Inside the Asylum

I made a prediction concerning Ahmadinejad's words in a previous post. Here is the relevant portion:

I also offer a prediction. Here is how Ahmadinejad’s “new” stance on Israeli-Palestinian negotions is being reported:

The Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says it will be “fine with us” if the Palestinians reach a two-state peace deal with Israel.

The prediction? There will be a clarification or new statement from Ahmadinejad that will make it crystal clear that he didn’t really mean it as it is being reported.

It didn't take long for my prediction to come true.

Ahmadinejad denied saying in an interview to ABC that he agreed to a two-state solution in Palestine.

"Ahmadinejad is bad, but the Iranian people are our friends." That's a pretty common refrain. Just because the Iranian president is as crazy as a rabid baboon, the Iranian population as a whole shouldn't be blamed. Seems to me we've heard that kind of thing somewhere before (see Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust). Seems to me also that this might have some relevance:

A recent nationwide poll showed that the Iranian president's popularity has grown among the electorate, while support for his rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi has remained unchanged... "The opinion poll conducted in Tehran as well as 29 other provincial capitals and 32 important cities on May 3-4, indicates that 58.6 percent will cast their ballots in favor of Ahmadinejad."

That's the funny thing about democracy. You can't just blame the leaders.
[American voters had better take a long hard look at themselves too, as they contemplate the next four years of debt, inflation and ever expanding government.]

Time for another timely Heinlein quote. If this doesn't describe Pelosi's attitude to waterboarding, I don't know what does:

"Most self-described 'pacifists' are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger."
From Time Enough For Love

Post Sept 11, the likes of Pelosi were fine with the "do whatever it takes" approach, but now the wind has changed they're back to moral outrage... and of course one day the wind will change direction again.

Daniel Bell, who teaches at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote the following Op-Ed in the New York times a few days ago:

Jiang Qing, a leading exponent of the new Confucianism, explicitly criticizes the idea of state sovereignty, saying that sovereignty lies with “heaven” rather than the state. He argues for a democratic institution that would offer more opportunities for political participation, while criticizing democracy for being too narrowly focused on the interests of the current generation of voters. Jiang proposes another political institution designed to represent non-voters whose interests are typically neglected in democratic states, such as foreigners, future generations and ancestors... Communism is dead as a unifying myth that can sustain the Chinese people, they argue, so what does China stand for now? Here’s where Confucian values become relevant.

It should be noted that Bell himself is a member of the "Left" himself, and it's informative to see how he operates in this Chinese environment. While I like Confucianism a lot, I don't see it in the same terms as Bell. Bell is ideologically aligned the China's "New Left" which is seeking to create a new socialist paradise only this time basing it on a Confucian model. The contempt for democracy that is felt amongst the liberal elite in USA comes out in full unshackled form from this academic when he finds himself in a place where he doesn't even need to pretend that the will of the people matters. Still, the questions that are raised are interesting: what happens when you deny state sovereignty and replace it with the Will of Heaven? How do we cope with the interests of non-voters?

The Weekly Standard notes the coalition of Senators currently opposed to cutting the C-17 transport aircraft. So far we have

Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senator David Vitter (R-LA), Senator Roland Burris (D-IL), Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)

The story also talks about cutbacks in the fighter construction, and notes:

There used to be a bipartisan consensus on the need to maintain America's defense industrial base, and when it comes to shipbuilding, that consensus still exists. But for whatever reason, no one is worried about the loss of what was once a thriving and hypercompetitive fighter aircraft market. Likewise, termination of the C-17 program will, in the words of one industry expert, "put America out of the business of wide-bodied lift aircraft."

Is no-one worried about the long term implications of this?
The article makes another important point:

In the mid-1990s, the Congress had no one [sic] confidence in the Clinton Administration’s budget-first, strategy-after process, and there’s no reason the Congress should accept it from the Obama Administration.

No surprise to this story really. Blogs have more integrity (or at least they should) by always including links to the original stories.

Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia... The sociology major's obituary-friendly quote – which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death on March 28 – flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it. A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole... So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version...

And the fake quote?

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

I don't know about you, but I have a picture in my mind of that kid from the Simpsons going, "Hah Hah".