From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Homer
Nods
So it turns out we erred in an item
yesterday on a House resolution honoring the troops who liberated Iraq.
The 228-195 near-party-line vote to which we referred was on a procedural matter,
not the resolution itself. We're told that such procedural votes almost always
come down along party lines. The House voted on the actual resolution yesterday
evening, and it passed by a much bigger margin, 327-93.
Voting "no" were 90 Democrats, two Republicans (Jim Leach of Iowa and Ron Paul of Texas) and independent self-styled socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont. One of the "no" votes came from Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, who in December 2002 urged the reinstatement of the military draft on the grounds that "a disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military."
Rangel seems to think the poor and members of minority groups who choose to serve their country--along with the better-off and members of majority groups who do--are unworthy of his respect. This isn't the first time he has voted against a resolution honoring the troops in Iraq; he did so also just under a year ago. And as with the 2003 resolution, the vast majority of members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted "no"--23, against only 6 voting "yes" (and 3 "present"). Especially disappointing are the "no" vote from Georgia's Denise Majette and the "present" vote of Alabama's Artur Davis. Both are freshman representatives who ousted far-left Black Caucus members with histories of anti-Semitism. Also voting not to honor the troops was Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader.
Such partisan small-mindedness isn't limited to Democrats. After the House passed the pro-troops resolution, it passed another resolution, "honoring the life and legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt . . . on the anniversary of the date of his birth." (Why they passed this yesterday is unclear, since FDR's birthday is Jan. 30.) The vote was 398-5, with the following Republicans casting "no" votes: Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Joel Hefley of Colorado, Steve King of Iowa and Ron Paul of Texas. Six more Republicans voted "present."
Still, the tiny number of Republican noes is testimony to the tendency of partisan divisions to heal over time. In his day, FDR was as hated by Republicans as George W. Bush is by Democrats. We wouldn't be surprised, 50 or 60 years hence, to see Congress approve a resolution honoring the legacy of George W. Bush by a similarly lopsided vote.
Figmental
Feces
Josh Marshall's blog is a fascinating read. He's smart but extremely partisan,
so there's no better place to go for a window into the strange worldview of
today's Democrats. Here, with a little toning down of his language, is an observation
he offered yesterday:
Again and again I read--or hear directly from administration supporters--this excuse that any questioning of the administration's record in foreign affairs, or Iraq, or even on other matters is just a deplorable focusing on the past, a distraction, when the nation faces grave challenges which we need to focus on solving. . . .
[The argument, in effect:] We've created such a mess that we don't have the time or the luxury to start second-guessing how badly we screwed things up! . . .
I apologize for the graphic nature of this analogy. But this is like I come back to my office to find my new employee has [defecated] right on my desk.
Puzzledly and not happy, I say, "What, umm . . . what happened here?"
To which he replies, "There you go again, always focusing on the past, how this or that could have been done differently, when what's really important is the future, how we deal with this and other challenges we're going to face."
To which I would reply, "No. The future is exactly what I'm thinking about. And that's why you're fired. Because in the future I can't afford to have anyone working here who craps on my desk, and then when I confront them about it all they can do is dodge responsibility with moronic excuses and try to put the blame on me for asking what the hell is going on."
These guys should be fired too.
And, no, I wouldn't advise the Kerry campaign to base a 30 second ad on this analogy.
The first thing to say about this is that the "excuse" Marshall describes is a straw man. No one says it's off limits to question the administration's record on foreign affairs. The complaint, rather, is that the Democratic campaign has offered little in the way of constructive criticism or proposals for improvement. Instead, it has issued sweeping and irresponsible denunciations.
Marshall's analogy is as strained as it is disgusting. It's more as if a junior employee found the guts of a suicide-bomb victim on his desk and accused a senior employee of defecating on his desk, then, when the boss pointed out that the accusation had no basis in reality and there was work to be done, the junior employee launched into a vigorous defense of his "right to question" his rival.
In truth, the administration has accomplished quite a lot: liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban, thus depriving al Qaeda of the base of operations it used before 2001; capturing or killing many al Qaeda leaders; liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, thereby destroying one of the Arab world's most aggressive regimes, paving the way for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, and intimidating Libya into coming clean about its weapons of mass destruction.
Real failure speaks for itself; in 1980 Ronald Reagan's supporters did not have to go around making scatological references to Jimmy Carter's foreign-policy record. Today's Democratic "criticism" amounts to blaming the Bush administration for every cost, hardship or setback in the war, as if any war were easy.
No doubt there are imperfections in the administration's foreign-policy record, and it would be good for the country if we had a serious opposition party that could offer substantive criticism. But unless the Democrats can do so, they well deserve to remain the country's No. 2 party.
What
Have You Done for Us Lately?
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation (she's best known for being unable
to name her congressman), is criticizing John Kerry for trying to evade
the "liberal" label, which she thinks he should wear proudly:
Next time you're asked, Senator, why not stand firm (you're already tall) and tell Americans, crisply, sharply and with conviction, how liberal values have shaped the greatness of this country. It won't lose you the election. It might just help you win it.
I'm sure you don't need this, but here's a short list of some of the great triumphs of 20th century liberalism--all vigorously opposed by conservatives at the time: Women's suffrage; Social Security; unemployment compensation; the minimum wage; child labor laws; Head Start, food stamps; Medicare; federal housing laws barring discrimination; the Voting Rights Act; the Civil Rights Act; anti-pollution statutes, guaranteed student loan programs and the forty-hour work week.
Now, what do you notice about Katrina's list? None of the items she mentions are any more recent than the 1970s (era of that great liberal, Richard M. Nixon), and most of them are a good deal older than that. For crying out loud, is Kerry really going to run on women's suffrage, an issue that was resolved 84 years ago? While he's at it, maybe he can promise to finally join the League of Nations.
"A fighting liberal would take on rightwing extremists who are determined to rollback [sic] the hard-earned rights and liberties of the 20th century," vanden Heuvel writes, exemplifying the reactionary nature of today's American liberalism. Its slogan might as well be "Fighting for yesterday's progress today."
That Dog Won't Hunt
Another reader, Dennis Gibb, disputes John Kerry's Vietnam account, which we
noted
Monday, of his pet dog being "catapulted from the deck of our boat
and land[ing] confused, but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol":
I was an artillery officer in Vietnam in 1971 and 1972 and am therefore somewhat familiar with the various forces which effect the flight of a ballistic object. There are 280 separate factors effecting the flight of an artillery round from the time it is placed in the gun tube to the point of impact--things like wind direction, speed, air temperature and density, rotation of the earth during flight and the drift of the round due to the rifling action of the gun tube. Even with computers it is virtually impossible to control all the variables of flight to achieve first round accuracy. To be sure, the advent of GPS and other technology has made the job easier, but those were not available during Kerry's time.
In addition to my service in Vietnam, where I frequently had to try to hit targets moving on the ground from a moving helicopter, I participated in a test in which teams of experienced artillery officers were tasked to hit moving objects with artillery rounds. The best we could do with knowledge of the terrain and experience was a hit rate of 10%.
The idea of the launch of a canine projectile from a boat to another boat with perfect results is absurd on its face. It is complicated by the fact that in an artillery round there is the direct action of the expanding gas from the propellant on the forward obturated round, which has a perfect ballistic shape, whereas in this case the canine was driven by the concussive effect of an explosion and if my knowledge of Vietnamese dogs is correct the projectile was hardly ballistic.
Kerry is quickly becoming another Al Gore.
Gibb refers to Gore's discredited claim in 2000, which the late Bob Bartley noted at the time, that his mother-in-law paid $108 a month for a prescription drug that cost the family dog a mere $37.80.
Other readers questioned whether Kerry's dog even existed. "Would it be wise to have a dog on a swift boat?" asks Don Smart. "What if you needed to be quiet and the dog decided to bark?" Well, Kerry ought to be able to resolve that question easily enough. When will you show us the dog tags, Senator?
Socialist
Appeasers for Kerry
Not long ago, John Kerry was boasting that unnamed foreign leaders were backing
his presidential campaign. With a little assist from al Qaeda, Spain is about
to get a leader who openly backs Kerry. "Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero on Wednesday described the U.S. occupation of Iraq as 'a
fiasco' and suggested American voters should follow the example set by Spain
and change their leadership by supporting Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts
for president in November," the Washington Post reports:
"I said during the campaign I hoped Spain and the Spaniards would be ahead of the Americans for once," Zapatero said in an interview on Onda Cero radio. "First we win here, we change this government, and then the Americans will do it, if things continue as they are in Kerry's favor."
As the New York Times' Paris edition notes, however, "the Democratic presidential candidate, who voted to authorize the Iraq war, has said nothing yet about finding a potential soul mate in Zapatero." Kerry may well be embarrassed by the support of a leader who is vowing to abandon his alliance with America, but this raises an intriguing question: Are the unnamed foreign leaders whose backing Kerry claims less embarrassing to him than Zapatero, or more embarrassing?
Life Imitates ScrappleFace.com
"Spain's newly-elected socialist prime minister today declared the start of a 'new era of protection from terror' as he cut the ribbon at the grand opening of the al Qaeda embassy in downtown Madrid."--ScrappleFace.com, March 16
"A group claiming to have links with al Qaeda said on Wednesday it was calling a truce in its Spanish operations to see if the new Madrid government would withdraw its troops from Iraq, a pan-Arab newspaper said."--Reuters, March 17
Poetry
for the War
In light of the momentary triumph of appeasement in Europe, Rudyard Kipling's
"Dane-Geld" seems apropos:
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:--
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to says:--"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
What
Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts: Spain Attacks May Promote More Terrorism"--headline, Voice
of America Web site, March 17
Wow,
He Really Is Still Dead
"The turnout in Sunday's election is likely to be high in a country where
the ghost of General Franco lingers."--editorial, (London) Guardian, March 13
The
Interplanetary War on Terror
"Bombing Mars Bush Effort to Trumpet Iraq Progress"--headline, Reuters,
March 17
Palestinian
Road Rage
"Fledgling efforts by Palestinian police officers to bring order to Gaza
erupted in a raging, back-alley gunbattle Wednesday, when a Hamas militant who
ran a red light in an unregistered car threw a grenade at police rather than
accept a traffic ticket," the Associated Press reports from Gaza City.
But who are we to judge, really? We should look at the root causes of such violence: the grinding poverty, the occupation and, not least, the humiliation of being pulled over and given a traffic ticket.
Blood
Feud
First they came for ROTC, then they came for the Boy Scouts, and now . . .
the Red Cross? Yup, the Associated Press reports from Monmouth, Ore., that gay-rights
moonbats at Western Oregon University "have launched a drive to ban Red
Cross blood drives on campus, claiming the donor screening process discriminates
against gays":
The two students are particularly upset about a donor question that reads: "Are you a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even once?"
The federal Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the Red Cross screening process, will not accept a donation from someone who answers 'yes' to the question, in order to help eliminate potentially HIV-tainted blood.
"By continuing to allow the Red Cross on our campus, the university is telling all the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students that we don't care about you," said student senator Shauna Bates, who is co-sponsoring the legislation.
Doesn't everyone have an interest in a safe blood supply? If you cut a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender student, does he not bleed?
Who
Knew?
"Increasing the Portion Size of a Sandwich Increases Energy Intake"--headline,
Journal of the American Dietetic Association, March 2004
It's the Eponymy, Stupid
We put this feature on the shelf for awhile, so some readers thought it was
gone for good. Not David Tarvin:
I have never seen such a thorough listing or accumulation of unusual names and occupations. Unlike others, I do not think you should worry about about the demand for this feature. After all, it is evident that you are a supply-side eponymist.
Indeed. We continue to hear from readers who like or dislike the feature, and who like or dislike our publishing those letters. Here's David Klug:
I began skipping the eponymy feature some time ago. The first few days were cute, but I mean really. How long can you go on with it? On the other hand I have quite enjoyed the eponymy complaint letters feature. Now I see you're getting letters complaining about them as well. Please keep up the complaints at least as long as you subject us to the eponymy. Or at the very least, post some letters about the letters about the letters about the eponymy feature.
At your service! From Jason Gustafson:
The feature is mildly amusing, but I happen to dislike the printing of letters from those who complain about the letters from those who dislike the feature.
Clay LeCony finds his amusement at a different level:
Ahahaha!! I can't stop laughing. It's not because of this feature, letters for this feature, letters against this feature, or letters about letters for and against this feature but because I'm so amused that it amuses you that some readers find the source of your amusement so unamusing. Don't stop.
Karl Stock is no longer amused:
Like most of your readers, I thought the first week or two of this section was hilarious. Everyone kept coming over to my desk to see what I was busting up over. Two of my favorites were Argue & Phibbs and Trojan v. Big Boy Steel Erection. However, it seems as though you've already rounded up most of the really good ones. Lately, they suck. I can usually follow all of them, but they rarely provide good laughs anymore. Are you beating a dead horse? Mutilating it beyond recognition, maybe? As poor as they are getting now, mine might even suffice. Karl Stock, economist for the Department of Interior. Get it? What, you're not cracking up laughing, though? Just a thought . . .
An economist called Karl Stock? We don't get it; what's eponymous about that? But hey, have you thought about doing volunteer work in a soup kitchen?
Finally, Donald Bales:
Enough with the name business. It was slightly funny and slightly interesting, but you are about to p.o. one of your readers. You probably don't care about that, but I do. And don't start with the hay or the cotton.
Very well, we'll start with academia: Alan Heavens is an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas has a computer scientist called Ajoy Datta (no relation, so far as we know, to the "Star Trek" robot whose mononym is a homonym). The University of Texas Health Science Center's director of telecommunication and networking is Bob Ports.
The University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography holds an annual Charles and Marie Fish lecture, in honor, we're told, of the school's founders. The current dean, David Farmer, isn't exactly eponymous; perhaps he should switch jobs with Jeffrey Seemann, dean of life sciences.
Elsewhere in the animal kingdom, Northern Ireland has Bruce Finn, deputy chief of the Fisheries Conservation Board, and there's a Washington state TV show called "Salmon Exchange" hosted by Nancy Guppy. David Bird studies wildlife biology at Quebec's McGill University, and Jon Katz is the author of two books about dogs, "A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me" and "The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love, and Family."
The July 2001 issue of Baseball Digest carried an article called "Does Size Really Matter?" The author: Peter Schmuck. OK, that was slightly risqué, but at least we're not scatological like Josh Marshall. Speaking of Josh, he remarked the other day that the Senate's sergeant-at-arms was "in an impossible position." The sergeant's name is Bill Pickle. All this talk about food is making us hungry for more gustatory eponyms, so we'll order a Hamburger (Cynthia, founder of Seer Technology) with Bacon (Pat, a dietitian), and a Burita (Mike, of the the food industry's Center for Consumer Freedom).
To wash it all down, we'll turn to this Associated Press report:
Naming your child after a popular soft drink could be seen as a little bit faddish, but the parents of young Diot Coke might be forgiven--they gave their baby daughter the name way back in 1379.
Researchers at Britain's National Archives believe that the little girl, born in West Riding in Yorkshire, was the unfortunate victim of the corruption of the name Dionisia. One of the diminutives derived from that name on its path to the modern day Denise was Diot.
The girl's surname is believed to be a variation on the name Cook.
At least she wasn't named Denise, or people would be forever asking her if her brother is Denephew. Then again, we understand little Diot did get teased a lot in school, and so did her sister, Tabitha whose nickname was Tab.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Glen Morehead, Daniel MacLean, Jo Maney, Preston Hartman, David Stoughton, John Matthews, Michael Segal, Thomas Conway, Nick Eckert, Bart Adler, Justin Clark, Liz Stinson, Ethel Fenig, Brendan Schulman, David Beebe, Michael Nunnelley, Michael Robbins, Bart Adler, Steve Baus, Richard Haisley, C.E. Dobkin, Terry Teachout, Edward Himmelfarb, Caitlin Murray, Eric Stone, Myles Rose, Ezzie Goldish, Steve Roberts, Susan Workman, Marcia Whitaker, Chris Thornton, Rick Turley, Fred Haab, Preston Garrison, Gary Boden, Mike Graham, Nicholas Barnes, Brian Watkins, Tom Pierson, Bennett Stern, Al Dubinsky, Tim Hoffman, Erik Andresen, Barak Moore, Matt Maynard, David Bookless, Edward Kalin and Chris Cardon. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The U.N. won't get to the bottom of the Oil-for-Food Scandal. Congress will have to.
- Peggy Noonan talks with James Caviezel after his meeting with the pope.
- Dick Cheney: John Kerry "speaks as if only those who openly oppose America's objectives have a chance of earning his respect."
- Nat Hentoff: Jazz is coming home to Harlem.
