PARTY FAVORS
Re: Editorial Note, We’re
Number One:
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday “my
favorite gang.” Happy birthday to you. If I was there I would offer
Adult drinks. Still the best site on the web!!
— Mary Krik
Braidwood, IL
I can’t get through a day without reading your articles. I enjoy
your perspective, the diversity of opinions and authors, the
witticism, just everything — even when I don’t agree with a
perspective. Wishing you a long, healthy, and prosperous life.
— Louise Stanley
Pollock Pines, CA
FIRE AWAY
Re: Patrick Basham and Chris Edwards’s Oregon’s
Anti-Tax Trail:
Your article on the defeat of Oregon’s Measure 28 is spot-on!
The editor of Oregon Magazine, a
lonely conservative voice in our state, notes that few commentators
talked about the impact of conservative talk radio, local and
national, on these tax-rise schemes.
— Margaret Whitcomb
Salem, OR
The local press/media outlets were deeply involved in attempting to
scare Oregon voters into supporting more taxes. Anything looking
like a public-services loss, due to the pending revenue “crisis,”
was on the front pages of the only major daily newspaper, the
Oregonian. The same stories were pushed on each local
nightly news broadcast. The last reports from most media outlets,
just before the vote, were “positive” regarding the public
supporting the tax increase. Huh? Says who? They were polling at
the colleges again, I guess. Note: Most local/regional topics on
this area’s TV evening news is reported in the daily morning paper
— a bunch of crack investigative reporters & super sleuths!
They must like to “speak with one voice’.
The public-funded schools, especially higher education and
community colleges, were deeply involved in the push to raise taxes
with active campaigns to get adult students/voters to pass the
increase. As an example, one of the state-funded colleges in
downtown Portland and the area’s largest university, Portland State
University, helped the “raise taxes” cause by putting out pink
slips for ALL part-time instructors. That would be a cut of 25%, or
more, of classes underway. Oh, by the way, they were to go into
effect on January 31, that is, unless the tax increase was passed
on January 28. Hmmm. That press release came out right after
January 1, which is just about the time the vote-by-mail ballots
started arriving in homes. I don’t expect many follow-up stories on
exactly how many of those part-time professors actually were let
go. The local community colleges buzzed within the e-mail users
group, sent to all staff members, of the need for the new taxes and
the drastic cuts pending if taxes were not raised.
Thanks for publishing the other side of this story, as it was,
since it has not been accurately expressed through the local media
sources. After seeing the one-sided press reports I doubt we will
see them compare the threats vs. outcome in much detail. There are
now reports telling us that the drastic cuts will not be “as bad as
expected.” Surprise, surprise, surprise.
— Dave Grasser
Portland, OR
NUKE TALK
Re: Jed Babbin’s No
Nukes Is Good Nukes:
Thanks to Jed Babbin for shedding some light amidst all the
smoke concerning possible U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Iraq.
To have read William Arkin’s piece in the Los Angeles
Times several weeks ago one would have been led to believe
that there was some news here. As Mr. Babbin rightly points out,
this country has never forsworn the first use of nuclear weapons,
preferring instead a studied ambiguity on the issue vis-a-vis Jim
Baker’s warning to Saddam on the eve of Desert Storm.
In point of fact the U.S. has long had so-called mini-nuke
bunker busters to possibly go after hardened, subterranean targets
and according to the left-leaning Center For Defense
Information even considered use of them during — guess when —
the Clinton administration.
“Proponents claim these weapons could destroy deeply buried
facilities used in the production of chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons and would thereby dissuade people like Saddam
Hussein from developing such weapons in the first place. Opponents
claim creating such weapons would threaten international law and
might accelerate the proliferation of nuclear weapons without
giving the United States much added bunker-busting capability.
Little noted in this debate is the fact that the United States has
been at work on similar weapons since the mid-nineties and already
has a bunker-busting nuclear weapon, the B61-11, a nuclear gravity
bomb.
“The Pentagon began developing the B61-11 in 1993 and deployed
it in 1997. Treading lightly around its obligations under the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States observes but
has never ratified, American nuclear scientists billed B61-11 as a
spin-off of an existing weapon. By putting an iron casing around
the nuclear warhead, the design theoretically allowed the weapon,
released from an aircraft, to burrow through earth or concrete to
destroy its target — the same mission officials at the Department
of Energy envision for weapons currently being studied.
“In 1996, the United States even threatened to use the B61-11
against Libya. When American intelligence learned that the Libyans
were building a large underground plant to develop chemical
weapons, Defense Secretary William Perry stated publicly that the
United States would consider its whole range of weapons to stop
construction — an implicit reference to nuclear weapons. One of
Perry’s assistants, Harold Smith, departing from the
administration’s script of calculated ambiguity, later explicitly
mentioned to reporters that, since the United States lacked the
conventional capability to destroy such targets, the B61-11 would
be the “weapon of choice” for this role. Although it is unclear
what factors influenced their decision, the Libyans eventually
halted construction.”
So there is very little “news” here, although you would not
necessarily know that from reading some of the more hysterical
accounts in the press.
— Bill Harrison
Arlington, VA
The probability of the U.S. employing nuclear weapons in Iraq is
slim. U.S. forces are trained and equipped to fight in a chemical
environment. If Iraq employs chemical weapons, the poorly equipped
Iraqi troops will be most at risk. At Khafji, during Desert Storm,
the Iraqi PWs captured there had lousy chemical protective gear or
no gear at all. I doubt the Iraqi Army is better equipped today. If
Iraq employs biological weapons, the civilians in Iraq and
surrounding countries who are not inoculated (and that means most,
except in Israel) will be at risk and not the U.S. Armed Forces,
which are supported by a medical establishment that is second to
none.
The U.S. is more likely to employ nuclear weapons against North
Korean targets than any found in the Middle East. The Israeli
nuclear deterrent is alive and well and may be used if Saddam
attacks Tel Aviv with WMD. This deterrent provides high cover for
U.S. forces in the region. Sharon is the wild card Saddam has to
worry about. If the U.S. crosses the nuclear threshold in the
coming weeks, months, or years, we will do it in Korea in response
to North Korean aggression. U.S. and ROK casualties (mostly ROK)
will easily exceed 1,000,000 people in the opening weeks of the
next Korean War, if the U.S. doesn’t end it quickly with nuclear
strikes on NK leadership and its stocks of WMD. Additional millions
of NK civilians will starve once the U.S. naval blockade goes in
effect and the bridges spanning the Yalu are downed. The early use
of nuclear weapons in the event of the Korean War going hot again
(remember, an Armistice was signed, not a peace treaty) would save
lives in the short run.
— Mike Slater
TENURE OR PERISH
Re: John R. Dunlap’s Tenurabilities:
Yes, you are right: many of the uses of tenure no longer apply.
But some new ones do:
1. Electoral politics. As one who never concealed his votes for
Ronald Reagan, I’m certain I would have lost my job long ago had I
not had tenure. You’re right, I could have gotten another job in
another field, but what a loss my loss would have been! Think of
those poor students! The deprivation!
2. A very mildly conservative colleague of mine, falsely charged
with sexual harassment, was stripped of his responsibilities in
advising students and in teaching big courses a few years ago.
There is no doubt he would have been fired had he not had tenure. I
don’t know the underlying reason for the attacks upon him. Maybe he
was just too popular. We’ll never know.
3. Politics aside, tenure protects people from being fired from
positions that could be more advantageously filled by spouses of
various descriptions.
Thanks for your very fine article. I particularly liked your
exposition of the term “collegiality.”
— unsigned
RIGHT CHOICES
Re: Geoff Brandt’s letters in Reader Mail’s Religious
Differences and Speaking
of the Dead:
Mr. Brandt seems to be fine with his daughters choosing to abort
his
grandchildren. Personally it is not my business what his daughters
do, but I have told my daughters all about choice. Choose wisely
who you bed. Hopefully it will be a responsible man that you have
chosen in marriage. Guess what, I have 3 daughters, no abortions, 4
grandchildren, all conceived after marriage.
— Mary Krik
Braidwood, IL
