Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

1. Mark Steyn on the Islamic Demographic Threat
2. Ted Kennedy's Stake in the Ground: off the deep end
3. Hillary's position: Firmly in the middle - but Bush is still wrong
4. President Bush: Firmly against human sacrifice
5. Killing the Viet Nam analogy

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Mark Steyn on the Islamic Demographic Threat

Mark Steyn gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation this week, and it was an hour of wonderfully entertaining terror. Steyn, author of the book "America Alone", has noticed that the birth rate among western nations is low, while that among Muslim nations it is very high. There will soon be far fewer people like ourselves, and many more like them. Listen to his gripping description of the problem in this three minute clip. Thanks to HotAir for the audio.

Play clip on the Birthrate Problem.

Birth rates are critical not only because they indicate the future population trend, but also because the more 15 year old boys with nothing to do in a society, the greater the level of crime and other social ills. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit pointed to a Strategy Page post that included this synopsis of the research of German social scientist (Gunnar Heinsohn, who

demonstrated that when 30 percent or more of a population is aged 15-29, you have too many young men with bad attitudes, and the result is a jump in crime, terrorism and civil unrest. Heinsohn showed that in 90 percent of the 67 of the countries that have the 30 percent "Youth Bulge" (as demographers put it) you have massive unrest. Moreover, 13 of the 27 nations with the largest Youth Bulge are Moslem.

Steyn later describes this as the 15-year old punk problem in the following clip.

Play clip on the 15 year old punk problem

The still-dead Palestinian Authority ex-Chairman Yasir Arafat, as cited in a 2002 article in the Village Voice by Sylvana Foa, used to boast about birth rates all the time.

"The womb of the Arab woman," Arafat [said] smugly, promising ultimate victory over the Jews, "is my strongest weapon."

This is not a message ignored in the Muslim world today, even if the west has paid no attention. As Steyn goes on to explain, we too often put too much trust in our technological expertise. But there is risk in that practice, as he describes in the next clip, recalling the role of technology the late 19th century, especially the Maxim Gun.

Play clip on the Maxim Gun

Use it or lose it, I guess

Ted Kennedy's stake in the ground: Off the deep end

Ted Kennedy, after over 40 years in the Senate, has reached the fermentation point. With all due respect to the aged owl of the Massachusetts Democratic party, it's way past time for him to ride off into the sunset. But my opinion carries no weight in this discussion. Senator Kennedy's view is that this is Viet Nam all over again, and it is time for congress to do whatever they can to pull our troops out before our military can win and give President Bush a victory. His view is different from Hillary Clinton, who is more a "stay-the-course-but-bitch-about-it" centrist. Senator Kennedy says it's time to act now. At a National Press Club talk last week he made his case. After reciting a litany of parallels to Viet Nam, quoting President Johnson at the time saying things that sounded as if they could have been said by President Bush today, he launched into his recommended congressional action. Thanks to Kathryn Jean Lopez on the Corner on National Review Online for the section that most clearly showed his point of view. Thanks to C-SPAN for the audio.

Play clip of Kennedy at the National Press Club

I only hope our buddy Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can keep him buttoned up for the next few years, to minimize the damage he can do.

Hillary's position: Firmly in the middle - but Bush is still wrong

Senator Clinton has been on a media blitz the last few days, appearing on as many morning shows as the drug commercials. It's apparently now time to respond to Barak Obama's announcement of his exploratory committee. She has to hold her place in the media. She was on NPR to criticize President Bush. How daring is that? But listen to this clip from her appearance on NPR. She has clearly staked out a different position from Ted Kennedy. Thank's to Ann Althouse for the recommendation to listen to the NPR episode on "sloganeering" by Mrs. Clinton.

Play clip of Hillary with NPR

Notice how she is not calling for an immediate cut-off in funding for Bush's actions, claiming that it would be fruitless. I agree. Congress has few effective tools for ensuring victory. And she has a valid point about demanding action of the politicians in Iraq. She is playing on the perception that the U.S. is doing all the work, while Maliki placates the militia leaders. There is news that the Iraqi's have arrested 400 militia leaders in the last few weeks, so perhaps this middle ground is where success might be found. Speak loudly and bitch is the new Clinton doctrine. It just might win in '08.

President Bush: firmly against human sacrifice

President Bush has been on the TV circuit himself lately, appearing on 60 Minutes and NewsHour on PBS. He thinks that some open dialog on his changes in Iraq can only help his case with the American people. He had me at "Fellow Americans", but that's no surprise. But on NewsHour with Jim Leher he was asked about that silly canard concerning "sacrifice". From Best of the Web on the Wall Street Journal Online, James Taranto picked this excerpt for riducule. He wrote:

The Cult of 'Sacrifice'

Last week we noted that aging Angry Left teen idol Markos "Kos" Moulitsas was unhappy with President Bush for "bellowing crap like 'decisive ideological struggle of our time' " without calling for "national sacrifice." Jim Lehrer, interviewing the president for PBS's "NewsHour" yesterday

Thanks to PBS for the audio.

Play clip of Bush on PBS

The bottom-line, as Leher is wont to ask that we question, is that the "sacrifice" being asked for here, is a sacrifice for others. They are calling young people into compulsory service. These people would otherwise enter the job market and do things that society values more, and shows it, by paying them.

The Viet Nam analogy

Everyone who was of age in the 60's and 70's thinks of the world in terms of Viet Nam. If I had received a lower draft card number at the end of the Nixon administration I would have been called. I remember the talk against the draft, against the war, against the establishment. Everyone was into it. But that was then and this is now. As we heard from Ted Kennedy earlier, some have yet to find a problem that didn't look like Viet Nam all over again, especially the current war in Iraq. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit points to a relevant passage:

IN FOREIGN POLICY, DONALD STOKER WRITES: "Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and Iraq should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Bush administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public's patience finally wears out." Read the whole thing. The question is whether -- with the "three-year-rule" having more than run its course -- we've got the time.

In another quote from Best of the Web, we have more on the Viet Nam analogy:

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby makes an excellent point about his senior senator:

Edward Kennedy likes to label Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," as he did last week when he introduced legislation to give Congress the final say on troop levels in Iraq.

Bush played no role in the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia to the Communists in 1975, of course. But Kennedy did. He helped lead the congressional drive to cut off financial aid to the pro-American governments in Saigon and Phnom Penh, brushing aside President Gerald Ford's warning that "the horror and the tragedy that we see on television" would only grow worse if America deserted its allies.

But Kennedy and the Democrats spurned Ford, and the result was unspeakable agony--Cambodia's killing fields, Vietnam's re-education camps, waves of "boat people" hurling themselves into the sea. Having seen the results of US abandonment in Indochina, how can Kennedy advocate the same policy in Iraq?

"If we cease to help our friends in Indochina," Ford said, "we will . . . have been false to ourselves, to our word, and to our friends. No one should think for a moment that we can walk away from that without a deep sense of shame." Ford, a decent man, couldn't imagine deliberately abandoning a friend in dire straits. Kennedy, it seems, isn't so inhibited.

As much as he likes to preen about his humanitarianism, when the going gets tough, Kennedy's message to those in need is "sink or swim."

That's it for now podcatchers, I'm Charlie Quidnunc reporting from a gradually warming Mercer Island, WA today