Labels: weekend

Labels: democrats, islamofascism

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Labels: democrats, left-wing media

Labels: the good guys

"When Obama can get that many people left, right and center to stand up and salute, it’s the canary in the coal mine for the Hillary campaign. Sen. Clinton now has the uphill battle for the nomination, and while it’s not impossible for her to win the White House, it suggests the country is going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into another Clinton presidency. It's because they know she means at least four more years of the same – the psychodrama, the partisanship, division, the Republicans being angry and bitter for the next four years."

Labels: clintons

Marketing "Peace" to the Clueless

The Palestinian kaffiyeh, symbol of the intifada and decades of violence and terrorism, is being marketed by Urban Outfitters as an “Anti-War Woven Scarf.” (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

For the rest of us, we can ring the alarm bells and let our country know what’s coming. Hugh conducted an important interview on Friday with a “liberal” Iranian blogger, a guy who hates Ahmadenijad and who therefore seemed like he might be friendly to our interests. Instead, he pronounced the Iranian people at war with America as they have been for the past generation.

That’s the state of things, and the president won’t be able to convince a single American of that reality who doesn’t already know it. Which means the rest of us will have to do it for him.

Labels: end times

Sevan’s indictment has just changed that equation. With charges now brought against him, the clock has stopped ticking on the statute of limitations. The U.S. has placed a lien on his Hamptons home, and lodged a warrant with Interpol for his arrest — which means he could be nabbed if he tries to travel across national borders. Unless he wants to risk a trial in New York, Sevan, now 69, faces a choice between spending quite possibly the rest of his life holed up on Cyprus, under the cloud of this indictment, or attempting a deal with the prosecutors. For Sevan, who spent his career as a globe-trotting U.N. official whose wife and daughter have spent years in the U.S., and who once ran the biggest relief program ever launched by the U.N., this ought to be a thought-provoking turn of events.

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Looking at this line in a report on Castro's medical problems ("It cited two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid. The hospital employs the surgeon José Luis García Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old leader.") in the Guardian, Tim Worstall has a question for those who so love to praise the Cuban health care system:

"Why isn't he being treated by a Cuban doctor? Diverticulitis, colostomies, these are not particularly rare diseases or treatments are they?"

Good question.

Lenin, of course, did the same in the course of what eventually turned out to be his final ilness. He disdained the efforts of the local doctors he described as "Soviet bunglers" and shipped in a few foreign specialists. With the Party's approval, of course.

Nothing changes.

Source: Andrew Stuttaford

Labels: democrats

Here's one scenario: Barack Obama is for Hillary in 2008 what McCain was for George W. Bush in 2000. He's a press darling and a public icon whose presence in the race will force her to sharpen her take on issues and force her to campaign harder and become a better candidate. And eventually, she will win the nomination — a victory that will nonetheless enshrine Obama inexorably as his party's Glorious Future.

Labels: clintons

This story needs to be read in conjunction with DOJ's failure to pursue Sandy Berger more vigorously. Many people are expressing puzzlement over why a Republican Justice Department would allow these investigations to fizzle out. The question I would ask is whether DOJ is any more "Republican" than the State Department or the CIA. It may well be that the handful of Republicans at the top of DOJ are helpless to push these investigations. You can imagine the headlines: "White House attempts to influence Justice Department leak investigation! I'm not asserting as a fact that this is what is going on, because I don't know. But it is not obvious that the Justice Department is significantly different from the other federal bureaucracies that are dominated by Democrats.

The full extent of Berger’s document removal, however, is not known, and never can be known. The Justice Department cannot be sure that berger did not remove original documents for which there were no copies or inventory. On three of Berger’s four visits to the Archives, he had access to such documents.

One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them--No. 217--was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy "under his portfolio also." In other words, he stole the same document twice.

Labels: clintons, democrats, left-wing media

In Iowa, the Midwestern state that will once again open the primary season with its caucus votes on January 14, 2008, Clinton slumped to fourth place with only 10% of the vote in a survey of 600 likely Democratic voters.

Source

Labels: clintons, democrats

Labels: democrats

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Consider the uproar if a Republican senator said something similar to, say, Janet Reno in the Clinton administration? But Boxer should get a free pass because she happens to be the same gender as Rice? No way. Going after the bollixed-up Iraq policy was fair game — from senators of both parties, no question. Ripping the whole "surge" plan is also fine. But suggesting the secretary of state doesn't care about the human costs because she's childless? And the Democrats wonder why the public is wary about their ability to govern with any sense of fairness or decency. It's this kind of haughty, condescending behavior that turned Americans against Democrats in the first place. Well, anyway, I'll remember this great example that Sen. Boxer has given the country. In turn, perhaps it might be good to remind the public about why a wealthy white Democratic woman of privilege has no problem supporting public schools that leave poor black kids uneducated and prepped for a lives of low wages and likely incarceration. More vile comments like that above and it won't be too long before the country starts waxing nostalgic for that Republican majority — a thought that Boxer's fellow Democrats don't want to consider.

Labels: democrats

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MSNBC is so consistently and openly against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Republican Party, I think it's fair to say it has abandoned objectivity as a model of journalism and is going for something else. Last week Bernard Goldberg suggested that MSNBC is "counterprogramming" against the more conservative views expressed on the more highly rated Fox News Channel, and I think that's more or less correct.

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I have a friend who, in a phone conversation last weekend, said the unsayable. Come to think of it, this friend makes a specialty of saying the unsayable. That is one reason he is invaluable.

He said, “The Democrats have to win in 2008 — I mean, the whole enchilada: House, Senate, and presidency.” You ought to know that my friend is a staunch conservative Republican. “Why?” I said. “Why do they have to win?” He answered, “Because that’s the only way they will be fully onboard the War on Terror. They won’t fully support it otherwise, because they will always be trying to trip up the Republicans. If you want the Democrats onboard the War on Terror, they have to be in charge. Period.”

A dark, dark proclamation. And redolent of ol’ Joe, the one from Wisconsin. I am not entirely convinced of its wrongness, however.

Labels: clintons, democrats, islamofascism, left-wing media

Labels: the good guys

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

Labels: democrats, islamofascism, left-wing media

Lieberman Applauds President for Pursuing
New Course in Iraq
Rejects ‘Fatalism of Failure’

WASHINGTON – Senator Joe Lieberman (I/D-CT) today made the following statement in response to President Bush’s address on Iraq:

“I applaud the President for rejecting the fatalism of failure and pursuing a new course to achieve success in Iraq. There is no more difficult decision that a President can make than to send our nation’s bravest soldiers and patriots into harm’s way. Yet, no objective is more worthy in defending America’s vital national security interests than aiding a struggling democracy and supporting brave moderates who are in a life and death struggle against totalitarian extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran.

Our troops have sacrificed much and now more will be asked of them to defend our nation. They fight in a just, noble and moral cause against the forces of terrorism, and their sacrifices will make America and the world more secure. I want our troops to return home as soon as possible – after we allow, enable and support them in accomplishing their mission in Iraq in finishing this fight.

I know there are deep differences of opinion about what the President has proposed tonight. In the coming days and weeks, we should undertake respectful debate and deliberation over this new plan. But, let us also remember that excessive partisan division and rancor at home only weakens our will to prevail in this war. I am particularly pleased that the President has taken the important and necessary step of creating a bi-partisan Consultative Group consisting of representatives and leaders of the Executive and Legislative branches to address issues related to the war against global terrorism.

At the moment, we and our Iraqi allies are not winning in Iraq and the American people are understandably frustrated by the miscalculations, the lack of progress, and the daily scenes of violence and casualties. But, make no mistake - defeat in Iraq would result in a moral and strategic setback in our global struggle against Islamist extremists who seek to strike our interests and our homeland.

Success is attainable in Iraq, and tonight the President has offered a comprehensive program to chart a new course in both winning the military struggle to establish order and in achieving the political and economic objectives to build a more promising future for Iraqis. However, no progress is possible unless we restore order, particularly in Baghdad.

Tonight, the President did not take the easy path, but he took the correct and courageous course. We are engaged in a world-wide struggle against Islamist extremism, and Iraq is now the central front. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that we can depart Iraq and the inevitable killing fields and terrorist violence will not follow us in retreat - even to our own shores. That is why it is right and imperative that we recommit ourselves to success in Iraq. Weakness only emboldens our enemy, but united resolution will make our nation safer for generations to come.”

Source

But with Americans already concerned over increased government surveillance under President George W. Bush's war against terrorism, the mere suggestion of a camera-equipped plane over public areas sparked controversy in this intensively independent region.

Labels: islamofascism, left-wing media

But instead of the theatrics of the Beats and their hippie descendants, which were tired agitprop even then, Kirk was trying to spur deeper reflection on the tradition he uncovered in his books, running from Burke to T. S. Eliot, and from the revelations of Jerusalem to Philadelphia’s ordered liberty. For this reason, Kirk was even cautiously optimistic about postmodernism. While he recognized the nonsense that that term often denotes, nevertheless, in sounding the final death knell of rationalistic liberalism, he suggested that postmodernism could provide an opportunity for a resurgence of the conservative imagination.

I'm a math guy; I want sixteen significant digits. With GW research you're lucky to get two.

Yes, we're going through a warming spell. Yes, it's got an anthropogenic component—quite likely a large one. And yes, the shrieking catastrophists of the enviro-Left are exceedingly annoying, and they are reaching for our wallets in the hopes of raising up a whole new category of tax-eaters. Beyond that, I wouldn't bet my house on anything.

Randall's conclusion—that "we have several quite compelling reasons to take steps to bring the fossil fuel era to an earlier end"—is surely sound. GW aside, surely the sweetest dream of every American (Englishman, German, Japanese,...) right now is to be able to tell the Middle East Muslims: "Thanks for all the oil, but we won't be needing any more. You guys can go back to herding goats."

Labels: global warming

The return of Democratic manliness was no accident; it was a carefully planned strategy. But now that the Macho Dems are walking the halls of Congress, it remains to be seen whether they will create as many problems for Democrats as they solved. After all, these new Democrats have heterodox political views that could complicate Democratic caucus politics, and their success may raise uncomfortable questions for those Democrats who don't pass the new macho test.

Labels: democrats

Labels: quotes

Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

There's an aspiring totalitarianism in Britain which is brilliantly disguised. It's disguised because the would-be dictators - and there are many of them - all pretend to be more tolerant than thou. They hide alongside the anti-racists, the anti-homophobes and anti-sexists. But what they are really against is something very different. They - call them secular fundamentalists - are anti-God, and what they really want is the eradication of religion, and all believers, from the face of the earth.

In recent years these unpleasant people have had a strategy of exploiting Britain's innate politeness. They realised that for a decade overly sensitive souls (normally called the PC brigade) had bent over backwards to avoid giving offence. Trying not to give offence was, despite the excesses, a noble courtesy.

There's a background to all this. Since 2001, lazy intellectuals have been allowed to get away with repeating the nonsense that terrorism and war are the consequences of belief in God. Believers are ridiculed for being, in contrast to the stupendously brainy atheists, very dim.

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BUT WHAT OF THE LOYAL OPPPOSITION? As a thought exercise this morning, I was pondering what would happen if it all worked. What would become of the American left if Petraeus performs wonders, the surge pacifies Baghdad, and peace spreads through Iraq in a viral fashion? Would the American left be capable of accepting victory?

One thing that has become painfully clear in the new Congress’ opening hours is that the mainstream of the Democratic Party is desperate for the Iraq war effort to fail. For those who have monitored liberalism’s inner demons the past few years, this is no surprise. Every American setback has been gleefully greeted as a portentous sign of imminent disaster. Actually, every event whether a setback or not has been gleefully greeted as a portentous sign of imminent disaster. So, too, has every non-event.

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I wrote about a dinner party Mrs. Soxblog and I held at stately Soxblog manor. One of the guests was a dignified man, about 60 years old, who despite possessing a gentle and gentlemanly manner practically frothed at the mouth with Bush hatred whenever the president’s name was mentioned.

Soon the conversation turned to the increasingly difficult struggle in Iraq. His delight over American setbacks was so palpable that I asked him if he wanted us to win in Iraq. He demurred. I repeated the question. After a long pause, he hissed, “I want this country to learn a lesson.” I let the conversation end there, because if I offered the obvious retort of burying his face in Mrs. Soxblog’s delectable apple crisp, I feared it might create an incident.

AM I QUESTIONING THEIR PATRIOTISM? A bit, but that sails wide of the mark. What I’m really doing is pointing out their view of America. They consider us weak, arrogant and lazy. If you listen to a Bill Maher monologue or a John Edwards campaign speech, you get the same message – America is a festering sump hole of problems and Americans are too lazy and disengaged to do anything about it.

This is their worldview. And they’ll throw everything but the kitchen sink, including the hefty Ted Kennedy, at anything that threatens to disturb that worldview.

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Labels: democrats, left-wing media

In 2005, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cost $1.034 trillion, twice the amount of defense spending and more than two-fifths of the total federal budget. These programs are projected to equal about three-quarters of the budget by 2030, if it remains constant as a share of national income.

Preserving present retirement benefits automatically imposes huge costs on the young -- costs that are economically unsound and socially unjust. The tax increases required by 2030 could hit 50 percent, if other spending is maintained as a share of national income. Or much of the rest of government (from defense to national parks) would have to be shut down or crippled. Or budget deficits would balloon to quadruple today's level.

Think tanks endlessly publish technical reports on Social Security and Medicare, but most avoid the big issues. Are present benefits justified? How big can government become before the resulting taxes or deficits harm the economy?

Labels: generational conflict

Damage to businesses and mosques in Detroit raises wider fears

As they repaired the broken windows of at least a dozen businesses and mosques along Warren Avenue in Detroit, many Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims wondered Monday if the vandalism was retaliation by local supporters of Saddam Hussein who resented that they celebrated the hanging of the Iraqi dictator.

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Labels: islamofascism

One needs only look at the incentives to see what will happen with his proposal. Health care providers will decline, since taxes provide a disincentive to the market; doctors will find other venues in which to practice, and the best will capture the most lucrative economic positions, none of which will now be in California. Small businesses, which will have to start paying an additional 4% of their payroll if they employ 10 or more people, will simply work hard to avoid that cap -- perhaps by outsourcing some of their functions to services in other states, which will expand to meet the market demand. Otherwise, small businesses will have to raise prices to cover the additional cost, which will make them less competitive than larger businesses and force more of them out of business altogether. That will result in inflationary pressure and a drop in employment, which will force taxpayers to spend even more money to insure the uninsured.

And that's not the end of the bad news. In order to manage all of these new mandates, Schwarzenegger will have to expand the state government. Otherwise, who keeps track of the insurance status of Californians? Who makes sure that resident A has his wages garnished if he doesn't buy health insurance when he can afford it, and who makes sure they know who can pay the bill? It will require a more intrusive governmental structure and a whopping bureaucracy to keep track of all these markers. All of this will take even more money out of the pockets of Californians than the health insurance costs now mandated by Arnold.

For a state that has made deficit spending an art form and expansion of power a chronic addiction, this seems par for the course. We can now write off California's economy for the next few decades. Perhaps socialism sells in the Golden State -- I think it probably does, unfortunately -- but at some time they will have to pay the bills, and maybe that will finally convince them of their folly in creating the Nanny State.

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Labels: democrats

"The Constitution is the supreme law of our land, and it governs our actions as citizens, only the laws of God, who governs our consciences, are superior to it...I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy."

Labels: democrats

It's not that we don't care,
We just know that the fight ain't fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

And we're still waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Labels: democrats

Over the course of several interviews with auto manufacturers from Seoul to Stuttgart at the 2007 North American Auto Show, the story was the same: No automaker can predict whether the world wants to save fuel with advanced gasoline engines, clean diesel engines, hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, all-electric vehicles or hydrogen fuel cells.

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Labels: weekend

Pelosi will be tested as never before in the next few months. The test: Will she remember that, when it comes right down to it, she herself was the recipient not of 62 million votes, as President Bush was in 2004, but of only 150,000 in a San Francisco congressional district?

That was Gingrich's biggest failing - he believed he had a constituency equal to Bill Clinton's, when his actual constituency was a hundredth the size.

The Roman emperors used to have an aide whose job it was to whisper in their ears: "Caesar, thou art mortal." Madam Speaker, trust me, thou art mortal, too.

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Labels: democrats, left-wing media

“Mad About You” broke a long-standing taboo in serious political journalism. Before the article few would have thought that “I hate President George W. Bush,” was a respectable argument — or any argument at all. But Chait’s declaration somehow changed the chemistry of liberal political rhetoric. In the months that followed the article, declaring that one detested President Bush moved from the fringes to become a mainstream way for many liberals to articulate their political passion.

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Labels: democrats

My wife and I get pizza twice a week from Paco's because it's convenient. This week I just learned that the same pie I used to get for $7.00 is now $11.00. At that price, we can't afford to get pizza twice a week.

The problem is that demand for almost everything is elastic: When the price of something goes up, demand for it goes down. Obviously were the minimum wage to jump to, say, $15 an hour, that would cause significant unemployment among persons just reaching for the bottom rung of the ladder of upward mobility.

Labels: democrats, economics

Orginally a centrist new Democrat and later an ideology-free Clinton stooge, he [Albert Gore] now is solidly ensconced in the Democratic left by virtue of the attribute that matters most to it -- virulent, near-hysterical hatred of the president. On top of that, he owns the issue of global warming, notwithstanding his eight years as the number two man in an administration that did virtually nothing on this front. Finally, as a former vice president and significant player in national politics for almost 20 years, his gravitas is a given.

Source

Labels: democrats

I'm writing this letter on a new Sony computer that I bought with cash. I owe Sony nothing. If Sony holds the dollars it earned from this sale, or if it uses these dollars to buy stock in General Electric or land in Arizona - that is, as long as Sony invests its dollars in America in ways other than lending it to Americans - the US trade deficit rises without raising Americans' indebtedness.

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Labels: economics, left-wing media

Cuaron reduces James’s supple account of the human condition and the great political dangers of modernity to narrow ideological politics. That leaves Cuaron with nothing more to offer his audience than naïve, romantic-sounding, 1960s slogans about the younger generation.

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From 2016, the elevator that is currently transporting workers, machinery and tons of smashed rock should be available to rail passengers, taking them in a few minutes from an underground train station to Sedrun, a village of 1,500 inhabitants on the surface of the Gotthard massif. From there, the travellers would be in easy reach of the ski slopes or be able to go hiking in the picturesque Alpine meadows.

In the 1970s, to find out that Jerry Ford had been an All-American player on Michigan’s championship team, elected most valuable player by his peers, you had to go do research. For the press, still in its ideological mode of the Nixon years, was describing the new president as if he were un-athletic and klutzy, instead of as perhaps the most nimble and lithe athlete the office had known since Teddy Roosevelt. (The systemic diminishment by the press of Republican national leaders, and the equally systemic “halo-ization” of Democrats was one of the factors that gradually turned me against the left.)

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Labels: left-wing media

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