OK, I’m in. We’re doomed.

Doesn’t have to be that way, but reading this bit about Tom Davis convinced me that the GOP will never, ever get back on track. Look at his response to the political woes of Republicans:

Inside the meeting, Davis had just presented his colleagues with what he said was a 20-page memo outlining his prescription for a way out of this mess. He did not offer details to the press, yet did not spare the party and the president scathing criticism in his public comments.

“The president swallows the microphone every time he opens his mouth,” Davis said. He believes Bush’s staunch opposition to the Democratic housing bill and the SCHIP bill, for example, is hurting rank and file.

So he blames Bush and wants to flee towards ill-considered legislation to placate voters. That, of course, will simply lose more conservative votes.

I hope that Davis has a minority viewpoint within the Party, but I doubt that we’re that lucky. If this is at all typical of the GOP thinking, then I’d just as soon see the GOP get hammered this fall.

Why McCain will win

Hillary Clinton: I am the Candidate of Change!

John Edwards: But I am the Substance of Change!!

Barack Obama: I have the Blueprint for Change!!!!

John McCain: I am an Agent of Change!!!

…and as the agent of change, I get 30% upfront and 10% of your residuals. Fork it over Dems!

Hey Hillary - what the hell? This candidacy isn’t worth spit! And Edwards trying to broker substance? You’re killing me!

Aw well, at least I can pawn the blueprints.

Well, it was a nice idea…

…but it seems like the notion of a summer gathering of IBers in Colorado is impractical and uninspiring. So I’ll stand down from alert. Anybody who wants to come out to hang with The Hostage on the weekend of July 12 is certainly welcome to do so.

Better brush off my resume

So that I can lay down some conservatism on the benighted liberals at the University of Colorado:

Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson surveys this landscape (the liberal landscape of CU) with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in gay literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. “We should also talk about intellectual diversity,” he says. So over the next year, Mr. Peterson plans to raise $9 million to create an endowed chair for what is thought to be the nation’s first Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy.
…
Mr. Peterson — a Republican who took over as chancellor two years ago — says he would like to bring a new luminary to campus every year or two to fill the chair, for an annual salary of about $200,000. No candidates have been approached, but faculty and administrators have floated big names like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, columnist George Will and Philip Zelikow, who chaired the 9/11 Commission.

OK, OK. So maybe I don’t have enough lumens to be a “luminary.” But I could certainly turn this little moppet around:

“They need to learn about social problems and poverty and the type of things liberal professors are likely to talk about,” says Ms. Malouff, a Democrat.

There speaks a child who’s never met a conservative thought in her entire life.

The silver lining of rising wheat costs

The opium crops in Afghanistan have been a problem area since well before the invasion. Since the invasion, the UN has been reluctant to crack down on opium growers, since it is their only livelihood, and is a key part of the economy. The downside, beyond the drug aspect, is that the opium passes from the farmers to local warlords or the Taliban, who sell it to raise funds.

But there’s some hope that the situation is changing organically:

Afghan farmers hope to capitalise on soaring food costs by growing wheat instead of poppy crops, with the fall in heroin prices further fuelling the switch.

The price of a tonne of wheat in Afghanistan has almost trebled this year, causing acute food shortages. A changeover of crops has begun in key agricultural regions, said Tekeste Tekie, country representative for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

He said a significant increase in wheat crops is expected from next year’s harvest. “The high price of commodities has encouraged farmers to switch from poppy cultivation to wheat. In fact, we are already seeing evidence of this happening, for instance in the Bamian region, where some farmers have planted half wheat and half poppy crops,” Tekie said.

The growing season runs from November to June in Afghanistan. If wheat prices stay near their current level, supported by regional subsidies, an Afghan farmer can make up to a third more on wheat than poppy by next year’s harvest, according to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture.

I just hope that the transition doesn’t drive the price of poppies up.

A clarion call to counter China

A wakeup call and call to arms in the Wall Street Journal:

…we cannot lose sight of the fact that every day China is growing stronger. The rate and nature of its economic expansion, the character and patriotism of its youth, and its military and technical development present the United States with two essential challenges that we have failed to meet, even though they play to our traditional advantages.

The first of these challenges is economic, the second military. … We may think we have troubles now, but imagine what they will be like were we to face an equal.
…
As we content ourselves with the fallacy that never again shall we have to fight large, technological opponents, China is transforming its forces into a full-spectrum military capable of major operations and remote power projection. Eventually the twain shall meet.

He points out that our military budget and resources have declined over the past few decades, while China has been modernizing with deliberate haste. I doubt we’ll be able to reverse those trends, but it’d be nice if we could postpone our descent into 2nd-tier nationhood for a few more decades.

The Huckabee as VP threat

So the word’s going ’round that McCain has Huckabee at or near the top of his VP list.

O RLY?

You know, that puts me in a mind to join the “Hope & Change” zombies. I like hope. I sometimes like change. And I wouldn’t mind being able to say that I voted for the first black candidate for President. Doesn’t that give you absolute moral authority or something?

That’s like getting a superpower.

Recruiting still on track, except for Marines, who blew their goals away

I’ve been pointing out that the military has been making its recruiting goals all year. Now, after an amazing April, the MSM finally takes notice:

The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month and could eventually be more than a year ahead of schedule in its plan to grow the force to 202,000 members.

All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said.

I’m impressed that they finally admitted it, although its a grudging admission (see the end of the article).

Iran creates its own legal sinkhole

I’m thinking Iran’s latest ploy may well end up backfiring on them:

Iran’s judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people.

Iran’s intelligence minister last week said Iran had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who he said were involved in the explosion that also wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz.

An interesting precedent. So what happens when we countersue in international court, using the incontrovertible evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq? What about Iran’s funding of Hezbollah? What about their relationship with Al Qaeda?

Once they acknowledge the jurisdiction of the international court, it seems like Iran could quickly end up being hammered on the legal front. So I’m thinking this is good news.

Taiwan getting even more worried about China

This topic has come up here before, but now we have the Taiwanese explaining just what’s going on with the Chinese military buildup:

China is building up its military defences to deter US intervention in case of war with Taiwan, the island’s defence ministry said Monday.

Beijing is focusing on developing long-range missiles “to strike at American bases and battle carrier groups stationed in the Asia-Pacific… so as to block the United States from coming to the rescue of Taiwan should war break out in the Taiwan Strait,” the ministry said in a report released Monday.
…
The People’s Liberation Army’s budget increased 17.8 percent to 44.94 billion US dollars in 2007, official figures show, making China the third largest military spender in the world after the United States and Russia.

But Taiwan’s report said the true figure was two or three times that, and warned that China’s rapid military expansion had tipped the military balance in the Strait.

In discussions on the internet, I find that people continually downgrade the threat from China, based on its past history of having a woefully underequipped, outdated military. That, unfortunately, was old China. The new China has a lot of cash, and has been using that cash to buy weapons from Russia, as well as develop its own military-industrial complex.

Taiwan has always been able to count on our naval superiority, but China is focusing its military planning on deterring our navy from defending them. We should take note of their warnings and plan accordingly.

Take THAT Malor

The recently graduated Gabriel Malor wrote a post three months ago about Neil Young’s disappointment in the failure of his latest tour to deliver his anti-war message. In it, he argued that since he had never heard of Neil Young, Young’s ambitions were ridiculous.

I took him to task on that point, arguing in turn that the fact that he had never heard of Young did not really address how popular Young might be among older audiences. Then a bunch of yahoos jumped in, some arguing that Neil Young isn’t that well known, and some yelling at me for calling Gabriel ignorant (which I didn’t).

Well, let’s just say that I think the final verdict is in on how notable a star Neil Young really is:

Iconic singer and songwriter Neil Young has had an honor bestowed upon him that is not received by many musicians — his own spider.

An East Carolina University biologist, Jason Bond, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider and opted to call the arachnid after his favorite musician, Canadian Neil Young, naming it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi.

Even lauraw doesn’t have her own spider named after her. Case closed.

That didn’t take long…

The 3500 Marines sent to Afghanistan last month are already having a big impact:

US Marines supported by British troops in Afghanistan now command three key locations south of the town of Garmsir, in Helmand province, putting pressure on the main supply routes of the Taleban for arms, opium and reinforcements.

For the first time since the Nato campaign expanded to the south in 2006 the Taleban stranglehold in this part of Helmand – stretching from the Pakistan border to Garmsir – has been weakened.
…
Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the British commander of Task Force Helmand, told The Times: “This operation has severely dislocated Taleban control of an area in which they have traditionally enjoyed considerable autonomy.”

I had wished that NATO could handle the situation without US assistance: we could use stronger allies in this rapidly changing world. But it’s comforting to hear how effective our own forces are.

I just hope this starts putting some pressure on the Taliban in Pakistan.

From the funny headlines department

China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Execute Most People, Amnesty Reports

So who’s left?

The US lays it out for China

Pretty strong words, if you can believe them:

The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific has called on China to give up any plans to develop what he calls “high-end military options,” and says the United States has no intention of abandoning its position as the leading military power in Asia.

I can’t believe that the US made such a statement - it’s uncharacteristically bold and definitive. I doubt we can hold such a strong line through the upcoming administrations, though. Especially with the aggressive buildup & modernization of China’ military.

Speaking of the buildup, why exactly are the Chinese spending so much so fast to modernize their forces?

Admiral Keating says senior Chinese military officers have told him they only plan to defend what is theirs, and he says that is something the United States can understand.

He forgot to ask one important question: what do the Chinese consider “theirs?”

Summer IB Gathering Up My Way?

One of the Hostages is coming out to Colorado on around the 12th of July this year. DaveinTX reminds me that it would be a handy occasion for an IB gathering out this way. If you’re interested in coming out, let me know in the comments. So far I have:

• The Hostage
• DinTX

That was easy.

Also, let me know what you’d like to do. The Hostage was thinking about river rafting: you can also hike, check out the cool downtown area in Denver, check out the cool-but-hippie-infested Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, go egg Ward Churchill’s house, wash my car, or walk my dog. Unrelenting fun!!

And don’t worry about leaving cyberspace: I run a secured Wireless G network on a DSL modem that gives me 50 - 150 Mbps download speed. We have 3 laptops for your amusement if you don’t want to schlep your own.

Bonus: if you come out, it might motivate me to finish that flipping bathroom.

UPDATE: That date doesn’t seem to be all that popular. If other dates are preferable, put them in the comments, and we can try to pick the date that works the best for the most.

UPDATE II: This is obviously going to require a little more organization. So here goes. Here’s a table of weekends in July and August. As you all give me your availability, I’ll fill it in. Y = Yes, M=Maybe, N=No.

Name	7/12	7/19	7/26	8/2	8/9	8/16
DinTX	Y	Y	Y
eddiebear	N		Y
Lipstick	N
Mr. Matamoros	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	M
NiceDeb	M		N
RG & The Missus	N	N	N
The Hostage	Y

[Post amended to preserve anonymity of The Hostage.]