William Frank Buckley, Junior (1925 - 2008)














The famous Buckley vs. Vidal incident from August 1968.

A lot of the transcript can be found on Rush Limbaugh's website here.

LSU 7, Indiana 1
Brrr ... that game was cold last night.

That kid Leon Landry from Baker hit the FUCK out of that triple to center. It was good to see him and LeMahieu play well in their first starts as true freshmen coming straight out of high school.

It was also nice to see the SEC go 10-0, including #11 Vandy's 8-1 win over defending champs, #19 Oregon State, and Georgia's upset win 9-7 over #1 Arizona.

RARIN' TO GO!!!

The Opening Lineup for LSU's Baseball Opener vs. Indiana
Opening Pitch
Les Miles, 7:00 P.M., Alex Box Stadium

By Defensive Positions
P - #27, J. Bradford, Sr., -
C - #14, S. Ochinko, So., 4
1B - #9, M. Clark, Jr., 5
2B - #16, R. Schimpf, So., 1
3B - #7, M. Hollander, Sr., 9
SS - #17, D.J. LeMahieu, Fr., 8
LF - #34, B. Dean, So., 3
CF – #3, J. Mitchell, So., 2
RF - #6, L. Landry, Fr., 7
DH – #35, M. Gaudet, Jr., 6

By Lineup
1. #16, R. Schimpf (L), .262, 4 HR, 11 RBI, 2B
2. #3, J. Mitchell (L), .258, 3 HR, 21 RBI, RF
3. #34, B. Dean (L), .316, 7 HR, 46 RBI, LF
4. #14, S. Ochinko (R), .277, 7 HR, 32 RBI, C
5. #9, M. Clark (L), 1B
6. #35, M. Gaudet (R), DH
7. #6, L. Landry, Jr. (L), RF
8. #17, D.J. LeMahieu (R), SS
9. #7, M. Hollander (R), .279, 5 HR, 26 RBI, 3B

Friday Starter
RHP - #27, J. Bradford, Sr., 10-4, 4.41 ERA, 96.0 IP, 16 BB, 81 SO

Saturday Starters
RHP – #13, J. Brown, Jr.
RF – #18, N. Pontiff (R), Jr., .313, 1 HR, 14 RBI

Sunday Starters
LHP – #10, R. Byrd, Jr., 6-2, 4.74 ERA, 68.1 IP, 21 BB, 35 SO
RF – #4, C. Jones (L), Fr.


Elsewhere in the SEC
Georgia vs. #1 Arizona
#2 South Carolina vs. ECU
#4 Ole Miss vs. Minnesota
#11 Vanderbilt vs. #19 Oregon St. (DeMarini Tournament in Tempe, AZ)
#20 Kentucky vs. Xavier (Coca-Cola Tournament in Mobile, AL)
#27 Miss. St. at North Florida
#30 LSU vs. Indiana
Alabama vs. Cal Poly
Arkansas vs. Wright St.
Auburn vs. E. Tenn. St.
Florida vs. Siena
Tennessee vs. Morehead St.


Stories Leading Up to the Beginning of the Season
They chose baseball
"Lasorda speaks with Tigers"
"LSU baseball picked 5th in SEC West"
"Mainieri, Baseball Staff Preview Season at Media Day"
"Once more at the Box"
"Rarin' to go"

College Baseball Newspaper's Preseason Top 40
PRESEASON SEC RANKINGS FROM COLLEGIATE BASEBALL NEWSPAPER TOP 40
(As of Dec. 21, 2007)
2. South Carolina
4. Ole Miss
11. Vanderbilt
20. Kentucky
27. Miss. State
30. LSU

ALL TEAMS
1. Arizona (42-17) 496
2. South Carolina (46-20) 493
3. Arizona St. (49-15) 491
4. Mississippi (40-25) 487
5. North Carolina (57-16) 486
6. Rice (56-14) 483
7. San Diego (43-18) 481
8. Texas (46-17) 478
9. Wichita St. (53-22) 476
10. Michigan (42-19) 473
11. Vanderbilt (54-13) 471
12. Florida St. (49-13) 468
13. Clemson (41-23) 466
14. Miami, Fla. (37-24) 464
15. Missouri (42-18) 461
16. Cal. St. Fullerton (38-25) 459
17. Long Beach St. (39-20) 455
18. UCLA (33-28) 452
19. Oregon St. (49-18) 451
20. Kentucky (34-19-1) 447
21. Fresno St. (38-29) 446
22. Texas A&M (48-19) 443
23. Louisville (47-24) 440
24. Virginia (45-16) 437
25. Georgia Tech. (32-25) 434
26. U.C. Irvine (47-17-1) 432
27. Mississippi St. (38-22) 430
28. Baylor (35-27) 428
29. Pepperdine (35-22) 426
30. Louisiana St. (29-26-1) 423
31. Oklahoma St. (42-21) 420
32. Louisiana-Lafayette (45-17) 419
33. Southern Illinois (34-22) 415
34. Southern Miss. (39-23) 413
35. U.C. Riverside (38-21) 411
36. Stetson (42-21) 408
37. Coastal Carolina (50-13) 406
38. Nebraska (32-27) 405
39. California (29-26) 403
40. Oral Roberts (40-17) 400
Other Teams Receiving Votes: Georgia, Alabama, Creighton, South Florida, Notre Dame, Winthrop, Arkansas, Old Dominion, Texas-San Antonio, New Orleans, Oklahoma, East Carolina, Tulane, Kent St., Houston, Central Michigan, Texas Christian, Central Florida, Lamar, Southeastern Louisiana, Florida Atlantic, Charlotte, Gonzaga, Santa Clara, Tennessee, Florida, Auburn, Southern California, Stanford, Washington, Washington St., College of Charleston, Rutgers, Western Carolina, Penn. St., Minnesota, Ohio St., North Carolina St., Wake Forest, Hawaii, Virginia Commonwealth, Louisiana Tech., Nevada, LeMoyne, Troy, Kennesaw St., Richmond, St. John's, Old Dominion, Austin Peay, Southern.
Source: Collegiate Baseball Newspaper

By Conference
SEC, 6
ACC, 6
Big12, 6
Pac 10, 5

Big West, 4 (#16 CS-Full., #17 Long Beach St., #26 UC-Irvine, & #35 UC-Riverside)
CUSA, 2 (#6 Rice & #34 USM)
West Coast, 2 (#7 SD & #29 Pepperdine)
Mizz. Vall., 2: (#9 Wich. St. & #33 SIU)

Other
#10. Michigan (Big Ten)
#21. Fresno St. (WAC)
#23. Louisville (Big East)
#32. UL-Lafayette (Sun Belt)
#36. Stetson (Atlantic Sun)
#37. Coast. Car. (Big South)
#40. Oral Roberts (Summit)


Assorted College Baseball References
USA Today College Baseball Poll
College Baseball Polls
Boyd's Ratings
National College Baseball Calendar
NCAA Baseball Scores
CBS SportsLine NCAA Baseball
College Baseball Digest
SEC Baseball Blog
Baseball America
SI NCAA Baseball
SEC Baseball Blog
Baseball News
SECSports.com Baseball
LSUSports.net Baseball
TigerDroppings.com Baseball

MEET THE TEAM'S MAJOR EXPECTED CONTRIBUTORS

The Advocate's Nine-Part Series
#1 -- Sun., Feb. 10, Catcher: "Ochinko seeks more duties"
#2 -- Mon., Feb. 11, First Base: "Clark hopes move to 1B works"
#3 -- Tue., Feb. 12, Second Base: "Another chance at second"
#4 -- Wed., Feb. 13, Third Base: "Ready for the hot corner"
#5 -- Thu., Feb. 14, Shortstop: "LeMahieu 'a natural' at short"
#6 -- Fri., Feb. 15, Outfield: "Jones turns heads in baseball"
#7 -- Sat., Feb. 16, DH Slot: "Gaudet looks to bring power to DH slot for LSU"
#8 -- Sun., Feb. 17, Pitchers: "Bradford to start opener"
#9 -- Mon., Feb. 18, Closers: "Closing options for LSU"

Starters
RHP – #27 Jared Bradford, Sr., Hueytown HS in AL (Preseason All-American)
RHP – #13 Jordan Brown, Jr., Hahnville HS
LHP – #10 Ryan Byrd, Jr., Denham Springs HS
LHP - #11 Ryan Verdugo, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Lake Stevens HS in Lake Stevens, WA

Relief Pitchers
RHP – #24 Daniel Bradshaw, Fr., Ouachita Christian HS
RHP - #29 Louis Coleman, Jr., Pillow Academy in Schlater, MS
LHP - #25 Kyle Beerbohm, Sr., Shaw HS
LHP - #41 Shane Ardoin, So., Sacred Heart HS in Ville Platte

Position Starters
C – #14 Sean Ochinko, So., Douglas HS in Parkland, FL (Fr. All-SEC)
1B – #9 Matt Clark, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Etiwanda HS in Fontana, CA (JuCo All-American)
2B – #16 Ryan Schimpf, So., St. Paul’s HS
3B – #7 Michael Hollander, Sr., Jesuit HS (2nd Team All-SEC at SS in '06)
SS – #17 D.J. LeMahieu, Fr., Brother Rice HS in Bloomfield Hills, MI (HS All-American)
LF – #34 Blake Dean, So., Crestview HS in FL (Fr. All-American)
CF – #3 Jared Mitchell, So., Westgate HS
RF – #6 Leon Landry, Jr., Fr., Baker HS

Chief Reserves
DH/INF – #35 Matt Gaudet, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Rummel HS
2B – #8 Rene Escobar, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Perris HS in Nueva, CA (JuCo All-American)
OF – #4 Chad Jones, Fr., St. Augustine / Southern Lab HS
OF – #18 Nick Pontiff, Jr., Jesuit HS
INF – #2 Buzzy Haydel, Jr., East Ascension HS

Green Pitchers
#12 Austin Ross (RHP, Fr.), #24 Daniel Bradshaw (RHP, Fr.), #30 Anthony Ranaudo (RHP, Fr.), #38 Jordan Nicholson (RHP, Fr.), #45 Taylor Martin (RHP, Fr.), #47 Ben Aslup (RHP, Fr.)

Others on the Roster
#5 Derek Helenihi (INF, JuCo Tr.), #20 Jason Lewis (C, Sr.), #21 Johnny Dishon (OF/C, Fr.), #28 Taylor Davis (INF/RHP, JuCo Tr.), #32 Chris McGhee (INF/OF, Jr.), #33 Micah Gibbs (C, Fr.), #37 Blake Martin (LHP, Jr.), #39 Nolan Cain (RHP, Jr.), #44 Paul Bertuccini (RHP, So.), #46 Cody Reine (OF, Fr.), #49 Stuart Peterson (C, Fr.), #53 Kevin Farnsworth (C, So.)

MEET YOUR 2008 LSU TIGER BASEBALL TEAM!!!



The LSU Bat Girls
Allison Norris, Captain
Katherine Bollinger, Co-Captain


MEET THE STAFF
Paul Mainieri, 50, Head Coach, 29-26-1, .527
Terry Rooney, 34, Pitching Coach / Recruiting Coordinator
Cliff Godwin, 30, Hitting Coach / Catchers Coach
Javi Sanchez, 26, Volunteer Assistant Coach
Will Davis, 23, Director of Baseball Operations


MEET THE RETURNING LETTERMAN
Players with Three Letters
#7 Michael Hollander, 3B/RHP, Sr.

Players with Two Letters
#2 Buzzy Haydel, INF, Jr.
#10 Ryan Byrd, LHP, Jr.
#18 Nick Pontiff, OF, Jr.
#29 Louis Coleman, RHP, Jr.
#32 Chris McGhee, INF/OF, Jr.
#39 Nolan Cain, RHP, Jr.

Players with One Letter
#3 Jared Mitchell, OF, So.
#14 Sean Ochinko, C, So.
#16 Ryan Schimpf, 2B/OF, So.
#20 Jason Lewis, C, Sr.
#25 Kyle Beerbohm, LHP, Sr.
#27 Jared Bradford, RHP, Sr.
#34 Blake Dean, OF, So.
#41 Shane Ardoin, LHP, So.
#44 Paul Bertuccini, RHP, So.
#53 Kevin Farnsworth, C, So.


MEET THE VETERAN PERFORMERS FROM LAST SEASON
Returning Starting Pitchers
RHP – #27 Jared Bradford, Sr., 10-4, 4.41 ERA, 96.0 IP, 16 BB, 81 SO, 23 G, 11 GS
LHP – #10 Ryan Byrd, Jr., 6-2, 4.74 ERA, 68.1 IP, 21 BB, 35 SO, 16 G, 12 GS

Returning Relief Pitchers
RHP - #29 Louis Coleman, Jr., 2-3, 5.59 ERA, 46.2 IP, 10 BB, 49 SO, 22 G, 4 GS
LHP - #25 Kyle Beerbohm, Sr., 1-1, 9.74 ERA, 20.1 IP, 9 BB, 15 SO, 13 G, 2 GS
LHP - #41 Shane Ardoin, So., 0-0, 5.93 ERA, 13.2 IP, 9 BB, 17 SO, 11 G, 0 GS

Returning Position Starters
C – #14 Sean Ochinko, So., .277, 7 HR, 32 RBI, 56 GS, .371 OBP, 2 SB, .990 Fld., 5 E
2B – #16 Ryan Schimpf, So., .262, 4 HR, 11 RBI, 31 GS, .377 OBP, 3 SB, .919 Fld., 3 E
3B – #7 M. Hollander, Sr., .279, 5 HR, 26 RBI, 56 GS, .329 OBP, 7 SB, .930 Fld., 18 E
LF – #34 Blake Dean, So., .316, 7 HR, 46 RBI, 56 GS, .366 OBP, 1 SB, .930 Fld., 3 E
CF – #3 Jared Mitchell, So., .258, 3 HR, 21 RBI, 55 GS, .340 OBP, 18 SB, .926 Fld., 10 E

Returning Chief Reserves
OF – #18 Nick Pontiff, Jr., .313, 1 HR, 14 RBI, 21 GS, .360 OBP, 0 SB, .900 Fld., 7 E
INF – #2 Buzzy Haydel, Jr., .234, 0 HR, 8 RBI, 25 GS, .287 OBP, 2 SB, .987 Fld., 2 E

Losses to Fill
P - #13 Clay Dirks, 12 G, 3 GS, 3-1, 7.30 ERA, 24.2 IP, 7 BB, 26 SO
P – #48 Charlie Furbush, 16 G, 16 GS, 3-9, 4.95 ERA, 87.1 IP, 37 BB, 88 SO
C - #9 Robert Lara, .200, 1 HR, 11 RBI, 32 GS, .263 OBP, 1 SB, .971 Fld., 8 E
1B – #21 J.T. Wise, .231, 2 HR, 19 RBI, 40 GS, .291 OBP, 1 SB, .920 Fld., 10 E
3B – #5 Chris Jackson, .292, 1 HR, 15 RBI, 33 GS, .366 OBP, 11 SB, .915 Fld., 12 E
OF - #38 Steven Waguespack, .192, 4 HR, 19 RBI, 29 GS, .241 OBP, 2 SB, .953 Fld., 3 E
DH - #54 Steve Broschofsky, .245, 0 HR, 2 RBI, 12 GS, .403 OBP, 1 SB, 1.000 Fld., 0 E


MEET THE NEW IMPACT PLAYERS
New Junior College Impact Transfers
RHP – #13 Jordan Brown, Jr. (RS), Hahnville HS
LHP - #11 Ryan Verdugo, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Lake Stevens HS in Lake Stevens, WA
1B – #9 Matt Clark, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Etiwanda HS in Fontana, CA (JuCo All-American)
2B – #8 Rene Escobar, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Perris HS in Nueva, CA (JuCo All-American)
DH/INF – #35 Matt Gaudet, Jr. (JuCo Tr.), Rummel HS

New Impact Freshmen Position Players
SS – #17 D.J. LeMahieu, Fr., Brother Rice HS in Bloomfield Hills, MI (HS All-American)
RF – #6 Leon Landry, Jr., Fr., Baker HS
OF – #4 Chad Jones, Fr., St. Augustine / Southern Lab HS

Green Freshman Pitchers
#12 Austin Ross (RHP, Fr.) -- Captain Shreve HS (Shreveport, LA)
#24 Daniel Bradshaw (RHP, Fr.) -- Ouachita Christian HS (West Monroe, LA)
#30 Anthony Ranaudo (RHP, Fr.) -- St. Rose HS (Jackson, NJ)
#38 Jordan Nicholson (RHP, Fr.) -- Ruston HS (Ruston, LA)
#45 Taylor Martin (RHP, Fr.) -- St. Michael's HS (Baton Rouge, LA)
#47 Ben Aslup (RHP, Fr.) -- Ruston HS (Ruston, LA)


MEET THE WHOLE RECRUITING CLASS
"LSU Signs #1 Recruiting Class for 2007"

JuCo Transfers
INF Matt Clark, Riverside C.C. (Calif.) -- Pirates (28th)
INF/OF Rene Escobar, Riverside C.C. (Calif.) -- Braves (30th) (JC All-American)
RHP Jordan Brown, Meridian C.C. (MS) -- Reds (45th)
LHP Ryan Verdugo, Skagit College (WA) -- Giants (47th)
INF Matt Gaudet, Delgado C.C. (LA) -- Devil Rays (40th) [2005] (JC All-American)
SS Derek Helenihi, Ohlone College (CA) -- (JuCo All-Conference)
RHP/INF Taylor Davis, Panola College (TX) -- (JuCo All-Conference)

Straight from High School
OF Leon Landry, Baker H.S. (Baker, LA) -- Reds (36th)
OF Chad Jones, Southern Lab H.S. (Baton Rouge, LA) -- Astros (13th)
INF D.J. LeMahieu, Brother Rice H.S. (Bloomfield Hills, MI) -- Tigers (41st) (HS All-American)
RHP Daniel Bradshaw, Ouachita Christian H.S. (West Monroe, LA) -- LA Pitcher of the Year (HS All-American)
RHP Anthony Ranaudo, St. Rose H.S. (Jackson, N.J.) -- Rangers (11th) (HS All-American)
RHP Ben Alsup, Ruston H.S. (LA) -- (HS All-American) [District 1-5A MVP as QB]
RHP Taylor Martin, St. Michael H.S. (Baton Rouge, LA) -- (HS All-American)
OF/C Johnny Dishon, Bridge City H.S. (Beaumont, TX) -- (HS All-American)
C Micah Gibbs, Pfugerville H.S. (TX) -- (HS All-American)
OF Cody Reine, Walker H.S. (Walker, LA) -- (HS All-American)
RHP Austin Ross, Captain Shreve H.S. (Shreveport, LA) -- LA 4A Pitcher of the Year
RHP Jordan Nicholson, Ruston H.S. (Ruston, LA) -- LA 5A All-State

Well, I consider it more Spanish than Cuban, really. For all I know they could have been Celts from Asturias or Galicia, or mabye some crazy ass Basques from around the Atlantic border with France. In any case, I don't think the Fernandez line of my family was still there when William McKinley finally kicked the Spanish Empire out of our hemisphere. Here are my favorite flags of my ancestry...

Happy Belated Birthday, Truck. I'm not much of a birthday person; I even have to set up reminders for parents, nieces/nephews and other loved one's bdays. As I sit here today I cannot say for sure what day my Mom and Dad's birthday is, although I know the month and general week-frame. Is that wrong? It's some weird mental block.

Habanos
I had no idea of your Cuban heritage, I guess because you do not look very Cuban and have never mentioned it. That explains your revolutionary and discontented view on things. Anyway, that is a huge coincidence because I really like cigars now and haven't enjoyed a Habano in quite some time. I wonder if you could help me out with your former family connections to the industry? Cmon, remember Poli Sci? How many of those did we go to??

McCain
You GOTTA love how the NYTimes endorses McCain and then a short time later publishes a smear piece on him based on rumors and speculations. Anyone that still doubts the existence of the leftist media machine needs a large nail hammered into their brain. Meanwhile, I cannot watch network TV without being bombarded by ObamaSpew. You know, I have no problem if someone if a fringe-leftist who hates America and thus, supports Obama. But I doubt many of his supporters genuinely know his stance and past votes on the issues. That's okay, we've got a long way to go and much time to devote to this guy.

Hillary Fucking Clinton
Gotta love it. It's not as good as her being run out of town by a pitchfork-wielding mob or being tarred and feathered. But to her, a defeat in an election by a relative newcomer is probably almost as bad.

SCUBA Diving
Any of you guys certified? Thinking about making some trips this year. Nothing big, just little mini-vacation type things to Florida.

Pakistani Election Update

Cuba Libre!

As someone who's great-great-grandfather worked as a cigar-taster in a Havana cigar factory, it's nice to see the Castro regime finally starting to crack ... hopefully.

See this rambling message on Granma from Cuba's pseudo "Commander in Chief," who with great cowardice, announced his resignation over the Internet, which most Cuban citizens are not allowed to access.

Some Interesting Articles

CNAS-Foreign Policy Magazine U.S. Military Index
This story just hit the news, and I must say that I think that the results are okay. It's never a good thing when a majority of surveyed officers say that the military is weaker than it was 5 years ago, but then again, we've stretched the U.S. military for a good reason. Especially interesting was the questions about how prepared the military was to fight another war. Looking at the results, it looks like plans against Iran are doable. I think it's plain to see that the Army is stressed out to the max and that an occupation of Iran is completely unworkable, but the Navy, Marines, and Air Force appear able to operate adequately (correct me if I'm wrong, Nols). And again, Iran does not need reconstruction efforts. It has functional civic institutions and a rather sophisticated, pro-Western citizenry.

From Monday, see CNN's "Generals warn of 'geriatric air force'."

Of course, Gregg Easterbrook of Slate would give a different explanation, as he did here from last April. So if I'm reading him correctly, it appears as though the USAF is spending a ridiculous amount of money on dual-use strike/fighter aircraft such as the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II (an "air superiority" strike fighter set to be introduced in 2011), while not spending very much on its older bomber fleet. I suppose this makes sense if the name of the game is to stay ahead technologically. In the meantime, F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons, F-117 Nighthawks, and our 21 B-2 Spirit bombers will have to be relied upon heavily for any potential conflicts in the next few years.

Will that be enough to effective neutralize Iranian air defenses such as TOR-M1 anti-aircraft missiles and S-300 system it has been sold from Russia? I would hope so. One interest thing that I've heard is that Israel's strike into Syria last year was not aimed at a nuclear facility provided by the North Koreans, but rather at anti-aircraft defenses supplied by Russia, who pressured Syria to hush up the incident so that the defense systems they were selling wouldn't be exposed as shitty. I doubt this is true, but it's an interesting possibility to think about nonetheless.

Interesting Results from Pakistan's Elections
It certainly is good news that Pakistan's elections went according to plan (finally). From this CNN article, I gather that, so far, the socialist PPP of the Bhutto family has won 92 seats, Nawaz Sharif's PML faction (PML-N) has won 67 seats, and the "King's Party" of Musharraf, PML-Q, has won 38. It's unclear who the next prime minister will be, since Sharif is officially banned from becoming prime minister, and since Benazir Bhutto has no clear successor to inherit her legacy.

Another interesting thing to keep your eye on here is the 2/3 threshold needed by Musharraf's opponents in order to impeach him from the office of the presidency, since he manipulated the legistlature into extending his term just a few months ago, and had to stifle dissent on the Pakistani supreme court in order to do it.

Hey Truck - can you send my your address?

Happy Birthday!

Oh, and happy birthday to me!

Leftists = Bossy Babysitter Syndrome
That's funny. I'm pretty sure that guy was having a little joke at the expense of his more leftist colleagues, many of whom have actually been saying the same things about conservatives for years--i.e., that they suffer from a perverted need for authority, conformity, and structure, blah, blah, blah. Not that this makes a lick of sense considering the strong libertarian strain within American conservatism, or for that matter that leftists have somewhat fascist tendencies, but I digress...

In any case, it's good to see somebody hitting back at those dipshits.

Hoorah for Kosovo!!!



From the Wall Street Journal...

The Birth of Kosovo
February 18, 2008
When Slovenia declared independence in 1991, Belgrade sent in tanks. When Croatia and Bosnia did the same, the Serbs started wars that left a quarter million dead. So Serbia's resort to violent rhetoric in response to Kosovo's declaration of independence yesterday counts as a kind of Balkan progress.

The newborn isn't out of danger, with Serbia and Russia wishing Kosovo ill. But the presence of NATO troops, and expected swift recognition by the U.S. and major European powers, ought to calm nerves and end the last territorial dispute in the Balkans. By taking the lead during the 1999 aerial war that forced Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansers from Kosovo and now on independence, the U.S. is shepherding one more Muslim nation to freedom—not that it will get credit for it in the Islamic world.

The proliferation of small states since the fall of communism has made Europe more stable and democratic, from Estonia to Macedonia. A sovereign Kosovo, which follows the entry of even tinier Montenegro into the club of nations, can be a force for good in the region and in the wider Europe. Though lawyers may quibble, Kosovo differs in no way from the other stand-alone parts of Yugoslavia that won their freedom after 1991, and are now better off for it. Serbian lobbyists portray the Kosovars as Muslim terrorists, but that strains credulity, given their moderate and secular practice of Islam (and Christianity) and their stated commitment to democracy.

Kosovar leaders say they want their country to join the European Union and NATO, which would open their borders to free trade and bring them into European security structures. The Kosovar Albanians also seem aware that their new state will be judged on their protection of minority Serbs and willingness to make up with former enemies. International oversight and scrutiny can help ensure these promises are kept. Western chaperones will also have to watch the fragile multiethnic constructs in nearby Bosnia and Macedonia, where separatists may try to use Kosovo independence to push for a breakup.

Russia has called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to revoke the independence declaration. With no troops or permanent interests on the ground, however, Moscow may be happy merely to score political points against the West—and then, as usual, abandon the Serbs to their fate.

Serbia is the sole former Yugoslav state that is not on track to integrate with the West. Responsible for and unapologetic about so much bloodletting in the 1990s, it doesn't seem to realize that history has moved on. The furious reaction to Kosovo independence has been redolent of Milosevic's "Greater Serbia" nationalism. In a televised address on the weekend, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica blamed the U.S. for "this violence," stoking the Serb sense of grievance.

Some European countries want to indulge the Serbs, offering them fast-track membership in the EU. In return, Serb politicians have threatened to freeze EU talks and downgrade relations with countries that recognize Kosovo—in short, most of the West. If the Serbs want to live through yet another lost decade, that is their choice to make.

The one Serbian politician brave enough to challenge Serbian historical nationalism was the late Prime Minister Zoran Djinjic, who was killed in 2003. Serbia needs another leader who can acknowledge the country's cultural and historical links to Kosovo, while accepting its neighbor's desire for freedom. One doesn't cancel the other. Germans appreciate Gdansk's role in their history without calling for another invasion of Poland, and Poles treasure Vilnius but accept Lithuania's freedom.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, who barely beat an ultranationalist in elections this month, has pledged to "do everything in [Serbia's] power to revoke the unilateral and illegal declaration of independence." He also said Serbia wants to join the EU. Brussels can help Serbia's re-education by insisting that any progress on membership be conditional on Belgrade's recognition of Kosovo. It can also insist, as the EU has for the past 13 years, that Serbia hand over indicted war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic for trial.

The EU's great achievement has been to bring World War II enemies into a club committed to peace and prosperity. It's now the Balkans' turn. Kosovo's independence opens the way to bringing this region into Europe, which is a victory for everyone, including the Serbs.

Top psychiatrist concludes liberals are clinically nuts!
Makes case ideology is mental disorder
Posted: February 15, 2008
3:40 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily


WASHINGTON – Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy."

For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.

Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by the two major candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination can only be understood as a psychological disorder.

"A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do," he says. "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do."

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

* creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
* satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
* augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
* rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

"The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

Journeying Back up to Normality from the Depths of Rumination
Wow, it's amazing what some things look like when you take a step back and look at them from the outside. I gave up TD for Lent, and looking at most of the recent discussions on the Poli Talk board, I'm left wondering what the hell is wrong with me for trying to actually converse with such idiots. God damn, those people are stupid.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of seriously deep thinking lately about the Hebrew alphabet and Gnosticism and conspiracy theorists and Stanley Kubrick and linguistics and the transhumanist movement and Wittgenstein and the like. It has a lot more relevance to recent cultural events than most people realize. Which I guess brings me back to Leo Strauss and hawks against Iran like Norman Podhoretz and all that stuff.

Nols, I'll get to that stuff eventually. I've been trying to outline an overview of the intellectual development of Catholicism for my niece and goddaughter, but I ended up getting so lost in a seemingly unending maze of religious complexity that I'm worn out--completely exhausted. It's not easy being an intellectual defender of all that is establishmentarian and orthodox, especially when it's so faddish to do otherwise, as it has likely always been.

In any event, there is a lot still to be said about American exceptionalism at it relates to the Judeo-Christian paradigm of being conservative and progressive at the same time, and about how so many members of our current government and military are shockingly in open revolt against our President, bordering on treason. In my estimation, our culture is being weakened severely by "New Age" beliefs. What this means for the future is very uncertain, but as a globalist, I'm always optimistic that Western civilization will ultimately triumph in the greater ideological war.

In specific terms, though, I certainly hope for the best in Pakistan on Monday (my birthday!), and for things to go well as Israel prepares to take down the Hamas regime in Gaza and give more power to the PLO and Abu Mazen. And, of course, as always, I hope for better days for Lebanon, which is about to descend into chaos between the anti-Syrian nationalists and Hezbollah, but the prospects for the near future look grim. I'm glad that asshole, Marine-murdering Hezbollah guy was killed though. We can celebrate that, as well as the killing of a major Al Qaeda figure in Pakistan.

Barack on the Issues
Regarding Obama, I challenge anybody to read his "issues" page and not vomit. This guy is, quite clearly, trying to develop a cult of personality while being deliberately vague on his real plans for just about every single issue. In fact, as you can learn from TheOnion, the only two things that people really know that Obama is for are "dreams" and "hopes." Oh, and he didn't vote for the Iraq War. Good for you, you leftwing communist motherfucker.

"Wouldn't it be nice to see the Saudi's and other assorted towlheads deal with their own problems?"

I understand. We're all tired of America playing parent to these stupid Muslim countries, but did you read anything I just wrote? America was asleep at the wheel, and North Korea and Pakistan got nuclear weapons, and they have BOTH been caught selling their WMD technology on the black market! WAKE UP! THIS IS NOT A REGIONAL ISSUE! THERE ARE NO REGIONAL ISSUES WHEN IT COMES TO THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY!!!

Iran has orchestrated terrorist attacks against U.S. Marines in Beirut, Jewish synogogues in Argentina, the Khobar Towers, etc., etc., etc., and they are still the main force responsible for the ongoing chaos in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. They are currently killing U.S. troops RIGHT NOW! Iran is currently getting nuclear technology help from Russia, and long-range missile technology from places like Pakistan, North Korea, and China.

Ask yourself, why does America still want the anti-ballistic missile program so much? Think for a second, and you'll realize that it isn't just because of some tin-pot dictator in North Korea. For the last several years, America has been in a dispute with Russia over building ABM defenses in Eastern Europe which are meant to defend our NATO allies from Iranian missile attacks. Again, this is NOT just a regional issue.

And when Iran finally gets the missile technology to reach London (and don't believe for a second that they won't), how long before they achieve the intercontinental ballistic technology necessary to reach Washington?

Ultimately, we must always ask ourselves, what does Iran want? I'll tell you what they want, leadership and rigid control over the Islamic countries of the world. Iran uses Hezbollah to bring Shiite power to the Levant, but ultimately, they want control over Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, and Jerusalem--their holy sites. They want control over OPEC's decisions. They want to turn back the clock and radicalize Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey, which are all presently American allies. And if they have nuclear weapons that can be snuck out to the peripheral terrorist organizations they control, are we going to really have the nerve to stop them?

And if Iran has nuclear weapons technology, will America ever be taken seriously again when trying to tell another country (like Cuba, Venezuela, or Sudan) that they can't have nuclear weapons technology? Setting precedent is a huge part of this, just like it was with Iraq. Regional, my ass.

OBAMANATION

Move Over ChipNation, there's a new cool white guy and his name is Obama. While ya'll are on here talkin about God-knows-what, Democrats are figuring out that Hillary is only slightly less disgusting than this other famous lib:




and Bammer is getting the fallout of voters. The media hasn't been this brazen about being behind a candidate since Bubba Ray Clinton picked up the Saxophone on Arsenio Hall, while most of you were shitting in diapers and loving it. Some of you guys still do.


This is not a trick pic, or one craftily taken at a second of hesitation...http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/anthem.asp

According to his own campaign spokesperson: "Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't" raise his hand to his heart for the pledge and/or anthem.

I-RAN
I'm a huge fan of "Rock the Casbah". I think it's gotta be one of the top 5 80's songs. I have to wonder though, Mujdhabadeen is as much, if not more, of a regional threat than a global one. Wouldn't it be nice to see the Saudi's and other assorted towlheads deal with their own problems? But, I know, blah blah, the destabilizing affect of an even crazier Iran will affect the US and on and on. So, I'm just saying...

"I just think the relationship benefits Israel more than it does the United States."

Hey, I don't disagee with that, but that's not the metric we should use to define our alliance. We both pursue our own interests, and we've got to find out when it benefits us to coordinate our actions. I'm just saying this: once we start caving into political grievances against Israel, we'll find that the short-term public relations credit (or "Brownie points") that we expect to receive will evaporate almost immediately (assuming that they are not completely illusory to start with), and that in the long-term, we'll actually have less credibility than before in the fight against terrorists.

Now I tend to dismiss the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being a central part of the larger picture, because I think our enemies have too much vested interest in keeping the conflict going. It's just a side show meant to distract us. On the other hand, it would be nice if Palestinians can continue to have their elections, and if the PLO can continue to get more concessions from Israel in return for more moderation--and I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year that Hamas finally recognizes Israel's fundamental right to exist. Once we get to that point, we can make great progress, and if Hezbollah continues to stir up trouble from southern Lebanon (and you know they will), Arab public opinion will likely turn sharply against them. And once that happens, we can bring Jordan and Egypt close into our embrace, and into the global capitalist system.

I'll be in Florida in about 2 weeks. Flying back to Halifax on 27 February.

We'll have to agree to disagree a little on Israel. I just think the relationship benefits Israel more than it does the United States.

Other than that I don't find too much to disagree with. While they are not part of our global pubic relations campaign, they are dealing with a bunch of fuckface Mohammedens...just like us...only obviously much closer to home for them.

Nols, when will you be returning to dry land again after sailing with Her Majesty's Fleet?

"and not lift up the seat to piss"

Well, I suppose that's better than not putting the seat down to take a dump.

And Slut, I will blaspheme against Bobby Knight all I want, damn it! That guy is an enemy of LSU, and I will never forgive him for keeping us from a Final Four and probable national title in 1987, and for that matter, beating us in the Final Four in 1981.

As Les Miles would say, "Have a great day."

We Are Not Benevolent Saviors
And by the way, Israel is dealing with their own problems. They are not part of our global public relations campaign to convince everybody that we're cool, nice guys. We don't need that shit.

Olmert and the Israelis are easing up and releasing prisoners for the sole purpose of giving Abu Mazen more prestige and negotiating ability vis-a-vis his Hamas opponents, because he is the only reasonable Palestinian politician that they can deal with who has any hope of getting solid public support.

Our goal in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and other places is not to be seen as "benevolent saviors." This is absurd, and will never work. We need only be the guys who awaken the Muslim populations to the fact that they are in charge of their own destiny, which specifically means that they shouldn't give a flying fuck about their so-called "Palestinian brothers" (general Muslim public support for them is dropping), but should worry about themselves first and foremost. Did the French like us after World War II? Not really, but we kept them from going communist, and allowed them to form a reasonable government on their own, albeit under our guidance. That's enough. That's all we can hope for.

Also, don't forget that Israel is holding our line in the proxy conflict against Syria. Israel fights Hezbollah and Syria, knowing full well that they have no chance to win, and that we will not allow them to bomb Damascus. We keep them restrained, and tell them to keep pouring water into a pail with holes, because we need to buy time to surround Iran.

Israel is a great partner. When Iraq was building a nuclear reactor at Osirak, who took all the flak for bombing them in 1981? Israel. Who recently took all the flak for bombing Syria's nuclear installations late last year? Israel. And notice that we needed them to do it, because we couldn't do it on our own for political reasons. And also notice that we told them to keep quiet about what they did, and they followed our orders. Why? Because we didn't want to be embarrassed with our recent concessions to North Korea, since the Syrians were obviously being supplied with nuclear and missile technology from Kim Jong-Il. This is why you didn't see this story on the front page of any papers.

Thanks spellchecker. Have a nice day.

Could you at least learn how to spell "Israel"? Would that be too much to ask?

Israel -- the new name given to Jacob, meaning "he who wrestles with God"

In the name of making lists.

1. Slut - good to hear from you and glad to know you're drinking.
2. FirstDibz is exactly like Sportz...remember the size of that Z?
3. Fourth "Slut" Child name proposal - Saban Neuheisel "his last name"
4. I understand what Truck is saying about Isreal, but I think Isreal can help with the important PR game in the middle east...and recently they have been.
5. Robert Fisk is an ass, and I will not defend him.
6. Wife and baby are out of town. Yesterday all I did was play Playstation, look at internet porn, and not lift up the seat to piss.
7. Great Cliff Notez.

Truck,
Don't you dare ever blaspheme Bobby Knight again. It would be a great day in Tiger history if we were to hire the General. I fucking love that guy. I plan to name my two sons (assuming I am ever married and have kids):
1) Brett Ripken "my last name" - after George Brett and Cal Ripken my two favorite baseball players
2) Bryant Knight "my last name" - after my two favorite hard ass coaches of the last century
if there is a 3rd he shall be dubbed:
Nicklaus Palmer "my last name" - after Jack and Arnie

Yes, I am drunk and hammered at 3 am EST. Fuck you fucking intellectual SOBs and good fucking night.

Some More Notes
(1) I can't fucking believe that TicketReserve actually changed its name to FirstDibz.com. That's absolutely horrible, and worse than when Sports changed its name to "Sportz," and then to "Reggie's."
(2) LSU women's basketball has no excuse not to win the national title this year. I just looked at their roster, and it's basically all seniors. The only non-senior that does anything is Hightower.
(3) Well, at least LSU men's basketball will more or less have all the same players next year. I hope to God Skip does't hire that shithead Bobby Knight.

Sure...

Cliff Notes
(1) John Brady was fired.
(2) There is a natural connection between neoconservatism and traditionalism, which is why many people point out the ties the movement has to the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, which is deeply concerned with studying capitalism and the ancient classics of Western civilization.
(3) Ayn Rand is not a neoconservative.
(4) John McCain enjoys "poking angry bears with short sticks"!!!
(5) Nols will be at sea starting Monday morning.
(6) McCain might not be so bad after all, because by talking shit about the Bush Administration all these years, he's actually built up enough credit to pursue some of Bush's more unpopular (but necessary) policies.
(7) Ron Paul is an idiot.
(8) Regime change in Iran is a sensitive issue that must be handled carefully, taking precautions to deal with public opinion in the Middle East.
(9) Iran will not require a long occupation like Iraq, but only an end to theocracy and meddling in Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. After that, they can have all the nuclear technology they want as far as I'm concerned.
(10) Anti-Zionist propaganda is a bunch of exaggerated garbage meant to discredit capitalism, global free markets, and by rather obvious implication, the entire American way of life. If America cares about standing up for itself, then it must also stick up for Israel.
(11) Nicolas Sarkozy has a hot wife (again).

Are there cliff notes for those of us who haven't been to the site in the last 36 hours?

If We Are Against Israel, Then We Are Against Ourselves
"I disagree with this line of reasoning, as I believe arms production for export is a legitimate, healthy part of American industry. (And French, Chinese, Russian, English and Israeli as well) Responsibility lies with a particular nations ROE, and the trigger puller."

Eh, up to a point. The problem of agency is one of the most difficult problems in law, and indeed in morality in general. How responsible are you for enabling agents or quasi-agents to act on your behalf? When are you responsible for checking up on those with whom you do business?

Have you noticed how much tighter banking laws have become on "get to know your customer" rules which have eroded the old banking secrecy laws that made places like Switzerland havens for evil dictators wanting to stash their money? Even Kim Jong-Il had some of his accounts frozen in Macau.

Anyway, I think a country is partially responsible about vetting its customers when it comes to arms dealing. Everybody agrees with this really, it's just that different people make different value judgments about to whom it is okay to sell, and to whom it is not okay to sell. See, for example, the A.Q. Khan nuclear network operating out of Pakistan, Russian sales to Iran, North Korean sales to Syria, Iranian shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas, Chinese sales to the Sudanese government to facilitate the atrocities in Darfur, Chinese sales to the regime in Burma, Venezuelan complicity with FARC terrorism, etc.

"Although Fisk is a liar at times in that book, his research is good as is his writing."

Uh, no thanks. I think I'll pass on that.

"The chapter which outlines this is called The Last Colonial War."

Now think about that phrase for a second, and tell me if it doesn't strike you as a little bit odd. "The Last Colonial War." What could Fisk possibly be getting at here? Hmmm, I don't know, maybe international socialism?

Now, you might say, "Truck, that's just an ad hominem attack." In these instances, however, I think it's important to realize with whom we're dealing. All these people have an agenda, and that agenda is to discredit America and the global capitalist system of free markets and free trade. Look at his opinions on other terrorist hot spots, and ask yourself if he's not viewing everything through socialist glasses.

Israel is a perfect issue for these leftists, (1) because it's a state based on a religious identity, (2) because it supposedly showcases more powerful people in conflict with less powerful people (which to leftists only means one thing--that the more powerful people must be evil), and (3) because it is allied with the United States. So you get all these people like Norman G. Finkelstein spouting out all this Marxist bullshit about how America and Israel are both equally evil, and how Israel is exterminating the Palestinians just as America exterminated the Native Americans. This should be looked upon for what it is--a bunch of leftist, anti-American, Marxist garbage and opportunistic propaganda.

"Now, Israel have come under a lot of pressure from the international community to have a lighter hand when dealing with unrest in Palestine, and they have cleaned a lot of this up. Since Abu-Gharib we've not heard much controversy over Israeli treatment of Palestinians. A good start."

From this, I can only gather that you have traveled deep into the land of anti-American propaganda and misinformation. Abu Ghraib, a series of late night redneck events reminescent of something Jimi McDonald would do, has nothing to do with ... well, basically anything. Any person who actually complained about this incident is basically doing something that any marriage counselor would easily recognize--arguing over the obviously trivial in order to avoid the larger subjects that are really at issue. To say that Abu Ghraib has anything significant to do with Israel is preposterous.

If you've been following Israeli politics at all this decade, you'll realize that what happened is that a new political force, Kadima, entered the scene thanks to Ariel Sharon. While the rest of the world wrung their hands over how Israel's building of a separation wall was breaking "international law" (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean), and how it was wrong for Israel to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, Israelis started getting along with getting along, and making progress on their own.

In addition, the Bush Administration's policy towards the Palestinians helped things a great deal. The coddling of Yasser Arafat ended abruptly. Arafat died, and was replaced by Abu Mazen, a much more reasonable figure to deal with. Elections were held, and Hamas won (based on their social policies and anti-corruption campaigns, not on their belligerence towards Israel), and a little bit of civil infighting went down in the West Bank--which I think is a great thing, because it shows Palestinians that they have to wrestle with themselves in order to control their own future.

All this talk about Israel needing to operate with a "lighter hand" is just ridiculous. They're a democracy, and the liberals and conservatives within their country struggle with these political issues every day. Who the fuck are we to tell them how to defend themselves as rocket attacks rain down on their towns, their soldiers get kidnapped, and their teenagers are blown up by suicide terrorists in their discos and pizza parlors? Personally, I would hesitate to tell Israel jack shit about how they should handle the Palestinians.

And as for the status of Palestine as a sovereign state, it simply doesn't exist and never has. Let's remember how this started--Jews fleeing European persecution immigrated to Palestine, where other Jewish communities had been existing for nearly 3000 years. (And remember that most of Palestine was just an uninhabited wasteland in the 19th century.) The British tried everything they could to stop this immigration from Holocaust survivors, but in the end, world opinion (and even Harry Truman) eventually turned against them, and many Jews were allowed to settle within the southwestern portion of the larger British mandate of the lands which are now called Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. (The British also tried to keep control over "protectorates" in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, etc., but lost influence in Iran.)

The British got tired of dealing with the issue (and indeed, colonial issues in general all over the world), and turned the matter over to the U.N., which decided on a partition in 1947, which was approved of by Jews, and rejected by Arabs. Remember here, the Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Then Israel won the War of Israeli Independence in 1948, and then the Six Day War in 1967. The West Bank was occupied, and considered a part of Jordan. This was the Cold War era, so the Soviets became involved, yada, yada, yada, and the PLO was born as a terrorist organization. Jordan, like the British before them, got tired of dealing with the terrorist issue, and turned against and attacked the PLO in 1970, expelling them completely from Jordan. After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, they relinquished all claims to the West Bank, and washed their hands of the whole issue. The following passage is instructive:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." --PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw."

Eventually, the fervor of pan-Arabism, and its goal to "drive the Israelis into the sea," subsided somewhat, and Egypt and Jordan returned to a more moderate lifestyle. But the European socialists and Soviets would not let the issue die, and kept funneling billions of dollars to Arafat's corrupt terrorist organization. Then the Iranian revolution occurred, and Iran, seeking to influence the entire Middle East, set up a terrorist apparatus in the old French-controlled regions of Lebanon and Syria, and created Hezbollah.

So let's review. Arabs seeking greater pan-Arab glory, sought to unite Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria against the establishment of a Jewish state of any kind. (The House of Saud offered only token support for this.) Jordan specifically opposed the creation of a Palestinian state on any territory on the West Bank, (supposedly) wanting instead for a new state of Palestine to be created completely within what is now called Israel. The old territory of cis-Jordan (or what is now called Israel and the West Bank), had shifting boundaries over the years as the two sides went back and forth, with Arabs never accepting any deal allowing for a two-state solution. Finally, the Kadima Party stepped onto the scene in Israel, and made its central priority a "unilateral disengagement" plan, partitioning the territory into two states, multilaterally if possible, but unilaterally if borne by necessity (hence the exit from Gaza and the building of the wall of separation in the West Bank).

Most Arabs are probably sick of the Palestinians. They're certainly sick of Iran and Hezbollah, as evidenced by the general lack of Arab support for Nasrallah during the Israeli-Lebanon conflict of 2006, which was sparked by the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Hell, Palestinians are sick of Palestinians. Their entire way of life is just living in huge welfare dependency run by criminal thugs. Public opinion is getting better, though, and when it improves just a little bit more, Abu Mazen will finally be able to strike a two-state deal--something which Arafat was unable to do in 2000, despite being offered over 90% of West Bank territory by Ehud Barak at Camp David.

And as for all this public opinion crap, I don't think Arabs are anywhere near as gullible and naive on these issues as are the stupid British, who are force-fed socialist, anti-semitic garbage from the BBC. I think by now, participants on both sides of the conflict are wise to the obvious media perception game that is being played, and don't really buy into all the hype on either side. Remember the faked footage (by French journalists, of course) of Israeli soldiers killing 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah in 2000? Remember "Jeningrad," or the Battle of Jenin in 2002, and how utterly ridiculous the Palestinian claims of a "massacre" were? Do you remember how stupid the "outrage" over Rachel Corrie's death in 2003 was?

All these anti-Israel people need to get a grip, and realize that the Palestinian refugees are just a bunch of welfare dependents living off larger criminal organizations, and that they can have peace as soon as they want it, so long as it doesn't include rigid demands for a return to pre-1967 borders, nor for an unlimited "right of return" that would undermine the state of Israel from within.

And really, Palestinians are no different in principle from Muslim Kashmiris living in India. The British left, a U.N. partition was made, and they got left on the wrong side of shifting borders. Whatever. Such situations don't arise often, but when you partition an occupied territory so as to create two entirely new states, this type of thing is bound to occur.

Also, don't be one of those people who pretends that Israel tells America what to do. It's quite the opposite. We supply them, we support them, we get them to fight our proxy wars against Iran, and when we need to "call in our chips" for larger purposes in the grand scheme of global politics and foreign policy, we do so. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me, and it also keeps democracy and secularism alive in a part of the world that is still very much in danger from being eaten alive by extremist thugs and dictators.

Moreover, even if selling out our allies in Israel would help us make some strategic gains in the Arabic world in the short term, I think it would be a huge, huge, huge mistake in the long term. Being known as a country that sells out your own allies can only lead to diplomatic ruin in the long run. We would lose our credibility, we would lose our honor, and we would embolden all our enemies into thinking they can repeat their success against other allies in the future.

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up." -- Pastor Martin Niemoller

Selling out like-minded allies is no way to win an ideological war.

"If I am not for myself, who will be [for me]? And when I am for myself, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?" -- Hillel the Elder

And if we start accepting the legitimacy of socialist arguments that American and Israel are both evil "colonizers," then we will have implicitly turned against ourselves, and once we turn against ourselves, who is to protect us from crumbling?

Mainly it is the ongoing "colonialism" into territory that is recognized as Palestenian by the rest of the world, but not by Isreal. This includes the very controversial bulldozing of neighboorhoods or whole settlements and then rapid construction in the same area with Israelis moving in.

The occupation of the west bank and Gaza strip by Israelis are widely considered to be illegal, or at least legally termed as "belligerent occupation," a legal status that exists following a war.
Lastly is the response of Israeli armed forces to perceived threats with undue prejudice...i.e. a kid throws a rock, and he is shot. A morter is fired at a checkpoint and the IDF responds by driving a tank or bulldozer through the entire neighboorhood, destroying houses.

Then there is the very famous incedent where a helicopter gunship destroyed an ambulance (it was carrying a known terrorist...but also his children and wife...and he was injured) with a Hellfire missile. This did damage to America's reputation as, of course, the fragments of the weapon were collected by onlookers who quickly determined that the weapon came from the United States. This incedent doesn't bother me too much and I really don't think it matters where the weapon came from. They bought it and they fired it, but at that time the anti-American propaganda machine in Palestine was very strong (1997 I think?)

And there are a whole slew of misguided people that believe that international arms dealers - legetimate ones - are immoral and are to be blamed for incedents like this. They trace their roots back to George Bernard Shaw and his (boring) play, Major Barbara and currently include such beacons as Bono of U2. I disagree with this line of reasoning, as I believe arms production for export is a legitimate, healthy part of American industry. (And French, Chinese, Russian, English and Israeli as well) Responsibility lies with a particular nations ROE, and the trigger puller.

Now, Israel have come under a lot of pressure from the international community to have a lighter hand when dealing with unrest in Palestine, and they have cleaned a lot of this up. Since Abu-Gharib we've not heard much controversy over Israeli treatment of Palestinians. A good start.

You can read a complete and well documented (if biased) account of the illegal colonization by Isreal in Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization. Allthough Fisk is a liar at times in that book, his research is good as is his writing. The chapter which outlines this is called The Last Colonial War.

Perceptions Are Part of the Game, But Not Goals In and of Themselves
Yeah, I got mad at you because of the way some of the stuff you wrote sounded (like when you kind of implied that the root cause of Islamic, anti-globalist terrorism against us was misperceptions about our policies--which is just not true), but I'm not sure if we really disagree too much on other stuff, as I think perceptions of what we are accomplishing in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq--as well as propaganda organs such as Voice of America and Radio Farda and all that--are vitally important. When I say I don't care about how we're perceived, I mean once our job is done. We won't get a puppet state in Iran, and we won't need one. We just need a government that's more honest and more directly accountable to its citizens. Just tell the new Iranian government to (1) take away the theocratic controls over democratically elected leaders, and (2) break ties with Syria and Hezbollah and similar organizations, and you can elect whomever you want.

As for Israel, I just don't understand, what do you want them to do, and what international norms are they violating?

Sensitive Indeed

And this is where you and I may disagree. A situation like Iran is where perception is important. Mainly for the "on the fence" Iranians - which are undoubtedly most of them - who we need to buy into an American intervention there for it to work quickly and well.
I don't give a goddamn what Europe thinks...when Europe is prepared to pursue its own interests, or even contribute to its own defense then I'll take whatever they have to say seriously...until then....NUTS!!!
I do, however, care what Iranians think- the actual people that we would be over there trying to help (as part of our reasonable and justifiable agenda to help ourselves).
If we can lay a good foundation for an invasion/intervention, and we can support a government that doesn't appear as a complete puppet (this would be initially hard I concede, but I am talking about an ideal here) of American interests, then ABSOLUTLY I think an American affected regieme change through force (if needed) in Iran woud be a truly worthwhile end. If we would have seen this years ago then we could have attacked "terrorism" there instead of in Iraq.

Also, and I know you disagree with me here, we would have to get Isreal under control. Their flaunting of international norms going unenforced only deepens the misconception in the Arab World that there is an Anglo-Zionist conspiracy afoot.

Hence my reasoning why perception is, in fact, important in international relations.

Sensitive Stuff
Yeah, it's extremely sensitive stuff, no doubt. I'm just hoping someone out there has some kind of a plan. And Iran is not like Afghanistan or Iraq were. It actually has long-standing civic institutions that operate rather well, relatively speaking. (So there would be little need for "nation-building," and after a couple of years, they could have all the damn nuclear technology they want and I wouldn't care so long as they had proper protections.) And if you go to places like WorldPublicOpinion.org, or watch video clips on the Internet like Rageh Omar's "Inside Iran," you see that a lot of people over there are rather pro-Western and sick of clerical rule. Which is not the same thing as saying they won't vote for dumbass politicians like Ahmadinejad every now and then, but it does mean they don't like being deceived by the terrorist-supporting mullahs at the Supreme Council.

But it's just strange to see that the president of France is saying more hawkish things about Iran than any American politician besides Joe Lieberman. Russia has the WTO and EU/NATO concerns to worry about, China has its public reputation at the Olympics to worry about, so why can't we get these damn sanctions up and running faster?

I know I've read somewhere an idea about how America could put the squeeze on the regime by seizing its gasoline refining or import locations (there aren't many), and this would send the public into a frenzy as gasoline is heavily subsidized--and heavily imported, by the Iranian regime to help prop up whatever remaining popularity they still have. Do we still do any "black ops" capabilities at all at the CIA? I'm guessing the answer is no.

Whatever. At least it's been heartening to hear good news coming out of Cuba lately. Forty-five years after JFK's fuck-ups, it looks like the Castro regime might finally be about to collapse into oblivion.

The quote you put up from McCain on Iran is exactly how I like to approach it. I hate "Toothpick's" craziness on TD, and think that anyone who just "declares" war on some country from the comfort of their own home, and who thinks of war with Iran in particular as inevitible, is foolish. Of course Iran is the epicenter of the idology that is most dangerous to America...as far as a foreign country is concerned (there are several "types" of people I've been exposed to in the Los Angeles area that are probably equally dangerous to our way of life).
Anyway, I'd be happy to go to war with Iran if we had a sensible policy as to what to do with the place once we were done with it. I would also stipulate that we need to be out of Iraq and have a couple of years to recouperate and rebuild our forces.

A reporter asked Mike Huckabee to work us through the math on how he could win the nomination.

"I was never that good in math. I'm more into miracles than math," said Huckabee. "Miracles, I understand. Math is a little harder."

Holy crap. Has anybody compiled a list of all the crazy ass shit this guy says? If so, I sure as hell would like to see it.

Yes, he is. You know that you will have been blessed by the good Lord if you never have the bad luck to have listened to any one of his dumb supporters.

Ron Paul is an idiot.

And, curiously enough, the neocon leaders over at The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, endorsed McCain for President all the way back in 2000. McCain's getting a nice set up here. The planets are aligning. All he has to do is follow through on what Bush started. In hindsight, I'm starting to think that perhaps nobody else could do it. So Bush's most bitter Republican enemy, going back all the way to at least 1999, might be the only person capable of fulfilling his legacy. A veritable "Nixon in China" situation, if you will.

Yeah, that might have been frustration talking. I like his stances on immigration and the troop surge, and it's nice to see him ride out the tough times on that when most of the conservative base was acting like a bunch of dingbats, but by God, I just hated the way he got to the top. It was like he was in a contest to see how much he could (unfairly) walk all over Bush's legacy, and it was particularly galling to see that he seemed to be in league with Huckabee and Paul against Romney. But, on the other hand, I guess politics is politics, and you do what you have to in order to make it to the finish line.

I actually have plenty of good stuff to say about the guy when I get the chance, but until then, here's the most hopeful thing he has to say:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7001585,00.html

From October 16, 2007: "I don't think it's inevitable that we're in a conflict with Iran," McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But I certainly see it as one scenario that could, and I emphasize could, take place if we are not effective in persuading Iran to drop its nuclear ambitions or in enlisting reluctant nations to back punitive sanctions," McCain said.

From February 7, 2008: All I ask of any American, conservative, moderate, independent, or enlightened Democrat, is to judge my record as a whole, and accept that I am not in the habit of making promises to my country that I do not intend to keep," he said.

Okay. Well that doesn't sound too bad. He also recently said something about how, historically speaking, recessionary periods were not a good time to raise taxes. So, at least he's getting some good economic advice. We'll see. Crazy times, crazy times.

That sentence on McCain is great, but taken silghtly out of context given that the writer of that article likes McCain, or is at least happy about his reaffirmation of "neowilsonian" stuff, in the same vein as G.W.

And McCain seems to be realistic about immigration. Do you really hate the guy so much that you'd vote for Hillary or was that just frustration talking?

As an aside...I don't like him. I'm just so frustrated by the way this has all turned out. I want to vote for Norman H. Schwarzkopf. Is that wrong?

Bon Voyage and Anchors Aweigh and all of that nonsense

The Canadian Atlantic Fleet will weigh anchor on Monday morning and I will be sailing with them of course. Yet another month wasted at sea. Luckily Canada sucks so I'll only be missing the overly taxed beer and the socialism...and my little family.

Gibb...you still interested in that anti-piracy buisness? Blackwater has beaten us to the punch and started a Marine Divison...big money without the hassle of ownership. I think I'll give up on working for the government in about three more years and do that.

Fuck this job.

David Gerson (another AEI bigwig) recently wrote: "McCain is partly responsible for this state of affairs. Over the years, he has enjoyed poking angry bears with short sticks ..."

THAT BASTARD!!!

"What does any of this have to do with Chris Jackson?"

Because Chris Jackson is really a Freemason who wants to create and lead a "New World Order." He's been assigned to trick all the American Muslims into submitting to global socialism.

And no, Ayn Rand is not a part of it. The Ayn Rand worshippers of free market capitalism, or "objectivists," demanded an ideological purity that was too much to even join in with the Barry Goldwater conservatives supported by Buckley's National Review. In that way, she is similar to the John Birchers, except without all the silly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Closer to neoconservatism is Buckley, as evidenced by his support of the Vietnam War and aggressively countering the communist threat. But Buckley himself is not considered a neoconservative, because he is against America being the world's policeman and joining in too much with all these international institutions. Well, I agree with him up to a point, but not while the Global War on Terror is still in its critical phase. America wants to be done with the rest of the world, but the rest of the world is not done with us yet.

Neoconservatism and Traditionalism
That's because there's a strong Jewish connection behind every modern school of political philosophy. Not only Karl Marx and a large majority of the socialist-communists in Europe, but also the ones who came to America, as well as proponents of the "New Realism" in legal philosophy, such as Walter Lippman, Benjamin Cardozo, Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis, Henry Morgenthau, the Sulzbergers, etc. And then later you have Noam Chomsky, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, etc. So in part, it's just one group of Jews joining sides with Americans who are arguing against an older set of Jews who are siding with different Americans, or global socialists, whatever may be the case.

There is, of course, a strong strand of traditionalism in neoconservatism, and to get at the intellectual roots of that, you really do have to dig deep into Judaism, Catholicism, or Anglicanism. Thus, you have the father of Anglo-American conservativism, the Irish Catholic Edmund Burke, who's thought is being rejuvenated by the work of William F. Buckley, Jr., another (American-)Irish Catholic wro founded the "New Right" in American politics. And latched on to this group of traditionalists within the larger GOP tent (since Buckley is still a paleoconservative) are some Jewish neoconservatives, which makes perfect sense.

[Some famous religious traditionalists back in the day were Cardinal Newman and G.K. Chesterton (British Catholic converts), and C.S. Lewis (an Anglican convert), but this is somewhat unrelated...]

And you have to keep in mind, when you're fighting the hippies and the "anti-imperialist" counterculture and all that, what are your best intellectual resources? Well, basically, anything upholding classical Greek thought and/or Judeo-Christian orthodoxy. And what is the American bastion of classicism and orthodoxy? None other than the University of Chicago, the conservative intellectual center of the world for capitalist thought and the study of ancient Greek philosophers.

Now, having some Jews join the left in American politics was perfectly natural, and there were many in FDR's "Brain Trust," but when they joined the right in recent decades, many old crazy religious fundamentalists went hysterical. Thus, you have all these conspiracy theories about Jewish neoconservatives wanting to control the world and sell out America for a new socialist one world government, and all this other nonsense. But neoconservatism at present is mostly just about having a more aggressive American foreign policy and a vision for combating some of the more evil (or heretical) political movements in the world today. The fact that many neoconservatives care less about libertarianism than they do about engaging the rest of the world scares some people, but for the time being, it's an alliance that suits conservatism well, since we will never truly be free until the rest of the world is free as well.

And let us not forget, that the neoconservatives are in very close alliance with the classical liberals over at the Wall Street Journal, who represent the oldest strand of libertarian political thought still in existence today--that of the old Whig/Liberal Party of the U.K., which is very much an Anglo-Saxon and Protestant phenomenon. And so, I guess you have to go back in history and ask yourself, were the Victorians and Cecil Rhodes neoconservatives? Was Winston Churchill a neoconservative? Was Abraham Lincoln a neoconservative? I think you would have to answer "yes" to all of those questions.

There seems to be such a strong Jewish connection with the neo-cons.

Wolfowitz, Leo Strauss, Ayn Rand - if she's part of the background of any of it, Himmelfarb, Zeilkow, Rumsfeld etc.

oh, i almost forgot:

What does any of this have to do with Chris Jackson?

Yes, there is.

I'll give you a long-winded background, and then actually get to Leo Strauss in a second post a little bit later.

PART I: A LONG-WINDED BACKGROUND
A few hysterical posts ago, I made the mistake of referring to foreign policy as being conservative or liberal, which was stupid of me for two reasons: (1) because the labels "conservative" and "liberal" are meaning less and less in conetemporary American politics (my favorite political party in history was probably the Liberal Party of the U.K.); and (2) because American foreign policy is neither conservative nor liberal, but rather just something that shifts back and forth between opposing ideologies and parties from decade to decade.

So why do I bring this up? Because "neoconservatism," if such a thing can indeed be said to even exist, traces its roots back to leftist Jewish students at the City University of New York, most of whom were busy discussing whether they considered themselves to be Stalinist or Trotskyist in nature, and whether or not Stalin was really that bad of a guy. Well, obviously the 30's were a horrible time to be an intellectual in America, and this is what Ayn Rand's novels and her political movement were all about, but I digress...

The point is, some people on the Left woke up and realized that they really loved America, and some people didn't. William F. Buckley, Jr., the old blue blood from Yale and patron saint of the conservative movement, started to make more and more sense to these guys. Whittaker Chambers was one of the first to defect to the Right after his days as a communist. But for most, it took a lot longer than that.

The leftist Jews were of course 100% behind the civil rights movement in the 60's, and to this day they tend to care very little about the issues of federalism or lower taxes and smaller government or strict constitutional interpretation. In fact, it was the administration of LBJ that really created the neoconservative movement. Goldwater had gotten trounced in 1964, and there was widespread and massive support for LBJ's "Great Society" and his naive "by the book" intervention in Vietnam, but it all went horribly wrong.

There were three bad things that started happening all at once: (1) our welfare programs started created a culture of dependency among blacks and the poor, and this started destroying the family structure and conservative morals of the very groups of people who needed them most; (2) the Vietnam War turned people against American foreign policy and capitalism, and the counterculture of the hippies started going way too far into nihilism (remember that word), experimental drug use, and open anti-Americanism; and (3) the U.N. and the entire rest of the world seemed like it was starting to collapse towards the Soviet side in the Cold War, and virulent anti-Semitism started becoming extremely popular again among world leaders under the convenient term "anti-Zionism."

And so the 70's were a depressing time. There was a movie made called "Network" where a guy screamed, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" America looked for heroes in strange places, such as "Flash Gordon" and "Superman" movies. New York City had turned into a cesspool of crime and vice (remember DeNiro in "Taxi Cab"), and a famous headline from the era read, "FORD TO NYC: DROP DEAD" (referring to his refusal to have the federal government bailout the bankrupt city). And that's not even starting to get into the truly nihilistic movies out there like "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now."

And it was out of this strange milieu that Irving Kristol, a former poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn and Trotskyist-sympathizer who attended CUNY, became known as the first "neoconservative." What did this mean? Well, to tell you the truth, nobody's exactly sure, not even Irving himself. People started using the label to describe him, and he was sort of like, "okay, I'll take it, even though I still consider myself sort of a liberal."

Who was a neoconservative and who wasn't? That's kind of hard to answer, since like I said, there isn't any real definition of the term, but I like to think of it in two phases. In its first phase, neoconservativism was all about politicians and intellectuals who switched sides from Democrats to Republicans in order to counter the open anti-American sentiment on the left. In addition to Irving Kristol, you have Jeane Kirkpatrick (who made the famous distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes with regard to American foreign policy and with whom we should ally ourselves) and Richard Perle attacking their own Democrat colleagues, and you also have Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (neither of which is typically considered a neocon) taking principled stands to unite behind the anti-communist effort overseas (led eventually by the new charismatic Republican leader, Ronald Reagan), and anti-Americanism at home, despite having very liberal political beliefs. I suppose they had a lot of similarities to Joe Lieberman. Oh, and you can go ahead and throw Norman Podhoretz into this time period as well.

In the second phase, beginning in the mid-90's, neoconservatism sort of mophed into something a little different. The Republican "Contract with America" in 1994 was great and all, and it led to unprecedented prosperity and all that, but there was a whole lot of sentiment among Republicans that we should just cut off all our ties with the rest of the world and let it go to hell for all we care. You can actually count me as included in that group during my teenage years.

We all got lulled into a false sense of complacency in the 90's, and started believing that our real enemies came from Janet Reno and conspiracies at the FBI, X-Files alien coverups, attempts to create a "New World Order," chopping down the rain forests, and basically, all kinds of bullshit from the lunatic fringes of society. Fun times actually.

But then we woke up, and realized that Russia is getting more and more ominous, North Korea and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, the A.Q. Khan black market network for nuclear weapons technolgy spread its tentacles all over the world, that the leftist revolutionary spirit was not yet dead in Latin America, and that Iran and Saudi Arabia were still doing a lot of really bad, bad things to cause trouble--from Beirut to Buenos Aires to Bali to Manila to Khartoum to Mogadishu.

And so then we fell back into the second manifestation of neoconservatives, whose base of operations were essentially the Project for the New American Century and The Weekly Standard (which is bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch). This group includes Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Donald Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz. Oh, and there are also a lot of family relationships too. See, for example, Gertrude Himmelfarb, William Kristol, Frederick Kagan, Robert Kagan, John Podhoretz, Lynne Cheney, Elizabeth Cheney, and even sometimes the lesbian Mary Cheney. And then you've got your more peaceable "Atlanticists," which had been pleading with conservatives throughout the 90's to remember how important our European alliances were, and how important it was to expand and strengthen the EU and NATO when so many people wanted to just end American efforts with those institutions. A lot of these guys were at AEI, led by Joshua Muravchik. Other scholars at The American Enterprise Institute included Nicholas Eberstadt, (the irrascible) John Bolton, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and Michael Ledeen. And finally, you have the guys who drive the leftwing nuts bonkers, the mysterious Philip D. Zelikow (who is seen as being the real-life embodiment of the "Cigarette Smoking Man" from the X-Files) and John Yoo, the constitutional scholar who laid the intellectual groundwork for the greater exercise of executive power by the President.