|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
|
|
|
|
|
|
Friday, April 30, 2004 :::
Mackubin Owens thinks our troops in Iraq have been too nice:A "humane" approach to war — one that stresses precision and minimizing collateral damage — may lead a population spared the horrors of war to believe that they haven't been defeated. And the fact is that a war ends when the defeated say it is over, not when the victors do. [emphasis added]
This is a real dilemma for U.S. war planners. On one hand, we are justly proud of the fact that we have gone out of our way to wage war in a way designed to avoid the deaths of civilians. On the other, those same civilians may conclude that the cost of continued resistance is low. I believe that this is the case with the people of Fallujah. Unlike the Germans and Japanese in 1945, they may not believe that they were defeated. "If we can just hold on," they may be thinking, "the Americans will go away and we can return to Sunni business as usual." While you're at NRO, see also "Rumsfeld's war, Powell's occupation".
::: posted by Steven at 10:38 PM
(0) comments
Thursday, April 29, 2004 :::
In the deal announced by U.S. military officials to end the more than three weeks of fighting in Fallujah, a former general under Saddam Hussein would lead a more than 1,000 Iraqi troops in the city, while remaining under the overall control of U.S. coalition officials. I think this is the most something idea I've ever heard, though I haven't quite figured out what yet.
::: posted by dWj at 7:37 PM
(0) comments
Fly paper?There were fewer international terrorist attacks last year than any other year since 1969, the State Department said Thursday, although it didn't include most of the violence in Iraq.
Though Bush administration officials frequently refer to Iraqi insurgents as terrorists, most attacks in Iraq were not considered international terrorism because they were directed at combatants, the report said.
::: posted by dWj at 6:57 PM
(0) comments
TiVo changes the way advertising is done
"Over the last six to 12 months, the advertising community has turned almost 180 degrees - from being uniformly opposed to TiVo and hating us to now seeing us very much as a benefit overall," he said.
With DVRs, the effectiveness of ads can be measured. Plus, there are opportunities to market products and services directly to consumers who are interested in them. TiVo is dabbling in both of those areas. It is in the interest of both the advertiser and the intended audience that an ad be seen if that audience is interested in the product being advertised; it is in the interest of neither if not. Unfortunately, most advertising falls most of the time into the "2% of my most narrowly targeted audience will be interested", and sometimes there the benefit net of costs has a different sign for one than the other. Making ads entertaining is one way in which advertisers try to change the balance; in the long term, I expect advertising to be better targetted than it is now.
Incidentally, one possible problem for the new liberal talk-show radio network is that its likely audience overlaps so much with NPR. I expect it's aimed at a younger, more energetically political demographic; it will have to keep and strengthen that distinction to get listeners to decide that it's worth listening to advertising.
Det är cross-posted.
::: posted by dWj at 12:37 PM
(0) comments
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 :::
This editorial on OpinionJournal is moderately ridiculous, asserting that the President is charged with waging war and defending the republic, and therefore should be subject to no oversight whatsoever when he declares something to be related to national defense. It's this sentence, though, that put my mind back to something I've been thinking for months:In an age when a single terrorist has the potential to cause thousands of American deaths, the task of identifying and detaining the enemy is more critical than ever. The problem is that the line between war and crime is fuzzy, and this war on terrorism finds itself pretty close to that line, or possibly sprawling across it. And I agree with the spirit of the OpinionJournal editorial to this extent: it would be really keen if our elected representatives could chase up for us an improved distinction between the two before the courts have to involve themselves and work out whether a decidedly interested party has made a reasonable determination as to whether or not he gets to excercise complete control over a particular case. More, though, I think this is pretty much where to look for that line; where "a single terrorist has the potential to cause ... deaths" and destruction far out of proportion with himself.(On a completely different note, they mock the idea of granting detainees habeas corpus rights, suggesting Hussein might submit such a petition to the ninth circuit. If he's overseas, wouldn't this go to the D.C. circuit? Or is the law even clear on this at this point?)
::: posted by dWj at 1:57 PM
(0) comments
From 1992 to 2002, U.S. multinationals added about five American jobs for every three foreign jobs. Perhaps these companies succeed simultaneously at home and abroad. But expansion abroad -- motivated by low wages or closeness to growing foreign markets -- may also create U.S. jobs, concludes economist Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth University in a study for the Coalition for Fair International Taxation, a group of multinational firms. He says that growing foreign activity may require more U.S. scientists and engineers, financial specialists and managers. Robert Samuelson suggests that Kerry's corporate tax plan would, at best, result in a very small increase in the number of domestic jobs; if his final paragraph seems to stretch to praise Kerry, it is true:But Kerry is on to something. The corporate tax is a monstrosity. It promotes widespread tax avoidance, raises a diminishing share of governmental revenue and discourages efficiency. It's an exercise in cynicism and waste that the next president ought to overhaul.
::: posted by dWj at 12:59 PM
(0) comments
Specter appears to have beaten Toomey by about 16,000 votes (out of a million or so).
::: posted by Steven at 12:44 AM
(0) comments
Tuesday, April 27, 2004 :::
This looks like potential newsBlasts and heavy shooting shook the Syrian capital, Damascus, late Tuesday, Arab television stations reported. Al Jazeera television said the blasts and shooting were heard from a western district of Damascus where it said the British ambassador's residence and the Saudi embassy are located.
::: posted by dWj at 2:47 PM
(0) comments
McCain and Albright call for the extension of sanctions on the Burmese military dictatorship.Oh, hey, are they calling it "Burma" again? I know I was, but I thought parties of the sort that get published in the Washington Post were calling it "Myanmar" these days.
::: posted by dWj at 2:37 PM
(0) comments
U.S. soldiers re-enlist in strong numbersDespite the shrapnel wounds Staff Sgt. William Pinkley suffered during his tour in Iraq, the 26-year-old is joining other soldiers who are re-enlisting at rates that exceed the retention goals set by the Pentagon.
As of March 31 - halfway through the Army's fiscal year - 28,406 soldiers had signed on for another tour of duty, topping the six-month goal of 28,377. The Army's goal is to re-enlist 56,100 soldiers by the end of September.... However, Childress cautioned that factors such as an improved economy and the Pentagon's decision to keep about 20,000 troops in Iraq for longer than a year to help quell the violence could change the picture. Could be; on the other hand, a lot of people were invoking decisions similar to the Iraq extension to predict that these goals wouldn't be met this year. My personal sources indicateThe Army is just barely meeting its reenlistment goals, but in recent years it has not met them at all. The Marines, I believe, are seeing reenlistments at almost twice the rate of their goal. The Navy and Air Force are offering early retirement buy-outs to long-serving sailors and airmen because they are overstaffed. This source provides an interesting idea as to why the media have done a poor job of making these predictions: they're stuck on Viet Nam, in which the soldiers already sent into war were draftees. Because this is a volunteer military, many of our soldiers see this as an appropriate job for them, rather than something to be further resented, as draftees would. The military might prefer not to retain those who don't, anyway, so long as the number of those who do is sufficient.Other personal sources with family in Iraq give no indication that they think they shouldn't be there. These, too, aren't the kind of people the media tend to hang out with.
::: posted by dWj at 9:35 AM
(0) comments
Monday, April 26, 2004 :::
Not including games against the Yankees, the Red Sox are 6-5. Not counting games against the Sox, the Yankees are 7-5. The Sox are 6-1 against the Yankees.
Maybe the Sox have played better teams than the Yankees (the Sox have played, at least, Toronto and Baltimore -- I don't know who the Yankees have played). But I think the main point is that baseball has a lot of randomness in the short term, and the season is still young. Montreal fans, take heart (though in Montreal's case, don't take too much heart...).
::: posted by Steven at 10:52 PM
(0) comments
Colby Cosh on class size:The McGuinty plan is a lot more like California's gargantuan Class Size Reduction (CSR) project, implemented in 1996. California introduced a 20-to-1 statewide cap, like the one Premier McGuinty proposes, in the same grades. The final "keystone report" on the CSR project was released in September, 2002, and might make Ontario parents a little nervous.... The one point on which CSR was successful was in improving parents' general satisfaction with their children's education, even though there was no objective benefit. In sum, it basically ended up being a ploy to placate freaked-out, superstitious middle-class parents at the expense of minorities, the poor, and those facing barriers to learning. Incidentally, there was a show on the local PBS affiliate yesterday about the California public education system; it highlighted two school districts in particular, noting that each was limited in its tax support to the same $6,000 per pupil, but indicated that the reason one was doing much better than the other was that in the wealthier district, an organization connected with the school had raised nearly $1,000 per student in private funds. Looking at these two districts, if per-pupil spending truly differs by only 15%, either that marginal spending was immensely valuable or something aside from money is seriously wrong in the poorer district. (I don't know enough to indicate whether it's the fault of district administrators; it may be misallocation of funds, but it may well be cultural.)
::: posted by dWj at 5:50 PM
(0) comments
Kerry's having more trouble with the medals:Kerry's campaign Web site calls Republican accusations that he surrendered his medals a "right-wing fiction." Instead, the site says, "John Kerry threw away his ribbons and the medals of two veterans who could not attend the event."
But according to news reports issued Monday, Kerry told a Washington, D.C., television station on Nov. 6, 1971, that he "gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals."
When the interviewer at the time pointed out that Kerry had a Bronze Star and a Silver Star as well as three Purple Hearts, Kerry said, "Above that, I gave my others."
In the interview Monday morning, Kerry said the military at the time made no real distinction between medals and ribbons.
"Back then, you know, ribbons, medals were absolutely interchangeable. ... The U.S. Navy pamphlet calls them medals, we referred to them as the symbols, they were representing medals, ribbons." Frankly, I think that's a reasonable rebuttal, provided that the hundreds of thousands of people who were in the armed forces at the time aren't going to contradict him. If ribbons weren't referred to as "medals", he'd be better off saying that he had misspoken, which I think is something he's generally too reluctant to say.
Unfortunately, Kerry didn't shut up:Commenting on the medal controversy, Kerry said Monday: "This comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether he showed up for duty in the National Guard." Presumably, Kerry has his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears. The Bush team did "answer" the question, and even provided some evidence in the form of payroll records. If Kerry is going to continue to pedal this left-wing fiction, he should point to some shred of evidence that Bush didn't serve. And it should come close to refuting the payroll records and the fact that Bush got an honorable discharge.
::: posted by Steven at 12:42 PM
(0) comments
A radio station that crank-called Cuban President Fidel Castro and broadcast the recording should be fined $4,000, the Federal Communications Commission said.
[... The FCC] rejected the station's claim that a rule requiring people to be notified before their voices are used does not apply to people in Cuba. If anyone has volunteered to pay the fine on the station's behalf, the story doesn't mention it.
I don't think this should be a criminal offense; it should be a tort. The station should be required to pay compensation to Castro -- as soon as he reimburses every American whose property he stole when he took power.
::: posted by Steven at 2:17 AM
(0) comments
This weekend's Brooks is on this Columbine article on Slate and this appendix:In the weeks following the killings, commentators and psychologists filled the air with theories about what on earth could have caused those teenagers to lash out as they did. The main one was that Harris and Klebold were the victims of brutal high school bullies. They were social outcasts, persecuted by the jocks and the popular kids. But there were other theories afloat: they'd fallen in with a sick Goth subculture; they were neglected by their families; they were influenced by violent video games; they were misfits who could find no place in a conformist town.
All these theories had one theme in common: that the perpetrators were actually victims. They had been so oppressed and distorted by society that they struck back in this venomous way. In retrospect, it's striking how avidly we clung to this perpetrator-as-victim narrative. It's striking how quickly we took the massacre as proof that there must be something rotten at Columbine High School.
As we've learned more about Harris and Klebold, most of these misconceptions have been exposed. The killers were not outcasts. They did not focus their fire on jocks or Christians or minorities. They were not really members of a "Trenchcoat Mafia."
[...]
Now, in 2004, we have more experience with suicidal murderers. Yet it is striking how resilient this perpetrator-as-victim narrative remains. We still sometimes assume that the people who flew planes into buildings — and those who blew up synagogues in Turkey, trains in Spain, discos in Tel Aviv and schoolchildren this week in Basra — are driven by feelings of weakness, resentment and inferiority. We cling to the egotistical notion that it is our economic and political dominance that drives terrorists insane.
But it could be that whatever causes they support or ideologies they subscribe to, the one thing that the killers have in common is a feeling of immense superiority. It could be that they want to exterminate us because they regard us as spiritually deformed and unfit to live, at least in their world. After all, it is hard to pull up to a curb, look a group of people in the eye and know that in a few seconds you will shred them to pieces unless you regard other people's deaths as trivialities.
If today's suicide bombers are victims of oppression, then the solution is to lessen our dominance, and so assuage their resentments. But if they are vicious people driven by an insatiable urge to dominate, then our only option is to fight them to the death. Link from J.J. Daley.
::: posted by Steven at 2:11 AM
(0) comments
The Simpson's line of the week is from TV newsman Kent Brockman:I guess you could call him the little tortoise that couldn't -- see our web site for the recipe.
::: posted by Steven at 1:24 AM
(0) comments
|
|
|
|
