The Golden Gate

An extremely kind (and apparently well-read) reader sent over some MUST READ links that I give you below. Be sure to read them ALL.

Read through the latest edition of the The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, published by the Defense Ministry-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA). Featured in this month’s edition are pieces by Marcus Noland, Nicholas Eberstadt and a load of other folk who know a lot more than I do. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the link.

Speaking of Nick Eberstadt, check out his essay on North Korea’s weapons quest over at the now non-Korea Foundation-funded AEI .

And while your over at AEI, Dr. Norbert Vollertsen contributed a piece on the “depraved society we can’t ignore” in the June-July edition of American Enterprise. Nicholas Eberstadt, James R. Lilley, Daniel Kennelly, Gordon Cucullu and Victor Davis Hanson also ran a piece in the magazine on the North Korean nuclear issue that, given the names involved, I might consider selling my left nut to get a hold of.

Be sure to check out “A Cold Peace: The Changing Security Equation in Northeast Asia,” (.pdf) by the Brookings Institute’s Tomohiko Taniguchi.

Our friend Brant had some responses to Rich’s original Black Friday Post. Here’s his response, and my response to his response:

Some quick counterpoints:

* Just because someone works for the gov’t (i.e. “the people”) doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to have good wages and benefits. If the gov’t (as with any other employer) doesn’t pony up fairly, then unified action is totally fair in response.

* Yes, it sucks to be inconvienced for a day (or week or whatever) as a commuter, but trying to raise a family (to say nothing of saving for retirement) on $50-60k in the bay area sucks more.

* $50k - 60k sounds like a whole lot of money for “entry level” people, but these are also QUALIFIED professionals, not entry-level college students. And as I said, it’s not easy to raise a family for that amount in the bay area. I don’t know many of my friends that would be fighting to get a fat $50-60k job. That truly is entry level. It’s not halfway bad if you’re young, single and don’t own a home. But get out of your 20’s, try to raise a family, buy a home, save for retirement, etc…It’s tough on gov’t wages.

* Conversatives often deride the huge salaries of gov’t workers. It’s a nice fiction — but the reality is different. You don’t often hear people of going into gov’t work “for the money”. No, it’s more often that you hear of people LEAVE gov’t work “for the money”…. Sure, gov’t jobs aren’t half-bad, but the gov’t should pay good, middle class wages (with bennies) for their jobs.

It will suck if BART strikes (I carpool every day work — can’t iimagine the traffic!), but painting the unions as the problem is simplistic.

Brant,

One more counterpoint, for good measure.

The moral value/justice of your post hinges on the concept “fair.”

However, the meat of your post has to do with “lifestyle.”

If the jobs at BART were paid equivalent to jobs that require equal skill in the private sector, they would not start at 50-60k. It is ONLY because they are government jobs, with unions, that they pay so WELL. YOUR friends might not be clamoring for 50-60k jobs, but take away the union bullshit/requirements, and BART would be able to get tons of equally qualified applicants willing to work for less (not your friends).

Is it “fair” to have the BART passengers and other commuters PAY (it will cost them money and time) so that BART employees can inflate their ALREADY above market level wages beyond what they already are, leading to higher taxes and higher fees to ride BART?

Fair? To whom?

Remember, every time we privilege some group with legistlation (i.e., guns/physical force), we must marginalize another. When we give over 13.5 billion dollars in subsidies to farmers (in 2003 alone, not counting the 3 billion in “emergency relief”), we 1) take that 13.5 billion dollars from other people/parts of the economy, and 2) raise the prices of food for EVERYONE. Yes, the farmers who received the subsidies and price-fixing are benefited - no doubt. I’m sure there are those who feel that this is “fair” because they “should/deserve to” make a “good” living. Shit, I think they should be rich! I think everybody “should.” Wouldn’t that be nice?

However, reality does not recognize our “shoulds.” It operates on principles that completely ignore our personal opinions. When we manipulate prices/wages in one area it has profound effects on EVERYONE. When we unbalance one part of the equation, other parts must rebalance themselves. If we add to one part of the equation, we must subtract from another. (Imagine saving 13 billion dollars in taxes and having lower food costs…whom would benefit from this?)

Most importantly, when we do this through government activity/legislation, we are doing it with force. All laws/regulations, no matter how “good” their intention, are implemented at the point of a gun.

Is that use of force “fair” to the part of the equation that is unbalanced? Is that fair to the people who have the skills and desire but don’t want to deal the union bullshit? Is it fair to the consumers who would prefer to purchase the products/services that get eliminated through such unbalancing?

For example, my father decided to retire last week because California just passed a law that you MUST be part of the electrical workers union to be recognized as legitimate. So, to keep his jobs and stay competetitive/alive in the market, he joined. In the first couple months of being part of the union, he has been forced to deal with so much union “padding” and “pressure,” that he no longer feels like the boss of his own company (which he has owned for 30 years). When it came down to it, he felt his best choice was to simply quit and close his business.

Society has just lost a master electrician (my father was respected and revered as extraordinary at what he does - I mean did), and my father has lost the ability to perform his art according to his conscience.

Of course, the union electricians and shops (ALL of whom were “grandfathered” into the deal) have essentially eliminated their competition through the new law. Also, they have seniority over all the people who have just been forced to join the union. They get the best jobs, the best promotions, and benefits. The new members even pay dues to support the existing members increasing “bennies.” Ain’t that just sweet? And, of course, we all know that unions are known for their ethical and exemplary political/fiscal activities… HAH!

The union lobby just FUCKED all the non-union electricians is the ass with a BIG, ROUGH a government-issued dildo with no lube, and the government bent them over at the point of a gun to either take it or quit.

Is the increase in the already inflated lifestyle of union electricians at the cost of men like my father “fair?”

Again, if we make our personal “shoulds” the basis of “fair,” whoever has sufficient political power to unbalance the equation gets to determine what we “should” do and what is thereby “fair.” I prefer letting “reality/each person’s choices/the market” balance the equation, rather than corrupt bureaucrats and lobbyists. If the BART employees really wanted “fair,” they would dissolve the union and open themselves to competition. Of course, they wouldn’t do that, because they know that thousands of people would jump at the chance to do their jobs for less money. WHY? you figure it out.

Last, I want to be clear that I support people’s right to organize. I do not support government support of that organization. Union’s can justly picket, but they cannot violate/abridge the rights of any other members of society who disagree with them, ESPECIALLY “scabs.” If the unions can garner public support through reason, they are valid. If they revert to physical force and intimidation, they become part of the problem, not the cure. If they enlist a government to do the force/intimidation for them, that does not change the immorality, injustice, and ugliness of the issue.

(teloscientist is an occasional contributor to The Golden Gate. You can see more from him here.)

So, the other day I was talking about Black Friday – the very real prospect that the unions that run BART (our local commuter rail system) might walk of the job starting tomorrow, throwing our San Francisco transit system into chaos. Well, the last couple of days have seen several developments which warranted a full-scale update on the situation:

* First, “Black Friday” has been pushed back to NEXT WEDNESDAY. If no agreement is reached by Tuesday, the BART unions will walk off the job. That’s what the unions are saying now, that this is a hard and fast deadline. As one BART Union leader told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Our strike captains are ready, our picket signs are ready and our members are ready to walk off the job.”

* BART has 2,700 union workers.

* BART carries 320,000 riders a day, about half of that total during peak commute time. In one sense, one could say that these 320,000 riders are at the mercy of the 2,700 union workers, but in reality, of course, the displacement of the 320,000 daily riders onto other modes of transportation will impact many more people than just the 320,000.

* The BART system is facing a $24 million deficit for the fiscal year that begins tomorrow. BART is projected to lose $100 million over the next four years.

* The average full-time BART union employee receives a total benefits package worth $31,719 a year on top of their average annual base salary of $67,865 for a total average annual compensation of $99,584.

* The cost of benefits has increased 66 percent in four years, and is likely to rise another 70 percent over the next four years. Full-time BART union employees now pay about $25 per month in health care coverage for themselves and all their eligible family members, a rate that has remained the same since 1996.

* In 2001, a strike was averted when Bay Area politicians intervened and the BART board approved a 22 percent raise over four years. The last BART strike was in 1997 and caused massive regional transit disruptions.

* BART’s latest contract offer to the unions is for no pay increases for the next two years, then in the final two years employees would be given raises based on the consumer price index, with a cap of 2 percent.

* In addition, BART would raise current and retired employees’ monthly contributions for family health benefits from $25 to $100 beginning July 1, 2006, and raise the contributions to $150 a month starting July 1, 2008.

* BART would also immediately cap what it pays for health benefits at the amount charged for Kaiser Permanente’s health plan, instead of providing the several options now available. Employees would have to pay additional costs if they chose health care plans from other providers.

Any way you slice it, the compensation BART union employees receive now is fair and more than fair. For the unions to be holding a gun to the public’s head in this way and demanding even more now, with BART facing a deficit and the entire region trying to sustain an economic recovery, just seems to me to be the height of arrogance and short-sighted selfishness. I mean, come on, BART workers got a fat 22% raise just four years ago — in 2001, when most of us out here in private business were facing the big downturn. BART’s new contract offer seems quite reasonable.

Oh, and the San Francisco Chronicle — a pretty consistently pro-union paper — weighed in with the following editorial on the BART situation in this morning’s edition:

BART talks are way off track

TAKE A VITAL public service. Add lousy labor relations, a pot of money and political pressure. For BART, these ingredients produced a nightmare that avoided a strike in 2001 but has impoverished the transit system ever since.

With another work stoppage in view, BART faces a rerun. Management may cave in by steering scarce dollars to raise already-high wages. The unions may persist in pushing for money that they know isn’t there. Serious problems such as health-care and pension deficits may get lip service.

Riders should be furious after this year’s round of fare hikes and parking charges in suburban lots. If BART wanted to force people into cars, it couldn’t come up with a better plan.

A strike will deepen this downward trend, and both sides need a reality check. The past 22 percent pay increases can’t be repeated, yet the unions are asking for 17 percent. Since Sept. 11, fare-box collections and sales-tax revenues — the two prime sources of BART income — haven’t recovered.

An added problem has arrived: deficits are widening in the employees’ health-care and pension funds. Most of the $100 million deficit forecast for the next four years is from rising retiree-health-care costs; the system’s short-term outlook is for less revenue, but more bills.

Neither side is talking good sense, but that’s par for the cat-and-dog relations in this standoff. One insider describes it as the train builders versus the public workers, two interest groups with little in common. This gulf required politicians to sail in four years ago and order up an agreement that raised wages but did nothing to address underlying problems.

BART can’t afford a stoppage and the public anger it will bring. It’s time to hammer out a plan that doesn’t bring on more trouble.

Absolutely. It seems to me that a mass replacement of the BART workers should be on the table, too. Without this possibility, our whole regional transit system can be held hostage by 2,700 workers. Otherwise, what is the incentive for the workers to compromise?

with John Kerry Has Bush’s Number

Here is a sample:

John Kerry has the uncanny ability to predict the cointent of Bush’s speeches and rebutt them in advance. There was little point in me watching Bush spew his jingoist propaganda last night, for Big John had it all covered. He knew that Bush would defy 200 years of presidential tradition and attempt to rally the nation with “Happy Talk” in a time of war. He knew that Bush would try to make us have faith in our country and pride in the troops, despite everything democrats have taught us. And he knew he had to do something about it.

Fearful of coming off like a sore loser, yet he finding himself unable to tolerate Bush’s littany of lies, he tookpen in hand to criticize Bush’s poorly planned war. A Vietnam war hero thrice wounded in combat, he courageously expressed his disatisfaction with a war he himself supported before he was against it, and that he boldly sort of supports now.

The New York Times was, of course, hesitant to risk their reputation of objectivity by publishing a partisan hit piece. But after going over Kerry’s article with a fine-toothed comb and triple-checking all the facts, they threw caution to the wind and printed the article as a service to the American People.

Read the rest on your own.

I love this.

A-f*ing-men.

Read this. Here is a taste:

Before the advent of psychology into the schools, education involved learning to read, acquiring mental skills, and developing the ability to think conceptually. The idea behind traditional education was to prepare the student with as wide and strong a base as possible for future success and contribution in the world. The modern psychologists have a different idea, and this involves ensuring the students possess the correct beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. The attention in education has gone from cognitive skills and effective thinking ability, to affective things, such as how the student feels, what he believes and what attitudes he has. This is why students perform worse on standardized tests today that gauge thinking ability and cognitive skills compared to 25 or 50 years ago.

By 1952, behavioral psychology had not only become the “scientific” foundation of American pedagogy, but it had changed our textbooks, revised the classroom curriculum, and redesigned the American school building. If you detect something mindless about American education, it’s because the mind has been taken out of it. Only visible behavior counts.

The modern psychologically-based schools fail to adequately teach the students how to read, learn and understand, concentrating more on the affective domain, and actually cause a number of “learning disabilities”, which psychiatry then “diagnoses” and prescribes drugs for as the solution.

Check out this report from the International Crisis Group via The Marmot’s Hole:

Relations between Japan and North Korea continue to deteriorate due to concerns over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and past abductions of Japanese citizens. Nearly a decade and a half of efforts at normalising relations between the countries have faltered due to Pyongyang’s unwillingness to give up that program or come clean over the abductions. For Japan, normalisation would help preserve regional stability and represent one more step toward closure on its wartime history; for North Korea, it would potentially produce the single greatest economic infusion for reviving its moribund economy. Indeed, the prospect of normalisation with Japan is one of the leading incentives that can be offered to North Korea in a deal to end the North’s nuclear programs.

Force fields could keep lunar astronauts safe from radiation. Check it here.

Well, it’s come to this. The anti-regime-change sect is trotting out the shopworn old argument again, hoping the public won’t notice, and lefty pundits and blogs and “advocacy organizations” are parroting the line pretty much verbatim.

You’ve heard it dozens of times before. It’s the tired old chestnut — that those of us who supported ousting Saddam as a key move in the War on Terror should not be heeded if we aren’t ourselves headed over to fight, or if we don’t have a child that we’ve “sent” or will “send” to fight in Iraq.

Please.

There is so much wrong with this line of argument that one hardly knows where to begin. Christopher Hitchens thoroughly dispatched this fallacious argument the first time it reared its ugly head, back in 2002:

The concept embodied in the contemptuous usage is this: someone who wants intervention in, say, Iraq ought to be prepared to go and fight there. An occasional corollary is that those who have actually seen war are not so keen to urge it.

The first thing to notice about this propaganda is how archaic it is. The whole point of the present phase of conflict is that we are faced with tactics that are directed primarily at civilians. Thus, while I was traveling last year in Pakistan, on the Afghan border and in Kashmir, and this year in the gulf, my wife was fighting her way across D.C., with the Pentagon in flames, to try and collect our daughter from a suddenly closed school, was attempting to deal with anthrax in our mailbox, was reading up on the pros and cons of smallpox vaccinations, and was coping with the consequences of a Muslim copycat loony who’d tried his hand as a suburban sniper. Should things ever become any hotter, it would be far safer to be in uniform in Doha, Qatar, or Kandahar, Afghanistan, than to be in an open homeland city. It is amazing that this essential element of the crisis should have taken so long to sink into certain skulls.

My wife is not of military age, and there is little chance of a draft for mothers. Are her views on Iraq therefore disqualified from utterance? And what about older comrades who can no longer shoulder a gun? What about friends of mine who are physically disabled? Should their expertise—often considerable—be set aside because they can’t ram it home with a bayonet?

There are some further unexamined implications of this stupid tactic. It is said, for example, that someone like former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey has more right to pronounce on a war than someone who avoided service in Vietnam. Well, last year Kerrey was compelled to admit that he had led a calamitous expedition into a Vietnamese village and had been responsible for the slaughter of several children and elderly people. (He chose to be somewhat shady about whether this responsibility was direct or indirect.) Do I turn to such a man for advice on how to deal with Saddam Hussein? The connection is not self-evident, more especially since, as far as I am aware, Kerrey knows no more about Iraq than I know about how to construct a chess-playing computer.

One hopes that the next implication is inadvertent, but the clear suggestion is that there ought not to be civilian control of the military. What—have callow noncombatants giving brisk orders to grizzled soldiers?

Right. Exactly. Well, to heck with that old “civilian control over the military” — who needs it anyway?

Anyway, well, now the anti-anti-fascist left is trotting out this tired refrain once again, and Hitchens is no less disdainful of the lameness of the argument, which he once again accurately and humorously skewers in his latest piece in Slate:

Andrew Bacevich [is] a “professor of international relations at Boston University and a retired Army officer.” What could be more impressive? This expert delivers himself of the opinion that, “If this is such a great cause, let us see one of the Bush daughters in uniform.” Let me do a brief thought experiment here. Do I know a single anti-war person who would be more persuaded if one of the Bush girls joined up? Do you? Can you imagine what would be said about such a cheap emotional stunt? Stalin’s son was taken prisoner by the Nazi invaders (and never exchanged), and Mao’s son was killed in the war that established the present state of North Korea. I am not sure how encouraging such precedents are supposed to be, but they have nothing at all to do with the definition of a just war.

Much more important than this, however, is the implied assault on civilian control of the military. In this republic, elected civilians give crisp orders to soldiers and expect these orders to be obeyed. No back chat can even be imagined, let alone allowed. Do liberals really want the Joint Chiefs to say: “Mr. President, I’ll respect that order when you have a son or daughter in uniform”? It was a great day when President Lincoln fired Gen. George B. McClellan. It was a great day when President Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. No presidential brat needed to be on the front line for this point to be understood.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are either worthwhile or they are not (and I see that nobody as yet requires an “exit strategy” from Afghanistan)… However, the majority of American dead have still been civilians living in America, and those who prattle on about the sacrifice of children seem not to have read about Beslan, or thought about it, or broken with the lazy old American habit that supposes that war is always “over there.”

Indeed.

Pretty good article in U.S. News and World Report on the distinction between the indigenous Sunni/Baathist terrorists and the imported terrorists and what they’re up to in Iraq:

.

Identifying who exactly is carrying out suicide attacks is a tricky business. There have been some 480 car bombings in Iraq since the handover of sovereignty a year ago, according to the Associated Press; the explosions killed at least 2,174 people and wounded 5,520. The military tries to piece together a picture of who is attacking Iraqis by forensic analysis of the dead bombers, interviews with captured jihadists, and confessions from failed suicide bombers. American officials say the largest share of the suicide bombers are Saudis and the second-biggest group are Syrians. Vines says the primary source of foreign fighters comes from recruiters who work mosques around the Middle East looking for young men eager for jihad against America. A senior intelligence official in Iraq told U.S. News that some of the bombers are recruited through mosques in isolated parts of Sudan or Yemen, where there is little access to satellite television. As a result, those recruits have no knowledge that ordinary Iraqis, not American soldiers, are increasingly the targets. “These individuals are disenchanted when we capture them,” said the intelligence official. “They feel they have been lied to.”

It’s a good read. Go check it out.

Two great posts from the indispensable Cox & Forkum:

The first is on the flag burning amendment. A gross affront to our first amendment rights:

They quote Mark Steyn:

For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It’s always useful to know what people really believe.

Amen.

The second is still still more on Kelo:

And they cite Larry Salzman and Alex Epstein writing in this article:

\
The attitude behind these seizures was epitomized by a Lancaster, CA, city attorney explaining why a 99¢ Only store should be condemned to make way for a Costco: “99 Cents produces less than $40,000 [a year] in sales taxes, and Costco was producing more than $400,000. You tell me which was more important?”

To such government officials, the fact that an individual earns a piece of property and wants to use and enjoy it, is of no importance–all that matters is “the public.” But as philosopher Ayn Rand observed, “there is no such entity as ‘the public,’ since the public is merely a number of individuals . . . .the idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.” In the context of the Kelo case, the idea that “the public interest” trumps private property rights simply means that the desires of some individuals for property they did not earn and cannot get from others voluntarily trump the rights of those who did earn it and do not want to sell it. Why are their rights trumped? Because some gang with political pull doesn’t happen to like how these individuals are using their property.

This is unjust and un-American.

Amen again.

Via Dhimmi Watch:

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani woman gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council said on Monday she hoped the country’s Supreme Court would reimpose death sentences on the men who attacked her.

The Supreme Court began hearing an appeal by the woman, Mukhtaran Mai, against the acquittal of five of six men convicted in the assault.

“I expect the same decision as was given by the special court,” Mai told reporters in the Supreme Court before the session began, referring to the conviction of the men.

Six men were originally convicted of the crime and sentenced to death, but five were later acquitted after appealing to a high court in Punjab province, which cited a lack of evidence. A sixth had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

Mai, 33, was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council after her brother — who was 12 at the time — was judged to have offended the honor of a powerful clan by befriending a woman from the tribe….

Read the Reuters story here.

And remember, organizations like CAIR want Sharia in America. Do you?

From Hubris

Journalist Criticizes Hostage For Insulting Former Captors, Jodie Foster Character In The Accused For Disparaging Rapists…

Go ahead. Read it all.

Heh.

It seems like the issue of Public Employee Unions just won’t go away. These Unions are powerful both locally and in the State of California as a whole. So, predictably, efforts to reform the Civil Service rules in San Francisco and the funding of Public Unions in the State have met with stiff and bitter opposition from well-connected and wealthy Unions.

And now, today, we get word that it’s quite likely that the Unions who represent BART workers (BART is the regional train system for the San Francisco Bay Area) will probably walk off the job this Friday, forcing some 300,000 plus commuters a day to find some other way to get around.

In short, Black Friday is coming.

I remember vividly the last BART strike, in 1997. It was a bloody mess. Bus lines from the East Bay that usually carried 9.500 riders per day had to deal with 42,500 riders. The Bay Bridge was backed up for miles. You think driving to the City in commute traffic is bad now? Until you’ve seen Bay Bridge traffic during a BART strike, well, you ain’t seen nothin’.

So, today, BART is telling everybody to get ready. Make your alternate transit plans, or even better, plan to telecommute, if that option is available to you, starting on Friday.

But the brouhaha begs the larger question: what should the role of Unions be, especially when it relates to Unions who represent government workers in essential sectors? Basically, when these Unions strike, they are striking against the people, aren’t they? And, heck, everyone agrees that BART workers (and their directors) are extremely well-paid now. I mean, the lowest-paid worker at BART (utility/maintenance personnel) are paid $50,000 at the entry level. And station agents and train drivers pull down $60,000 for entry level hires.

I don’t know, I just can’t get away from the view that, when these public workers strike, they are essentially holding a gun to the heads of the very people that they have sworn to serve.

Something to consider when you are stuck in traffic this Friday.

Cassandra over at Villainous Company has an excellent post on this subject that can be found here.

It starts off:

Last year I wrote Stop Lying About The 2000 Election to refute John Kerry’s mantra that over 1 million blacks were disenfranchised during the 2000 election.

That he would say this infuriated me. As a member of the Senate, his staffers had access to the Civil Rights Commission Report on the 2000 election (even if he did manage to miss 86% of the votes). He knew better. But Mr. Kerry was never one to let petty details get in the way of a good plan. Not content with asserting phony voter disenfranchisement in the last election, his lawyers began making plans to allege voter fraud and suppression in the upcoming election well in advance of November 2nd, and they’ve kept the rumors simmering ever since.

It doesn’t help when the DNC chair lies about the results of his own study…

Go read the whole thing for it is good and so is Lady Cassandra.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Tehran — With his cheap suits, 18-hour workdays and ever-ready quotes from the Quran, he is the very model of Islamic piety. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the ultra hard-liner who swept to power as Iran’s new president Friday, is modest about everything in life — except, perhaps, his own modesty.

Even as he cast his ballot in the poll that propelled him to victory, the former mayor of Tehran could not resist yet another chance to portray himself as just a humble municipal worker. “I take pride in being the Iranian nation’s little servant and street-sweeper,” he declared, a reference to the time he briefly swapped his mayor’s desk for a stint in the city trash brigade.

Yet for his reform-minded detractors, the worry now is that he will sweep away much more than just litter. They fear that Ahmadinejad — whom they dub “Iran’s Taliban” — will cancel the few social freedoms they have won in the last decade, bringing back a religious orthodoxy not seen since the early days of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Sure they’re not building a bomb. Sure this election is not a sham. And yes…we should take Sean Penn’s advice and try and understand them better and not take “death to Amercia” literally.

It is all just metaphor, right? Right.

I do not think that the problem is America does not understand Iran. I think the problem is that we do.

Today is the Gay Pride Parade here in SF. I felt it appropriate to re-post this:

I would say this is ironic and amusing accept that is so sad and entirely inexcusable that I am–and I am seldom so–I am actually appalled:

Read the whole thing here: City finds popular gay night club discriminated against blacks

But here is an excerpt:

A bar owner in the predominantly gay Castro neighborhood violated numerous city civil rights codes by discriminating against black patrons, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission announced Tuesday.

The case has been closely watched by the city’s gay community, many of whom said they were incredulous that an establishment in what’s considered one of the country’s most progressive and socially liberal neighborhoods would actively keep black customers out of the popular nightspot Badlands.

In particular, the commission said club owner Les Natali referred to blacks as “non-Badlands customers” who should be discouraged from patronizing the club.

It is not even that this is a progressive and socially liberal city. It is that while the gay community here fights for equal rights in terms of same-sex-marriage, all the while using the analogy of how the right used to be against interracial marriage, they are discriminating against Blacks. Methinks this is an all-time hypocritical low. I am stunned. Really stunned.

On Kelo:

Writing for the majority, Hubris said that “Hubris has carefully formulated a testicle-tearing plan that he believes will produce appreciable emotional satisfaction for himself.”  He added that the proposal by the justices that the court adopt a bright-line rule that ball-stealing does not qualify as a public use is supported by neither precedent nor logic.

The ruling indicated that the right to seize testicles is crucial to eliminating the blight of shrunken old balls.

Go read the whole post here. And if you are not visiting the Mighty Hubris a few times a week to help him though his dark spells, you should, lest his untimely death by his own hand be ALL YOUR FAULT.

Heh.

By Roger L Simon.

This BBC article quoting world leaders on the Iranian Election is (kind of) interesting. Worth noting are the words of that great “democrat” Vladimir Putin:

“I am convinced that your election, which came as a result of the Iranian people’s will, will guarantee continuity in the development of partnership between our countries.”

Translation: Keep the cash flowing.

The words of Israel’s Shimon Peres:

Neither the primaries nor the recent round of elections were free, and were contests between extremists. The candidates were pre-determined, as were the results…

The conclusion is that the dangerous combination of extremists, non-conventional weapons and isolation from the West will continue, and will generate a great deal of problems for the free world.

Translation: Look out below. (well, maybe not… but a lot of people might be relieved if they did)…

Wouldn’t it be fun if politicians spoke the truth? I think Roger’s translations are far closer to the truth than what was spoken.

Heh.

Suddenly I now see the value in this near-classic movie.

Via LGF:

Bangkok - The bodies of a Buddhist couple were found shot and nearly decapitated on Friday in restive southern Thailand, adding to the five other beheadings in the past three weeks, police said.

Jad Suwanchatree, 52, a defence volunteer in Muang district of Yala province, and his wife Serm, 51, were riding their motorcycle to tap rubber from a plantation when they were killed.

“As Jad stopped his motorcycle to remove wood which blocked the road, he was shot and slashed in his neck, as was his wife,” police in Yala said.

“Their heads were not totally separated from their bodies” although a doctor confirmed the cause of death for both was their neck injuries, police added.

Where is the MSM on THESE continuing patterns supported by the Quran? Killing Buddhists? Well, we know how offensive Buddhists can be.

Hot off the presses from Professor Volokh:

Justice Thomas’ dissent does an excellent job showing that the original meaning of “public use” was either actual public ownership of the condemned property or at the very least a legal right of access by the public (as in the case of takings for railroads and other common carriers). It did not mean a mere potential benefit to the public, which is why the text does not use a term such as “public purpose,” which the Kelo majority uses interchangeably with “public use.” Many state supreme court decisions explicitly distinguish between “public use” and “public purpose” (I can provide cites to anyone who may be interested), and the US Supreme Court should follow their lead.

Read it here.

Also, Volokh has a page of related posts here. It starts off with a theme I completely agree with:

Big Government for Its Own Sake:

A while back, I had a post, “George Bush, liberal darling” stating that liberals should like George Bush for his vast expansion of federal spending. I received many outraged emails, and many links from outraged liberal bloggers, protesting that liberals don’t like Big Government for its own sake, but rather support using the institution of government for wise, liberal ends. I accept that that these protestations were sincere. But consider the lineup in Raich and Kelo. Then consider the legal gymnastics it takes to consider local medical pot part of “interstate commerce,” and to consider taking people’s home and giving them to Pfizer a “public use” in the face of two hundred years of precedent that A to B transfers are illegitimate; and the fact that “liberal ends” were certainly not involved in Raich, nor in Kelo (see Justice Thomas’s dissent); and consider that the liberal Justices are not exactly shy about invalidating laws when it strikes their fancy. I think a good argument can be made that the more liberal Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court do indeed support Big Government for its own sake.

Amen.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy.

I am seldom as stunned as I am by THIS laid out well over at Tech Central Station:

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that governments may seize your business and even your home in order to facilitate private economic development schemes.

It’s well settled, of course, that the government can take your property in order to devote the land to some public purpose. The Binghamton campus of the State University of New York, for example, was built in part on land that the state took away from my family. In the case before the Supreme Court, however, the City of New London wanted to seize a neighborhood and turn the land over to a private developer who would then raze the homes and build a big industrial park…

There is a round-up of the government taking of private land here.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

From LGF:

Islamic Hatred in Mainstream Aussie Mosques

In the same Australian state where two Christians have been convicted of “religious vilification” thoughtcrimes for criticizing Islam, the so-called “mainstream” Brunswick Mosque is preaching Islamic supremacism and Dark Ages hatred of infidels and Jew…

Go read the whole thing. You know you want to.

So, the City of San Francisco is in a budget crunch, right? So when comedian and local resident Robin Williams recently offered to give the City $80,000 to repiar a City-owned retaining wall and median strip near his home, a rational person would naturally assume that the City would say a grateful “thank you” and accept the money and move on.

Well, as they used to say on the SAT test: rationality is to San Francisco politics as oil is to water.

SF Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval is holding up–and may block–the City’s acceptance of Williams’ donation. Sandoval is apparently annoyed that the money is going to be used to fix up the City property in Williams’ expensive Seacliff neighborhood:

“Gee, I wish everyone was in that position,” said Sandoval, who represents the Excelsior and surrounding working-class neighborhoods. “How about an extra $80,000 to fix a median in the Bayview?”

Well, gee — how about for starters, Gerardo old bean, if the City accepts the $80,000 from Williams, that’s $80,000 that the city won’t have to spend fixing up that Seacliff retaining wall and median? Thus, that’s $80,000 more the City will have to spend on projects in Bayview and the Excelsior — or any other project you and your fellow Supervisors wish to pursue.

See how that works, Gerardo?

Geez, and we wonder why the City is in such a fiscal mess, with economic wizards like Sandoval at the helm.

Here’s my proposal: require that every member of the Board of Supervisors take basic economics and accounting classes. And an ethics class, while we’re at it.

“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all of these sick children well, by creating the international children of the future.”

Dr. C.M. Pierce of Harvard University in a speech to teachers (1973)

This and other interesting quotes over at Where’s Your Brain.

This is also a good time t mention John Taylor Gatto’s amazing book available free on line in HTML or for purchase at that link. I have read it and was stunned. He is a two-time award winning New York public school teacher.

Does it bother anyone that the more money we pump into public schools the less literate our populace becomes?

From Salon:

_

Today’s mega-conference in Brussels on Iraq — cosponsored by the U.S. and the E.U. and attended by representatives from 74 nations — was designed to encourage broader participation in the country’s reconstruction. The L.A. Times called the meeting “a matchmaking exercise: a chance for the Iraqis to present their political, economic and security agendas and for the participating nations to decide how they might be in a position to help.” But so far, that help seems to be mostly symbolic. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the conference’s purpose was “primarily political … to send a clear message that the international community will stand by the people of Iraq.” No major initiatives were announced, and whether any tangible aid will be offered remains to be seen. In fact, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to remind nations that have already pledged contributions to Iraq that they need to pony up — very little of the $15 billion in non-U.S. aid pledged at a conference two years ago has actually been contributed.

So. let me see, what was that Paul Berman exceprt from Terror and Liberalism I posted the other day?

`

And we saw the kind of support and solidarity those people [Iraqi liberals] received from elsewhere in the world—saw how miserly was that support, how cautious, how self-interested and sometimes how deluded. And this, too, the spectacle of people around the world failing to rally to the anti-totalitarians in their moment of crisis, conformed to a main pattern of modern history. For liberal-minded people have always had a good deal of trouble understanding the totalitarian rebellions against liberal society, therefore a lot of trouble in putting up a resistance.

… The invasion revealed that ordinary Iraqis were desperately in need of more help than the coalition armies could provide; and, around the world, some of the richest and most powerful of nations, pursuing their national interests, lifted not one finger in aid. The coalition soldiers likewise needed help; and still no aid. It became clear that Washington, in its underestimation of the enemy, was spending not nearly enough money; and the cry went up in the United States Congress that Washington was spending too much. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were new flare-ups of an old war, which has been going on for most of a century—the war between liberal society and the anti-liberal rebellions—this time in a series of Muslim landscapes. But the meaning of these Afghan and Iraqi battles remained invisible to entire populations all over the world, and a great many people went on gazing at those faraway battles in a spirit of detachment or even schadenfreude, faintly satisfied to see the United States floundering.

Ah — yup. Though, I wouldn’t call it “floundering.” But do I think that cynical, calculating types inside the EU would be willing to sit on their hands and watch the fledgling Iraqi democracy do without simply to spite the US and the coalition for having the temerity to act decisively when the EU were unwilling/unable to?

The answer, unfortunately, continues to be “yes.” And apparently they haven’t made good on the $15 billion of assistance they previously promised to contribute.

Disgraceful.

New Regulations for Title 18, Section 2257

From the semi-monthly newsletter for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom:

As of June 23rd, 2005, the U.S.C. Title 18, Section 2257 adult material
record-keeping and labeling law is being expanded to include the Internet. These
regulations update the record-keeping requirements of the Child Protection and
Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988. NCSF believes the new 2257 regulations are
unconstitutional because they are unjustly burdensome on protected speech and a
serious threat to privacy.

There are a number of practical difficulties in complying with the proposed
2257 regulations which will apply to both companies and individual website owners.
One of the key issues is the definition of a “producer” of content and the
requirement that “secondary producers” must also keep original records for every
image. The name and physical address of the custodian of these records must be
posted with the images.

An injunction has been filed by the Free Speech Coalition on behalf of
their members against 2257. The Free Speech Coalition is the trade association of
the adult entertainment industry, representing all the diverse creators and
distributors of adult products and services in fighting against regulations that
unfairly target adult entertainment.

FSC is “confident” that they will receive injunctive relief of some sort,
but it is not known what components of the law and regulations will be covered. FSC
is urging the adult entertainment and information community to be compliant with
the law and regulations, and to be prepared to comply with the new regulations,
insofar as possible.

NCSF is working with the Free Speech Coalition for greater clarity on
compliance and will pass along advice as it becomes available. For more information
about 2257, go here.

Let’s not let the libertarian sensibility of America slip away while we increase our sense of security.

Read it over at LGF. Do it now before it gets cold.

Heh.