GLOBAL FREEDOM AND DRUNK COAL MINERS
Notice how quick President Bush’s father was to explain to the press that we don’t have to take seriously what his son said at his second inaugural about “ending tyranny in our world”? Thanks for sharing, Dad. What you really made clear is why you never had a second inaugural yourself.The speechwriter who wrote Bush the Elder’s first and only inaugural address (where he pledged to achieve a “kinder and gentler nation,” and Nancy Reagan exploded in anger, whispering to her husband, “Kinder and gentler than what?”), Peggy Noonan whined once again in the Wall Street Journal today about GW’s “overweening” idealism, and that his speech had no “historical context.” I guess Peggy, like her former boss, didn’t pay much attention to the news last year.Perhaps the most important story of 2004 was the achievement of democracy in so many countries. Every “realist” squish in Washington has the vapors over GW’s suddenly becoming a radically dangerous Lone Ranger cowboy - when what’s really happened is he’s acting on the old political adage that if you discover a parade that’s going where you want, get out in front and lead it. GW’s second inaugural address was the Vision Statement. What is needed now is the Business Plan, how the vision is to be actually implemented. For an insight into Bush’s Business Plan for Ending Tyranny, we can look at the drunk coal miners of Donetsk.
ANTI-DEMOCRACY DEMOCRATS
Something had better jog the liberal mind from its obsessive Bush-hatred. The liberals, on both sides of the Atlantic, are in imminent danger of repeating the great shame of many of their ideological grandparents in the middle of the last century, who became unthinking apologists for Stalin's terror and tyranny. This coming Sunday, the Iraqi people are holding an election -- the first real election in the 6,000-year history of this ancient people. But the cynicism and indifference of liberals to this extraordinary event should shock the conscience of decent people, because Iraqis are marching through shot and shell to gain this first chance at self-government.
SHORTING THE EURO
When Ted Turner compared Fox News to Hitler this week, a Fox spokesman commented that “Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind - we wish him well.” It is time to feel such sympathy for other famous businessfolk who have similarly lost their minds - such as Warren Buffett.The legendary investment guru has allowed his newly acquired left-wing politics to idiotize him. Just like Turner, he sets up an assumed liberal populism as an envy-deflection device, ends up hating America and the capitalist system that made him wealthy - and becomes a fool in the process.To be clear: only a fool would bet long-range on the euro now.
JOHNNY AND THE TSANTSA
For years it was a fantasy of mine to be a guest on the Tonight Show. I was writing a book entitled The Adventurer’s Guide, and I fantasized I would appear on the show promoting the book by showing Johnny Carson a tsantsa, a human shrunken head. This fantasy came true on November 16, 1976. I found myself standing behind that famous multi-colored curtain, holding a small black box, and hearing Carson introducing me. Perhaps professional entertainers would not be nervous behind that curtain, but I was almost paralyzed. That old Chinese warning to be careful for what you wish for, as it might come true, hit me hard. So when the curtain parted and I stepped out into the lights, it was in a total daze that I found myself in that chair sitting next to Johnny Carson with 20 million people watching. And with one brief look by Carson into my eyes, the daze was gone. Somehow I felt comfortable and relaxed. Somehow those 20 million people weren’t there, and it was just me and this friendly fellow having a conversation. Johnny Carson had this almost magical ability to put you at ease - on national television. I believe that within almost everyone there is a dream of adventure - a dream of doing something truly memorable, thrilling, and special. Johnny Carson gave me the opportunity to provide encouragement to people so they could fulfill that dream. As millions of Americans commemorate his passing, I’d like to renew that opportunity, and encourage you to get out into the world and follow whatever dream there is inside you.
TAKING BUSH SERIOUSLY
It must have been a scatological moment for dictators around the world, as they soiled themselves watching George Bush’s inaugural address on global television. They must have known this was coming, for GW has been telegraphing his punches for a long time.That’s why they put all their hopes on GW’s defeat last November. They knew John Kerry would never come after them. Now they know George Bush will.The appropriate reaction to Bush’s Inaugural Address yesterday is: awe-struck. This was a Babe Ruth moment, pointing to where he wanted to hit the ball and swinging for the bleachers. I couldn’t help laughing when I read Peggy Noonan’s petty, small-minded essay in the Wall Street Journal this morning, grouchily complaining about Bush’s “mission inebriation.” She didn’t like the speech because it was so much better than any she wrote for Ronald Reagan.I saw three of Peggy’s former colleagues - White House speechwriters for President Reagan - at one of the Inaugural Balls last night, and they all agreed that Bush’s Second Inaugural will be seen as one of the historically greatest of any American President.So Peggy can cluck, and British newspapers can smirk, but anyone with an ounce of common sense had better start perceiving the reality behind the Left’s myth about GW. You can be sure folks like Hugo Chavez and Aleksandr Lukashenko have no such illusions.For they know, as do their fellow dictators such as Robert Mugabe, Kim Il-Sung, Than Shwe, Ayatollah Khameini, and Fidel Castro, that there is now a bulls-eye painted on them by someone scary-smart and scary-serious who happens to be the most powerful man in the world.
TO WIN IN IRAQ WE MUST WIN IN IRAN
It has been quite clear for some time now that al Qaeda and the other major terrorist groups — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jamaa, etc. — are all working together, and have been ever since we went into Afghanistan. The war in the Middle East — for it is a regional war, not merely a battle for Iraq — cannot be analyzed at the level of the individual terrorist groups, because the terrorists are part of a larger context. The organizing center is, as Spanish Magistrate Balthazar Garzon publicly put it, a "directorate" located in Iran, that works closely with Iranian intelligence organizations, including the Revolutionary Guards. Those organizations, in turn, work with their counterparts in other friendly countries.
WE’RE ALL CRIMINALS NOW
I’m writing this from a place called Mea Culpa City. It’s not a lot of fun being here, but it’s where I have to live until I finish this essay. It turns out that I have wronged a friend. The silver - well, pewter - lining is that in attempting to rectify it I learned how easy it has become for the Federales to turn any of us into criminals.The Cato Institute in Washington has just published a book on this: Go Directly To Jail: The Criminalization Of Almost Everything. It documents how the federal government now views its jurisdiction as limitless - which means almost anything you or your business does can be a federal crime. The Cato book paints a frightening picture - but the truth is, it’s much worse.It’s worse because of the depraved collusion between politicians and their buddies in the media to demonize and criminalize someone on the front pages of newspapers. This of course is not exclusive to Washington. States are on to the game as well. New York’s Elliot Spitzer has turned the State Attorney General’s office into his private Gestapo. But he’s New York’s problem. Federal agents and federal politicians are a problem for all of us.
USE SNOPES!
Has anyone emailed you this picture of the December 26 tsunami hitting Phuket, Thailand? It’s all over the web, yet if you’ve ever been to Phuket, you know this is a fake. The city is actually Antofagasta, Chile with phony Photoshopped waves. We all have friends with the terrible habit of forwarding some shocking claim worthy of National Enquirer on to everyone in their email list, without bothering to check its veracity out first. There’s no need to be upset at them, for they’re excited and just want to share something they think is cool - but now you can tell them how to easily find if any claim is for real or not. Just go to Snopes.
A NEEDLESS CATASTROPHE
I troll Microsoft newsgroups regularly. It’s part of duties. Normally I troll development newsgroups, particularly those involving databases. However, now I’m doing a stint in XP newsgroups. Last week I described a catastrophe in the making that I was able to avert. This week I’m describing one I ran across last night, but too late. Not that I have much sympathy. Just to save $39.95, the fellow I'm about to describe ruined his computer.
SARKO VS. EURABIA
My wife just returned from a business trip to Paris last night. She hadn’t been there in a while and was shocked at its transformation. “Where are all the French?” she asked. “Every other person I saw was Arab or North African.” Now she understands how Europe is becoming Eurabia.Yet standing in the way blocking France’s march to cultural doom is a short, wiry fellow with a distinctly un-French name. He’s the most popular politician in France, rock-star popular, married to a beautiful, glamorous model, and the odds-on favorite to be the next President of France. He’s Nicolas Sarkozy - the beloved “Sarko,” as everyone calls him, and he’s part Jewish.