Friday, August 15, 2008

Free kibbles

Russia will attempt to exploit the divide in Europe after invading Georgia and Poland's signing of the missile shield deal. Dumb European countries will be swayed by Russia temporarily, like Germany and France were against the US when Bush took office. But both those countries changed direction and developed closer ties to the US, and European countries that embrace Russia now will eventually reject Russian aggression and come running back to the US. While Russia continues to roll through Georgia, the US continues to talk. Talk's cheap. We should be acting. By now, Bush should have organized the G7 to reform without Russia.

Russia threatens nuclear strike against Poland because it agreed to host the missile defense shield. If there's a silver lining in all this, it's that the world finally waking up to the Cold War Putin's Russia and China have been waging against the west. We have to wake up to it before we can win it.

Article claims Pakistani President Musharraf will resign in days. Great. This is the only effective leader Pakistan has, our strongest ally in Pakistan, the US government undermined him, and now he might forced out. Cato reports that at the same time, the civilian government has proven inept and the people of Pakistan are beginning to look to the army to take over again. I suppose Bush's Pakistan policy could have been worse, but it's hard to see how with Musharraf being forced out and Osama bin Laden enjoying a safe haven in Pakistan. The Democrats also share the blame for our bad Pakistan policy since they led the charge to take power from Musharraf.

McCain and Obama are tied again. This is the most bizarre campaign I can ever remember. Obama's is an unabashed communist sympathizer and radical black movement supporter, the American people are naturally afraid of that, his mother is a communist sympathizer, his father and mentors were a communist advocates, he has the glowing endorsement of the communist party, his policy proposals are hard-core socialist proposals, but McCain refuses to capitalize on it. Now McCain is considering naming Lieberman as his VP. It's stunning terrible these 2 candidates are. America is a basically libertarian country, but the 2 parties are running a belicose liberal and hard-core socialist/communist sympathizer. Compared to both these candidates, Michael Dukakis would look good.

US Olympic swim team uses fluid dynamics and high tech to improve performance.

Scientist identifies recently evolved new species of water lily, proving that evolution is occurring right now.

Comparison of George Bush's green ranch home and Al Gore's energy burning monstrosity.

Pat Buchanan exposes US hypocrisy by comparing our actions in Serbia and Kosovo to Russia's actions in Georgia and South Ossetia. We should have never stuck our noses in the Serbia-Kosovo conflict, and while the circumstances and motives of the US in Serbia and Russia in Georgia are very different, we entered Serbia as part of a multi-national peacekeeping force to end ethnic cleansing, not an invader intent on toppling the elected government and taking control of an oil pipeline like Russia, the accusation of hypocrisy is pretty accurate. His comparison of Israel's invasion of Lebanon after Hezbollah kidnapped an Israeli soldier is also misguided - Georgia did not attack Russia as Hezbollah, a Lebanese institution, attacked Israel. Buchanan does a good job explaining how our post-Cold War foreign policy has alienated Russia. But Pat, when did Bill Clinton, who bombed Serbia and sent in US troops, become a neo-con?

Victor Davis Hanson explains that the Russian invasion of Georgia was long-planned, instigating the perfect opportunity supplied by Georgia's bombing of South Ossetia. He has a great quote about western apologists:
The Russians have sized up the moral bankruptcy of the Western Left. They know that half-a-million Europeans would turn out to damn their patron the United States for removing a dictator and fostering democracy, but not more than a half-dozen would do the same to criticize their long-time enemy from bombing a constitutional state.

The Russians rightly expect Westerners to turn on themselves, rather than Moscow — and they won’t be disappointed. Imagine the morally equivalent fodder for liberal lament: We were unilateral in Iraq, so we can’t say Russia can’t do the same to Georgia. (As if removing a genocidal dictator is the same as attacking a democracy). We accepted Kosovo’s independence, so why not Ossetia’s? (As if the recent history of Serbia is analogous to Georgia’s.) We are still captive to neo-con fantasies about democracy, and so encouraged Georgia’s efforts that provoked the otherwise reasonable Russians (As if the problem in Ossetia is our principled support for democracy rather than appeasement of Russian dictatorship).

From what the Russians learned of the Western reaction to Iraq, they expect their best apologists will be American politicians, pundits, professors, and essayists — and once more they will not be disappointed. We are a culture, after all, that after damning Iraqi democracy as too violent, broke, and disorganized, is now damning Iraqi democracy as too conniving, rich, and self-interested — the only common denominator being whatever we do, and whomever we help, cannot be good.

Ralph Peters give more details explaining how much planning and preparation had to have gone into Russia's invasion of Georgia. He also points out this invasion has exposed glaring weaknesses in Russia's military, especially it's air force, which has failed to destroy the oil pipeline despite numerous attempts to hit it.

Ann Coulter points out the obvious - before John Edwards volunteered to take a paternity test, he had already made certain his mistress would refuse to allow one. This guys is as transparent as Barack Obama.

Jonah Goldberg compares the Clinton's to movie monsters because they never die and will come back to scare everybody at the Democrat convention.

Thomas Sowell explains that the reason labor unions want to do away with secret ballot for unionizing is so they can use intimidation tactics to grow the unions.

George Will has an unusually bitter column about how Russia's invasion of Georgia should have brought the world back to reality, but Obama and Bush were slow to figure it out, and the world is transfixed on the Olympics in tyrannical China.

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