McCain too old - or too rich? - to recall how many houses he owns

"I think -- I'll have my staff get (back) to you," on that question, McCain told Politico in New Mexico.

I remember how many houses I own. (Zero!) How 'bout you? Can you rattle that number off the top of your head? Yeah, I think 99.9% of Americans can, too.

Wow, what a defining moment, what a startling confession of just how out-of-touch and elitist McCain is. (The correct answer for Johnny Mac: between 4 and 8).

And remember, this is from a guy who has never had a job outside of government!

(Just goes to show that it's better to marry rich than to get a real job.... Hey, maybe McCain and Kerry can start a "Desperate Househusbands" club in the Senate!)

Admit Ukraine into NATO now?

This Investors' Business Daily op-ed is idiocy. Admitting Ukraine into NATO is a terrible idea. It's an even worse idea to rush Ukraine's admission into NATO as some kind of "reciprocity" for Russia's attack on Georgia. Bad, bad, bad idea.

Ukraine is a real place, with real people, who live very, very close to Russia (its #1 trading partner) and far from America. Ukraine is not some pawn on America's chessboard. Editorials like this one really disturb me. They show a cavalier lack of compassion and appreciation for subtlety. Joining NATO won't help the average Ukrainian one bit. It won't make Ukrainians any safer. Just the opposite. It will up the ante and heighten the tension between Russia and the West, with Ukraine jerked this way & that in a tug of war that, in the end, has little to do with serving Ukraine's interests. Joining NATO will only hurt Ukrainians -- when Russia doubles the price of gas, or turns off the gas altogether, or starts charing outrageous tariffs on Ukrainian goods, or starts cracking down on the millions of legal and illegal Ukrainians living in Russia, or starts requiring visas for Ukrainians in Russia, or funding more pro-Russian political parties, or stirring up frozen separatist movements in Crimea and E. Ukraine, or a dozen other hurtful steps Moscow could take in response to Ukraine's membership in NATO.

Anyway, Ukraine's foreign ministry does NOT speak for the majority in government, or the majority of the people. (Besides opinion polls, which consistently show a majority of Ukrainians against joining NATO, you actually see graffiti here: "NATO go away!" or "NATO - No!" I've never seen any random pro-NATO graffiti.) The foreign ministry speaks for President Yushchenko, who is an anti-Russian zealot. (I don't blame the guy: Russian spies tried to poison and kill him; and Russia funded his opponent's presidential campaign). So, we should be careful whose statements within Ukraine we're listening to, and whose we're not. For perspective, if you wanted to know what "America" thought about something, you wouldn't just take Condoleeza Rice's word for it, you'd also listen to what Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were saying, not to mention moderate Republicans in Congress. If you ignored their views, you'd be getting less than half the big picture.



By the way, Ukraine's military is in awful shape, with outdated Soviet equipment and underpaid, demoralized conscripts. It will only be a liability to NATO, in every sense.




Ukraine: No Chicken Kiev
IBD Editorials
August 18, 2008

Buchanan: Our chickens have come to roost...in Tbilisi

I could not say this any better than old Pat. Take note of his phrase "democratic imperialism;" you'll be hearing it again.


Blowback from Bear-Baiting
By Patrick J. Buchanan
August 15, 2008 | HumanEvents.com


Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.

Moscow cites Kosovo to justify war, yet refuses Kosovo self-determination?

I may be wrong, but I've never heard official Moscow advocate self-determination for Abkhazia and S. Ossetia. If they did, then maybe it was only just recently, after the West granted Kosovo its independence from Serbia. My point is, you could argue that Russia's stance has been consistent: to quell separatist movements, as in Chechnya; and to make sure that "frozen" separatist movements stay frozen, as in Kosovo, Abkhazia, S. Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia occupies both separatist regions of Georgia in the guise of "peace keepers." This state of affairs has seemed to please Russia so far, without their calling for Abkhazia and S. Ossetia's secession from Georgia. (This would undermine their credibility as impartial peace keepers, to say the least.)

Anyway, why do Abkhazians and S. Ossetians have an "undoubted right to self-determination," as this Professor says? What makes them so special? Russia itself has about 100 ethnic groups! Does each of them undoubtedly deserve self-determination? That's a recipe for chaos and Balkanization. In this regard I sympathize with Georgia. The main challenge of any state is to maintain its territorial integrity; and anybody who challenges that threatens the very life of the country. (Hence Abe Lincoln could not tolerate S. Carolina's secession, and war ensued). Unfortunately for Georgia, however, the threat from Russian invasion is bigger than S. Ossetia's secession.

Russian cynicism revealed in Caucasus strategy
Published: August 14 2008 03:00
From Prof William G. Clarence-Smith.

Sir, South Ossetians and Abkhazian Circassians have an undoubted right to self-determination, which the Georgian government has violently and wrongly denied them, but Russian cynicism in this conflict knows no bounds. If Moscow was really concerned with Ossetian and Circassian rights, it would allow its own populations in the Caucasus, including Ossetians and Circassians, the right to secede. Instead, Russia has recently fought one of the nastiest wars in modern history to prevent the Chechens of the north-western Caucasus from achieving independence. This follows centuries of colonial conquest and rule in the Caucasus, in the course of which the Russians deployed a shocking degree of brutality. Moscow also cites the example of Kosovo to justify its war against Georgia, and yet refuses Kosovo the right to self-determination.

William G. Clarence-Smith,

School of Oriental and African Studies,

London WC1H 0XG, UK

Reply to Mom on school vouchers

Mom,
Tuition and fees at [high school name] for an out-of-district, non-Catholic student are $6,700. And tuition at [elementary school name] for a non-parishioner is $4,195, plus fees. So your $7,000 voucher would cover either. A Catholic School in New York costs at least $7,000 per year. But then there's the cost of transportation to the school, lunches every day, and other misc. fees.

More important, think about [high school name]'s capacity to hold more students, for instance. They just expanded. Could they handle another 100 students per class? Another 500? And even if they could, what would happen to the quality of the education, which depends on intimate classrooms and one-on-one attention? What would happen if non-Catholic, urban students suddenly outnumbered the Catholic students from the suburbs? What would that do to [high school name]'s cultural ethos? How would that affect the amount of money that suburban parents pledge to [high school name] -- would they give more or less? Especially if they saw, for example, that the basketball team suddenly went from 100% white to 80% black? After all, many parents send their kids to [high school name], and donate money because of its athletics, not its academics. In other words, what if [high school name] went from a small school that depended on high tuition plus generous donations, to a large school that serviced the "market" for school vouchers? Wouldn't that fundamentally change the school?

In other words, I think you're mistaken or naive if you think that the private schools would remain unchanged, and simply transform all these incoming students, without the students transforming your beloved private schools (and not always for the better).

And assuming that [high school name] had the right to refuse students (more on that to follow ), what if a child in [city name] found that [high school name] nor any other private school would take him, either because he was too "dumb," or the school was already at capacity, or for some other reason? What could he do then? And yet a child of similar characteristics in [city name] did find a private school to take him. Wouldn't that be a violation of the 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law)? That would mean that two Americans who were basically the same were not given the same level of access to the publicly funded educational system. That would be even worse than "separate but equal" public schools for whites and blacks! Or, what if a child has to bused, at public expense, to a faraway private school because there are no private schools available where he lives?

This is not to mention all the legal and moral implications of what happens when autonomous private schools are suddenly receiving taxpayers' money: Will they have to alter their curriculum and dozens of other things to conform to the Constitution and civil rights legislation? For example, would [high school name] remain an all-boys school if a female student who was refused a spot at [high school name] realized that there was an open spot at [high school name], and sued to win admission there? Or, what if somebody simply counted up all the available spots in all the local boys' and girls' schools, and realized that there was an imbalance: wouldn't that be inherent sex discrimination? Or, could [high school name] still teach that homosexuality was sinful?

And would private schools have to take any student who wanted to matriculate, or could they refuse some students? If yes, on what basis would private schools be allowed to refuse? Just imagine all the discrimination suits! Alternatively, I can imagine a school like [high school name] simply refusing to grow or hire more teachers, even if it could find the money to do so, in order to refuse any more urban, out-of-district, or non-Catholic students with their vouchers.

(I know, [high school name] could have "voucher student Bingo night" in the gym, when underprivileged kids could compete in a lottery to win an admissions spot!)

Moreover, with a voucher system in place, then what would happen to the public schools? Would their funding decrease as funding for vouchers increased? How would school boards and principals be able to project their funding and expenses, and make decisions like issuing education bonds, and hiring teachers, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers based on that (lack of) information? Imagine if 50% of their students opted for vouchers and left the public school in the same year, then you'd have teachers sitting idle and resources wasted.

It seems to me that public schools would always be the fall-back "choice" of last resort; they would always have to be prepared to give up students or take them back; whereas private schools would have some say, "yea or nay," over whom they accepted. And what would be the total cost of educating our children then? In other words, what are the cost implications of funding two different educational systems, simultaneously?

Of course, what school voucher proponents really want -- and what most proponents of privatizing/outsourcing any government-provided service really want -- is for public schools to become dysfunctional, wither on the vine due to lack of funding, and eventually lose all public support until they disappear. Voucher proponents' long-term agenda is not about "school choice," but rather about replacing public schools with publicly-funded private schools. Moreover, I suspect that their hidden-hidden agenda is the establishment of a de facto tiered system of private schools, which would allow white privileged kids to remain separate and above.

I agree that it is tempting to try to replicate the results of a few students here and there, but just imagine the implications if you roll out a massive school voucher program nationwide. Have you really thought this through? How in the heck is it supposed to work? It would be chaos. Until school voucher proponents can answer convincingly these and a hundred other questions, they can't be taken seriously.