Did my matzos come?

I've listened to some on XM the past few days. Two thoughts:

The musicianship is excellent. That isn't exactly a surprise, because I've noticed it before, but it strikes me anew each time I check out the genre.

U2 is an enormous influence. I just heard apt.core's cover of "40" (from Under A Blood Red Sky), followed by "Feel It Coming On" by Delirious, whose lead singer has plainly learned much from Bono.  

From a USA Today article on Internet telephony and its effect on cities' tax revenues:

America's tradition for packing phone bills with taxes has a long history. Consider the 3% federal excise tax, a mainstay of phone bills everywhere. It was originally imposed in 1898 by President McKinley to help finance the Spanish-American War.

"It was obviously successful, because they have not attacked us since then," Glenchur deadpans.

Andrew Stuttaford writes of a Belgian Eurocrat, "If he had any honour, he would resign." I think of the scene in the movie The Day Of The Jackal in which a French minister, after learning that he's revealed state secrets to an enemy spy, kills himself. Shame so strong indicates a powerful sense of honor. Were real Europoliticians ever like that? Because such an act has become unthinkable.  

At WeeklyStandard.com, Mark Gerson gives a great, evenhanded analysis of the pullout from Gaza:

Israelis all over the political spectrum also share another crucial ambition--to be able to live in a normal, bourgeois society. . . . How can Israeli pursue its bourgeois ambitions while confronting the ugly political realities of the region? The left-wing solution (negotiating with the Palestinians as though they will accept the very existence of Israel) did not work. And neither did the right-wing solution (continuing the occupation indefinitely and expanding settlements). The remaining solution is disengagement.

THROUGH DISENGAGEMENT, Israel is saying: We are not giving in to the Palestinians; we are giving up on the Palestinians. We will live in an Israel that is as independent from Palestinians as possible, and we will live as normally as possible, with strength. Of course, Israel can not really "disengage" from an enemy on its borders who wants it extinguished--Israeli intelligence and security services will have to remain engaged at times beyond Israel's borders for the foreseeable future. Disengagement is a hopeful exaggeration, but what it really means is minimizing engagement. . . .

The fence and the Gaza pullout represent the beginning of what might be considered a replacement of the "peace process": Israelis saying that they will pull back to safe and defensible borders where they can have as little engagement with the Palestinians as possible (with every reasonable person recognizing that zero will not be possible). The Israelis are not going to wait for the Palestinians to accept a Jewish state before proceeding with as normal a life as possible.

Gerson concludes:

The Israeli government has given its word and lent its legitimacy to the disengagement from Gaza. Therefore, the consequences of the pullout not happening (for any reason) would be dire and wholly unpredictable--almost as unpredictable as what Israeli politics and society will look like in September, after disengagement; if it happens.

Read it all.  

The lede of this New York Daily News piece irked me:

Live 8 concert organizer Bob Geldof said President Bush has done more for Africa than any other American leader - even though the continent's daunting problems have only worsened during his tenure in office. [Emphasis added.]

Why is everything up to us? I ask again (a bit more temperately this time), if Africa can't fix itself, where's Europe?

But I won't argue with the closing paragraph:

African nations say the U.S. and Europe keep them permanently in poverty with expensive farm subsidies that keep agricultural commodity prices artificially low.

Amen, African nations.  

Thomas Sowell:

Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs."

. . . Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn't get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year.

From Dave Barry:

This topic was suggested by a letter from John Cog of Norfolk, Va. Here's the entire text:

"How come when I'm standing in front of a full-length mirror with nothing on but socks, white socks look OK, but dark-colored socks make me look cheap and sleazy?"

This letter was passed along to me by my Research Department, Judi Smith, who attached a yellow stick-on note that says: "This is true." Judi did not say how she happens to know it's true; apparently — and I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation — she has seen John Cog of Norfolk, Va., wearing nothing but socks.

But the point is that dark socks, as a lone fashion accessory, create a poor impression. This is a known fact that has been verified in scientific experiments wherein fashion researchers put little white socks on one set of naked laboratory rats, and dark socks on another, then exposed both groups to a panel of leading business executives such as Bill Gates, who indicated that they would be "somewhat more likely" to hire from the white-sock group, should their personnel needs ever include a rat.

Though I liked John Podhoretz's piece in favor of Israel's proposed withdrawal, Caroline Glick's arguments against still make more sense to me:

This week, the polls, which over the past several months have registered a gradual yet consistent erosion of public support for the plan, showed that today only 48 percent of the public supports it.

. . . In order to justify their withdrawal and expulsion plan both domestically and internationally, Sharon and his associates have had to proclaim their support for PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas. This they have done even as Abbas has done everything in his power to support and strengthen terrorist organizations. To the extent that Abbas is weak, his weakness is due to the fact that the terrorists don't believe that his support has been sufficient.

But because Sharon has publicly supported Abbas, the Americans feel justified in pressuring Israel for more concessions to him. The government cannot publicly admit that Abbas is part of the problem, and that strengthening him will only make matters worse because doing so will merely point to the absurdity of the planned withdrawal and expulsion.

. . . Last Friday, on the eve of his hand-over of command to [Lt.-Gen. Dan] Halutz, Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon gave an in-depth interview to Haaretz in which he said, among other things, that . . . if it is implemented, the Palestinians would pocket Gaza and then relaunch their terror war against Israel from Judea and Samaria. In his words, "I have no doubt that they will have an interest in demonstrating that after the pullout from Gaza there will be a period of quiet there. 'You left Gaza? You get quiet. You will leave Judea and Samaria? You will get quiet. Leave Tel Aviv and things will be completely quiet.'"

Ya'alon's statements were quickly backed up by retired security brass from across the political spectrum in Tuesday's edition of Ma'ariv. These former Mossad chiefs and IDF generals noted that the plan will erode Israel's international standing; place pressure on Israel for more and deeper withdrawals and expulsions in Judea and Samaria; set a precedent for a retreat to the 1949 armistice lines including a redivision of Jerusalem; and increase vastly the capabilities and the motivation of the Palestinians and the Arab world generally to reignite the terror war against Israel in the fall.

The government's reaction to these cautionary notes was to denounce the critics as gasbags and to ratchet up its rhetoric against the residents it is set to expel and their supporters.

. . . The only question that remains open today is whether the government will collapse before or after it implements its ruinous policy.

Peter Brimelow on immigration:

[T]he consensus among labour economists is that . . . while immigration does not increase the aggregate income of the native-born, it does cause an immense redistribution of wealth within the native-born community, basically by depressing wages. George Borjas has estimated that more than 2 per cent of GDP is redistributed from labour to capital. This by itself explains much of the American immigration debate or, more accurately, lack of it. Big political donors, like Silicon Valley and agribusiness, want cheap labour. Politicians of all parties give it to them. Both are engaged in a predatory attack on American workers. It's embarrassing, but vulgar Marxism does offer the simplest explanation. . . .

The economic evidence is clear: neither the US nor Europe needs immigration. It continues because it benefits powerful special interests, and because it feeds into pathological elite anti-racism on both sides of the Atlantic.

If you want to see someone live up to the maxim usually attributed to Voltaire, read Melanie Phillips's latest column in The Spectator. She isn't actually threatened with execution, but I suspect she'd stand her ground longer than most of us:

In France, everyday violence and intimidation has left French Jews in a state of siege. . . . [T]wo weeks ago the French appeal court in Versailles ruled that in a comment piece published by Le Monde in 2002 entitled 'Israel-Palestine: the Cancer', the paper was guilty of 'racial defamation' against the Jewish people. In other words, under cover of an attack upon Israel in language which is replicated every week in Britain and Europe, the most prestigious newspaper in France had been whipping up hatred of the Jews.

. . . [H]eartening as it is to see a public body at last calling this prejudice by its proper name, the case against Le Monde also provokes unease. Racial prejudice is hateful and should be exposed as such. But this should be done at the bar of public opinion, not in a court of law.

. . . What is hateful and prejudiced to one person may be legitimate comment to another. The way to deal with prejudice is surely through the public pillory, naming and shaming and countering it with the truth. In other words, far from suppressing expression the remedy is to open up debate.

. . . Racist expression poses an acute dilemma for a liberal society. Its effects are noxious; its antidotes may be muted. But suppressing it just drives it underground. If hearts and minds are to be won, prejudice has to be fought in the open on the battlefield of ideas.

 

MEMRI has posted a translation (datelined 6/10/05) of a television interview with "Egyptian historian Professor Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz." Here's one exchange:

Abd Al-Aziz: . . . The Crusader war is ongoing, because it has been a religious war since the dawn of Islam. . . .

Host: You mean to say that the World Council of Churches delegated the mission of Christianizing of the world to the US.

Abd Al-Aziz: Yes.

To the professor, I respond thus:

Look, you lunatic idiot. If the Crusades were ongoing, you'd be dead, along with virtually all your coreligionists. Your cities, towns and temples would be razed (that means "demolished," not "lifted"). We have the military power to wipe you out in weeks. What keeps us from using it is our basic decency, which you can't comprehend and which we, foolishly and to our frequent detriment, assume that all other nations possess.

The Crusades ended centuries ago. You won. Your massive failure since then in every meaningful area of human endeavor is your own fault. Stop blaming us.
 

Some birds evidently decided that the year was 1944, they were the RAF and my car was Berlin.
 

After reading Nicholas Kristof's piece on the Sudanese government's "systematic campaign of rape" in Darfur, I have a question for Europe:

Where the hell are you?

Are you waiting for the U.S. to take action? We're rather busy in Iraq and Afghanistan at present. So why don't you do something? France, Germany, Belgium: For years you've claimed moral superiority to us. Prove it now.

You have two honorable options. Either explain how the proper approach to Sudan is to stay out — and I don't see how you can make that case — or get in there and at least try to stop the violence.

Here's an ultimatum from someone with no power over you: Intercede forcefully and with determination in Sudan by the end of the week, or lose all credibility with me. The world's most influential newspaper printed a story that, thanks to Glenn Reynolds and other bloggers, millions will have read by the end of the day. You can't plead ignorance of the situation. Continue to do nothing, and I'll see no reason ever to give the smallest damn about your opinion on any matter.

I'm not optimistic.
 

Has there ever been a long-running tv comedy less funny than That '70s Show?

I dig the interstitial music cues, though.
 

Jemima Lewis:

All my life, I have fallen in love with the leader of the pack. At junior school, the girl I most admired was a pigtailed tyrant named Caroline. She made it plain that she did not return my affection: if I tried to sit next to her in assembly, she would sharpen her pencil to a point, plunge it into my thigh and snap off the lead. My mother, as she teased the little grey spikes out of my flesh with a needle, would beg me to make friends with a nice gentle child - but I only had eyes for the top dog.

Besides, every now and then Caroline would let me into her gang. "Today," she would loftily announce, "you are allowed to play with us" - and then it seemed as though the heavens had parted, and bathed me in a sunbeam of pure happiness. For a few hours, I was popular and powerful and dizzyingly close to the one I loved - but the next day, the heavens snapped shut again, and I was back in the cold.

This, I have since discovered, is one of the techniques that distinguishes the charismatic from the merely charming. Most people, however alpha, are too constrained by empathy or good manners to be openly manipulative with another person's feelings. But charismatics often have a touch of the sociopath about them: their pity glands are underdeveloped, and they are fearless about breaking normal social codes. Like a cat flicking a beetle from paw to paw, they observe the struggles of their victims with a kind of detached, curious sadism.

The good news, from the beetle's point of view, is that charismatics usually get their comeuppance. A lucky few - Hitler, Napoleon, Genghis Khan - rise to the top, wreaking havoc on their way; but by and large, charisma palls with age. It is easy to create a personality cult in the playground, where there is a captive audience of frightened, susceptible creatures. One of the pleasures of adulthood is the freedom to walk away from bullies and sociopaths - or at the very least, to grumble about them to the personnel department.

Even I, three decades on, have finally heeded my mother's advice. I could not love a man who wasn't clever and funny and socially adept; but if I catch a whiff of that instinctive, almost bestial, magnetism, I run for the hills. Ultimately, charismatics are too brutal and narcissistic to live with. Or as the crime writer Brian Masters put it: "Evil is something you recognise immediately you see it: it works through charisma."
 

Ralph Peters on the French and Dutch votes:

[T]he pleasure we can take in the humiliation of Schroeder and Chirac masks the fact that, for all their rhetoric and anti-American posturing, they were do-nothing, status-quo leaders whose authority never rose above the nuisance level. We may come to miss their fecklessness and gourmet-level pandering as nationalism swells among their electorates.

Whenever Europe's nationalist tide flows back in, the innocent drown.
 

From StrategyPage today:

The terrorists have followed the path of least resistance. Thus they avoid attacking American troops, and concentrate more on easier targets, like Iraqi police and civilians. Attacking mosques has become a favorite tactic, although this enrages the more religious Iraqis, who are the very people the al Qaeda terrorists are doing all this for. While the mosque is usually, but not always, a Shia one, that makes little difference to most Iraqis. The mosque attacks, more than anything else, have turned Iraqis against the terrorists.
 

What I've seen:

When most of the original five players are men, the men first try to eliminate one another, then go after the women.

When most of the original five players are women, the women first cooperate to eliminate the men, then go after one another.
 

I finally started subscribing to StrategyPage, so I feel comfortable posting the occasional excerpt. Here's an item from yesterday (typos in original):

The ten kilometer road from Baghdad to the airport is often described as the deadliest road in Iraq. The troops call it "Route Irish." It is the only good road from Baghdad to the airport, and is thus always full of traffic. In practical terms, being the "deadliest road" means that it has, in the last six months, suffered one attack or "hostile incident" a day. About once every four days, a roadside bomb goes off along Route Irish. Most of the attacks or incidents do not result in any friendly casualties. For example, once or twice a week, a roadside bomb is found before it can detonate. That is considered a hostile incident. The road is heavily patrolled, both on the ground, and in the air with UAVs and helicopters. As a result, terrorists have to go to extraordinary lengths just to plant a roadside bomb on Route Irish. Terrorists have largely given up trying to sneak out at night and plant a roadside bomb on Route Irish, as they continue to do on thousands of kilometers of less heavily patrolled roads. In fact, most of the attacks on the road are people in vehicles, or on the side of the road, firing an AK-47 or RPG at American vehicles, or tossing a hand grenade. Sometimes a mortar shell will drop some shells on the road. These attacks often hit innocent civilians, which just adds to the unpopularity of the terrorists. . . .

Despite it's reputation, you are still much more likely to be injured in a vehicle accident along Route Irish, than by a terrorist attack. That's why Iraqi civilians continue to use the road so heavily. Most of the road traffic is civilians, and one attack a day is just considered another road hazardous on a road that would be dangerous even with out homicidal terrorists constantly trying to hit something.
 

But this is interesting:

Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton watched how parents interacted with their children while shopping in supermarkets and found that so-called ugly ones were more neglected and allowed to engage in potentially dangerous behavior.