Sunday, July 30, 2006

News Flash: Conservatives Defend One of Their Own

Amen on this one! I remember when Reagan was shot. The media's collective yawn was surpassed only by their theories of "how the reaganites will spin the shooting to their advantage". Why, The very day he was shot was the NCAA men's championship game between Indiana U and North Carolina. I was in Bloomington, at a public viewing, while the game was postponed for 2-3 hours awaiting results of the shooting. The collective shouts of "He ain't dead, start the game" were typical of what one saw from the MSM...T

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTY2OTBhOTYzY2NhZTE3ZWM1MDc0ODA3Y2EyNzA3NTE=
When Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr., I seem to recall a curious silence in the media. Nobody danced in the street, exactly, but no keening was heard from Dan Rather at CBS, as the President fought for his life on the operating table. Reagan just wasn't JFK, RFK, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., you see. While the nation breathed a sigh of relief when Reagan survived, the media didn't miss a beat. (In fact, Reagan's wounds were far more dangerous and debilitating than was ever reported.)

Conservatives don't get much of a defense in America, even from other conservatives. Newt Gingrich is an intellectual feast for many of us--- always spinning off new and interesting ideas, based on freedom, not coercion. But when the media finally brought him down as House Speaker, nary a word was heard in his defense, even from "staunch" conservatives (who apparently forgot what the word "staunch" actually means).

Clarence Thomas suffered what he rightly called a "high-tech lynching" in his Supreme Court nomination hearings, and he had to finally turn on his media attackers himself, before the tide turned in his favor. Conservatives never gave him much of an effective defense.
We have seen dozens and dozens of media lynchings in the last twenty years. When the Left draws blood we generally leave our friends bleeding and dying in the street. On the Democrat side, when Hillary Clinton was actually physically approached by Republican Senate candidate Rick Lazio in a TV debate, he was trashed by the New York Times for "violating her personal space." Lazio never recovered from the horror. Almost touching Hillary lost him the election, and conservatives watched and let it happen.

More recently when Rush Limbaugh and Tom Delay were falsely accused of criminal behavior by Leftist prosecutors, they were simply left to their own devices. Rush came out only a few million dollars poorer, and Delay is still in court.
Well, the times, they are a-changin'. Maybe.

National Review published a vigorous defense of Michael Ledeen, who was just trashed in the usual fashion by some sleaze journo for Rolling Stone. Nothing new there, you say. All prominent conservatives get trashed by the sleaze legions of the Left. (Yawn). No, there's no news in the public attack on Ledeen. The big news is that by some miracle, he is being defended by his colleagues at National Review, Andrew McCarthy and Mark Levin.

Ledeen's big sin is to call attention to the Mad Mullahcracy in Tehran, which is even now speeding toward its first Big Bomb. The Khomeiniacs created, directed, supplied, and indoctrinated Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those bombs you see killing children on television today are entirely the doing of the mad theocracy. Lebanon would have made peace with Israel long ago had it been allowed to by Syria and Iran.

For calling attention to reality, Ledeen was duly trashed by Rolling Stone, a pillar of the Liberal Media Establishment. For one thing, Ledeen is obviously a Judeoconservative ... I mean, neoconservative. For another, mind-reading liberals can tell from Michael Ledeen's beady little eyes that he's evil. They just know these things. It's just this feeling they get, with a little help from the New York Times.
McCarthy & Levin point out that Ledeen has never called for a military attack on Tehran's theocrats, but wants us to support a pro-democracy movement. Even the Left might be expected to favor a pro-democracy revolt against a violent and corrupt reactionary theocracy that hangs teenage girls by the neck until dead--- for being too sexy. But no: Ledeen was duly smeared, accused of forging the infamous Niger yellowcake document that is even now financing Valerie Plame's little nest egg.

(Why Ledeen? you ask. What's the evidence? But that's the point: No evidence is needed. Ledeen is accused on pure, paranoid suspicion. Don't ask.)

We wish Michael Ledeen well. He may not be sleeping well these days, worrying about real things--- not the impish tricks of Rolling Stone but an Iranian Bomb. Conservatives are expected to be adults, even if their "personal space is invaded."

But conservatives might start caring about the human sacrifices that are so often demanded by the Left. The Mayas, it is said, needed to sacrifice at least one young child each night, to ensure that the sun would come up the next day. Today the cult of the Left needs to sacrifice at least one conservative every few months, to assure itself that it is still in control of the dominant narrative in America. As long as they run the media, they won't have to actually think. But the times they are a-changin', and the children of the Sixties are finally losing control.

When conservatives start defending each other, we know that America has a chance to get back on track.
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Friday, July 28, 2006


Wonder why oil prices are so high? Try China, India and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela...."That's 10 MILLION barrels"....ahh ha hahhhhh!.....T Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Israel's war separates the decent left from the indecent left

This piece, ostensibly about the terrorists, and their useful idiots in the west, is really just the finest, most comprehensive list of the stunning record of failure rung up by the left in the last 60 years. From the Cold war to welfare, it truly is a breathtaking accomplishment, to be so wrong, so often. Print this one, and add it to your handbooks, fellow conspirators!...T

I believe the Left has been wrong on virtually every great moral issue in the last 30 years.

During that period, it was wrong on the Cold War -- it devoted far more energy to fighting anti-communism than to fighting communism.
It was wrong for attacking Israel for its destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor.

It was wrong on welfare.

It was wrong in its demanding less morally and intellectually from black Americans than from all other Americans.

It was wrong in advocating bilingual education for children of immigrants.

It was wrong in generally holding American society rather than violent criminals responsible for violent crime.

It was wrong in imposing its view on abortion on America through the courts rather than through the democratic process.
It was wrong in teaching a generation of men and women that men and women differ because of socialization not because of innate sex differences.

It was wrong in reducing sex to a purely biological and health issue for a generation of young Americans.

It was wrong in identifying "flag waving" with fascism.

It was wrong in supporting the teachers' unions rather than students and educational reform.

It was wrong in allying itself with trial lawyers and blocking tort reform.

It was wrong in blocking the military from recruiting on campuses and teaching a generation of young Americans that "war is not the answer" when war is at times the one moral answer.

It was wrong in arguing that America is not based on Judeo-Christian values, but on secular ones like Western Europe.

It was wrong in advancing multiculturalism, which is an extreme form of moral relativism that holds all cultures morally identical and which is a doctrine designed to undermine American national identity.

In just about every instance, one could say that the Left was foolish, the Left was naive, the Left was wrong, even that the Left was dangerous. But in all of those cases, one could imagine a decent person holding any or even all of these positions.

But we now have a bright line that divides the decent -- albeit usually wrong -- Left from the indecent Left.

The Left's anti-Israel positions until now were based, at least in theory, on its opposition to Israeli occupation of Arab land and its belief in the "cycle of violence" between Israel and its enemies. However, this time there is no occupied land involved and the violence is not a cycle with its implied lack of a beginning. There is a clear aggressor -- a terror organization devoted to Islamicizing the Middle East and annihilating Israel -- and no occupation.

That is why the Israeli Left is almost universally in favor of Israel's war against Hezbollah. Amos Oz, probably Israel's best-known novelist and leading spokesman of its Left, a lifetime critic of Israeli policy vis a vis the Palestinians, wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

"Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. . . . This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages. . . . There can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hezbollah."

Likewise, another longtime liberal critic of Israel, historian and Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, wrote last week:

"As one who rejects war, I regret Israel's heavy bombing of Lebanon last week, as I deplored Israeli attacks in population centers and on infrastructure in Gaza. . . . Yet, given the rejectionism of both Hamas and Hezbollah . . . is the path of negotiations actually open to Israel? . . . There is no moral equivalence between enemies here. . . . It seems urgent [to] reaffirm foundational support for Israel. . . . The fury of anti-Israel rage among Arabs and Muslims is accounted for only partially by the present conflict. It resuscitates . . . the long European habit of scapegoating Jews. . . . No one should think that embedded contempt for Jews -- anti-Semitism -- is not part of the current crisis."
Amos Oz and James Carroll are men of the Left who have been tested and passed the most clarifying moral litmus test of our time -- Israel's fight for existence against the primitives, fanatics and sadists in Hezbollah and Hamas and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world who wish to destroy it. Anyone on the Left who cannot see this is either bad, a useful idiot for Islamic terrorists, anti-Semitic or all three. There is no other explanation for morally condemning Israel's war on Hezbollah.

Click here for full article

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Only Exit Strategy

Departing from the themes of Politics and Media affairs (the usual themes of this page), let's focus on the one issue that has remained unsolved for decades, yet which has always been easily resolvable to those of clear thinking bent. Let Israel win; then there can be peace. Not until then will this occur. As Stolypin once put it: "First, order, then reform"...T

WASHINGTON -- There is crisis and there is opportunity. Amid the general wringing of hands over the seemingly endless and escalating Israel-Hezbollah fighting, everyone asks: Where will it end?

The answer, blindingly clear, begins with understanding that this crisis represents a rare, perhaps irreproducible, opportunity.

Every important party in the region and in the world, except the radical Islamists in Tehran and their clients in Damascus, wants Hezbollah disarmed and removed from south Lebanon so that it is no longer able to destabilize the peace of both Lebanon and the broader Middle East.

Which parties? Start with the great powers. In September 2004, they passed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, demanding that Hezbollah disarm and allow the Lebanese army to take back control of south Lebanon.

The resolution enjoyed the sponsorship of the United States and, yes, France. As the former mandatory power in Lebanon, France was important in helping the Lebanese expel Syria during last year's Cedar Revolution, but it understands that Lebanon's independence and security are forfeit so long as Hezbollah -- a lawless, terrorist, private militia answering to Syria and Iran -- occupies south Lebanon as a rogue mini-state.

Then there are the Arabs, beginning with the Lebanese who want Hezbollah out. The majority of Lebanese -- Christian, Druze, Sunni Muslim and secular -- bitterly resent their country being hijacked by Hezbollah and turned into a war zone. And in the name of what Lebanese interest? Israel evacuated every square inch of Lebanon six years ago.

The other Arabs have spoken, too. In a stunning development, the 22-member Arab League criticized Hezbollah for provoking the current crisis. It is unprecedented for the Arab League to criticize any Arab party while it is actively engaged in hostilities with Israel. But the Arab states know that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia in the service of Persian Iran, is a threat not just to Lebanon but to them as well. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have openly criticized Hezbollah for starting a war on what is essentially Iran's timetable (to distract attention from Iran's pending referral to the Security Council for sanctions over its nuclear program). They are far more worried about Iran and its proxies than about Israel. They are therefore eager to see Hezbollah disarmed and defanged.

Fine. Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don't invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the U.S. has a Lebanon allergy. And Israel could not act out of the blue because it would immediately have been branded the aggressor and forced to retreat.

Hence the golden, unprecedented opportunity. Hezbollah makes a fatal mistake. It crosses the U.N.-delineated international frontier to attack Israel, kill soldiers and take hostages. This cross-border aggression is so naked that even Russia joins in the G-8 summit communique blaming Hezbollah for the violence and calling for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty in the south.

But only one country has the capacity to do the job. That is Israel, now recognized by the world as forced into this fight by Hezbollah's aggression.

The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.

It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran's choosing.

Just as in Kuwait 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded -- implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.

Only two questions remain: Israel's will and America's wisdom. Does Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have the courage to do what is so obviously necessary? And will Secretary of State Rice's upcoming peace trip to the Middle East force a premature cease-fire that spares her the humiliation of coming home empty-handed but prevents precisely the kind of decisive military outcome that would secure the interests of Israel, Lebanon, the moderate Arabs and the West?
Click here for full article

Thursday, July 06, 2006

A Small Detour on Our Road to Dictatorship

This one tackles the psyche of both the MSM and the dribbling, rabid, Schizophrenic left. You know, the ones who believe that Bush bombed the towers as a pretext to impose dictatorship, and that Dan Rather is a right wing tool. This page being about the relationship between politics and media, this piece nonetheless extrapolates this topic better than any I've seen.....T

Many on the left tell us that our republic is held in thrall by a mass-murdering dictator. He regularly tramples on our constitutional guarantees of privacy. He flouts the law at his pleasure. With a crack of his whip, he bids his minions in Congress to slavishly pass enabling legislation that dirties our water and air, makes rich his cronies, clandestinely establishes a Christian caliphate right here in America, and secretly plots with corporations to steal elections.

And to make matters worse, this tyrant of a man is able to do all this by hoodwinking vast swaths of America’s electorate; unless, of course, you’ve been given God’s good grace to glean the truth from a “lapdog” press who have been hypnotized by their corporate masters to under-report, misreport, and simply ignore all these horrific doings in our nation’s capital. For in the end, it is those that prove themselves immune from this Napoleon’s magic spells who will save our republic and bring peace, freedom, and justice back to the galaxy.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

The left’s “riot of conceits” as R. Emmett Tyrell puts it, have never been more pronounced than when they raise the specter of Bush as dictator. It is not a new charge leveled against American Presidents. Even legends like Jackson and Lincoln had detractors who accused them of ruling with the iron fist of tyranny. And while both of those worthies defied the Supreme Court for one reason or another, in retrospect we can see that their actions fell far short of even the dictionary definition of dictator, which defines the word as “one holding complete autocratic control” or “one ruling absolutely and often oppressively.”

But the actual definition of words has never stopped the left when it comes to erecting politically correct straw men. “Racism,” sexism,” “homophobia,” and “dictator” have meaning beyond the common usage of those terms that the rest of us, bound by tradition and respect for the English language, are constrained from following. In short, if the left wants to define dictatorship down, who’s going to stop them?
Certainly not Philip Slater, former chairman of the Brandeis University Sociology department, who wrote in The Huffington Post:

“Why are some patriotic Americans supporting a president who seems so bent on destroying America—America’s constitution, America’s democracy, America’s good name, America’s credibility, America’s land, air, and water, America’s solvency, America’s educational system, America’s security, America’s children, and America’s future…”(HT: The New Editor)

Slater doesn’t use the word “dictator” in his article, but I daresay if he actually believes George Bush is destroying “America’s constitution” [sic] and “America’s democracy,” the implication can’t be anything less than his belief in Bush as tyrant. This from a man who advocates constitutionally destroying the presidency by separating the functions of Head of State from Chief Executive – an interesting construct in that the good professor nominates the actor Morgan Freeman to fill the same symbolic role played by Queen Elizabeth II in the British system. Perhaps someone should get in touch with Mr. Freeman’s agent and see if he’s available for a long running government gig. Since I haven’t seen him much in the movies lately, he might jump at the gig.

And who can forget CNN’s curmudgeonly host Jack Cafferty opining on air following the revelation back in May that NSA computers were gathering vast numbers of telephone records looking for patterns that would lead the machines to reveal terrorists and their sympathizers here in the United States. With flashing eyes and jutted chin, Cafferty thanked God that Senator Arlen Specter was asking questions about the program because

“He might be all that’s standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country.”

Leave aside for a moment the comical idea of Arlen Specter as democracy’s White Knight and examine Cafferty’s contention that Specter was alone in standing against the Administration in their march toward gathering absolute power unto themselves. The program had been vetted by lawyers from both the Justice Department and the NSA and appropriate Members of Congress informed. For the latter, the President can, in special circumstances, inform only the “Big Eight” in sensitive matters of national security. These 8 individuals include the Majority and Minority Leaders in the House and Senate as well as the Chair and Vice Chair of the Intelligence Committees of both houses. This was done as it also had been done with the NSA intercept program revealed last December by the New York Times.
One can argue whether or not this consultation was enough in light of the invasive nature of both of those programs. This is legitimate debate – one that we will be having for as long as there is a war against Islamism. The tension between civil liberties and national security in a free society is inevitable, especially in time of war. But in case the left hasn’t noticed, dictators don’t “consult” anyone about anything. Just ask Hugo Chavez.

The Venezuelan tyrant recently received a boost in this country from that Icon of the Anti-Establishment Left, the Rosa Parks of the Anti War Movement, Cindy Sheehan who said yesterday that she would rather live in Chavez-led Venezuela than George Bush’s America. While Sheehan’s anti-war, anti-Semitic, and anti-American rants have been well documented, it is her obscenity laced descriptions of George Bush as Tyrant in Chief that the press has tip-toed around in a rather gingerly fashion:

The US government is now ruled by murderous hypocrites…criminals who should be arrested, charged appropriately, confined behind bars.”

“Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs…gangsters who lust after fortunes and power; never caring that their addictions are at the expense of our loved ones, and the blood of innocent people near and far.”

“The biggest terrorist is George W. Bush.”

The press aren’t the only ones trying to disengage from Mrs. Sheehan’s unbalanced diatribes against the President. Democratic politicians who once fawned and feted the Goddess of Peace have turned their backs on this mother of all whackos. But her support remains strong among the netnuts on the internet who still believe, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd once said, that Sheehan has “absolute moral authority” when talking about George Bush and the war.

And that is the nub of the left’s argument that George Bush is either an aspiring dictator or already a de-facto member of that exclusive club. In order to see Bush as unprincipled tyrant, one must be wearing the special glasses that allow the viewer to see the unseen, to read between the lines of stories from a press too frightened and cowed to tell the truth of what is really going on in the Administration.
The fact that some fairly intelligent people actually believe this claptrap would be shocking, except for the fact that we live in extraordinary times that have caused us to degenerate into a society where it is perfectly reasonable to think the absolute worst of your political or ideological opponent. Both right and left are guilty of this myopia, although the liberal left has taken political opposition and ascribed actual evil to their nemesis.

Jeff Jacoby’s article yesterday in the Boston Globe made the point that the Administration’s reaction to the Hamdan decision should, in normal times, put to rest any idea that George Bush was seeking to rule by dictatorial fiat:

President Bush learns the court’s ruling in Hamdan has gone against him. A five-justice majority held the military commissions created by the administration to try the Guantanamo detainees are invalid, since they were never authorized by congressional statute. The justices seem to have repudiated Bush’s claim that the Constitution invests the president with sweeping unilateral authority in wartime. ``The court’s conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground,” Justice Stephen Breyer pointedly notes in a concurrence. “Congress has not issued the Executive a `blank check.’ ”

Whereupon Bush says—what? ``The justices have made their decision; now let them enforce it?” Something even more acidic? Perhaps he repeats a statement he has made previously—``I’m the decider, and I decide what is best”?

Not quite. He says he takes the court’s decision ``seriously.” A few moments later he says it again. And then comes this: ``We’ve got people looking at it right now to determine how we can work with Congress, if that’s available, to solve the problem.” There is no disdain. No bravado. No criticism. Just an acknowledgment that the Supreme Court has spoken and the executive branch will comply.

Some dictator.

Alas, while the Administration has already begun working with Congress to lay out the specifics in order to comply with the ruling, the left has conveniently ignored this bursting of their dictator balloon and kept up a steady drumbeat of ever wilder notions that Bush is the second coming of Ivan the Terrible. This criticism of Jacoby’s reasoned article is from the liberal blog Shakespeare’s Sister:

Failure to even mention in passing the rigorous endeavors of the Bush administration to undermine checks and imbalance the three branches of government is the least of his omissions, however. Perhaps the most important person who Jacoby fails to mention in his list of “D-word” spouting lunatics, is Bush himself.

“You don’t get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.” (Governing Magazine 7/98) — From Paul Begala’s “Is Our Children Learning?”

“I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don’t agree with each other, but that’s OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” — CNN.com, December 18, 2000

“A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it. ” — Business Week, July 30, 2001

Convicted out of his own mouth? Or the freely elected President of the United States stating the obvious?

The above is revealing in that for the dedicated lefty, it is impossible to take anything the President says as he means it. It is necessary instead to substitute a meaning wholly irrelevant to the issue the President was raising – an issue commented on in one form or another by every President in history – in order to validate a set of beliefs that places the commenter in the privileged position of knowing something hidden from the rest of us; that because dictatorship is “easier” it follows that Bush wishes to be one.

As we approach the final two years of the President’s constitutionally mandated term in office, I have no doubt we will see rampant speculation on the left about whether or not Bush will in fact engineer another terrorist attack and use it as an excuse to remain in office regardless of who wins the Presidential election in 2008. Like the certainty espoused by liberals during the 2004 election that Bush would re-institute military conscription and other idiotic “sure things,” I’m convinced that on January 20, 2009 when the next President takes the oath of office, all the talk of Bush as dictator will disappear overnight and the left’s rhetorical slings and arrows will be readied for the next occupant of the oval office who incurs their displeasure.

Unless she’s a Democrat, of course.

Click here for full article


This from CornetJim...how true! Exaggeration to make a point? only by a hair. They would rather people die than allow Bush a success, or an issue.....T Posted by Picasa

Monday, July 03, 2006


Traitorous Filtheth!...T Posted by Picasa