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LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 6, 2007
Two juxtaposed items on Instapundit (this blog is, after all, part of Glenn Reynolds’s comments section) —
unintentionally, it seems:
posted at 08:46 AM by Glenn Reynolds
posted at 08:22 AM by Glenn Reynolds
You’re with me, right? What does Republican President Ron Paul do?
Posted in Politics and Poker, Stragety | 16 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 30, 2007
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Monday that two of the Democratic candidates will change their minds again about the Iraq war and agree that it was the right decision.Asked at a town-hall meeting to characterize the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq,
Giuliani said they have done an admirable job.
“Do I think the mission overall in Iraq is the correct one, I think without a doubt it is,” the former New York mayor said at Insight Technologies, which makes tactical weapon lights and laser systems for the military.
“And I think the Democrats are going to change their minds about it again,” Giuliani said, noting that Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards voted as senators for the initial invasion in 2003.
Nice little rhetorical move.
Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 18 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 28, 2007
Turkey has that Oriental swagger:
Turkey’s top military commander promised Saturday to make Iraq-based Kurdish rebels “grieve with an intensity that they cannot imagine” . . .
Can you imagine a “Western” country’s military leadership phrasing a threat that way? Say, one of ours? There would be Congressional hearings within the week, outraged editorials in the New York Times, and, probably, no grieving rebels.
Not that this means there will be any. Turkey hasn’t really shaken anyone up in about a hundred years. And, I don’t know, a lot of really good military powers have found Iraq… somewhat dicey, shall we say? … especially in the “insurgent” department.
But perhaps when dealing with this sort of enemy, there is something to be said for “mother of all battles”-type fighting words. Isn’t there?
Posted in Orient, Stragety | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 25, 2007
U.S.-MADE CENSORWARE sold to dicatators in Burma and elsewhere. This is a disgrace.
Free trade is a disgrace? We can barely institute and enforce export controls of technology to our outright enemies. Now we have to track the identity of the customers of private software vendors? And, I suppose, to their customers as well (for after all, circumventing such controls by the use of dummy purchasers should not be difficult)? And once we do, will Europe, Israel and other high-tech countries also decline to sell software that could end up in wicked hands?
I understood, and agreed with critics, when Google was found out to be working, hand in glove, with the Chicoms in the oppression of their people. IBM, too, is rightfully ashamed of its intimate involvement with the Nazis’ genocide machine. But off the shelf software? This is one of the prices of free trade: Money, and most of the things it buys, are both very fungible.
And in the long run, anyone with the gelt can buy what he wants, unless (we hope) like a nuclear bomb, it’s unusually well regulated, expensive and complex. This is software. Maybe by virtue of buying off the shelf software, circumvention by those familiar with it has a better shot than if the Burmese hire programmers from their own part of the world to custom design the software. Maybe, maybe not.
But in the long run, the oppressed of the world are better off with free trade than without it — trade is probably the only reason there’s any hope at all for China. How and when will it work on Burma? I have no idea — probably somewhere out there in the Long Run. And yes, I know that the man said about the long run. But there is no percentage in moral pronunciations about commerce, as self-satisfying as they are.
Posted in Gelt, Sisyphus, Stragety | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 24, 2007
More like firming her up with the center. Here’s a strategy that may just propel Hillary Clinton to the White House : Ads by nutroots making her out to be a right-wing tool:
A newly formed political action committee is aiming to stop Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary by calling into question her progressive credentials.”We think there are other Democratic presidential candidates who are both more progressive and have a better chance of beating the Republicans than she does,” said the president of Democratic Courage, Glenn Hurowitz.
He declined to tip his hand on the group’s case against Clinton, but said the PAC plans a paid media campaign in the early primary states to make its position clear.
“We’ll definitely have sufficient resources to make a significant media buy,” he said, adding that their campaign against Clinton would be “edgy” enough to get attention. “We don’t need to raise an immense amount of money to make a big difference.”
Shoring up Hillary’s foreign policy credentials with the key middlin’ vote? If they had a Karl Rove on th’ other side, he’d be behind this one.
Posted in Politics and Poker, Stragety | 15 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 14, 2007
Sanchez said he felt he could not resign and go public with his reservations while he was in Iraq, because he feared that move
could further jeopardize troops serving there.
“I think once you are retired, you have a responsibility to the nation, to your oath, to the country, to state your opinion,” he said.
Is that right? It’s an interesting proposition, actually. On the one hand, his formulation sounds intuitively correct. How could you be silent if you knew, perhaps better than anyone, “they” were blowing it, costing lives, still doing it all wrong?
On the other hand, how could you speak when your comments give aid and comfort to the enemy?
Given that both of these things may be present — as they seem to be, and it seems frequently will be — how do you weigh the opposing interests?
Posted in Orient, Stragety | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 13, 2007
I used to think the eventuality of a Hillary Clinton presidential run was “no problem,” because surely the brain trust at the tippy-top of the GOP has been working out this strategy, utilizing higher math, the alignment of the stars, dumpster-diving and elaborate drills and simulations, for a decade. Her candidacy, I figured — as Carl Rove says — was a gimme for the Republicans, and all we had to do was let the Democrats step into the trap of nominating her, and then — fwip! — we’d have her figuratively hanging by her ankle in a net. “Heh,” right.
No such heh. I saw the Republican leadership in 2006… saw them mishandle the immigration debate… watched the porkathon of 2007 with horror… and saw the GOP become the face of gross political corruption. Unless “simulate utter political incompetence” is really one of those grand Roveian master plans, it’s going to take a lot more than the party that keeps giving us the likes of Trent Lott for leadership, to avoid this bad dream:
Clinton yesterday said she would meet with Iran without preconditions. “I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don’t really understand how Iran works,” she said.
“Because we don’t really understand how Iran works“?!
Save us, God!
So, how do you stop a bulldozer? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Politics and Poker, Stragety | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 11, 2007
Social networking is one thing, but have you noticed how unwieldy Amazon.com is these days?
It’s looking more and more like MySpace. I just wanted to buy a book.
Think I’ll walk across the street to Barnes & Noble to clear my head….
Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Stragety | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 9, 2007
ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE BLUNDER? “Al Qaeda’s Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden’s September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy’s system.” Let’s hope things aren’t as bad as this report makes them sound. This constant leaking is a real problem.
Maybe. But let me just axe: Why wouldn’t an occasional story like this, itself, function as really good disinformation? Just saying, as we say.
Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Stragety | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on September 19, 2007
Blame is one thing; policymaking is another. The Economist recognizes, in its cover story, what the antiwar crowd will not: The wisdom of the choice to go to war with Saddam Hussein is only slightly related to the question of what policy to pursue now:
If the case for staying depended on extrapolating from the modest gains the general claims for his surge, it would be a weak one. The strong case is that if America leaves, things will get even worse. This can only be a guess, but it is more plausible than the alternative guess that America’s going will nudge Iraq in the right direction. In the past two years, violence has tended to decline where American troops are present and to rise in the places they leave. There is no doubt that some Shia militias want to rid Baghdad of its Sunnis and that American troops are for now the only thing stopping them. Contrary to what foreigners think, most Iraqis say they oppose partition: in the BBC/ABC poll, 62% said Iraq should have a unified government and 98% said it would be a bad thing for the country to separate on sectarian lines. . . .
If America could choose again, it would not step into a civil war in Mesopotamia. But there are worse reasons than preventing a bloodbath for a superpower to put its soldiers at risk. Having invaded Iraq in its own interest—to remove mass-killing weapons that turned out not to exist—America owes something to Iraq’s people, a slim majority of whom want it to stay. It is hard to know how Iraq can be mended. At some point it may become clear the country has sunk so low it is simply beyond saving. But it is not possible to be sure of that yet.
For a bunch of Europeans, that’s pretty good.
Posted in Euroids, Orient, Stragety | 5 Comments »
