Can I question their patriotism now?

Yet another post on patriotism, I’m afraid. But this one is totally different – this time I’m applauding liberals for using the definition correctly, and responding sensibly.

Cutting Berkeley off

So the City of Berkeley has decided that the Marines and their recruiting office are “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” That’s fine by me, I suppose. Well, it’s fine by me as long as the city no longer receives any federal funding. Unfortunately they don’t receive all that much – only about $9 million in federal grants (out of $300 million in total revenues) – so they wouldn’t feel too much pain if they were cut off.

But UC Berkeley is quite a bit more exposed. They receive 20% of their total funding and 60% of their research funding from federal agencies. Roughly $300 million/year. The university and the city would certainly miss that money – UC Berkeley would be a disaster within a year.

If we really wanted to be nasty, we could make UC Berkeley students ineligible for student loans. I don’t really want to go that far, but if the city is really going to start dictating federal-level policy, they can go find their own funds and make their own loan programs.

…or they can start appreciating those little responsibilities of citizenship.

Forecast: Blogging light to nonexistent

…until something momentous happens. I’m just not getting inspired much by the news of late, and I don’t have the time to put together some of the grander posts I’ve been contemplating. I suppose studying physics would be a more sensible use of my time, anyway.

Thanks for stopping by.

It’s raining men!

Maybe the Weather Girls should have thought things through before they did that song:

A man jumped from a second-story balcony and landed on a woman below Saturday night.

Colorado Springs police said the man jumped from the Rum Bay bar at Tejon and Pikes Peak Avenue.

The 47-year-old woman was taken to Memorial Hospital.

The UN making sense?

Ban Ki-moon may not speak French well, but he may be the long-awaited Secretary-General who actually makes the UN more useful than not. This year he wants to reduce the potential for local and regional conflicts by improving the quality and distribution of water.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world on Thursday to put the looming crisis over water shortages at the top of the global agenda this year and take action to prevent conflicts over scarce supplies.

He reminded business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum that the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan was touched off by drought — and he said shortages of water contribute to poverty and social hardship in Somalia, Chad, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Colombia and Kazakhstan.
…
Ban said he will invite world leaders to “a critical high-level meeting” in September to focus on meeting U.N. development goals — including cutting by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015 — particularly in Africa.

I like this back-to-the-basics emphasis. Improving water access, and its complement, sewage treatment, is a high-leverage way of improving people’s standard of living, boosting their economies, and reducing the incidence of disease.

More than half the world has water/sewage issues, so this is an ambitious proposal. But I was just reading about the Ganges River in a recent Smithsonian Magazine, and it’s a sad tale indeed – the kind of story that brings home how important Ban’s proposal is. The Ganges services a third of India, but it has become a dump for chemicals and raw sewage. Yet people continue to bathe in it and drink from it.

Cleaning up that one river would put the UN more than 10% of the way toward its goal.

Strategy Page is on the same . . . page?

What an odd coincidence. On the heels of my last post (and many earlier ones) noting China’s rapid rise in technical capability, Strategy Page notices the same trends I’ve been writing about. And he confirms my fears concerning China’s militarization:

…the growth of higher education, and the economy (which continues to expand at 10-11 percent a year) is being used to provide China with more military power. The government believes that, in the next few years, China will surpass South Korea in technical abilities, and Germany in GDP. While China is still a minor player in the world of military high tech, the government is putting lots of money and effort into changing this. Expensive, and long term, efforts are being made to produce high tech items like jet engines, missiles and military electronics. At the current rate of progress, Chinese military technology will match that of the United States in a decade or so.

You heard it first here.

China technically backwards? Not any more.

Following the thoughts I had previously, where I was trying to convince people that China is rapidly becoming an economic and technical competitor:

A new study of worldwide technological competitiveness suggests China may soon rival the United States as the principal driver of the world’s economy — a position the U.S. has held since the end of World War II. If that happens, it will mark the first time in nearly a century that two nations have competed for leadership as equals.

The study’s indicators predict that China will soon pass the United States in the critical ability to develop basic science and technology, turn those developments into products and services — and then market them to the world. Though China is often seen as just a low-cost producer of manufactured goods, the new “High Tech Indicators” study done by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology clearly shows that the Asian powerhouse has much bigger aspirations.

That’s pretty much what I’ve been saying – many people have not updated their information and are living in the past of 11 years ago, when China scored a 22.5 on technical competitiveness. Now they have a score of 82.8!

And the US? A measly 76.1.

Wait a minute – “Busloads?”

KATU of Portland Oregon tells us:

Busloads of immigrants and their supporters arrived in Salem Tuesday to attend a second round of public testimony on requiring proof of legal presence in the United States before a driver’s license is issued in Oregon.

But whenever anybody says “busloads,” they’ve immediately eliminated the possibility that this is some sort of grassroots upheaval, which is the slant of the rest of the article. You don’t have buses unless you have an organized, funded, premeditated effort.

The common (illegal) immigrant fighting for his rights? I don’t think so.

More Bush-bashing, 4 1/2 years late

Some people never give up:

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
…
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida,” according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. “In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”

So the Bush administration made statements that were later proved to be false. In fact, they made a lot of them. This is not new news – in fact it was old in 2003. It’s been known since 2003 that the Bush administration was convinced that Iraq had WMD, and that the WMD were never found. In fact, a year and a half ago, Bush flat-out said that he was wrong.

Seems to me that all these quotes demonstrate one thing, and one thing only: that Bush and his people believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. If they were lying outright, there’s no question in my mind they would have had a much better exit strategy than, “we were wrong.”

Looking at the Al Qaeda claims, I also notice that they’ve slipped in a little caveat: “meaningful ties” rather than just “ties.” I’d sure like to know how many times they counted “ties” as a lie, when the criterion was “meaningful ties.”

But let’s look at the organizations themselves. First of all, it wasn’t “two nonprofit journalism organizations.” The Fund for Independent Journalism is basically set up to provide endowments to The Center for Public Integrity, who actually do the investigating and reporting. So it was one organization and its sugar daddy who put this report together.

Then let’s check the partisanship of The Center for Public Integrity – something suspiciously lacking from the article. Wikipedia tells us this:

Despite its claims to be a nonpartisan news organization and profession of the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics, the Center has been accused of bias towards left-wing political causes because it has accepted money from organizations and individuals that favor liberal policies and/or actively oppose right-wing political causes.

George Soros and Bill Moyer are featured prominently on the donor’s list. And if you look at The Fund for Independent Journalism’s website, you quickly find that the organization is quite liberal in orientation, and very, very unhappy with the current administration.

The upshot: the report says nothing new, nothing surprising, and nothing that the Bush administration hasn’t already admitted. In fact, all the report does is confirm the liberal slant of The Center for Public Integrity, permanently tainting their claim to “non-partisanship,” because only those suffering from severe BDS would have undertaken this project in the first place

Totally non-threatening Russian naval exercises force alarmist Brits to go on alert

Russia has resurrected strategic bomber patrols, military parades, and now, threatening naval exercises:

RAF fighters scrambled to track Russian long-range bombers joining a naval task force yesterday as Moscow practised strike tactics off the coast of France and Spain and test-launched nuclear-capable missiles.The fleet of Russian warships, supported by fighter jets and the bombers, engaged in Russia’s biggest naval exercises since the end of the Cold War.
…
A naval spokesman said: “This is the biggest exercise of its kind in the area since Soviet times.” All the warships and aircraft, which are drawn from Russia’s Northern and Black Sea fleets, were carrying full combat ammunition loads.

Fortunately the Russian fleet isn’t all that impressive:

Pavel Felgengauer, one of Russia’s leading defence analysts, told The Times that the display of power was much less impressive than it appeared. Russia’s navy was so depleted that perhaps only 30 out of 300 vessels could go to sea at any time.

But, as pointed out numerous times here, that’s changing fast:

Flush with money from oil and gas sales, Russia has embarked on a rearmament programme and will spend $189 billion (£96.3 billion) to upgrade half of the army and navy’s equipment by 2015. Defence spending has quadrupled since Mr Putin came to power in 2000. It will rise by 16.3 per cent this year to $36.8 billion (£18.8 billion) and to $45.5 billion (£23.2 billion) by 2010.

Holy graphs and charts, Batman!

I’m in a pleasant daze after watching this amazing graphical presentation on world health and income. The message on health and income wasn’t bad, either. It’s 20 minutes long, but I think you’ll find it well worth it.

Looks like Russia will be shooting first

Empty saber-rattling or fan mail from some flounder?

The Russian military’s Chief of Staff says Moscow is ready to use preventative nuclear strikes to defend itself.

Speaking at a conference at the Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow, General Yuri Baluyevsky said Russia must be ready to counter possible threats.

“We do not intend to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary that all our partners in the international community clearly understand that for the defence of our sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, the armed forces will be employed, including preventively the use of nuclear weapons,” he said.

Noting that Iran is an ally of Russia, and is the only country on deck whose territorial integrity might be at risk, I’m suspecting that this is directed at the US. Baluyevsky has been issuing a number of “he can’t really mean that”-type statements concerning the US’s plans for a missile defense system in Europe, as well as creepy “we mean no harm to your planet”-type reassurances. He seems to be Putin’s point man for hawkish statements – his deniable approach to staking out aggressive positions in foreign policy.

Nice to know that Putin’s still thinking about us.

Feeling November’s blues a little early

Just watching the Chinese fire drill that is our modern primary system, and the candidates who have enthusiastically helped to make it that way, I’m struck with one thought:

Please, please let the November election be close enough that no party can claim a mandate.

Religious Left: Don’t improve the safety of warheads – we like the old ones better

Pinheads.

The Religious Left is claiming to have killed – at least momentarily – the proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), a program that would update the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Having organized a letter from 50 left-leaning clerics in North Dakota, the Religious Left is claiming credit for having persuaded Senator Byron Dorgan, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, to omit funding for RRW in 2008.

Morons. The RRW program is intended to replace our venerable warheads with new warheads that incorporate modern (anti-terrorist) safety features and less sensitive explosives. The new warheads are supposed to be easier to maintain (reducing likelihood of accidents) and to decommission.

The best way to make a nuclear capability more dangerous is to make it an uncertain nuclear capability. If you aren’t sure that your aging warheads will work perfectly, you use more warheads.

Mike Rosen on patriotism

Mike Rosen and I are on the same page:

They might covet some wispy notion of a socialist paradise that never was and never can be, their vision for a new America “after the revolution,” but they hate our actual history and the heroes, institutions, values and lifestyles of bourgeois America.

They hate capitalism, consumerism, competition, the global economy, technology, the military, intelligence agencies, cops, George W. Bush, Republicans, MacDonald’s, Wal-Mart and the Fox News Channel.

They hate many of the same things Osama bin Laden hates about America. Their loyalty is not to America but to abstract leftist ideology. They despise the petty, real America that stands in the way of their dream.

Patriotism is simply love of and loyalty to one’s country. I’d go a step further: love of one’s country above all others.

This echoes a theme I’ve been pushing here for the past year – here’s that very theme as applied to Cindy Sheehan:

This is exactly my point with regards to the patriotism of many liberals: they are patriotic to their own idea of what America should be, not to what it is. So when she defends her patriotism, she’s defending her personal conception of America, not America.

To a conservative, that’s not patriotism. That’s narcissism.

As I’ve also said before, I’m not sure why it upsets liberals so much when their patriotism is challenged – I’d think that the idea of a blind loyalty to a country would be anathema to their free-thinking, authority-rejecting spirits. That’s when my cynicism surfaces and leads me to conclude that patriotism is just another political gamepiece to them.  Useful in rhetoric, discarded in practice.

Of course, how can you practice that which you don’t understand?

Other posts on patriotism:

• Howard Zinn fires up my patriotism in time for the 4th
• Michael Moore proves that he doesn’t understand the definition of “patriotism”