First Explain What a "Vote" Is

In today's edition of Arab News, lefty journalist Norman Solomon helps his Saudi friends who may be having some difficulty understanding our bicameral system of representation.

Like the "purloined letter" openly displayed in a famous tale by Edgar Allan Poe, the Senate’s huge structural flaw is right in front of Americans all the time — but they don’t see it as anything more than an eternal legacy of the country’s political heritage.

The past has ways of enduring. Today, in the 100-member Senate, cattle may be more equitably represented than people.

For instance, Montana — with a total of 902,195 residents, according to the 2000 census — has a pair of US senators. So does California, with a population of 33,871,648.

In other words, less than one million people in Montana have as much representation in the United States Senate as more than 33 million people in California.

Yeah, but what about the 53 Congressional Districts in California vs. Montana's one?

And by the way, how many representatives are there in the Saudi Parliament? The fact is, if you're a ordinary Saudi citizen (and by that I, of course, mean a man) you're better offer seeking redress of your grievances from Parliament Funkadelic.

Well, at least they’re thinking about democracy.

And Norman, you’re in good company over there on the Arab News team.

Great Timing

MIT has revealed that it can now manipulate video images to make anyone appear to say anything no matter how riduculous or divorced from reality it may be. I believe Noam Chomsky has been working on a manual version of this technology for a great many years.

Even the Bureau of Printing and Engraving Knew!

Here's an interesting clue to the vast conspiracy if silence surrounding the September 11th attacks as found on New World Disorder.

The Shame of the Forbidden Notion

Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia is one of the nation’s greatest schools. For those who don't live near the Beltway, Jefferson is a legendary magnet school devoted to math and science and regularly supplies squadrons of freshmen to the Ivy League. Jefferson also happens to be a public school and to the political hacks that administer the system, the school’s success is deeply troubling.

The student body at Jefferson does not reflect the diversity of Fairfax County. All the students are smart and hardworking. Not everyone in Fairfax County is smart and hardworking. For that matter, not everyone in the United States is smart and hardworking. Of course, any child of any ethnic background can enter Jefferson and expect to be treated as a full member of the community – but only if they are smart and hardworking.

The Superintendent of Schools in Fairfax has rightly recognized this policy as discriminatory. Yes, Jefferson discriminates on the basis of ability. According to the Superintendent, this will make Jefferson “isolated and elitist” according to an NPR story.

“Jefferson was never meant to cater to the best and brightest,” he says. It was meant to serve the entire community. So in the interests of the community he wants Jefferson to accept a set number of applicants from every grammar school in the County regardless of their intelligence or work ethic. How exactly this will serve the interests of the community is never articulated.

But the presumption is pretty clear – Jefferson’s success starkly reveals “the forbidden notion.”

To a liberal of a certain age, there is nothing more shameful than “the forbidden notion.” The forbidden notion is the crazy aunt locked away in the basement of the liberal psyche. It is the reluctantly held belief that everything Sheriff Bull Connor and Governor Wallace said about blacks was true: that they are less intelligent than whites and inherently lazy.

Of course, this belief is the very essence of American racism. And that’s why it must be concealed at all costs.

If you were liberal and believed in the forbidden notion you would have a choice of two responses. Either you treat African-Americans as wards of the state doomed to being marginalized from the mainstream of society and hope that their frustration and rage does not boil over and consume you, or you pretend the notion doesn’t exist and make sure that no evidence of it ever surfaces. Of the two responses, the first is clearly not acceptable . . . but the second requires eternal vigilance.

This explains quite a lot about the contradictions of the “progressive” movement.

If you did not believe in the inferiority of blacks then you would welcome any opportunity to disprove the forbidden notion. You would crusade against quotas that obscure individual achievement, you would think globally and act locally to create a colorblind society where as Bob Marley sang, “the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes.” And you would hold African-Americans to a higher standard than the mainstream in order to crush tenacious racism under an avalanche of countervailing evidence.

But if you did believe the forbidden notion then you would be singing a different tune, more along the lines of Mrs. Robinson – “most all you’ve got to hide it from the kids.” Rather than reward excellence, you would celebrate diversity. Instead of encouraging competition you would focus on cooperation. Instead of raising standards, you would scrap them, denounce them, and label them mere cultural constructs.

Jefferson High is a golden opportunity disprove the forbidden notion. At Jefferson anyone with brains can excel. Race is not a factor. But rather than support its mission, the progressives want to -- need to – stamp it out. They don’t dare take the chance to disprove the horrible notion they believe is the truth.

Liberals believe “the forbidden notion.” They know it’s wrong and that’s why their policy recipes on issues of race come so heavily seasoned with self-loathing.

The rest of us who believe there is no organic difference between blacks and whites are left to scratch our heads and wonder, "what are they afraid of?"

Manufacturing Absurdity

Did anyone happen to catch the Washington Post’s fawning profile of Noam Chomsky in the Sunday Style section? Man, for a guy who’s supposed to be censored by the corporate media, he sure seems to get a lot of coverage.

Of course, Chomsky is a crank. He’s the L Ron Hubbard of our time. In a more coherent world he’d be loitering out front of the White House wearing a sandwich board covered in 10pt text and mumbling about an implanted homing device.

But in our oppressive police state, he’s a celebrity professor at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, a prolific author, and the subject of a lengthy soft-focus article in a major newspaper.

Check out this passage:

Noam Chomsky believes in the redemptive power of logical thinking and coming to Chomskyan conclusions about the world. He is a white-hot contrarian, a distinguished linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who "tends to be quite conservative" and is devoted to "simple moral truisms."

Holy smokes! Censored? This guy isn’t even being questioned.

When Chomsky claims to be “quite conservative” what is that supposed to mean? Is he Pinochet-conservative? Kim il Sung-conservative? Stalin-conservative? What could the term “conservative” possibly mean to a man whose mind is so dense it is able to warp the very political spectrum.

Hell, if he thinks he’s “quite conservative,” what would he make of me? I must be like some sort of jackbooted trilobite, a mean-spirited Mesopotamian slave auctioneer, a particularly backward Coelacanth, a Moai from one of the less cosmopolitan parts of Easter Island.

A casual stroll through the Barnes & Noble on Union Square turns up no less than four different Chomsky books displayed on three floors. Yet, in any other country he’d be sharing a cell with Lyndon LaRouche.

God Bless America!

One Picture vs. 681 Words

When I’m feeling confused and melancholy I seek solace in the Arab News. That, and The Onion, never fails to get me focussed and energized. For instance, how is the Fortuyn assassination playing out in Saudi Arabia? Well, let’s read the commentary in today’s online edition:

“There will be many in the Muslim world who on hearing the news of the assassination of the leader of the Dutch extreme right-wing movement will have felt some grim satisfaction. Pim Fortuyn was, after all, not merely a bigot who wanted to close the country’s doors to immigrants, he was an unashamed Islamophobe. This is the man who called Islam "backward", who believed that existing immigrants in the Netherlands (most of them Muslims) had to be integrated — by which he meant that they should be forced to abandon their Islamic beliefs and practices.”

This is rich coming as it does from a nation that gives building permits to Christian churches and Hooters franchises in equal numbers. A place where immigrants are either integrated or beheaded. For a Saudi “reporter” – actually no more an independent journalist than is the radio speaker built into the dashboard of my car – to call Pim Fortuyn an intolerant bigot is ironic on so many levels that it can only be explained through advanced quantum mechanics.

Arab News draws some troubling conclusions:

“He has opened a Pandora’s box that will not be closed. He has stripped away Dutch innocence and the result will be a cruder, more vicious brand of politics. It is not just that he has ensured that a thousand new Fortuyns spring up, hydra-like, in the wake of the dead leader, or that he has created a martyr who will be venerated by the far right across Europe — both of them appalling prospects. But by killing Fortuyn he has turned the entire Dutch political system on its head. Fortuyn will be seen as the victim, and those who opposed him as the bigots. That is an extremely frightening development.”

Yes, how unjust that a Dutch politician who lays dead because he spoke his mind is seen as a victim while the peace-loving non-bigots who found his views crude, vicious and extreme are tarred as hateful racists.

As if to punctuate this point is a cartoon that appears in part on the very same page as this plea for tolerance from the frenzied Dutch barbarians. And guess what? It’s a crude, viscous, bigoted caricature of a Jew dictating the words coming out of Uncle Sam’s mouth that would look quite at home on the pages of Der Sturmer.

Murdered by the Left

I have no inside information about the motives behind the Fortuyn assassination, but I do have an instinct (and recklessly sharing unsubstantiated information with the world is what blogging is all about).

My sense is that what passes for the Left in Europe is really just a coalition of divergent complaints. It's a negative force. All those demonstrators clogging the streets of Paris last week were not marching in favor of Chirac, they were opposed to Le Pen, or fascism, or war, or racism, or any number of generic "causes." That fact is, it's a lot easier to be against something than to be in favor of anything.

A key attraction to the Left is that it allows you to be concerned about the state of your world without requiring anything more than a mild feeling of indignation. For young people whose real concern is being cool and getting laid, being on the Left means you don't have to stick your neck out for anything and appear foolish. This hegemony is enforced by ridicule and peer pressure which is why liberalism is the default position for most people. To move to the right requires real effort and risk. That's why the most interesting political figures are those who made the journey from Left to Right and the most brain dead ones are those who have never questioned their liberal or conservative assumptions.

Fortuyn made that journey. He was a risk taker. He stuck his neck out. But on the national level that adolescent ridicule is a potent and potentially violent force. While most on the Left are just along for the ride and the music, some who have listened carefully and have fully digested the menu of hate and intolerance that Cafe Gauche is serving these days are likely to take matters to their logical conclusion.

You can't save the planet without breaking a few eggs. Pim Fortuyn was just the latest egg.

Maybe it's a stretch to say that the negativity that motivates the Left ultimately leads to hate and violence but . . . heck, that's why I have a blog.

The silver lining here may be a realization that what Fortuyn advocated was more thoughtful and nuanced than the "far-right-wing" or "fascist" labels imply. And perhaps this will lead to a more open and candid debate about the meaning of conservatism and liberalism in Europe.

PS

According to Reuters, the assassin had radical environmentalist propaganda in his home:

Some newspapers said he was known to intelligence services as an ``extreme leftist,'' but Hofstee said: ``We do not use that term.''

Of course they don't use the term "extreme leftist." In much of Europe and the States, there is no such thing as the extreme Left. Certainly the political spectrum of Reuters stretches all the way from "extreme, right-wing, ultraconservative" on one side to "center-left" on the other. Is anyone else beginning to tire of this game whereby all dissent to the liberal orthodoxy is labeled "extreme?"

Backlash!

Pim Fortuyn, the charismatic neo-conservative Dutch politician is assassinated. Anyone care to link this to the Euro-hysteria regarding anything and anyone conservative? Fortuyn was no fascist. He made the conversion from Left to Right, a conversion that speaks volumes about a person's maturity and wisdom. He was therefore far more of a threat to the liberal elite than a buffoon like Le Pen.

Again the Left has demonstrated that it is more animated by what it is against than by what it is for. After all, with so many competing factions, who's to say what the Left stands in favor of anyway? Watch closely as the Left becomes the Far Right they claim to detest.

This is tragic.

Watch Your Back, Yasser

Yesterday, The New York Times reported Yasser Arafat’s response to the news of the desecration taking place at the Church of the Nativity. In my opinion these are by far his most cogent and perceptive comments to date on the situation:

Mr. Arafat exploded in rage at the news from Bethlehem, shouting: "This is a crime! This is a crime!" and calling those who committed it "terrorists, Nazis and racists."

Finally the truth!

Well, not really. Arafat wasn’t talking about the scores of Palestinian gunman who have flaunted international law by turning a UNESCO-recognized cultural site into a heavily armed bunker for more than a month. No, he was talking about the Israelis, of course.

I guess he’s got to show some support for the death squads under siege. After all, he was under siege himself until he traded six of his associates for his own freedom.

What are the Palestinian true-believers to make of this sell out? After sending their sons and daughters on pointless kamikaze missions, after listening to Arafat beg to be martyred rather than set free, after a highly suspect “trial” of the assassins of the Israeli Tourism Minister in which Arafat himself served as both judge and jury, now comes the news that he threw in two of his own people who had not even been kangaroo-tried.

As a condition for lifting the siege in Ramallah, Israel demanded the handover of the leader of the PLFP, Ahmed Saadat and Fuad Shubaki who was behind the smuggling of 50 tons of weapons from Iran.

Arafat completely caved. Anything to get out of the house. I particularly love the official talking point that explains this betrayal.

"There is an agreement that we will send them to the jail, and then to the court, and then we will see if they are guilty," said Mr. Abdel Rahman.

That’s a nice succinct description of justice, Palestinian style – jail time first, then a trial, and after that we’ll determine your guilt or innocence. Presumably after that you’ll be forced to commit a crime.

Don’t get me wrong. Having these six in prison is a giant step toward a more peaceful world of chirping birds and frolicking puppy dogs.

But if I were Arafat, I’d watch my back.

Heck, if I were Arafat the very first thing would be to replace the lousy Norelco I got for Christmas in 1973. After that I’d take one hell of a long shower. Might even talk to a decent dermatologist about those troubling red spots.

But after all that, I would definitely be on the lookout for disgruntled martyr wannabes who realize it’s a fuck of a lot easier to blow up a hypocritical Nobel laureate right in the neighborhood than an encampment of Israeli border guards.

Behold the great Arab defect . . . they can’t trust each other.

Praise Allah for that.

Mayday! Mayday!

This is fun. It’s May Day so be a little civilly disobedient today by logging on to Protest.net and posting a few fake events on their activist calendar like this one:

Title Progressives for Islamofascism
Location Sbarro’s Pizzeria on Irving Place
Speaker Heather Stalin
Sponsor Suckers for Peace

March in solidarity with the brutal Arab murderers who use religious fanaticism as a pretext for snuffing out the lives of innocent old people and children in the hope of some day violently replacing the tolerant liberal democracy called Israel with a vicious woman-hating theocracy where anyone with a gun and a chip on his shoulder can dictate the fates of his neighbors unless one of them happens to have a bigger gun, or wooden club, or a sharp rock or something. In any case, it’s what we’ve always been working toward, right?

It’s particularly amusing to schedule them a month or two in advance so the webmaster doesn’t discover them till it’s way too late.

Good clean fun.


PS. Looks like the Protest.net webmaster is on to me. But in the words of the IRA assasins who failed to blow up Margaret Thatcher in Brighton, "You were lucky this time. But you have to be lucky every single time. We only need to be lucky once."

PSS. Today's hidden Google-busting search term is: Nike, Starbucks, No Logo, Naomi, Justice, social, fascism

Peaceful Non-Existence Watch (chapter 4)

I have a daughter in kindergarten so I always enjoy reading about young minds open to all the world’s possibilities. At such a tender age, children don’t recognize arbitrary adult constructs such as race and ethnicity. Some conscientious program officers at Hamas are helping Palestinians address this deficiency with a homegrown version of Head Start according to The San Francisco Chronicle and OxBlog:

Gaza City -- Six days a week, kindergarten teacher Samira Ali El Hassain (teaches) her class of thirty 5-year-old boys and girls . . . "I tell them that they are Palestinians, that they must defend their land when they grow up, that this land belongs to them and not to the Jews, our enemies," said the 35-year-old Hassain.

"Every morning, I ask them: 'Did you watch the news? Do you love the enemy who massacres the Palestinian people? Would you want to make peace with them when you grow up?' "

Her 24-year-old colleague, Istama Showish, imparts a similar message.

"We teach them that Jews who live in Jerusalem and Palestine are occupiers, that they have taken even the air that we breathe," she said.

How refreshing to find a public school teacher who is not obsessed with that multicultural nonsense. Why, it’s so simple even a 5-year old could understand it: The Jews are alien occupiers who must be murdered.

Peaceful Co-Existence? Sure, when the Israelis no longer exist.

Better Dead Than Lebed?

Alexander Lebed may have not been the most savory morsel in the Russian political stew but he was a serious counterweight to President Putin. Now without Lebed, a man who looked to have been made of pre-cast concrete, there is no one prominent who can make a credible case for not being repressive. Don’t get me wrong, this guy had police state written all over him. But his actions often revealed a softer, more feminine side. (see photo of a jubilant Lebed). His death means one more obstacle out of the way if Putin were to fancy a stroll toward totalitarianism. Worse, he may have left behind a vacuum to be filled by someone or something even more noxious.

Of course, foul play isn’t necessarily a given in this case. I mean, the guy was traveling over Siberia in a Soviet helicopter that can best be described as 1500 moving parts yearning to live free. Nonetheless, at the time of the accident Lebed was in the midst of a dispute with a neighboring governor that appeared to be on the verge of armed conflict if you can believe Pravda. (And who can’t?).

I recall Lebed’s tour of Wall Street several years ago when he looked to be power broker in the Russian Federation. He seemed totally baffled as various Rockefellers and investment bankers fawned all over him.

That in turn reminds me of a story about a friend whose job it was at the Pentagon to shepherd former Soviet military leaders on a tour of the US. These guys had never been to America before and the Clinton Administration decided to bring them to Las Vegas. Better yet, they landed at Nellis Air Force Base where they keep the mothballed strategic bomber fleet. Their impression of the United States no doubt exceeded any Soviet indoctrination – by day, thermonuclear ready B-52s lined up wingtip to wingtip as far as the eye can see and at night glassy eyes gamblers and bare breasted women in colossal glittering casinos.

I bet they all went back home and committed themselves to building a modern capitalist society just like the one they saw in America.

Peaceful Non-Existence Watch (chapter three)

For those who think that peace in the Middle East will flourish if only the Israeli Defense Forces would withdraw from Ramallah, or from the West Bank, or from Ramallah, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip are kidding themselves. The Palestinians want nothing less than full Israeli withdrawal from the planet Earth. Heck, it’s their official policy!

The presumption of the Peaceful Non-Existence Watch is that the true aim of the Palestinian cause and its attendant rock throwing and keening over oppression and occupation is not so much the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state as it is the destruction of the sovereign Israeli state. Evidence of this is laughably abundant on the web. But having worked with computers, I know how confusing they can be. That’s why, as a service to those who have still not figured it out yet I include links to the fucking obvious.

Today’s exhibit is the Palestinian National Charter itself as posted on the website of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations.

PALESTINIAN NATIONAL CHARTER

Article 1. Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the greater Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.

Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.

Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine

Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947, and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time,

So for those of you joining us late, let us review. Far from seeking self-determination in order to live in peaceful equality with its Israeli neighbor, the Palestinian leadership has set as its goal the total elimination of Israel through violence. Indeed, armed struggle is the only way to go. Negotiating the peaceful annihilation of Israel just won’t do. (see article 9 above) They want scorched earth and body bags.

In this light, there is no such thing as a peace process. Only a war process leading to peace.

Explosion Near Here

An expolision in a building two blocks from here has New Yorkers feeling jittery. Opposite of 9/11 -- cold, wet, dreary day and most importantly, a building of no political or cultural significance. It is not the Apex Technical School as Reuters is reporting.

Interestingly, the explosion was just a couple of yards from Revolution Books, the local pro-terrorist lunatic bookstore. Maybe they'll be a looting opportunity!

The Habits of Highly Offensive People

The Palestinian News Agency carries a story this morning about an explosion in Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah. I found at least one little tidbit of information intriguing. According to the report:

“The explosion came from the prison inside the compound, which is adjacent President Arafat's office.”

A prison adjacent to his office? Is this considered some sort of executive perk? Back in the 1990s it was a Gulfstream V, but today nothing says, “you've made it” quite like a corner office with an adjoining prison.

If I were Saddam Hussein reading this I'd be on the phone right now getting bids from contractors who could install a gas chamber next to my conference room.

Peaceful Non-Existence Watch --- (chapter two)

From a May 2000 Al-Jazeera interview with the late Abu Ali Mustafa, the then leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as translated and posted on the PFLP’s own website.

Al-Jazeera: ...[Up to the last moment] George Habash kept declaring that the armed struggle must be escalated, because the only solution to the Palestinian problem is the destruction of Israel. ...Is this Habash's personal position or does it reflect the policy of the PFLP?

Mustafa: ...Habash expressed the positions of the PFLP. …The political platform of the PFLP speaks in the clearest way about the strategic goal of the Palestinian people's struggle and about the use of all means, including armed violence…

Al-Jazeera: Meaning that today the PFLP still believes in the armed struggle...

Mustafa: This is one-hundred percent true. We believe the conflict and the struggle against Israel is a strategic [principle] that is not subordinated to any consideration. Even if there are circumstances of talks about peace and a settlement we see them as neither peace nor a settlement. We believe the Palestinian people, both in the Diaspora and [in the territories] under occupation, have the right to struggle using all means, including the armed struggle, because we think the conflict is the constant [factor] while the means and tactics are the variables....

So let’s recap . . . the goal of the PLO is Israel’s destruction and any “peace process” is meaningless unless it facilitates a non-Israeli future.

No doubt such "unhelpful" rhetoric earned Mustafa the censure of his boss, the international man of peace, Nobel laureate Yasser Arafat. Indeed, Arafat appointed a relacement immediately after discovering Mustafa in possession of two Israeli helicopter launched air-to-surface missiles in his Ramallah office in August of last year.

The Power of InstaPundit

Just Great! The day I get a coveted link from Instapundit is also the first of six days of complete radio silence as we took the jellybeans to Disneyworld. Now I’ve missed my golden opportunity to earn the loyalty of millions of readers with witty follow-up postings. Guess I’ll just have to deal with obscurity.

Peaceful Non-Existence Watch

Now I get it. The moral relativists believe that Israel and the Palestinians have symmetrical foreign policy goals – to live peacefully each in their own sovereign state.

But if that were the case why would the Palestinian approach to achieving such a benign goal include suicide murders of Israeli citizens? That’s hardly the road to peaceful coexistence.

In fact, the goal of ethnically cleansing Israel of Israelis has never been more unambiguous. Now when the Palestinians talk of “the occupation” they are no longer even pretending to mean the West Bank. They want it all including beachfront property on the Mediterranean.

I’m starting a collection of Freudian slips, dead giveaways, and outright declarations of genocide just so we all know the score.

Let’s begin right here with our friends at Fatah. Their website declares their goals as being “Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.” Hey if you can’t believe Fatah, who can you believe?

How about a sermon from the prominent Palestinian Imam Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi first posted on Little Green Footballs? According to this man of peace, “we will enter Jerusalem as conquerors, enter Jaffa as conquerors, enter Haifa as conquerors.” I’m sure he said it in a gentle, lilting tone but still, words are words.

Famine in Connecticut . . . Where Is the Outrage?

In an alarming world of children suicide bombers, priests who prey, and Bob Traficant’s hair, the nation asks as one, “what does Anna Quindlen have to say?”

Well, she was in Connecticut yesterday talking about hunger . . . in Fairfield County . . . in Greenwich, even!

"It seems to me I have a mandate, being a feminist, in not only being certain that women become partners in law firms and hold high political office but that they also have safe homes and their kids have enough to eat."

Aside from the pompous claim of a “mandate” to be anything but self-absorbed, Quindlen says hunger on the Connecticut Gold Coast is a quiet epidemic. Could it be that Ms Quindlen is finally fed up with bulimia . . . the scourge of debutantes from Westport to Darien? It is true that many wealthy woman waste away in stoic silence just so they can squeeze into the latest Escada. And how bold of her to come to the belly of the beast to make her stand.

But alas, this is Anna Quindlen. And she’s come to the wealthiest state in the Union to talk about poverty and hunger. Never mind that even hunger activists will tell you that the burning nutritional issue among the poor in the United States is not hunger but morbid obesity.

The cause of all this stomach grumbling is affordable housing she says. Now here she may have a point. I don’t doubt that there are some social climbers who when forced to choose between life-giving sustenance and living in a choice part of Greenwich would gladly give up food. But that’s their problem, not anyone else’s.

Quindlen is right about the housing thing. Greenwich is the sort of place where if you are paying under $3,000 a month, you’re living in affordable housing. In fact, “affordable housing” is as alien a concept in Greenwich as “luxury townhome community” is in Ramallah.

On the other hand, there is a whole city filled with affordable housing about 15 miles away in Bridgeport. But see, no one like Quindlen would ever think of stepping foot in Bridgeport much less go house hunting for bargains. And besides, there are all those fat poor people.

Quindlen calls for “government action” and frets that President Bush’s calls for civic volunteerism will only serve as an obstacle to the urgently needed “action.” What action could she mean? Public housing projects al la Pruitt-Igoe or Southwark Towers perhaps? How about vouchers? Ahhh . . . no. Maybe repealing some of the politically mandated building codes that put housing beyond the reach of low income workers? (There was a time when cities had single room apartments with a hotplate for a kitchen and a shared bathroom down the hall. Beats living on the streets. But today such housing is illegal.) Puuleeze!

That fact is, Ms Quindlen is concerned about problems, not solutions. Problems allow her to furrow her brow and pontificate. That’s her job. Solutions would require actually thinking and working. The best problems are those without any obvious solutions. Even better are problems that aren’t even obvious problems: starvation in Stamford, illiteracy in preschool, di-hydrogen monoxide in drinking water.

And the best part about speaking out against famine in Connecticut . . . free lunch.

Give War a Chance

A European friend informed me recently that military action in the Middle East “never solved anything.”

That was a revelation. I thought everyone should know about it. But upon reflection I concluded that this was a bit like saying, “negative campaigning never works.”

Frankly, if these two approaches to problem solving weren’t effective in arenas as competitive as war and politics they would have been jettisoned long before the next violence/election cycle.

So far military action in the Middle East has been stunningly effective. After enduring a quickening tempo of mega-terrorist “operations” -- Khobar Towers, the US embassy in Nairobi, the USS Cole in Aden, mass murder in Lower Manhattan – there has been no rejoinder. You could say the cycle of violence has been broken.

That’s because instead of enjoying the perks and comforts of honored guests in Afghanistan, al Qaeda serial killers are now busy hiding for their lives after having been chased out of every dusty dive from Khost to Revz by crew-cut NASCAR enthusiasts . . . praise Allah!

And in Israel, after averaging one vicious suicide attack on unarmed women and grandfathers per day for months before the Israeli Defense Forces took action, there has been only one attack in nearly two weeks. That would seem to constitute success.

Of course, military action works . . . but only for the winning side.