stolypin was assassinated, Nicholas II murdered by the Bolsheviks—and Russia plunged into 73 years of communism.

We can only hope that Russian autocracy succeeded by oligarchy then by dictatorship and finally democracy does not revert back to its atavistic autocracy by another Tsar, this time a scion of the Secret Police culture which still afflicts Russia.

Why are Jews and East Asians So Damned Smart?

The Economist has an article on recent studies in genetic distribution and mutations. Here are some preliminary conclusions:

First, did you know that the reason Pygmies are so short [under 5 ft average] lies in the fact that they stop growing and start reproducing around age 12, for the simple reason that in two African groups, the average LIFE SPAN is 16 years!! Nor did I. Four other groups average a little over twenty years in the harsh conditions Pygmies around the world have chosen to dwell.

Second, did you know that the spread of Indo-Europeans around the globe may be the result of a:

variation in LCT, a gene involved in the metabolism of lactose, a sugar found in milk. All human babies can metabolise lactose, but only some adults can manage the trick. That fact, and the gene involved, have been known for some time. But Dr Moyzis's team have worked out the details of the evolution of LCT. They suspect that it was responsible for the sudden spread of the Indo-European group of humanity about 4,000 years ago, and also for the more recent spread of the Tutsis in Africa, whose ancestors independently evolved a tolerant version of the gene.

Third, did you know that:

Chinese, Japanese and Europeans, meanwhile, have all seen changes in a serotonin transporter. Serotonin is one of the brain's messenger molecules, and is particularly involved in establishing mood. The finding that may cause most controversy, however, is that in the Asian groups there has been strong selection for one variant of a gene that, in a different form, is responsible for Gaucher's disease. A few years ago two of the paper's other authors, Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, suggested that the Gaucher's form of the gene might be connected with the higher than average intelligence notable among Ashkenazi Jews. The unstated inference is that something similar might be true in Asians, too.

This will get inquiring minds all in a tizzy, as smart Asians start populating the U. of Cal university system in overpowering numbers.

And China & Japan do have a growing influence in the world economy.

Max Mayfield Smacks Down Midget Waxman as a Liar

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. is a silly stooge who has forever been a niggling little apparatchik in the Democrat Mighty Wurlitzer. His nostrils alone should be classified as a hazard for carbon dioxide, as they resemble the entrance & exit to the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side.

Recently some sneaky lil Dem snoops claimed that Mayfield was somehow pressured into testifying about global warming, and a hilarious Democrat-led investigation into the matter released on Monday:

"I want the record to show that no one forced me to say anything on the subject of climate change and tropical cyclones that I didn't believe at the time," Mayfield told ABC News.

"I accept the fact that global warming is real," Mayfield said. "Most meteorologists with knowledge of tropical cyclones think that there will be some impact from global warming on hurricanes. The debate is over how much of an impact."

He says he never heard from anyone on the committee about the incident. "No one ever asked me about the context in which my testimony was given. No one from this committee or any other Congressional committee ever asked me if I was improperly pressured to change my testimony," Mayfield said.

When one recalls that Mayfield is a respected expert in the field, and the child-man Waxman makes Dennis Kucinich look like Arnold Schwartzenegger, the credibility "problem" is a real slam-dunk, and Waxman's dishonest politicizing of the issue is not subject to question by any rational adult.

Harry Truman, The Curse of Baku & Potemkin

Simon Montefiore has the eerie ability to evoke flesh-and-blood from Yusef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, and I am currently addicted to his two books, Stalin in the Court of the Red Tsar and The Young Stalin.

SM makes this probable double-agent bank-robber Georgian into an auto-didact who would make Harry Truman blush, so addicted to history and music was this tyrant HST faced at Potsdam. Famously, when HST asked Stalin how it felt to be the conqueror of Berlin, the dictator responded "Tsar Alexander made it to Paris." When HST informed Stalin of the development of the yet-unexploded A-bomb, Stalin showed no interest, [and HST might have divined by that that Soviet intelligence had previously informed him, had Harry been a bit swifter]. At Potsdam or Yalta, Stalin shared with Churchill that the Great Famine in the Ukraine had been a great trial for him, because ten million [in his own estimation] died to make collectivization work. [Which, like all leftists, he deluded himself that it was actually a success.] The Terror which he inflicted on his own comrades evidently didn't affect him as much.

[Parenthetical note: Harry Truman was indirectly responsible for the Korean War when his inept Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, stupidly omitted Korea from a list of countries the US would protect, in a UN speech written by incredibly inept fool named Dean Rusk, the Asst. SecState for East Asia. Strange that this "oversight" has been neglected by "historians" who rush to condemn the US for everything from dropping the bomb on Hiroshima to Vietnam (which "historians" neglect to mention prevented a Communist takeover of Indonesia in 1974, the Year of Living Dangerously). Of course, Joe Stalin noticed and promptly gave Kim Il-Sung the go-ahead to invade S.Korea.]

Back to the main narrative: Simon Montefiore demonstrates among many fascinating details that Joe S. was responsible, along with Zhadanov, for rewriting the history curriculum for Soviet primary and secondary schools. Stalin famously admired Catherine the Great, for astutely picking lovers like Potemkin [whom SM has written a highly acclaimed biography] to help her rule the vast country.

My personal interest was in Stalin's views of Iranian [Persian] history, where he admired the poisoning of Nadim Shah of his enemies in 18th c. Tehran. Also, his view of Baku, where I personally, along with Sergo Ordzhonokidze [sp?] and Kirov, experienced serious problems with ingesting food or whatever that made them gravely ill. Haydar Aliyev, now president of Azerbaijan, told me that he had suffered severe food poisoning in the same restaurant that I had contracted a near-death dose of microbial murder. [The restaurant is owned by an Iranian, interestingly enough.

Baku is where Stalin, working in the oil fields when very young, fathered an illegitimate child. [Syncretistically, an Azeri-born mailman has just delivered a letter from our bank requiring my signature---happens to me more often than not---weird coincidences.] Other bad events happened to Soviet leaders such as the Armenian Mikoyan, who outlived them all and is an important source for this book.

The Azeris and Georgians were always more anti-Russian than other nationalities, although most chafed under Soviet rule. Bernard Lewis has read much of the "underground" literature written by anti-Bolsheviks in Turkic languages that few can understand with their dialectical variances.

I'm only a quarter through this fascinating tome and find it spellbinding. Although

Blue Eyes "Invented" less than 10kya?

Steve Sailer has a good piece from the LATimes that quotes one of my fave anthros at UofWisc, John Hawks.

As blue eyes are recessive, it takes two parents with baby blues to produce a baby with blues. Or at least, blue-eyed parents can't produce a brown-eyed girl---unless the milkman came early.

As an afterthought, Hawks mentions that the larger the population, the faster evolution proceeds in humans---so it's going to be a bumpy ride in the pop-boom USA.

Brady, Pats Best Ever? Tebow the Next Brady or Peyton or Brett?

John Madden has been around a while and seen a lot of NFL football. I myself have been an NFL devotee ever since Tony Canadeo was the QB of the Green Bay Packers before Bart Starr and Vince Lombardi. Tomorrow's game between the Pats and Steelers promises to be a doosie [or is it dusie? or doozy?]. But the Washington Post quotes Big John thusly:

"It's the best offense I've ever seen," Madden said. "Tom Brady is playing the position of quarterback right now better than I've ever seen anyone ever play it in my history. Where they go as the best team, I think offensively they're right there."

My daughter babysits in the same gated community in Boca that Randy Moss has called home since his buddy Cris Carter persuaded him to avoid the nasty Minnesota winters by living near him in Boca. Cris lives in the same gated community. So does famous life-coach Wayne Dyer, who also lives in Hawaii part of the time. Randy & Cris work out at the Boca Athletic Club just down the road. Cris is nice, Randy is, well, Randy.... Fact is, I'd watch Randy if he lived in Timbuktu or whereever. Just as Miami has traded away the best Dolphins [mimicking the Marlins, apparently] Kraft and Belichick have fashioned a terrific team & unbeatable offense that makes the Pats the best bargain in sports.

And Brady is a very smart young fellow. He's widely admired even though he doesn't mince words or do the dipsy-doodle circumlocuting that even Brett Favre indulges in from time to time:

"We're not trying to win 42-28," the quarterback said recently on Boston radio station WEEI. "We're trying to kill teams. We're trying to blow them out if we can. You want to build momentum for each week. You don't want to be up 42-7 or 35-7, and all of a sudden you look up and it's 35-21. We don't want to be part of that. You don't want to go into next week realizing that for the last 18 minutes of the game your team didn't play well or didn't play up to its capabilities. You gave other teams momentum for the next time they play you, or you gave another team a reason not to be intimidated."

Parenthetically, Tim Tebow got the Heisman his stats and leadership skills made him richly deserve. RunDMC still has a chance next year & came in second again. Barring injuries he may get it if Tebow stumbles or gets injured in '08.

I was unaware of the incredible stroke of luck Tim had by even being born, as his mom had caught amoebic dysentery in the Philippines and was advised to abort for health reasons, as carrying Tim to term might endanger her own life. She made the right choice. And Tim has become an inspiration to a lot of kids, besides his awesome prowess on the field. I am a member of the Gator Nation and the Red Sox Nation as well.

If the Pats keep their incredible run going, there might rise a "Patriot Nation," with all the overtones and undertones implied.

As Lombardi famously once said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Bush Bungles

The Wall Street Journal echoes the sentiments I and many I linked to on Tuesday. Whatever his personal political skills, his larger perspectives are flawed or suffer from inattention.

President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.

An earlier WSJ editorial is also derogatory over this president's apparent inability to instill even a modicum of control over who his Administration hires:

As recently as 2005, the consensus estimate of our spooks was that "Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons" and do so "despite its international obligations and international pressure." This was a "high confidence" judgment. The new NIE says Iran abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 "in response to increasing international scrutiny." This too is a "high confidence" conclusion. One of the two conclusions is wrong, and casts considerable doubt on the entire process by which these "estimates"--the consensus of 16 intelligence bureaucracies--are conducted and accorded gospel status.

Our own "confidence" is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials," according to an intelligence source. They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

For a flavor of their political outlook, former Bush Administration antiproliferation official John Bolton recalls in his recent memoir that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "described Brill's efforts in Vienna, or lack thereof, as 'bull--.'" Mr. Brill was "retired" from the State Department by Colin Powell before being rehired, over considerable internal and public protest, as head of the National Counter-Proliferation Center by then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

No less odd is the NIE's conclusion that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to "international pressure." The only serious pressure we can recall from that year was the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the time, an Iranian opposition group revealed the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear program to mill and enrich uranium and produce heavy water at sites previously unknown to U.S. intelligence. The Bush Administration's response was to punt the issue to the Europeans, who in 2003 were just beginning years of fruitless diplomacy before the matter was turned over to the U.N. Security Council.

Mr. Bush implied yesterday that the new estimate was based on "some new information," which remains classified. We can only hope so. But the indications that the Bush Administration was surprised by this NIE, and the way it scrambled yesterday to contain its diplomatic consequences, hardly inspire even "medium confidence" that our spooks have achieved some epic breakthrough. The truth could as easily be that the Administration in its waning days has simply lost any control of its bureaucracy--not that it ever had much.

Bush's asleep-at-the-wheel management of his foreign policy appears to extend horizontally and vertically across all the major agencies. He's giving the Harvard MBA program a bad name with his executive ineptitude. But Harvard isn't at fault for his inability to convey information or impart any confidence that he knows what he's doing.

Bush's inability to explain himself at his press conference belies belief. He is either almost totally inarticulate or hoping that somehow his dissembling and simpering will convince his critics that he's a "good guy, so lay off the criticism." GWB goes back instinctively to his cheerleading vibe, rather than any explication of a complex intersection of events, which he is apparently unable or unwilling to attempt.

Everyone in Florida knows the story of GWB's mome & poppy, who wanted Jeb to run for prez in 2000. The plan was for Jeb to beat "Walkin' Lawton" Chilesm for FL gov in '94, which didn't happen. Instead, the family black sheep GWB won the Texas gov in '96, which paved the way for the family's second-choice to grab the 2000 nomination.

Perhaps GWB's inarticulate streak is astrological. He was born on July 6, 1946, the same day and year as Sylvester Stone, whose grunts and screams were a major part of his on-screen dialogues throughout his career.

Darwin & Lincoln were also born same-day, same-year, if you catch my drift.

UPDATE Another reassessment of the NIE situation by a company which believed Iran would SPEED UP its nuclear program in 2003.

It should be noted as obvious to any geopolitical analyst that any country like Iran which possesses over 30% of the entire WORLD's natural gas reserves would not have the SLIGHTEST NEED for nuclear power for electricity generation. Natural gas is the most efficient fuel for generating power and electricity, as everyone should know.

The Iranian program is therefore a policy determination to develop a nuclear weapon at some time in the future---or have the capability to do so.

Team B: Did it lead to the end of the USSR?

Team B was the famous group which served as the "red" team did for the NIE in Iran, only in the '70s for the USSR. William Colby, a CIA "lifer," had nixed the project, but the new chief, George Herbert Walker Bush, checked with the White House and initiated the project.

Edward Jay Epstein in 2006 found it a useful exercise. Partisan toady and nitwit snob [we drove into Riyadh in a cab & this arrogant nobody refused to speak to me, as my experience as a Political Officer in Riyadh might prejudice his prejudices. As they say in Washington, "DC is a septic tank & the biggest chunks rise to the top." Talbott now runs a left-wing think tank. [Although to be fair, that's not near the top.] [/sarc rant]

Team B found that the CIA's info [sources] & methods had skewed the NIE on the USSR into a surprisingly benign appraisal of the Soviet Union's mentality, plans & outlook. And of course, the CIA had propagated, and used corrupt media lightweights like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to convey the falsehood that the USSR was "economically sound."

Of course, the CIA was surprised by Afghanistan, par for the course. But the biggest fumble among the fumblewits was that no one was more surprised when the USSR began to crumble than the "experts" who had studied it from the vantage point of the CIA, using secrecy as a tool to project "inside knowledge" when in fact, they were being subjected to flimflammery and projecting mystifications.

As Edward Jay Epstein says in his book review of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. Below a portion of EJEpstein's summary:

Was Angleton's obsession with moles and disinformation misguided? From the evidence in “Legacy of Ashes,” probably not. After Angleton left, the CIA discovered that Aldrich Ames, the agency's own head of counterintelligence for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, had been a KGB mole. And it discovered that it had been receiving Soviet disinformation from myriad sources. One of Mr. Weiner's more stunning revelations is that for eight years (1986-94) a large number of the CIA's highly classified “blue border” reports contained information from CIA recruits who were “controlled by Russian intelligence.”

The CIA director signed these blue-border reports—so called because of their distinctive blue stripes—and sent them directly to the president, secretary of defense and secretary of state. Thus Soviet disinformation from the KGB—and Russian disinformation after the dissolution of empire—had routinely made its way to President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton. Mr. Weiner says that, astonishingly, the CIA inspector general, upon looking into this scandal, found that the “senior CIA officers responsible for these reports had known that some of their sources were controlled by Russian intelligence.” CIA officials continued to forward the Russian disinformation to the White House because it would be, as Mr. Weiner puts it, “too embarrassing” to admit that the CIA had been so badly deceived.

What distinguishes “Legacy of Ashes” from most other books about the CIA is that it places the agency's assassination attempts, coups d'état and other covert actions within a real political context. By tracing the relations between successive presidents and the CIA, Mr. Weiner refutes the paranoid myth that the agency was an out-of-control, rogue entity or, as some claim, a kind of shadow government. The CIA has always been a carefully honed instrument of executive power.

I do not agree with all of Mr. Weiner's characterizations of CIA officials. I find his portrayal of James Angleton as an incompetent and an alcoholic at odds with the trust that Angleton won over many years from six CIA directors—including Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Allen W. Dulles, George H.W. Bush and Richard Helms. They kept Angleton in key positions and valued his work. Helms wrote in his autobiography: “In his day, Jim was recognized as the dominant counterintelligence figure in the non-communist world.” Such esteem would explain Angleton's long tenure at the CIA.

Sadly, the CIA has become just another political football in the inside-the-Beltway BS that masquerades as US foreign policy deliberations & determinations.

Postscript: George Tenet & I were friends since I married his former boss at the American Hellenic Institute. When I was a few years into a terrific job at Amoco, George took me to lunch and handed me his resume. He told me he was sick of DC & the back-stabbing BS that passes for policy development. He said he'd even move his family to Chicago if that's what it took. While I shopped it through Amoco, suddenly Bill Clinton gave him a super-job at the NSC. A year later, he was appointed DCI in Langley. I thought I saved a copy of George's CV, but no can find.

In the end, he was ground down by a vicious cabal of right and left-wingers---the septic tank of DC had expelled George from a top rank. It's [literally] happened to most of the best of them.

Humanizing a Monster:

Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar is an excellent, even absorbing, cautionary tale of how even monsters have their human side.

Simon Sebag-Montefiore's Stalin is summarized by the best historian on the USSR, Richard Pipes:

How to reconcile such manifestations of humanity and intellectualism with the persistent sadism, clinical paranoia and debauchery that fill so many of the pages of this book? For life at Stalin's court was a kind of Grand Guignol, dominated by the unpredictable and irrational behavior of the leader -- with his ''swarthy pock-marked face, gray hair, broken stained teeth and yellow Oriental eyes'' -- who kept his entourage in constant dread of his outbursts. People were expelled from his presence for no apparent reason, sometimes simply demoted, sometimes arrested and tortured. In 1937 he had the Politburo formally authorize physical torture of ''enemies of the people,'' and he would add the words ''Beat, beat!'' next to a victim's name.His cronies learned to anticipate his moods in diverse ways, even from gestures he made with his pipe: ''Stalin was always pacing up and down. There were various warning signals of a black temper: if the pipe was unlit, it was a bad omen. If Stalin put it down, an explosion was imminent. Yet if he stroked his mustache with the mouthpiece of the pipe, this meant he was pleased.''

One mistake by his peers, and even though they lived side-by-side in the Kremlin & had children playing together & went to dinners & cinema almost every night, and the unfortunate Bakhunin or Rykov or Trotsky or Meyerhold or his oldest comrades from Siberian exile would be consigned to the "Memory Hole" Orwell memorably described in 1984.

And often tortured to death, like Meyerhold, AFTER he had confessed to imaginary crimes.

Something that comes across after reading books by Hitler of almost the same quality [Fest & Rosenbaum] was the similarities between Stalin & Hitler. Both came from homes with tyrannical fathers & loving mothers; both had training in intense religious environments; both had physical deformities [Stalin had a deformed foot & numerous illnesses, mental & physical including hypochondria & dipsomania; Hitler had only one testicle and was a fanatic teetotaler/vegetarian/drug fiend]; both had a wolf fetish; and of course, both were megalomaniacs who killed dozens of millions without compunction [Hitler specialized in killing Jews, Poles, and foreigners of dusky hue; Stalin liked to kill kulaks, Ukrainians, and dozens of the "nationalities" he oversaw, partially by 'ethnic cleansing.']

Stalin comes across as the ultimate auto-didact, who surprisingly had Frederick the Great among his historical heroes. Stalin, who came from the strain of Georgian nationalism that opposed the czar for decades in the 19th century, hated Russians and Jews, though he spoke Russian well with a thick Georgian accent.

The paradoxes in Stalin's life abound, according to Pipes:

The most fascinating chapters in this fascinating biography deal with Stalin's actions during the war with Germany. The motives behind his 1939 deal with Hitler are not delved into, but there is ample evidence of his unwillingness to believe a steady stream of intelligence, Soviet as well as Western, that his Nazi partner was about to attack him. Afterward he privately admitted that he had been wrong: ''When you're trying to make a decision, NEVER put yourself into the mind of the other person because if you do, you can make a terrible mistake.'' Apparently he had reasoned that if he were in Hitler's shoes he would not have invaded a country that assured him of a stable Eastern front, while supplying him with the raw materials he needed for his assault on Britain and its empire.

Once he had overcome his shock, Stalin took personal charge of the war effort, bullying and cajoling everyone including his generals but, unlike Hitler, in the end always acquiescing to their advice. Montefiore's biography leaves no doubt that his leadership was essential to Soviet victory both in organizing Russia's defenses and in sustaining public morale. But it was a victory that, in good measure, was gained by the unstinting expenditure of Red Army lives. Stalin emerged from the war utterly exhausted and more than ever convinced of his infallibility. In his last years he became inordinately capricious, suspecting everyone and ready to jettison on trumped-up charges even his most loyal followers. He spent much time vacationing in his lavish palaces. He indulged in drunken orgies, where he would force his ministers to dance for his amusement: ''He made the sweating Khrushchev drop to his haunches and do the gopak that made him look like 'a cow dancing on ice.' '' The Polish security boss, Jacob Berman, was made to waltz with Molotov. Stalin hated it if anyone disagreed with him, yet he admired the courage of those who did: ''Having created an environment of bootlicking idolatry,'' Montefiore writes, ''Stalin was irritated by it.''

His paranoia toward the end of his life centered on the Jewish population, which he came to suspect of being more loyal to Israel and the United States instead of the Soviet Union. He ordered the murder of a number of leading Jewish personalities and was about to give the signal for the mass deportations of Soviet Jews when death intervened.

This is what Simon Sebag Montefiore concludes about Stalin from his meticulous researches: ''It is no longer enough to describe him as an 'enigma.' . . . The man inside was a superintelligent and gifted politician for whom his own historic role was paramount, a nervy intellectual who manically read history and literature, and a fidgety hypochondriac suffering from chronic tonsillitis, psoriasis, rheumatic aches. . . . This lonely and unhappy man ruined every love relationship and friendship in his life by sacrificing happiness to political necessity and cannibalistic paranoia . . . who believed the solution to every human problem was death.''

Which death fetish was also shared by Hitler.

I once had a long conversation in Los Angeles with a Jewish emigre from Russia named Alexander Dropkin. He claimed his father was one of Trotsky's generals in the civil war & subsequently was exiled to Kiev, than eastward, after 1929. Dropkin claims that his friends in Israel told him that Stalin was almost certain to "finish the job Hitler started" as his alcoholic paranoia reached new heights in his advanced age. Dropkin said that the doctors around Stalin somehow "arranged" his medical death, the so-called "Doctors' Plot" not because they were Jewish [they had been carefully selected not to be Jewish], but because of reasons of humanity & perhaps many friendships with Jews who would be affected.

As with many other aspects of his life, Stalin's death remains a mystery.

Hopefully, Vlad the Empoisoner's love affair with the glory days of Soviet power doesn't drive him to emulate this re-incarnation of Genghis Khan. Or Attila. Choose your Oriental despot [Saddam Hussain had a study lined with books on Stalin & Hitler].

Best to nip these characters in the bud.

Gas Bags in Bali Emit Carbons Galore

Offset scams are the latest joke among the pseudo-science conclave meeting in Bali on the world climate scare.

Serial Bore-Gore will be pontificating about his bogus "cred" among fatuous dilettantes and spurious second-rate quack-scientists. That series of pious exhalations from Lyin' Al should create enough carbon emissions to lower the price of the offsets [or would this chronic gasbag actually raise the prices?].

Ahmedinejad Claims Victory

Hardliners in the Bush Administration such as the Cheney camp have been defeated, or bruised, by the NIE report. However, as I noted yesterday, the report does say that Iran DID have a nuclear weapons program, is still producing enriched uranium, and may restart its weaponizing at any time. It seems that a logical reason that the Iranians ceased their weaponizing program for nukes in 2003 was due to the fall of their mortal enemy Saddam Hussein. At the time, the cost of oil was low enough so that the "cost-benefit" argument might have held sway, given the new removal of SH from their enemies' list. Also, the fall of their opponents in Afganistan may have given them less of a sense of urgency.

However, the Democrats, who derided US intelligence so roundly as far as Iraq WMD was concerned, can hardly turn around 180 degrees and say this "proves" anything in a fundamental fashion about the supposed dishonesty of the Bush administration---though they will.

For example, Sen. Joe Biden has already lied about what Bush knew and when he knew it ["months ago"] about the NIE report, which only came to a final determination just two weeks ago. Of course, Biden knows this as part of his SenForRel Cte chairmanship, but as with his plagiarism of Neil Kinnock a few years ago, with Biden dishonesty is his frequent policy, closely allied to his practice of shooting off his big mouth.

But of course, this will give the Euro-weasel crowd & the evil twins of Russia & China more inspiration to sit on their asses vis-a-vis Iran. And the clown-in-chief of the IAEA el-Baradei, whose Nobel Peace Prize is only slightly less ridiculous than that of the most recent winner, is again bleating for entry into the Iranian wolf's lair. Iran's feet must be kept to the fire, but there is now an argument that a good cop role by the USA in initiating discussions with the Iranians might be clever.

This is because the demented troll Ahmadodojihad is facing serious opposition to the parliamentary elections in March of '08 and while calling his opposition "traitors," he has also simply has lost the confidence of the Iranian street. Runaway inflation and empty shelves have had their effect and it's a good bet that Rafsanjani's opposition forces may win big in March and then take the presidency [again] in '09. Ahmadodo..d has only his truculent foreign policy to support him & most Iranians are sick of his antics and posturing, much as the Venz just showed their disgust for Chavez by voting down his Putsch against the Constitution.

A well-reasoned argument for negotiations or at least talks comes in a new article by Vali Nasr & Amin Taheri in Foreign Affairs which says that the US could grease the skids for the former hostage-kidnapper Amhedodo...d. At the Tehran Embassy [my FSO colleague Ms. Kolb & several other hostages have identified him as a concentration camp guard in the Embassy back in '79-80] he was a nasty little persecutor of the female embassy staff, whom he treated with special derision for displaying their forearms in the blazing heat. His greatest usefulness & that of his delusionary comrades was to get Jimmy Carter booted from the White House and prepare the Soviet Union for its ignoble end. So thank you, dodojihad. Jimmy Peanut would have continued to play footsie with the Sovs, and Ronald Reagan came in on his white horse and rescued America from incompetent amateurs.

Back to Iran, Nasr & Taheri posit that talking to non-Pasdaran Iranian leaders who do not consist of the thug-mafia currently killing US soldiers in Iraq might make the '08 election in March about domestic policy, which will demolish the dodo & his colleagues. Having read David Ignatius and Robert Kagan on the issue, I reluctantly agree, although the ultras now in control of Iranian FOREIGN policy, as opposed to their nuclear development policy, will attempt to use their poker playing skills to outduel GWB, who along with Condi, can barely play checkers, though they think they are playing chess with Iran.

Iran is outfoxing them by playing poker, while they think they're in a game of chess.

Perhaps they may still have the energy, and overcome Dick Cheney's veto to finally allow Condi Rice to escape from the mediocrity surrounding her. Unless, of course...........

Chavez's Brave Bluster Hides Crushing Defeat

The Christian Science Monitor has an article that puts Chavez now in the position of the people he has claimed are the class-enemies of the Venezuelan poor. Although he says that the referendum will not hinder him from pushing forward on his socialism policy:

Alberto Barrera, a novelist and co-author of the Chávez biography, "Chávez sin Uniforme," says the president seems unwilling to read the truth from the electoral results, showing what he calls a ¨short circuit¨ between what Chávez wants and what the people want. "President Chávez exists because the country's elite ignored and turned their backs on the will of the people, but now it seems he may be willing to do the same," he says.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

A Venezuelan friend says that had Chavez actually won the referendum, the army would probably have overthrown him anyway. Paradoxically, Chavez's loss may have postponed drastic action by the Venz military, who despise him despite the billions he has thrown at them.

Chavez has severe limitations as a mentally superior leader; he actually thought that his fix in the referendum of about 10% of the vote stolen or cheated for would be a comfortable cushion against the polling which at the last minute was giving the opposition a slight edge.

But Chavez's boastful self-absorption and widely-touted "reforms" had not brought prosperity or even food to his most fervent supporters, who actually voted "no" in some of his "safe" districts.

The Christian Science Monitor is a fatuous leftist publication and therefore tries to put a good face on Chavez's defeat. As does Chavez, who realizes the international left and miscreant kleptocrats in Argentina and Mexico are rooting for him.

But the Venezuealn military will have the last say, and this silly caudillo will be reduced or eliminated if he attempts to subvert the countries democratic institutions.

Which, given his low IQ and big ego, might just happen. Hope his end is swift and just.

Global Warming a Crock of .......? Check It out Here!

The Schnitt Show has about 240 links on global warming sceptics. Check out the list that you may want to bookmark.

In case you can't find enough scepticism on the Schnitt post, go to The American Thinker, which has 600+ links to things caused by "global warming," including such classics as "world in flames," or "world in frozen hell."

All due to "global warming."

Hilarious Triangular Firing Squad Among Dems in Iowa

Hillary Clinton's strategy, according to some pundits, is to defeat Obama by hook, crook, or broomstick in Iowa, lest he gather more momentum. In the Clinton Inc. Boardroom, the thinking is that Edwards is beatable even in his native state of S. Carolina, but that he & Clinton together might head off Obama in Iowa. Even if she doesn't prevail, Edwards has a shot because Edwards has virtually lived in-state for more than two years, surfacing on the East Coast only momentarily to raise funds or campaign in N.H. or S. Car.

Obama is levitating simply because the Clintons can't help themselves, as their political vices have now become habits, and Norman Hsu & his band of bogus-contributors remind voters about the utter lack of ethics these two lawyers [Billary] possess, along with a completely robotic ability to grasp and accumulate funds. And flim-flamm the press with skill and ease.

As negatives on Clinton accumulate like silt on the slow-moving but inevitable river towards nomination, Edwards, himself a lawyer, may be induced to stop attacking Hillary with sub rosa seductions such as promises of a VP slot.

Obama is a lawyer, but seems above the sleaze of the Clinton campaign machine and the Edwards hedge fund hypocrisy. And if Obama wins in Iowa, he may also win in S.Car & N.H., giving him momentum into Super-duper Tuesday.

So Clinton & Edwards must head off Obama in Iowa, or their tandem team of legal shenanigan specialists could founder in their own quicksand slime.

And Hillary's latest rejoinder to Bill Richardson when he jokingly said that Governors make great presidents was "they also make great vice-presidents." As subtle as ever, she would presumably want the quirky but likeable Richardson as her number-two, given Edwards' bizarre offshore hedge fund investments/consultancies.

And Huckabee's levitation in the polls reminds me of another Arkansas eccentric's rise by media manipulation.

The "crazy old aunt in the attic" that allowed Bill Clinton to edge out GHWB in '92.

Weasel Watchers Wary of NIE on Iran

Wolf Howling has a post aptly named "The Good, the Bad, and the NIE" [h/t: Right Wing Nut House] which is a good sum-up of the NIE's ambiguous conclusions. Even if it is true that the program "WAS" suspended in 2003, does that mean that the program has not been "RESTARTED?"

Rick Moran has the sensible reason for the NIE report to be regarded as merely an advisory:

[T]he Administration is going for a third round of sanctions. The reason is exactly the same regardless of whether the Iranians have an active weapons program or not; they continue to defy the UN by expanding their enrichment program. Until Iran cooperates fully and the IAEA gives them a clean bill of health (while ensuring compliance through inspections and monitoring), sanctions should continue and be expanded the longer the Iranians refuse. The conclusions drawn by the NIE do not change this situation one iota. It is the enrichment program that poses a danger to the world and must be shut down until there are adequate safeguards in place that the Iranians will not use their knowledge to build a weapon.

Also, the Iranians could use the enriched uranium for weapons as well as power generation.

And before the Harry Reid "we've lost the war" crowd exults too much about the NIE, they should recall how they themselves have been sceptical of US intelligence in the recent past. You can't have it both ways.

Of course, the chorus of weasels and America-Last types will nonetheless use this as ammunition against President Bush, who in today's press conference had a deer-in-the-headlights inability to respond vigorously to thinly-disguised contempt in the questions that came his way. He seems to be more interested in placating a hostile media than vigorously defending his case. Or else, he simply can't vocalize adeptly and think on his feet as Bill Clinton used to do, even when Bill was fibbing right and left.

I always get the feeling that with GWB it's as if the head cheerleader had been promoted to quarterback. But GWB is no Tom Brady.

"Comeback Kid" Bubba Complains on Hillary Press

Bill Clinton continues to suck the oxygen out of his wife's campaign, as he kvetches about lack of press coverage on Hillary's "experience," saying it compares favorably with Sen. Barack Obama.

Really?

Does Obama have skeletons like Travelgate or the Rose Law Firm disappearing records?

Does he have political debacles over a health plan initiative so secretive and hierarchical that no one knew except Hillary & Ira Magaziner what it consisted of, until it burst on the political scene like a busted boil or broken blister?

At least in part causing the Contract With America to eliminate her husband's Congressional majority in the House, Hillary's botched leadership and incompetent imperious prickly style should be dredged up at every opportunity.

But then Bill would complain about that too, and say it's time to "move on."

Bill and Hillary want it every way, and will fingerpoint and play the victim card if they don't get what they want.

French Stunned by Muslim Violence [Battle of Algiers in the French Banlieux]

Timesonline has a story on how the French are stunned that the Muslim youths are trashing their home suburbs and using shotguns and other deadly force against gendarmes sent to quell the rioting.

You'd think after the turmoil in Algeria & elsewhere in the French colonies, there wouldn't be surprise.

I'm just hoping Sarkozy does the job he started as Interior Minister---he would seem to have a mandate.

Osama bin Laden's ABCDarian How to Do It Yourself Kit

Scott Atran has a wonderful presentation with bullet points, graphs, buzz words, and geneologies to demonstrate how the terrorism virus spreads among international entrepots. Atran's presentations were given to the US State Dept and the UK House of Lords.

Just as all politics is local, terrorism also varies wildly from place to place, fed by the oxygen of the press publicity trying to hype and dramatize violent criminal reactionaries in order to get eyeballs reading papers and watching TV.

The commonalities are few, and religion has less to do with Al Qaeda than the press & pundits make it to be. Basically, AQ is stuck in Waziristan & has no contact with outsiders except those lost souls who pay thousands of Euros to get training in W-stan. The nutjobs come to AQ, which is now just a franchise, with the nucleus just a few hundred mujahideen growing old in caves.

Terrorism is a bunch of networks spread by the internet among young horny misfits in Europe, where the prisons are jammed with Muslims as they are with blacks in the USA. Europe is much more susceptible to the petty criminals joining with comic-book hero-worshipping youth who want to blow something up. Islam is just an afterthought or a bogus reason to express the resentments of an underclass.

The Spanish plot in Madrid which changed the course of a civil society was a total series of unlucky breaks for the 200+ victims of the Asturias petty criminals, Syrian nutjobs, and Moroccan crime ring that pulled it off with only a few months planning.

Atran goes into a lot of detail on the Spanish and Bali catastrophes, both completely different from one another. The Spanish was instigated by Syrians ejected from that country by Assad's crushing the Sunni elites---the Syrians went to their old Umayyad homeland during the Muslim heyday where the Syrians ruled Spain & Andalusia.

The Indonesian terrorists are former Afghan freedom fighters who have intermarried and the Jameeyah Islamiyaah there is mostly a family affair.

Atran's advice on "What NOT to do" is very insightful. The European social welfare systems come under criticism for creating an atmosphere of boredom and alienation that leads to violence to get kicks.

Finally, the entire Muslim system wants "Justice and Fairness" rather than "Freedom and Democracy." I don't know how many times I have been lectured by Saudis and others who say that the superiority of Islam is moral, and that freedom and democracy lead to dissolute behavior and decadence, degeneration, and general outlandish behavior.

No amount of pointing out that fanaticism is the dark side will ever change their minds.

Their extended family systems, at least in the Arabian peninsula, and their sharia law, with all the patriarchal trimmings, suits them just fine.

Meanwhile in Europe and Asia and the Maghreb, the youth are unemployed and restless and will use any excuse to display their resentments.

Harvard Profs Hire High School Ghost Writers

Harvard has sunk so far in the public's estimation that it is difficult to be disedified by any of the antics pulled off by the tenured morons who ejected Lawrence Summers from Harvard's top job. But Harvard's long, slow, spiraling descent into the porcelain poop-pot continues relentlessly as 02138 mag defrocks serial fraud Alan Dershowitz. [h/t: Steve Sailer]

Back in the day, I was supposed to appear on Ossie Davis's show in NYC and met in the green room, Alan Dershowitz, then an up-and-coming young vitellono in the academic thickets. He was nice and we had a sweet conversation about Lord-knows-what & did the show & years later, I recognized him inveighing against the evil Arabs on TV. I forgave him because he also detested Jimmy Carter, a continuing embarassment to America's international image.

Here's paras on Dershowitz:

Dershowitz generally employs one or two full-time researchers, three or four part-timers, and a handful of students who do occasional work—all paid at $11.50 per hour. (Since Dershowitz doesn’t get enough in the $7,500/year research budget the law school accords him, he often has to pay that hourly rate out of his own pocket.) Several students who have worked with him describe his hiring practices as almost arbitrary—barely looking at résumés, hiring anyone who asks him for a job, sometimes having his wife interview applicants, and often forgetting those who’ve worked with him in the past. One long-serving researcher was a local high-school student.

Several of his researchers say that Dershowitz doesn’t subscribe to the scholarly convention of researching first, then drawing conclusions. Instead, as a lawyer might, he writes his conclusions, leaving spaces where he’d like sources or case law to back up a thesis. On several occasions where the research has suggested opposite conclusions, his students say, he has asked them to go back and look for other cases, or simply to omit the discrepant information. “That’s the way it’s done; a piecemeal, ass-backwards way,” says one student who has firsthand experience with the writing habits of Dershowitz and other tenured colleagues. “They write first, make assertions, and farm out [the work] to research assistants to vet it. They do very little of the research themselves.”

When one student couldn’t find a desired source for an HLS professor’s project, a Harvard research librarian commented, “Isn’t that the opposite of how you’re supposed to do it?” Other students point out that Dershowitz has been at the law school for four decades, and thus even his most apparently off-the-cuff suppositions are based on a long career of reading and practicing law. And Dershowitz does acknowledge researchers in his books.

Now Dershowitz has been at Harvard four decades, so some slack must be cut. However, some very young profs named Howard Gates and Fryer are also outsourcing their research.

Read the whole article to understand the full panoply of Harvard's dissolute degeneration into an Ivy intellectual brothel.

Lipstick on the Pig that is Lions for Lambs

Klunker Tom Cruise is busy destroying his career on and off-screen while he builds elaborate bunkers against extraterrestrial attacks following the tenets of his "religious" hallucination/delusion syndrome. Variety has some details on his latest fiasco.

His partner in shame on the failed movie featuring Streep & Redford adding to the ignominy of tiny box office has eloquent weasel words to describe how

a] the movie is going to succeed in DVD land &

b] even if it doesn't succeed, it's no big deal &

c] s**t happens, especially when Tom Cruise is involved

[I made up the last one.]

Maybe the over-the-hill high school dropouts posing as psychology experts and foreign policy gurus will take a hint, but I doubt it. Hubris is the default position of this collection of puffed-up specimens. Rendition & Redacted are the latest casualties of Hollywood's Hate America campaign.

Box Office Vox Populi. The people think Cruise sucks.