Rob Tracinski writes a good article today:

Like many on the right, I have been deeply unsatisfied with the Republican Congress. The Republicans, I thought, ought to lose enough seats in the November congressional elections that they feel they’ve been punished for runaway federal spending.

But as the election gets nearer and I think more about what is at stake, I have come to realize that the best outcome is for the Democrats to lose. The Democrats’ failure to regain control of either house of Congress would be a good start. But an unambiguous and humiliating defeat–even a loss of Democratic seats in the House and Senate–would be much better.

The best thing we can do in this election is to crush the left–because the Democratic Party adds nothing of value to the American political debate.

He comes to a similar conclusion as me in my essay The Fault Line In American Politics.

Read Rob Tracinski.

I was beginning to wonder, amidst all the controversy about what is written on the Arizona 9-11 memorial, if I was the only one who noticed it was a giant crescent shape:

I don’t know how we’re gonna win this war if we can’t even celebrate the right side when erecting memorials.

It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day

Here’s a bike that you row like a boat, instead of pedal:

YYAARRGGHHH!!

It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day, matey!

One guy gets it right:

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I’d like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.[...]

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.[...]

I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world’s Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.

Read Sam Harris.