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Iraq: Civil War, Or Just Stupid?

So now NBC has declared the war in Iraq a "civil war." Well, Sunnis are killing Shiites and vice versa; throw in the U.S. and the Kurds, and you can call it a civil war or a free-for-all, but it's hard to deny that factions within the country are at war.

So the question once again is, How does the U.S. win a fight between two OTHER parties? How do we define "victory" for our country in a war between two other factions? When people say we'll "win," what do they even MEAN by that?

I stand second to none in being a rock-ribbed conservative. That's why I stand by the old, traditional concept that the purpose of war is to defeat the enemy (an enemy that has done something really egregious to us). The purpose is not to "adopt" some foreign country and nurse it to adulthood as we define it. That was the oh-so-clever concept devised by -- well, by whom? Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? Bush himself? It's hard to be sure. But they all bought into the highly modern, advanced, brainy innovation that armies and wars are for "democratizing" whole areas of the globe.

They talked about Iraq before the war as if it were a renovation project: "We'll go in, knock out a wall here, put in a patio there, build a Jacuzzi, and boom -- you won't know the place when we're through." That's the way they talked. It was a stupid notion, the half-baked notion of a dilettante, an amateur,  somebody who thinks he's a whole lot more clever than he really is. You can take your pick as to who that root, original clever boy was.

But that's why I dislike the crude, brainless bigotry of "Bush lied us into war" and "No blood for oil." Those are propaganda slogans for flea-bitten left-wing morons. Somebody in this administration got intoxicated with his own cleverness, and carried the day argumentation-wise; so now we have an adopted problem child or tar-baby on our hands. But the aims of this half-baked "renovation project" were announced beforehand. It was stupidity and dilettantism, all you smelly biased half-wit protesters -- not lies.


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Brute-Force Economics

The Wall Street Journal, in a story headlined "The Wages Of Politics,"  says

               A hike in the national minimum wage seems all but certain
         to become one of the first fruits of the Democrats' victories
         this week. Nancy Pelosi, the presumptive Speaker of the House,
         has pledged to raise the minimum by over $2, to $7.25 from $5.15.

You can argue this, or you can argue that. You can argue that supporting the higher mandated minimum wage makes you a White Knight, noble and pure. You can argue that  higher minimum wages cause lower employment -- fewer jobs.

I argue, economics cannot be governed by brute force. Economics is a spontaneous, grass-roots, from-the-bottom-up enterprise, and it's intellectual confusion to think it can be governed from the top down, by governmental decree, by brute force. That's the mentality of totalitarians.

And, it's vicarious do-gooderism. It says, not "I'll pay you more,because I'm a compassionate liberal," but rather, "I'll demand that a third party pay you more, because I'm a sanctimonious liberal with totalitarian tendencies on a huge power trip."

I say it's spinach, and I say to Hell with it.

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Who cares about Korea? What about China?

  ---  (Or, "If you can't help me, don't help the bear" part 2.)  --- 

So North Korea has the Bomb? So what? North Korea's a slum. They'll sink into oblivion just like the USSR.

But China -- that's a country with a population in the billions, which we're HELPING to take over our economy, our technology, and our place in the world.

First, we're building their economy at the expense of our own -- shipping our manufacturing infrastructure to them as fast as we reasonably can. This outsourcing, mislabeled "free trade" but actually the alienation of our productive capital,  means we are in effect grooming them to take over the role of economic powerhouse in the world. We'll end up a country all of whose inhabitants  "make a living by taking in one another's laundry," to use Walter Lippman's phrase.

We're giving them all our advanced technology, and educating their college students in our universities -- so much so that an American in an upper-level computer-science or nuclear-physics course nowadays feels like a foreigner in a strange land. And it's a hostile land -- the Chinese students are openly disdainful and hostile to us.

We won World War II because of our incredible manufacturing capacity -- the capacity we're so eager to give China (and other cheap-wage countries) right now. In any major future war, we'll have to go to the Chinese and ask them to make us some airplane wings -- because Boeing is giving them all the means to design and produce wings now. As the "Seattle Times" says,

        The steady transfer of airplane manufacturing
        from Seattle to countries like China shows little
        sign of slowing. Lower labor costs are only part
        of the reason.

        In China, the heated competition between Boeing
        and Airbus for nearly $200 billion in sales over the
        next two decades hinges not just on prices and
        politics. The more willing Boeing and Airbus are to
        share technology and provide local jobs, the more
        likely they are to win Chinese orders.


As Boeing itself so smugly says,

           Boeing supports Chinese efforts to ensure a safe,
         efficient, and profitable Chinese aviation system
         to keep pace with the country's rapid economic
         growth.
           Commercial aviation is crucial to China's economic
         growth, and Boeing provides the world's best airplanes
         to China.
            Boeing helps Chinese companies develop skills, achieve
         certification, and join the world aviation and supplier
         networks. China has an increasingly sophisticated and
         expanding role in the commercial aviation industry. China
         has a role on all of Boeing airplanes, the 737, 747, 767,
         777 and 787. China has an important, highly visible role
         on the 737 -- building horizontal stabilizers, vertical fins,
         portions of the aft tail section, doors, wing-panels and
         other parts. China builds all the trailing edge wing ribs for
         every 747. China has an important role on the new 787
         Dreamliner airplane, building the rudder, wing-to-body
         fairing panels and leading edge of the vertical fin. China
         is the first location for conversions for the new 747-400
         Boeing Converted Freighter -- with many parts and
         assemblies built in China and conversion, test, certification
         in China and delivery from China.


Isn't that special! Boeing is so fatuously proud of selling out our national security and economy! Is that company run by retards? 

My question is, do we want to resist the Chinese, or build their economy by sacrificing our own? Personally, I favor "protectionism" over "sacrificialism."


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My Constitutional right to "Goo Marriage"

How DARE the government deny me the right to marry the Buick of my choice??!!? I'm in love with a vintage Riviera -- chrome wheels, Landau top, cherry... mmm, mmmm! But why should I tell you about her, you jealous, love-stealing, bird-dogging readers? Forget what I said -- you'll never meet her! WHAAA-hahahaha!!!

But I digress.  How DARE the government deny me the right to marry the Buick of my choice? Or the huge pit full of Jello of my choice? I went to a Jello-wrestling event last night, and I'm head-over-toes in love with a pit of goo. How DARE the government deny me my equal right to marry the loved one of my choice?

I read about a woman who married a sea creature -- I think it was a sea-lion. (It was a civil ceremony, though a highly ridiculous one, I'm sure. The reception was held at Pier 27. The couple was gift-registered at Pets R Us.)

Harper's magazine reported incidents like these:

A British woman married an Israeli dolphin after fifteen years of courtship. “I am just waiting for everyone to leave,” said the woman, “so we can have a private moment.”
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sudanese villagers forced a man to marry a goat after he was found having sex with it; the man also was required to pay the goat's owner 15,000 Sudanese dinars as dowry.
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A woman married a cobra in the Indian state of Orissa. “Though snakes cannot speak or understand,” said the bride, “we communicate in a peculiar way.”

===================================================

The Web site of the NBC TV station in Philadelphia (NBC10.com) reported this:

              British Millionaire Marries Dolphin

Even with no wedding ring, she thought he was a good catch.

Sharon Tendler, a millionaire from England, married the love of her life this week: Cindy the dolphin.

Cindy squeaked his vows at an Israeli resort Wednesday and Tendler, a rock concert promoter from London, fed him some mackerel in return.

After giving her groom a big, wet kiss, Tendler was thrown into the water to swim with her slippery spouse.

Tendler said the wedding was one of the happiest moments of her life and she was looking forward to having a moment alone with her beau.

"It was everything and more,” said Tendler after the ceremony. “I am just waiting for everyone to leave so we can have a private moment."

Tendler said that is was love at first sight when she met Cindy 15 years ago.

=========================================================

If those addled, hydrocephalic morons can marry the creatures of their choice, HOW DARE the government deny me the right to marry the object of my choice??!!? I'm incensed! And crazy about a Mercury! (But no more crazy than the filthy, poly-morphous perverts who want to mock and parody the holy institution of marriage.)


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