Check out the American Flag blog, which links to blogs that have an American flag displayed on site. Via Amy Ridenour.
Mark Steyn: U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode (to read), via Country Store.
Update: Deacon at Power Line notes the dialogue between Mark Steyn and Austin Bay on the future of Europe, and writes:
My general take is that Steyn has the better sense of how profound Europe's problems are and how little we now have in common with the Europeans. Indeed, my comment on MSNBC last week that the U.S. and Europe are former allies is not that different from Steyn's latest reference to "the death" of "a Euro-American alliance founded on common values."
However, in my view Bay is correct to reject Steyn's certainty that the rot is irreversible. In times of crisis, it's not difficult for minds as powerful as Steyn's to "prove" that a happy ending is impossible. Yet, hidden dynamics can produce endings that, if not happy, are at least acceptable. If one believes, as we do, that the Middle East cannot be written off with certainty, it would be odd for us to agree that Europe can be.
Update: Glenn has a roundup of associated commentary.
Support HSQLDB!
While OOo development is funded by its sponsors, HSQLDB is an independent project run by individuals and receives no external funding. The integration with OpenOffice.org has so far required several unpaid man-months of extra work by the maintainer and lead developer of the HSQLDB project. There are still features that remain to be done.
At present (14 February 2005) there is a lot of work that needed to be done "yesterday" in HSQLDB. This is over and above the work undertaken by OOo developers in the front end. Unless immediate funding becomes available, this core engine work will be postponed, resulting in less-than-wholehearted acceptance and not-so-glowing reviews when OOo 2.00 is released.
Via Roger Simon, a very depressing glimpse into the mind of Vladimir Putin:
It was meant to be a heart-to-heart: just the two presidents and their translators, sitting alone inside the historic castle that overlooks the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Four years earlier, in another castle in Central Europe, George W. Bush looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his trustworthy soul. But what he saw inside Putin last week was far less comforting. When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS."
It's not clear how well Putin understands the controversy that led to the dismissal of four CBS journalists over the discredited report on Bush's National Guard service. Yet it's all too clear how Putin sees the relationship between Bush and the American media—just like his own. Bush's aides have long feared that former KGB officers in Putin's inner circle are painting a twisted picture of U.S. policy. So Bush explained how he had no power to fire American journalists. It made little difference. When the two presidents emerged for their joint press conference, one Russian reporter repeated Putin's language about journalists getting fired. Bush (already hot after an earlier question about his spying on U.S. citizens) asked the reporter if he felt free. "They obviously planted the question," said one of Bush's senior aides.
(emphasis mine). I'd heard about that line, but thought it was merely from a clueless Russian reporter. Turns out it was from a Russian reporter, but it was also probably planted, and Putin himself was the first to voice the charge. How could a world leader like Putin be so clueless about how a country he has to deal with works? And not just any country, but the US? What else is Putin wildly misguided on? Very disturbing.
Update: Via Amy, this Time article has more:
George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush's four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. "Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather," says a senior Administration official. "It was like something out of 1984."
Sunday, February 27, 2005
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