Saturday, November 13, 2004

Saturday 11/13 links

This one's a classic, from the Weekly Standard's "Scrapbook": "Disappointed Democrats have had two weeks to argue about what went wrong for John Kerry on November 2. And they've had any number of plausible theories to choose from. ... But none among the most commonly circulating postmortems has yet won an enthusiastic Democratic embrace. Except, that is, for this one: George W. Bush won reelection because . . . well, because there are just too many damn dumb people in this country, that's why."

One of the new favorites, Captain's Quarters blogger
"Captain Ed" Morrissey, ruthlessly fisks Brent Scowcroft's insidiously anti-Israel Washington Post column.

Paleoblogger
Andrew Sullivan on Barbara Plett, the idiot BBC correspondent who claimed she "started to cry... without warning" when Arafat left Ramallah: "Do you think she'd shed a tear for the Pope? Or Mother Teresa? The far left's attraction to foreign murder and tyranny endures, doesn't it? Notice also this BBC timeline for Arafat's life. The last two dates are his Nobel Peace Prize and the 2001 Israeli blockade in Ramallah. No mention of Camp David or Taba. The BBC has the historical objectivity of Stalin."

Washington Post reporters
Dana Priest and Walter Pincus faithfully take down notes from CIA lifers who are leaking--drip, drip, drip--ie whining that the new CIA director is mean. The leakers warn darkly that resignations are being tendered! Good! The CIA is like the Chicago Cubs--every trade or other transaction is a winner because you're getting rid of a presumably incompetent-spook/Cub and getting a presumably non-incompetent-spook/non-Cub in return.

New York Times columnist
David Brooks cuts straight to the point: "Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies. His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Weekly Standard correspondent
Irwin M. Stelzer asserts that the European Union is perhaps not not our enemy, but certainly our opponent: "The positioning of the E.U. as an anti-American force has not been lost on Washington's policymakers, who now realize that this country's historic support for a united Europe is dangerously contrary to U.S. interests."

Power Line blogger "Deacon," aka
Paul Mirengoff, examines the Democrats' newest rhetorical trick--imputing statewide statistics to individual voters. Thus Pres. Bush was only popular among less educated, stupider, and less productive Americans, who by implication are not quite equal enough to count. Of course there are much more precise statistics available, which indicate that when sorted by level of education Sen. Kerry took two classes of voter: those with post-grad experience, and those without high school diplomas. Pres. Bush took college graduates, some college, and high school graduates. What would you conclude from that?

Weekly Standard writer
Robert Satloff suggests that Palestine already possesses many of the attributes of a modern Arab state--that is, it's a mess. Then he supplies a lot of useless advice.

London Times columnist
Ben Macintyre notices blogs. Good for him. As he puts it: "Welcome to the New Tom Paines."

Alas, poor Earth Mother--IOWAHAWK satirical blogger
David Burge recounts the angst of "Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of Dollywood Values."