ELSEWHERE

A fascinating short article in the WSJ pointing out that Democrats have abandoned any pretence of idealism in foreign policy and now favour stability and the status quo! I think the Democrats did once have some principles but that is all gone now. They will now advocate ANYTHING that they think will get votes. Historians will remember that J.S. Mill was a great spokesman for liberty but that he was in fact on the Left in British politics and voted in favour of government restrictions and regulation on lots of issues. Principles were very rubbery for him too.

Excellent comment on the Kurds: Why do the Palestinians get to jump ahead of the Kurds?... The Kurds meet all of the qualifications to get a state. They are a cultural and national group with strong ties to the land on which they live. They've been persecuted mercilessly for a long time.. and even better, they have quietly gone about building the institutions of statehood and a civil society pretty much on their own... Oh, one other thing. The Kurds have never blown up any buses full of civilians, never desecrated religious shrines, never mutilated 'enemy' corpses, never machine-gunned elementary schools, never sent teenagers in bomb vests to kill other teenagers at restaurants and coffee shops.. Perhaps the Kurds should do all of those things. Then they would be rewarded .... People would say that there can be no peace in the Middle East until the Kurds get a state.. That's the problem with the Kurds. They spend their energy and talents on things like economic development, education, and infrastructure.

Mike Reagan: "The 9/11 Commission is not doing its job. It is ignoring a document that shows that President Clinton was alerted in 1996 about the possibility of 9/11 style attack, while instead focusing on the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Having harassed the Bush administration into declassifying the August 6 PDB, the Commission must now demand that a PDB from the Clinton administration also be declassified. Unlike the August 6 document which had no information about hijacking jets to crash into U.S. Targets, the 1996 PDB gave specifics about al Qaeda plans to carry out exactly that kind of attack."

Fallujah Gets Loud Silence From World's Muslim Leaders: "Western Christians were near unanimous in their support for Muslims as they faced (backlash) bigotry after Sept. 11, 2001; when will these Christians hear comparable expressions of support from Muslim leaders now that they are increasingly under threat from the Islamists? "

Tiger Woods on the U.S. military: "I'm just trying to hit the ball into a little bitty cup that's 400 yards away," Woods said on Friday. "These people here are putting their lives on the line. That to me is the ultimate dedication. They're doing it for our country to keep all of us safe."

Tim Worstall has some fun posts up -- like why Coca-Cola produced in the USA is more fattening than Coke produced elsewhere (It's true!) and what the word "truck" originally meant.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots of good postings.

Another Thai recipe today: Pork and seafood salad with water chestnuts. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring some principles with them. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

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