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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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October 01, 2003
Elvis Costello's North
My review of Elvis Costello's new North album is up.
posted by Al at 10/01/2003 03:15:00 AM
September 30, 2003
John Derbyshire bares the fangs
John Derbyshire does some of the most interesting writing at National Review. He's never more interesting than when he's saying things that I find unsettling.
In this case, he reports newspaper headlines from "an alternate universe in which the U.S.A. has been conducting a real war on terror." Some of them cause me to suspect that Mr. Derbyshire has perhaps a bit too much fiber in his diet.
Some of them actually seemed just right to me, like the story from Gaza in which the IDF was attacking pro-Hamas demonstrators. Yes, exactly right.
The Libya story, in which American military suddenly whacked Khadaffi seemed a little iffy, but arguably defensible.
Where he really lost me though, was rolling in issues of illegal Mexican immigration as part of the war on terror, and proposing several harsh measures for dealing with immigration issues based on that national security consideration.
Foul! Mexican immigration involves a lot of significant legitimate problems, but Mexican illegals are not coming here to kill us. They've come to harvest our produce and bus our tables. Considering all Mexican illegals as if they were potential terrorists is not justified by the facts, and it's not cool. It's not necessary, and it's not nice.
Then throw in Derbyshire's Cairo dateline, which involved absolutely literally declaring war on al-Jazeera television network, treating their headquarters and reporters as enemy combatants.
That's maybe just a BIT much, don't you think, Derb?
posted by Al at 9/30/2003 11:51:00 PM
Spending money on Iraq
A lot of people are bitching about President Bush's request for $87 billion dollars for the Iraqi effort. I think they're wrong. We discussed this project, and we commited to it, now we have to follow it through. Give the whining a rest.
Considering what we're trying to do, this $100 billion or so isn't that much money. The main legitimate thing the federal government does is provide for the common defense. Some may perhaps reasonably differ as to how much this effort helps to defend us, but that's totally a separate argument. The war and now rebuilding in Iraq are being pursued in the interest of US security.
Considering that the Iraq effort is the main centerpiece initiative of the administration's efforts to secure our peace, this ain't that much. Rounding the costs up to $100 billion against a total budget well in excess of $2 trillion dollars makes the whole effort somewhat less than 5% of the budget. For which cost, we are getting rid of some nasty enemies- and as an added bonus taking the boot of cruel tyranny off the necks of tens of millions of people.
This part of the budget will actually be doing some good. It's a reasonable cost for taking care of serious business. We're thinning out the threats, and the bad guys who want to kill us.
By rights, most of that money is for our troops, more than three quarters of the requested funds. Spending for Iraqi infrastructure, stuff that might be considered foreign aid is only in the $20 billion dollar range. Now this is well under 1% of the federal budget. How petty to begrudge the people of Iraq this modest help in rebuilding their country. Even if it was necessary, we did tramp in and blow a bunch of their stuff up. It behooves us to spend a modest amount helping to repair stuff.
Really, people are frickin' greedy. They want more free stuff for themselves. Democrats and some Republicans are pissy cause they don't get to spend these extra few dollars buying domestic votes. Tough.
Relative to the goal of improving our security, and lessening the likelihood of more terrorist attacks even a little, this money constitutes chump change. Leaving aside pain and suffering, just think how much a terrorist attack in America costs strictly monetarily, and this looks like cheap insurance.
You want to save money, start by nixing some corporate welfare. Eliminating all the agricultural subsidies alone would probably more than pay for the entire effort- and do more to help third world economies than any welfare we could give.
Plus, we've got troops in something like 120 countries around the world. Shut down most of those where we don't have major problems. Screw defending Western Europe, for starters. If the French and Germans don't want to participate in Iraq, that's fine. But they could be expected to defend themselves.
Of course the congress should provide some budget oversight. Look through and make sure the money is going to something productive. I don't necessarily trust the administration not to slip in a bit of porky spending. Make sure it's going where it needs to go. But don't grouse about spending the money.
For a major important project like this, we can squeeze a lousy couple of percent out of the overall budget without that much sweat. Let's just do it, and give the greedy whining a rest.
posted by Al at 9/30/2003 02:36:00 AM
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