GIVE WAR A CHANCE
That was the title of a very funny book P. J. O'Rourke wrote a few years ago about Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's very apt advice right now for Colombia's Alvaro Uribe. You knew that Venezuela's coke-head clown dictator was going to find a pretext for war with Colombia a month ago in Wars On The Way. The Colombian Army's take-out of Chavez's FARC buddy Raul Reyes, a murderous Marxist midget (he was barely over five feet tall) last Saturday (3/01) provided it. Now let's hope Uribe accepts Chavez's offer of war. For if he does, it's bye-bye, Hugo.
A MESS ONLY A REPUBLICAN COULD LOVE
Never before has a presidential nomination been determined by a do over. This year there may be two. And they may not be enough to prevent a bloodbath at the Democrat convention in Denver in August. Despite winning Rhode Island by 18 points, Ohio by 10 points, and Texas by 4 points, Ms. Clinton shaved only 12 delegates from Sen. Obama's lead, with 10 still to be allocated. That lead is pretty narrow. Sen. Obama has won 1,366 delegates in primaries and caucuses to date, compared to 1,222 for Sen. Clinton. Mr. Obama needs 659 delegates more to obtain the 2,025 needed to win the nomination. Sen. Clinton needs 803. But only 611 delegates are left to be won in the remaining primaries and caucuses, 158 of them in Pennsylvania's primary April 22. That means the nominee will be picked by the 795 "superdelegates," who have been elected by nobody. It also means the primaries in Michigan and Florida are going to have to be held again.
HALF FULL REPORT 2/29/08
We start off this week's HFR with a marvelous confirmation that Yes, Virginia, Hollywood really is that stupid and shallow... Next up is the exhilarating photo flap over Hussein Obambi's looking like a Moslem girlie-man in drag. Then the HFR announces that its Hero of the Week award goes to General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who had the courage to publicly state that "global warming is a total crock" of fecal material... The HFR further announces the impending death of North Korea... And lastly, there appeared this week two astonishingly hopeful signs of moderation in Islam.
EUROPE’S CHOICE: STATISM OR FREEDOM
Ljubljana, Slovenia. As I gaze out on the prosperous and exquisite "old town" of this ancient city, it seems far removed from the country of Yugoslavia of which it was part. After a brief battle in 1991, Slovenia won its independence, and is now a part of the European Union. The tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, the final remnants of Yugoslavia, are felt not much more deeply here than in most other parts of the EU. By almost any measure, Slovenia has been an economic success during the last 18 years, and now enjoys a per capita income (on a purchasing power parity) almost equal to that of the average EU country, and about 60 percent of that enjoyed by the average American. Despite Slovenia's success, it now faces many of the same problems found in the larger EU countries. Back in 1991, Slovenia, tucked up against the Austrian Alps, had the goal to be a little Switzerland with its economic prosperity and personal liberty. Yet, two decades later, the economic system in Slovenia looks more like that of France than Switzerland. Thus the debate here, as it is emerging in so many places in Europe, between retreating into stagnant statism or moving forward into freedom.
AN AMAZING QUESTION ASKED BY EASTERN EUROPE
During the past two centuries, three major European continental nations have tried to impose their will on the rest of the continent, indeed, on the globe. First France in the early 19th century, then Germany in the first half of the 20th century, and finally Russia. In the second half of the 20th century, France and Germany each realized that on their own their importance on a European and global level was going to decline. Hence, they became the motors of the so-called European unification process. Many - especially in Britain, but also in smaller countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands - perceive the European Union to be a joint Franco-German effort at dominating Europe. Eastern European nations such as the Baltic states and Poland fear that one day the Franco-German axis might be enlarged by bringing in Russia. They realize that the biggest threat to their independence is a Franco-German-Russian axis. If one day Paris, Berlin and Moscow decide to join forces the rest of Europe will have to do as they are told. So they have begun to ask themselves an amazing question.
SO SLIPPERY HE MAKES BILL CLINTON LOOK HONEST
Sen. Hillary Clinton has road-tested several versions of attacks on Sen. Barack Obama that don't work. Obviously, and first, don't come out against change and hope - the perennial themes of successful election campaigns. Even my old boss, Ronald Reagan, campaigned for re-election in 1984 in response to the claim that America needed to change on the phrase, "We ARE the change" (as well as on the hopeful theme of "morning in America"). If a candidate is not for change, he is not for us. Nor will Americans ever vote for a presidential candidate on what he or she has already done for us. In American politics, gratitude is always the lively expectation of benefits yet to come. The question is always, what will you do for us tomorrow? Americans will not give Sen. John McCain the White House because we are grateful for his heroism 40 years ago at the "Hanoi Hilton." We are grateful, and he was heroic. Americans might gladly vote a medal, or even an opulent retirement home, but not the presidency.
JOHN THE JERKOMANIAC
In her tribute to Bill Buckley, Mona Charen lauded not only what he had accomplished - a "profoundly consequential life" - but what he was as a human being: "by universal acclimation, the most gracious man on the planet." "It was always Bill," she observed, "who rushed to get a chair for the person left standing" at a meeting. "Always Bill who reached to fill your glass" of water. "Always Bill who volunteered to give you a lift wherever you were going, insisting it was on his way." With his usual impeccable timing, Bill Buckley chose to leave us at just the opportune time to contrast the gracious humanity of the founder of America's conservative movement with the personality of the man claiming conservatives should support his nomination for President of the United States. The Democrat Party and its candidates, Mrs. Bill Clinton and Hussein Obambi, have the neurosis possessed by all liberals - Infantilizomania, the obsessive compulsion to treat adults as children. The presumptive candidate of the Republican Party has a different type of neurosis - Jerkomania, the obsessive compulsion to be a jerk. The only way for McCain to overcome this is for conservatives, when they think of him, to think of Cordell Hull.
TURKEY’S PHONY INVASION OF IRAQ
Turkey Invades Northern Iraq blared headlines around the world last weekend (2/23-24). Thousands of Turkish troops had crossed several miles into Iraq to "root out" PKK Kurdish guerrillas from their "mountain strongholds." Here is a map of the Turkey-Iraq border. It runs west-to-east or left-to-right from Syria (the triangle that Highway 6 runs through is Syria) to Iran. [See map in main article.] Note the Turkish town of Cukurca. This is the Turkish Army's staging point, where the invasion was launched, and from where, as CNN announced yesterday (2/27), Turkey Sends More Troops Into Iraq. The farthest penetration of Turkish troops has been about 24 kilometers or 15 miles into Iraq in the area of the Iraqi village of Al Amadiyah. Anyone who sees this map and knows where the PKK is based is instantly LOL - laughing out loud. The PKK "stronghold" is in the Qandil mountains where Turkey, Iraq, and Iran come together - almost 100 miles by road or jeep track from Cukurca. This is a phony invasion. Check out this story in the Washington Post, whose eyewitness reporter states the Turkish troops can "go no farther" than 15 miles into Iraq, that the Turkish military has "targeted Kurdish civilians in villages that are often far from the bases of the [PKK] guerrilla group," and quotes an Iraqi Kurdish soldier: The Turks "say there are PKK in this area, but actually the PKK are very far from here." Why would the Turkish Army stage a Potemkin invasion of Iraq and pretend to attack the PKK? To ramp up anti-Kurdish Turkish jingoistic nationalism while preserving the business deal the Turkish Army has with the PKK to run drugs.
HAS HUSSEIN OBAMA BEEN BOUGHT OFF BY A PARTNER OF SADDAM HUSSEIN?
You probably would have heard of Nadhmi Auchi by now if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. were a Republican. A British citizen of Iraqi descent, Mr. Auchi, 70, is a billionaire, the 279th richest man in the world, according to a Forbes magazine survey last year. A great deal of Mr. Auchi's money was made doing business with the regime of Saddam Hussein, much of it under the table. In 1987, Mr. Auchi helped French and Italian firms win a huge oil pipeline contract in Iraq, chiefly by paying off Iraqi officials, according to testimony given by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan. Mr. Auchi is also a business partner of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has supported Mr. Obama financially since his first run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.
HOPE FOR IRAQ IN DENMARK
I'm in Denmark this week as an observer at an Iraqi "reconciliation conference" that has brought nearly two dozen political and religious leaders to Copenhagen. It's a fascinating group. The clerics range from Sunnis and Shiites to members of little-known pre-Islamic sects like the Yezidis (who seem to be historically linked to the Zoroastrians) and the Mandaeans (the central figure of whose faith is John the Baptist), all of whom have suffered ghastly depredations in the terror war following the defeat of Saddam Hussein. Political figures include National Security Adviser Muwafaq al-Rubayie, who spent a long and intense day here on Tuesday (2/19), and remains in close contact as the participants try to hammer out a collective document. It's probably sheer coincidence that this conference takes place at the moment General Petraeus is expressing considerable hope for reconciliation, and his statement that Iraqis need to shout instead of shoot is very much in the forefront of the discussions here.