A FLORIDA-GEORGIA 25TH ANNIVERSARY

To begin to understand my special passion for this game you have to first understand that I love Georgians and have many, many family members in that great State. Both of my parents are, in fact, Georgians. My mother was born and raised on the Sumter County – Macon County line in Andersonville. My father was born in Ellaville and his cluster of family was then and is now centered around the town of Roberta. These areas are quite rural, quite agricultural. On my maternal side the family owned, and still owns, a few hundred acres of land on that county line adjacent to the Andersonville National Cemetery. In fact, for years my maternal Grandfather (who is still living) for years worked his farm and worked at the cemetery to support his family.

On my father’s side, they were sharecropping but eventually began a logging company that generated work all over South Georgia. But in 1950s Georgia an African American with a sharp mind and a sharp tongue could fairly easily find some trouble. Give that same man some disposable income and there was likely going to be a problem. My father, the oldest son in his family, no doubt qualified for that sharp mind / sharp tongue category. I’m sure he was young and dumb in many, many ways. Neither of my parents went beyond the 8^th grade in school but both were quite bright. And confident. Once my father married my mother and was successfully running the logging business . . . and had two (of his eventual six) children, things got to be too hot and he was basically chased out of Georgia.

Chased away . . . to the great State of Florida. Many other family members on both sides went away to Gary, Indiana or Detroit or New York City. Most others stayed in Georgia. Some others settled in spots further down the Florida peninsula. Despite the upheavals of the ‘50s and ‘60s, my father never gave up being a proud Georgia boy. That’s just the way Georgians are. So, when I was coming of age in the 1970s as a proud Florida boy making his way through secondary school and really disappointed by the fact that Georgia seemed to be ruining my Florida Gators football seasons on a regular basis (and questioning why this was the case), everything was really simple to my father: we Floridians just didn’t eat enough cornbread and collard greens.

Well, damn, I thought. I loved cornbread and collard greens. To this day I wonder about people who don’t share that love. And I knew my father was really perceptive and smart, but could it really be that simple?

Anyway, when I completed a tour of duty in the Army and finally began my freshman year at U.F., the most anticipated game for me on our football schedule was the Florida-Georgia game. So when November 8, 1980 rolled around I was hyped. I mean really, really hyped. I attended the game with my younger brother who was actually ahead of me in school as a junior at U.F. – this was because he would do his tour of duty in the Army AFTER graduating from college, as an officer. Smart man.

Unfortunately, by that November date my father was already in failing health and unbeknownst to me, would only live for a few more months. The game, as all Gators and Dawgs know, turned out to be a classic:

Herschel was unbelievable, and thus didn't disappoint. On one play, I saw him get tackled, his legs cut from underneath him, but he before he hit the ground, he tucked forward, somersaulted just inches from the ground, rolled on his back, and sprang up on his legs. He was amazing.

 

But so were the Gators that day.

 

Through eight games that season, Herschel had rushed for 1,096 yards, and the Bulldogs were undefeated and ranked second in the nation.

 

Was he really that good? On the third play of the game, Herschel answered, motoring 72 yards for a touchdown, and it looked as if it was going to be another long day for the Gators. He finished with 238 yards on 37 carries, and you'd have thought that would be enough, but it wasn't.

 

On the other side of the field, a little-known Gator wide receiver named Tyrone Young was having the game of his career. Young hauled in 10 catches for 183 yards from UF quarterback Wayne Peace. Every time you looked up, Young was making a big play.

 

The Gators, who came in ranked No. 20 following their forgettable 0-10-1 season a year earlier, trailed just 14-10 at the half. The Dawgs used two field goals to stretch the lead to 20-10 after three quarters.

 

Then magic happened.

The link above and the subsequent excerpt are from a recent column by Peter Kerasotis in Brevard County’s Florida Today newspaper. It turns out that he began matriculating at U.F. the same quarter that I did (the last year for quarters at Florida). As he wrote, the Gators made a valiant comeback and in the fourth quarter took the lead, 26-21. Up in the endzone of my hometown Gator Bowl sat me and my brother and a bunch of Florida students. We were going crazy. My memory says we were in the endzone stands looking directly at the Gator defense as they were harassing the hell out of Georgia’s offense. This meant Georgia had their backs to us and all the action unfolded directly in front of us. The screaming was incredible. Georgia was on their goal line and we were doing our best to drown them out. First down and second down occurred. The stadium was literally rocking. Victory was at hand and the partying was going to be super good.

And then them damn cornbread and collard greens-eating Bulldawgs broke our hearts.

Larry Munson’s call of that play up in the Georgia radio booth has become quite famous. This is my interpretation of his exact, heartbreaking call. I’m not so much of a Gator that I can’t acknowledge that this is a classic call:

Florida in a stand-up five, they may or may not blitz.

 

Belue third down on the 8 . . . in trouble . . . he got a block behind him . . . going to throw on the run . . . complete on the 25 to the 30!

 

Lindsay Scott 35, 40, Lindsay Scott 45, 50, 45, 40.

 

Run Lindsay, 25, 20, 15, 10, Lindsay Scott! Lindsay Scott! Lindsay Scott!

 

* * *

 

Well, I can’t believe it. Ninety-two yards and Lindsay really got in a foot race.

 

I broke my chair. I came right through a chair. A metal steel chair with about a 5 inch cushion, I broke it. The booth came apart. The stadium . . . well, the stadium fell down . . . now they do have to renovate this place . . . they’ll have to rebuild it now.

 

This is incredible. You know this game has always been called the World’s Greatest [Outdoor] Cocktail Party. Do you know what’s gonna happen here tonight? And up at St. Simons and Jekyll Island, and all those places where all those Dawg people have got those condominiums for 4 days?

 

Man is there going to be some property destroyed tonight!

 

26-21, Dawgs on top. We were gone. I’d gave up, you did too. We were out of it and gone.

 

Miracle!

It was at this game, at this moment, where every other University of Florida football game became simply a game and this became THE game on our schedule for me. Truth be told, it already was that for me but this really, really nailed it down. It was also where I learned to have a certain contempt for the defeatist element among Gator fans. All around me, the students gave up. All around me, it seemed as if the life went out of everyone and we turned the stadium over to Georgia. But there was still time left and we had a potent offense capable of coming down the field. In fact, we did make a bit of a drive (IIRC) but couldn’t quite bring it home.

Georgia won.

They had their miracle.

And I had to live with my father’s good-natured ribbing about his Georgia boys. That’s part of what makes this game so special. In some ways, I feel a little sorry for Floridians who don’t have any Georgia relatives and vice-versa. It makes a remarkable social event even more special. For instance, in honor of my father and for psychological satisfaction alone, I try to make sure that I have at least one plate of cornbread and collard greens leading up to this here game. Yes, sir, buddy!

And every ass-whuppin we’re able to deliver to them these days, they damn well deserve. So yes, I’m enjoying the hell out of that win yesterday and all of our previous victories in 14 out of the last 16 games.

Beat Georgia. Beat the hell out of Georgia. And then slap ‘em silly some more!

Y’all excuse me while I go get me another plate of them good ole, down home, collard greens.

Go Gators!

 

DOWN GOES JAH-JUH, DOWN GOES JAH-JUH!

A 14-10 victory is oh-so-sweet, and all is right in the sports world this Sunday morning. That means that no amount of coverage on the aftermath of the game is “too much,” so . . . here’s a bunch of links on that glorious behind whuppin, courtesy of GatorCountry.com:

'Unbeaten' is rare in SEC, Meyer says
JACKSONVILLE- Urban Meyer knows what it's like to finish a season perfect, having finished 12-0 last year at Utah. He's not sure if it's realistic to think you can do so at his current location, saying it's near impossible with the talent and depth of the Southeastern Conference.

Circumstances don't matter: UF still won
The offense did little in the second half. The fumbled exchange at the end of the first half kept Georgia in the game. The defense had...

TE Casey resurfaces
Florida sophomore tight end Tate Casey guessed that a few passes might come his way Saturday.

Party crashers
Gator defense backs up quick TDs JACKSONVILLE - On the first offensive play of the afternoon, Chris Leak had two running backs lined up in the backfield with him.

Gators keep hope alive, beat Georgia 14 - 10
eorgia left another Cocktail Party without anything to celebrate. Chris Leak threw a touchdown pass and ran for a score, and No. 16 Florida used an impressive defensive performance to beat the previously unbeaten Bulldogs 14-10 Saturday at the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.

Spoilers and more
Florida is getting pretty good at ruining Georgia's national football championship hopes -- and saving its season at the same time.

Wynn gives Leak breathing room
Nothing takes the pressure off a struggling quarterback like a running back who can move the chains.

Mincey, defense step up
With his team clinging to a small lead, Florida defensive end Jeremy Mincey knew he had to step up and make plays at the most important times Saturday.

UF finally opens with good drive
Florida's offense has not exactly been a machine on its opening drives this season, but the Gators looked pretty good on Saturday.

The key play
The situation: Georgia's ball, trailing 14-10, about nine minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. First down and 10 on the Florida 33.

'Dogs' idea runs out of steam
If the University of Georgia was going to rally in the second half and beat Florida Saturday at Alltel Stadium, it was going to be according to the formula that enabled the Bulldogs to dominate this rivalry in the 1980s

Two misses cost Georgia, but Richt's confidence remains high in Coutu.
Two misses cost Georgia, but Richt's confidence remains high in Coutu.

Munson: Tereshinski TD would have been great call
Georgia's only touchdown Saturday against Florida would have been a play for the ages -- had the Bulldogs gone on to beat the Gators.

Gators Upset Bulldogs, Stay In SEC Title Hunt
Soaked and smiling, University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer reached for daughter Gigi's hand Saturday as they ran toward the school band.

Mincey Gives 'Dawgs A Show
Jeremy Mincey always dreamed of starring at the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party -- just wearing different colors.

Florida-Georgia Game Notes
No one on Florida's sideline seemed shocked Saturday when Georgia won the toss and elected to give the Gators the ball on the opening kickoff of Florida's 14-10 win.

Passion Fuels Gator Road Trips
Barbara Bunting spent her first 17 years in New York City. The Swamp stole her heart in a day.

Alive and well at Alltel
Gators quarterback Chris Leak knelt with the final snap, then flipped the ball away and leaped into offensive guard Drew Miller's arms.

Meyer's late call pays off while Richt's decisions fail
Faced with late-game coaching quandaries for the first time at Florida, Urban Meyer favored the conservative route Saturday night.

Loss is deflating to the Georgia seniors
When it ended, it wasn't a quarterback or a head coach who created Saturday's indelible image for the Georgia football team. Instead, it came from a 340-pound offensive lineman.

UF offense finds new option
The Florida Gators aren't shouting Auburn's rallying cry just yet. But they will.

Meyer's legacy teeters between Zook, Spurrier
The Georgia Bulldogs' national championship dream got utterly crushed here Saturday because the Florida Gators' Southeastern Conference title hope got unlikely life. The outcome was no larger for either college football team, though, than it was for one man.

Not cracking under pressure
Jeremy Mincey, who wanted to play for Georgia as a child, made critical plays to halt the Dawgs' final drive.

Safety problem solved
After spending seven games trying to find productivity from the free safety position, it took just one half for Florida coach Urban Meyer to realize he found his man.

Early touchdowns give Gators a victory
The Georgia Bulldogs played the odds, and in the process tossed yet another Southeastern Conference insult at coach Urban Meyer and his offense.

Casey, Manson take advantage of chances
Tate Casey hadn't caught a pass in four weeks, but with an offense in desperate need of targets for Chris Leak, the sophomore tight end finally had the ball thrown his way.

Meyer has got the hang of this SEC thing now
The SEC is Urban Meyer's league now. He doesn't own it, or even half of it, but he finally is a genuine participant, winning ugly whenever possible, losing awful when it's not, wading hip deep into rivalries that can bring a proud coach to the brink of tears or send him limping out of the stadium with a goofy grin of wonderment and relief.

HAPPY HOUR!
Urban Meyer has been the coach at Florida for 10 months now, but it wasn't until Saturday that he truly became an authentic, archaic Southeastern Conference football coach.

DE Mincey takes revenge on his native Georgia

Florida defense spoils fairy tale for Tereshinski
Joe Tereshinski III is so steeped in Georgia history that he could have sworn he was about to write a new chapter.

When SEC teams are playing, the offense rests
Two questions: Is the Southeastern Conference a great defensive league? Or is it a great defensive conference because its teams have lost directions to the end zone?

Snubbed Georgia native sparks Florida's defense
As a high school player in Statesboro, Ga., Jeremy Mincey dreamed of playing for his home state Bulldogs.

Tensions to lessen at Meyer household
It has been a stressful time at the home of Urban Meyer after the Gators lost two of their past three, but Friday night, Shelley Meyer sensed something was different.

UF defense hangs tough vs. Georgia
Just over three minutes were left to play and Florida faced a fourth down at the Georgia28 when Urban Meyer pulled the mouthpiece down on his headphones with the decision.

Gators' Mincey thankful to wear orange and blue
Before Jeremy Mincey accepts his award for savior of the game, there's a few people he'd like to thank.

Once bitten
Injuries cost Georgia any margin for error. Nine horrible minutes Saturday afternoon cost the No. 4 Bulldogs their perfect season.

Game ranks among worst in Richt era
As the temperatures dropped, the chances dwindled and hope evaporated, one thing likely went up.

Coutu takes blame for loss
In a game with enough blame to go around, Georgia place-kicker Brandon Coutu took it all on himself Saturday night.

JUST ENOUGH
They have this swagger, Florida linebacker Brandon Siler said of the members of the Gators defense, this belief in themselves that they don't need much to win games, just a lead, just a few points.

Not quite enough
Injuries cost Georgia any margin for error. Nine horrible minutes Saturday afternoon cost the No. 4 Bulldogs their perfect season.

Tereshinski's dream better than reality
Joe Tereshinski's dream didn't come true. The third-generation Georgia Bulldog grew up with a picture on his bedroom wall of a small boy daydreaming about playing Florida. In the picture, Georgia is moving the ball on the Gators. In reality, it wasn't as pretty.

Meyer chooses winning
He's not quite walking on Lake Alice again, and maybe he never will, but with a 14-10 victory over the hated Georgia Bulldogs, Urban Meyer is at least back on the shoreline.

Wynn, Manson lead potent ground game
For stretches of Saturday's game, the Gators resembled a power offense. DeShawn Wynn gained 109 yards on 19 carries, with 86 of his yards coming before halftime. His total was a career high. Coach Urban Meyer seemed even more impressed with the performance of redshirt freshman Markus Manson, who gained 49 yards on nine carries.

Quick start stands up for Gators
Georgia won the opening toss and chose to defend. "Everybody was thinking, here we go again," said Florida coach Urban Meyer, whose offense had struggled against strong opponents.

The sweetness of redemption
Under a stone-gray sky on the Ides of Halloween, down on a field where gremlins have had their way with the breakage of dreams over decades, 99 ticks and four points were all that stood between the Florida Gators and sweet redemption.

Offensive line sets tempo
With a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his head, an exhausted Florida center Mike Degory wore a satisfying look on his face as he walked through the tunnel at Alltel Stadium early Saturday evening.

Gators find winning formula
Sometimes, the only way to win is to admit defeat. This is why the hotshot quarterback left his pride behind, and confessed to coaches how awkward he felt in the option offense.

Game balls
DeSHAWN WYNN, RB, FLORIDA: The junior led Florida's rejuvenated running game with 19 carries for 109 yards.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet !!!

 

THE FISHER DEBERRY COMMENT

The coach from the United States Air Force Academy, Fisher DeBerry, created a furor when he dared to speak in public about the topic of sports and race the way most Americans talk about the subject:

On Tuesday, in discussing last weekend’s 48-10 loss to TCU, DeBerry said it was clear TCU “had a lot more Afro-American players than we did and they ran a lot faster than we did.”

“It just seems to me to be that way,” he said. “Afro-American kids can run very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me that they run extremely well.”

He said more, of course, about his observations and appearances, etc. Of course, people started talking a lot of yang as a result of this story. In response to a post on this topic on a subscription-only Gator sports website, I made this initial comment:

Race, race, race. We can argue about this all day and through all kinds of permutations -- and have been for centuries. Here is where I think we (as a nation and a planet) most often get confused on this: the overwhelming majority of people all over this globe are indistinct in mental and physical ability.

Period.

What we view in the United States through athletic competition, etc., is not the result of “breeding” as that concept is usually understood -- that’s absurd. What we view is the result of random genetic variation in human beings passed down through the ages. Since it seems fairly settled that the greatest genetic variation in human populations is most prevalent on the African continent, isn’t it also fairly obvious that (generally) you will find some of the fastest, slowest, tallest, shortest, fattest and most thin people among African populations?

Anyone who has paid attention to National Geographic publications and documentaries, etc., can probably see the truth in that assertion. But that only describes people on the margins. Exceptional folks. Athletes are “exceptional” folks, are they not?

But for the overwhelming majority, there just ain’t a bit of real difference. Anybody who has lived a life and seriously mixed and mingled knows this is true. Hell, I bet I can’t jump any higher than [Hal Lewis] and he probably can’t jump a bit.

Now, cold-sensitivity and heat-sensitivity -- things like that; yeah, that results from millenia of male-female breeding by choice as dictated by group needs or quirky biases.

At least that’s the way I see it.

I’m pleased to say that this comment received some support and the thread (being of the sort that can easily get out-of-hand) has mostly evolved without much foolishness. There was a thought expressed, however, that this was an inappropriate subject for a sports board. To which I replied:

I don’t think this is an inappropriate subject. It comes up, people talk about [it all the time in private company], no sense running and hiding about that. Yes, there are responses in this thread I wish weren’t here. That also happens often when I read a thread on Ron Zook.

We are making some progress, though. Yesterday I happened to see the two ESPN sportsreporter shows that come on at 5 and 5:30. The first show had a split opinion on the subject but I was pleased to see the black guy from Boston say he wasn’t offended by what the man said (I wasn’t either) and that the coach was accurate as far as it went. He was only talking about what “appeared” to be from his observation. Most of us have “observed” the same thing.

Some folks apparently don’t want to accept my point that the overwhelming majority of humans are indistinct in mental and physical ability. Cool. My “observation” tells me something different. Genetics research seems to side with my observation.

Anyway, we need to get rid of this taboo of being unable to talk about these things. No one has anything to be afraid of when you really think about it.

I forgot to mention in my response that Michael Wilbon on the 5:30 show also said he was not offended and found nothing remarkable about what the coach said.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is progress in America.

 

THE MIERS NOMINATION, AGAIN

I should have known the jig was up when Beldar didn’t post for days and days. I also should not have been surprised that Hugh Hewitt’s last post prior to the announcement of the Miers withdrawal would be right on the money:

One of the great ironies of this disastrous embrace of the tactics of the left is that it comes only weeks and indeed days after repeated warnings by Justice Scalia of just such abuses. Scalia’s August 30th Madison Lecture at my law school addressed these issues, and he referred to them on MSNBC as well, answering Maria Bartiromo’s question about whether he could be confirmed again with “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to go through it today [laughs]. I’ll tell you that much. It has become politicized.”

Yesterday I quoted the Wall Street Journal’s quote from the Cato Institute’s Roger Pilon:

“This woman has demonstrated almost nothing that would indicate she is either one of us or up to the job.” (Emphasis added.)

In [researching] this post, I found Roger Pilon’s forward to the latest edition of Supreme Court Review, wherein he writes:

“The problem with going down that political road, however, is its potential for undermining the rule of law, for turning everything into politics. At the extreme, for example, both the president and the Senate might demand that a nominee pass a so-called ideological litmus test as a condition for being nominated or confirmed -- the idea being to try to bind him to deciding future cases in accordance with his answers on the test. Were that approach to prevail -- and we are already part way there -- the independence of the judiciary would be seriously compromised as judging would no longer be a function of dispassionate and apolitical reason but of nomination and confirmation politics. That political process would determine the legal process, in effect, rendering the latter a sham.”

I cannot reconcile Mr. Pilon’s strong statements against the nominee (though I do not believe he has called for withdrawal prior to the hearings) with this warning, but I also cannot reconcile Judge Bork’s condemnation of her with Judge Bork’s introduction to the new book ke edited and released this summer, or David Frum’s leadership of the new organization attacking Miers with his July 4 description of a potential Miers nomination.

All no doubt have explanations which deserve a careful hearing, of course, and they may even be persuasive.

But I don’t think it is possible to deny that the assault on Miers has given the left a sword of incredible sharpness for use in future judicial battles. The Gang of 14 did incredible damage in May, but it was possible to recover from that set-back because conservatives did not abandon their argument for an up or down vote after a hearing. Now many have. The list of conservatives publicly urging a hearing and an up-or-down vote for Miers is very short indeed. Perhaps that will change.

No, Hugh, it didn’t change. This public servant [Harriet Miers] has been chewed up and spit out, cavalierly cast away by folk who need not fear the rebuke of shame.

I predicted last Friday that the Washington echo chamber, already proven to be too superior to be limited by shame on the left-wing would prove to be the same on the right-wing, meaning that Harriet Miers’ nomination was doomed:

These people who oppose Harriet Miers are going to continue their temper tantrum, and hold their breadth – everything else be damned – until they get their way.

I say let them expire.

But I doubt if the Bush Administration or the Republicans in the Senate are going to be able to hold out. What a shame. The caste ghetto that has developed around the United States Supreme Court has to be broken. This would be a good time to begin that conversation.

Sometimes you have to be ashamed “for” people. This is one of those times and I am certainly ashamed for David Frum, Rich Lowry, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Robert Bork, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and the remainder of their posse.

You’ve successfully trashed what appears to be a fine woman of moral righteousness and high achievement. Congratulations.

 

SURPRISE, SURPRISE (NOT REALLY): NIGGERIZATION WINS, AND MIERS IS OUT

When your own side niggerizes you, as opposed to your partisan opponents, and slimes you in such a way as to be nothing short of bizarre – well, common sense be damned. As a result, Harriet Miers has withdrawn from her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Somewhere down the line I’m sure I’ll write more about this.

One thing is for sure: I’ve given certain conservative intellectuals far, far too much credit.

 

TWO REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLES ON THE HURRICANE WILMA AFTERMATH

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Recovery Begins

Floridians began to comprehend the effects of Hurricane Wilma on Tuesday, as it became increasingly clear that residents will spend the next few days waiting in lines for basic supplies, scouring the area for gas, coveting warm showers and working toilets, clearing away debris, and, overall, kicking themselves for underestimating the damage a Category 2 storm could bring.

Miscommunication Problems

Miscommunication left scores of storm victims who had lined up for ice and water at distribution centers in Palm Beach County empty-handed after hours of waiting Tuesday.

Yet another reminder that people, states and nations cannot be protected from life. Things happen. For goodness sakes, can that lesson please resonate across the country?

 

JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT WE’RE FIGHTING, THIS BE IT

This man, Dafydd ab Hugh, is on a roll and laying it down with serious clarity:

The Threat

We have always known that security flows from stability; but we have only recently admitted that stabilty is the child of self-rule. Let me explain.

The gravest threat to the United States is the same today as it was throughout the twentieth century. It is not international terrorism; that is a tactic. Neither is it militant Islamism; that is a manifestation. The most dangerous threat is mass lawlessness. Robbing a liquor store is individual lawlessness; mass lawlessness is brutal outlawry on the scale of nations, groups of nations, or a world-spanning empire.

In the 1900s, we had two main flavors of mass lawlessness: Fascist/Nazi Socialism and Internationalist (Communist) Socialism; both virulent social diseases employed terrorism as needed, from the Bolshevist pogroms to Kristallnacht, Stalin’s slave labor camps, Guernica, Auschwitz, the show trials, the Gulag, and even the attempt to assassinate the pope. Each of these was violence intended not to advance the legimate prosecution of war, but directed at civilians to terrorize, demoralize, and break the will of ordinary people.

They used other tactics as well, the classic structures of empires by conquest: the enslavement of the native populations, stripping the land of natural resources, and forcing the conquered masses to buy finished products they barely needed at inflated prices they could not possibly afford. Among civilized (lawful) nations, all this was dying out as the century began; but the lawless nations not only revived classical imperialism, they fortified it with a brutality never before seen on such a vast and mechanized scale... Tomàs de Torquemada with machine-guns, tanks, and MiGs.

The chain shackling these twin brutalities together was mass lawlessness: the belief that to superior beings on a “mission” -- such as themselves -- literally anything was allowed. The only limitations were physical: how many cells could be built, how many bullets could be fired.

Question:  Clear?

Answer:  Clear!

That’s why we fight.

 

ABOUT THAT SO-CALLED GRIM MILESTONE

Media folks all over the country are putting on masks so that they may properly convey the seriousness of the somber and grim milestone we have supposedly reached with deaths resulting from the War in Iraq. Once again, and it can’t be shown enough given the ridiculously high level of unseriousness from opponents like our good folks in the media, is Dafydd ab Hugh:

 

Like most Americans, I’m not paying any attention to these fools who more often than not have a “Hollywood” understanding of the issues involved with war. Real war.

 

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS TALKS SMACK THE WAY SMACK SHOULD BE TALKED!

Referencing that punk ass surrender monkey, George Galloway:

For George Galloway, however, the war would seem to be over. The evidence presented suggests that he lied in court when he sued the Daily Telegraph in London over similar allegations (and collected money for that, too). It suggests that he lied to the Senate under oath. And it suggests that he made a deceptive statement in the register of interests held by members of the British House of Commons. All in all, a bad week for him, especially coming as it does on the heels of the U.N. report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, which appears to pin the convict’s badge on senior members of the Assad despotism in Damascus, Galloway’s default patron after he lost his main ally in Baghdad.

Yet this is the man who received wall-to-wall good press for insulting the Senate subcommittee in May, and who was later the subject of a fawning puff piece in the New York Times, and who was lionized by the anti-war movement when he came on a mendacious and demagogic tour of the country last month. I wonder if any of those who furnished him a platform will now have the grace to admit that they were hosting a man who is not just a pimp for fascism but one of its prostitutes as well.

Damn, you gotta love that – not simply hosting a pimp for fascism but one of its prostitutes as well!

How is it possible for Americans to glorify this man? Ever?

FAMU HOMECOMING PARADE

 

FLORIDA-GEORGIA, DAY 2

This roundup is courtesy of GatorCountry.com:

Gators say they would prefer Shockley
Some Florida fans may be elated that Georgia will be without starting quarterback D.J. Shockley for Saturday’s game in Jacksonville, but the Gators are not. They say they would prefer to face the Bulldogs at full strength.

‘Dawgs have made believers of SEC pundits
The window was supposed to be closed, slammed down on the fingers of the Georgia Bulldogs with the enthusiasm of a Larry Munson touchdown call.

Black Monday revisited
It was a quiet, uneventful day for the Florida football team Monday.

Lost one for Zooker
One year ago today, Florida lost to Georgia -- even though the teams wouldn’t be playing at Alltel Stadium for another five days.

Florida-Georgia activity schedule
The Welcome Center opens: The center is open from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. at the sports complex, between Metropolitan Park and the Kids Kampus.

Mincey spurned Bulldogs
Jeremy Mincey heard a lot of barking growing up in Statesboro. Florida’s senior defensive end was, naturally, surrounded by Georgia fans. Classmates, teachers, coaches and family members adored the Bulldogs.

Gators Wish Shockley Was Available
Several Florida defensive players are disappointed Georgia QB D.J. Shockley might miss Saturday’s game because of a sprained knee ligament.

Florida, Georgia enjoy Jacksonville
As director of the Jacksonville Sports and Entertainment Board, Mike Sullivan certainly loves the thought of Florida and Georgia continuing their 90-year-old series at Alltel Stadium in the heart of his city.

Zook’s exit hits an anniversary
Florida Gators linebacker Todd McCullough looked around the locker room before last year’s Florida-Georgia game and for a brief moment football didn’t matter.

Meyer targets defense for offense’s struggles
Seven games into his first season at Florida, Urban Meyer is now saying what many people were saying seven games ago.

Meyer supports Leak
It’s not all Chris Leak’s fault. Florida’s offense has struggled in SEC play this season. There have even been cries from some fans to start Josh Portis at quarterback in his place. That isn’t going to happen.

Loss of Shockley could sink ‘Dogs
It’s Code Red time for the No. 4 BCS-ranked Georgia Bulldogs. A simple scramble through the heart of Arkansas’s defense on Saturday turned into a sprained left knee ligament for Georgia quarterback D.J. Shockley.

Gators remember Georgia game, Zook one year later
Despite a subpar offense and a load of injuries, the Gators feel better heading into Saturday’s game against Georgia than they did a year ago.

At Georgia, a Hike in Tradition
Joe Tereshinski III’s grandfather, father and uncle played football at the University of Georgia, so he knows how much the annual border game against the University of Florida means to the Bulldog Nation.

Zook sheds no Gator tears
Monday was an anniversary of sorts for Ron Zook. Exactly one year ago, as Zook’s Gators were getting ready for their annual showdown with Georgia, Florida athletics director Jeremy Foley announced the coach was finished, effective at the end of the season.

I’ve got to start eating my plates of cornbread and collard greens to get ready for this bad boy, this bad little puppy. Heeeeeeeeeere little doggie, doggie . . .

 

GEORGE WILL RECEIVES A WELL-DESERVED BEAT DOWN

Dafyyd ab Hugh slices and dices with a purpose:

Those of us who support the nomination of Harriet Miers (even reluctantly) were warned repeatedly that we would be devastated, blown away, and inundated by the Noahide deluge of Hurricane Gamma, George Will’s unanswerable final whirlwind of rhetorical devastation of Harriet Miers. Instead, all we got was a spritz of seltzer down our pants.

Will’s meticulous retailing of yawn-inducing epithets (“perfect perversity,” “discredits,” “degrades,” “justifications,” “deficit of constitutional understanding,” “gross misunderstanding of conservatism,” and “persons masquerading as its defenders” -- all from the first paragraph!); his hand-waving dismissal of counterargument (his entire final paragraph -- see below); the by now comical snobbery (“crude people”), looking down a sharpened beak at the ants crawling about his Ozymandian feet; all this does surely leave me breathless... but with an amazed sense of loss, not cowed submission.

Uh . . . yepper!

Worse, Will’s simplistic denunciation does not even understand the charge -- of which he, more than anyone, is truly guilty. The “elitism” or “snobbery” charge is not that the Rebel Alliance looks down upon Miers because she graduated from Southern Methodist University; the charge is that her critics insist that only a person who is a particular kind of professional legal intellectual qualifies for the Supreme Court. Those who make that argument are fond of analogizing the Court to brain surgery; Charles Krauthammer (another snob) japed on Brit Hume Friday, if you needed brain surgery, would you go to a podiatrist? But the Court was never intended to be the supreme legal university; if judicial conservatives are to be believed, the primary purpose of the Supreme Court is to adjudicate disputes, not churn out postdoctoral dissertations on arcane and occult points of constitutional doctrine.

Boo-yaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh! That’s what I’m talking about, Dafyyd.

By contrast, Miers’ advocates (all of them) must understand none of this; I’m sure Will’s clarification comes as an eye-opener to Hugh Hewitt, for example. In an earlier piece, Will was more explicit:

[President Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

This is the high-verbal lynching carried to the point of low comedy.

Of course a judge must understand the Constitution; but caselaw (common law) is equally important, including an understanding of contracts, torts, legislation (state and federal), and every other area of the law besides con-law that might pop up in a legal dispute. Nobody is an expert in all; every justice must rely on the writings of specialists (often previous judges that they quote at length... at great length).

But equally, every justice must look within himself to decide where he lands when the experts disagree -- which inevitably is always. Judicial philosophy is indeed important, as judicial conservatives and liberals alike argue; and contrary to Will’s later snoot-cocking, I do not consider it “inappropriate” for senators to inquire into the nominee’s opinions on past cases to determine her judicial thinking. But the “brain-surgery” analogy is infantile; it paints judging as merely a narrow technical skill, rather than a balancing act of competing verities that collide in the instance of a single set of facts.

Reducing the Court to a gaggle of lecturing professors is not only offensive, it’s a blunder. Intellectuals, especially truly clever ones, can talk themselves into anything. There is good reason why so many of the brightest lights of the twentieth century talked themselves into joining the Party -- but Ronald Reagan never did. Room must be made on the Court for a person grounded in sanity and the real world, rather than airy theory and lugubrious rhetoric.

Ssssssssss-smoking!

I’m telling you, it’s incredible how ignorant some seemingly intelligent people have proven to be on this one issue.

And not only narrow, but remarkably shallow. Opposing the nomination of Harriet Miers is perfectly acceptable (although curious) but the manner in which she has been attacked is the faux pas.

 

IT’S FLORIDA-GEORGIA WEEK, BABY!

And it’s time to get it on with them damn Dawgs!

Beat Georgia. Beat the hell out of Georgia. And then slap ‘em silly some more!

Courtesy of GatorCountry.com, here’s a listing of stories that may or may not be of interest:

Shockley doubtful vs. UF [Yeah, right – see my comment below]
Joe Tereshinski will be the Georgia quarterback Florida faces in Jacksonville on Saturday, but the Gators are preparing for D.J. Shockley just in case.

Some things change... and some things never will when it comes to Gator Nation
Seven games into last season, Florida's coach was about to get fired. The one-year anniversary is Tuesday and there are plans for champagne at fireronzook.com.

Richt: D.J. won't play
If No. 4 Georgia is going to put together its first winning streak in the Florida-Georgia series since 1987-89, the Bulldogs are going to have to do it without perhaps the best player in the Southeastern Conference.

UGA's Shockley To Miss Game Against UF [RattlerGator rule number 1: never trust a Georgia Bulldog – I’ll believe Shockley won’t play in his only Florida-Georgia game as a starter when I see it, and even then I’ll question what the hell I’m seeing]
A sprained knee ligament will keep University of Georgia quarterback D.J. Shockley from playing against Florida on Saturday in Jacksonville, Bulldogs coach Mark Richt said Sunday.

Offensive play on offensive line
Here comes the snap, and Florida's offensive line springs into action. But all too often, the next few seconds for the Gators' linemen look nothing like they should. Defensive ends power past UF tackles placed in one-on-one situations. Guards miss charging linebackers. Quarterback Chris Leak ends up sprinting out of the pocket or lying on his back, the line turning and watching helplessly.

Offensive protection has been little out of line
The Gators, who gave up seven sacks in their first seven games last season, have allowed 24 this year.

Injury gives UF helping hand
The key player standing between the University of Florida and its Southeastern Conference title hopes looks to be out of the picture.

UF isn't only team struggling with spread option
The spread-option offense of Urban Meyer has seen much better days. The Florida Gators' coach spent last week dumbing down the scheme that baffled defensive coordinators a season ago and put Notre Dame and UF in a tug of war for Meyer's services. It also spurred a couple of branches on the 41-year-old's coaching tree.

Joe T. to Lead UGA During Florida Game
Joe Tereshinski had just trotted off the field after a punt when he got quite a battlefield promotion. He was going from special teams to quarterback for the fourth-ranked team in the country.

Meyer gets crash course on Bulldogs
What's on the line for Florida in Saturday's meeting with Georgia in Jacksonville? It didn't take long on game week for Gators coach urban Meyer to get a quick reminder.

Dogs hand off to Tereshinski
Florida will prepare to face Georgia quarterback D.J. Shockley, Gators' coach Urban Meyer said Sunday. If that's the case, the Gators will be the only ones.

Shockley might miss Cocktail Party
Urban Meyer was hardly shy on Sunday about what the Georgia game means to the Gators.

And . . . don’t miss this tribute thread to those true Georgia Bulldogs, the Icy Hott Stuntaz.

Oooooh, they so icy!

 

THE MARINES ARE BEGGING FOR MICHAEL YON!

Damn glory whores! Here’s Yon’s latest e-mail:

An excerpt of the dispatch “Purple Fingers” appears in today’s Weekly Standard. The full length version with more photos is now published on my blog:

www.michaelyon.blogspot.com.

I had hoped to fly down to Basra to spend some time with Danish troops. I’ve heard they are working hard down there. Unfortunately, there were some transportation snafus that occurred the morning of the flight. 

I’ve wanted to go with U S Marines for many months, and I asked the Marine chain of command if I could come out to Al Anbar Province, A.K.A. the “Wild West.”

Anbar has become the most dangerous area in Iraq. I’ve heard many stories about IED holes looking like moon craters. Mostly, though, I hear Marines inviting me to come out, even stopping me on the road asking why I hang out with the Army all the time and never come with the Marines.

I’m on my way.

It always comes as a shock to Marines that Army combat forces are more often as not just as good as them, and in some cases better – they are just so damn invested in those commercials of theirs and all that Marine mythology.

That said, they are doing a good job in Al Anbar Province (with Army, Air Force and Navy forces complementing their forces). It’s a hell of a compliment to Yon, come to think of it, that the Marines are desirous of getting their story told in the same way.

Stay safe, stay strong Michael Yon.

TEST:

 

I'm having trouble making any kind of post today. I hope the problem gets rectified soon.

 

OH MY GOD! DID YOU KNOW THAT THE HARRIET MIERS WOMAN WAS INVOLVED IN, IN . . . POLITICS!

She’s been tainted by a flood of politics! Why, Captain Ed himself says so:

This morning’s news has administration aides choking on their morning coffee regarding the Harriet Miers nomination. While the Wall Street Journal comes out in opposition to her confirmation and urges withdrawal, the New York Sun reports that a senior Republican Senator has already passed that same message to the White House, which angrily dismissed the feedback. Meanwhile, John Fund reports that Miers’ work at the Texas Lottery Commission will bring up several uncomfortable details about a sweetheart golden parachute for Ben Barnes after his firm lost a TLC contract under questionable circumstances -- and new reports have come out showing that George Bush paid a hell of a lot of money for Miers’ services at about that same time.

These people who oppose Harriet Miers are going to continue their temper tantrum, and hold their breadth – everything else be damned – until they get their way.

I say let them expire.

But I doubt if the Bush Administration or the Republicans in the Senate are going to be able to hold out. What a shame. The caste ghetto that has developed around the United States Supreme Court has to be broken. This would be a good time to begin that conversation.

Unfortunately, the niggerization of Harriet Miers continues.

niggerazation

n : the social process of becoming or being made to feel not only marginal but unqualified or unworthy (especially as a group within the larger society)

Yes, my definition is a variant of “marginalize” and yes, there are other dimensions to the thing but I think y’all catch my drift. Why don’t we cut to the chase on this whole Harriet Miers saga, okay? Harriet Miers is being niggerized, and she’s being niggerized precisely because she is a child of the South who makes people uncomfortable.

I've followed all of this mess with a certain sense of amazement and curiosity -- and it strikes me that a commenter identified as “magna” on a thread generated by Beldar (you should take the time to read the whole thread) has been the most honest opponent of the Harriet Miers nomination:

Beldar,

I respect and understand your views on this (particularly in terms of the reaction to seeing someone decent attacked).

However, where I differ is at the conclusion where you claim that those of us who call ourselves conservatives are friends. This recent explosion and particularly the many discussions I've had about it have forced me to the realization that, at least politically, many who call themselves conservatives are natural enemies rather than friends. The split between religious conservatives and libertarian conservatives has never seemed starker. I, for one, have put up with a great deal to maintain the conservative coalition due to my interest in seeing a change in the court. Now, it has been made clear to me that the republican party and _its_ version of the conservative movement are more interested in big religious government and a religiously activist court than any of the views that I have fought for.

It is often said that you should be careful who you ally yourself with. I am now feeling the full force of that. I have been forced to accept that my compromises with the republican coalition have done nothing to advance my views. It's become clear that I have more in common with the democrats (not enough to vote for them) than I do with the religious majority in the republican party.

It's nice to send up the idea that we really all can get along. That's false. These are longstanding rifts in the beliefs of the party and many of us have pasted over them due to a shared belief in the importance of the courts. With that cover ripped off, I think we're all about to find out why there is nothing more feared than a war between brothers.

The conservative movement, as such, has been hijacked by theocrats (I'm sure on the other side they talk about it being hijacked by Godless anarchists). Well, I don't think it's worth a fight. I'm simply going to leave and let others fight this out. I simply see there being no reason to discuss issues with people who share none of my basic assumptions about the possibility of communication or argument.

In any case, it's time we faced the facts that the conservative movement and republican party are only held together by fear of the democrats. Some of us have been pushed far enough to head back to the third party wasteland where we will probably safely disappear. Enjoy the quiet without us.

Isn’t that amazing?

Doesn’t it, and much of the bitching and moaning heard from the National Review posse, strike you as eerily similar to that of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party? I mean . . . wait for a hearing to judge the woman? No way! Wait to get some records of her professional life to debate her qualifications? No way! Believe in a two-term Republican president who has shown good judgment on judicial appointments? No way!

Theocracy!?!

That said, not even magna’s comment goes quite far enough. Nothing explains the eruption of irrational opposition to Harriet Miers quite as well as the discomfort these folks have not only with her as an evangelical getting on the court – but she’s a Southern white woman that they just don’t understand. And some of the folks who don’t understand her are Southern white men.

You know, it's almost as if this gang really doesn’t believe that the Supreme Court belongs to all of us. It appears as though they give lip service to believing in the "American" way but what they really believe in is a stratified caste -- and for certain positions, certain people NEED NOT APPLY. And when they do happen to slip through and garner a nomination, NIGGERIZE THEM.

And the real kicker is, they have no clue that this is what they are communicating to the mass of Americans busting their butt so that their progeny can advance in this country.

And they have no clue because they just don’t give a damn. Until they are slapped back, they never will.

I would also suggest any reader interested to go back and read my related post made on October 7, 2005.

 

ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE . . . ALMOST

What’s that you say? Check out this post at the The Locker Room:

Go to C-SPAN online, click on the recent archives and scroll down till you find “Black Media Forum on Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media” (Oct. 14 at Howard University). It’s a very long program (apparently 4 hours), and Kambon makes his appearance at the 3:33 mark. The comments in question start just before the 3:41 mark. I have updated the transcript, which was essentially correct. Here are Kambon’s closing remarks:

And then finally I want to say that we need one idea, and we’re not thinking about a solution to the problem. We’re thinking about all these other things, but we’re not dealing with a solution to the problem. And we have to start to think about a solution to the problem so that these young brothers and sisters who are here now, who are 15, 16 or 17, are not here 25 years later talking about these same problems.

Now how do I know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem. I know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call racial profiling, DNA banks, and they’re monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem. *tepid applause* Now I don’t care whether you clap or not, but I’m saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. And I will leave on that. So we just have to just set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem and the problem on the planet is white people.

Earlier in the program Kambon say that “we are in a war” (~3:36 mark), that white people had pretended to free blacks but instead set up an “international plantation” (~3:36:50 mark) that made “every white person on earth a plantation master,” that “white people want to kill you” and that is “because that is part of their plan” (~3:37:45), and that “the only nigger on the planet is the white man and the white woman, and our people are not niggers, they are imitation niggers” (~3:39).

Damn.

I’ve certainly heard this kind of stupidity before and, truth be told, so have many others.

Please – more sunshine on these fools, more! It’s just this type of unserious discussion that needs to be rebuked.

 

CIA COVERT ACTIONS AGAINST PRESIDENT BUSH

This is simply not getting enough attention but Victoria Toensing calls a spade a spade and nails what this whole Valerie Plame B.S. is about:

VT: This was the CIA doing a covert action against the President. Now why is it that they would allow Joe Wilson to go over, do this mission, not sign a confidentiality agreement, and then allow him to write about it in the New York Times?

Mighty damn curious, I’d say. That quote was posted on RadioBlogger.com and was part of the transcript from a Jed Babbin interview with Toensing while he’s guest-hosting on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.

Now we’ll just have to wait and see if Patrick Fitzgerald is too much of an egghead for his own good.

 

IT’S HOMECOMING ON “THE HILL”

One can only hope that Fam will stop shooting itself in the foot and, and, and . . . well, it is homecoming, and (between all the negativity) there are reasons to celebrate.

For instance:

Celebrating Florida A&M University’s homecoming means a return to down-home cooking, seeing old classmates, fraternity and sorority members and catching up on news from the past year.

For alumni who haven’t been “home” in a while, changes on the grounds might leave you wondering. What are some of the new buildings or construction on campus? What’s the status of the presidential search, FAMU’s finances and enrollment figures?

Here’s a primer to get you caught up with the latest Rattler news:

Q. What new buildings have recently been completed or are going up on campus?

A. The new School of Journalism and Graphic Communication building is at 510 Orr Drive, across from its former home in Tucker Hall. The school will celebrate its grand opening at 10 a.m. Friday at the front entrance of the building.

A student recreation center is being built at 2101 Wahnish Way, near the intersection with Osceola Street.

A new FAMU Developmental Research School, known as FAMU High, will be located at the northeast corner of Orange Avenue and Wahnish Way. The $20 million project is expected to encompass 40 acres.

A $29.3 million multipurpose teaching gym will be built on Wahnish Way at Okaloosa Street on the site of the current intramural field. The gym will feature a 10,000-seat arena, athletic office, classrooms and indoor track.

Q. What is the status of dorms on campus? Are some still closed?

A. Diamond, Young and Sampson halls remain closed.

Q. What is the current enrollment at FAMU?

A. There are 12,187 students registered at FAMU this fall, compared with 13,063 students a year ago. A team is expected to report to the board of trustees in December on ways to boost enrollment.

Q. What’s the status of the presidential search?

A. Earlier this month, FAMU board of trustees Chairwoman Challis Lowe appointed a five-member presidential search committee to find a replacement for Interim President Castell Bryant. The committee meets today for the first time. Lowe said the committee will decide the process and timetable for the search. The Rev. R.B. Holmes Jr., of Bethel Baptist Church in Tallahassee, is chairman. Other members include: Leerie Jenkins, chairman of an architectural firm in Orange Park; Laura Branker, government-strategies director for a health-care provider; Mary Diallo, FAMU associate professor of French; and Ramon Alexander, FAMU student-body president. Bryant has said that she’s not interested in the job.

As I said in an earlier post today – all in all, not bad – not bad at all.

Strike, Strike, and SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-strike again, Rattlers!

 

RECENT RECOMMENDATIONS FROM AMAZON.COM

Here are ten that giant multinational corporation offered me (based on some recent purchases, of course), for whatever they’re worth:

1. 

Capitalism and Freedom : Fortieth Anniversary Edition
by Milton Friedman
Publication Date: November 15, 2002

2. 

Brand Sense : Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound
by Philip Kotler (Foreword), Martin Lindstrom
Publication Date: February 1, 2005

3. 

Buzzmarketing : Get People to Talk About Your Stuff
by Mark Hughes
Publication Date: July 7, 2005

4. 

Life After the 30-Second Spot: Energize Your Brand With a Bold Mix of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising
by Joseph Jaffe
Publication Date: May 20, 2005

5. 

The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)
by F. A. Hayek, III, W. W. Bartley (Editor)
Publication Date: October 4, 1991

6. 

The Constitution of Liberty
by F. A. Hayek
Publication Date: October 15, 1978

7. 

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
by Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman
Publication Date: November 1, 1990

8. 

The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
by Natan Sharansky, et al.
Publication Date: September 30, 2004

9. 

The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (Oxford History of the United States)
by Robert Middlekauff
Publication Date: February 1, 1985

10. 

Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)
by Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick (Translator)
Publication Date: April 1, 1998

So many suggested books, so little suggested time.

 

PETER SCHWEIZER

Today’s Tallahassee Democrat has an interesting book review by their political reporter, Bill Cotterell, of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, by Peter Schweizer. Mr. Schweizer, who is reported to be a Tallahassee-area resident, may or may not be happy with this:

At times, “Do As I Say” reads like People magazine without the wide-eyed wonderment. Or Robin Leach doing “Lifestyles of the Rich and Fatuous.” Those who mistake their own wealth and fame for gravitas deserve Schweizer’s critical exposure the way silk top hats deserve snowballs.

Moore can call his book “Stupid White Men” and rail against corporate greed in his films. But Schweizer says the champion of the little guy has hired almost no blacks or Hispanics for his various ventures, and has a foundation whose stock holdings have included defense contractors like Halliburton and Boeing.

“The simple fact is that those in the vanguard of the liberal left have found their own ideas to be ultimately self-defeating, self-destructive and unworkable,” he writes. “So why do they continue to cling to them? Clearly these slogans still offer a potent weapon with which they can cudgel their enemies.”

A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Schweizer and his wife, Rochelle, published “The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty” last year. Schweizer also wrote “Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of his 40-year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism” in 2002.

The scholarly Schweizer is more highbrow than Bernard Goldberg, the CBS correspondent-turned-critic whose latest is “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.” He’s not as funny as columnist Ann Coulter, so “Do As I Say” is probably too serious to get Schweizer much time on the cable-TV shout shows.

He’s confidently conservative but doesn’t quite ignore some recent examples of right-wingers not practicing their own preaching. The difference, Schweizer reasons, is that when conservatives stray, they hurt their careers.

All in all, not bad. It’s impressive to know this guy is in the area and I can only hope to meet up with him one day.

 

WILMA EXPLODES ON THE SCENE

Hurricane Wilma exploded last night and now is a Category 5 monster, the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico region. Southwest Florida now has to wait and hope that it loses strength. Last month I happened to be in the Fort Myers area around Florida Gulf Coast University. That campus has an unassuming layout but the housing areas for the students were impressive. Also impressive was the obvious pace of development around that university. Check out this picture of a development right next door to the main entrance for the university:

 

It’s an area that is still mostly scrub but is clearly going to mirror, more and more, the type of development pictured above. Those folks already in Southwest Florida now have an immediate problem. This is a monster storm; will it remain a monster? We hope and pray it moderates and that it mostly glides over the Everglades.

 

DUMBING DOWN?

McQ at Q and O blog is still smacking around Harriet Miers. It’s the “little lady’s” intelligence, along with the President’s intelligence, and that of Congress and the process itself:

Or, as John Lott entitles his article, “Why judges aren’t smarter”. Simple explanation? It’s harder to get seemingly smarter judges through the process of confirmation.

The less sterling a candidate’s record, the more likely Congress is to confirm.

And, per Lott, in terms of a chance for confirmation, Bush could hardly have done better than Harriet Miers.

Well. Isn’t that “smart” of him? The less sterling the better – and the President, under those constraints, could hardly have done better than nominating this silly bitch.

That’s the way it read to me, anyway. So I responded, naturally:

Has it not occurred to you, McQ, that the United States of America itself is a dumbing down experiment? That’s what made us a model republic, you know, and it seems to have worked out fairly well.

It is oh-so-fashionable among the so-called intellectual crowd these days to lament all manner of efforts as “dumbing down” adventures. How European, and how genuinely dumb. Somehow a woman who has achieved against the odds at every stage of her life, academic and professional, and done well enough so as to reach the upper strata of her craft, is unfairly caricatured and her intellectual heft is questioned.

I’ve thought from the beginning that this has been a bizarre exhibition of unserious temper tantrums from people who should know better. It still looks that way to me.

A likely small but dedicated segment of folks have lost their minds on this matter. It is in some ways (some ways) analogous to the high-tech lynching of Clarence Thomas, a worthy nominee in my estimation but a man of less accomplishment than Harriet Miers.

 

THE BEAUTY OF TIGER WOODS

Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel has written a nice tribute to Tiger Woods, contemplating his imminent departure from the Orlando area that he has called home for a decade:

Does anybody realize how lucky we’ve been to have this guy living among us for the last decade? Not just because of his celebrity, but because of his dignity.

My media buddies complain all the time about how Tiger guards his privacy and doesn’t let anybody inside his inner sanctum. I’m glad. I don’t want to know more about Tiger. I don’t want to see his faults or foibles. I don’t want to see an Outside the Lines special, quoting his old girlfriends and disgruntled bodyguards.

Isn’t this why there are no real sports heroes left anymore -- because they’ve all been demystified and demythologized by the 24-hour-a-day coverage on SportsCenter? All except Tiger.

All we really see of him off the course is what he wants to see. And that is gracious elegance. And that’s fine with me.

In this day and age of insolent in-your-face athletes, Tiger is a delicious departure. His quiet class is a refreshing reprieve from a sports world filled with clanging cymbals. Not once has he ever embarrassed himself or his sport.

Have you ever seen a story in the newspaper about Tiger hosting a sex party on his yacht with a bunch of strippers? Or getting arrested in a bar fight? Or brandishing a gun? Or taking steroids? Or hitting a cop? Or anything?

Not our Tiger. The worst thing he’s ever done publicly is to utter a profanity after hitting a lousy shot. And, oh yeah, there was the magazine writer a few years ago who wrote about Tiger telling a few off-color jokes. And who hasn’t?

I couldn’t agree more. Bianchi nailed it, straight down the middle of the fairway. I never fail to be amazed by Tiger Woods and how grounded he seems. I’m also proud to know that his father was an Army Green Beret.

 

HOW LONG BEFORE THE SLUR OF UNCLE TOM ARISES?

Will wonders never cease – some Florida Boys of the black persuasion are defending President Bush, and not only the South Florida Sun-Sentinel but the Miami Herald actually share the news with their readers.

First, the Fort Lauderdale paper:

President Bush cares about black Americans, despite what hip-hop artist Kanye West says, a group of leading South Florida black Republicans said Monday.

The Coalition of South Florida African and Caribbean American Republican Party members from the tri-county region didn’t blame Bush, but New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for the slow response to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The defense of the president came at a news conference at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center.

“The real culprit in Katrina was and is the lack of local and state and planning and a bumbling, bickering bureaucracy at all levels, including Washington, D.C.,” said Levi Williams, a lawyer and leading Republican voice in Broward County.

And now for the Herald:

While Bush and the Republican Party have worked hard in recent years to convert black voters, the Gulf Coast tragedy threatens to curtail those inroads. [Reverend O’Neal] Dozier [pastor of Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach], said he has participated in four hurricane-related conference calls the White House has arranged with black clergy around the country.

Don Bowen, the president of the Broward County Urban League, who is in New York City coordinating the group’s national relief effort, said Monday’s news conference is part of a political strategy.

“The Republican Party is concerned about Bush’s poll numbers going down and want to launch some kind of counter-offense to try to neutralize some of the criticism,” said Bowen, who is not registered with a party, in a phone interview. “Florida is a hot spot because we’ve been pivotal in previous elections.”

Levi Williams, who serves as general counsel to the Broward Republican Party, said at the press conference that state and local officials in Louisiana, not the president, should be held accountable.

‘‘Political opportunists and race-baiting black leaders and Democratic politicians have taken advantage of the tragedy and suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,’’ Williams said. “The real culprit in Katrina was and is local and state leadership and planning, and a bumbling bickering bureaucracy at all levels.”

Let the congregation say . . .  Amen.

But, we can be sure that the charges / slurs against all of the folks involved as sell-out Uncle Toms is already well underway.

So be it.

 

GATOR OFFENSE IN DISARRAY

I can’t really write about it right now (and I’m not going to link to anything) but I’m trying to figure out how we’ve turned the SEC’s number one offense into an inept offense.

And I’m not happy about that at all.

Beat Georgia and all is well.

Lose to Georgia . . . I don’t EVEN want to think about that mess.

Finally, I thought Florida winning in Tallahassee last year for the first time in forever would cure me of a curse I only developed since moving to Florida’s Capital City in the late 1980s – cheering against the Noles. Watching that game against Virginia last night proved me wrong. I’m still working on that, though. State pride and all that stuff.

 

THE ADVERTISED MIND

This summer I purchased a book that seemed both interesting and informative, The Advertised Mind, but have yet to sit down and do the reading. I suspect, however, that it’s going to be quite relevant to the enhancement with America’s famous “impatience” and the ever-growing need (within more and more sphere’s of American life) for either (1) superficial perfection, or (2) immediate results. Fast Company made it their June Book of the Month selection and their discussion of the book is prefaced with this outline:

Recall and persuasion are today's primary measures of ad effectiveness. Author Erik Du Plessis makes the case that emotion is actually the foundation of both, a major shift that he says today's advertisers are reluctant to accept. To back this up, du Plessis has assiduously amassed the latest scientific research from the fields of neurology, psychology, and advertising, and presented it in an exhaustive, empirical package.

Hmmmm . . . emotion is the foundation for not only recall but persuasion as well. That sounds as though it is straight out of Trial Lawyer 101, and one of my primary biases is that most everything about Democratic Party campaigning and politicking, etc., is inordinately affected by Plaintiffs’ lawyers and their unique mindsets. Fast Company also listed some “fast takes” from the book:

We interrupt this review with three ideas from The Advertised Mind

1.     Test before you leap. The brain uses emotions as a filter to determine what it’s going to pay attention to. But know your emotional context. While ads for insect repellent in the United States may show customers annoyed by buzzing mosquitoes, South Africans are more worried about malaria. A quick test will avoid expensive changes later.

2.     Get to the point. The “effective length” of a commercial begins when the audience realizes which brand is being advertised. Scrap the enigmatic teaser ads and get your brand -- or a brand “trigger” -- on-screen early. Sony’s PlayStation ads often kick off with a split-second flash of its logo.

3.     Close the loop. Quirky celebrities and actors may be memorable, but unless the spokesperson is on the packaging or there’s some in-store tie-in, shoppers may not make the connection.

Very interesting, don’t you agree?

 

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM

No matter how you slice it, America has triumphed in Iraq and the Iraqis have set the stage to demonstrate that their many factions can democratically govern their own country – in peace, with themselves and their neighbors. Blog God Richard Fernandez (a.k.a. Wretchard the Cat) concludes a post on “The End of the Beginning” with some thoughts on what has been accomplished:

Just as the ouster of Saddam by OIF touched off a wave of changes in Libya, Lebanon and the entire region, the impending defeat of the insurgency will paradoxically enhance the ability of diplomacy to address many of the remaining issues. Saddam’s defeat confirmed what many military analysts knew from Desert Storm, that it was impossible for any conventional army to stand up against US forces. And that modified the behavior of many rogue states. Yet there remained the hope that the terrorist model of warfare, forged in Algeria and refined against Israel in Lebanon, would bring America to a halt: that rogue regimes acting discreetly could operate within that strategic shadow. Now, for the first time since Algeria, a terrorist force of the highest quality, supported by contributions from oil-rich countries, in the heart of the Arab world, with sanctuary in a friendly regime across the border and eulogized as “freedom fighters” by dozens of major international publications is on the verge of total and ignominious defeat. There are no more strategic shadows.

Victory is arguably the most perilous moment for any great power. In that instant it can be goaded into the destructive path to hubris, or if it is wise, go on to attain real greatness. The fruits of freedom throughout the region may not always be congenial, as the example of the voters in Fallujah showed in microcosm. But that is what the mission set out to attain all the same: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

And to the “Blame America First” crowd – hey, keep right on hoping for American failure. Seems to be working real well . . . for the United States!

 

SOME FOLKS HOPE Y’ALL AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION

Mudville Gazette has a fantastic post up demonstrating the brazen revisionism being peddled regarding the War in Iraq:

PBS has created a portal, a compilation of their Frontline reports on Iraq. A goldmine of information, with interviews, video, transcripts, and more.

Just looking at the overview of the series provides interesting insight onto how the media narrative of the Iraq war has evolved with time.

Originally broadcast on October 9th, 2003, Truth, War, and Consequences is a good place to start. Here's the description from the site:

FRONTLINE traces the roots of the Iraqi war back to the days immediately following September 11, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the creation of a special intelligence operation to quietly begin looking for evidence that would justify the war.

An especially interesting line, that tracing the roots to September 11 bit. The previous episode detailed just below it offers an odd juxtaposition.

The Long Road to War originally aired on March 17, 2003 - just as the shooting war in Iraq began again. From the PBS description:

With the U.S. apparently within days of attacking Iraq, FRONTLINE draws on its 12 years of reporting on Iraq to chronicle the key moments in the history of America's ongoing confrontation with Saddam Hussein.

So, an ongoing confrontation stretching back 12 years becomes (seven months later) something whose "roots" can only be traced back to September 11, 2001 - a day that apparently inspired Don Rumsfeld to cook up some sort of excuse to invade.

Those of us who've worn the uniform over all those years know September 11 was but another of many turns in an extremely serpentine road. We watched the news coverage of the parades of troops returning home back in '91 too - and then we proceeded to rotate in and out of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other points nearby to maintain an uneasy "ceasefire" for the next dozen years. Our seemingly eternal military presence in Saudi - mostly Air Force enforcing the southern part of the "no fly zone" - was a significant factor in Osama Bin Laden's determination to bring death and destruction to the US that fateful day. Though ultimately (perhaps obviously) untenable, the world was happy with that status quo. And as the Iraqi people suffered and died - from starvation or poison gas or other methods to be discussed more fully in a certain upcoming trial - a few opportunists from many lands made fortunes on something we now know was (perhaps inevitably) corrupt - Oil For Food (even more trials to come). Still, from time to time over those dozen years we'd get a quick headline after launching a missile in response to Saddam's violation of UN regulations, and the world went on its merry way.

Yes, September 11 was one of countless events on the road to finishing our unfinished business in Iraq. Being "the" event along that path is a construct of the post-war media, as PBS rather unexpectedly demonstrates for us in quite dramatic fashion.

But these people will insist they aren’t sheep peddling a line pushed by folks who hate the United States.

 

STANDING FIRM IN THE FACE OF INTELLECTUAL CONDESCENSION

Melanie Phillips, writing on October 12^th:

One of the factors that has created the current climate of lies about Israel and the Jews is the respect afforded to academics who, despite the fact that they tell blatant lies and thus rewrite history, are regarded as authoritative simply by virtue of the fact that they are university professors. Since the academy is the custodian of knowledge, it is assumed that its representatives are disinterested seekers after truth. Thus what they say mutates into the normative truths of a culture. The problem is that this fundamental premise is no longer true. Great swathes of the academy are no longer disinterested at all. For a variety of separate but sometimes related reasons, including the development of the grievance or victim culture, the rise of interest groups with money to spend promoting that culture, the dependence of academics on such groups for funding and the post-modern deconstruction of the very concept of truth, academia has become a prime site for propaganda.

Needless to say, that got me to thinking – so I decided to take a quick look at the article that apparently alerted her to the subject of her scorn, Joel Beinin:

Tenure is a gift, or perhaps a right, bestowed upon professors so that they can present their work on its merits, free of political interference.  Professors, uniquely among professionals, cannot be fired simply for disseminating unpopular ideas.  This is, we are told, how Great Ideas are formed. 

Joel Beinin, a tenured history professor at Stanford, has at times accused others of trying to silence him.  However, since a tenured professor, by definition, cannot be silenced, the irritation felt by him must be based on something else than the fear of being stifled.   Perhaps Beinin fears exposure of inaccurate or dishonest ideas that he has propagated since he received tenure.

Beinin has taken on, in the last few years, President Lawrence Summers of Harvard, Dr. Daniel Pipes, and Paul Wolfowitz. He has defended Sami Al-Arian, the alleged al Jihad terrorist operating out of the University of South Florida.  He has been photographed by the Stanford Daily carrying placards on “Nakba Day” (the “catastrophe”) a day that is known elsewhere as Israel’s Independence Day.  Thus, any complaints he has about criticisms needs to be considered with the idea that he can give as well as get.

Okay, I can roll with that. Stanford and many other schools have these kinds of professors. However, by this time, I was really intrigued with the idea of “trahison des clercs” and its possible application today. That’s when I stumbled across an early 1990s article by Roger Kimball in The New Criterion – and got to thinking about Harriet Miers, African Americans, Black Studies programs, “Not” Out of Africa proclamations, the curious insistence that Egyptians are white, etc.

I’m in a troubled state, in other words, and not simply because a plumbing company just tried to run a scam on us and wants me to be pleased at their $400-plus magnanimity.

No.

While in this troubled state, I’m also thinking about the Constitution, Solzhenitsyn, balance, Tocqueville, standards, the promise of America and the mosaic that is planet Earth.

After initially finishing the piece by Kimball, this is what grabbed my attention:

[There is] an important peculiarity about the history of Enlightenment: namely, that it is a movement of thought that began as a reaction against tradition and has now emerged as one of tradition’s most important safeguards. Historically, the Enlightenment arose as a deeply anti-clerical and, perforce, anti-traditional movement. Its goal, in Kant’s famous phrase, was to release man from his “self-imposed immaturity.” The chief enemy of Enlightenment was “superstition,” an omnibus term that included all manner of religious, philosophical, and moral ideas. But as the sociologist Edward Shils has noted, although the Enlightenment was in important respects “antithetical to tradition” in its origins, its success was due in large part “to the fact that it was promulgated and pursued in a society in which substantive traditions were rather strong.” “It was successful against its enemies,” Shils notes in his book Tradition (1981),

because the enemies were strong enough to resist its complete victory over them. Living on a soil of substantive traditionality, the ideas of the Enlightenment advanced without undoing themselves. As long as respect for authority on the one side and self-confidence in those exercising authority on the other persisted, the Enlightenment’s ideal of emancipation through the exercise of reason went forward. It did not ravage society as it would have done had society lost all legitimacy.

It is this mature form of Enlightenment, championing reason but respectful of tradition, that Finkielkraut holds up as an ideal.

What Finkielkraut calls “the undoing of thought” flows from the widespread disintegration of a faith. At the center of that faith is the assumption that the life of thought is “the higher life” and that culture—what the Germans call Bildung—is its end or goal. The process of disintegration has lately become an explicit attack on culture. This is not simply to say that there are many anti-intellectual elements in society: that has always been the case. “Non-thought,” in Finkielkraut’s phrase, has always co-existed with the life of the mind. The innovation of contemporary culture is to have obliterated the distinction between the two. “It is,” he writes, “the first time in European history that non-thought has donned the same label and enjoyed the same status as thought itself, and the first time that those who, in the name of ‘high culture,’ dare to call this non-thought by its name, are dismissed as racists and reactionaries.” The attack is perpetrated not from outside, by uncomprehending barbarians, but chiefly from inside, by a new class of barbarians, the self-made barbarians of the intelligentsia. This is the undoing of thought. This is the new “treason of the intellectuals.”

Postmodernism. An absurdity that most African Americans dismiss out-of-hand because no one thinks about it or knows what the heck it is. Earlier in the piece was this riff that left me thinking of the right wing bitch session against Harriet Miers:

Julien Benda was not so naïve as to believe that intellectuals as a class had ever entirely abstained from political involvement, or, indeed, from involvement in the realm of practical affairs. Nor did he believe that intellectuals, as citizens, necessarily should abstain from political commitment or practical affairs. The “treason” or betrayal he sought to publish concerned the way that intellectuals had lately allowed political commitment to insinuate itself into their understanding of the intellectual vocation as such. Increasingly, Benda claimed, politics was “mingled with their work as artists, as men of learning, as philosophers.” The ideal of disinterested judgment and faith in the universality of truth: such traditional guiding principles of intellectual life were more and more contemptuously deployed as masks when they were not jettisoned altogether. Benda castigated this development as the “desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action.”

In its crassest but perhaps also most powerful form, this desire led to that familiar phenomenon Benda dubbed “the cult of success.” It is summed up, he writes, in “the teaching that says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt.” In itself, this idea is hardly novel, as history from the Greek sophists on down reminds us. In Plato’s Gorgias, for instance, the sophist Callicles expresses his contempt for Socrates’ devotion to philosophy: “I feel toward philosophers very much as I do toward those who lisp and play the child.” Callicles taunts Socrates with the idea that “the more powerful, the better, and the stronger” are simply different words for the same thing. Successfully pursued, he insists, “luxury and intemperance … are virtue and happiness, and all the rest is tinsel.” How contemporary Callicles sounds!

In Benda’s formula, this boils down to the conviction that “politics decides morality.” To be sure, the cynicism that Callicles espoused is perennial: like the poor, it will be always with us. What Benda found novel was the accreditation of such cynicism by intellectuals. “It is true indeed that these new ‘clerks’ declare that they do not know what is meant by justice, truth, and other ‘metaphysical fogs,’ that for them the true is determined by the useful, the just by circumstances,” he noted. “All these things were taught by Callicles, but with this difference; he revolted all the important thinkers of his time.”

In other words, the real treason of the intellectuals was not that they countenanced Callicles but that they championed him. To appreciate the force of Benda’s thesis one need only think of that most influential modern Callicles, Friedrich Nietzsche. His doctrine of “the will to power,” his contempt for the “slave morality” of Christianity, his plea for an ethic “beyond good and evil,” his infatuation with violence—all epitomize the disastrous “pragmatism” that marks the intellectual’s “treason.” The real problem was not the unattainability but the disintegration of ideals: an event that Nietzsche hailed as the “transvaluation of all values.” “Formerly,” Benda observed, “leaders of States practiced realism, but did not honor it; … With them morality was violated but moral notions remained intact; and that is why, in spite of all their violence, they did not disturb civilization.”

To my less than refined sensibility, this strikes me as the swamp that the posse led by writers for the National Review has been suckered into by the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. This is why National Review, and apparently many other intellectuals, wanted the all out war over a Supreme Court nominee. It isn’t that they have “removed” standards, per se, but by bastardizing the traditional requirements for appointment to the Supreme Court – first the left wingers and now the right wingers have effectively “removed” those standards and imposed a new set of criteria foreign to the very idea of America:

The irony, alas, is that by removing standards and declaring that “anything goes,” one does not get more culture, one gets more and more debased imitations of culture. This fraud is the dirty secret that our cultural commissars refuse to acknowledge.

There is another, perhaps even darker, result of the undoing of thought. The disintegration of faith in reason and common humanity leads not only to a destruction of standards, but also involves a crisis of courage. “A careless indifference to grand causes,” Finkielkraut warns, “has its counterpart in abdication in the face of force.” As the impassioned proponents of “diversity” meet the postmodern apostles of acquiescence, fanaticism mixes with apathy to challenge the commitment required to preserve freedom. Communism may have been effectively discredited. But “what is dying along with it … is not the totalitarian cast of mind, but the idea of a world common to all men.” Julien Benda took his epigraph for La Trahison des clercs from the nineteenth-century French philosopher Charles Renouvier: Le monde souffre du manque de foi en une vérité transcendante: “The world suffers from lack of faith in a transcendent truth.” Without some such faith, we are powerless against the depredations of intellectuals who have embraced the nihilism of Callicles as their truth.

George Bush (quite wisely, I think) has decided that he doesn’t want to engage in the destructive tit-for-tat bogus game so many in Washington seem to lust after. He wants to step back from that particular ledge come hell or high water.

We will soon see if President Bush is going to stand firm in the face of this onslaught. I certainly hope he does. That might be the first tangible sign to the nation that George W. Bush has emerged as one of tradition’s most important safeguards. That tradition known as America, and American Exceptionalism.

 

HOPE STILL SPRINGS ETERNAL WITH THE GOOD OLD DEMOCRATS

However, they are getting ahead of themselves once again – as outlined in this “Who's Cracking Up?” post at Power Line:

The question remains, though, what is fueling this liberal triumphalism? The answer, no doubt, is President Bush’s falling poll ratings. Another one came out today, showing the President at a record low for his Presidency. It seems that Bush’s poll numbers have been in a steady decline almost from the day of his second inauguration. This, fundamentally, is what has the left dancing in the streets.

But are Bush’s numbers really that bad? His current Real Clear Politics average stands at 41.7% approval. That is at or about the low point in nearly five years in office. How does it compare to other presidents’ lowest poll ratings? Actually, it’s not bad. Here are the low approval ratings for the last seven presidents:

*Johnson: 35%
*Nixon: 24%
*Ford: 37%
*Carter: 28%
*Reagan: 35%
*Bush I: 29%
*Clinton: 37%

Yes, that’s right: Every president since 1963 has had approval ratings, at one time or another during his administration, at least five points lower than Bush’s current nadir.

Objectively, the evidence for a “conservative crack-up” is thin, at best. The reality is that the Republican base is holding remarkably firm, in the face of a media onslaught against the Bush administration that has no parallel in modern history, and following months of little but bad news: gas prices, hurricanes, and casualties in Iraq (the only news most people hear from that part of the world). Things could change, of course, but my guess is that the next year’s news will be better for the administration and for Republicans than the past year’s. The price of gas has likely peaked; Iraq will continue to stabilize, and troops will come home; absent more natural disasters, the economy will resume its steady growth; Harriet Miers will be confirmed and start voting with conservative majorities on the Court. Most likely, liberal dreams of the end of the conservative era will have to be deferred again.

This makes the bizarre right wing attack on President Bush all the more disappointing. All politics reduces down to multiple coalitions of the willing – how remarkable that one side acts as if it wants to dictate to the President how he MUST act . . . or they take their marbles and go home.

 

INSTAPUNK DELIVERS!

How did I miss this a week ago? The irreverent folks at Instapunk deliver a serious smack-down of a seriously deserving target:

My my my. Get a load of George Will on the Miers nomination:

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s ``argument’’ for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their prepresidential careers, and this president, particularly, is not disposed to such reflections.

Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers’ nomination resulted from the president’s careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers’ name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists.

What a jackass.

Yes!

But there’s much, much more and what follows is just the ending:

Time to correct a few misimpressions. Supreme Court judges are not the democratic equivalent of Vestal Virgins. They don’t follow a special diet, breathe special air, and they don’t live in sacred temples. Nor for that matter do they have to be lawyers, any more than the Constitution’s authors had to be. Benjamin Franklin had some pretty impressive reasoning skills, but no law degree.

The Constitution does not say that if the President isn’t intellectual enough to suit the educational snobs of his generation that he must find 100 smarter people to make his supreme court selections for him. (We’d dearly love to have witnessed the outcome of the duel that would followed George Will’s attempt to give this particular lecture to Andrew Jackson. Oh well.)

The inflated demands in this piece remind us of another blowhard’s famous canard (Carl Sagan, Cornell, no law degree) that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” As a matter of fact, they don’t. They require exactly the same kind of proof needed for ordinary claims. Presidents have selected supreme court justices for all kinds of reasons, including politics, friendship, and legitimate credentials. The founders knew this would happen. That’s why they gave the senate a role in advice and consent. Not because the senators would turn out to be better or smarter than the President, but because government appointments take place in the arena of politics and open political proceedings tend to be more noisy and less corrupt than closed political proceedings, except when it’s the other way around. That’s one of the many many flawed compromises our form of government asks us to accept.

Those who don’t accept such compromises are free to propose their own rules, as George Will has done. God bless his First Amendment right to speak down to the rest of us. Perhaps we should follow his lead. Here are three rules we think will improve the confirmation process for Harriet Miers:

1. Don’t ever take seriously any sermon delivered by an adult male who is wearing a bowtie.

2. Don’t ever forget that lawyers are great at causing trouble and rarely competent at fixing it..

3. Regardless of what happens in the Miers hearings, we will -- most of us -- continue living our lives as if the terrible outcome of the confirmation process had never occurred.

Now get some rest. Relax. Do something that makes you feel good and happy today. Here endeth the lesson.

Sssssssssssssssssssss-smoking!

 

WISDOM FROM THE GREAT UNWASHED MASSES

Hugh Hewitt received this gem in an e-mail (scroll down to the e-mail asking “Do We Need Elite Supremes?” and check out point #3):

The President values quality jurisprudence over elite education.

President Bush earned degrees from Yale and Harvard. He knows the culture of the elite universities, and has decided that a Supreme Court Justice does not need it.

I believe he is acting wisely, not only from trusting his [judgment], but because I happen to have earned degrees from Stanford (philosophy of law) and Yale. Both places, like Harvard, are full of very smart people. Unfortunately, they have become so politically correct that they no longer offer liberal education in the classic sense. Worse, they foster an unspoken contempt for the great unwashed masses for whom they presume to speak. The President’s phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations” fits this culture of contempt. Their graduates may be able to rationalize anything, but lack common sense.

Sometimes, of course, they have a healthy dose of common sense but on certain issues lose any grasp of political common sense.

And the curious thing is this – it, apparently, applies to liberal AND conservative elites. This is the personal revelation resulting from this nomination for me. I knew it applied to the left wing. But the right wing? I guess I should have known better . . .  but it’s still a surprise.

For instance, Captain's Quarters still seems to be sipping from the wrong cup – now criticizing Laura Bush for her interview on the Today Show with Matt Lauer when she acknowledged that sexism may play a role with the anti-Miers posse, prompting some exasperation in readers of the blog – myself included, leading to this comment from me, beginning with a quote from a prior commenter:

Kheldar: “Some of Miers’ critics are sexists. Some are ignorant of her accomplishments, or are choosing not to look at them.”

So obviously true. Equally true is that some of Miers critics ARE desperate, too.

They’ve dug a hole for themselves with a laughingly absurd trashing of a conservative Supreme Court nominee and are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that the country isn’t rolling with them on this issue.

Speaking for myself, they’ve shown their behinds and I will never read them the same again. And I’m pretty sure there’s a big country of blog readers out there who feel the same. I feel like I’ve been pissed on by cultural snobs hell bent on denying their snobbery -- all while insisting on taking their marbles and going home because the unwritten rules of the game seem to have changed.

Deal with it like a [grown-up], for goodness sakes.

We’re dealing with an unbecoming temper tantrum from folks who should know better.

 

TALENTED TENTH AMONG WHITE CONSERVATIVES

It strikes me that if, in ordinary political discussion, white conservatives were generally conversant regarding the concept linked to W.E.B. DuBois of the talented tenth, many more people would understand the crazy response to Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court. Dafydd ab Hugh is getting there, it seems to me:

In my last post, riffing off Captain Ed's Washington Post piece on the taxonomy of the Miers debaters, I talked about the fourth class of conservatives, what I called the Cowboys. These are intelligent but non-intellectual (even anti-intellectual) folks who don't try to articulate their conservativeness... they simply live it. I noted that Bush belongs to this class, rather than to the Loyalist Army, the Rebel Alliance, or the Trench-Dwelling Dogfaces, all of whom at least have pretensions to being intellectuals.

The Cowboys very much distrust intellectuals because they believe those eggheads can talk themselves into believing anything. Case in point: how many extraordinarily intelligent and perspicacious intellectuals managed to talk themselves into believing in Communism, including such later conservative luminaries as Whittaker Chambers, David Horowitz, and about half the founding staff of Bill Buckley's National Review?

(When asked why so many NR editors were ex-Communists, Buckley simply grinned and repeated "EX-Communists!")

In contrast, there is a very special kind of person found almost exclusively among the Cowboys. For want of a better word, I'll call this sort a Gipper. A Gipper (Ronald Reagan is the prototypical example) is a person who doesn't need to logically reason his way to rightness, because he has an instantaneous intuitive understanding of right and wrong.

Despite so many of Reagan's friends and mentors falling for the Communist line, and despite the fact that Reagan was a New-Deal Democrat, Ronald Reagan never once, not even for a moment, had anything but absolute contempt and loathing for Communism and its kid-sister Socialism. He started fighting the Communists in the 1940s, during the war, while even FDR himself was pedaling the line that "Uncle Joe" Stalin was an enlightened, progressive, scientific, and democratic leader.

(Don't believe me about FDR? Rent a copy of the 1943 Warner Brothers movie Mission to Moskow, made by Jack Warner on direct orders from Roosevelt himself and filmed from the diary of FDR's former ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davies.)

Reagan happened to be an excellent writer, but he never thought of himself as an intellectual. His genius was first in seeing the right, then in being able to explain it in terms that were not only universally understandable but extraordinarily persuasive. Buckley made conservatism respectable, but it took Reagan to make it popular.

Anybody who knew Reagan for any length of time knew that, no matter what compromise he was forced to accept due to circumstances, Reagan would never, ever "drift to the left," "grow in office," or accept the nearly universally held postulate that Socialism was the way of the future, and the New Soviet Man was the future of Mankind.

Substitute Reagan for Booker T. Washington and any of the National Review crowd for W.E.B. DuBois and – voila!

Booker T. would never fall for that foolishness and W.E.B. did, along with many other African American intellectuals. Here is a modification of my response to Dafydd:

When the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party and similar types rail on and on about "anti-science" and "anti-intellectual" they're just pimping for their European superiors, and pissing on the American concept of things.

Great post, Dafydd. I wouldn't say "cowboy" but I understand where you're going with it, and it is perhaps "the" enduring American symbol around the globe. This reminds me of the schism in black America back in the day between W.E.B. DuBois and his idea of a talented tenth vs. Booker T. Washington and his faith in the masses of black people. The former talked about it, the latter lived.

Of course, Booker T. Washington is disrespected by black academics nationwide.

 

STANFORD TAKES THE $2,000,000 CAKE

Florida’s entry at the DARPA Challenge couldn’t quite bring home the prize:

UF’s NaviGATOR, a 4,300-pound robotic racer, finished far better than last year’s competitor in the 131.6-mile Grand Challenge race but came well short of winning the $2 million prize.

Built by Team CIMAR, which is comprised of eight UF graduate students, the robot didn’t finish the race, placing 18th out of 23, but did travel 23 miles, more than twice what last year’s UF robot managed.

Stanford University’s Stanley won the Mojave Desert race in 6:53:48, under the 10-hour time limit set by the U.S. Department of Defense, which sponsored the competition.

So, what was the problem or what led to the inability to finish?

At 3 a.m., all the competitors received the race route via CD-ROM. UF’s team worked busily inputting the latitudes and longitudes into the global positioning equipment on board the NaviGATOR.

“We really pushed [the NaviGATOR] as hard as it could go because we came to win,” said Dave Armstrong, project manager for Team CIMAR. “But it ended up costing us.”

Armstrong said if they had slowed down their progress through the course, they could have easily placed in the top five teams.

“The team didn’t want to come to the line knowing we would lose,” he said.

Now, if this is true, that strikes me as incredibly curious reasoning. I would have thought job one was to finish the race – given the novelty of the event and the great honor you would get for actually finishing.

Anyway, congratulations for a great effort from Team CIMAR and special kudos to the winning Stanford team. Florida’s NaviGATOR vehicle is going to be donated to the folks at Air Force research and development and that strikes me as a good thing, too.

 

ANOTHER MICHAEL YON DISPATCH

Last week I was getting ready to head out the door and head to Orlando when I noticed a new e-mail had arrived. Michael Yon had a new dispatch up, and . . . . Well, let’s just say I decided then and there that I would head down to Central Florida later. Although I wrote up this post immediately after reading his long dispatch, I just didn’t get around to posting it until now:

They fled. It was all over the news. When the bullets flew, they fled. Leaving stations, abandoning posts, forgetting duties, hundreds of police fled. When the police response to gunfire was to simply run away, the city fell into lawlessness. Pundits rushed to the airwaves, proclaiming the city’s future hopeless. When the news of Hurricane Katrina first reached Mosul, the parallels were uncanny.

What followed in this lengthy and impressive post were personal riffs by Yon on:

tales of Disaster Relief 101 (the calm before the storm in Mosul),

the Storm Watch (after the charred bodies were strung up in Fallujah and many of the cockroaches subsequently fled to Mosul),

Insurgent leaders must have spent hours watching western television, particularly news broadcasts. They planned attacks that would create dramatic footage for the nightly news, and in many cases, they provided the camera crew and made the footage available for streaming and downloads on the internet. In light of their other recent media victories, the enemy felt ready to take on the Americans in Mosul.

Shifting Tactics (where urban warfare had to be met head-on)

Our soldiers faced a complex, rugged and courageous adversary, and one which could be exquisitely brutal, at a time when enemy morale was extremely high. Propaganda wouldn’t be enough. Being tougher, smarter and more adaptable was our only chance of winning the battle for Mosul without simultaneously flattening the city.

* * *

This may have looked like typical kinetic battle strategy at work, but even as guns were firing, the Coalition was building a tougher breed of Iraqi police, to work along with a new Iraqi Army. By the time I arrived in Mosul, the Americans had, in just some months, recruited, trained, and started fighting along with the new Iraqi Police and Army, who were proving smarter and tougher than the enemy.

Captured on Film (where a real reporter shows how reporting is done)

Deuce Four soldiers didn’t need to be told much. The key was delivering them to the fight. After they get into the fight, they operate on autopilot. But that day, something was very different. I was actually witnessing Iraqi commanders aggressively deploying their own men, isolating the enemy.

You Know You’re Good When . . . (documenting the growth of the real Iraqi minutemen)

I wasn’t the only man in Mosul to notice the skill spike among Iraqi police. As the big kinetic fights were drawing down, cooperation between Iraqis and Americans expanded. In just under six months, the main resistance was squashed and the Iraqi Police and Army in Mosul had strengthened to the point where the enemy could no longer mass. This harbinger of eventual success wasn’t lost on the insurgents. With the ISF becoming a formidable force in Mosul, the ever-adaptive enemy shifted from large kinetic attacks against Americans, and came gunning instead for the new sheriff.

* * * [but the Iraqi’s demonstrated their backbone, and secured Mosul]

Mosul faded from the news. No one seemed eager to rush in and cover progress. So, outside of the media lights, the Coalition began emplacing more police stations, including three just last month. More Iraqi men stepped forward, responding to the call to fight for the city (plus they needed jobs). As they completed training and were deployed, insurgent and terrorist activity kept them busy. Within months the Police could operate largely without Coalition military assistance.

Sharing Intelligence (real interaction leads to a real partnership)

Our intelligence people keep detailed records of times and locations of attacks and, along with other information, perform “pattern analysis” to predict future attacks. With persistence, these predictions produce results. American officers saw that when they shared intelligence with their Iraqi Army or Police counterparts, it was used to good effect.

The police were also developing their own intelligence and acting on it, even becoming adept at “the cascading raid,” as I began to call it. The Americans do it often, but call it “the domino effect.” Watching these raids unfold, I saw the effect was more like a cascade. Raid cascades happened like this: a bad guy is caught, and tells where other terrorists are, who are then quickly caught, and they in turn rat out a few more. One terrorist might lead soldiers to three more, who might lead them to four more, who might lead them to another one. Sometimes the cascades lasted only a few hours and netted perhaps a half a dozen fighters before petering out. Other cascades lasted days and netted dozens.

Paying Respect: Investing in Iraqi Leaders (respecting a warrior’s manhood)

The Iraqis have great pride. If an Iraqi colonel thought someone was patronizing him with trivial gifts, not only would he be insulted, he might also think the American was feeble-minded. But when the Iraqi commander respects the gift-giver, and the sincerity of the gift is not in question, the gesture by which it’s given takes on greater meaning. Kurilla and his officers never just delivered the sheep and said, “Thanks, here’s a sheep.” The delivery was always a spectacle.

Tides Change for Terrorists in Mosul (the serious beat-down begins)

Tactics based on faulty assumptions often backfire. The insurgents apparently were expecting that their strategy of targeting the police would make those who survived less committed. But the new cops were cut from stronger cloth, and similar to how those American troops who see a lot of combat in Iraq seem to have the highest morale, the increased targeting of the Iraqi Police fostered greater unity among them and elevated their status.

Suffer the Little Children (the “Oh, hell no you didn’t!” moment)

In Mosul, the love Iraqi parents have for their children was exploited as a weakness. The apex of this tactic came early one day in May when a homicidal car bomber trailed an American combat patrol for blocks, and as the children in one neighborhood ran out to wave, the “Jihadist” detonated his bomb.

* * *

Perhaps it was a deliberate effort to kill and maim as many children as possible in order to frighten their parents, or maybe it was just bad luck that the kids were there. Whatever the case, it backfired; Iraqis love their children. When the foreign terrorists targeted kids, the citizens of Mosul grew to hate insurgents. US Army officers told me that after that photo had run on Iraqi television and in newspapers, intelligence flooded in that resulted in killings and captures of more terrorists.

Tribes and Tribulations (all over the globe, people are people)

In Mosul, almost 90% of the police are members of a single tribe—the Al-jiburi, which many Coalition officers believe leads to endemic corruption. And the friction between the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army in Mosul can be severe. There is even friction between police on the east and west banks of the Tigris River. But this is not a “Mosul thing.” I was with some American soldiers in Baquba when we got into a short firefight one night. When both the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army arrived to help out, the first thing the American leaders started talking about was how to keep them from bickering, but without sending one or the other home. The Americans did not want to alienate one commander by asking him to leave, but also did not want the police and army to open another front. Many of these delicate negotiations are being undertaken by soldiers, on battlefields, right now.

Iraqi Government: Retaking Mosul, One Sheep at a Time (risk : respect : reward)

The best American and Iraqi leaders have some common traits: they are smart, courageous, persistent, and chose their battles wisely. They don’t throw away their men, but they are not afraid to risk their men, and they take those risks with their men. When these leaders get hurt, they try to get back with their men quickly.

Spies among us (enemy combatants are lurking)

The soldiers often had to control Jeff, who had a habit of smacking suspects. But his English was impeccable. I had seen him under fire a number of times; he was unquestionably courageous. I had seen him helping kids after a car bomb, and helping with wounded Americans during another attack. After one car-bombing, where a foot and a hand were all that remained identifiable of the driver, Jeff ran up and kicked the hand, which seemed quite odd, but I just thought it might be an "Iraqi-thing."

Impeccable English, battle-tested courage, and zealous commitment to the cause. Apparently the only serious problem with Jeff was that he was a spy.

The terrorists recruited Jeff and tried to persuade him to wear a bomb and blow us up.

Running out of Targets (it all comes back to respect – for your enemy and your own troops)

Late in the fight, many terrorists realized that killing children was hurting their own chances of survival. Iraqis were not cowering, they were turning on the killers. And they were learning that it was easy to rid the town of the killers; just call the JCC (Joint Communications Center) or police and tell where the bad guys are. The American or Iraqi forces would launch out and kill or capture the bad guys and, if fortune smiled, they might even get a cascade started.

* * *

The terrorists tried to stop hurting kids in Mosul, but only to replace one failed tactic with another equally self-defeating one. They began to eye certain factions of their loose assemblage of terrorists as more expendable than others. Suddenly the ugly hydra of tribal, regional and even national identity slithered in the mud.

Abu Zayd (thank God for backwards enemy leaders)

Interestingly, one of the very problems that Zayd complained about in his letter—incompetence and discontinuity of leadership—were the opposite for American forces. While the Deuce Four was preparing to leave Iraq, it was familiarizing the 1-17th Stryker unit from Alaska with the battle space. Basically, a bunch of new soldiers from, of all places, Alaska , were deploying in a city in the desert, taking over in what amounted to the terrorists’ proverbial backyard. Yet no sooner did the 1-17th take over, than they started killing and capturing bad guys.

Deuce Four goes Home (well done, Soldiers, well done!)

I may never have mentioned Colonel [Robert] Brown, but he was running the show in Mosul. There were other American units in Mosul who also fought hard in their battle spaces, and these units, including the Deuce Four, were all under the command of Colonel Brown. Mosul was his battle space.

Throughout the year, no less than fourteen US Army Battalions served under Colonel Brown’s command. That’s about 10,000 soldiers, and roughly 530 of the American soldiers under Colonel Brown’s command were wounded or killed in Mosul. Of those, 157 were in the 1-24th, led by LTC Erik Kurilla, who was the last Deuce Four soldier to be wounded in Mosul. He was shot down and continued to fight. That might be the most telling explanation for why the Coalition is winning in Mosul.

It bears repeating that the Coalition IS winning in Mosul. Here’s why: while the enemy commander Abu Zayd was hiding in and around Mosul, and complaining about his fellow terrorists squandering money on phones and cars, American and Iraqi commanders were physically fighting alongside their men, instilling confidence in the mission, sharing the risks.

Now Comes the Hard Part (no punk ass surrender monkeys allowed)

Building a new and strong government takes work. The full spectrum of civil affairs projects, training and equipping the ISF--all while conducting combat operations--requires a heavy investment of resources over time. Some of our most senior and intelligent advisors, such as retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, caution that Americans need to be told the truth that this probably will be a five-year fight. Initially opposed to the war, General McCaffrey asserts that now that we are in it, we must win.

We cannot pull out next year and expect Iraq to stand alone. That would be like pulling out of New Orleans once the water is pumped out and the levees stopped up with sandbags when one small storm would wreck the place again. We could also opt for the easiest path: we could just drop cash on the table and walk away, leaving decisions about rebuilding a city to the very people whose judgment in these matters has already proved questionable. Or we could do something that we know is always hard and time-consuming: the right thing.

Another fantastic piece from Michael Yon; surely this is going to be a feature length movie one day. By the way, if you’re interested – this link is to a briefing conducted by Colonel Robert Brown, commander of the Brigade Combat Team:

COL. BROWN:  Okay.  Thank you very much for this opportunity. 

            The Stryker brigade has fought from Fallujah, Baghdad, Euphrates River Valley and then up in the Tigris River Valley and all the way up to Mosul in northern Iraq and out to the border out in Syria over the last year.  We're very proud of the soldiers' performance.  And two different situations that we faced in our time here -- pre-election and post-election.  Prior to the elections last January, we faced a very well-trained foreign fighter and some very intense battles.  And what we've seen is a population that was on the fence at that time, to post-election, a population that has absolutely understood that their government, their Iraqi security forces support them, and the terrorists offer no hope for the future. 

            One of the great pieces of information we got recently is 80 percent of the al Qaeda network in the north has been devastated.  And those are not our figures, those came from the last six leaders in Mosul, al Qaeda leaders that we captured; they informed us of that. We also had a letter that was captured from Abu Zaid (sp) going to Zarqawi.  We recently killed Zaid (sp) and we had that letter, and it also talked about the desperate situation for the al Qaeda and the insurgents in Mosul and in the north.  And then also, sources we have inside the al Qaeda network up here have also informed us of that.   

            So we're very proud.  We have a situation where the Iraq army is being rebuilt.  The Iraqi police that ran away in November are standing and fighting.  In fact, they recently found one of the largest caches certainly in the north, and maybe all of Iraq.  And they're doing a very good job.   

            And then we have the population, I think is the most significant change I've seen over the last 11 months, from a population clearly on the fence, not sure -- they want freedom, but they weren't really sure what freedom was, and they were clearly intimidated, to a population that clearly understands they want freedom; they are absolutely sick and tired of the terrorists, the brutal acts against innocent civilians, and they want a brighter future for their children.  And we've got a lot of statistics to back that up.  Like when we first got here in October, there was -- no hotline existed.  We opened a hotline; we got about 40 calls a month prior to January.  The last six months, we're up to 400 calls a month.  Every day the citizens are stopping us on the street telling us where a potential suspicious individual is who may be a terrorist, and telling us where they tried to plant IEDs and those type of devices.  So the population is clearly very confident. 

That’s good news.

And although it slipped my attention then, this fantastic and battle-tested brigade is apparently going to be re-flagged as the 2^nd Cavalry Regiment – one of my old units, minus the heavy armor component. Instead, it will be back to an infantry focus.

Dragoons!

 

THE HARRIET MIERS FASCINATION CONTINUES

It is a continuing revelation to see the number of apparently bright people (like Krauthammer) make incredibly ignorant arguments when it comes to Harriet Miers. I mean, most of these arguments seems easily reducible to the "absurd on its face" category. Yet they go forward, resolute in their brilliance.

I predict this is going to make an interesting case study one day.

At this point, it's seems undeniable to me that there's some very real bias going on here and most of these contrarians are hiding behind all kinds of "yeah, but" defenses to explain their irrational attack on an accomplished lawyer.

What set me off this morning? Beldar, responding to a very surprising column by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post:

[Krauthmammer disappoints ]by asking this very good question without bothering to pause to consider its answer:

There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president?

Well, sir, I have your answer right here, ‘cause not a single other one of those 1,084,504 lawyers can say they’ve been —

·        counsel to the President and to the governor of one of the most populous states, along with having competently executed several other high-level White House staff positions;

·        president of both the state bar association in the Nation’s second largest state and of one of its most respected and active local bar associations, as well as having led valiant efforts to return a dysfunctional American Bar Association back to its roots of apolitical service to the profession and public;

·        long-time managing partner of an extremely well regarded large Dallas-based law firm, which then became a successful 400+ lawyer statewide powerhouse after she oversaw a successful cross-state merger with a Houston-based firm of comparable size and reputation;

·        an accomplished courtroom lawyer, praised with words like “very good, cool, deliberate, poised, effective” by the judges before whom she’s appeared, with experience at both the trial and appellate level in both state and federal courts, capable of personally attracting repeat engagements from sophisticated clients like Microsoft and Disney, and regularly listed among the top 50 or 100 American lawyers in listings complied by national legal periodicals;

·        a law clerk for two years for a respected federal district judge, providing further insights into federal trial practice of a sort that no current member of the Court can claim;

·        a published member of, and then an articles editor for, the top law journal at her law school, noted for its comprehensive coverage of Texas law; and

·        a “very thoughtful, very good student” who made “top marks” and could be counted on to give “solid, intelligent answer[s]” to “critical question[s],” according to a professor of hers, nationally recognized as an expert in business law, who 35 years after teaching her pronounced himself filled with “great satisfaction” to see her nominated to the Court.

Dr. Krauthammer’s question also seems to assume that “her connection with the president” is a negative factor. Instead, it reflects the fact that based on years of close dealings with her, the President says he’s more sure, based on personal knowledge of her, that she won’t turn into “another Souter” than he could be with respect to anyone else he might have nominated — thus allowing him to keep his campaign promises about judicial nominees.

What.

The Hell.

Is Wrong.

With These People!

Conveniently overlooked, because they dare not debate the issue openly, is the specter of Justice Clarence Thomas. “These” people are making the argument against Harriet Miers that was made against Justice Thomas – unqualified crony.

How interesting that a Southern black man gets that treatment from his political enemies but a Southern white woman (of great legal accomplishment) gets that treatment from her own side.

Yeah, there’s one hell of a case study begging to be done on this. I will only note a curious parallel that just occurred to me. What particularly made me think of this possible parallel was viewing William Kristol express his opposition to Miers and reading Krauthammer. Back on March 3rd (and Hugh Hewitt may well remember this context), I wrote a post that I’m going to reproduce in its entirety right here:

Robin Burk at Winds of Change has posted an interesting topic expressing a political concern she has that I’ve somewhat taken issue with in the comments to the thread. Her concern centers on Evangelical Protestants dancing too closely to the slippery slope of conflating God, their particular faith tradition, and their particular brand of conservatism as “the” guiding lights in 21^st Century American politics. At least, that’s my interpretation of her concern. Read the piece for yourself; it’s a good question. She raises it in response to a post by blogger Matt Margolis about an upcoming conference referenced in this February 28th post by Hugh Hewitt:

GodBlogCon I is now on for October 13-15, 2005, on the campus of Biola University in La Mirada, California, under the guidance of Dr. John Mark Reynolds.  Very good news indeed. I’ll post more info as it becomes available, but save the dates. 

In order to understand my response below you’ll have to read Robin’s initial post at the very least, but here is my second comment in the thread:

Robin:

You said, “it’s natural for those who sincerely hold Christian beliefs to lay claim to the name of God when discussing their activities as Christians.

Keep that in mind when you read the next paragraph”

And I assure you that I understood you the first time and did, in fact, keep that modification in mind. That was the very reason for my response, in fact. Unfortunately, it seems to me that you’ve given a detailed response but not addressed “what I don’t get.” Do you or do you not suspect the discomfort you feel is based on the perceived majoritarian ascendance of evangelicals?

You seem to place great weight on a bifurcation of 1) activities undertaken as Christians, and 2) activities undertaken in the political sphere. In fact, you state “I moved that question to the political sphere because I do see signs that many evangelical Christians, in particular, see themselves as being the core and/or the main part of the conservative movement - and blur the religious and political spheres.”

It occurs to me, however, that an evangelical will not make that bifurcation and you seem to want to deny said evangelicals that viewpoint. That’s the extremely curious thing to me. That non-bifurcation viewpoint is likely central to their understanding of their personal faith yet there is expressed in this thread “discomfort” with evangelicals organizing accordingly.

“And that’s exactly why I am cautious about making too explicit a link between one such tradition and political events.” Fine, Robin -- from the outside keep that caution. Who would begrudge you that right? It likely will prove to be a good counterbalance. However, all politics reduces down to multiple coalitions of the willing. And from within, evangelicals (as one part of the coalition) must consider it mighty strange indeed that a discomfort from outside their faith tradition but inside the political coalition, and based on a bifurcation of faith and politics that they likely don’t ascribe to, should require a change in naming protocols so that non-evangelicals in the coalition won’t be made to feel discomfort.

Respect their faith -- that is my point. “But is it wise not to hear the concerns that Matt and I, in different ways, raise?” Of course not. I’m simply requesting (and it seems entirely reasonable to me) that you and Matt consider the possibility that your concerns first and foremost require [your] further personal introspection.

“My theological concerns are not lightly adopted or stated casually.” Of that I have no doubt. All the more reason, it seems to me, for my question. Because in this one quote:

“At least in its current nascent form, it appears that it’s really pretty much just EvangelicalProtestantBlogCon. A perfectly fine and good thing to have. But maybe under some other name than the one being advertised.”

I think you betray the need for further personal introspection. Pretty much just? Evangelical Protestants, I’m fairly certain, have a personal relationship with God and to them and many others your initial question, “Who owns God in politics and the blogosphere?” no doubt seems inapposite.

We all own God. Including Evangelical Protestants. So there is no “pretty much just,” right?

This seems so straightforward to me but I suspect others will not view it the same.

Now, that is intensely curious, isn’t it? Especially given the bewildering INSTANT reaction to the Harriet Miers nomination and the strange, almost tortured reasoning employed to oppose her.

At this point, do I (or do I not) need to reiterate that Harriet Miers is an evangelical protestant?

I didn’t think so. I’m not going so far as to say this explains everything – but it goes a mighty long way.

 

GATORS IN THE FINALS OF DARPA CHALLENGE

Team CIMAR from the University of Florida had made the finals of the DARPA Grand Challenge:

October 5th:

Were in! Team CIMAR has been selected as a finalist in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. 23 teams were selected after a week at the National Qualification Event at the