One of the most critical imperatives for Israel right now is to stop the suicide bombing. One of the best ways would be to blow up the bombs -- and preferably the bomber along with it -- prematurely. The ideal would be to blow up the bomber so only he (or the occasional she) dies and no innocent Israelis.
Here are two different versions of how to accomplish this.
Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? It's the Left -- liberals, left-wingers, socialists, commies, pinkos, the Noam Chomskys and Alec Baldwins and Barbra Streisands -- that hates America. But the Right -- good old flag-waving patriotic God Bless America conservatives? How could they possibly be anti-American? It sounds ridiculous.
Yet whatever sense or nonsense it makes, Anti-Americanism is seeping into the entire conservative movement and is threatening to splinter it into pieces.
The now-legendary late-hit of the Los Angeles Times on Arnold five days before the election has had the salutary effect of making the major media's liberal bias unavoidably clear to all.
Whether the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein were self-inflicted or not, the military operation to capture them was immaculate.
There were no American deaths, 10 minutes of warnings were given over loudspeakers, and it was the Iraqis who opened fire. So sensitive was the American approach, they even rang the bell of the house before entering.
The neat operation fits squarely with the tenor of the whole American campaign, contrary to the popular negative depiction of its armed forces: that they are spoilt, well-equipped, steroid-pumped, crudely patriotic yokels who are trigger-happy yet cowardly in their application of overwhelming force.
”John X” is a very recently retired FSO (Foreign Service Officer) of many years at the State Department. It’s important to know that there are a good many conservatives sprinkled throughout the Foreign Service - and even on the Seventh Floor of Foggy Bottom itself. Most of them have to stay politically hidden, but with Condi they may start coming out of their closets. Here is “John’s” assessment, as a State Department professional, of Colin Powell. -JW
Powell had made no secret that he would resign after the election. We had been hearing rumors all last week that Powell had submitted his resignation letter; on Friday, November 12, a 7th floor source told me that Powell had sent his letter to the President. On Monday, of course, it was all over the media.
I was in the Department the day that Powell arrived. He was a breath of fresh air after a string of very bad Secretaries of State, starting with Jim Baker, continuing with the comatose Warren Christopher, and then the vile Madeleine Albright.
The State Department was in disarray, morale was at rock bottom, literally hundreds of officers had quit or taken early retirement. Our Embassies in many countries were barely functional, and very exposed to terrorist attack. Department employees were constantly being lectured on the need "to do more with less" but no reform of the bureaucracy was undertaken to make it leaner and more efficient; everything was pretty much left as it was, but just given less money -- except of course for Albright's travels, in my office she was known as the "Empress" for her lavish demands on the budget.
[Clinton’s Secretary of State was also nicknamed “Secretary Half-Bright” by virtually the entire Foreign Service. She was astoundingly stupid. - JW.]
So Powell was a relief.
Across the world, today's newspapers carried front-page headlines similar to that of the Washington Times: "Russia Remains Silent on Deadly Knockout Gas." The mystery of the Knockout Gas's identity has been solved.
Ten years ago, in 1993, Sylvester Stallone made a movie entitled Demolition Man . He played a Los Angeles super-cop in the late 90s who is framed and sentenced to being frozen in suspended animation.
In 2032, he is revived to solve an unprecedented crime wave. He knows nothing of what has happened in the intervening 35 years. Stallone's partner is a lady cop played by Sandra Bullock. As they are driving down a LA street, Stallone asks where they are going.
"We are going two more blocks to turn left at the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library, then continue..."
Stallone interrupts her. "What did you just say about a library?" he asks.
"Well," Bullock explains, "After we passed the 32nd Amendment to the Constitution which allowed a naturalized citizen to become president..."
Stallone interrupts her again. "You mean that guy..." He shakes his head with weary incredulity, waving off the rest of Bullock's explanation. "I don't want to hear about it."
Where did Stallone get his crystal ball?
I am glad to see Professor Hospers’ letter on websites such as WorldNetDaily. We offer it here in case you have not seen it. John Hospers changed my life, and so much for the better. When he was Chairman of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, he persuaded me to teach there and get my Ph.D. under his guidance. That was 33 years ago, and whatever philosophic capacities I have result in large part from the impact of his wisdom and counsel.
It is a tragedy that so many libertarians pretend to live in Plato’s Cave, despising the real actual America because it does not live up to their Platonic ideals. Let’s hope Professor Hospers’ valiant effort persuades them to leave the comforting dark of fantasy and have the courage to fight for the country they actually live in. -JW
As a way of getting acquainted, let me just say that I was the first presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party back in l972, and was the author of the first full-length book, Libertarianism, describing libertarianism in detail. I also wrote the Libertarian Party’s Statement of Principles at the first libertarian national convention in 1972. I still believe in those principles as strongly as ever, but this year — more than any year since the establishment of the Libertarian Party — I have major concerns about the choices open to us as voting Americans.
There is a belief that’s common among many libertarians that there is no essential difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties — between a John Kerry and a George W. Bush administration; or worse: that a Bush administration would be more undesirable. Such a notion could not be farther from the truth, or potentially more harmful to the cause of liberty.
The election of John Kerry would be, far more than is commonly realized, a catastrophe.
It is important to understand that that the actual death rate for SARS is far higher than the currently reported rate. The death rate publicly given in press reports is a percentage of the reported cases, now running at a little over 2%. The figure to focus on however is the death rate as a percentage of the recovered cases. This figure is much higher, over 10%.
There is an organization of conservatives which has met in private thrice annually since 1981. As a member for over 20 years, I am obliged not to mention its name or membership. Suffice it to say that virtually every major conservative figure in America belongs.
This is the full Introduction to John Fund’s new book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy . A friend of mine for many years, John is on the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal and writes the WSJ’s Political Diary column. You’ve seen him often on Fox News - it’s always enjoyable to see John rhetorically slap Alan Colmes around.
John has written a very important book, and it could not be more timely. The Democrats are masters at stealing elections, and new rules regarding such things as “provisional ballots” and mass absentee voter fraud give them more opportunities than ever. John’s book is sobering and frightening. The Democrats have gone around the bend this year with rage. Their ends-justifies-the-means Marxist morality - as exhibited by Dan Rather claiming forgeries are fine if they contain a “core truth” - gives them the rationale to commit whatever fraud necessary to “win.” Please read John’s Intro - and please buy John’s book! -JW
Our nation may be on the brink of repeating the 2000 Florida election debacle, but this time in several states, with allegations of voter fraud, intimidation and manipulation of voting machines added to the generalized chaos that sent our last presidential contest into overtime. There is still time to reduce the chance of another electoral meltdown, both this year and in future years. But this will not happen unless we acknowledge that the United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system befitting an emerging Third World country rather than the world's leading democracy.
STRATEGIC INVESTMENT, January 2003
One hundred and sixty years ago, in 1843, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office, Henry Ellsworth, reported to Congress: “The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.” (This is the source of the spurious quote attributed in 1899 to Ellsworth’s successor, Charles Duell, who never said “Everything that can be invented has been invented”).
Human improvement did not come to an end in 1843, nor will it in 2003. In fact, I think 2003 is going to
Let's start with two things we know for sure about Hillary. First, she wants to be President. Second, she will do anything to be so. There is no lie she won't tell, no friend she won't destroy, no pledge she won't break, no slander she won't spread, no political dirty trick she won't employ in order to reside in the White House again, this time as the POTUS.
Now let's look at one thing you should know about George W. Bush. He's smarter than Hillary.
I recently received a very kind letter from ToThePointer Hagan Hetz, of the famous Fairview Evergreen Nurseries in Pennsylvania (www.fairviewevergreen.com). He wanted to know what I thought of President Bush's September 7 address to the nation on Iraq.
OK, Hagan, here it goes. While listening to GW, I was thinking about Alberto Fujimori.
This month we’re going to focus upon books on Islam. The first thing to do in this regard, however, is to go into the To The Point Archives and read the Myth of Mecca article. It explains how the religion of Islam was invented as a religious rationale to justify Arab imperialism. At the end of that article, you’ll see a list of sources, all of which I strongly recommend as works of serious professional scholarship:
• Al-Rawandi, I.M. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources. Prometheus, 2000
• Crone, P.M. Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Oxford, 1987.**
