Telling indeed that this is a platform that “liberals” identify with.

Dictionary.com: tact  /tækt/ –noun
1. a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.

Yeah, clearly it’s tack, not tact. I think now Allen and tact should no longer be used in the same sentence.

Must be something about the Army Language School (now the Military Language Institute). My Dad went there in 1955 after growing up in New Jersey. I grew up in Los Angeles, not New Jersey. California is really something else, and perhaps, maybe a bit redder (politically) than it’s been in some time. Hopefully, the National Republicans won’t continue to treat California like it’s a complete lost cause anymore.

The word you are thinking of is tactic. A synonym is tack (nautical term).

Tact just does not fit the useage.

Of course America can control its borders.

Over 90 years of drug prohibition proves that.

Re: tack

It is a naval term meaning a change in course to take advantage of the wind without changing your general direction.

As far as Jim Webb is concerned one cannot criticize him for making deals with his Democratic sponsors. In their desparation to get a so-called majority they have given a man who was considered an arch-enemy to feminists and peaceniks a club. I would be very surpised indeed if Webb turned ultra liberal on us. In fact he is more conservative than many Republicans. I am sure he won because he got a substantial male, Marine and veteran vote a vote that has eluded the Democrats for years simply because he is a manly Democrat that such men feel they can trust. Webb is also right that the is an invisible ethnic group that is awakening to its strength and that is the people who are descended from the fringe people of the British Isles. Such people were never English and have always been outsiders to a large extent to the power elites. Call them what you like, the Scotch-Irish, the Gaels or the Celts, that feeling is still out there and Webb capitilized on this feeling; his kilted brother played the pibrochs loud and clear at his victory party. I can’t remember a Democratic gathering for more than 40 years that had so many current and ex-Marines present.

As far as California having great natural beauty yes this is true. As I too live in the San Joaquin Valley and know Morro Bay, los Osos and Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon I can see yes there is great natural beauty there.

But for a combination of history AND natural beauty nothing can surpass the Northwest of Scotland (particularly Loch Maree).

I like an appreciate California but have watched Arvin and Bakersfield go down the LA road; none of my children want to live here and I am only staying here until I retire and then intend to retreat to a quieter less anarchic and less taxified quarter.

With Arnold we have avoided present disaster but I fully expect the tax and spend Demcrats to permanently control both houses in Sacramento and win back the governorship.

I have been a school teacher for more than 20 years and I can tell you that I have noticed a change among students.

1) they are lazier and more defiant and as one of the posters said seem to believe all authority is derrogation. They wear ipods in their ears, cheat like mad and refuse to study except to go through the motions. The majority have no interest in learning or culture. They are only interested in themselves, sex and hedonism. More and more California reminds me of the Last Days of Pompeii.

2) It used to be one phone call to the parents about bad behavior would bring about change but now it just opens a window to the moral chaos and one expects defiance and vituperation from that quarter as well. What can’t be cured must be endured but to keep the students on task is a constant battle.

The problem with that plan is that it assumes the Iraqis are capable of, and willing to, step up to the plate and do what it takes in terms creating a stable, non-corrupt civilian government, professional, loyal, non-corrupt police force, and professional military forces that are willing to fight and loyal to said stable civilian government.

This does not seem to be the case in Iraq.

As far as I can tell Rumsfeld’s plan was that after the Liberation of Baghdad the music would swell, the credits would roll, a class of good looking, well educated, English speaking Iraqi Jeffersonian democrats would magically appear to take the reins of a universally popular government; and Iraqi would become some sort of an Islamic Switzerland, like Turkey only more progressive.

But the Iraqis did not behave like the French, and the Dutch did in 1944, or like the Poles and Czechs and Hungarians did in 1989. Instead they behaved like Iraqis. This is because (suprise!) they are NOT the French, Dutch, Polish, Czech or Hungarian, they are Iraqi. This should not have been a surprise, but somehow it seems that, to Rumsfeld at least, it was.

The Iraqi people aren’t the Europeans; they weren’t raised in a Liberal Judeo-Christian culture; so it should not be a surprise that they don’t share Liberal Judeo-Christian values, or behave the way Americans or Europeans (who were raised in a Liberal Judeo-Christian culture) would. (There is a reason why Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East.)

There is a UN Statistic that says more books get translated into Spanish in one year (approx 10,000) than have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years! In a nation with no Luther, no Hobbes, no Locke, no Mayflower Compact, no Federalsit Papers, no Jefferson, no Hamilton, no Madison, no Ayn Rand, and no Hayek, you don’t get a lot of Libertarians and Jeffersonian democrats! In the Islamic World The Renaissance and the Enlightenment are still very literally “just things that happened to other people.”

The first rule of Strategy is that you never base your plan upon the actions of someone you can not control. Rumsfeld repeatedly violated this rule. He assumed that Iraqi exiles would flock to the “Iraqi Liberation Army” (remember that?). He assumed the Turks would let us move in through their country. He assumed that Iraqis would not consider the Liberation of their Capital to be an opportunity for mass looting and the theft of national cultural treasures. He assumed the Iraqis would be less concerned with settling sectarian scores and lining their own corrupt pockets than with building a free and prosperous nation. He assumed the Iraqis would not sabotage their own oil resources, or blow up their own Holy Places. He assumed their politicians would make personal sacrifices to work together for the common good. In short he assumed that even though the Iraqis had not been raised in a Liberal, post- Enlightenment, Judeo-Christian culture, they would act exactly as if they had been.

He was wrong.