Headline of the story as reported by the AP and Drudge:

Senators question future of US-Soviet nuclear pact

I’m sure someone will correct the headline at some point. But, um, I remember something pretty significant happened on December 25, 1991….

….I was teaching high school kids tonight. None of them was alive during the Soviet Union. I feel old!

So why is it that the Washington Times is going to lay off 40% of its staff and cut back circulation?

Within hours of Maj. Hasan’s gunning down dozens of his unarmed US Army comrades, National Public Radio was on the air with the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] explanation for his murders, a well-acknowledged psychological syndrome.

And although Instapundit gives NPR good marks for digging into the actual facts of the murders yesterday, this morning NPR returned to its usual fare [I heard it myself, from some "reporter"], what a wise man once called the “dictatorship of relativism”: that there are two theories:

a) That this had something to do with Islam, or

b) That the murderer “snapped” at the prospect of being shipped with his unit to Afghanistan on Friday.

The beauty of NPR-ish relativism is that truth is subjective. If

a) doesn’t float your boat because it raises untidy questions about the nature or modern practice of Islam,

you can pick

b), which makes you all warm and fuzzy and as a bonus makes the Major a victim of the American war machine.

Who’s to say?

NPR [and the New York Times and CNN] presented these as equal possibilities. Hmmm. Let us reason together, as a somewhat less wise man once said:

Maj. Nidal is a psychologist, not a combat officer. So what did he have to fear in Afghanistan, then?

Getting his ass blown up by some homicidal or suicidal [probably both] Muslim maniac, mostly. That’s just a fact. I can feel that.

So if he suffered from Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PPTSD], suffering PTSD in advance, it was related to fear of Muslims who kill indiscriminately, of which there are many. Such a fear is not unfounded, because there are a lot of such folks in the Afghanistan area, which is WHY THE UNITED STATES IS IN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

[Sorry for shouting. But geez, ipso facto.]

So then, the only explanation is that Maj. Hasan’s Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was Pre-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder By Proxy [PPTSDBP]: the fear of counseling the actual US combat troops who actually would get blown up by Muslim murderers.

So he just cut to the chase and wasted them all himself back in Texas before they even deployed?

OK, thanks, NPR, NYT, CNN, Chris Matthews, et al.

I realize that makes sense in your reality, where there is no reality, only the opinion that makes you feel OK, makes you feel best about yourself.

And that’s why I’m miffed about all this—not that something relatively predictable happened, but that the media, applying the moronic standard of relativism, can’t tell the difference between the remotely possible and the reasonably probable.

As NPR posed the question, both get equal standing, and it insults their intelligence far more than mine, and even their listeners and contributors.

What, do they think we’re stupid?

Unfortunately, they do. Some of us don’t mind and NPR calls them “members,” meaning they give NPR stations money. Other of us do mind, I guess. We’re what NPR fundraisers call “freeloaders,” who listen but don’t contribute.

I can occasionally bear my intelligence being insulted, but damned if I’ll pay for the privilege.

The answer is a) That this had something to do with Islam. Truth is not a matter of subjectivity, nor is it up for a vote.
__________
CNN: So the first moments of Thursday afternoon, can you tell our viewers, you know, where you were, what happened, how it all unfolded?

PVT Joseph Foster: I was sitting in what they call station 13, it’s where we get, basically, our final outs of our RSP (ph) system and I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up, screamed and yelled Allah Akbar (ph) in Arabic and he opened fire.

[Via Mudville Gazette, transcribing a CNN interview with one of the actual victims. He got shot.]

I’ve got so used to my lefty friends not being able to speak plain English without their perversions of it, that I’ll call Fox News “Faux News” just to get it over with.

It’s now 10 PM Eastern, 7 PM Pacific, and the results are rolling in on Election Day 2009.

Republicans have already enjoyed a landslide for the top 3 offices in Virginia, a 2008 “swing state.”

Faux News has their anchor Shepard Smith up front, followed by Bret Baier, both of whom anchor straight news shows, not opinion shows like O’Reilly’s, Hannity’s or Beck’s.

MSNBC is running opinionator Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, with highly partisan Lawrence O’Donnell reading the returns. At least MSNBC has abandoned the pretense that Olbermann can serve as an even-handed anchor—as they pretended until halfway through the 2008 Democratic convention, when even MSNBC execs couldn’t keep a straight face about it anymore.

FLASH—As I write this, Faux News has just projected Republican Chris Christie defeating Democrat Jon Corzine for New Jersey governor.

A flick back over to MSNBC had Lawrence O’Donnell finishing an interview with Howard Fineman and promising Keith will return.

After returning from commercial, Olbermann has just begun his promised attack on Joe Lieberman over the health care bill. No election coverage forthcoming. In the lower corner, I see a check mark next to Christie’s name over Corzine. Oh.

The White House has declared that Fox News isn’t news, but recently the President met with Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson, E.J. Dionne, Ron Brownstein, John Dickerson, Frank Rich, Jerry Seib, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Gloria Borger, and Gwen Ifill.

Oh, and Keith Olbermann. Frequent MSNBC viewers will recognize most of those names as resident or visiting experts.

Meanwhile, those of us interested in election news will have to thumb the remote back on Fox. Or that other cable news network that few watch anymore.

Late add: It’s 10:42 EST as I finish this, and Olbermann is talking about baseball. [Praising the Yankees, natch.] Back over at the Fox News Channel, O’Reilly, Hannity and Back are nowhere in sight. FNC is, however, analyzing the election returns, you know, like they were news or something.

Last add: Democrat ex-Gov. Jon Corzine is now making his concession speech on FNC. Olbermann and MSNBC are still doing baseball…

What’s the big deal? Apparently, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post seems to think that the handful of Republican Senators that choose to vote by proxy in Committee against Sotomayor somehow are disgracing the nomination process because they didn’t show up. Or was it that they didn’t vote yes like their colleague, Lindsey Graham? As if sitting through hours upon hours of near pointless hearings isn’t enough. Truthfully, our reporters have nothing better to do.

See Brian Williams bow to President Obama.

(H/T: Illinois Review)

(Cross-posted from Thoughts of a Regular Guy.)

The Roman virtue signifying one’s duty to family, in particular parents.  It also appears to be something Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley, is lacking.

Rod Dreher makes a half-hearted defense of Christopher Buckley’s exposé of his recently departed mother and father.  Dreher describes Christopher Buckley as being in the “impossible position” of choosing between telling the truth and honoring his parents.  Whatever happened to respectful silence?

Let me get this straight. When the Sept. 11 attacks took place, Pres. Bush was pilloried for continuing to read to kindergarten kids and not shoulder-rolling into a waiting black SUV while simultaneously pulling two AK-47s out of his suit coat and screaming, “Come and get ya some, punks! Let’s do this!” (Google “bush goat kindergarten” for proof.)

But eight years later, with the economy subterranean and giants of industry teetering on the abyss, it’s perfectly fine for the sitting U.S. president to go on a late-night talk show for some yuk-yuks? And don’t you love how the Christian Science Monitor slugged this article, and then went on to get in some jabs in the body of the article, too? (more…)

Ross Douthat is one of the smartest and most well-respected conservative writers around.  And he is 29 years old to boot!  I don’t always agree with what he writes, but it’s always worth reading.  If nothing else, it’s refreshing to have a social conservative at the Grey Lady.

Update: In case anyone missed Feddie’s original post to it back in November, here is Ross Douthat’s beat down of Douglas Kmiec over at Slate.  This quote still brings a tear to my eye:

I suppose I could find a thing or three to agree with in Kmiec’s longer list of ideas for how the party he abandoned could win back his vote. But frankly, I don’t see the point. I understand that the pro-life position on abortion does not command majority support in the United States and that people of good will can disagree on the subject. And I have no doubt that the Republican Party can profit from greater dialogue between its pro-life and pro-choice constituents—and do a better job, as well, of addressing itself to both pro-lifers and pro-choicers who aren’t already inside its tent. But I can’t begin to fathom why the GOP should consider taking any advice whatsoever from a “pro-lifer” who has spent the past year serving as an increasingly embarrassing shill for the opposition party’s objectively pro-abortion nominee.

I generally have low expectations whenever the New York Times reports on religion and, more specifically, Catholicism.  But this article on Archbishop Timothy Dolan—the current archbishop of Milwaukee and the newly-appointed archbishop of New York—is bad by any measure.

(more…)

Spengler has a typically smart take on the furor following Pope Benedict’s decision to lift the excommunications on four Society of St. Pius X bishops—including the holocaust denier, Richard Williamson.  In particular, Spengler worries that “[b]ad governance and worse public relations” at the Vatican not only threaten to undermine Catholic-Jewish relations but also Pope Benedict’s more general efforts at defending the West’s “spiritual foundations.”
(more…)

An apt description of what Megyn Kelly does to Obama spokesman Bill Burton in this video clip:

(h/t Newsbusters.org)

Novelist Andrew Klavan is being interviewed on Uncommon Knowledge this week.  He also has a cool website/blog.

Harry Stein has some thoughts on “The Future of Conservative Books” in the summer 2008 City Journal.

An American Carol opens nationwide on October 3.

The Goode Family, Mike Judge’s new project, is scheduled to debut on ABC in November or next spring, depending on which website you read.

Dig this.  (Hat tip to K-Lo.)

Thank you, Terry. This is the first time I ever did a double take while looking at a computer screen.

Michael Hirsh wants you to understand that “the South — or what has become the South-Southwest” is the vessel of “a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores” traceable to Scotch-Irish migration patterns and Andrew Jackson.  “The coarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and frontierism has brought to our national dialogue is unmistakable.”  And Hirsh doesn’t care for it — the “intolerant nation” he says we’ve become — not one bit.  The essay is subtitled “Southernism is taking over our national dialogue. Maybe it’s time for the North to secede from the Union.”

Yawn.

Such media fear and loathing of the South in Presidential election politics is at least as old as its reaction to Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”   Give it a rest, guys.

How many times have you heard some toad-licking agrarian socialist of the modern day refer to FOX News as “propaganda” or “biased” and then pirouette and insist that CNN or CBS News is a bastion of objectivity?

(more…)

In today’s WSJ, Christopher Hitchens takes an appropriately sharp look at O.J. Simpson’s new “book.”

Teens Call Hyper-Sexualized Media Images ‘Normal’

Yikes. Raising a daughter in this culture would send me to an early grave.

In July, San Francisco Police Officer Nick Birco was killed in the line of duty.  You can read about his sacrifice here.  Apparently, in typical liberal fashion, the SF media heaped criticism on the department over its pursuit policy rather than condemning the behavior of a fleeing felon. 

In this press conference, SF Police Association President Gary Delagnes gives the media the business and points out the judicial failings that led to this tragedy.  Simply outstanding.

S.T. Karnick is one of the journeyman writers of the conservative-libertarian (or as he would say, classical liberal) movement.  His work has appeared just about everywhere.  Some of you may remember him from his editorship and co-creation of American Outlook, which was a very good policy and culture magazine put out by the Hudson Institute for several years.  He and Wlady gave me my first opportunities in freelance writing a few years ago.  (Thanks to both for helping through a couple of lean years in Waco.)

Although Karnick has written about just about everything between his freelance work and his regular editorial pieces for the Hudson magazine, he really shines when opining about popular culture.  After years of encouraging him to focus on that area, I am happy to report that Karnick on Culture is now in business.  After only a few short days, Karnick has written posts covering Mickey Spillane, Monk, Psych, the Beach Boys, Touching Evil, Nero Wolfe, The Closer, and Superman Returns.  Spend a little time with S.T. Karnick before you make another CD, DVD, or fiction purchase.  You’ll be glad you did. 

Salvo Magazine is the latest effort by the publishers of Touchstone.  Salvo has an intellectual edge, like Touchstone, but is not devotional or necessarily religious at all.  It is, however, a wickedly funny indictment of culture with some insightful articles along the way. 

I’m telling everyone I can about the magazine because it has exceeded all my expectations.  I wrote an article for it and promptly forgot about the project thinking it would be just another throwaway magazine, but Salvo is gorgeously rendered and makes the articles pop right out of the page. 

You have to buy the mag or subscribe for four quarterly issues to see it, but I can assure you that the fake ads are worth the price of admission alone.  Bobby Maddex has really accomplished something as editor of this magazine and I encourage everyone who wants to see more of these efforts to support it by subscribing for the first year.

Lee at A Bama Blog has written the definitive response to Dana Milbank’s shabby attack on Senator Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.)  It ends with this:

Back in 2004, Dana Milbank co-authored a column with David Broder entitled “Hopes for Civility in Washington are Dashed.” To quote the Instapundit…”Indeed.” Perhaps Mr. Milbank should re-read his own material from time to time.

Read the whole thing.

Dana Milbank’s column today is a remarkably nasty personal attack on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.), apparently triggered by Sessions’s positions on immigration policy and border control.  “Forget Politics. This Battle Is Personal” begins with this:

Alabama’s Jeff Sessions sure knows how to nurse a grudge. Talking about his family earlier this year, the Republican senator recalled that “Lincoln killed one of them at Antietam.”

Now he is turning his prodigious anger on legislation the Senate is expected to approve on Thursday that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens. In the process, Sessions is taking on the White House, his leaders in the Senate, the Congressional Budget Office and business interests at home.

Nowhere in the column does Milbank explain how Sessions’s position is “personal,” nor does he plumb the source of Sessions’s “prodigious anger” or explain how Sessions’s positions are a function of some “grudge” of his.  Instead, the reader is treated to a textbook example of ad hominem argument, including this passage:  

A short, wiry man with protruding ears, Sessions has become the Lou Dobbs of the Senate. He argues his points not with the courtly Southern tones of the late senator Howell Heflin (D), his predecessor, but with the harsh twang of a country tough — which, in a sense, he is.

So, the reader is left to speculate that, maybe, Sessions opposes an open-border approach simply because he’s a mean-spirited, vicious redneck.

That’s the Washington Post I know and love.

More on Sessions and immigration from A Bama Blog, including a link to this John O’Sullivan column, calling Sessions “a hero of commensense in this debate.”

Update:  Steve Sailer is all over this.

Further update:  Lee at A Bama Blog has a very thorough response to Milbank here.

I saw United 93 on Saturday night. It was the single most powerful film I’ve seen in my life. The film lacks any element of fiction. I didn’t feel as though I was being told a story, so much as I felt that I was a ghost given permission to observe events at the FAA, NORAD, and onboard United 93.

What I observed was the incredible vulnerability of human systems confronted by something new, the tenuousness of authority in the face of relentless second-guessing by media and legal professionals, and the willingness of people to keep working in the most impossible situations.

The recreation of events on the flight are super-realistic. We only get one side of phone calls. We see the rapid formation of a plan by men who know only that they have to do something and that failure will be no worse than a death sentence 95% already delivered. By the time the passengers move against the attackers you are so keyed up and identify so fully with their plight, you move with them. I could almost smell the recycled air of the cabin.

The closest I can come to explaining the experience is to invoke the holodeck of Star Trek fame. I felt as though I had walked into a holodeck taking me through September 11 and United Flight 93. I couldn’t help, but I could feel the emotions and take in the atmosphere.

When the passengers finally move against their captors, I felt a dam break inside me and all the tension, fear, and anger racked my body as tears literally jumped out of my eyes. I knew no one in the theatre would notice because the other people were going through the same thing. When the credits came up, no one moved.

After a few moments, we recovered from our shock and walked from the theatre in a procession just as orderly as a funeral.

If a lot of people see this film (and I pray they will), there will no longer be much debate about Iraq or Iran. Wide recognition will dawn upon Americans that we are in uncharted territory and that something is exponentially better than nothing when facing an implacable foe. We need to churn up as many difficulties as possible so that our experience will be wide and we will never again display the innocence we did just a few Septembers ago.

No matter how much we wish it were not so and pretend it is not true when previous memories fail, we are violently reminded that there is evil in the world and that its practitioners are convinced of their rectitude.

which I saw last night.   Many have questioned whether it is too soon to have a movie on these events.  Before seeing the movie, I also wondered if it was too soon.  However, during the movie and since, that thought never crossed my mind.  The only impact of the currency of the movie, for me, was that I remember the events more clearly than if it had been twenty years ago.  Although on second thought, I doubt those memories will ever fade.

A few things that struck me about the movie though:

1)  I did not like how the movie followed the terrorists preparations for the day.  Granted it was not extensive, but I was shocked and disgusted to feel a non-negative emotional connection with the terrorists, in the way that Hitchcock got the audience to connect with Norman Bates such that when Bates tried to dispose of the body in the car the audience almost rooted for the car to sink.  The movie should have followed the day-to-day activities of the innocent vicitms.  We only learn sparce details from conversations and that failed to create the appropriate emotional connection.

2)  The movie made me see 9/11 through new eyes.   I had lived it with fear from my safe mid-western home, and had pondered the emotions of the victims, as well as those who lost family and friends, or who were in the New York and D.C. areas and while not direct victims suffered the reality much more than I had.  However, this movie made me realize the utter fear and helplessness the air traffic controllers, NORAD and military personel encountered that day.  I thought that an important insight.

3)  The movie also made me realize how impossible it is to keep us safe, and reminded me of all the ways in which we are suspectible.

4)  I found disturbing the way the movie showed both the terrorists and the victims sincerely praying as the end approached.  Watching terrorists pray for such evil evoked the same stomach-churning emotion as hearing of a story of the desecration of the Holy Eucharist.

5)   Finally, I wondered early on how the “politically correct” society would view the movie’s portrayal of Muslims.   You cannot present United 93 without showing the religious views of the terrorists, but I wondered if the movie would be condemned as hostile to Muslims.  I did not see it that way, but a friend of mine said that there were two young men in the bathroom who made comments along the lines of “I hate Muslims” after the movie.  I was shocked to tears to hear this.

Fox News is merely a tool of the Bushitler White House. 

Unless you’ve been in some sort of shot coma, you know the bubbly Miss Couric announced her departure from the Today Show for the CBS Evening News.

I’m no Couric fan. I’m quite the opposite. I don’t so much dislike her as I simply don’t prefer her style (nor the balance of the Today Show’s style). My question for the readers: Are you excited about this move? I imagine that many of our readers could care less about network news generally, but there is no denying the import of the CBS Evening News anchor job. Couric will deliver election results, special reports on disasters, and other major happenings that concern the nation.

So, how do you feel? I’m giving you a few options, but you can expand at will with your response in the comments section:

1. I am excited for Couric and for the CBS Evening News. I think it’s all good.

2. I am against the move. Couric doesn’t have the chops for the job. CBS will regret this.

3. I don’t watch network news, but I’ll tune in to see what happens.

4. I don’t watch network news, and it will take more than this for me to tune in.

5. I’m a professional who doesn’t get home in time for the network news. It’s been months since I got home and the sun was still shining!

6. Katie who?

My take is #3. I’m slightly inclined to #2, but I’m no longer sure it takes much to do the evening news on the major nets. Perhaps election coverage and the like, and reporting on major events on the fly, but not the canned evening news.

I’ll tune in, mostly for the show. I am fairly confident I won’t be all that crazy about the new CBS product, but one never knows.

……a docudrama by Michael Winterbottom premiered this year in Berlin and it’s on its way to a theater near you. He focuses on three British chuckleheads (Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasu) who get scooped up in 2001 by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and subsequently released in 2004. Dubbed the “Tipton Three” (that’s left-speak, I guess, sort of like the “Chicago Seven”) it’s their tale of mistreatment and a protracted detention at Gitmo. This U.S. film release comes on the heels of much public criticism of the media for suppressing positive stories in the war on terror. Winterbottom’s stated purpose of this film is to shut down Gitmo. OK, what then? We throw open the gates, write letters of apology to the inmates and give them lovely parting gifts? I am against torture and believe those in our custody should be treated with dignity. But, taking such isolated incidents and using them to shape world opinion against our conduct of the war is bizarre. It’s just another vial of acid poured on American resolve to face the challenge of Islamofascism. I cannot imagine how this would have played with my dad’s WWII generation. Well, I suppose I can.

In stark contrast to Winterbottom’s propaganda, I prefer to heed the counsel of Gitmo commander Maj. Gen. Jay Hood who said in this recent NPR interview…

“There are a group of men here who are extremely well-educated, very familiar with the West… and many of them have looked us in the eyeball and said, ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to kill you.’”

Go see this Anthony Hopkins movie, based on the true story of motorcycle speedster Burt Munro.  Well worth your money.