Tick-Tock

NYT Fudges Elite Arts Club Distaff Flap

2011-02-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's NYT city section recounted the fierce and acerbic debate over The Century Association's reciprocal members' arrangement with the similarly elite The Garrick Club in London.

After a democratic vote the Century has decided to end the arrangement with the Garrick due to the that club's refusal to admit women as members. (The Century began admitting women as members in 1988.)

Nowhere in the article, which quotes a number of members without naming them, is there mention of what precipitated this crisis. Word comes to us from an insider that in September, one female Century member, like an Egyptian democracy activist at the gate's of the presidential palace, tried to crash the Garrick in full knowledge that it is a men-only club.

The NYT article would seem, then, to be incomplete and misleading. Or can the Times be completely unaware of this?

Read the article here.

French Strikers' Achilles Heel: They Won't Strike without Overtime Incentive

2010-10-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

... and the leader of the Union organizing the Paris strike complains that the French police employed underhanded tactics by re-taking a blocked refinery during the middle of the night. "A scandal," bleats Charles Foulard, "a grave moment for our democracy."

Apparently French strikers refuse to strike and picket and occupy after certain hours... and only do so with adequate rations of wine and foie gras.

Read the whole thing, via the BBC, here.

Bon soir et bon chance...

David Mamet on Theater and the Free Market

2010-08-05T03:41:00.000-07:00

The theatre is a magnificent example of the workings of that particular bulwark of democracy, the free-market economy. It is the most democratic of arts, for if the play does not appeal in its immediate presentation to the imagination or understanding of a sufficient constituency, it is replaced. ... It is the province not of ideologues (whether in the pay of the state and called commissars, or tax subsidized through the university system and called intellectuals) but of show folk trying to make a living.

- from Theater, just published by Faber & Faber, and a hat-tip to Terry Teachout for his excellent review that called my attention to this quote.

Sexy... Lady Gaga, or Hephzibah?

2010-07-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK magazine has gone giddy over Lady Gaga. There was the (fascinating) cover story a couple of months ago. And then this week, featured video from her performance Friday on the TODAY show. I like Lady Gaga's music, and I'm interested to see her underwear, but the woman herself leaves me cold.

In contrast... in another appearance on the same show that day, the Cambridge-educated author and journalist, Hephzibah Anderson is seriously hot stuff.

She doesn't writhe around there in her underwear, that is true, and is unfortunate, but she does discuss with Hoda and Kathie Lee her new book "Chastened: My Year without Sex." The book recounts her wondering one day what would happen if she were stop her habit of serial short relationships and occasional hook-ups? Would she make space to let the right one in? As she explains, she gave it a try. Hephzibah is the living embodiment of the lord's plenty, but also that the idea that not doing it... or specifically not doing it at least for a little while... can be damn sexy too. You don't believe me? Watch the men in the background of the studio watching her interview.

Please, then vote in the comments below: Who's sexier... Gaga... or Hephzibah?

Gaga singing "Alfredo" on the July 9th TODAY show:

Hephzibah discussing "Chastened" on the July 9th TODAY show:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bon soir et bon chance.

On the plus side... General Petraeus

2010-07-12T08:43:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson weighs our advantages in the prolonged conflict in Afghanistan. Chief among them, General Petraeus...

By all accounts he is an historic figure. Take his willingness to step down from Centcom, after achieving global fame, only to enter into the Inferno of Afghanistan, at a time when he has seen nonstop service and dealt with health issues — and when there is not much that can be added to his reputation but a great deal that might diminish it in Afghanistan.

All that is in marked contrast, for example, to the 2003 behavior of Gen. Tommy Franks, who did the opposite: He retired abruptly after basking in the glow of a three-week victory — even as he saw the insurgency brewing — seemingly in order to capitalize on his newfound and transitory fame. Petraeus’s moral capital and past successes are worth a great deal, here and abroad, and bring a new dimension to the struggle — even though he will be apparently working with diplomatic personnel quite unlike the gifted and selfless Ryan Crocker.

Remember, he surged in Iraq without the sort of wide-scale criticism over his rules of engagement that has been directed at current counterinsurgency methods in Afghanistan. Again, for a national icon to willingly step down into the fray, when conventional wisdom is writing Afghanistan off, and under the aegis of former senators — Biden, Clinton, Obama — who deprecated his efforts when he most needed public support is nothing short of heroic. And that too will help for a while in rallying military and civilian opinion behind the effort.

Read the whole thing at NR on-line HERE.

The Three Terrors: "Jihad is Sweet, Jihad is Fun"

2010-06-21T04:04:00.000-07:00

"Jihad is Sweet, Jihad is Fun!"

(Based on "Funiculi Funicula")

Sung by the Three Terrors:

Erdogano Pavarotti, Assad Carreras and Ahmedido Domingo

A.

Erdogan: I say -- it's time that I restore the Empire

Let's get to work (let's get to work!)

Because in Europe everybody knows that

I'm just a jerk (he's just a jerk!)

Assad: And I , the serial killer who should spend all

his life in jail (oy vey oy vey)

To reach the hearts of all the world media

We found the trail (hurray hurray)

Erdogan: Terror, Terror, that's my cup of tea

Terror gains us love and sympathy

To beat the West, to be the one

From Tripoli to Teheran

Yalla yalla, ya -- Jihad is sweet, Jihad is fun

All: Terror, Terror, that's how you convince

That you're cool and charming as a prince

To beat the West, to be the one

For Hezbullah and Erdogan

Yalla yalla, ya -- Jihad is sweet, Jihad is fun

Ahmedi: So now, the UN has imposed the sanctions

(Ironically) Oh my, oh my... (oh my, oh my)

Together here we stand, no opposition,

I hung them high (he hung them high)

I wish to thank Obama for his patience,

For playing dumb (for playing dumb)

Coz now I got the peace of mind to build me

The nuclear bomb (The nuclear bomb)

Terror, terror, that's my cup of tea

Assad: Terror gains us love and sympathy

Erdogan: To beat the West, to be the one

From Tennessee to Teheran

Yalla, yalla ya, Jihad is sweet, Jihad is fun

All: Terror, Terror, gets us all the grants

Terror makes you all piss in your pants

To beat the West, to be the one

From Tennessee to Teheran

Yalla yalla, ya -- I hit the switch and you are gone

Newsweek Reports the Zombies Attack

2010-06-15T06:14:00.001-07:00

It was just a matter of time.

Bon soir and bon chance, and read the whole thing HERE.

A Call to Open The New Yorker to Free-thinking Writers

2010-06-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

Ronald Radosh calls The New Yorker to open it's pages to a wider range of writers. They should considering their readers pride themselves on free-thinking.

Curiously he addresses this plea not to its Editor, David Remnick, but to Hendrick Hertzberg. Radosh writes:

In a blog post yesterday, New Yorker writer and editor Hendrik Hertzberg, who admits to knowing me for decades, starts by saying that I am “disliked by many on the left,” which is putting it mildly. But it is nice to know that despite all of my numerous heresies, Hertzbgerg still retains a “persistent soft spot” for me. The feeling is mutual.

For his readers’ benefit, he goes through my checkered past, noting my stint as a Communist in my high school and college years... through my sojourn as a social-democrat and my current stance, which I prefer to say is that of an independent conservative centrist, who calls things as I see them without worrying about labels.... But Hertzberg goes on to say I have “undeniably fallen into bad company..."

If I have fallen into this bad company, it is because other outlets in the so-called MSM somehow refuse to publish my articles and reviews. I do not think these articles are so far out that a credible open-minded magazine would not be able to run them, but somehow, that is not how their editors feel. I wish Hertzberg would look over some of these pieces. Even if it turns out he agrees with any of them, would he have let them into the New Yorker? To ask that question is to answer it.

I have a simple question to ask. Would the Nation, or the New Yorker for that matter, print an article by a conservative that sharply criticizes a book by a liberal writer they all revere? Such a review would have to be from a position not shared by any liberals. For example, an article on race and affirmative action by Abigail Thernstrom or Shelby Steele. Articles like the recent one attacking Paul Berman from the left are not evidence for Hertzberg’s argument. Show me one example, if there is any. Could it be that conservative journals and magazines are more open-minded than liberal ones?...

So I would like to see Rick Hertzberg be brave and open the pages of the New Yorker to a wider spectrum of views, if only to hold an honest debate on the important issues facing us today.

Bon soir et bon chance, and read the whole thing HERE.

Trotsky Denounces Stalin Trials, in English, 1932

2010-05-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

Suicide Cult Meets Death Cult?

2010-05-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

My latest article on Breitbart Media's Big Journalism...

"In Britain, Media Frets As Suicide Cult Greets Death Cult"

Judging by the exceptions he recently proposed for altering the Miranda warnings, even Attorney General Eric Holder believes that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” a truth first stated in 1949 by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, and made new again in our time. Meanwhile over in Britain, this week they have a new Prime Minister. They also have a Queen. They have Big Ben. The have, in Chelsea, a world-class soccer club owned by a Russian oligarch. They have an honorable tradition of tolerance, free speech and fair play. But they do not have a constitution. Recently, though, a British judge, John Mitting, signed a suicide pact between his nation and violent Islamic extremists when he ruled that two Pakistani men, one a known al-Qaeda operative, could not be deported due to the possibility of their being harmed if they were sent home....

Read the whole thing HERE. The comments are certainly lively!

Joe Biden, Truth-teller

2010-03-24T05:27:00.000-07:00

At the historic White House signing of the Obama health-care legislation, Vice President Biden, while speaking sotto voce into the president's ear, dropped the bomb: "This legislation is a big f@#&ing deal."

Indeed.

One characteristic of an idiot, whether village idiot or idiot savant, is that they often speak a truth that everyone else in a room knows but won't publicly acknowledge. In a way, Joe ("one heartbeat way from control of the nuclear football") Biden is consistently such a man. You might appreciate him for this, but I don't want him anywhere near my health care.

In any case, the next question would of course be: Who precisely here is getting f@#&ed?

Bon nuit et bon chance.

The Coming Trial of Adam Gadahn

2010-03-07T13:01:00.000-08:00

Adam Gadahn (born Adam Pearlman), the Oregon-born/South California-raised propagandist for al Qaeda, has been detained in Karachi, Pakistan.

Pundit Roger Kimball wonders where Eric Holder proposes to try "this disgusting person."

According to Wikipedia, Gadahn has been "indicted in the Southern Division of the United States District Court for the Central District of California by a federal grand jury for the capital crime of treason for aiding an enemy of the United States."

I'm taking odds that AG Holder will propose BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA for the venue.

An account via AP, who absurdly dub the arrest of this loser a "huge victory," can be read here.

Roger Kimball here.

Climategate, Following the Money

2010-02-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

My new piece, "Climategate UK, Following the Money, All Three Trillion Euros of It," is now up at Big Journalism, the latest edition to the Breitbart media empire. As I say:

There’s a question oft-posed by the proponents of global warming… or of “climate change,” as the new term of art has it, thus allowing warmists to claim both the snowstorm now blanketing America’s East Coast, as well as the melting of that snow, as evidence for their theory.

“To what end?” the warmists ask the skeptics. Or, in the lingua franca of conspiracy theorists everywhere: “Cui bono, my friend, cui bono?”

Well, lots of people are benefiting from the practical implications of this theory....

Read the whole think HERE.

Retracto, the Correction Alpaca

2010-02-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

Retracto, Big Journalism's Correction Alpaca has a theme song.

It's fairly awesome... the tune anyway. I think they need to work on the words for the second verse.

Listen in here.

Update on Jim Treacher

2010-02-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I was tweaking high-priced blogger Jim Treacher about his metro-sexualization.

Days later he was was hit by a blacked-out window SUV in DC. At first he thought it was Secret Service. Next he was told it was State Department security.

In any case I had nothing to do with it. I wish him speedy recovery, and hope he's not sore about my teasing. I suspect he's forgotten it.

He offers this update:

Right after I posted that yesterday, a couple of nice medical students came in and changed the dressing on my leg. I finally got to see the aftermath, and at this point I think I’m too freaked out to really be upset by it. The knee is pretty swollen and the incision down the left side of my left leg is huge. I can’t even think about what they were peeling away and what they were doing underneath. But they seem to have done a good job, because I’m healing faster than they expected.

Read the whole thing HERE.

The Metrosexualization of Jim Treacher

2010-01-18T03:01:00.000-08:00

Highly-paid Beltway blogger Jim Treacher reveals that he has become a Mac user.

Oh dear, this will never do for the former self-fashioned hayseed-blogger from rural Indiana.

Treacher was seduced recently by Tucker Carlson to join the ranks of DC chatteratti via Carlson's Daily Caller website. In his new column Treacher has been documenting his change in latitude, attitude, and operating system:

So I’m a Mac guy now. Yep, I’m typing up this here disjointed mess on a MacBook. I used to think Apple partisans were a bunch of dumb jerks, but now I see what they’re talking about. This thing just works. At first I felt like a toddler trying to land a space shuttle, but now I never want to go back to a slow, clunky PC. This MacBook is like a part of my own body, only thinner. Thanks, bosses.

In his columns, Treacher also has revealed that he did jello shots with Paul Begala, that he found Jake Tapper handsome, and that he has been using a cover name.

What next? Is Treacher to be outfitted in White-House-Correspondents-ready Prada, or will he continue to dress-down by donning metro-blogger Diesel streetwear? One shouldn't expect full-on Union-square foot-tapping, but it is a slippery slope.

Treacher on his transformation HERE.

"A Warren Beatty Drive-By"

2010-01-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

Patrick Goldstein's "Big Picture" column asks "How many women did Warren Beatty sleep with?"

Goldstein ventures the following:

Biskind estimates the bedded-by-Beatty women figure at '12,775, give or take, a figure that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.' (If anyone can offer a good definition of what might constitute a Warren Beatty "drive-by," we'd love to hear it.)

A "Warren Beatty drive-by"? That's easy.

A "Warren Beatty Drive-by" is akin to what was known in the early 1990s as a "Little Rock Jog-by," following the practice of a certain one-time Arkansas governor who would push off for an early morning run, cruise by the ranch home of his "Floral" mistress for a quickie, continue some thirty minutes later to the local McDonalds franchise, then return home for shower. Time spent: 50 minutes, distance covered .60 miles.

It is the distant cousin of the "Third Avenue Crafty," wherein an Upper East Side, NY, husband and father, surrounded by his family, slips away from a restaurant table, on the pre-text of an important work call to grab a quick cigarette on the sidewalk, two doorways down.

See also "Union Station Foot-tap," "VIP Hostess Courtesy Call," "The Governor's appointment in the Capitol"...

A Climate Deal from Copenhagen? Don't Hold Your CO2

2009-12-14T02:16:00.000-08:00

Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, on the climate change conference:

Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen.

-via the London Telegraph (Dec. 5)

CO2 - That Most Persecuted Molecule

2009-12-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant? According to some (link below).

Plants have depended on CO2 since the beginning of life on earth.

When an elephant exhales a tree nearby breathes and smiles.

Who will stand and speak for CO2? Who will speak for trees?

More about EPA's anti-flora power grab HERE.

Confirmed in the UK: Global Warming IS Like a Religion

2009-11-04T06:21:00.000-08:00

This morning's lead story in the UK's Independent trumpets a landmark ruling that allows employees holding "green" views to sue for unfair dismissal:

"Employees who raise concerns about their company's environmental practices won the right to legal redress yesterday after a judge ruled that green beliefs deserved the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions."

Elsewhere, Nobel Laureate Al Gore, stung this week by criticism in the New York Times and elsewhere over his playing the role both of advocate for the belief in global warming as well as investor in cap-n-trade schemes, struck back yesterday by launching a media campaign... in the UK.

Gore, who's been labeled on blogs a green "profiteer," appeared on BBC's flagship "Newsnight" interview program, as well as BBC Radio 1's morning news program.

One wonders... will green advocates under fire around the world make their appeal to the UK media, and in UK courts, much as do libel complainants?

Read the Independent story HERE.

To read the NYT's surprisingly skeptical turn about Gore's role of preacher and profiteer, go HERE.

To watch Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman "turn up the heat" on the Nobel Laureate Gore, view on i-player HERE. (May not be available at this link outside the UK. If not, persist, it's delicious.)

Editorial note, for FCC purposes, now or in the future: This blog is independent and unsubsidized. No goods or tangible value have been received in association with the composition or publication of this post.

Paul Greengrass's "Green Zone"

2009-11-02T04:15:00.000-08:00

The trailer for Paul Greengrass's "Green Zone" has finally arrived. The movie began life based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran's prize-winning nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City from 2006, and entered production in January 2008. From the short log-line on IMDB and the brief trailer below, it appears the movie has become an action thriller with Matt Damon as a CIA operative trying to figure how Iraq became such a mess [okay, so Iraq movies date quickly] and why Saddam's weapons of mass destruction remain so elusive.

Cue: George W. Bush on stage at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Oops, wrong tape.

With a jiggling camera following lone operative Damon down dark streets, this looks a great deal like a new edition in the "Bourne" series... which is fine by me, although it does beg one question: can Paul Greengrass really not afford a Steady-cam?

LA Times writer Patrick Goldstein enthuses:

"When Damon tries to wheedle the identity of a source out of crack foreign correspondent Lawrie Dayne -- played by the estimable Amy Ryan -- Dayne gives him the old 10th Avenue freeze-out, frostily replying, 'I'm not discussing sources.' Amazing, isn't it? A no-nonsense reporter in a Hollywood movie. Wonders will never cease."

Goldstein's elation may be premature.

Damon's character, presumably operating in the early months of the occupation, urgently investigates why WMD cannot be found. The stone-walling journalist he confronts in the scene Goldstein cites seems actually a stand-in for NYT's journalist (and putative friend of the neo-cons) Judith Miller, who before the war reported too credulously on Iraq's WMD program, and somewhat later, during the Valerie Plame affair, stone-walled independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Here of course the Judith Miller-like figure instead works for the WSJ, a part of Rupert Murdoch's empire, thus "extra evil."

Alas, I fear Goldstein's journalistic brethren will be further frowned upon in this movie.

Who, though, is the Iraqi figure Damon is attempting to arrest? Hard to tell. It could be a member of Saddam's regime, such as Chemical Ali. It seems to me, however, a conflation of former exile Achmad Chalabi and the dodgy intelligence source dubbed "Curveball."

Watch the "Green Zone" trailer HERE.

Lawmaker Shouts "You Lie!" at Government Chief Executive

2009-10-28T04:53:00.000-07:00

... and resounding silence ensues.

Why hasn't the media covered this?

Perhaps that's because this took place in California and the interrupted government chief executive is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the yelling lawmaker is Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, "a San Francisco Treasure."

Read the whole thing, written by a friend and colleague of Ammiano's, HERE.

I guess it's only cause for censure if you interrupt to accuse a Democratic president of lying.

Jeanette Winterson on The Demons of Artists

2009-10-21T05:13:00.000-07:00

"Creativity takes the heavy mass of our lives and transforms it back into available energy. Taking the mundane or the weighted, the overlooked or the too familiar, art is able to re-show us ourselves and ourselves in the world. Art holding up a mirror to life is commonly misunderstood as realism, but in fact it is recognition. We see through our own fakes, our own cover stories, we see things as they are, instead of how they look, or how we'd like them to be."

Read the whole thing HERE.

The Obama - West Controvery

2009-09-14T05:48:00.000-07:00

The contretemps between President Obama and hiphopper Kanye West can be watched at the video below.

Meanwhile, Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation looks far back in time to President Obama's health care reform speech. (Boy, things sure speed up in news cycles these days. The New York Times and I can hardly keep up.) Dalmia likens the President's speech to "the policy equivalent of the middle finger." Read the whole thing HERE. (Hat tip Roger Kimball.)

“Was Churchill More a Liability than an Asset to the Civilized World?”

2009-09-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

A friend who attended the 3 September 2009 Intelligence2 debate sent me the following notes.

-OT

Was Churchill More a Liability than an Asset to the Civilized World?

Supporting the motion: Pat Buchanan (billed “an advisor to three US presidents”), a Scotsman (Norman Stone, now teaching at a university in Ankara), and a Cambridge Economist (Nigel Knight).

Opposing: historian and Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts, Anthony Beevor (historian, noted for Stalingrad and Berlin), and Richard Overy.

The debate, moderated by the fragrant former BBC presenter Joan Bakewell, was held at the Methodist Hall, Westminster, a site that hosted the inaugural meeting of the UN General Assembly. The debate will be broadcast on TV and should be available in audio format via the web.

It’s worth noting that the I2 debates used to be sponsored by The Spectator, and are now sponsored by The Evening Standard, a publication now owned by Lebedev, the former Russian spy.

Your reporter needs to remind you all that this is an account of the debate, and the opinions described are those of the debaters, not mine, and that these are approximations.

Proceedings were launched by an outraged heckler “how dare you, etc…” applause.

Buchanan began the debate by allowing that judged only from his actions in 1940/41 Churchill was a great and courageous man, but in fact he was a leader for a half century during which (according to Buchanan) he left a record of “belligerence and bad decisions,” specifically actions that played a role in starting two world wars.

Principal among his bad, belligerent and ill-fated decision were

1) the 1919 naval blockade of Germany that led to the starvation of civilians, including women and children, an act which stoke a grievance that led to the rise of Hitler and the onset of WW2. [Very deterministic was Mr. Buchanan – OT]

2) The use in 1927 Iraq of “poison gas” on the Kurdish and Shiite populations, an act that when perpetrated by Saddam H was considered a war crime of a magnitude to justify his overthrow. (Robert was quick, in his turn, to quote documents from memory indicating that it was “tear gas” the British had used, of a sort used today in crowd control on the streets of London, not nerve gas such as Saddam used”).

3) The military debacle in WWI of Gallipoli.

4) The fumble, early in WW1 of Norway… a misjudged strategy compounded by Churchill’s blabbing about the impending operation to the press which alerted German command.

5) Bombing of the Rhineland, including civilian populations there, which led to the retaliatory bombings of Coventry, etc…

6) Post war UK capitulation to post-war US demands.

7) Churchill’s appeasement of Stalin at Yalta.

Taken together his acts took Britain from the greatest Empire since Rome to an island dependency of the US.

Andrew Roberts replied by correcting the bit about “poison gas” then added that given that he entered parliament in 1900 and served on and off until 1964, it was inevitable that Churchill shared in a number of misjudgments. That said, Churchill was quite simply the champion of the free world. As for WC as a military strategist, WC’s move to draw German forces to North Africa and extend them was ingenious. “Given that we now debate in a hall where de Gaulle launched the Free French Movement, where Churchill announced ‘victory is before us’ let us not sully this place with perverse arguments.”

The Cambridge economist recounted how Churchill, in 1925, as chancellor of the exchequer, against the advice of Keynes and others (other Cambridge economists), took the country back on to the gold standard, a disastrous move that led to deflation, unemployment, etc…

NK recounted Churchill’s decision, against the advice of air commander dowling, at the outset of WW2 to send fight planes to France making them unavailable to defend Britain.

“WC maintained a pre-WWII view of the navy, not recognizing the importance of Uboats or air carriers.”

NK described Churchill’s WW2 strategy as “dispersionist” and based on his WW1 Gallipoli strategy, which itself had failed. It postponed the concentration of force that is necessary to win, it cost time and lives (“ten million lives in the two European theaters”).

Beevor charged that Buchanan was making a revisionist argument akin to Putin recent comments suggesting that the UK was responsible for WW2, and that it was a false, dirty and dangerous argument. Time and again, Hitler would sign a treaty, use the pretext of defending German speaking peoples to annex a portion of territory and use that as a launching pad to take control of the rest of the country. This was Hitler’s aim, not a reaction to the British signing a defense pact.

As for his strategy of delay… the UK alone did not have sufficient forces to defeat Hitler. In early 1943 the UK did not have sufficient landing craft, the Luftwaffe was still strong, and the US army needed time to sort itself out.

In 1943 Tehran it was Roosevelt, not Churchill, who sacrificed Central Europe.

In sum, according to Beevor, he was our greatest asset.

Norman Stone, the Scot now teaching in Turkey, began with a Glasgow memory. He was a interrupted by a heckler (“How dare you...” with other sounds of approval.)

He outlined Churchill the Imperialist’s fumbling attempts in 1920s through 1930s to hold onto to empire escaping his grasp. How can WC be consider the great asset of the free world when he continually acted to deny democracy to people in Britain’s colonies. So many of our problems today are an inheritance from his bad decisions… chiefly the problem, for us here at home in Britain as well as abroad, of Pakistan.

NS condemned the 1945 bombing of Germany to bits as sadistic. WC did not, like de Gaulle, see ahead to the post-war period.

NS lays at WC’s feet Britain’s post-war decline… cue the reminisce of 1970s Glasgow [seems a non sequitor to me! – OT], and Britain’s small-minded thinking throughout that era.

Overy: “The countdown to war began in 1939. Try to imagine the consequences of that period without WC.” He recounts period, Hitler’s breaking of treaties, being presented with a basket of broken treaties on his birthday. The advocates for the motion seem to lay everything that happened in that era at Hitler’s feet, but at the very least I need to say that WC, unlike Hitler, tended to take advice. What (citing an earlier fact citation) could WC possibly do about Stalin’s decision to displace millions of ethnic Germans within the Soviet Union?”

He had a historic vision, a view that encompassed liberty, rule of law, parliamentary freedom, and a hatred of tyranny.

In 1941-42 the Liberal age was on the point of extinction. In 1940, there was discussion of a peace deal with Hitler (remember, at the time the US was neutral and the USSR was in an alliance with Nazi Germany)… and WC stood against that compromise.

In response to various questions from the audience:

Andrew Roberts rejoined the debate, remarking on Putin’s recent historical gambit: “The Munich Pact was not the trigger for WWII, the Hitler-Stalin pact was.”

Buchanan: “Churchill goaded Chamberlain to give Poland a guarantee of assistance that could not be followed through on.”

Who else could have played a pivotal role as leader?

The Cambridge economist suggested that Atlee was a more organized decision-maker.

Buchanan suggested that not only was the war unnecessary and the fault of Churchill’s belligerence, because “Hitler wanted no war in the west,” but that “if there’d been no war there would have been no holocaust.”

Andrew Roberts: What you say is monstrous. The holocaust started before Britain’s entry, and before the Wansee conference. There were both killings and preparation. The Wansee conference was simply to plan the industrialization of that effort.

Beevor:

As for the bombing of the Rhineland, it was it was designed to pull the Luftwaffe and its anti-aircraft guns from the Eastern front, and it was commenced at the request of the Red Army.

As for his handling of India… Churchill kept the Japanese out of India. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines 17% of the population died.

Remember, in 1939, on the day France and England voted to go to war, the League of Nations votes on the standardization of rails in Europe.

Roberts, in response to a question: “Thankfully, Churchill revisionism is a minority fetish, and its proponents are not to be found among the young but rather those of a certain age.”

What would Alexis de Tocqueville think?

2009-09-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

Manhattan Institute fellow Steve Malanga writing in the Institute's City Journal:

The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued "productive industry" without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America's balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out of the pervasiveness of religion, which Tocqueville called "the first of [America's] political institutions, . . . imparting morality" to American democracy and free markets. Some 75 years later, sociologist Max Weber dubbed the qualities that Tocqueville observed the "Protestant ethic" and considered them the cornerstone of successful capitalism. Like Tocqueville, Weber saw that ethic most fully realized in America, where it pervaded the society. Preached by luminaries like Benjamin Franklin, taught in public schools, embodied in popular novels, repeated in self-improvement books, and transmitted to immigrants, that ethic undergirded and promoted America's economic success.

What would Tocqueville or Weber think of America today?

Read more HERE.

Tick-Tock blog

2009-09-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

... remains here, but is updated only occasionally...

Octave Tockfield writes

2009-09-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

HERE, at Tick-Tock blogspot...

Gordon Brown as "Macavity"

2009-08-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

One British newspaper writer early this week referred to PM Gordon Brown as Macavity, from T. S. Eliot's Holmesian poem (based on Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories), for hiding from view and from responsibility when the storm of protest over the terrorist's release hit.

How apt.

The Eliot poem has the refrain:

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity

There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.

He always has an alibi and one or two to spare.

What ever time the deed took place Macavity wasn't there!"

On the Relationship of Economic and Political Freedom

2009-08-25T04:51:00.000-07:00

"Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

"The combination of economic and political freedom produced a golden age in both Great Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. The United States prospered even more than Britain. It started with a clean slate: fewer vestiges of class and status; fewer government restraints; a more fertile field for energy, drive, and innovation; and an empty continent to conquer. . . .

"Ironically, the very success of economic and political freedom reduced its appeal to later thinkers. The narrowly limited government of the late nineteenth century possessed little concentrated power that endangered the ordinary man. The other side of that coin was that it possessed little power that would enable good people to do good."

... via Rose Friedman, who passed away this week, writing with her husband Milton in their 1980 book "Free to Choose"

The Forgotten War - Iraq

2009-05-13T02:11:00.000-07:00

Dexter Filkins writing in the New Republic:

Perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country's reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press -- the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say -- one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.

That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America's war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. . . .

The irony of America's big tune-out lies in its timing. It has taken place during what has been the most dramatic phase of the six-year-long conflict -- more precisely, during the reversal of the war's fortunes. It is this reversal, this unexpected turnaround to the possibility of something less than a disastrous outcome, that has allowed so many Americans guiltlessly to forget about it. In the summer of 2006, remember, the war in Iraq was spiraling toward defeat, and the Middle East seemed to be headed toward a regional war. Two summers later, however, conditions on the ground were so normal, relatively speaking, that the citizens of the invading nation could feel secure enough to avert their gaze.

Read the whole thing HERE.

"First They Came for the Right-Wing Radio Hosts"?

2009-05-07T23:34:00.000-07:00

Right-wing talk radio host Michael Savage has been excluded from entering the UK by order of the Home Office. No explanation has yet been given for why he has been put on a list with murderers and those who advocate violence.

I'd never listened to Savage, and knew little about him, though I understand he has a large audience. I wanted to know more. First I went to Savage's response to the exclusion order (see link at the bottom). Savage, it turns out, is a "yeller," a loud-mouth, not pleasant to listen to, but in this instance, the matter of his exclusion, perhaps he has reason to be upset.

Next I went to a complaint about him lodged by CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations... a US organization similar to the more-influential Muslim Council of Britain). Since both organizations liaise with the government over issues relevant to their respective communities it occurred to me that CAIR's complaint might be the one that put the UK Home Office on notice.

At the CAIR site, I heard again that Savage is a yeller, unpleasant, offensive even, but his comments for the most part were not any more incendiary than, say, Rev. Wright, the head of the Chicago church that the family of President Obama attended for many years.

In the "details" article on CAIR's website (at link HERE), they post some text quotations that serve as the basis for their own complaint. One of the text quotes they list is indeed BAD... and would possibly even be cause for exclusion from the UK (more on this in a moment). That said, none of the other quotations, while obnoxious, advocate violence. What's more, in their full context, as given in the audio on a different page of their site, the other quotes are a good deal less offensive than CAIR implies.

Next I went to the audio link CAIR gives to provide the sound bites for the text quotes listed on that page. (Audio available HERE).

Listening to the audio clips one realizes that Savage does NOT suggest that practicing Muslims as a group should be deported, as you might have guessed from reading CAIR's text details out of their full context. Instead in the the audio clip he suggests that if a person wants to do violence to another because of a fundamentalist reading of the Koran then THAT person should be deported.

However, missing from CAIR's audio clips is the BAD quote that they had attributed to him in the text of their website. The quote CAIR attributes to him, that "Muslims should be forcibly converted," might indeed be grounds for exclusion from the UK and other countries. Indeed, Savage, if he said such a thing in a country with freedom of religion, should be denounced.

BUT DID SAVAGE ACTUALLY SAY THAT?

That quote is not in the audio. It is also a view out of keeping with the perspective demonstrated in the various clips I've listened to. I wonder now whether Savage has been excluded from the UK for something CAIR has falsely attributed to him. If anyone can find such a statement by him please alert me in the comments section below, which is now open.

If Savage has recommended the forcible conversion of anyone that is shameful.

On the other hand if Savage did not advocate that he is owed an apology and an explanation from CAIR and perhaps the UK Home Office.

Let's find out.

Savage's response to the exclusion, including the quote "When has this witch listened to my program?" can be heard HERE. (Turn down the volume before listening.)

Background article from Savage's hometown, San Francisco, HERE. More background HERE and HERE. BBC interview of Savage HERE.

I'll be examining this further as I learn more. In case CAIR alters its website, I reported this story Thursday, May 7.

The New Journ-O-lism

2009-05-07T23:30:00.001-07:00

Since Politico broke the story, there's been much written about the JournoList, the discreet on-line discussion group comprised of a few hundred left-leaning journalists, bloggers and opinion-makers.

That said, so far as we know there's been no explanation for the "O" in the middle of this group's name. I wonder what that "O" could stand for.

I can think of one possibility. Hint: Begins with 'O,' ends with 'bama.'

Until we know let's keep an eye out for examples of "The New Journ-O-lism."

Since membership in the JournoList is by and large kept secret, how can one differentiate products of New Journ-O-lism from that of everyday Mainstream Media?

Look closely, and you'll know it when you see it.

Politico's original story here:

Paglia on Obama and the Media

2009-05-07T23:29:00.001-07:00

"Obama's ability to stay on his feet and outrun the most menacing waves that threaten to engulf him seems to embody the breezy, sunny spirit of the American surfer. In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama -- even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. . . . Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views."

She right. Read the rest at Salon.com.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

2009-05-07T23:28:00.001-07:00

Jake Tapper posits an Obama Derangment Syndrome... the flip side or complement to the "Bush Derangement Syndrome," identified by Washington Post commentator and psychiatrist Charles Krautheimer as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency--nay--the very existence of George W. Bush."

A first sighting of the reverse disorder would be in Rep Paul Broun, R-Georgia, who said that he fears President-elect Obama may create a security force akin to the Gestapo to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

As Broun told the AP, "It may sound a little bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force, a civilian force to help the military shoulder some of the national security burden.... We can't be lulled into complacency."

Sounds like an early onset of ODS...

Read more at abcnews's "political punch" blog

The Wine and Cheese Revolt

2009-05-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

La Stampa daily of Turin reports that the Russian billionaires who invaded the French and Italian Rivieras in the '90s have become so unpopular that local restaurants are refusing to serve them.

"From north to south, a rebellion is growing against those who show off their money and power."

Roman Abramovich, the friend of Vladimir Putin said to be worth $23.5 billion, was refused a table the other night at Bistrot in Forte dei Marmi on the Tuscan coast, The Times of London reports.

When restaurateur David Vaiani told Abramovich his eatery was fully booked and said, "You can try again tomorrow," the oil tycoon was so furious that he took off immediately for Sardinia on his yacht.

A Poetic Lesson

2009-05-07T23:23:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal brings us an essay on the verse of former Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi and his poetic romancing of various rights guaranteed detainees by a recent ruling of the US Supreme Court.

Al-Ajmi's poetry was recited at a 2006 Seton Hall Law School 'teach-in' that was Webcast live to four hundred colleges and law schools in the US and abroad.

Al-Ajmi himself was released from Guantanamo in 2005.

On April 26th of this year, Al-Ajmi, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti, blew himself up in Mosul as part of a coordinated suicide attack on security forces of the democratically-elected government of Iraq. Thirteen died and forty-two were seriously injured.