Pianist Krystian Zimerman says people in the U.S. have no clue.He will shun the United States in protest.No more concerts for us.
On stage in Los Angeles, Zimerman complained about Guantanamo Bay, about the war in Iraq (“a war based on lies”), and about U.S. policy toward his home country of Poland.“Get your hands off my country,” he said.
Obama’s election apparently failed to mollify him:
Lately, he’d seemed pleased with the direction the United States has taken. During a performance Friday at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, he delighted his Bay Area audience by making sly reference to his approval of Barack Obama in the White House.
We of course knew the Bay Area took delight in Obama, but who knew they appreciated slyness?
And so, the incoherent Zimerman will presumably continue to perform in those countries with a history of marching across Poland, each time leaving it in ruins, in order to chastise the only country that made an effective stand against its oppression.
The report makes no mention of whether he intends to pull his CDs from the shelves and forego other income derived from the clueless Americans, but you might want to avoid offending him with your money, just in case he forgets.
Porter Goss, former CIA Director and Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, brings some welcome perspective to the debate on interrogation techniques.
Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.
Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:
– The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
– We understood what the CIA was doing.
– We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
– We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
– On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.
Now, the same members of Congress who knew what was going on and gave their consent are poised to launch investigations and even prosecutions of those who carried out these (formerly) bi-partisan policies.This Inquisition is just getting started, and before cooler heads prevails, it will do more damage to the intelligence services than the Church Committee.
Miss California, Carrie Prejean, makes an excellent poster girl for heterosexuality.
It’s unfortunate that her views on same-sex marriage are being marginalized as peculiar to Christian conservatives. Her views are equally compatible with Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, and numerous other religions. But you don’t have to believe in any of them to agree with Prejean. You could simply believe in biology, for example, and rationally conclude that there is something unique about heterosexual marriage.
Personally, I wonder who came up with the insane idea of having Perez Hilton, an openly gay gossip columnist who apparently made his mark “outing” allegedly gay celebrities, judge a beauty contest. He usurped the show. The Miss USA Pageant will never be the same. I suppose next year the pageant will be open to contestants of any gender, all in the name of tolerance and equality.
Someone left a comment at Wizbang that pretty well sums up my feelings about all this foolishness:
I didnt know who either of them were before this week…I like her a WHOLE lot better!
Geert Wilders has been denied free speech in the Netherlands and denied entry into Britain, so it seems only fitting that we should give him the widest audience possible. His remarks earlier this month are worth hearing.
Contrast Wilders with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights at Durban II. The video below via Powerline purports to be of the Iranian delegation engaged in reasoned debate. The subject of the debate is the one dignified gentleman seen briefly in the middle of the crowd, Elie Wiesel. As Wilders says, all cultures are not equal.
That’s what Marc Thiessen calls it in today’s Washington Post, explaining the damage to national security from the release of CIA interrogation methods.Of particular interest, the administration has given highly valuable information to al Qaeda while withholding valuable information from us:
But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved.
Yet there is more information confirming the program’s effectiveness. The Office of Legal Counsel memo states “we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM” and notes that “intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the [Counterterrorism Center's] reporting on al Qaeda.” The memos refer to other classified documents — including an “Effectiveness Memo” and an “IG Report,” which explain how “the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information.” Why didn’t Obama officials release this information as well? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.
Add to that the fact that the news media have largely ignored the information in the report that details how intelligence was gathered successfully using those methods.
Did those techniques make us safer?Obama says unequivocally no, but the evidence indicates otherwise.Even if reasonable minds could differ on that question, there is no doubt that releasing the information has made us more vulnerable.
General Motors, under its new government management, announced plans today to revamp its entire line of automobiles.Gone are the land yachts, SUVs, and soccer vans.GM plans to introduce instead a sleek new automobile more befitting of the company’s revised mission in hard economic times.
In fact, GM has settled on a single, one-size-fits-all, model with a proven track record.The strategy will streamline the company, focus the marketing efforts, and cut production costs dramatically.
It’s actually a reprise of a classic, the Trabant.
Unlike Ford’s attempt to bring back the nostalgic Thunderbird, the Trabant offers a combination of nostalgia and practicality.Its German engineering is expected to be a real plus among auto enthusiasts.
The smoky, two-stroke engine was expected to be a drawback initially, but company spokespeople said there were very aggressive plans to replace the engine with more environmentally friendly, state-of-the-art hybrid within a very short time – “probably 7-10 years,” according to one congressional staffer.
Fred Flummocks, project manager, explained.“We started with a blank slate, put our best government designers to work on this problem, and they kept coming back with much the same thing.It was hard not to see some resemblance to the old Trabi, so eventually, we just looked around the room and reached a consensus that the Trabi was perfect as a government-produced car.”
“There was a lot of discussion – well, actually grumbling among the holdover engineers and design people who really weren’t in favor of this decision,” said Flummocks from his office in Washington.“But doing nothing just isn’t an option.”
Another high-ranking spokesman responded to questions about the need some people have for larger vehicles. “We considered continuing to make pick-ups for farmers and people who have stuff they need to haul around, but it wasn’t practical.Too many people in the city were buying pick-ups for no reason – you know, just taking them to Starbucks or chewing up two parking spaces in the office garage.”
“Besides,” he said, “The only people who need pick-ups are out in the country, and they really aren’t our constituency – er, market.”
Officials at Chrysler were quick to criticize the move.According to one source, “It’s just not fair that the government is propping up GM this way, and then it decides to go toe-to-toe competing in our market.We’ve been making the functional equivalent of the Trabant for years, so this could really take a bite out of our sales.”
GM’s managers testified before a House Subcommittee yesterday that the decision to produce the Trabant as GM’s sole offering would not result in the loss of single union job or any reduction in benefits.
Gateway Pundit brings the predictable news of writers on the left who blame Capt. Phillips for the death of the pirates who kidnapped him and shed crocodile tears for the Seals whose lives were put at risk in the rescue.The Daily Kos, which speaks for an unfortunately large number of people, counsels us to follow the pirates’ rules meticulously.Then, all will be well:
The pirates’ modus operandi is that they hold the crew, ship, and cargo harmlessly until a lot of money is paid to them. Phillips “heroic” actions put his crew and himself at risk. If he’d done nothing except acquiesce to the pirates’ demands, there would have been no risk, just possible discomfort until the extortion money was paid. Instead he put himself and the Seals at grave risk.
I applaud the crew, the Seals, and the military chain of command for their actions. I think Phillips was in error–if not a grandstander, then greatly misguided.
Pictured below are three grandstanders: Thomas Phillips, John Benbow, and Sir Ralph Delavall. I could not find any similar memorials to those who followed Kos’ advice.
The rules according to Kos:
Surrender first.
Negotiate a better surrender if the first one is unsatisfactory.
Pay any demand.
Leave any grandstanders among you to the tender mercies of cutthroats.
Those rules apply, of course, only to the curious breed of people stupid enough to venture onto the high seas or high prairie, to Navy Seals, merchant marines, entrepreneurs, financiers, farmers, fishermen, and firemen.
From the comfortable blue-state urban neighborhoods of Kosdom, grandstanding (especially of the rhetorical variety) is perfectly acceptable.
Capt. Richard Phillips was in “imminent danger” of being killed before snipers shot the pirates in an operation authorized by President Barack Obama, Vice Adm. Bill Gortney said.
We can all be grateful that Capt. Phillips was rescued.That, by definition, is not a botched mission.But I’m left with serious questions:
1. Do we now require presidential approval for the rescue of U.S. citizens held captive on the high seas?
2. If we require presidential approval, what’s to stop congressional Democrats from constructing some right to oversee the president’s decision to rescue hostages?Will the president have to trigger the War Powers Act?
3. Why is there any need for a reference to “imminent danger”?Capt. Phillips had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom.Did this mission require some finding that he was about to be killed imminently - say, today as opposed to tomorrow?
4. If Capt. Phillips had succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and been engaged in a game of Parcheesi with his captors, would the president have ordered the Navy to stand down?
5. Is there some explanation for why it took the Navy several days to defeat four dudes in an out-of-gas lifeboat?
6. Why did we allow this out-of-gas lifeboat to drift slowly to shore where the pirates could find help?Is the Navy out of grappling hooks?Would a frogman in the water risk harm to sensitive marine life?Were we waiting for an indictment?
7. If you were being held hostage by Somali pirates, wouldn’t you rather have Capt. Phillips in charge of your rescue (someone who was apparently able to think on his feet), or perhaps some Lieutenant Commander on the scene, than a bloated chain of command that extends all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
Defending Western Culture and traditions through a rational discussion of the arts (emphasis on durable music) with unavoidable references to politics, religion, law, ranching, and the quest for a good martini.
Professor Carol now offers a complete self-study course covering 300 years of music.
This romp through music history (and many other historical topics) combines 13 hours of DVD video with a 3-disc listening set from Naxos and a 236-page course book.
From the birth of opera to the Leipzig coffeehouses frequented by Bach and Schumann, from the Orthodox cathedrals of Moscow to Tin Pan Alley, from scientific discoveries to bloody revolutions, spooky dramas and shoe styles, Carol chronicles it all with her unique commentary.
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