I'm sure you have seen this poll by CBS which has Bush's approval rating at 39%. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing at The Corner for National Review Online, has some analysis of the poll, and commentary on Bush's political failures. First, she points out that the survey is among "adults" and not "registered voters," and the "adults" group always skews Democrat (which doesn't mean much, because they don't vote). The group itself is also skewed Democrat, so much so that they elminated some of the sample:

The data set itself is dramatically more Democrat. It’s 28% Republican and 37% Democrat AFTER they weighted Republicans UP. In other words, the sample was even more Democrat when it came back. In fact, Democrats were 40% of the sample and Republicans were only 27%. Someone clearly knew having a sample that was 40-27 would be a tip-off, so they weighted Dems down into the 30%s in order to avoid extreme criticism.

She also sees problems with the questions, and thinks that this is being done for the sake of headlines only. This does not mean that she is giving Bush a free pass, either. She lists some of his failures, and points out some things the Republicans in Congress should be listening to the conservatives on:

We should be eliminating ALL the perks in Congress. We should be talking about lifetime bans on Congresspersons from lobbying. We should be talking about a constitutional amendment requiring supermajorities to increase taxes. We should be far more aggressive on immigration, but the President is simply wrong on this issue too – an issue that the public is dramatically to the right of both parties on.

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:41 AM | Permalink | |

More from the Saddam tapes at Investor's Business Daily:

The first 12 hours of the tapes — there are hundreds more waiting to be translated — are damning, to say the least. They show conclusively that Bush didn't lie when he cited Saddam's WMD plans as one of the big reasons for taking the dictator out.

Nobody disputes the tapes' authenticity. On them, Saddam talks openly of programs involving biological, chemical and, yes, nuclear weapons.

War foes have long asserted that Saddam halted his WMD programs in the wake of his defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam's abandonment of WMD programs was confirmed by subsequent U.N. inspections.

Again, not true. In a tape dating to April 1995, Saddam and several aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had found traces of Iraq's biological weapons program. On the tape, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, is heard gloating about fooling the inspectors.

"We did not reveal all that we have," he says. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."

There's more. Indeed, as late as 2000, Saddam can be heard in his office talking with Iraqi scientists about his ongoing plans to build a nuclear device. At one point, he discusses Iraq's plasma uranium program — something that was missed entirely by U.N. weapons inspectors combing Iraq for WMD.

If he had them, where did they go?

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," said John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense, in comments made at an intelligence summit Feb. 17-20 in Arlington, Va.

"They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special ops) units out of uniform that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:47 PM | Permalink | |

Jim Geraghty at National Review thinks so:

For all we know, this deal may be the quid pro quo for the biggest intelligence-sharing bonanza with an Arab state since the 9/11 attacks. Look at a map of the Middle East. Check out what country is opposite the UAE on the Persian Gulf, and try to imagine why we might want intelligence-sharing or other cooperation with this state.

The UAE is, in its actions right now, an ally. The Democratic party as a whole appears hell-bent on scuttling this deal, and ruining relations with this ally. For all that party’s relentless talk about the U.S. needing allies and strong partnerships, they will urinate all over one of our comrades in order to score points against the president.

However, this is the same party urging us to continue sending aid to the Palestinians, where it can be used by the new government of Hamas.

The Democratic Party would humiliate, alienate, and punish our allies while sending financial aid to terrorists and sucking up to our enemies. Do not buy into the line that they are pushing.

He makes some good points. Read the whole thing.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:40 PM | Permalink | |

It is obvious that Hillary Clinton, whether she is running or not, is already the central figure in the 2008 primaries. The Republicans have no strong frontrunner (Allen may lose his Senate seat in November), and the Democrats have a small, but not impressive group (Richardson still may be their best bet, IMO). This editorial comes from Tampa Bay, and it makes me wonder if I should be rooting for Hillary to make it to the general election:

If you run for president, chances are good that you'll secure your party's nomination. But realistically, how do you think you can win the White House? You are the most polarizing figure in the Democratic Party, and your negatives among likely voters are prohibitively high. Many people simply don't trust you. You may share your husband's name, but what people liked about him is not transferable to you.

You are not the person to help define a party that needs to convince voters it can govern from the vital center.

Even yellow dog Florida Democrats express profound reservations about your presidential ambitions. They worry that you cannot attract moderate and independent voters and that your presence will hurt the election chances of other Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

They fear, Hillary, that you would doom Democrats to impotence for decades. Republicans might relish that prospect, but on reflection, they would acknowledge the importance of a strong two-party political system. Should the Democratic Party be crippled, the Republican Party is likely to become complacent, uninspired and unaccountable.

I would argue that the GOP is already "complacent, uninspired and unaccountable," so on that front, a Hillary run wouldn't change much, except cripple local Democrats, as this editorial suggests. This comes a day after Drudge scoops the new book Strategery, in which Karl Rove had some interesting things to say about HRC:

Rove said he expects the Democrats to be hungry in 2008, since they will have been out of the White House for eight years. He predicted that Clinton will draw on her extensive campaign experience in her bid for the presidency.

“She has seen what the job requires,” he said. “And she has been through six gubernatorial campaigns, two presidential campaigns, and then two senatorial campaigns in a big, industrial state. So she will be a formidable campaigner. She’ll be sure-footed.”

Rove hinted that Clinton, who has been somewhat cautious since election to the Senate in 2000, may find that Americans sometimes want boldness from their president.

“For somebody who is philosophically very liberal, she’ll be a very cautious candidate at times,” he said. “That cautiousness will serve her well a lot of times — not always, but a lot of times.

“For example, her cautiousness had her vote for the Iraq war,” he said. “Her cautiousness has led her to do things to sort of try to position herself as a centrist.”

I'm not ready to say that Hillary running for President is a good thing for conservatives or not, but 2008 is either going to be extremely fascinating or extremely boring. I'm hoping for the former.

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:11 PM | Permalink | |

I am making today an all-anglosphere day, quite by accident, with this post, and the previous one about India.

These both come via Andrew Sullivan. First a great quote from Australian Treasurer, Peter Costello defending liberal Western (anglo) ideology:

"Before entering a mosque visitors are asked to take off their shoes. This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks, don’t enter the mosque. Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don't come to Australia."

Sullivan also linked to a story about "South Park" conservatives in Australia:

In Australia, recent studies have shown Australian young people reacting against the liberal-progressive values of their parents in much the same way. Clemenger BBDO's 2005 survey Tomorrow's Parents Today found that young people were significantly more conservative than their parents. They were more likely to volunteer, to give to charity and to go to church. They were also more likely to marry, and there is already evidence that they plan to have their children earlier.

According to Ian Manning of National Economics: "You do get the feeling that forgoing worldly ambition for the sake of having kids is gradually coming back into favour. In the past, people have said, 'Oh, I can't have a baby yet, I've got to pursue my career'. But maybe it's become socially acceptable to say, 'No, I'd rather have a family'."

I think this bodes well for the United States and other anglo countries, though I am not quite sure of how conservatives in Oz view the US.

Again, for anglosphere backround, read this post.

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:05 PM | Permalink | |

This is cool:

PRESIDENT BUSH arrives in Delhi for his first state visit this week, hoping to cement an increasingly close relationship between the United States and India that has the potential to alter the strategic balance in the world for the rest of the century.
. . .
“The President’s visit, at least to some extent, marks the transition from a 40-or-so-year painful bilateral history to the transformed relationship the two countries have today,” Robert Blackwill, a former US Ambassador to India, said last week.

The change in the relationship is reflected in that India is, according to recent surveys, the one place where the popularity of the US, if not its President, has risen in the past four years.

American officials cite many areas of common interest. As Mr Bush presses a pro-democracy agenda for the world, India is the world’s largest free nation. Economic growth in the sub-continent has been rapid, bringing trade and investment opportunities for both countries’ companies.

The two countries have shared interests in energy security and, of course, in confronting Islamist extremism. And, in the US at least, some long-term strategic thinkers see India — democratic, capitalist and, in large part, English-speaking — as a powerful ally and makeweight to China’s growing hegemony in Asia, although Indian officials, eager to stay on good terms with their large neighbour to the north, are keen to play down that aspect of the relationship.

For anglosphere backround, read this post.

Posted by Ryan S. at 10:34 PM | Permalink | |

For those that don't know, Robert T. Huber was ousted by the News-Journal as a white-supremacist. He is currently in the doctorate program for physics, and taught a class during Winter Session. No problems were reported by students, and his grading was found to be fair. The News-Journal did a story on Huber and his "hatecore" band, Teardown. UD has kept Huber in the program, basically upholding that no in-classroom violations were made by Huber. For once, I agree with Mike M. of Down With Absolutes:

UD minorities (and, presumably, a large population of whites) are outraged that this racist hasn’t yet been sacked by UD President David P. Roselle. In my opinion, this is where “political correctness” truly rears its ugly head on college campuses: stifling one’s free speech to enhance or maintain the “comfort” level of those offended by it. Huber has been convicted of no crimes. As far as I’m concerned, he’s merely upholding his own First Amendment rights to free speech by participating in these personal, albeit disgusting, activities. One student is in Huber’s class has said “Huber wore long-sleeves while teaching to conceal his tattoos and never talked about race or politics.” This is enough for me to take Huber’s side on this issue. He hasn’t made his extracurricular activites an issue in the classroom, so why should students be making such a fuss? Hanging swastikas and burning crosses would be one thing.

Posted by Ryan S. at 6:37 PM | Permalink | |

Back in November, I discussed the quality of the food here at University of Delaware, and reasoned an explination for the low quality and odd choices to the monopolistic nature of UD's dining services. However, in recent weeks, some new information about the inter-workings of Dining Services (I use the term loosely) has come to my attention.

A friend of mine has a pretty good relationship with the manager of Kent Dining Hall. Over Winter Session, Kent had actual bonafide cheesesteaks on Thursdays during lunch, and then they mysteriously disappeared. The explination given to the manager was that they were "too popular." The ramifications of that statement are astounding.

First, to my understanding, the dining halls are extensively micromanaged by the bureaucracy. This means that all menus and all decisions, both major and minor, are not made by the people who actually work in the dining hall every day.

That fact, combined with the "too popular statement" means that Dining Services constructs menus that will be unpopular, this stifling demand for dining hall food. Having an "all you can eat" set-up must be expensive for the University, and selling Taco Bell, Quizno's, and Chik-Fil-A must be cheaper and much more profitable for UD.

This all means that the University is exercising its monopolistic authority to manipulate the market for on-campus dining. At least Main Street remains free market (as far as I can tell).

Posted by Ryan S. at 6:04 PM | Permalink | |

My hero this week is pictured in the above photo as a champion, though his high school basketball team hasn't won their title yet. He is Jason McElwain of Greece, NY. Jason has autism. As some of you may know, my brother also has autism (Asperger's Syndrom, a "high-functioning" form). Though the type of autism Jason has is different from my brother's there are similarities across the "spectrum" of autism. Jason served as the team manager, too small to play varsity, but the coach allowed him to play in his final home game, after being put in, he "proceeded to hit six 3-point shots, finished with 20 points and was carried off the court on his teammates’ shoulders." The disorder especially makes social interaction difficult, and hearing Jason's story, of the autistic team manager turned showstopping athlete, warms my heart. Way to go, Jason.


My hack this week is not Larry Summers, but the institution that shunned him, Harvard University. Summers posed a question, the feminists, rather than allowing for open discourse, riled against him. Earlier this week, he resigned. Robert McHenry, writing at TCSDaily, elaborates:

At Harvard, Mr. Summers faced neither sticks nor stones but an altogether more formidable weapon, the feminist fantods. The utter depravity of his crime -- suggesting that the possibility of innate differences between the genders was one among various hypotheses worth testing in the search for an explanation of the relative scarcity of women in the top rank of science and mathematics -- was first indicated by the reaction of an MIT biologist, who said she fled the scene lest she "black out or throw up." No subsequent elucidation of the nature of Summers' offense ever improved upon that formulation.

More here too.

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:04 AM | Permalink | |

As the gowth of government seems inevitable, a snowball of regulation and programs that are untouchable, and cost millions to upkeep and fix, this application of the USA PATRIOT Act to drug crime seems unfortunately, inevitable. This is serious stuff, especially if you have ever taken Sudafed:

If you thought al Qaeda or Iraqi insurgents were the major threats facing America, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) says you're wrong. According to Dent, "The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself." Many of Dent's colleagues apparently agree, so they've attached surveillance, "smuggling", and "money laundering" provisions to the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.

These vast new police powers, contained in a new "Combat Methamphetamine Act" (CMA) and other provisions, serve no purpose in the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism. One proposal could place millions of Americans who purchase cold medicine on a huge government watch list; another could broaden powers that have been used to prosecute people for catching lobsters whose tails are too short. What could possibly be Congress' motivation in adding stuff like this to a mammoth piece of counterterrorism legislation (ironically, as part of an agreement negotiated with wavering Senators to put more checks on the government's PATRIOT Act powers)? The answer is, to tweak the parlance of pundits, very September 10th. The CMA pushes Congress's favorite pre-9/11 bipartisan activity: escalating the never-ending War on Drugs.

Ironically, some Democrats who objected to National Security Agency wiretaps in December actually championed provisions that step on privacy in the name of stopping meth. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.), who voted for a filibuster after the revelation of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program in December, co-sponsored the CMA and helped insert it into the PATRIOT Act conference report after failed attempts to pass it through other legislation. The new provisions were stalled with the filibuster and temporary PATRIOT extensions, but now appear to be poised for passage with the compromise bill.

The CMA would move cold medicines such as Sudafed behind the counter, on the grounds that their active ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is a potential meth component. In DiFi's words, the solution to this non-problem would include "requiring purchasers to show identification and sign a log book."

Once you sign for your medicine, your name becomes part of "a functional monitoring program" that would "allow law enforcement officials to track and ultimately prevent suspicious buying behavior of ingredients for meth production," according to a Feinstein press release describing a similar stand-alone bill. (Reason)

I'm not advocating the decriminaliztion of meth at all, but this seems like a lot of overkill. Maybe I'll stick to NyQuil, before they make that purchase contingent on a watch list.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:45 PM | Permalink | |

This is easily the scariest thing in the news right now:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A major Sunni Arab bloc Thursday suspended talks with Shiite and Kurdish parties on a new government after scores of Sunni mosques were attacked and dozens of bodies found in a wave of reprisal violence following the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine.
Violence continued Thursday with an attack on a Sunni mosque in Baqouba, where eight Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bombing and nearly a dozen people were wounded.
Faced with the grim prospect of sectarian war, the government extended the curfew in Baghdad and Salaheddin province for two days in the wake of Wednesday's attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra. All leaves for Iraqi soldiers and police were canceled and personnel were ordered to report to their units.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr slammed the Iraqi government and U.S. forces for not protecting the Samarra shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, and ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq.
"If the government had real sovereignty, then nothing like this would have happened," al-Sadr said a statement. "Brothers in the Mahdi Army must protect all Shiite shrines and mosques, especially in Samarra."

This goes back to the Sunni/Shia rift that has been around for centuries, though the fact that al-Sadr is still around to do something about it is worrysome. This is one of the problems that the CPA should have dealt with a long time ago. This very well maybe a critical point for the future of Iraq, and a prevention of a disintigration into civil war would be a good sign. A civil war in Iraq is something the region cannot afford right now, nor can the United States.

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:58 PM | Permalink | |

In case it wasn't obvious before, Bill Frist is running for President. We alrerady know he is not seeking reelection this November, meaning he ceases to be a Senator and Majority Leader. This was indication #1.

He appeared at CPAC, though I don't think he enthused the crowd much. He is also going to be at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which is supposedly "the new CPAC."

Now comes phase three of Frist's maneuvering: the repositioning for popular support. In the last few days (days only!) Frist has allied himself with both Hillary Clinton and Tom Tancredo, two political magnantes so opposite to each other that only someone trying to run for president would even be able to comprehend such a position. Frist is against the port deal, a popular opinion to say nothing more, but he has also come out in opposition to the president on illegal immigration. This allowed Smash Left-Wing Scum's tragically hilarious headline: "Sen. Bill Frist: I want to be Tom Tancredo when I grow up."
Welcome to the contradictory positions of presidential wannabes.

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:29 PM | Permalink | |

Earlier this evening, the College Republicans at the University of Delaware hosted both Republican US Senate candidates. Both were given ample time to speak, and both followed their speeches with question and answer sessions.

Jan Ting did very well. This is my third time seeing him doing this sort of talk, and this was the best performance of his I have seen so far. His speach covered a lot of ground, but did so with a style that encapsulated his message without lecturing. Ting seemed to have a clear grasp of the issues and where he stood. He spoke with a tone that allowed him to sound educated, but not condescending. His responses to the questions fielded by the audience sounded thought out and reasoned. It seemed like most of the room had a favorable impression of Ting, especially on immigration (he has also laid out his position here).

After a short recess, Mike Protack was given the floor, and that is where the meeting took an interesting turn. Protack laid out his message, focusing on what he deems to be the big issues of 2006, health care and pensions. Protack talked heavily on re-facing the Republican Party, especially about reaching out to labor unions, and trying to fight for the "working man." Sounds a little too much like the Democrats if you ask me. Apparently, some of the College Republicans in the audience agreed, and asked Protack several pointed questions, both about his positions, and some of his claims.

One member disagreed with him when he said that "most jobs do not require documentation to get." She countered this point with facts that in her five jobs, she had to present documentation to get all of them, in various places, including resteraunts. She said that Protack's statement was misleading, and called him on it, causing him to stammer and try to qualify his answer. She then accused him of dodging the question. Others accused Protack of not exciting the base, and questioning what they called a deluding of values to try to reach out to the middle, rather than the base. In response to that, Protack said something reminiscent of John Kerry in 2004, claiming that his conservative positions were all on his website. Yet another questioned him dilligently on his call for national healthcare. If Mike Protack cannot handle a group of self-identified Republicans in college, how can he expect to do against an established Democratic politician?

After the meeting, Ting stayed and chatted with several students, Protack finished one of his arguments with an audience member, and then left.

Cross-posted at Delaware2006.

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:29 PM | Permalink | |

All around the blogosphere, from left to right, and from Hillary Clinton to Gov. Ehrlich, there has been a knee-jerk reaction of outrage to the news that American ports, currently under control of a British company, would move to a company owned by the United Arab Emerites (UAE). This story is making strange bedfellows out of Chuck Schumer and Michelle Malkin, and George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter (link).

This fall completely in line with the politics of economic nationalism. Economic nationalism, to provide a quick definition, is the desire to use the forces of nationalism to explicity futher the economy of one's own country at the cost of hurting another country's (or countries') economy. In the 19th and 20th century forms, this was done via the mercantilist desires of colonialism. While some may approach a defense against economic nationalism from an individualist perspective, I see it as a free trade issue.

I don't see Dubai World Ports as a major security threat for two reasons. Frist, the UAE is desperately trying to grow its economy, and creating the suspicion of terror is not the way to do that. Two, the United States remains in control of security. Here is what is really going on here, from The Strata-Shpere:

The one bugging me right now is the outcries about a UAE company acquiring control of a British company that runs some of our ports. Has anyone heard that this is a British company, using American employees, which is selling a controlling interest to a UAE company?

I hadn’t. By the outcry I thought UAE Muslims were taking complete control of the ports (which, by the way, are also run by the US Coast Guard) and would be smuggling nuclear bombs through them any day now. That is the fear being alluded to that is driving us to create the ‘them’ and ‘us’. The UAE is one of the most western Middle East countries and they have a lot of commercial ties to the West because they have been investing their oil monies to modernize the region.

and:

And because of fear we are about to do Al Qaeda’s bidding and nip this opportunity in the bud. Because an ‘Arab’ country of ‘Muslims’ is continuing to work its way into the Western economic picture - we are up in arms.

The UAE and the British have been working together for decades. The fact the UAE is getting permission from the British to integrate these two companies provides me plenty of confidence this is not some Al Qaeda front. We are playing to our worst reflexes. Unless someone has hard, irrefutable evidence of Al Qaeda running this company, and they are able to order the US and British employees to violate our inspection processes to get dangerous materials past our borders, I suggest people calm down and think this out.

We WANT a modern, peaceful Middle East as an economic partner. We cannot live in fear of every Arab or Muslim or we will fulfill Al Qaeda’s dream and WE will be the ones that divide the world into ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. We do not target groups and punish them for sharing blood or religion with our enemies. We identify individuals and prosecute them (or kill them) if they are working with our enemies.

Mad Tea Party also has a post on why this isn't a big deal, and touches on why an American company can't take over for DPA. Because that company does not exist.

From the outcry, this may actually get reversed, and that may not be so good for us. Time will tell.

UPDATE (6:12PM 2/21/2006):
Bush is now threatening to veto legislation that prevents this deal. First, I can't believe this is the issue that brings out the pen. After that $282 billion highway bill, I thought he lost it.
Second, there must be a reason for this. The UAE must have something we want, and I believe it is connected to the War on Terror. This may be a bad political move by the President in terms of popular support, but there may be some deeper policy at work here. .

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:01 PM | Permalink | |

Paul Smith Jr., part of the Delaware Conservative Blog Alliance, has an excellent post over our new group blog, Delaware 2006, about the state of the electorate in Delaware. It is not as bleak for the Republicans as it appears to be at first glance:

The Republicans are not the sitting ducks people take them for. There is still a solid base of support for state-wide GOP candidates. Unfortunately, there is a pessimism within the Republican Party about their chances that becomes self-fulfilling. If they can shake that and convince people they do have a shot, the Democrats could be in for a rude awakening come Election Day.

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:37 PM | Permalink | |

Last night over dinner, I met a bunch of conservative bloggers from Delaware. Hube from Colossus of Rhodey, Mark Levin Fan, Paul Smith, Jr., Jeff the Baptist, and Steve of Blogolution all met for lively poltical (and other topics too!) discussion.

What officially resulted, besides the usual blogs-to-names-to-faces when bloggers meet in person, is the Delaware Conservative Bloggers Alliance (DCBA), and a new blog, Delaware2006. All the members of the Alliance will be posting on Delaware2006 with our views and such on the upcoming elections. All the big races will be covered, and it remains to be seen how interesting some of the local races get. If you are a conservative Delaware blogger, and would like to join the Alliance, e-mail Hube at colossusofrhodey@gmail.com with your blog's name.

For those interested, Hube has a post up with a picture.

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:34 PM | Permalink | |

That truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that.

-William Gibson, No Maps for These Territories

One of the two jobs I am working this semester is at Morris Library, in the Reserves, where professors put things into controlled circulation for their classes. With the rise of convering documents into pdf files and placing them- password protected- on the web, as well as one of my shifts being relatively early in the day on Saturdays, I get to read a lot. This morning, I read An Army of Davids. This book is amazing.

Do not mistake this enthusiams as bias towards the author, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, whom I met at CPAC. This book should be read by anyone who hopes to live well into the next 25-50 years. Some may dismiss this book at first glance as a love letter to bloggers. They would be very wrong. This book is suburbia's version of Thomas L. Friedman's The World Is Flat. In a way, the localization of globalization. An Army of Davids is about the triumph of the individual. There is only an interlude dedicated to blogging, as blogs are only one weapon in the Army.

Personally, this book contains a convergance of my many interests, and of things I have read recently (except for the Anglosphere). It touches on the issue of big government, which Size Matters discusses in detail. Reynolds, ever the futurist, talks about the future of health and nanotechnology, something John Scalzi's science fiction work Old Man's War explores in detail. In fact, An Army of Davids often treads the border of science fiction and science fact.

The future of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson is on the horizon. Entrepreneurs and cyberpunk have a lot in common. An entrepreneur-based society, like the one America is moving towards, is juxtaposed against what Reynolds labels "the Dilbert office," and towards a higher percentage of self-employment, either through small businesses or eBay and Amazon.com. An employment system such as that, moving towards new-cottage industry, away from monolitioc and more in the direction of decentralization, is inherently cyberpunk. I have touched on the issues of cyberpunk and society previously, but I feel more is in order. Reynolds discusses the value to society of war games (and video games in general), in An Army of Davids which ties directly into one of the main characters of Cryptonomicon, who created such games for a while.

Inherent in most video games, and in the genre of cyberpunk, is the need for survival. Players of wargames or other simulations, whether it be The Sims or Halo, acquire skills for dealing with situations in real life. A player of The Sims may be better in dealing with social situations than others, as a Halo player may have a better understanding of modern infantry tactics, and may have a better understanding of military affairs than someone without that background (as Reynolds argues). Cyberpunk is the individual standing in firm opposition to the monolith. The 21st century will be the many individuals (the Davids), standing in firm opposition to the monolith (the Goliaths).

The empowerment of the individual, through blogging, home industry, and other mechanisms, is the future. It just isn't widely distributed yet.


Welcome Instapundit readers!

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:43 PM | Permalink | |

Just did a major blogroll overhaul, making use of several Blogrolling.com accounts, and adding a bunch of blogs that should have been on there for a while. If you belong to either the UDel Bloggers or Delaware Blogroll categories, and are not on the list, shoot me an e-mail.

If you link here, and want to be on my general blogroll, you can also e-mail me.

Posted by Ryan S. at 2:38 PM | Permalink | |

Welcome to an all-Olympic Edition of Hero/Hack. The Olympics embody everything that humanity has to offer: competition (pointless and not-so-pointless), corruption (French judges anyone?), national pride, and crappy television coverage. All kidding aside, I do love the Olympics (the winter ones especially) and I thought I would highlight some of the big players on the Hero and Hack side of Turin.


My hero is John Ligety. Here's his story:

First Olympics, first event, first gold medal. "Ligety Split" indeed. Downhill skier Ted Ligety lived up to his nickname and then some by winning the Olympic combined on Tuesday night, choosing a floodlit hillside in the Italian Alps for his first major triumph.

Ligety was not the favorite going into the event, but showed strength and poise, becoming only "the fourth American man to win an Alpine Olympic gold." "I never expected to be here right now," Ligety said. "A medal wasn't something I could have foreseen."

Unfortunately I have two hacks this week. The first is Johnny Weir. It is not for failing to medal, but for not showing national pride by wearing a Soviet jacket:
Disgracefull. That brings me to the other hack for this week, Bryant Gumbel. On his show, HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, he made some rather uncouth remarks about the racial makeup of the Olympic athletes:

"Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t like them and won’t watch them ... Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin." (Emphasis Added)

Newsbusters has the full story with video.

Hero/Hack appears every Friday at Jokers to the Right.com

Posted by Ryan S. at 12:00 AM | Permalink | |

Just now, ABC's Nightline had a story about new Saddam tapes from the mid-1990s. Why these tapes were "secret" for so long is unclear. Many interesting things going on in the tapes (12 hours of them).

On Biological agents, Saddam's regime tried to cover up the plans for the biological weapons by throwing an individual "red herring," and predicting an attack on US soil by terrorists, as well as hiding WMDs from the UN:

"Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2 and told the British as well … that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. "In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."

Also at the meeting was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. "Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it."

The tapes also reveal Iraq 's persistent efforts to hide information about weapons of mass destruction programs from U.N. inspectors well into the 1990s. In one pivotal tape-recorded meeting, which occurred in late April or May of 1995, Saddam and his senior aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had uncovered evidence of Iraq's biological weapons program—a program whose existence Iraq had previously denied.

At one point Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and the man who was in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction efforts can be heard on the tapes, speaking openly about hiding information from the U.N.

"We did not reveal all that we have," Kamel says in the meeting. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct." Shortly after this meeting, in August 1995, Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan, and Iraq was forced to admit that it had concealed its biological weapons program.

Full story (and video)

Posted by Ryan S. at 11:45 PM | Permalink | |

I will say this now. Neal Stephenson is my favorite author (Amazon link). Cryptonomicon is a must read, in my opinion for any student of history, computers (technology), or economics, as it ties all three nicely together, for World War II and the present day. The Baroque Cycle does the same for the baroque period, the era of Isaac Newton.

Zodiac (review), Snow Crash, and The Diamond Age form a sort of trilogy about the impact of corportations, technology and government. Government plays less of a role in each of them, with the "phyles" of The Diamond Age becoming the ultimate in contract-theory politics, where you sign to join a government. The contract of citizenship is voluntary and explicit. Snow Crash takes place in an anarcho-captialist future, and demonstrates that it is sort of like it is now, but with swords.

From my reivew of Zodiac:

Stephenson also has a couple themes running through his book, including practical applications for science and computers, witty/geeky observations about people and culture, and several libertarian themes. While the first two are sort of obvious, the libertarian themes I find are the benefits of guns (the main character of Zodiac comtemplates getting one numerous times, after it would have helped him a lot) , individual freedom (seen a lot in relationships or being violated by a state), the media-corportate relationship (explored heavily in Zodiac), and haveing a healthy amount of paranoia, which I feel characterizes libertarians (I know I have it).

Paranoia of the state and authority, in my opinion, is healthy, and causes one to be prepared for the breakdown of social systems, and making preservation of life, liberty, and property, the number one priority, regardless of the health of the state. Guns are one way to achieve this end, and other precautions such as survival training/experience are widely seen elements in Stephenson.

Stephenson is funny, engaging, and brilliant. I would recommend any of his works (except The Big U).

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:43 PM | Permalink | |

This is pretty sweet:

A slim cable for a space elevator has been built stretching a mile into the sky, enabling robots to scrabble some way up and down the line.

LiftPort Group, a private US company on a quest to build a space elevator by April 2018, stretched the strong carbon ribbon 1 mile (1.6 km) into the sky from the Arizona desert outside Phoenix in January tests, it announced on Monday.

The transition from science fiction to science fact is underway.

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:37 PM | Permalink | |

The Brokeback Mountain of the Arab world is getting ready for release. If these people killed over some Danish cartoons, what are they going to do when a film about gay Arabs called In the Name of Allah comes out. I, for one, am going to try to not find out.

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:19 PM | Permalink | |

I agree with George Taylor of TCSDaily.com in his reaction to statements like this:

"The vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists from all over the world have sounded a clear and urgent alarm. …these scientists are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities is becoming a serious threat to our common future."
-- Al Gore, MoveOn.org, January 2004

What a bunch of malarky. There was a study done to analyze abstracts on papers about global warming, and the results were dubious at best. Taylor provides details:

Dr. Benny Peiser of England's John Moores University attempted to duplicate Oreskes' work. Peiser found 1,117 abstracts using the same search technique. Of these, only 13 explicitly endorsed the 'consensus view.' However, 34 of the abstracts rejected or questioned the view that human activities are the main driving force of "the observed warming over the last 50 years."

Oreskes claimed, "none of these papers argued [that current climate change is natural]". According to Peiser, however, 44 papers emphasized that natural factors play a major if not the key role in recent climate change.

Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, European climate scientists, stated earlier this year that "a significant number of climatologists are by no means convinced that the underlying issues have been adequately addressed. Last year, for example, a survey of climate researchers from all over the world revealed that a quarter of respondents still question whether human activity is responsible for the most recent climatic changes."

That survey involved responses from 530 scientists worldwide. They were asked: "To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?" Only 9.4% strongly agreed, while 9.7% strongly disagreed. Another 19.3% were in general disagreement.

I'm with this guy:

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomic Observatory in St. Petersburg said Monday that temperatures will begin falling six or seven years from now, when global warming caused by increased solar activity in the 20th century reaches its peak, RIA Novosti reported.

The coldest period will occur 15 to 20 years after a major solar output decline between 2035 and 2045, Abdusamatov said.

Dramatic changes in the earth's surface temperatures are an ordinary phenomenon, not an anomaly, he said, and result from variations in the sun's energy output and ultraviolet radiation.

The Northern Hemisphere's most recent cool-down period occurred between 1645 and 1705. The resulting period, known as the Little Ice Age, left canals in the Netherlands frozen solid and forced people in Greenland to abandon their houses to glaciers, the scientist said.

We're due for an ice age.

UPDATE 2/15/2006 9:39AM: h/t Michelle Malkin

Two scientists from the University of the Philippines yesterday lamented how Gore's "doomsday" pronouncements apparently received more attention than the more detailed analyses and solutions offered by Filipino environmental experts. They also challenged and branded as "exaggerated" what the former US leader said about Manila Bay "overflowing" because of the greenhouse effect.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:45 PM | Permalink | |

I am now part of the Coalition Against Illegal Immigration, and will be posting articles from the group. This one irks me. It comes from the Uncooperative Blogger, who wants to militarize the border. I disagree (a wall is a good start), but this is still a serious issue.

From The Washington Times:

The U.S. government has sent more than $376 million to Mexico in the past decade for that country's military and police to help stop alien and drug smugglers, guard against terrorists and protect America's southern border, including $50 million due this year.

The money, quietly authorized through State and Defense department programs, has been used to train and equip the Mexican military and police, drawing disagreement on whether those institutions are part of the solution for U.S. border security, or are part of the problem.

What?? Are they kidding? Take that money and put it towards our Border Security and screw Mexico. Considering these stories:
More Mexican Border Incursions
Another Border Incursion by Armed Mexican Soldiers
Mexican Army Crossing the Border while Drug Cartels make Elaborate Tunnels
Armed standoff along U.S. border
Mexican Army Crossing U.S. Border

I think TJ Bonner, no relation, has it right.

T.J. Bonner, a veteran U.S. Border Patrol agent who heads the 10,000-member National Border Patrol Council, described the program as “appalling,” saying it amounted to the U.S. government funding attacks on U.S. law-enforcement personnel along the border by rogue Mexican military troops.

“This funding program should cease immediately, and the Mexican government needs to be placed on notice that any further incursions by its military or police will not be tolerated,” he said, referring to recent incidents on the border in which men in Mexican military uniforms confronted U.S. law-enforcement officers in this country.

“If they have this kind of money to give away, there are better ways to spend it,” Mr. Bonner said. “Mexico cannot control its own military, and it makes no sense to give them better weapons and equipment they can use to attack and threaten our own law-enforcement officers,” he said.

Mr. President, with all due respect, put the Military on the border!

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate please go to The Uncooperative Blogger or Freedom Folks

and email us. We will add you to the blogroll, and send you the rest of the info you will need.

Title: U.S. gives Mexico millions for Border Security

http://uncooperativeblogger.com/2006/02/14/us-gives-mexico-millions-for-border-security/trackback/

Posted by Ryan S. at 3:49 PM | Permalink | |

H/t: Michelle Malkin

Posted by Ryan S. at 9:44 PM | Permalink | |

My Fellow Conservatives (and any liberals within earshot):

I spent the past three days at CPAC, surrounded by conservatives. For anyone who resides on a college campus for most of the year, this is an unusual event indeed. However, all was not up to par for me. There were too many Republicans, and not enough conservatives (and certainly not enough libertarians). I describe myself politically as an American first, a conservative second, and a Republican third. I am not a conservative because I am Republican, but rather the other way around. The GOP is the party that irks me least.

CPAC this year had a very "we're doing great" tone, with many speakers including Ken Mehlman and Bill Frist not promising anything for the future. FoxNews has an article highliting the GOP criticism, but I didn't see much of it. President Bush squandered his first year of his second term, DeLay and others caused scandal and plauged the GOP, which has remained stagnant in Congress. Boehner is a cautious step forward, but I think Representative Todd Tiahrt said it best when he spoke on Saturday, saying the "conservatives are not in control of Congress."

Most speakers were not pragmatic, citing Supreme Court nominations as victories, but not Social Security reform as a defeat. We need a new conservative revolution, to take the GOP back from those whom power has corrupted.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:17 PM | Permalink | |

Bought two t-shirts from Bureaucrash (these two) Also got coffee and a shirt from Contra Cafe (I'll let you know how it tastes when I make some), as well as free t-shirts, a Size Matters one from Nelson Current (and yes, it is pink!) and one from Newt Gingrich's equivelent of what can only be described as a street team. Maybe he is running in 2008.
Also, I have a signed copy of Glenn's An Army of Davids. It doesn't come out until the begining of March, and I will try to read and review well before then. I also have a copy of Unhinged, Michelle Malkin's new book, unsigned, because the line was amazingly long. Not bad for a blogger (wink). Also got my copy of The Official Handbook of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy signed.

I'm exhausted, and I'll have a reaction post to CPAC, on the State of the Conservative Movement, tomorrow. Teaser: CPAC painted a rosy picture for the most part, but it shouldn't have.

Posted by Ryan S. at 8:49 PM | Permalink | |

I did not have time or physical strength to post this yesterday, but here goes:

Laura Bush is my hero for this week because of some comments she made about Hillary Clinton, to be broadcast on Monday (according to Drudge):

Q Before I let you go, one political question, because I'll get fired if I don’t ask at least one political question. The ceremony for Coretta Scott King was just so moving, all the speakers at that. Hillary Clinton has now taken a little bit of the forefront. And I know that you all travel together, and just a week before, she had some very harsh words about this administration, saying it could be one of the worst -- go down in history as one of the worst ever. Is that just politics, is that fair game, or is that out of bounds, a statement like that?

MRS. BUSH: Well, of course I think it’s out of bounds. But I think it’s politics, it’s certainly politics. President Clinton and President Bush and President Bush number 41 who was with us, as well, are in a club together, and really, I think, wives of the Presidents are in a club, as well. We know what it’s like to live in that house. We certainly know what it’s like to have your husband criticized. So I think there’s a certain empathy that we might have for each other that we wouldn’t have maybe for somebody else who said something like that.