born live love die

New blog (for me) alert. Pink Dome PinkDome is from Texas, I think. I got this picture from them.

James Wolcott is a must read. He writes about the recent push toward civil war in Iraq.

Poor President Bush, prince of fools. He let the neoconservative creative destructors play upon his religiosity (and Cheney’s power hunger) and persuade him that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be a transformative moment that would set democracy and freedom in motion across the region, and crown him in history with Churchillian honor. I believe Bush wanted democracy in Iraq, or convinced himself that he believed it after the Chalabi-as-chess-king scheme fell through, because such belief flatters his pride in his own idealism. But the intellectual architects of the policy didn’t care. If there was peace and stability in the new Iraq that would strength America’s power in the region and bolster Israeli security, fine; if Iraq fissured into factional strife, fire, and chaos, better still.

He ends with:

Sorry, fellas, but there’s no high road out of hell.

Read the whole thing.

What do you do if you pursue an ism for a lifetime and then it turns on you? Gotta find a new ism, I guess. In one of the celebrated articles of the weekend, Francis Fukuyama washes his hands of neoconservatism.

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. (more…)

If you ever wanted to know what a facist looks like, check this guy out. Ben Shapiro writes about sedition.

At some point, opposition must be considered disloyal. At some point, the American people must say “enough.” At some point, Republicans in Congress must stop delicately tiptoeing with regard to sedition and must pass legislation to prosecute such sedition.

“Freedom of speech!” the American Civil Liberties Union will protest. Before we buy into the slogan, we must remember our history. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and allowed governmental officials to arrest Rep. Clement Vallandigham after Vallandigham called the Civil War “cruel” and “wicked,” shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, and had members of the Maryland legislature placed in prison to prevent Maryland’s secession. The Union won the Civil War.

Under the Espionage Act of 1917, opponents of World War I were routinely prosecuted, and the Supreme Court routinely upheld their convictions. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rightly wrote, “When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” The Allies won World War I.

During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, as well as allowing the prosecution and/or deportation of those who opposed the war. The Allies won World War II.

During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the free speech rights of war opponents, whether those opponents distributed leaflets depicting the rape of the Statue of Liberty or wore jackets emblazoned with the slogan “F— the Draft.” America lost the Vietnam War.

This is not to argue that every measure taken by the government to prosecute opponents of American wars is just or right or Constitutional. Some restrictions, however, are just and right and Constitutional — and necessary. No war can be won when members of a disloyal opposition are given free reign to undermine it.

Check out his bio. How did someone so well educated learn to not think? It isn’t like he didn’t learn to think. He learned to not think. In the passage above, he is making a causal relationship between the way dissenters are treated in war time and the result of that war.

Education has failed him.

IBM has a way to make circuits drawn at 30 nm with 65 nm equipment.

n a development that could help the semiconductor industry postpone a costly switch to expensive chip-making equipment, IBM said its researchers in San Jose have made a breakthrough that could extend the life of current techniques for creating tiny circuitry on chips.

Scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center have created a tool nicknamed Nemo that can help print circuits that are less than 30 nanometers in width. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, and current chip-making equipment can create 65-nanometer circuits. IBM did the work in conjunction with JSR Micro in Sunnyvale.

Bob Allen, one of the researchers, said the invention is significant because it extends the life of immersion lithography tools that have been in use for years. Many observers thought these tools, which shine light through stencils to make the patterns on chips, would hit the limit on shrinking circuits.

Chip makers have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in an alternative technology, extreme ultraviolet lithography, for the future. But Allen said IBM’s advance means chip makers can delay using the alternative.

The number of Iraqi battalions that are able to fight independently is now 0. WaPo has the story.

The number of Iraqi army battalions judged by their American trainers to be capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. help has fallen from one to none since September, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

On December 18, President Bush said this:

First, our coalition will remain on the offense — finding and clearing out the enemy, transferring control of more territory to Iraqi units, and building up the Iraqi security forces so they can increasingly lead the fight. At this time last year, there were only a handful of Iraqi army and police battalions ready for combat. Now, there are more than 125 Iraqi combat battalions fighting the enemy, more than 50 are taking the lead, and we have transferred more than a dozen military bases to Iraqi control.

But….

In a briefing for reporters at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Gene Renuart disclosed that the number of battalions at Level 1 had dropped from one to zero, while the number at Level 2 had grown from 36 last September to 53 now. The number at Level 3 fell from 52 to 45, in part because some were upgraded to Level 2.

Thus, the total number engaged in combat has increased from 88 in September to 98 now.

It was never 125 battalions. When is Bush going to stop lying about things?

If bombing mosques is good for peace in Iraq, let’s stay with that category and hope we hit the Daily Double. On CNN , Terry Jeffery, editor of Human Events and political commentator for CNN, had the following exchange with Wolf Blitzer.

Terry, is Iraq falling apart right now?

TERRY JEFFREY, EDITOR, HUMAN EVENTS: Well, I certainly hope not, Wolf. But I think actually these attacks on these Shia shrines can be attributed to the potential success at the Bush strategy.

Black is the new white.

What people seem to forget is that before 9/11, the worst terrorist acts committed in the US were all done by Americans. Who thinks that any Muslim had anything to do with this ricin ?

A substance discovered by a student in a University of Texas dormitory has tested positive for ricin, a potentially deadly poison, officials said.

The chunky powder was found at the Moore-Hill dormitory Thursday and reported to university police, officials said. Tests for ricin came back positive Friday.

DarkSyde, writing at Kos tells the tale of intelligent design. Here is his wrap up:

All that matters is market share.

Read the whole article to see what it means.

Bush will accept no responsibility. He is like a child in that regard. From the Seattle PI

Appeals from religious leaders and an unusual daytime curfew Friday curbed violence that claimed more than 140 lives across Iraq after the bombing of a Shiite shrine. President Bush joined in calling for calm, saying, “This is a moment of choosing for the Iraqi people.”

Hey, pig, the choice they wanted to make was when you invaded.

They choose ‘no’.