Coffee-it's what's for dinner:

Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.

[snip]
In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.

Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.

Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did not drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

And it tastes bettter than broccoli.

Hat tip: my mom.

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Yesterday I attended a panel at the APSA convention, chaired by Robert A. Pape, with the grandiose title: Suicide Bombing, Counter Terrorism and Mobilizing a New Generation of Bombers. From the title one might be forgiven for thinking the authors were sponsored by Al Qaeda or Hamas, but of course they meant to be ironic. And what, you might ask, does irony really contribute to such a serious topic? Nothing, I should think. But it probably makes the researchers feel better about their rather thin analysis. As one might expect (and with a couple of exceptions) it was a Bush-bashing party.

more...

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President Hamid Karzai has signed a decree on behalf of the people of Afghanistan, allowing for the donation of $130,000 in disaster relief aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

It's small when compared to the amount of U.S. foreign aid received by Afghanistan, but it's the thought that counts.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 11:47 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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(Kabul, Afghanistan) Tourists Jun Fukusho, 44, and Shinobu Hasegawa, 30, both junior high school teachers from Hiroshima, disappeared on August 8 in southern Afghanistan. Their bodies, confirmed by dental records, were found Thursday in a ditch outside Kandahar. According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, both "had been shot in the head point-blank."

While acknowledging that their deaths were brutal, senseless, and criminal, I have to seriously question the wisdom of touring Afghanistan while the country is at war.

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I added the Jawa Report to The Truth Laid Bear's list of blogs that give to support hurricane relief. With Rusty away, I semi-arbitrarily picked the Baptists as a recommended charity. I expect they'll keep sober. In fact the Baptists won't even have sex standing up--because someone might think they're dancing. But whatever reputable charity you contribute to, log your contribution here and tell 'em the Jawa Report sent you. (This is cool because, if nothing else, it tells people about the generosity of bloggers and blog readers.)

I'm afraid for some reason my own meager contribution didn't get counted--or actually that it got counted but didn't get noted in the Jawa file. So you be sure and make up for me.

PS And if you live in California, as I do, you're going to be sitting in the dust of your earthquake-flattened house some day soon, croaking with thirst while wildfires rage all around and a meth-crazed brigade of Latin Kings bikers carries away your womenfolk, and you'll be thankful you've set a precedent of charitable giving in time of disaster. (You'll also be thankful you invested in a surplus M14 and a thousand rounds of ammo, but give to the charity first.)

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I thought this WaPo review of the Constant Gardener was interesting. No way I'll see the movie; after falling asleep in The Russia Houseand groaning through The Tailor of Panama, I've given up on film adaptations of John LeCarre novels. They're awful. But it's interesting because the review starts with a long meditation on radicalism--specifically the distinctly uncomfortable, unsympathetic, borderline-mentally-ill personalities that are drawn to radical politics, and the way they show up in film:

This is actually a fairly common portrait in the movies. Think of the many other radicals the flicks have portrayed as loose cannons with messy lives, full of small treacheries against people while yapping moral triumphalism in favor of some mythical animal called The People.

Hollywood, the reviewer points out, doesn't make radicals particularly likeable. Even the supposedly heroic ones like Karen Silkwood come off as twitchy and priggish. And even friendly directors like Julie Taymor in Frida still make the title character seem like "a twisted sister off on a self-dramatization crusade, who used a bus accident as a tool for constant manipulation of those around her, turning many things into one-act plays starring her own self. Some would come away from that film thinking: She's not a part of the solution; maybe she is the problem."

The reason this reviewer likes The Constant Gardener so much is that it offers a different portrayal--a "countertheory"-- of a zealous radical:

...[F]ar from being a screwball angry at a vanished or indifferent parent taking her for granted, she has rational politics. They're cause-based, not anger-based. She's examined the policy, she's understood the science, she's read the documents, she sees the implications...[The film] holds that the radical is not a crazy hater who needs to tear down out of narcissism, to avenge her own slights. She takes no pleasure in destruction; it's that she takes no pleasure in injustice, and if she sees injustice everywhere, it's because injustice is everywhere.

Fine, the reviewer likes these noble, rational radical types. But that doesn't really comport with reality. I've known quite a few of these people in my short time on earth, and they're not pleasant. A desperate dedication to political change is unhealthy and often a cause or a symptom--I don't know which-- of a deeply disordered life. There's a reason Hollywood's attempted hagiographies of them can't make them seem likeable: they're not. The closer the films get to the truth, the less sympathetic their subjects appear. I won't be seeing The Motorcycle Diaries, but there's a reason they focus on young Che Guevara finding himself on a coming-of-age tour--because in later life, once politics consumed him, he was a doctrinaire, homicidal jerk who enjoyed shooting people who disagreed with him.

It's not just me and Hollywood that noticed this tendency of radicals--pick up a copy of Paul Johnson's Intellectuals. It's a historical account of the lives of people like Marx, Lenin, Brecht, Freud, even touching on Chomsky, and the way they actually lived. It's quite an eye-opener.

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In one of the few pockets of fighting, insurgents fired seven rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks from adjacent buildings in the western neighborhood of Qadisiyah. A U.S. jet destroyed much of the block with a 500-pound satellite-guided bomb, commanders said.

It sounds like we really roto-rootered an insurgent hive in Iraq, and that's some much-needed good news. Apparently Tall Afar was a mini-Fallujah 40 miles off the Syrian border that had gone unchecked for over a year.

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I thought it was a pretty bad joke--but just as he predicted, someone else who isn't joking said the same thing.

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Dead at 80

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The American Political Science Association has invited the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the notoriously antisemetic Middle East Institute at Columbia University to give tonight's keynote address.

Rashid Khalidi will speak on 'Resurrecting Empire', also the title of his latest 'academic' book. The thesis of the book boils down to the Iraq War being about a Neocon right-wing conspiracy to protect the interests of Israel. Khalidi, like many I'm-not-antisemetic-I'm-just-pointing-out-the-fact-that-there-are-a-lot-of-Jews-in-the-Bush-administration-who-are-really-pulling-the-strings-of-power political scientists also puts oil interests at the center of this conspiracy. Of course, the Jewish Neo-Con conspiracy isn't really a conspiracy because, you know, conspiracies are secret and every one knows that the Jews control Washington's foreign policy.

Everyone in the Administration has some connection to oil, and even Condi Rice is somehow being personally enriched by the War.

I would like to think that the American Political Science Association has sunk to a new low inviting this conspiratorial moonbat to give a keynote address. Unfortunately, the practice is common place in the academy. The neo-conspiracy theories of the Left, couched in academic language, will probably be well received by the audience. Any one who questions the appropriateness of including Khalidi in the program will be branded an advocate of censorship and a Brownshirt trying to quash academic freedom.

The address will be tonight at 8:30 in Salon 1 at the Washington, D.C. Marriott-Woodman Park (near the Zoo). I'll be the guy sitting in the first row, wearing the anti-Bushitlerhaliburton mind probe tin foil hat.

More on Rashid Khalidi can be found at the Little Green Footballs archives

Posted by: Rusty at 10:15 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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I won't elaborate, but I'm now completely convinced that we're in a war with "the liberals" (meaning, the Social Democrats) just as much as we're in a war with "irreconcibable Islam." I'm also beginning to think that, at least as an organizing principle, we ought to start pushing to change the "working Capital" of the US from DC to Omaha, Nebraska. And it's not that I hate Omaha all that much, but it's a lot closer to the "middle" of the country than any place else I can think of, in just about every way I can imagine.

And the parking lots are epic.

Keep DC as a symbolic totem.

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If you thought there was something eerily familiar about Kanye West's ranting in front of an embarrassed Michael Myers, well, so did Tony B at More than Loans. Yes, it was an SNL skit once upon a time, with Heather Locklear in the Kanye West role, and Myers standing there looking flabbergasted.

Tony links to one of several versions of this video going around. This one, hosted at riehlworldview.com, is the best because you see Chris Tucker looking equally astonished before stumbling into his script.

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Remember 41's "Thousand Points of Light?"

By the time the mess of Katrina is cleaned up, bloggers will have their own galaxy.

Here's one who is literally hands on in his approach.

Here's a grateful Iraqi. One of the rare voices from Islam who doesn't think a hurricane is getting what we deserve.

What am I doing? Well, I'm link-peddling other's worthy efforts on high traffic blogs, and I'm working on this.

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Get in on Phin's auctioning off of a custom blog design. Scratch that, get in on Phin's auction of TWO blog designs.

As an added bonus, Pixy Misa is throwing in your very own colony in MuNuvia.

All proceeds will go to the American Red Cross, or a charity of the winning bidders' choice.

What the hell are you staring at this for, git goin'!!!!!!!

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Woo-Hoo!

Good news! Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue today announced that, effective at midnight tonight and running until the end of September, no state gasoline taxes will be collected. Perdue expects stations to drop their prices up to 15 cents per gallon within hours. Those stations that don't pass on the savings to consumers will be singled out for investigations by the Department of Revenue and Office of Consumer Affairs.

I suppose it's not necessary to mention that Gov. Perdue is running for re-election next year and he timed his announcement to run live on Georgia TV news broadcasts. It's also probably not necessary to mention that the suspension in tax collection is more a political play than an economic benefit.

Hey, but it's better than nothing.

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All APSA related posts can now be found at The Jawa Report's APSA archives

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Above (click for larger image): Paul Mirengoff of Powerline speaks at the American Political Science Association. Next to Paul (from left to right) is John Klenker of the Claremont Review of Books, Scott Johnson, also of Powerline, Peter Cannellos, of the Boston Globe, and Bill Gertz, of the Washington Times. (Bad photo, I know, but it's from a camera phone). Charmaine of Reasoned Audacity sat right behind me and has a few better photos here.

Report from the panel: Wasn't able to stick around and meet Paul or Scott from Powerline because I had to rush off to a job interview.

Two memorable observations from the panel. First, a heated exchange betwen Peter Cannelos and Scott Johnson. more...

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(Los Angeles) Four homegrown Islamic terrorists identified as members of the radical group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS, have been arrested for conspiring to attack military facilities, synagogues, and other targets in California.

From The Mercury-News:

Four suspects were charged Wednesday with conspiring to wage war against the U.S. government through terrorism. Named in the federal indictment were Levar Haley Washington, 25; Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21; Hammad Riaz Samana, 21; and Kevin James, 29.

All but Samana, a Pakistani national, are American born and Muslim converts. Counterterrorism officials have found no evidence directly connecting the group - described as the cell of a California prison gang of radical Muslims - to al-Qaida or other foreign terror networks.

Law enforcement officials and terrorism experts said it could represent one of the first Islamic terrorism cases involving U.S. natives without those connections.

The founder of Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh is California State Prison inmate Kevin James (aka Shakyh Shahaab Murshid) who preaches terror to Islam's enemies. Followers apparently pledged loyalty to James "until death by martyrdom."

Interestingly, the plotters were exposed only after they were arrested for an unrelated series of gas station robberies. Subsequent searches of their possessions found weapons, ammunition, and plans for the attacks. In other words, the authorities were lucky to catch these fanatics before they acted.

"Make no mistake about it -- we dodged a bullet here, perhaps many bullets," Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton said at a news conference.

Companion post at Interested-Participant.

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Chavez is moving to consolidate power again. Yes the democratically elected President and self appointed Dictator of Venezuela is after control of that country's banking system.

A continuation of left-wing President Hugo Chavez's aim to create "socialism of the 21st Century", a number of foreign banks would be affected. Among them are Spanish institutions Banco Santander and BBVA. Both own Venezuelan banks - Banco de Venezuela and Banco Provincial respectively.

Hat tip: California Conservative.

Yeah I know but I'm waiting on a machine right now.

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Whomever this author is (whom is obviously afraid to sign his work), just couldn't resist taking a few potshots at the war through the hurricane.

The situation in New Orleans, which had seemed as bad as it could get, became considerably worse yesterday with reports of what seemed like a total breakdown of organized society. Americans who had been humbled by failures in Iraq saw that the authorities could not quickly cope with a natural disaster at home. People died for lack of water, medical care or timely rescues - particularly the old and the young - and victims were almost invariably poor and black. The city's police chief spoke of rapes, beatings and marauding mobs. The pictures were equally heartbreaking and maddening. Disaster planners were well aware that New Orleans could be flooded by the combined effects of a hurricane and broken levees, yet somehow the government was unable to immediately rise to the occasion.

Watching helplessly from afar, many citizens wondered whether rescue operations were hampered because almost one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq. That's an even bigger loss than the raw numbers suggest because many of these part-time soldiers had to leave behind their full-time jobs in police and fire departments or their jobs as paramedics. Regardless of whether they wear public safety uniforms in civilian life, the guardsmen in Iraq are a crucial resource sorely missed during these early days, when hours have literally meant the difference between evacuation and inundation, between civic order and chaos, between life and death.

(snip)

The gap is now belatedly being filled by units from other states, though without the local knowledge and training those Mississippi and Louisiana units could supply. The Pentagon is sending thousands of active-duty sailors and soldiers, including a fully staffed aircraft carrier, a hospital ship and some 3,000 Army troops for security and crowd control (even though federal law bars regular Army forces from domestic law enforcement, normally the province of the National Guard).

But it's already a very costly game of catch-up. The situation might have been considerably less dire if all of Louisiana's and Mississippi's National Guard had been mobilized before the storm so they could organize, enforce and aid in the evacuation of vulnerable low-lying areas. Plans should have been drawn up for doing so, with sufficient trained forces available to carry them out.

Let's look back through history. Florida has had three, four? hurricanes, just this year. How many cases of looting and anarchy did you see? I don't recall any, although to think that nobody stole anything after a natural disaster is probably a little naive. But the fact is, there was order and control there. And guess what? They have National Guard soldiers in Iraq as well. So I'd have to say that the entire gist of this article has just fallen flat.

Of course I'm sure that they can then turn around and argue that this disaster is worse than anything Florida faced, but I'm not so sure that will hold water either. Except for the massive flooding, I've seen Florida sustain some pretty bad damage. But even the flooding doesn't excuse what's going on.

The looting started the day that the rain stopped. There was no time for societial deteroriation due to lack of leadership. If people were starting to loot NOW, I might be inclined to agree with that. But when you go out and start stealing stuff the minute the rain stops falling, you're just looking to steal stuff. Especially when that stuff is name brand clothes, TVs, radios and other non-consumables. You liberals need to get used to the fact that, try as you might, you simply can't blame a natural disaster on Bush. He didn't cause it, he couldn't stop it, and he is now reacting to it. That's about the best you could ask for out of anyone. So pull your head out of your backside and realize that there are people of the United States that need your help. Not your preaching about how Bush is evil. Try pulling together and let's see what we can do. We did it after 9/11 and I'm sure, if you try hard enough, you can put your Bush-hate aside and join us in rebuilding the lives that have been devistated by this.

Posted by: Drew at 09:49 AM | Comments (30) | Add Comment
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