James R. Rummel

I am a self defense instructor who lives in Columbus, Ohio.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

by

I was just browsing through the news and came across this item, which reports on how the New York Observer was just purchased by the 25 year old scion of a real estate baron.

The first thing that popped into my mind was the classic movie Citizen Kane. The title character buys an ailing New York daily with his millions because he thinks “…running a newspaper will be fun!” Then he turns the paper into a real powerhouse by ignoring professional ethics and embracing go-for-the-throat yellow journalism.

It remains to be seen if The Observer will go that route, but all thoughts of classic movies were driven from my mind when I read what the new owner’s father had been up to…

His father, Charles Kushner, a philanthropist and Democratic fundraiser, was sentenced in March 2005 to two years in prison for assisting in the filing of false tax returns, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, and retaliating against a witness in the case – his sister.

He hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, made a videotape of the encounter and then sent it to his sister, the man’s wife, in retaliation for her cooperation with federal authorities who were looking into his business activities.

Holy crap! Isn’t that amazing? That prostitute must have been really something!

Our biggest customers at Police HQ were prostitutes, and none of them were attractive enough to make me want to pay a nickel for their attention. I suppose all of the hot whores move to New Jersey to ply their trade.

Other than that, I’d have to say that it would have been the perfect gift if Charles had mailed the tape directly to his brother-in-law instead of to his sister. It certainly would have made those vanity license plates he made himself while in prison look like a booger.

What does this say about the Democrat’s claims that the Republicans wallow in a “culture of corruption”? I note that the elder Kushner might have been wallowing in some corruption of his own, but he wasn’t an elected official. This means that the Republicans commit their own crimes, while the Democrats contract the work out.

Lockdown

by

Crime in the United States was pretty much out of control by the 1970’s.

There were a variety of reasons for that, but I think the biggest factor is that a new strategy of enforcing the law came in to vogue. The public was encouraged to view criminals not as bad people who need to be punished for their misdeeds, but as lonely forgotten souls who were driven to crime due to bad experiences during their formative years.

Perps were sick, you see, and they needed healing and compassion more than hatred and marginalization.

This attitude eventually got turned around, but it took awhile. It took even longer for the damage caused by this touchy-feely crap to get cleaned up, but it finally happened. This is due to the fact that the number of convictions started to climb, and the number of convictions that resulted in jail time also started to increase. This resulted in a larger prison population, but the results are hard to ignore.

Crimes against property started to fall by 1980, but it wasn’t until 1993 that we saw a reduction of violent crimes.

Still, once the ball started to roll it just kept on hurtling downhill. Today the people in the United States enjoy an aggregate crime rate that is less than half of what it was during the dark and lawless days.

Read more

Grab That Cash With Both Hands and Make a Stash

by

Steven den Beste has retired from political blogging, but he wrote a very interesting post back in 2004. In Up Against The Wall, Steven points out the moment when US foreign policy shifts so far as our stance on the Palestinians.

President Bush gave a speech in June of 2002 where he pledged support for the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state, but only if they first renounced terrorism. One of the conditions for this was the dismantling of organizations that currently perform terrorist acts, and even organizations which conducted terrorism in the past. This obviously isn’t going to happen as long as the Palestinians are eager to elect openly genocidal terrorist organizations to head their government.

Steven makes a lot of really interesting points in his post, and I urge you all to take a few minutes to read the whole thing. (Steven clarifies some of his points in this follow up post.) There is, however, one aspect to Steven’s original essay that I would like to focus on here.

Read more

The Most Important Person of the Past 25 Years

by

Dan from Madison makes a pretty good case for Bill Gates.

I really don’t agree. Let me tell you why.

The air raid sirens were tested on Wednesday at noon in my home town, just like most towns and cities in America during the Cold War. I live in Ohio, but it has always seemed odd that Indiana never adopted Daylight Savings Time. I bet kids from there could tell where the border was just by noting how the wailing would start up over yonder while they still had to wait another 60 minutes.

Although no one has ever praised my intelligence, there have been a few days where I was on the ball. I happened to be around a television in 1969 when a news report explained what a nuclear war was and what the sirens were for. Every Wednesday at noon for months afterwards I’d start sobbing when I’d hear that eerie shriek, convinced that the Russians had launched. Let me tell you, being aware of your own imminent death was a hard thing for a 5-year-old to bear.

As a general rule, US administrations from both sides of the political aisle worked to oppose Communism for five long decades. It is wrong to single out one President and claim that they were the sole reason that the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Even after saying that, I’m going to partially violate my own rule and state that Ronald Reagan deserves a lion’s share of the credit.

I was alarmed at Reagan’s economic policies while he was in office, particularly his policy on increased military spending. It is obvious in retrospect that I was wrong, since there is little doubt that the pressure placed on the U.S.S.R. to match us hastened the dissolution of that state by many years. Before Reagan I had been convinced that the Soviets would still exist and pose a viable threat long after I had died and become forgotten. Now it appears that people in their 20’s have a hard time remembering that once it seemed almost inevitable that the Communists would destroy our civilization in a single afternoon.

Don’t get me wrong, the technological advances spearheaded by people like Bill Gates certainly meant that it was just that much more difficult for Communist Russia to match the US in advanced warfighting capabilities. Devoting your life to administering a huge charitable organization and doing good works is also an achievement that should be praised. But Gates didn’t stare down a nuclear-armed police state and refuse to blink. That took someone with balls as big as churchbells. I really don’t think anyone can claim that Gates has that kind of package.

So tell me true. If lives are on the line, which one of the guys below would you want at your back?

gates.jpgreagan.jpg

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Beyond the Far Horizon

by

Science fiction has always been one of my favorite literary genres. If memory serves I went from the “Dick and Jane” books to juvenile sci-fi without much transition. It helped that this was the 1960’s, and everyone thought science fiction was something that was pretty necessary in order to get people ready for the Space Age future that was coming at warp speed.

It was obvious by the 1970’s that the future wasn’t about to arrive, or at least the one envisioned seemed to fall by the wayside. There were some big names in the business back then, like Asimov and Bradbury, but science fiction had mostly lost its way. In 1968 the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey showed everyone a false but brilliant glimpse into a universe where people lived on the Moon and traveled around in bright, clean commercial spaceships. Less than ten years later and the best anyone could do was a story about some hick farm boy who gains magic powers. Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars and think it is one of the best movies ever. But I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim that it is a thoughtful and mature film. Science Fiction as literature had slipped back into sci-fi as juvenile entertainment.

But then James Baen came along.

He didn’t write the stuff himself, working instead as an editor. He would buy and publish the work of some of my favorite authors, almost single handedly pulling the business out of a boring swamp of dreadful hack writing by giving some extremely talented people the chance to get paid for doing what they did best. After Jim Baen got started you could take a science fiction novel up to the checkout counter in the bookstore and not be afraid that the pretty co-ed behind the cash register would laugh at you.

Those of us who enjoy science fiction owe Jim Baen a debt that is so big it’s tough to even acknowledge the whole of it. We’re never going to get the chance because he died yesterday.

Click on that last link and you’ll find a eulogy written by Jim’s buddy David Drake. It’s a fitting tribute to the man who saved our sense of wonder.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)