Strange Women Lying in Ponds

Peggy Noonan compares Hillary to Maggie Thatcher and other great women of modern history, and finds Hillary wanting:

The point is the big ones, the real ones, the Thatchers and Indira Gandhis and Golda Meirs and Angela Merkels, never play the boo-hoo game. They are what they are, but they don't use what they are. They don't hold up their sex as a feint: Why, he's not criticizing me, he's criticizing all women! Let us rise and fight the sexist cur.

When Hillary Clinton suggested that debate criticism of her came under the heading of men bullying a defenseless lass, an interesting thing happened. First Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL and an Edwards supporter, hit her hard. "When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Sen. Clinton embraces her elevation into the 'boys club.' " But when "legitimate questions" are asked, "she is quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules."

Then Mrs. Clinton changed tack a little and told a group of women in West Burlington, Iowa, that they were going to clean up Washington together: "Bring your vacuum cleaners, bring your brushes, bring your brooms, bring your mops." It was all so incongruous--can anyone imagine the 20th century New Class professional Hillary Clinton picking up a vacuum cleaner? Isn't that what downtrodden pink collar workers abused by the patriarchy are for?

Hillary with a vacuum cleaner would make a great photo-op; kind of like Michael Dukakis in a tank.

Noonan puts the boot in where it counts -- and kicks Hillary out of the circle of America's most narcissistic greatest generation, the Baby Boomers:

... I don't think Mrs. Clinton is the exemplar of a generation, she is the exemplar of a quadrant within a generation, and it is the quadrant the rest of us of that generation do not like. They came from comfort and stability, visited poverty as part of a college program, fashionably disliked their country, and cultivated a bitterness that was wholly unearned. They went on to become investment bankers and politicians and enjoy wealth, power or both.

You gotta' love that line -- "visited poverty as part of a college program, . . . and cultivated a bitterness that was wholly unearned."  That not only sums up Hillary; it aptly sums up some of the most vocal members of the Angry Left.

(Via Gabriel Malor)

I was appalled by the recent story about State Department employees being up in arms about the possibility of being assigned to Iraq -- appalled in the sense that I couldn't believe that career diplomats were refusing to serve in the most strategically vital area of our time.

I decided that, if they won't go, I will, given the chance.  I went to the State Department website and found a job description that I think I might qualify for -- "Rule of Law Advisor (Iraq)".  I filled out the online application and sent it in.

Let's see what happens, now.  The worst that can happen is that I won't qualify, or won't pass the medical.  I wouldn't like being away from my family for 13 months, but that would be a small price to pay compared to what our men and women in uniform have sacrificed.

If I somehow get accepted, I promise to blog from over there.

I keep waiting to read a movie review in which the writer doesn't somehow squeeze in a mention of the Iraq war.  In his review of No Country for Old Men (a movie that I look forward to seeing), Peter Travers just made me wait a little longer.  He concludes:

Recent movies about Iraq have pushed hard to show the growing dehumanization infecting our world. No Country doesn't have to preach or wave a flag — it carries in its bones the virus of what we've become. The Coens squeeze us without mercy in a vise of tension and suspense, but only to force us to look into an abyss of our own making.

Sheesh, what a stupid thing to write.  Let's just leave aside that, from early on, movies have often focused on the animalistic side of humanity.  If you want your nihilism served up thick and cold, just rent The Big Sleep, Body Heat, or the Coen's debut film, Blood Simple, if you're in a noir kind of mood, or Deliverance or Goodfellas if you want movies about how thin is the veneer of civilization that surrounds us all, blah-blah-blah....  All were, to my recollection, made before the Iraq war.  All were, and are, quite good movies.

But what really cracks me up is when liberals carp about our growing "inhumanity" (a theme which -- I'm revealing my age, here -- liberal commentators began trotting out during the first term of the Reagan administration).  Don't they see how they make themselves the Yang to the Yin of the likes of Pat Robertson and Robert Bork?  What's the real difference between Bork telling us that we are "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" and ninnies like Travers lamenting about a growing infection of dehumanization in the world?

None that I can think of.  Michael Crichton once wrote that we humans seem to have such a deep need to attach religious meaning to events that those who reject religion end up unconsciously attaching a sort of religious significance to everything around them.  Whether you believe in the Book of Genesis, or in global warming and the evil of Halliburton, we are all fallen from Grace, in need of a Savior.

But for me, I think that, sometimes, a movie is just a movie.

Michael Yon snapped the above image in Baghdad, recently.  He writes:

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.

This image immediately brought another photograph to mind:

Wretchard had the very same idea.

The Herald's Latin America commentator, Andres Oppenheimer, is usually a level-headed (if predictably liberal) guy.  But when it comes to the issue of illegal immigrants, he seems to lose his grip.  His most recent column shows that the pro-amnesty crowd is being reduced to making threats of violence:

The rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria -- fueled by ratings-hungry cable-television hotheads and leading Republican presidential hopefuls -- is a dangerous trend: It may lead to a Hispanic intifada that may rock this nation in the not-so-distant future.

Remember the Palestinian intifada of the early 1990s, when thousands of frustrated young Palestinians took to the streets and threw stones at Israeli troops? Remember the French intifada of the summer of 2005, in which disenfranchised Muslim youths burned cars and stores in the suburbs of Paris?

If we are not careful, we may see something similar coming from the estimated 13 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, most of them Hispanic, who are increasingly vilified in the media, forced further into the underground by spineless politicians and not given any chance to legalize their status by a pusillanimous U.S. Congress.

We are creating an underclass of people who won't leave this country and, realistically, can't be deported. They and their children are living with no prospect of earning a legal status, no matter how hard they work for it. Many of them will become increasingly frustrated, angry, and some of them eventually may turn violent.

Sheesh.  Is that a promise?

Just checking in and clearing out offers for organ enhancing medicaments.  Don't think that I'm not watching you.

Btw, since I last posted, we've apparently won the war in Iraq.  I for one consider this to be good news.  Others, not so much.

I've been away for a while, and my traffic has gone down to less than a dribble (a drip?).  I should be back to more regular blogging soon, but in the meantime, I came across this scholarly and informed critique of the Reagan administration's mistakes in dealing with Iran, and how those mistakes set an unfortunate series of precedents for how Iran perceives us as well as for our credibility in the larger GWOT.

And here is something that I didn't know:

Four days later, on the second anniversary of the six Da'wa bombings in Kuwait, there was quite literally "fire" on America's interests. As Reagan wrote in his memoir:

On December 12, our nation got another reminder of the high price we were having to pay for the continuing strife in the Middle East and our efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict: Nearly 250 American soldiers returning home after six months of duty as members of the international police force posted in the Sinai under the Camp David accords were killed when their plane crashed after a refueling stop in Newfoundland.[64]

It was the largest single-day loss of life for the U.S. Armed Forces since the invasion of Normandy.   As with the bombings of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, the kidnappings in Lebanon, the truck bombings of the French Paratrooper and U.S. Marine barracks, and the Da'wa bombings in Kuwait, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

. . . Though the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Transportation Safety Board, FBI, and CIA all investigated the crash, their findings were not released to the Canadians.  "The Canadian Aviation Safety Board was unable to determine the exact sequence of events which led to this accident," the Board's official report states.

However, a dissenting opinion was issued by four of the Board's nine members:

In our judgment, the wings of the Arrow Air DC-8 were not contaminated by ice--certainly not enough for ice contamination to be a factor in this accident.... Accordingly, we cannot agree--indeed, we categorically disagree--with the majority findings.... The evidence shows that the Arrow Air DC-8 suffered an on-board fire and a massive loss of power before it crashed. ... [The fire] may have been associated with an in-flight detonation from an explosive or incendiary device.[65]

Until the U.S. declassifies its findings, the public cannot know if the results of U.S. investigations were withheld by the Reagan Administration because they would have pointed to its secret negotiations with Iran.

The entire essay makes for fascinating and deeply troubling reading.

(Via Michael Ledeen)

Breaking:

Universal Orlando has signed a deal to transform a corner of its Islands of Adventure park into a multi-attraction "theme park within a theme park" called the "Wizarding World of Harry Potter."

Slated to open in 2009, the biggest expansion of the park since it opened will jut off the existing Lost Continent area and likely include re-theming the Duleing Dragons roller coasters.

Park offiicals are mum on what other rides are part of the more than $100-milllion project, but the new themed area will include mock-ups of Potter icons Hogwarts Castle, the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade village.

The Times Online has a feature on Dennis Kucinich's looney lefty, 29-year old bride from Essex.  If you don't feel like clicking through, believe me when I write that this is all you need to know:

At Kent she unexpectedly signed up for a master’s degree in conflict resolution after meeting the course lecturer in a pub. She knew she had chosen the right subject when her final exam took place on September 11, 2001.

“The rest of the world was sending out its love to America but US officials just wanted to kick out. I remember thinking then I’d love to come to America and help them to reconcile with the rest of the world,” she said.

Love.  After 9-11, that's all we really needed, baby.

Btw, the article notes that she's been compared to Arwen from LOTR.  If she's Arwen, then who's Frodo?

The name on the helmet is what really intrigued me about this article.  Don't these royals have proper last names?

I couldn't resist:

NEW YORK - Dan Rather going Hollywood?

There were gasps of surprise at ABC's fall-schedule announcement this week when the veteran TV newsman popped up as an actor in clips for "Dirty Sexy Money," a new drama about a wealthy, misbehaving New York family.

The role wasn't exactly a stretch. Rather plays a reporter at a fancy dinner party pressing a politician, portrayed by William Baldwin, about his future political plans.

Tell us something we didn't know, already.

I have been following the Fred! zeitgeist, and I have to admit that I like what he has to say.  Here is the text of a speech he recently gave.

Only in Miami.

Background here.  (Update:  Lyrics posted here.  Funny stuff.)

We like what we see, here:

Kudos to the Herald for supplementing some of their local stories with embeddable video.

As See-Dubya writes, it's kind'a hard to get excited about French politics.  But seeing an unreformed Socialist take a drubbing at the polls is always satisfying, especially when she accuses her opponent of being "polarizing," then in her next breath utters such cohesive rhetoric as this:

"Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice," Royal told RTL radio.

"It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won)," she said.

Pressed on whether there would actually be violence, Royal said: "I think so, I think so," referring specifically to France's volatile suburbs hit by widespread rioting in 2005.

Way to go, Segolene, way to go.

We only lose if we choose to do so.  Tell the Dems what you think by signing the "We win, they lose" petition.

Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey explains his state of despair:

SANDMONKEY: Let me tell you something. I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago and I met a couple of Syrian activists. They one thing they told me that was really funny about the Pelosi visit. After Pelosi came to Syria two things happened. People on Syrian TV were saying, "We forced the Americans to knock on the Damascus gate!" Sort of like an admission that we messed things up in Iraq so much that America had to come and beg for their help.

But the day after Pelosi's visits there were immediate arrests of Syrian activists. That was the fruit she yielded. "Oh the Americans came over and they said they have a different foreign policy  and they're more interested in placating Bashar's ego." And he went out and got [arrested] everyone he wanted because he knew he had an ally in Washington that wouldn't pressure him as much.

You can't make this kind of stuff up.

Tom Tancredo, call your office.

Especially in light of recent events, I understand the need to enforce safety on college campuses.  But this is kind of silly:

Freshmen Anthony Shortt, Sarah Claussen and two friends would construct what they called bottle rockets out of plastic soda bottles, water and dry ice.

They'd take them out to the grassy quad, cap them, and watch the carbon dioxide pressure build and pop the bottle, producing a loud boom.

The 19-year-olds had no idea the stunt would cost them a night in jail, eviction from their dorms, suspension from school and a possible five years in prison.

Somebody needs to get a sense of perspective.