Did my matzos come?

Don Surber, on Harry Reid's press for withdrawal from Iraq:

Look, it is up to the United States to help Iraq. No one else will. . . . What sort of tree do you plant as penance for turning your back on 24 million people?

If the main function of the US military in Iraq is to prevent further suffering by the Iraqi people, then we should leave. Our military's job is to protect us, not Iraqis.

I continue to oppose a timetable for withdrawal. We need to stay in Iraq until Iraq's military and police are credible defenders of their nation. Our national interest, not the threat Iraq faces from within and without, keeps us there.

(Via Glenn Reynolds.)
 

Jonah Goldberg:

Who's up for some hand rolled sushi and then some steak tartare? I hear she makes it all herself.
 

Because I know that most people don't have time to read all of this FrontPage Magazine symposium, I'm going to quote what I consider the most important parts. Unfortunately, even my edited version is long:

[Jamie Glazov, moderator]: . . . Please tell me that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not a realistic scenario.

[Steve Schippert]: It is quite realistic, I am afraid. The fall of the Musharraf government - and with it, Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - to a murky cabal of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the ISI and other Islamist fellow travelers would be a horrifying potential turn of events. As I have said, the face of the conflict we think we know would change in horrific fashion overnight. . . . [T]he consequences would be so grave that it must be considered soberly and with greater urgency than that currently afforded the Iranian nuclear crisis.

What we know is that there are elements of Musharraf's government (military and intelligence) that are sympathetic to al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban. . . . [T]he Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance is believed to have amassed combined-forces strength of about 200,000 fighters throughout the FATA and NWFP region.

In the end, one bullet or blast potentially separates the various Islamist groups from the 30 to 50 nuclear warheads in Pakistan's arsenal and the creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

In an immediate aftermath, India is most at risk. Perhaps this had a hand in the recent agreement reached between India and the Musharraf government to ensure communications between the two rivals in order to 'avoid an accidental nuclear exchange.' It surely is an urgent concern. . . .

Musharraf is in a rather precarious position. [Ask him] to do too much and his actions may inspire an all-out insurgency shifted toward Islamabad rather than Kabul.

[Thomas] Joscelyn: . . . Predicting Musharraf’s future, as well as the future of Pakistan, is fraught with uncertainties. But the consequences of a nuclear-armed Pakistan falling to al Qaeda and its Islamist allies are so dire that there is no more important issue today. . . . [L]et me lay out three concrete ways the tenuous situation in Pakistan impacts the current “war on terror.”

The first has to do with the ability of so-called “al Qaeda central” to orchestrate terrorist attacks. Numerous reports indicate that senior al Qaeda officials operate out of the mountainous border region separating Pakistan and Afghanistan. And plots around the world have been traced to their [doorstep]. (On a side note: There is also a substantial body of evidence indicating that senior al Qaeda officials continue to operate from Iran as well.) . . . Initially, some analysts tried to claim that the 7-7 bombings were executed by a group of radicals who were inspired by al Qaeda, but did not receive any active direction from senior al Qaeda leaders. This is now, as it was previously, demonstrably false. . . . [I]ntelligence compiled by the British indicates that the last three attempted/executed attacks in the UK were coordinated from Pakistan.

. . . The second issue concerns the future of Afghanistan. The Taliban, al Qaeda and their allies are once again resurgent. Their ability to attack coalition forces, who are trying to stabilize the broken nation, has steadily grown. There is no doubt that the safe haven our terrorist enemies enjoy on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan allows them to orchestrate these attacks with increasing efficacy.

. . . The third issue, which is in no way less important than the first two, concerns ongoing terrorist attacks against India. . . .

[B. Raman]: . . .The most likely scenario as of today is that Musharraf will continue to be in power; he will manipulate the next elections, with the US closing its eyes, in order to ensure the victory of the parties loyal to him; will continue to use terrorism against India while making a pretence of stopping it; will continue to keep the Neo Taliban alive and kicking hoping one day it could come back to power in Kabul and carry out the Pakistani agenda; and will extend co-operation to the US in its operations against Al Qaeda to the extent he can do so without undermining his own position. Jihadi terrorism originating from Pakistan will continue in the short term.

I have always held the view that if there is an act of jihadi terrorism anywhere in the world in which a WMD is used, it would have almost certainly originated from Pakistan or Chechnya. In Pakistan, the military has effective control over the nuclear establishment and I visualise no danger of the jihadis getting control of the nuclear material. The danger at present is of Al Qaeda or other organisations getting hold of WMD-capable material from elsewhere and managing to convert them into usable weapons with the knowledge, expertise and experience of serving and retired Pakistani scientists. . . .

Retired senior officers of the Army and the ISI . . . are among those actively assisting the Al Qaeda, the Neo Taliban and the jihadi organisations active in India. They share two qualities---a hatred of India and an equally strong hatred of the US. . . . Similarly, there must be many retired scientists who must be in touch with the jihadis---either for money or out of ideological affinity. I am most worried about them. . . .

[Dr. Rohan Gunaratna]: After the US-led coalition intervention in Afghanistan, the ground zero of terrorism has moved to the FATA in Pakistan. Pakistan needs all the support the international community can give to fight both terrorism - but more importantly - extremism.

Musharraf is America's most pivotal ally in the fight against terrorism. More than 25% of detainees in Gitmo were captured in Pakistan by the government agencies of Pakistan — especially ISI and IB working with the CIA. If Musharraf is assassinated, he will be succeeded by a group of officers that will follow the same line Musharraf is towing. I have no doubt that the nuclear infrastructure of Pakistan will be protected. To ensure that the anti-jihadist leaders like Musharraf remains in power and survives in Pakistan, the West must work even more closely with Pakistan and support Islamabad.

[Daveed Gartenstein Ross]: . . . While I have great respect for Rohan Gunaratna, I am nowhere near as confident as him that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal will be safeguarded against extremists. . . .

Also alarming is Musharraf’s increasing inability to effectively direct his own military. Adnkronos International recently reported that Musharraf was unable to order an air strike on a madrassa in his own capital city because his air force refused to carry out the attack.

Overall, there are no good answers to the problem of Pakistan at present. . . . [W]e need to carefully think through the perilous situations that may arise in the future, including worst-case scenarios. The U.S. had not even contemplated the destruction of Iraq’s Askariya mosque that occurred in February 2006. We were thus unprepared for the sectarian violence that subsequently engulfed the country. The consequences of being caught by surprise in Pakistan could be even deadlier.

Schippert: . . . It's not just nuclear warheads, though [they're] clearly the most dangerous. Pakistan is a state with myriad WMD technological capability and human resources that exists within a spiralling nexus of terrorist activity.

. . . While the regime in Tehran must be changed, the Musharraf regime in Pakistan must be preserved, regardless how messy the former or how imperfect the latter. The alternatives for Pakistan are clearly uncertain. . . . Uncertainty and nuclear weapons are a dangerous proposition. . . .

Joscelyn: In terms of preserving Musharraf’s regime, there are a number of key issues. But, two of them stand out: (1) Senior U.S. officials need to convince Musharraf that appeasement is a feckless and dangerous strategy[;] and (2) [the] U.S. and Musharraf’s regime need to work together to limit the reach of Musharraf’s most deadly rivals, who also pose a significant threat to U.S. interests. . . .

As for the first tactic, . . . Musharraf has sought to quell his opposition and maintain power by simply conceding large portions of territory to the Islamists. But this short-sighted strategy only pushes off a potentially more deadly confrontation into the future, and is not a real strategy for maintaining long-term, pro-Musharraf stability inside Pakistan.

Some will no doubt argue that Musharraf’s hand has been forced, and he has no other realistic options. The thinking is that Musharraf’s tenuous grip on power can only be preserved by avoiding a direct confrontation with his enemies, thus his concessions are necessary. This is rubbish. These concessions have not dissuaded Musharraf’s enemies from trying to assassinate him. Nor have they prevented his enemies from orchestrating further attacks against Western targets from what was formerly Pakistani soil. And the West cannot afford to make excuses for these concessions.

As for the second tactic, it makes no sense for Musharraf to pretend that he can ignore the duplicity of current and former senior ISI and military officers. . . .

Raman: In the Pakistan Army, the moderates are still in an overwhelming majority among the serving officers in the ranks of Majors-General and Lts-General. They should be the constituency of the US, instead of keeping its attention focussed exclusively on Musharraf. The US should interact actively with the moderate officers, who are unhappy with growing jihadisation in the bordering areas. The proportion of fundamentalist/jihadi elements in the ranks of NCOs is about one-third of the total strength. This is not an insignificant number. . . .

How to neutralise them and how to ensure that recruitment to the army at least in future keeps out potential jihadi elements is another issue that should engage US attention. . . .

There has to be a whole basket of measures---short, medium and long-term--- to weed out the jihadi elements in Pakistan and sterilise them. Neither the CIA nor India's R&AW has the faintest idea about the extent of penetration of jihadi elements into Pakistan's scientific community. The two should undertake a crash joint operation to identify the penetration of jihadi elements into the scientific community and examine ways of neutralising them. So much needs to be done. . . .

Gunaratna: Yesterday I flew back from Karachi, after a week in Islamabad and Lahore. I was a part of the Pakistan-ASEAN dialogue. As student of Pakistan for over 15 years, my observations are as follows.

First, the jihadist threat, intertwined with Islamist politics, is growing. Musharraf has been effective [in dismantling] Al Qaeda and foreign groups but the local jihadist groups have survived. Politically, Musharraf has done a lot - he can do more, provided the West continues to support him.

Second, Pakistan has not witnessed such a high rate of economic growth ever before., If their economy grows at this current pace, in 15 years, Pakistan will have an economy in par with the East Asian Tigers.

Third, the West must invest more in Pakistan to ensure that its economy will grow at the current rate. This will also strengthen the hand of Musharraf and his long list of "likes" to succeed him. . . .

Pakistan's future is determined not only by the Pakistani and its leaders but by the international community. US assistance has helped in a major way. . . .

Gartenstein-Ross: One problem with U.S. counterterrorism policy is that it tends to be reactive rather than pro-active. . . . It seems that this panel has emerged with a consensus that Pakistan is currently one of the two most critical areas in the global war on terror because its terrorist safe haven significantly helps extremist forces in Afghanistan and because of the possibility of a “nightmare scenario” if Musharraf falls from power. (The other critical area is Iraq, which is already receiving much attention from high levels of government.) Hopefully policymakers, analysts, and other officials will be pro-active in Pakistan rather than standing by idly as the situation in that country worsens.

I said before that there isn’t a good answer to the situation in Pakistan, but the suggestions put forward by this panel would make a far better starting point for a comprehensive U.S. policy than the efforts that are currently being undertaken. I think the most important recommendation is B. Raman’s focus on the informational approach: U.S. and Indian intelligence do need to undertake “a crash joint operation,” as he puts it—not just to identify jihadist elements in Pakistan’s scientific community, but also in other areas that can help us better understand Pakistan.

What emerges from this panel, I believe, is a four-pronged approach. The first prong, as I already discussed, is informational: we need to learn more, as it will make us more effective in dealing with Pakistan. The second prong is diplomatic, as Thomas Joscelyn suggests. We need to convince Musharraf to move away from the course of appeasement that he has been following, as it jeopardizes the U.S.’s security, and ultimately jeopardizes Pakistan as well. (In this regard, Pakistan’s signing of the new Bajaur Accord is not a good sign.) The third prong is engaging the internal dynamics of Pakistan. This includes efforts to weed out jihadist elements (in the Pakistani military, the ISI, and beyond), and by engaging moderate officers within the Pakistani military as B. Raman suggests. The fourth prong, as Rohan Gunaratna suggests, is economic: helping to ensure continued growth of the Pakistani economy.

These four steps would comprise a far more sensible Pakistan policy than our current efforts.
 

(Via Andy McCarthy.]

"In the Land of Women" is one of those films informed by intimate personal experience - the experience of seeing "Garden State."

Kyle Smith, New York Post
 

Maybe. This is on Drudge right now:

FLASH: RATINGS BLOWOUT FOR NBC NEWS... 7.4 RATING/15 SHARE FOR BRIAN WILLIAMS AND CHO TAPES, NIELSEN OVERNIGHTS SHOW... 6.2/12 FOR ABC 'WORLD NEWS'... CBS COURIC AT 4.2/8.
 

Some of the incidental music in "Impulse," an episode of the tv series Enterprise, is remarkably similar to incidental music in The Matrix—so similar that I'd say it's a case of plagiarism. Not that anyone asked.
 

Asaf Romirowsky:

There are approximately 3 million Palestinians living in Jordan, comprising about 2% of the total population. . . . There is a successful Palestinian upper and middle class in Jordan, but predictably an exclusive Palestinian identity seems strongest among the approximately one million refugees without Jordanian citizenship and among those who live in the squalid refugee camps. . . .

In practice, all factions within Palestinian society saw Arafat as their leader for many years. The so called "cohesiveness" amongst Palestinians is now non-existent and Palestinians are now divided more than ever by region, by tribe and clan, and by religious outlook. . . . In terms of an extended social network, West Bankers do not rely on their "Palestinian brothers" in Gaza but rather on their families and friends in Jordan. And Gazans do the same thing with Egypt. . . .

More ancient animosities are also on display. The on-going intifada revived tribal rivalries. . . . As Jonathan Schanzer writes, "despite a recent flood of books and articles attesting to long-standing patriotism, the Palestinian Arab community has a longer tradition of factionalism and disunity. [. . .]"

Hamas represents the Islamist agenda and Fatah represents the secular lifestyle most Palestinians embraced during the later 20^th century. But the Palestinian example shows that the game is basically over. The newly created Palestinian Unity government sees secular Fatah leader Abbas reduced to parity or worse with his Hamas rival Khaled Mashal. . . . [T]he main goal of the new coalition is to get the international community to resume the flow of financial aid. In this, it has evidently been successful. . . .

Although Jordan under Abdullah could serve as a positive example for how Palestinians could become assimilated in an Arab country, the desire to keep the Palestinians in their dire state is greater. . . . And the so-called unity government is just a tactical truce to be held until one party believes unity no longer serves its interests.
 

Unlike Andrew Sullivan, I found John Bolton tremendously impressive in this interview by BBC host Jeremy Paxman. Whenever I read or hear someone criticize the decision to invade Iraq, I remember the following, from a report by James G. Lakely in the Washington Times, 2/2/04:

Mr. Bush met yesterday with former weapons inspector David Kay, who testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that he doesn't expect the exhaustive search of Iraq now under way to turn up any large caches of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). . . .

Mr. Kay told senators that the ousted Iraqi dictator was likely being duped by his own scientists, who pocketed for themselves the millions he spent on his WMDs program.

The former inspector also maintained that Mr. Bush was right to go to war in Iraq, and characterized Saddam's regime as "far more dangerous than even we anticipated" when it was thought he had WMDs ready to deploy.
 

(Emphasis added.) The "Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq" also rewards a look from time to time, as a reminder of how many good reasons we had to attack. Concern over WMDs was just one of them.

(Sullivan link via John Derbyshire.)
 

Richard Bell, of whom I'd never heard, at Global Public Media, of which I'd never heard:

But if you want to go on living on the planet Earth, then you’d better learn how to love sequestration. Because if sequestration doesn’t work, the planet is toast. Literally.

Mmm. Toast.

("Literally"? Earth will become an enormous, spherical piece of cooked bread?)

(Via The Oil Drum. Incidentally, Bell appears to be no more a scientist than I am. And though Global Public Media purports to "present complex, informed and dissenting points of view," the range of opinion in its Climate Change section isn't exactly, um, wide. Adieu,* Global Public Media. We shan't meet again.)
 

*Originally I had "Au revoir," which contradicted the closing sentence. Then I remembered this story.
 

AP, 12/13/06:

A group of Turkish aviation technicians were so happy to be rid of the last of a batch of troublesome planes that they sacrificed a camel on the tarmac of Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport. [. . .]

Turks traditionally sacrifice animals as an offering to God for when their wishes come true, in addition to sacrificing animals during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, a ritual commemorating the biblical account of God's provision of a ram for Abraham to sacrifice as he was about to slay his son.

"We are happy to be rid of planes which frequently broke down," the daily Cumhuriyet quoted Can as saying after the sacrificing ceremony.

The crew sacrificed the camel to mark the return of the last of 11 four-engined Avro RJ 100 jets leased from Britain to Turkish Airlines 13 years ago.
 

John Derbyshire (post reproduced nearly in full):

I am at the point with this business about the British hostages where I really can't trust myself to post any more, I'm so mad. Toby Harnden indeed says much of what needs saying, but I think he is too kind to the enlisted men. They are saps and worms, insults to the Queen's uniform. I'd better change track right here—see what I mean?

One thing the whole business has revealed to me is how it is possible to hate your own country, a thing I never understood before. Not that I hate my country—which is, as of five years this coming April 19th, the blessed U.S. of A. I maintain strong sentimental ties to England, though, and I've been burning with anger and shame at the dishonor these giggling buffoons have brought to their country, the country of my ancestors (all English, for as far back as I know), the country I was raised in. Yes, there have been moments when I've hated England.

I've told this story before, so I hope I'll be forgiven for telling it again. My Mum, Esther Alice Knowles (1912-98), eleventh child of a pick'n'shovel coal miner, in one of the last conversations I had with her, said: "I know I'm dying, but I don't mind. At least I knew England when she was England."

I discounted that at the time. Old people always grumble about the state of the world. Now I understand it, though. I even feel a bit the same way myself. I caught the tail-end of that old England—that bumptious, arrogant, self-confident old England, the England of complicated games, snobbery, irony, repression, and stoicism, the England of suet puddings, drafty houses, coal smoke and bad teeth, the England of throat-catching poetry and gardens and tweeds, the England that civilized the whole world and gave an example of adult behavior—the English Gentleman—that was admired from Peking (I can testify) to Peru.

It's all gone now, "dead as mutton," as English people used to say. Now there is nothing there but a flock of whimpering Eloi, giggling over their gadgets, whining for their handouts, crying for their Mummies, playing at soldiering for reasons they can no longer understand, from lingering habit. Lower the corpse down slowly, shovel in the earth. England is dead.
 

[T]he idea was to get Americans and moderate Arab reformers together to talk about Iraq, Iran, and any remaining prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

As it happened, though, the Arab speakers mainly wanted to talk about the Israel lobby. . . . A pollster showed that large majorities in Arab countries believe that the Israel lobby has more influence over American policy than the Bush administration. Speaker after speaker triumphantly cited the work of Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter as proof that even Americans were coming to admit that the Israel lobby controls their government.

The problems between America and the Arab world have nothing to do with religious fundamentalism or ideological extremism, several Arab speakers argued. They have to do with American policies toward Israel, and the forces controlling those policies.

As for problems in the Middle East itself, these speakers added, they have a common source, Israel. . . . We Americans tried to press our Arab friends to talk more about the Sunni-Shiite split, the Iraqi civil war and the rise of Iran, but they seemed uninterested. . . . It was all Israel, all the time.

. . . The Arabs will nurture this Zionist-centric mythology, which is as self-flattering as it is self-destructive. They will demand that the U.S. and Israel adopt their narrative and admit historical guilt. Failing politically, militarily and economically, they will fight a battle for moral superiority, the kind of battle that does not allow for compromises or truces.

Americans, meanwhile, will simply want to get out.

Update 4/18/07: In the original post I linked to this column by Walter Williams, arguing against reparations for slavery. Though I like Williams's column very much, I shouldn't have connected it to Brooks's piece that way. My apologies.
 

And Hugh Hefner:

The publishing titan turns 81 on Monday, but makes little concession to the calendar. He just celebrated his birthday with a bash in Las Vegas, and recently started work on the third season of "The Girls Next Door," an E! reality show about life with his girlfriends Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. Their upcoming adventures include an appearance at the Toyota Grand Prix, where Hefner will serve as grand marshal (and Wilkinson will drive a race car), and a trip to Monte Carlo at the invitation of Prince Albert, Hefner said.

And the chatter about Hef getting engaged? Just rumors, he said.

"I am in a very serious relationship with Holly," he explained. "I love all three of the girls, but the relationship with Holly will last, certainly, for the rest of my life. Whether it leads to marriage, we will see. I've tried marriage twice before without great success, and at this moment, I don't want to spoil the relationship."
 

Spengler:

Too much, I think, is made over the tug-of-war within Tehran, and too little attention is paid to Iran's underlying motives. Within as little as a decade, Iran will produce too little oil to export, and its economy will collapse, as I warned in several locations, most recently on December 5 (Civil wars or proxy wars?). Within a generation Iran will have half as many soldiers and twice as many pensioners. . . . Iran's imperial ambitions, I maintain, express a unique solution to an otherwise insoluble problem, namely to grab the oil resources of southern Iraq, Azerbaijan, and perhaps even northern Saudi Arabia.

And on Iran's complaints (for instance here) about the movie 300:

"A new Persian Empire masquerading as an Islamic Republic," I called Iran last year (Jihadis and whores, November 21). Now the mask has fallen. Iran's uninterrupted tantrum over the portrayal of the 5th-century BC Persian Empire in a US film is very Persian, but not at all Islamic.
 

Terry Teachout:

You’ve heard Louis Kaufman play the violin, whether you know it or not—and you probably don't. He was the concertmaster of the studio orchestras that recorded the scores for a startlingly high percentage of the best Hollywood film scores of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. He also played with Aaron Copland, Darius Milhaud, and Francis Poulenc, made the first recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, bought the first oil painting ever sold by Milton Avery, lived in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, and wrote a lovely autobiography called A Fiddler’s Tale.

Such a life deserves to be celebrated, and I did so in an essay published in Commentary three years ago. . . .

Especially if you like classical music, the post's worth reading in full. I often turn to Teachout's blog (which he shares with Laura Demanski) when I need a break from politics. His writing has an unobtrusive luxuriousness, and his subject (the arts), along with his and Demanski's consistent generosity, make About Last Night a kind of oasis in cyberspace for me. Or maybe an ice-cream shop giving away samples on a hot day.
 

In three Corner posts. Mark Steyn:

It seems to me, mulling over the rules of engagement and the self-inflicted humiliation of the Royal Navy, that the whole UN peacekeepy thing has utterly corrupted western governments' views of their own militaries to the point where it seems entirely normal to send "warships" into a "theatre of war" and expect them to operate like an NGO.

Michael Ledeen:

This hostage taking is old stuff; they've been at it for 28 years. A nuclear Iran will be very different. Iranian nukes are a deterrent against others' nukes, and will make their use of chemical and biological weapons more likely.

Victor Davis Hanson:

This was the hour of Europe to step forward and show the world what it can do with sanctions, embargoes, and boycotts, and how such soft power is as effective as gunboats—and it is passing.

The incident also redefines "asset". A European naval vessel, under current rules of engagement, seems to me more a liability, a floating diplomatic embarrassment waiting to happen. In this Orwellian logic, the British decision to mothball some of the ships now on duty in the Gulf makes sense: fewer chances that one will be challenged, humiliated, or attacked by Islamists.
 

Omar Fadhil:

As in many things in this life during wartime, what you see as unusual a month before, today becomes just a routine, usual scene. And in Baghdad these days, any increase in security just leaves you wanting more.

(Via Instapundit.)
 

Arthur Herman:

Seventy years ago, another generation of British politicians believed that disarming themselves would help ease world tensions after World War One. Farsighted and progressive planners cut the Royal Navy by nearly two-thirds and ceased the fortification of vital naval bases like Singapore so as not to alarm other powers. In the name of international peace, Britain signed treaties formally limiting the size of its fleet, and as late as 1935 reached an accord with Adolf Hitler allowing him to build the submarine fleet that the Versailles Treaty had denied him.

Six years later, Hitler's U-boats were turned loose to harry British shipping and the Japanese stormed into Singapore, forcing the greatest mass surrender in British history.

Today, British politicians seem determined to make the same mistake. They exude the spirit not of Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher but of diplomat and Labor Party stalwart Harold Nicolson, who used to sigh to friends in the dark days after France's surrender in 1940: "All we can do is lie on our backs with our paws in the air and hope that no one will stamp on our tummies."

The capture of 15 British sailors should serve as a warning. Nations cannot "opt out" of their responsibilities in the War on Terror when they feel it, like players in a pickup basketball game or cricket match.

Enemies like the mullahs and their terrorist allies recognize no time outs, no neutral ground. They see only strength and weakness, those nations they can manipulate and those they have to fear. Today they clearly feel they can pull the British lion's tail with impunity.

Herman notes that "[b]y this time next year, the once-vaunted Royal Navy will be about the size of the Belgian Navy." Sad days.

(Via, I think, NRO.)
 

Theodore Dalrymple on Britain:

My wife, who is French, was attracted to the culture of this country because, as late as 1979 or 1980, the people, including administrators in hospitals, were obviously upright, whatever else their failings might have been. A quarter of a century later, all that has changed; deviousness, ruthlessness, an eye fixed on the main chance, sanctimony in the midst of obvious wrongdoing, toadying and bullying have become the ruling characteristics of the British people, or at least those of them who are in charge of something. The old virtues - stoicism, honesty, fortitude, irony, good humour and so forth - can still be found, but only in people who are of no importance, at least in the public administration. If I may put it very strongly, good people are like a defeated class in this country.

And in an aside:

[T]here is nothing more dangerous for a society's stability than a large number of unemployed people who consider themselves to be intellectuals.
 

Thomas Sowell on Pelosi et al.:

That these political games are being played while Iran keeps advancing relentlessly toward acquiring nuclear weapons is a fateful sign of the utter unreality of politicians preoccupied with scoring points and a media obsessed with celebrity bimbos, living and dead.

Once Iran has nuclear weapons, that will be an irreversible change that will mark a defining moment in the history of the United States and of Western civilization, which will forever after live at the mercy of hate-filled suicidal fanatics and sadists. . . .

It has been said that the world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. But who would have thought that it could end with political clowning in the shadow of a mushroom cloud?
 

Terry Teachout posted this a few years ago:

"Perhaps you will blame me for having spent so much of my time in Music Halls, so frivolously, when I should have been sticking to my books, burning the midnight oil and compassing the larger latitude. But I am impenitent. I am inclined to think, indeed I have always thought, that a young man who desires to know all that in all ages in all lands has been thought by the best minds, and wishes to make a synthesis of all these thoughts for the future benefit of mankind, is laying up for himself a very miserable old age."

Max Beerbohm, "Music Halls of My Youth"
 

A tragedy that sums up their priorities all too well. James Taranto:

The Palestinian Sewer

"Further deadly sewage floods are feared after a wave of stinking waste and mud from a collapsed septic pool inundated a Gaza village, killing five people, including two babies," the Associated Press reports:

The collapse has been blamed on residents stealing sand from an embankment.

It highlighted the desperate need to upgrade Gaza's overloaded, outdated infrastructure--but aid officials say construction of a modern sewage treatment plant has been held up by constant Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

The report gets a bit more specific as to the meaning of "constant Israeli-Palestinian fighting":

Umm Naser is about 300 metres [300 million microns] from the border with Israel, in an area where Palestinians have frequently launched rockets into Israel and Israeli artillery and aircraft have fired back. The situation worsened after Hamas-linked militants captured an Israeli soldier last June in a cross-border raid, and Israel responded by invading northern Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post reported earlier this month that metal provided by Israel had been used in the construction of those terrorist rockets. And why was Israel selling the Palestinians metal? "For the construction of a sewage system in Gaza."

Palestinian babies drown in sewage because of the bloodlust of Palestinian grown-ups. What a fetid political culture.