http://www.cronaca.com/archives/001506.html

Very interesting article about the view French people hold of their own country. Apparantely it's souring. The 5th, or 8th, or whatever Republic of France they are, may need some revision soon. Surprise, centralized welfare states don't work!

Here's an idea. Walk out on the U.N. Start a new organization, an invitation only group founded by the US. Make a constitution for the group in which the United States has the power to pick all the members, but is no more powerful than the other nations otherwise. Countries can apply to join, and if we think they ahve some serious human rights violations, they won't get in. If they are led by tyrants, they won't get in. If they are a hate-filled country where terrorists grow on trees, they won't get in. But if their people can live free, and they share the basic ideal that all people are created equal, and should be free to live their lives, then they can get in. Then we'll have an international organization for peace in which the members actually care about peace.

By the way, something like this would not be without precedent. Back in the day, Woodrow Wilson started the League of Nations. It was pretty much useless, as WWII proves, and was disbanded to provide a chance for the UN to get started. Now the UN is proving to be useless. Start again.

How about that recall election? I think Arnold will probably win, especially if McClintock can be convinced to drop out. Previously I was skeptical of Arnold, mainly due to the advisers he has surrounded himself with. Warren Buffet is not exactly a bastion of low tax policy. I read an article written by Arnold (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004058) that totally revives my optimism. Except for the cheesy references to the Terminator (so bad I almost vomited), he did a really good job.

Bush's speech to the UN was both good and bad. Good for what he said, bad for what he left out. Wouldn't this have been a great chance for him to reveal all the information on WMDs that he said he was going to discuss in September? He's running out of time.

What he did say can be summed up rather easily to, "I still think I'm right on Iraq, but it would be nice if the UN wanted to support me a bit. If not, at least come in and run elections when we're ready for it. Oh yeah, you should also try to come up with a plan for staunching the proliferation of nuclear weapons so we don't have to do this stuff again."

Germany has decided to play nice, and the French are kind of talking that way, too. The only explanation I can think of for the sudden turn around is that they realzied the rest of the world was on to their plan. Now they won't be able to get the UN in charge of Iraq to the point where they would be able to control Iraq's oil.

To anyone out there that thinks the French have been acting out of some altruistic notion, you're wrong. First off, supporting the continuation of the rule of Saddam is not in any way altruistic. Secondly the French have shown time and again that their "altruistic" foreign policies are merely a way to get their foots in the door and drum up some business.

Thanks to InstaPundit for this link. Great, GREAT article on Iraq and Bush, and why, if a democrat had been in charge, much of the same stuff would have happened, but there would be less complaining. Also refers to articles in major left-wing journals from 1998 complaining that Saddam has ignored UN resolutions for too long, and Clinton's bombing campaign doesn't far enough. Funny, back then the UN resolutions had given Saddam too much leeway. 5 years later, however, we didn't give those same resolutions more time to achieve results. The democrats should rename themselves, "The Hypocrites."

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0903/091803.html

I read a point that someone made yesterday in an online discussion forum on somethingawful.com that defeats any argument you could make that Israel is at fault and should stand down and stop trying to stop Palestinians from killing them, unless you are one of those crazies that really thinks the Palestinians will all be happy once they get a state. The fact is, if I srael concedes and puts down its arms, they will get swept into the sea by a wave suicide bombers and Palestinian refugess claiming right-of-return. If the Palestinian militants put down their arms and concede, they will get their own sovereign country. It's as simple as that, one side has everything to lose by conceding defeat, the other has everything to win.

I wonder how many people realize that the current Middle East conflicts are, in all reality, an effect of European infighting in the 1800's. The Europeans couldn't make peace with each other, a situation which led to the assasination of the Archduke Ferdinand, who was heir to the thron of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by Princip in Sarajevo, which led to the onset of WWI. French greed led to ridiculously high reparations to be paid by Germany, which sent the new Weimar Republic, which was Germany's shot at rebuilding itself, into a political chaos out of which Hitler rose. Hitler's anti-semitism, and the appeasement of the rest of Europe, led to the Holocaust, which led to the formation of Israel as one place where perhaps Jews could live without the fear of oppression and death, which they had faced throughout their long history. Now European reluctance to admit that Palestinian terrorists will not stop until every Jew has been driven into the sea allows the death to continue. When will Europe admit that the problem is not the Jews, but their own failings which have led to the current state of affairs?

Throughout history, all the way back to pre-Grecian times, Europeans have led the world by far in death and destruction. What is wrong with these people that they can't let the rest of the world live in peace?

Christine Amanpour started throwing dirt at FoxNews, calling them, "Bush's foot soldiers." FoxNews's reply was classic, with their spokesperson saying, "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda." I love it!

One wonders what the world would look like today had Al Gore been elected President of the United States instead of George Bush. I suspect September 11 would have happened, that Gore would ahve gone after Osama bin Laden and friends with much the same gusto, and that he, too, would have gotten fed up with the U.N.'s lassaiz faire attitude regarding Saddam and gone in as well, in this era of connect the dots to terrorism. Israel would still be suffering terrorist attacks, apologists would still be calling the Palestinian terrorists "freedom fighters," and the economy would still be bad, but slowly getting better. The big difference would be that the country would probably be more unified, because the Republican party would respect Gore for going after terrorism, despite political differences. If only the Democratic Party had the same kind of integrity.

Further in to the discussion with Smiley, we talked about the far future. Let's say, for arguement's sake, that the far left wins out, and in 1000 years we're all happy on soma or something, everbody is fed, the producers produce, and the moochers live off welfare or whatever. We haven't colonized space because it costs too much and takes away from the ability to make the lowest common denominator happy. Let's say that an alien race visits Earth. If they do, it's because they didn't go the same route, in which case they won't care about peace at any cost. That means they may very well be aggressive and see Earthlings as weak and easy to take advantage of. Or, the Right/Libertarians could win out, we colonize space, and when we meet up with aliens (and I truly think they are out there somewhere), we'll be able to deal with it. Far, far future speculation, but worth thinking about. There is, of course, a lot of science fiction that deals with first contact, but probably not so much that relates it to current day political ideology. Perhaps that would be a good niche for me to write a story about.

I'm curious about who my readers are, so if you're not related to me, send me an email to benskott@hotmail.com and say hi.

Roommate Smiley, following a discussion related to my earlier blog on the future of the human race and the differing result thereof from Liberal and other ideologies, said that I should write a research paper on the effect of science fiction on modern politics. I thought more about it, and I'm not sure I can write that, because I don't think there is much direct effect. Certainly the idea of humans colonizing space versus everyone staying on Earth and being happily peaceful has some merit in this discussion, but do you think welfare supporters like Howard Dean are actually reading science fiction to get ideas about how he can stagnate the human race? There's Europe, a more liberal area which does seem to be stagnating somewhate versus the more conservative and more innovative United States, and the effects each ideology has on their evolution. There's cyberpunk and the idea about the 'net' which are slowly becoming reality. It's an idea I will think more about, but I'm not sure if I want to tackle it. Where would you even get that sort of thing published? Smiley has confidence I can do it, and I know I have the ability, but I'd rather get a story published.

Turns out I was wrong. I had the times mixed up and had to cancel on going to that meeting. Then I felt like a jerk, and decided that not pissing off my boss is more important than my other plans, so I delayed my other plans and will be joining my colleagues for drinks. I just hope it's not just me and my bosses and the guy from Citi.

Fun day at work. There were lots of little crisies, but I got them all fixed. I was all excited because our Account Executive from Citibank is coming to take us all out for drinks. Well then I find out a bunch of people aren't going because Citi has been a pain in the ass lately, and they're bitter. I say go drink his money and have a good time. Well then I hear my bosses bitching that everyone replied positively, and now not a single person is going. I was still going, and looking forward to it, but apparantely my bosses don't think I count, so now I'm a little bitter, and may not go. They should be more careful what they say seeing as they are in the office across the hall and both doors are always open.

Check this out!

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin-e.html

Another day, another suicide bomb. This time east of Tel Aviv. It won't end until Israel feels like it can take its gloves off and do what it needs to do to protect their people without the rest of the world coming down on them. Basically that means that the US needs to give them the thumbs up.

A liberal friend of mine was trying to state the basic differences between liberals, conservatives, and libertarians in a few simple sentences. I disagreed with him somewhat, and, after thinking more about it, I decided a lot of it, domestically, anyway, comes down to how you look at the future of the human race. To a Libertarian like myself (to distinguish from other Libertarians), the future of the human race involves evolution, space exploration, and colonization. To get to this point, we have to stop coddling the huddled masses and let success speak for itself. Social-Darwinism. That's what it's about. Liberals, the idealistic ones, not the power hungry megalomaniacs like Hillary, don't look to the future as the conquering of the universe, they prefer to look to a future where everyone can be happy in our little world, a world where the human race eventually will stagnate, but there will be peace and food for everyone.

I played my first round of golf yesterday, 18 holes at semi-beautiful Bobby Jones on Northside not too far from where I live. The front nine was a heck of a great time. I was driving well, and 3 putting nearly everything. My short game needs some work, obviously, but I was playing better than my much more experienced roommate. Our other companion, Warren Grey, kicked both of our asses, breaking his own personal record with 3 straight pars and 5 over the course of the day. Really I find the short game, putting chipping, etc., to be not so exciting. For me it's all about those big drives. Hitting a 3 wood over the water, hitting a driver downhill 300 ayrds right to the green, that where the fun is. That's why you'll probably see me on a driving range a lot more than on a golf course.

CNN.com is reporting that the recall race in California (I was going to use the word gubanatorial, but I wasn't sure about the spelling) has begun to focus around immigration issues. The quotes from Schwarzenegger used the term illegal immigrants when discussing such topics as prop 54 which he is against (the bill is to stop collecting information on race and ethnicity, despite the very beneficial effects in medical care, among others), prop 187? (the one where illegal immigrants can get driver's licenses), and other ideas to give more official status to illegal immigrants. When Davis and Bustamonte discuss these issues, especially when attacking Schwarzenegger, they use the term immigrants, with the distinct lack of illegal, despite the lie of omission. Schwarzenegger, a legal immigrant at some point in his life, could not possibly to be said to have a problem with people coming in to this country by proper means. I hope the people of California, US citizens and legal immigrants, are not so stupid as to fall for these charlatans who try to use a twist of phrase to incorrectly attack their opponents.

As far as Arnold's little magazine interview from 25 years ago, who cares? If we blamed people for things they did 25 years ago (except of course the violently evil type things), there would be very few people capable of our approval. I'm far more disturbed by the lack of care in regard to Bustamonte's affiliation with the seemingly racist Hispanic group, which I think is called Mehta? Not so much that he was a member back in college, but that he refuses to denounce such a group presently.

I was disappointed with Bush's speach tonight. I think he should have waited until they were ready to release whatever information they have supposedly collected in the weapons of mass destruction arena, which probably means they didn't really find the absolute hard evidence they had been hinting they were collecting for a report to be released in September. That report to be released is something I remember reading about maybe a month and a half ago, and have heard little mention of since. Overall Bush's speech was full of rhetoric with very little actual factual statement free from the influence of his adminitration's view of the world. I was also disappointed at the lack of mention of anything happening around Israel. Until Bush and the world admit that terrorism there is the same as terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, or New York City, I don't think the problems the middle east faces in not being such a chaotic and destructive element in the world, will ever be solved.

I have read much about the proposal in California to give diver's licenses to illegal immigrants in that state. There are a lot of reason given by liberals for why this is a good thing, and a lot of reasons given by conservatives on why this is politically expedient by Grey Davis and has nothing to do with good or bad. Personally, I think it's bad, but I also think that Californians, an obviously misguided and naive bunch, are going to pass this and make it law. What I really wonder is what other states can do? How about putting a law on the books in Georgia stating that California licenses cannot be recognized in any way in our state? Just because people in California are stupid (sorry Courtney and Lane, but from my perspective, your electorate just looks thoughtless and your politicians power-hungry and uncaring), does that mean that we have to let illegal immigrants that came in to this country through California eb able to drive in our state, commit crimes in our state, buy homes in our state? California is creating a problem that affects the rest of the country, and I don't want to pay for the consequences.