Ball Diamond Ball

I agree.

The Middle East is impossible to understand if you assume that Israel will not accept Palestine. But the Middle East is easily understood if you assume that the Arabs will accept nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

Arafat was offered Palestine, and nothing changed.
Israel has accepted Palestine (a la Caroline Glick), and nothing has changed.

Gaza has its own port cities, its own border with Egypt, and not a single Israeli on the territory. They have a “government” funded by massive cash inflows from around the world, and they have complete control over their social, economic, and military institutions. Nowhere in the history of mankind has a state existed with more freedom and less responsibility than the current Gaza Strip. It should be succeeding … Continue reading →

Stand and fight! You should not even offer amendments. Just block this infernal treachery! These NON-BINDING resolutions have no effect in law, and the symbolic damage is already done. Therefore, it cheapens us to engage in negotiations, and gains us nothing. It will not even profit the Democrats, but they are too stupid to see this. The only winners will be our enemies, and it would be nice to have at least one party which can see that. It would be more than nice, in fact–it is a matter of survival to our very Republic.

You would not entertain haggling over the price of your wife. You would reject the offer on principle, and probably counter-offer a punch in the face. Your country deserves no less.

Stand … Continue reading →

Some people think that the way to do it is to raise taxes. This is madness.

We pay for the war by maintaining an economy strong enough to kick ass on seven continents and the moon. You do that by keeping taxes low, which actually increases total revenue. If instead you raise taxes, you slow the economy, and you wind up with a larger slice of a smaller pie.

I have been away. Not in any physical sense (and no, I was not deployed anywhere), but I have been posting over at Little Green Footballs, a.k.a LGF, which I felt provided me with a far wider audience. Which is true. And the companionship of my fellow Lizards (check LGF to figure that one out). Which is valuable. But I have been solicited by people who want me to update my blog with increasing regularity. I can’t link to it, as these have been actual walking, speaking human beings. People I gave the link to a long time ago, and who tell me months later, “Please post something! I check your blog once a week, and still all I see is the weird Kofi post, or whatever … Continue reading →

Here are the results of my informal and non-scientific poll:

Respondants who support Israel and think current level of force is appropriate:
Arch-Conservative English teacher, Proprietor of this blog.
Conservative Canadian English teacher, eh.
Liberal Democrat English teacher with tattoos, greatly admires Bill Clinton.
Aging Liberal English Teacher, balding with ponytail, greatly admires Jimmy Carter.

Respondants who do not support Israel, think current level of force is too much:
[crickets]

Respondants who will not commit to a position:
Fellow who said “the last I heard, the Ginza strip was given to the… Palestinians?”
Fellow who said “kill them all, let God sort them out.”

So across the political spectrum, it’s 4-0 in favor of Israel, with two abstentions.

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Bob Schieffer has mis-appropriated the fable of the Frog and the Scorpion, and rolled it into the media campaign against Israel. If you start with the world-view that the Middle East is impossible to understand, you wind up condemning Israel. The converse is true as well; If you start by condemning Israel, then the Middle East is impossible to understand. On the other hand, if you start with the idea that the wars in the Middle East can be understood, and have largely rational causes, you wind up with this: the Arabs will accept nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

The story below, as the closing comments of the July 15 2006 broadcast of Face The Nation is how Bob Schieffer views the Middle East: Unfathomable.

When … Continue reading →

“No Tornadoes Confirmed In Nebraska-Kansas Area This Year
First Time Since 1950 There’s Been No Tornadoes In Region”

Failed Presidential Candidate and former Senator and Vice-President Albert V. Gore Junior (D-OZ) issued a statement condemning the Bush administration for the lack of tornadoes this year in Kansas and Nebraska. “You can’t have KANzuzz… without tornadoes… [sigh]… and you can’t have NuhBRASkuhh… without any twisters… and… [sigh]… if *I* were president, we would have had a bumper crop of tornadoes. Believe me, a Gore Presidency would have seen F5 tornadoes ripping the roofs off of churches and guillotining whole herds of schoolchildren with flying… duhbreee.”

local6.com – Weather – No Tornadoes Confirmed In Nebraska-Kansas Area This Year

http://www.local6.com/weather/9468760/detail.html

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