Redstate

We're not a bunch of impatient conservative whiners from broken homes, Leon.  ;)

Reading several thread tonight, this is one of the most UNCIVIL evenings I can remember.

There seems to be a plethora of liberals and talking-point-o-matic rhetoric out there tonight!

Lots of people off their meds!

I'm going to bed...take two naproxen and call me in the morning!

Because I won't use diary entries to talk about New York Times articles pumping up Communist regimes anymore, the only place they're appropriate is an open thread.  

So in addition to going on a Mission with Nick Kristof, everyone should have a look at this piece of pro-Chavez propaganda at the Times.

Meet the Sandalistas.

The actor Danny Glover has come. Harry Belafonte has also been here. So has the antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, the prominent African-American writer Cornel West and Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales...

...

Reva Batterman, 27, a graduate student, said she had wanted to come to Venezuela to show its people that "we're not all just Bush supporters or imperialists."

...

Emily Kurland, a 26-year-old social worker originally from Chicago, said that was exactly what she and the others here were getting.

...

"The fact that we have a country that's trying to create an alternative model is bold and ambitious and unique, and that's why people are wondering, 'Is this possible?' " said Mr. Boudin, whose parents, Katherine Boudin and David Gilbert, were members of the 1970's radical group the Weathermen. "The intellectual in me is curious."

Chavez has managed to attract a lot of attention because of his opposition to Bush, and the usual suspects are migrating there...but my question is:  is this a bad thing?

The world is proving that they're on the wrong side.

Make the socialists live under the reality of socialism for a while, I'd bet they'll come back born again capitalists.

If Condi ever gets the bump up to VP (as Fred Barnes recently suggested for Bush to 'shake-up' his administration) I would suggest we somehow get Tony Blair to be US Secretary of State.  He's the most articulate supporter of current US foreign policy in regards to the GWOT, it'd work in some crazy way.

...of oil wealth to pursue some good old-fashioned populism. It's easy to get people to love you if you write them what amounts to royalty checks. I read his "socialist rhetoric" as basically a sham and a personality cult. I read the Times piece kowalski mentions, and they're obviously just cheerleading what they hope will be a Leftist rebirth spreading across Latin America. But not every country has free money to hand out.

The criminal thing is that, properly utilized, Venezuela's oil wealth could be creating a world-class infrastructure and a super-prosperous nation. But that's not what Chavez is all about. Meanwhile, he won't have to face the kind of comeuppance that failed socialism and massive poverty would cause, because he has the oil to cushion the blow. And he's already learned from Fidel that you can always blame the Yanquis for all your problems.

As always, this is what sucks about democracy. People get the leadership they ask for.

And I think of Venezuela's wealth and it's patently clear to me that managed properly it could make the entire society prosperous.

Instead Chavez has decided to make Bush his enemy, for the usual reasons.  It's a shame that people who are graduate students in America don't understand this fundamental mismanagement.  Instead, they're once again caught up in the romantic, "taste of Revolution" vision.  It will end badly, as it always has.  A century of failure means nothing to the hardcore Socialists, but they'll keep trying.  They're wired that way.  

I'm not so sure that it was Democracy that brought Chavez to power in Venezuela.  I know Jimmy Carter says the elections are free and fair and it's wrong, so wrong to doubt him--but there's an awful lot of evidence mounting against Chavez' campaigning techniques.

Iran is reason #1.

Well, at least I know there will be one team I like in the other final four, vying for 65th best team in the country.

I'm probably a little younger than you are, and believe me, that's no boast and nothing you should be worried about -- it's only recently that I'm coming to realize that the Carter Administration may have been the single biggest mistake the American public ever made.  I loved him for a long time, and I nodded in agreement with so many people who thought he was our greatest statesman and one of our best Presidents...

What did the 70's do to me?!?!  Realizing that Brzezinski is really off his rocker has taken me more than 20 years.  God, I don't even recognize myself sometimes.

Adult Swin on Cartoon Network is advertising some sort of new Chuck Norris show starting soon.  I know there's some big fans here, you may want to check it out.

Do they always do it that way?

And when he found out it was a cartoon half-hour, he roundhouse kicked it into a live-action 24/7 network.

Fine, I can't do it.

But I'll watch.

Of the play in game. Though, to be fair, most office pools don't require the game to be picked, and the game is an afterthought on ESPN2.

You can't spell uranium without Iran.

capitalists are keeping socialism from working.

Chavez is using the uncommon blessingof oil wealth to pursue some good old-fashioned populism.[...] Meanwhile, he won't have to face the kind of comeuppance that failed socialism and massive poverty would cause, because he has the oil to cushion the blow.

Socialism doesn't just fall apart because the system runs out of money, though that can happen even to Chavez if world economic conditions, or his big mouth, get the best of him.

Socialism also collapses under the crushing weight of bureaucracy.  Men, especially prosperous men, want to be free; they want a challenge; they want a structure that allows them to better themselves; and they want the status quo.  Give them leisure time and take away their dignity with handouts, and with the slightest change you will see them in the streets demanding the right to be even lazier.  And like the French kids, they won't even know that deep down they are fighting for the things I've mentioned.  But notice that they are fighting.

Unless I'm wrong, in which case the people of Venezuela will suckle passively at the teat of Mother Gummintista as long as there is milk.  

Except they are probably wealthy celebrities or trustafarians who will live in bubbles while they are there.  Maybe one or two will end up like that idiot girl who joined Sendero Luminoso in Peru.

...but I disagree with almost everything you said. I think one of the strange lessons of history and of current events is that people are perfectly content to live under tyranny for long periods of time. Only a very few blessed people have the willingness to fight and die for freedom. And oddly enough, most of them are native English speakers. There are shining non-Anglophone exceptions like Walesa and Havel.

I became finally convinced of this view in the years after Tiananmen-1989, when like most Americans I took it on faith that a little capitalism would lead to an ineluctable clamor for political liberty, just as night follows day. It hasn't happened, and it won't happen, because the thirst for freedom just isn't in the Chinese gene pool.

Go to your average American university campus and start talking about freedom. The professors will start snorting and laughing, because they believe that freedom is nothing but a cruel illusion. And millions of people in Latin America are deeply receptive to the fantasy that happiness depends not on freedom but rather on eliminating people who have more material wealth than others.

Flame away. I deserve it for my lack of faith in human nature.

...process by which Chavez was elected, you're still implicitly accepting the democratic principle. I'm not competent to judge the cleanliness of Chavez' election down there, any more than Jimmeh CAW-tuh is. (The difference is that I admit I'm not competent to judge it.)

However Chavez got himself in power, I believe he would retain it even in a squeaky-clean election. That's because populism works as long as there is free money to fund it. So my quarrel indeed is with the democratic process, to a certain extent. Not that I know any process that would work better. But it says a lot about the American people that we tend to elect governments that are reasonably committed to our core values time after time. Other countries do the same thing, and end up with results like Chavez and Hamas.

made an interesting observation last night, and compared the MSM to Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day.

They go to bed everynight thinking thier latest reports and rants have finished President Bush for good.

When they awake in the morning, he is still President, noting has changed, and they start all over again!

Brilliant analogy!

...the reasons that the MSM (and many on the Left) give for supposing that the President is finished:

Don't you watch the news, you stupid Republican morons?

Well, no, I don't. And it's exactly because I can look around me and see that things are going well. I don't need Hell's cheerleaders to tell me with circular reasoning that things are going badly.

And for what it's worth, the MSM are equal-opportunity believers in their own power to shape events. I still remember ABC's Sam Donaldson predicting with utter confidence that Clinton would resign within days, after the semen on Monica's dress was verified to be his.

It hasn't happened, and it won't happen, because the thirst for freedom just isn't in the Chinese gene pool.

 Give it time. The founding fathers had the advantage of being able to work well outside the boundaries of England until such a time as they could pull off a successful rebellion. Would the same group have been able to overthrow England itself working strictly from inside their mainland?

 The Chinese are in a much tougher position, yet they do what they can, availing themselves of every opportunity to suck in information and Western culture. You regularly see exiled Chinese dissidents drumming up support for pro-democracy efforts here in the U.S. so I hardly think they have a genetic predilection towards communism.

 I think there's truth in the idea that everyone wants "freedom" - freedom to be what they want to be and live how they want to live. The Chinese ideal of freeom may not be equivalent to the American ideal but would nonetheless be a great improvement over what they have now.

Toronto Star:

How To Spot A Baby Conservative

Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ...

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

But before you begin some serious self-introspection to determine if you were whiny as a kid or not, read this:

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn't going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right.

But that's not all:

Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country.

Really? You don't say.

In case you're still worried, this should put your mind at ease:

Jost welcomed the new study, saying it lends support to his conclusions. But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona who was critical of Jost's study, was less impressed.

"I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best," he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members."

Just some more fresh and balanced reporting from our fair and unbaised media. (h/t Drudge)

I had a diary the other day about Gore coming back in '08. More noise about it!

Suggestion, DO NOT read this on a full stomach.

Now being called the:

The New New Gore

Five years ago, Al Gore was the much-mocked pol who blew a gimme with his stiff demeanor and know-it-all style. Today? C'mon, admit it: You like him again.

Full Article

and I am not sure that with the level of technology available that the date will ever change.  

to make the point I wanted to make, which was the socialism falls apart because of bureaucracy.  I got distracted by my own transcendant eloquence, I guess.

See, even if there's a limitless supply of money coming in, it still has to be directed.  Bureaucrats do it very badly, such that metaphorically speaking, people have to hop in their Mercedes to drive over to the bread line.  

Socialism says everyone will be equal, but its inevitable mechanism, the bureaucracy, is ill-fitted for the task.  That's what leads to dissatisfaction: people are promised or accustomed to utopia, and instead get triplicatopia.

I don't remember the exact numbers but I believe that when the men's tourney moved to the 64-team format in the mid-80s (it was 32 teams in 1979, then 48 in 1980, and had crept up to as high as 52), there were something like 33 conferences eligible for an automatic bid, which left 31 at-large bids to fill the field of 64.

Then a new conference became eligible for an automatic bid, and instead of reducing the at-large bids by 1, they simply expanded from 64 to 65 teams, hence the need for a 'play-in game' which so far has always been on Tuesday in Dayton.

Under your theory, the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York (who's managers appear to use Dante's Inferno as thier business model), should have been stormed years ago.

Personally, I don't think that either corruption or inefficiency is going to bring down the Chavez government.  As long as Hugo and his cronies make sure that the poor are fed Just Enough (enough to keep them alive, but not enough to move them up Maslov's Hierarchy), and know where the food is coming from, they'll be singing his praises.  As long as he's got oil revenue and doesn't get stupid, he's all set.

...is perhaps the most effective form of government ever invented. The genius of bureaucracy is that it disconnects accountability from action. The people at the bottom of the chain are concerned only with keeping their jobs. Only they can act, but they have neither the power nor the incentive to do so. At higher levels of the chain, the same incentives apply. Those who are empowered to act are far removed from the lower levels where action is desired, and they similarly have no incentive to take any risks. The result is stasis, which perfectly serves the needs of those who are in a position to tax away the fruits of the people's labor.

But there's nothing about bureaucracy that is particular to socialism. What I just described is just as true in the US as it is in France or anywhere else. And it definitely has the effect of stifling economic productivity. But I differ with you in that, based on my reading of history, people seem willing to tolerate low levels of prosperity quite well.

What I think will sink Chavez is if he succumbs to the standard disease of Latin Leftists: fear of his own people. And there are plenty of signs that this is already happening. If he starts systematically torturing and "disappearing" his political opponents, then Venezuela will replay the experience of other Latin nations in the Eighties.  If he follows this path, Chavez will eventually be deposed in a bitter, bloody coup, at a catastrophic cost in lives and treasure.

Somewhere, in the Pantheon of Evil, Che Guevara is watching and smiling at the thought.

This new article from The Onion cracked me up.

Constructionist Supreme Court

...is greater than their thirst for freedom, and this is true even for most of those who left China for education and greater opportunity. Many Chinese still remember the dark days of Mao, the brutal Japanese occupation, the time of the warlords and the humiliation of a huge nation unable to defend itself or assert power in the world. They are willing--for a time--to give their government great leeway to ensure that these bad things never happen again.  Freedom from foreign aggression and domination is still the "freedom" they want right now. The thirst for political freedom is in their gene pool, but the gene is being carried by a generation too young to assert itself.

Go Gamecocks!

Vietnam Vets poetry

here's one, to get started.

No Lie, GI

We had a deal, he and I,

of no bullshit between us.

If one of us got wounded,

the other wouldn't lie.

So when he got hit

and he asked me,

"How's my leg?"

I looked him straight in the eye

and told him, "It's fine."

It looked fine to me,

laying over there,

looked as good as new.

No Lie, GI.

About the people from FreeRepublic who were commenting on the accidental death of an iraqi family and here are some cool responses from the dimwits (speaking about freerepublic members):

I guess that's what my " ... I don't know" is about. This kind of ** traumatizes me. I can't believe these are our fellow citizens. I consider myself to be a pacifist, and committed to democratic principles. But these people ** me up and freak me out--you're right, they do make me violent (and that feels so counter to my being), and they do make me question my committments to free speech, and letting people express themselves, etc. These ***s make me question everything. What the ** kind of country are we living in?

I'm gonna go whack a few Freepers.  Hey, ******, its a war.  Thunder-striking happens.  Get over it.

Memo to Freepers:  Post Thunder-strike, don't send any of your buddies to avenge your whacked brethren.  They'll get whacked to.  I take unkindly to traitors.

God, can we please get American Revolution II started so I can get down to the business of dealing with these modern day Tories in the manner with which they must be dealt with???

and

I keep hoping that some horrible, GOP-funding oligarchical corporation ends up poisoning the Freeper's water supply or sells them tainted beef.

That, and that some mysterious, government-insider agent (ala the Anthrax terrorist) blows up a few Justice Sunday gatherings.

It frankly sickens me to hear myself suggest as much, but these people are truly dangerous.

and

I have 5 boys at my dinner table last night - they are between 14 and 16 years old. Four of the five are actively exploring Canadian citizenship.

amusing...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/22/73728/2217

But as with all dictatorial regimes, Chavez will kill off the production of the 'money', in his case oil.  Don't forget, Russia is rich with oil, as well as coal, gold and diamonds, yet the people stood in line for a loaf of bread.

Right now, he is able to pump the oil out of the ground, with infrastructure built by capitalists, but once the infrastructure has been destroyed by the always present graft and corruption, the oil money stops.  When it does, Chavez is a dead man.

We do like him again! (and this time we won't need any courts.)

and all of you should check it out on hughhewitt.com which has a link to last nights show and will to tonights show. Also a good link to Hughs Chris Hitchens interview.

Hugh was just on for the 2nd night in a row and I must say that Anderson Cooper is a fair man.

Hugh has been awesome and Anderson gave him time to smack the msm with devastating blows.

And you talk about a non-verbose lawyer that can get to the point whether in asking or answering questions, wow! Hugh is da man.

Bush being on the stump seems to have really energized the debate, as he always seems to do when he takes a notion!

And I think he will take a notion just enough for us to maintain power in 06 and win the war!

feels right

Conservative blog at Washington Post!

Does anyone else see this as an historical event?  I believe that this will go down in history as a historical event that will eventually change the media forever.  The NYT will have to follow suit if they are to survive.  Does not anyone else see this event as the major change in the MSM?