Likelihood of Success

Ron Coleman’s pretty good blog

Life still unfair

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 22, 2007

Well, Bill Clinton always did fancy himself the redneck JFK. Here’s his beef:

He said he had re-read the Iraq resolution last week, and that his wife had voted only for “coercive inspections.” Clinton justified his wife’s refusal to apologize for her vote by explaining that she was acting out of concern that future presidents might need similar language authorizing “coercive inspections to avoid conflict.”

“It’s just not fair to say that people who voted for the resolution wanted war,” Clinton said.

But it is fair to say that people who agreed with your take on WMD were “lying,” right? And it’s fair that you signed the law making regime change U.S. policy and your wife now campaigns against it? Was the fate of the White House travel office fair? Is it fair that someone who never served in public office or lived in the State of New York walks into the job of Senator of that state?

Life’s been pretty fair for President and Senator Clinton, don’t you think?

Posted in Politics and Poker | 4 Comments »

Nix on the Mex

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 22, 2007

Fitch sees through a clever ruse!

Posted in Americana, Jocularity | 2 Comments »

Edwards resolves key political question

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 22, 2007

John Edwards’s priorities:

Democrat John Edwards is forging ahead with his second bid for the presidency despite the sobering news that his wife, Elizabeth, is battling an incurable reappearance of cancer.. . .

Putting to rest speculation about his political future, Edwards told reporters: “The campaign goes on. The campaign goes on strongly.”

. . .

“From our perspective, there was no reason to stop,” Edwards said. “I don’t think we seriously thought about it.”

“I don’t think we seriously thought about it.” So what does this resolve? It tells us that John Edwards — whom, I will admit, I never liked politically, though of course our sympathy must go out to him and his family on a personal level — is one of two things:

Either merely an inveterate liar, or a complete moral retard. Democrats are certainly used to having one or the other of those as their candidate, but chances are there’s at least one better one in this year’s field.

One what — liar or idiot? Pick ’em.

UPDATE: Characterizations softened — see the comments. On the other hand, excuse me while I call out what I think are cheap shots from the other side of this issue. (Yes, I think there are two sides.)

Posted in O Mores!, Politics and Poker | 67 Comments »

Proof that all viruses are written by Apple cultists

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 21, 2007

Lack of Mac malware baffles experts.

Posted in Nuvo-Techno | 11 Comments »

An inch of time

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 21, 2007

Now that you’ve, perhaps, read the next-to-last word, prepare to read the last word on the Iraq war. First read this (sweet) story and this (God-awful) story to put you in the mood.  But that’s the last word whether anyone else’s mouth ever moves again or not. Gerard Van der Leun, who does happen to be something of a not-so-old friend, just wrote the best thing ever about the war. I don’t even know where to excerpt from it, it’s so good. But I’ll try if it there’s any chance it gets one more person to read this essay (emphasis added):

Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of “Imagine” compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.

Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer long sent down to riot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. “We shall… over… come.” Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them that much is certain.

Four years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.

Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that “War is bad for children and other living things.” They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers. They all went into the fire and the ash just the same. But they, now, are not important. Nor is the message their deaths still send us when we listen. That message is to be silenced. The rising brand new message is “All we are say-ing is give….” And it is always off-key.

Four years in and they are upset that their party of the 90s has been so long interrupted; that their raves are foreshortened; that their sleep is persistently shaken by car bombs beyond the far horizon; that their time at the mall can not be entirely, completely, and utterly without guilt. . . .

Four years in and the fools in the streets multiply. They are tired of the war, but full of themselves. . . .

It is in patience alone that our enemies outstrip us. After all, when you look at what they have made of their “civilization” what indeed do they have to lose?

Posted in O Mores!, Orient, Politics and Poker, Stragety | Leave a Comment »

Frontier justice

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 21, 2007

Or is it “frothing” justice? Kim du Toit says, “We don’t need no stinkin’ judges!” Or actually, Kim says the following on the subject of the Second Amendment — Kim’s favorite topic:

The law is what we say it is, not what some unelected jurist thinks.

That’s either a very abstract concept of “the law” or a very scary one. And I’m entirely sympathetic with Kim on gun rights as such. But it’s an odd thing to say you’re defending the Constitution but don’t care what anyone but “we” thinks the Constitution means. What kind of constitution, what kind of rule of law, is that? Kim explains:

Unlike liberals and lawyers who need to have every jot jotted and tittle tittled, we know that the Second Amendment enumerates an individual right, and we know exactly what “shall not be infringed” means, because we’ve taken the time to study what the Founding Fathers wrote at the time, in both their public and their private letters.

Well I think some lawyers, and maybe even some liberals, have taken the time, too. And after all, Kim, it is going our way!

I don’t have a bit problem with originalism; I’m a lifelong Federalist. But when you go waving that thing and shouting that “the law is what we say it is” — that’s when I reach for my revolver.

As soon as someone teaches me which side the bullets go in.

Posted in Americana, Lex scripta | 1 Comment »

Defiant, I guess

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 21, 2007

That’s how I am about the Iraq war. So much executed so poorly — perhaps. I’m not even convinced of that; all alternative scenarios posit perfect execution and all the other things 20-20 hindsight makes so magical. Some things, yes, are inexcusable, such as Abu Grab. But it’s absurd to postulate that because soldiers died and Arabs are killing each other, as they’re known to do when there are no Jews around, that the war was “lost” — how can you “lose” when the other side leaves the field and its commander in chief is hanged by the government you put in to power?

But not only that: In concept, I cannot bring myself around to believing it was a mistake. I’m not the only one. Though it is pretty lonely.

The only big mistake was and is the Administration’s poor handling of the marketing of the whole situation, exacerbated by the White House’s unfortunate cronyish style. That’s a huger error, because (as I have said before), you can’t put on a war in a democracy unless you’re prepared to sell it, and follow through with the sale. This government was not prepared for that, and if we didn’t learn that from Vietnam, shame on us.  (UPDATE:  Oy.)

Defiance, however — for that, GWB gets credit. He believes in this policy, and all the conventional wisdom and smirking second guessing in the world have not swayed him. It has cost his party plenty to do the right thing, and at the end of the day I don’t know just how much a good PR strategy would have helped. War is hell, after all. But the right thing, it was, and Bush gets credit here for his defiance of … just about everyone.

Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 15 Comments »

Soros wants his money’s worth

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 21, 2007

And not in shekels, either. Captain’s Quarters calls George Soros “underwriter” of the Democratic party. With a little luck, aided by the force of his magnificent, warbucks-enriched and hypocrisy-proof ego, he may end up being its undertaker — at least in terms of separating the men (including Senator Clinton) from the boys on the issue of Israel.

Regarding which, it’s safe to say, Soros is fundamentally “anti.”

That works out great come a-primary time, because so is the Democratic left-wing “base.” The hard left and black voters, though utterly beyond any risk of bolting the plantation now that the Nader distraction is apparently gone, still needs the occasional bone. Policies and pronouncements counseling “balance” and Palestinian self-determination always play well here and keep clowns such as Jimmy Carter in the thick of things. Hence the only Democratic candidate to condemn Soros’s most recent anti-Israel remarks — his claim that Israel ought to be forced to negotiate with Hamas, an entity that does not grant it the moral or political right to exist — is Barak Obama, who despite qualms to the contrary is actually black and not, like Hillary Clinton, merely married to the First Black President.

The problem with this strategy in the long run is not so much us Jews, including the ones on the coasts with all that money that goes to support the Democrats. Jews as a political force, notwithstanding the effectiveness of AIPAC in particular, are not one-issue voters; certainly not any more. They need only a bare minimum of pro-Israel noises from their candidates and then move on to their liberal political religious obligations. These liberal Jews happily believe that the policies of Bill Clinton, such as propping up the likes of Yassir Arafat and making constant feel-good investments of blood and gold in “peace processes,” are the good strong medicine Israel needs to take. These are the children and grandchildren of the Red Diaper Babies and presidents of the Eleanor Roosevelt Fan Clubs of the Grand Concourse and Morningside Heights. They were raised in self-deception and cultural and religious confusion. Seen in their best light they, like Soros, are big on the rights of Oppressed People, the limitless advantages of concessions, negotiation and appeasement, and, of course, guilt over anything that smacks either of an excess of zeal in self-defense or a lessening of their esteem in the eyes of the goyim world opinion. In this regard they are not to be blamed — they are no worse, and no more contemptuous of their heritage and identity, than the ruling clique in Israel itself.

No, the problem for Democrats is that in Red America — in flyover country, the only states not already in one column or another — Israel is on the Good Side. In the general election, not only will all candidates have to tack to the center compared to their nomination run-ups, but they will have to satisfy audiences among the undecideds that they are not selling the Israelis down the river. GOP candidates, besides George W. Bush, don’t usually have that problem, and if the Democratic candidates cave on Israel — well, it is a only a matter of when; but if it happens now — count on the Republicans to exploit this in 2008. Will Soros’s selection have a response?

Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »

Watching the watchers

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 20, 2007

You knew about Olbermann Watch. But did you know about Watching Olbermann Watch? It’s a website by those obsessively compelled to monitor a website that’s obsessively compelled to monitor a guy who’s making a nice living, thank you.

And we know for sure that Keith Olbermann only writes — how many of these websites?

Posted in Blogophilia, Medialites | 4 Comments »

Plugging the plank

Posted by Ron Coleman on March 20, 2007

This memo just washed up on shore:

Avast, friend… whether ye be land-lubber or member of the Brethren…!

If you read the newspaper–or even just glance at the headlines–you are no doubt aware of the critical worldwide shortage of pirates. (If you do just glance at headlines, you might consider canceling your paper subscription and spending your money on something else.)

Pirates perform a number of vital socio-economic services for the population at large, of course: Their constant burying and digging up of treasure ensures the free circulation of doubloons and other valuables; their making each other walk the plank guarantees that sharks in all seven seas are well fed; and without pirates the rum industry could not survive.

Unfortunately, ranks of pirates are at their thinnest these days, and no one seems to know exactly why. Is it global warming, which has disrupted the natural habitat of the feared Ice Pirates of Antarctica… or an excess of wily but virtuous blacksmiths who, having studied swordsmanship in secret, are now hell-bent on wreaking vengeance on the pirates who destroyed their homes? Or is it simply too many ninjas?

Whatever the cause of this crisis, my friends, I am a man of action, and I would prefer to focus on the solution. And the solution is simple: We need more pirates.

Jean LaFoote the barefoot pirate

Studies show that 9 out of 10 potential buccaneers are held back only by the lack of a really good entry-level guide for new pirates. (The tenth is held back by his love of the Governor’s virtuous daughter.) While we can’t do anything for that unfortunate tenth, the other nine are in luck.Sometime in the next few weeks, THE GOVERNMENT MANUAL FOR NEW PIRATES will arrive in a bookshop (or on a bookship) near you.

THE GOVERNMENT MANUAL FOR NEW PIRATES is a handy (or, hooky, as the case may be) and practical reference manual that will aid you in selecting a ship, training your parrot, and — perhaps most importantly — cursing with sufficient panache. It also features a handy pirate/Yiddish dictionary.

If you have been thrown in the brig (or are otherwise unable to make it to your local bookstore), you may purchase the book by clicking here.

THE GOVERNMENT MANUAL FOR NEW PIRATES: Because that treasure isn’t going to bury itself.

Arrrrr,

Matthew David Brozik
(a/k/a “Cap’n Hook-leg”)
Co-author of The Government Manual for New Pirates

Posted in Ars Longa, Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »