We continue to live in the world of Thatcher & Reagan

Explains, at once, both Bush's current low Poll numbers, and why GWBush has been a transformational president. Thanks again to "CornetJim" for this one!...T

As Washington insiders pore over the latest low job-approval ratings for George W. Bush, and as aficionados of British politics ponder the latest low ratings of Tony Blair, let's take a longer look at the political ebb and flow in America and Britain over the last quarter century or so. There is a certain parallelism.
In the late 1970s, both countries experienced something like collapse -- a collapse of the Keynesian economics dominant in the post-World War II years, a collapse of the accommodationist foreign policy prevailing since the setback in Vietnam.
From that collapse arose two improbable leaders on the political right: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. By conventional standards, they were unacceptable: Thatcher was a woman, Reagan a septuagenarian __ and both were too far to the right. Their policies were attacked as hardhearted and reckless. But they worked. Economic growth resumed, Britain triumphed in the Falklands, and America prevailed in the Cold War. Thatcher lasted 11 years in office, Reagan eight __ both were followed by lukewarm but clearly right successors, John Major for seven years and George H.W. Bush for four.
The policy and political success of the parties of the right in time produced a center-left response from the opposition. Bill Clinton in America and Tony Blair in Britain largely accepted the Reagan and Thatcher policies and promised modifications at the margins. A successful formula: Clinton won in 1992 and 1996, and served eight years; Blair won in 1997, 2001 and 2005, and has now been in office more than nine years.
When you look back at all these leaders' job ratings in office, you find an interesting thing. The transformational Thatcher and Reagan had negative to neutral job ratings during most of their longer years in power. Thatcher's peaked upward after the Falklands victory; Reagan peaked from his re-election until the Iran-Contra scandal broke two years later. Their divisiveness, the stark alternative they presented with the policies and conventional wisdom of the past -- all these held down their job ratings.
In contrast, Blair and Clinton for most of their years in office had quite high job ratings. Blair's ratings for his first eight years were probably the highest in British history. Clinton, after he got over his lurch to the left in 1993-94, also enjoyed high job ratings, especially when he was threatened with impeachment. The center-left alternative, by accepting most of the Thatcher and Reagan programs, was relatively uncontroversial, determinedly consensus-minded, widely acceptable to the left, center-left and much of the center-right segments of the electorate.
Thus, the crunchy, confrontational right was in its years in power not so widely popular as the soggy, consensus-minded center-left. Yet surely history will regard Thatcher and Reagan as more consequential leaders than Blair and Clinton. Thatcher and Reagan defined the issues and argued that, as Thatcher once famously said, "There is no alternative."
Blair and Clinton mostly accepted the definitions of the right and then deftly articulated an acceptable center-left alternative. As a left Labor M.P. critical of Blair recently wrote in the Times of London: "Mrs. Thatcher, even at her most controversial, thought, acted and governed with the grain of her ordinary party members. But Tony Blair has tested to destruction the idea that you can run the Labor Party in total opposition to its dearest-held beliefs and values."
It is in this context that we should consider George W. Bush's current poor job ratings. For all the high ratings for center-left leaders, it remains true in America and Britain that the policies of the right are more acceptable than the policies of the left -- and are capable of beating the center-left, too. George W. Bush fashioned a right appeal that succeeded in defeating Bill Clinton's handpicked successor. Britain's Conservatives, preoccupied by the bitter split over Thatcher's ouster in 1990, failed to provide a viable alternative to Blair for a dozen years.
But today, under David Cameron (who was 24 when Thatcher got the boot), they are doing so. It is in the nature of things that the right, while sharply defining the issues and winning most serious arguments, should also stir more bitter opposition than the soothing, consensus-minded center-left. All the more so because Old Media in this country, more than in Britain, is dominated by a left that incessantly peppers the right with ridicule and criticism, while it lavishes the center-left with celebration and praise.
Even so, we continue to live in the world of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, as we once lived in the world of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Click here for full article

Looking Ahead to Monday's Speech

This is Hugh Hewitt's take on the current US political atmosphere. While I don't buy the "Feeding Frenzy" of doom the media portrays, I do think his advice to the Bush White House, to play to the base, is needed right now politically, and also makes for sound policy...I would emphasise the Judges over Border Security, but that is the huge issue to many right now, justified or not...T

"The president's speech on Monday night is a huge moment for him, a rare chance to recapture the momentum on the issue of border security and with it, renew the country's confidence in his commitment to national security, a confidence first shaken by the ports deal, and eroded by the long negotiations to form the Iraqi government.

Already the anti-amnesty forces are dismissing the speech as window dressing for the Senate debate to follow, arguing that rumored National Gaurd deployments are temporary and designed only to facilitate the amnesty that isn't called an amnesty.

The president needs to announce that the Guard will indeed be deployed in support of the Customs and Border personnel, but that the key to lasting border security is the dramatic expansion of border fencing in keeping with the House bill.

He should urge that the Senate adopt the House language in this regard (along with any other language necessary to assure that the construction of the 700 miles of fencing not be subject to any other law that might inhibit the quick start and completion of the projects.)

He must avoid the word 'virtual,' as in 'virtual fencing.' The White House isn't surrounded by a 'virtual fence,' and voters have no faith in 'virtual fences' except as supplemts to the real thing.

If the president comes out early and hard in favor of expanding the fences along the border which have already worked so successfully in urban areas, he will have met the American public where it is with what it demands.

The rest of the president's speech will not affect its impact one way or the other. The only other details that will resonate widely will be the assurance that no one becomes a citizen without command of English and then only after many years of productive residency in the U.S.

It is all about the fence because it is all about security, the next 11 or 12 million, not the 11 or 12 million already here.

A great speech will tie this concern about security and the fencing security requires into the NSA program(s) much debated in recent days and months, as well as the economic security brought about by the tax cuts past and present (and future), coupled with spending restraint.

The big close should be twofold. First, the announcement of the nomination of two score judges to replenish the federal bench, a demand that the Senate act quickly on these nominations, and a commitment to require --as he has of these nominees-- only what every oath sworn by every official requires: A commitment to uphold the laws of the United States.

Following that announcement, a congratulations to the new government in Iraq that is forming, and a thanks to the troops that have delivered the Iraqi people a genuine government, the sort of government that will bring the stability the region needs. A few words about the patience and sacrifice required for real security, the sort of patience and sacrificie that marked the immigrants that brought his forebears and almost all of ours to these shores, and which still marks the newly arrived to this country.

In short, the president can put the agenda he has built back at the center of the political and policy debate:

Win the war.

Confirm the judges.

Cut the taxes.

Control the spending.

Secure the border.

And he can do so in the context of the overarching themes of his presidency: Confidence in the goodness of the American people and the greatness of the country's calling.
UPDATE: Powerline points me to a piece by the New York Post's Deborah Orin on the outline of the president's speech Monday night.

Pray that she's wrong. The use by the president of the term "virtual fence" is in fact a declaration against the realthing, and it would undo every bit of good he intends to accomplish via the address.

Faced with suspicion from his base that he really doesn't intend to enforce the border, the president simply can't proclaim a "virtual fence" as a substitute for the real thing and expect people to treat it as a serious attempt to satisfy border security advocates.

I hope someone in the White House is at this very minute asking "why not a real fence," and refusing to accept nonsense answers about symbolism in a time of war.

If an when the fence around the White House is taken down, voters will start believing invirtual fences. Don't ask them to accept absurdity as policy. Click Here for Full Article

The Psychomyopic Democrats

Exactly as I see it, and always have. You will never have to ask "why?" again. Their motives are naked to the eyes of all who choose to see, which makes the Drive-by/Antique/MSM media so dangerous. The cloak of sincerity has been draped upon them for too long, and the veil of legitimacy. It is time they were lifted, once and for all...T
For several months, I have felt like the little boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Standing in the middle of a crowd of my elders and betters, watching the current political spectacle, I have been waiting for someone to say the obvious, waiting in vain until I feel compelled to blurt it out myself.

Here goes: “Many Democrats want the US to fail in Iraq!” I don’t mean that they think we’ll fail—they want us to. They want a big embarrassing collapse of US military and political policy in Iraq and will do whatever they can to make it happen. There, I’ve said it and I feel much better.

That doesn’t mean that they are traitors, taking bribes from al Qaeda, or prepared to jeopardize their country’s welfare to advance their careers. Not all of them, at least. There are some prominent Democrats who are morally so far gone that they may just possibly think that way. (After all, a person who can think up Travelgate is capable of any infamy.)
But the vast majority of Democrats think of themselves as loyal Americans and a polygraph would show that they honestly believe it.

The neural pathways inside their heads run something like this:

• The best thing for the United States would be for the Democratic party to come back into power.

• A really embarrassing failure in Iraq would tip next year’s election toward the Democrats.

• Therefore, a failure in Iraq would be good for the USA.

Take another issue, illegal immigrants. I contend that, if for no other reason than homeland security, it is essential that we seal our borders against illegal immigrants and expel the ones we have now. The reason behind the Democratic party’s insistent call for amnesty for all illegal immigrants has nothing to do with compassion; the syllogism is rather:

• The best thing for the United States would be for the Democratic party to come back into power.

• Illegal Hispanic immigrants, if naturalized, would vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

• Therefore, the naturalization of illegal immigrants would be good for the USA.

To explain this peculiar logic, we must look to the emerging field of mental ophthalmology, which describes the aberrations of what Hamlet called “the mind’s eye.”

Blurring the Mind’s Eye

One such aberration is psychomyopia, or mental nearsightedness. Like most politicians in most parties in most countries of the world, these Democrats cannot see beyond the next election. Issues such as the fate of our nation, the fate of the Iraqi people, and the success or failure of Islamic terrorism are vague blurry background features that they cannot discern.. The only thing their brains can focus on is the nearby goal of getting into power and staying there.

The Democrats are not alone in this aberration, of course. Psychomyopia is a widespread affliction. Republicans are sometimes just as bad when they are out of office or with regard to certain topics that will not be discussed here. It flourishes in all kinds of settings.

Bureaucrats and (if you’ll pardon the double misnomer) civil servants are often so preoccupied with career survival that they cannot see even the most urgent assigned tasks in any other light. Journalists can be so obsessed with publishing a scoop that they are oblivious to the harm they may cause by doing so. And let’s face it, dear reader, haven’t you and I occasionally been guilty of similar myopias?

But psychomyopia can be a relatively mild aberration, due to stupidity and shortsightedness. It is often not culpable because “they know not what they do.”

It is even occasionally curable, not by glasses but by patient explanation. A notable literary example of a cure is described by Robert Louis Stevenson in “Father Damien”:

…he had originally intended to lay out [the money] entirely for the benefit of Catholics, and even so not wisely; but after a long, plain talk, he admitted his error fully and revised the list… I was struck by the fact that he had the honesty of mind to be convinced. I may here tell you that it was a long business; that one of his colleagues sat with him late into the night, multiplying arguments and accusations; that the father listened as usual with “perfect good-nature and perfect obstinacy”; but at the last, when he was persuaded — “Yes,” said he, “I am very much obliged to you; you have done me a service; it would have been a theft.”

It is rare, but it does happen. And it attests to the shortsighted honesty of at least some psychomyopics.

The symptoms of psychomyopia are easily confused with those of psychoglaucoma, or tunnel vision—a preoccupation with one aspect of a situation, coupled with a willful refusal to consider certain other aspects. As in physical ophthalmology, the latter is much more serious and (along with psychoastereopsis – failure to perceive depth) one of the few aberrations of the mind’s eye that can twist a soul into something evil.

Psychoglaucoma is culpable because it perverts the essence of free will. As Aquinas and others have pointed out, we are not free to refrain from choosing an obvious good or rejecting an obvious evil. Our freedom consists in deciding to ignore certain aspects of the choice—to avert our eyes from factors we don’t wish to see and confine our attention to the rest.

An intelligent and just man forces himself to see all aspects of a problem and therefore chooses the good. A psychomyopic cannot see some aspects but chooses as best he can. But a victim of psychoglaucoma chooses evil by seeing only what he wants to see and avoiding what he doesn’t want to see
The Bible provides us an example of psychoglaucoma, the elders in the story of Susannah, who

…suppressed their consciences; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments. [emphasis mine].

I remember a confrontation between pro-abortion and anti-abortion demonstrators, on a street in East Los Angeles some thirty years ago. One of the pro-life demonstrators held up poster showing a large picture of a baby-like fetus. He was surrounded by pro-choice demonstrators who were trying to cover up his poster with theirs—they didn’t want to look at it! Later, at a rally, pro-life advocate Susan McMilllan was asked about initiating a dialogue with pro-choice leaders.

“It doesn’t do any good”, she replied, “they know what they are doing and refuse to discuss it.”

Like the corresponding optical aberration, psychoglaucoma is a slow progressive disease. You develop it by first ignoring a few tiny unpleasant details and then, over the course of several years, you pile one self-deception on top of another until, without conscious dishonesty, you can be utterly oblivious to whatever you don’t want to see.
The Psychomyopic Democrats

"The News Media"...(gag, heave...)

...Uh huh...ok..."Good Night, and Good Luck"...yeah, right...T
I remember a conversation I had with a broadcast news executive many years ago.
"Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?" I asked.
"Oh, no, no," he said. "Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news."
"So what you're saying," I said, "is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans."
He quickly replied, "No, then it would be biased."
I have been closely acquainted with newsroom cultures for more than 30 years, and I recognize the attitude. Only liberals can see the world clearly. Conservatives are prevented by their warped and ungenerous views from recognizing the world as it is. Click here for full article

How do you Debate a Compulsive Liar?

Starting with the spark kindled by the title here, the author brings clarity of focus to the frustration we feel when being force-fed "Bush lied, people died" and "No blood for oil" etc. This writer (Ronald Wieck) could be with us for a long time, indeed. Great style, impeccable insight, highly disciplined in focus. I'm re-printing the whole piece because excerpting his writing would be like trying to paraphrase Churchill. Once he disposes of the kooks, the author devastates Senator Kennedy, the left, and the MSM/drive-by media's dismissal of Chappaquiddick with glorious and indisputable finality...T
Whose Chappaquiddick was Chappaquiddick?
If jesting Pilate would not stay for an answer to his famous question, he owed it to himself to hang around long enough to check out a certain website, where he would surely have discovered what truth isn't. The Huffington Post is the sort of place kids used to call a nuthouse. For lefties at once swollen with their Weltschmerz, aggrieved, yearning for a more sensitive time when anti-American atrocities go unpunished, and sniggering, affecting knowledge and sophistication they simply don't possess, it's a watering hole.
They congregate there to lie about George Bush and Dick Cheney. A single theme is endlessly reworked, without logic or evidentiary reasoning ever intruding on the monotony of the variations: Bush and Co. are liars. Simplistic and essentially dishonest, it has to be hammered home relentlessly. That requires sacrificing even the most minimal standards of objectivity on the altar of the one transcendent liberal truth, a truth so nebulous and elusive that its exact nature continues to baffle taxonomists.
Not that any of the regular contributors are losing sleep. After all, Arianna Huffington, patron saint of apostates, was recently a conservative pundit. Following her husband's defeat in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat, she jettisoned him, along with all of her previously-avowed principles, and remade herself overnight, Madonna-style, as a liberal pundit. Deeply held convictions, for one who has been initiated into the cult of The Anointed, are so vulgar.
The spectacle of a partisan of the right saying nasty things about the left is guaranteed to induce yawns. Each side routinely accuses of the other of lying (the left does little else), and nobody pays attention, except the silly people whose job is to get themselves all hot and bothered. Well, there's something to that, but allow me to advance a proposition.
Confrontations between liars and honest souls tend to benefit the liars.
The very act of exchanging identical-sounding charges establishes for the undiscerning public, i.e., most voters, a qualitative equivalence. A real problem arises when one side is reality-based, while the other relies heavily on falsehood and distortion. In the absence of critical thinking skills, it is impossible to tell the knights from the knaves. And The Huffington Post is crawling with knaves.
Finding them is as challenging as finding beer cans at a softball game. You might be legally blind, but you'd still trip over your share. Just to take a random stab, here's a notice culled from the Des Moines Register. Far-left blowhard Tom Harkin has decided that the recent violence in Iraq constitutes a civil war. Stop the presses! Democrats have been praying for a civil war for three years and, to their keen disappointment, they don't have one yet. Can you guess what Harkin's solution is? "The senator, an opponent of the war, said the only solution to the surge of sectarian violence is [fanfare, please] to begin withdrawing U.S. forces." What's the Senator's rush? C'mon, all together now: "In order to extricate ourselves from the quagmire there."
Propaganda has to be repetitive to be effective, and it doesn't get more drearily, mind-numbingly predictable than this. But every so often, just when you thought you've heard everything--when you're certain that the limits of shameless effrontery have been reached--along comes something of such surpassing moral idiocy that it doubles you over like a Joe Frazier left hook to the liver. You're left gasping: They can't possibly be going there.
In the wake of Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of his friend Harry Whittington, a loony-left blogger on the Huffington Post, one using the name R.J. Eskow, wondered if the incident was "Cheney's Chappaquiddick." Honest to God.
Now, where to begin? The temptation is to try to say everything that cries out to be said all at once. We'll let Eskow set the stage:

Tucker Carlson confronted me on "The Situation" tonight about the fact that Willeford's husband was apparently on the ranch at the time of the incident. It seems that he and others must think my comparison of the Whittington shooting and Chappaquiddick must be all about sex.

Confused? How on earth does sex figure in the shooting accident? Actually, it doesn't figure one tiny bit. Mr. Eskow, seeker of truth that he is, fabricated this angle out of whole cloth. Two women not married to either Cheney or Whittington were members of the hunting party. Their husbands were aware; there is not the faintest hint of any sort of impropriety. Don't waste any indignation here--our boy is just getting warmed up.

There were more important factors than sex behind my Chappaquiddick analogy. (That analogy seems to drive conservatives insane, by the way. The hate mail and threats I've received are beyond anything I've ever seen. I guess the word's been such a treasured icon of hate for them that the possible loss of it drives them into a frenzy.)

I suppose there would have to be more important factors, as sex is a nonexistent one here. Clearly, a very sleazy mind, glutted with party politics to the exclusion of all other thoughts and feelings produced that innuendo. And please note the implication that conservatives who resent Teddy must be harboring an irrational hatred.

...It's about power, drinking, irresponsibility, and dishonesty. If there was no romance going on, the issues are still the same"

All right, maybe the guy is simply pulling our legs. By a show of hands, how many people out there out there can think of a mildly significant difference between the two Chappaquiddicks?
The very first order of business is to state for the record that in Teddy Kennedy's Chappaquiddick, a.k.a. "Chappaquiddick," a real, flesh-and-blood woman died. By sharp contrast, Harry Whittington received immediate medical attention and was whisked off to a hospital.
No, that's not quite sufficient. We need to review how that woman died. Very briefly, omitting all speculation about Teddy's amorous intentions, the young woman, a Kennedy staffer named Mary Jo Kopechne, had the misfortune to be his passenger when he drove the car off a bridge. Somehow, he managed to extricate himself and swim to safety. She remained trapped in a pocket of air--for who knows how long--and eventually drowned.
This next part should be underlined: The Conscience of the Democratic Party did not attempt to alert anyone to her plight. He went home and met with two of his advisors the following day to map out a strategy to a) obstruct justice and b) preserve his political viability. He didn't report the accident until after it was discovered ten hours later.
Please reread the preceding paragraph several times. Committing it to memory wouldn't be a bad idea.
Ask a liberal/leftist why he, or more incredibly, she isn't horrified, revolted, appalled by behavior that can best be described as horrifying, revolting, appalling, and you're likely to hear a recitation of Teddy's legislative accomplishments.

"No, really, he saved himself and let her slowly run out of air and drown!"
"Well, he's accomplished a lot of good things"

(You might want to restrain yourself from grabbing the zombie by the shoulders and shaking vigorously.)

"Do you hear me? He left a woman, still alive, in a submerged car, got himself to shore, AND WENT HOME! He didn't think to pound on the nearest door or yell for help. He didn't do what almost every human on the planet would have done without a moment's hesitation!"

No, they don't care. They don't care even slightly. The voters of Massachusetts, to their everlasting shame, re-elect him every six years. And don't fall for the myth that Chappaquiddick cost Teddy his birthright, the Presidency of the United States. When he announced his challenge to incumbent Jimmy Carter back in 1980, preliminary polls showed him with a huge lead. The born-again Jimmuh waged one of his characteristic slash-and-burn, no-blow-is-too-low campaigns, savaging his opponent and completing the job begun by Roger Mudd: the exposure of Kennedy as one the dumbest men ever to sit in the Senate. Voters didn't reject Teddy's morals. They simply found him unfit for the office.
Purely as an exercise, try to imagine something Teddy could do, short of murder, that would damage him. After giving it your best shot, ask yourself if what you've conjured up is worse than what he did, bearing in mind that he wins easily each time he runs. Eskow dissembles:

"It's about character. It matters."

Character means nothing to a morally tone-deaf fraud willing to stoop to anything to smear politicians whose policies he disapproves of. Everybody pays lip service to the notion that character matters, so nobody seriously ponders the question of why it should. How heavily would you weight character and integrity if you were a voter in the 1972 presidential election? For all his whiny sanctimoniousness, George McGovern had a decided edge over Tricky Dick. Would you, therefore, vote to install in the White House someone who had a terrific shot at losing the Cold War for the West? I confess that wrestling with this question makes me extremely uncomfortable. I will insist, however, that lines must be drawn somewhere.
Teddy Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne to die on a night in 1969. Over a third of a century has passed without anyone elucidating the ideological component in the tragedy. What is right or left about condemning behavior that is so utterly beyond the pale? Massachusetts is the bluest of blue states: Are there no other reflexively anti-military socialists who are capable of representing it?
In the most bizarre two sentences of his frighteningly twisted blog--always assuming that whole thing is not merely a very dark satire--Eskow writes:

“Ted Kennedy eventually came clean on his accident, and by all by all reports he’s straightened his life out. All of our leaders should do the same.”

Yes, yes, I know: Heaven help us if our leaders do the same. But for anyone who doesn’t know, there is the magnificent essay “Ted Kennedy on the Rocks,” which appears in the collection of Michael Kelly’s work, Things Worth Fighting For (Penguin Books 2004). Kelly’s untimely death in Iraq deprived the world of an elegant stylist and a good man.

My submission to the Understatement of the Century Contest is: Ted Kennedy has not come clean on his “accident” nor has he quite straightened his life out.
Click here for full article

Scooping the mainstream media

"MSM", "Antique Media"...I am starting prefer Rush's term: The Drive-by Media"...This is a good one, as I see that the AP is finally getting called to account. The AP and the International Herald Tribune have always been examples of the very worst of anti-American, anti-Republican bias...T
The Associated Press reached a new level of incompetence, and the "news" industry they serve doesn't seem to care. If you want political opinion, you'll find it in Associated Press dispatches. If you want news, you might have to read conservative opinion columns.
On February 22nd, Walter Williams, a (syndicated) columnist, scooped the mainstream media. Williams reported that high school teacher Jay Bennish lectured his geography class stating:
1) "[President Bush's State of the Union Speech] sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say."2) "Bush is threatening the whole planet."3) "[The] U.S. wants to keep the world divided."4) "Who is probably the single most violent nation on earth? The United States of America."5) "[The U.S. has engaged in] 7,000 terrorist attacks against Cuba."6) "Capitalism is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion and at odds with human rights."
...Not included in Williams' column is the fact that Bennish also said:
7) "Don't the Peruvians and the Iranians and the Chinese have the right to invade America and drop chemical weapons over North Carolina to destroy the tobacco plants...?"
8) "Do you see the dangerous precedent that we have set by illegally invading another country and violating their sovereignty in the name of protecting us against a potential future attack?"
9) "You have to understand something. When Al-Qaeda attacked America on September 11th, in their view, they're not attacking innocent people. Okay? The CIA has an office in the World Trade Center. The Pentagon is a military target. The White House was a military target. Congress is a military target... .So, in the minds of Al-Qaeda, they are not attacking innocent people, they are attacking legitimate targets."
...At 2:16 a.m. on March 3rd, the AP issued a dispatch on the Bennish story. Their lead paragraph:
"About 150 high school students walked out of class to protest a decision to put a teacher on leave while they investigate remarks he made about President Bush in class, including that some people compare Bush to Adolf Hitler."
...The AP incompetently reported the story and positioned it about students protesting a decision to put one of their teachers on leave because of comments he made about President Bush. The Washington Times correctly reported the story and positioned it as about what a high school geography teacher said to his class.
...I was only able to find one editor with enough spine to go on the record. William Nangle, Executive Editor of the Northwest Indiana Times, said, "The Associated Press had an obligation to provide more detail in this story."
...The AP and the mainstream media control the news. They set the agenda. They determine what will be a story and what will not be a story. They determine how the story will be spun. Nobody is holding them accountable. The MSM would be all over a teacher who made a disagreeable comment about women, gays, minorities or Democrats. But, geography teachers who attempt to indoctrinate their students toward socialism while deriding capitalism get a pass. Click here for full article

Standoff in Iraq: The IED vs. Democracy

Once again, for the record: We are WINNING, and in spectacular fashion, in the greatest victory, with the least casualties, of ANY war in the history of the world. Another shining example of MSM and liberal idiocy (that we are losing) is conclusively debunked...T
The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces — or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government. The United States air base at Balad is one of the busiest airports in the world. Camp Victory near Baghdad is impenetrable to serious attack. And even forward smaller bases at Kirkuk, Mosul, and Ramadi are entirely secure. Instead, the terrorists count on three alternate strategies:
First, through the use of improvised explosive devices (IED), assassinations, and suicide bombings, they hope to make the Iraqi hinterlands and suburbs appear so unstable and violent that the weary American public says “enough of these people” and calls home its troops before the country is stabilized. In such a quest, the terrorists have an invaluable ally in the global media, whose “if it bleeds, it leads” brand of journalism always favors the severed head in the street over the completion of yet another Iraqi school.
Second, the al Qaedists think they can attack enough Shiites and government forces to prompt a civil war. And indeed, in the world that we see on television, there is no such thing as a secular Iraq, an Iraqi who defines himself as an Iraqi, or a child born to a Shiite and Sunni. No, the country, we are told, is simply three factions that will be torn apart by targeted violence. Sunnis blow up holy places; Shiites retaliate; and both sides can then blame the Americans.
Third, barring options one and two, the enemy wishes to pay off criminals and thugs to create enough daily mayhem, theft, and crime to stop contractors from restoring infrastructure and thus delude the Iraqi public into believing that the peace would return if only the Americans just left.
One of the great lapses in world journalism is investigating what happened to the 100,000 criminals let out by Saddam Hussein on the eve of the war. Thus the terrorists have succeeded in making all the daily mayhem of a major city appear to be political violence — even though much of the problem is the theft, rape, and murder committed by criminals who have had a holiday since Saddam freed them.
We are at a standoff of sorts, as we cannot yet stop the fear of the IED, and they cannot halt the progress of democracy. The Americans are unsure whether their own continued massive use of force — GPS bombings or artillery strikes — will be wise in such a sensitive war of hearts and minds, and must be careful to avoid increased casualties that will erode entirely an already attenuated base of public support for remaining in Iraq at all. The terrorists are more frustrated that, so far, they cannot inflict the sort of damage on the Americans that will send them home or stop the political process entirely.
During this sort of waiting game in Iraq, the American military silently is training tens of thousands of Iraqis to do the daily patrols, protect construction projects, and assure the public that security is on the way, while an elected government reminds the people that they are at last in charge.
The IED and suicide bomber answer back that it is a death sentence to join the government, to join the American-sponsored police and army, and to join the rebuilding efforts of Iraq.
Who will win? The Americans I talked to this week in Iraq — in Baghdad, Balad, Kirkuk, and Taji — believe that a government will emerge that is seen as legitimate and will appear as authentic to the people. Soon, ten divisions of Iraqi soldiers, and over 100,000 police, should be able to crush the insurgency, with the help of a public tired of violence and assured that the future of Iraq is their own — not the Husseins’, the Americans’, or the terrorists’. The military has learned enough about the tactics of the enemy that it can lessen casualties, and nevertheless, through the use of Iraqi forces, secure more of the country with far less troops. Like it or not, the American presence in Iraq will not grow, and will probably lessen considerably in 2006, before reaching Korea-like levels and responsibilities in 2007.
The terrorists, whom I did not talk to, but whose bombs I heard, answer back that while they fear the Iraqization of their enemy and the progress of democracy, they can still kill enough Shiites, bomb enough mosques, and stop enough rebuilding to sink the country into sectarian war — or at least something like Lebanon of the 1980s or an Afghanistan under the Taliban.
It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or by blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.
The Iraqi military goes out now on about half the American patrols, as well as on thousands of their own. It is not the Fallujah brigade of early 2004 — rather, it is developing into the best trained and disciplined armed force in the Middle East. While progress in reestablishing the infrastructure necessary for increased electricity and oil production seems dismal, in fact, much has been finished that awaits only the completion of pipelines and transmission lines — the components most vulnerable to sabotage. It is the American plan, in a certain sense, to gradually expand the security inside the so-called international or green zone, block by block, to the other 6 million Iraqis outside, where sewers run in the streets and power from the grid is available less than 12 hours per day.
The nature of the debate has also changed at home. Gone is “my perfect war, your screwed-up peace” or “no blood for oil,” or even “Bush lied, thousands died.” And there is little finger-pointing any more that so-and-so disbanded the Iraqi army, or didn’t have enough troops, or didn’t supply enough body armor. Now it is simply a yes or no proposition: yes, we can pull it off with patience, or no, it is no longer worth the cost and the lives.
Most would agree that the Americans now know exactly what they are doing. They have a brilliant and savvy ambassador and a top diplomatic team. Their bases are expertly run and secured, where food, accommodations, and troop morale are excellent. Insufficient body armor and unarmored humvees are yesterday’s hysteria. Our generals — Casey, Chiarelli, Dempsey — are astute and understand the fine line between using too much force and not employing enough, and that the war cannot be won by force alone. American colonels are the best this county has produced, and they are proving it in Iraq under the most trying of conditions. Iraqi soldiers are treated with respect and given as much autonomy as their training allows.
Again, the question now is an existential one: Can the United States — or anyone — in the middle of a war against Islamic fascism, rebuild the most important country in the heart of the Middle East, after 30 years of utter oppression, three wars, and an Orwellian, totalitarian dictator's warping of the minds of the populace? And can anyone navigate between a Zarqawi, a Sadr, and the Sunni rejectionists, much less the legions of Iranian agents, Saudi millionaires, and Syrian provocateurs who each day live to destroy what’s going on in Iraq?
The fate of a much wider war hinges on the answers to these questions, since it would be hard to imagine that bin Laden could continue to be much of a force with a secure and democratic Iraq, anchoring ongoing liberalization in the Gulf, Lebanon, and Egypt, and threatening by example Iran and Syria. By the same token, it would be hard to see how we could stop jihadism from spreading when an army that is doing everything possible still could not stop Islamic fascism from taking over the ancestral home of the ancient caliphate.
Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq — mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of the state-run Arab media, and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them. Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that. After visiting the country, I think we can and will win, but just as importantly, unlike in 2003-04, there does not seem to be much of anything we should be doing there that in fact we are not.

The MSM "Antique Media" have become parodies of themselves. This wouldn't have been nearly so funny just a short few years ago...T 

Hypocracy, thy name is Democrat...T 

The Voice of the Neuter is Heard Throughout the Land

Ok, this one is a few weeks old, but as everyone of my acquaintance is still commenting on it, I have decided to post it. This is in the category of: "All you ever need to know about liberals in 3 easy lessons". Too lengthy to excerpt properly, please read in its entirety. Enjoy!...........T
LIKE SOME HAGGARD CRACK WHORE banging on the door of a dealer's den willing to do anything , the hapless Joel ( "I despise our troops." ) Stein has been passed randomly about the blogsphere in the last couple of days...
What is of interest to me here is not what Stein writes or says. His own words damn him more decisively than a thousand bloggers blathering blithely What interestest me is how he speaks.
If you focus on it, you realize that you hear this voice every day if you bounce around a bit in our larger cities buying this or ordering that, and in general running into young people in the "service" sector -- be it coffee shop, video store, department store, boutique, bookstore, or office cube farm. It's a kind of voice that was seldom heard anywhere but now seems to be everywhere.
It is the voice of the neuter .
I mean that in the grammatical sense:"a. Neither masculine nor feminine in gender."b. Neither active nor passive; intransitive,"
and in the biological sense:"a. Biology Having undeveloped or imperfectly developed sexual organs: the neuter caste in social insects."b. Botany Having no pistils or stamens; asexual."c. Zoology Sexually undeveloped."
You hear this soft, inflected tone everywhere that young people below, roughly, 35 congregate. As flat as the bottles of spring water they carry and affectless as algae, it tends to always trend towards a slight rising question at the end of even simple declarative sentences. It has no timbre to it and no edge of assertion in it...
What Stein has said is what his whole cohort has said in response to questions of honor, duty, country. It is the standard issue answer and will be their standard issue epitaph:
"Whatever." Click here for full article

Politics of negation

Historical perspective is what it's all about, for me. Barone is a master, and here is a great look at today's political scene "from above"...T
"American politics today is not just about winning elections or prevailing on issues. It's about delegitimizing, or preventing the delegitimization of, our presidents.
This thought sprang into my head as I was reading the angry and sometimes obscene Democratic Web logs and noted the preoccupation of some bloggers with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, now seven years in the past. "
...Mr. Bush's version of history is mostly in line with Reagan's. Since September 11, he has led an aggressive policy against foreign enemies, while lowering taxes and pursuing, with considerable success despite narrow Republican majorities, mostly conservative policies at home.
Democratic politicians and the mainstream media, who bridle at the Reagan version and are disappointed it has not been displaced by Mr. Clinton's, regarded Mr. Bush's victory in the Florida controversy as illegitimate and have been trying furiously to delegitimize him ever since. So far, this has proved at least as ineffective politically as impeachment was for the Republicans, but the impulse to persist seems irresistible. How long will this continue? Democrats were accustomed to writing our history in most of the last century. But without a competing vision of their own, they seem no more likely to succeed than Roosevelt's or Reagan's furious opponents. Click here for full article

Where is he when we need him?!

You get 3 guesses, the last two don't count: Who wrote this, and when?...T

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
-Sir Winston Churchill: 1899

Note: Churchill later devised the boundaries of the modern middle east, including naming the area which is now Israel "Palestine". In fact, there is no such thing as a "Palestinian"...T

A European Awakening Against Islamic Fascism?

An indispensable article by Hanson. The turn of the tide against the Islamo-fascists has begun. Be sure to read the whole piece (click the link) and save it to disk. Please post your comments on this one, a you won't hear the MSM mention this at all (typical!), or on the previous article on this page!......T
Over the last four years Americans have played a sort of parlor game wondering when--or if--the Europeans might awake to the danger of Islamic fascism and choose a more muscular role in the war on terrorism...
...Have the Europeans flipped out?
Hardly. Recent polls show a majority of Europeans are becoming increasingly tired of current liberal immigration policies and foreign aid programs that have given billions of dollars to the Palestine Authority that they now learn in the aftermath of Yasser Arafat's death resulted in both rampant corruption and the Hamas backlash. It is one thing to subsidize a double-talking Arafat, quite another to keep giving money to terrorists who openly promise to finish the European holocaust.
More importantly, despite distancing themselves from the United States, and spreading cash liberally around, the Europeans are beginning to fathom that the radical Islamists still hate them even more than they do the Americans--as if the fundamentalists add disdain for perceived European weakness in addition to the usual generic hatred of all things Western...
...It is not the capability but the will power of the Europeans that has been missing in this war so far. But while pundits argue over whether the European demographic crisis, lack of faith, stalled economy, or multiculturalism are at the root of the continent's impotence, we should never forget that if aroused and pushed, a rearmed and powerful Europe could still be at the side of the United States in joint efforts against the jihadists. And should we ever see a true alliance of such Western powers, the war against the fascists of the Middle East would be simply over in short order. Click here for full article

Conservatism's march

Relax everyone, never, ever let the MSM infiltrate your grey matter...We are winning every battle, the march goes on!....T
"It was a big week for Republican leaders. On Jan. 31, Ben Bernanke was sworn in as Federal Reserve chairman and Samuel Alito was sworn in as the 110th Supreme Court justice. On Feb. 2, House Republicans elected John Boehner of Ohio as their new majority leader. And on the day Bernanke and Alito were sworn in, George W. Bush delivered his fifth State of the Union Address to Congress. " Click here for full article

State of the Democratic party

This article by Blankley lays forth what I have been predicting for 2006. The polls are not an indicator of major gains by the Libs in the midterms. They continue their march, pied-piper like, to permanent minority status. You saw it here 1st!...T
During an election campaign, political operatives are fond of seeking to induce in their opponent a negative "defining moment." That is to say a highly publicized moment when their opponent portrays everything that is wrong with him. In 2004, John Kerry provided that moment when he said he voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it.
Surely, at the State of the Union address the Democratic Party provided such a moment when, as has already been well commented on by others, they wildly applauded President Bush's statement that Congress failed to pass Social Security reform last year...The Democrats' wild applause on behalf of doing nothing was more than a merely tactical political blunder. It displayed a deeper truth about them.
President Bush caught the essence of today's Democratic Party in a rather elegant double epigram: "Hindsight alone is not wisdom, And second-guessing is not a strategy."
I wouldn't be surprised to see that thought become the strategic negative communication theme for the Republican Party this campaign season. That is the trouble with being a rotten tomato-throwing member of the bleacher crowd. One may develop a small following amongst one's fellow complainers, but no large group of people are going to ask you to come out and lead the team.
But not satisfied to be a head in the sand, reflexively negative opposition party, an increasing number of Democrats and their supporters in the leftish fever swamps have started calling for President Bush's impeachment.
While I haven't seen any polls yet on the subject, I would guess that something less than 10 percent of the American voting public would look forward to seeing the last two years of the Bush presidency consumed with a Democratic Party-controlled Congress trying to impeach the president during a time of war.
Somehow the Democratic Party -- for 180 years the most electorally successful political party on the planet -- has now almost completely mutated into a party too loathsome to be seen in public, and too nihilistic to be trusted with control of even a single branch of government. Click here for full article

Stuck in the '70s

The MSM has been in rerun mode since 2000: rerun the Bush41 years, rerun the 70's, rerun Vietnam. You can imagine my glee at the appearance of this column by Barone today!...T
"We can learn from history, and each decade has something to teach us. But we can't repeat history, because so many things change. Not many Americans, if they could vote for a decade to go back to, would vote for the 1970s. But for many in the mainstream press and for many Democratic politicians, it's always sometime between 1970 and 1980, and they're forever young.
The public isn't buying it. Enough with the bellbottom pants and the disco music, most Americans seem to be saying." Click here for full article:

The White House Press Corps

Well, I've been away for awhile, but this one brought me back. The MSM has lost their collective mind!...T
"Hamas sweeps to victory. Iran is on the brink of nuclear weapons acquisition. Syria's president is quite likely the man who put the hit on a Lebanese leader. New reports on Saddam's WMD.
And the White House press corps has already asked two questions about pictures of the president with Jack Abramoff.
Is this really the best the MSM can do?" Click here for article

The Plague of Success

The Paradox of Ever-Increasing Expectations.

Dead on. We have won spectacular success, so much so, that like in Churchill's case, the left and the MSM can change the subject, unless we stay on offense...T

"Apparently due to the success of George Bush at keeping the United States secure, he, not Osama bin Laden, can now more often be the target of a relieved Left -- deserving of assassination in an Alfred Knopf novel, an overseer of Nazi policies according to a U.S. senator, a buffoon, and rogue in the award-winning film of Michael Moore. Yes, because we did so well against the real enemies, we soon had the leisure to invent new imaginary ones in Bush/Cheney, Halliburton, the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft, and Scooter Libby."

Few Americans remember that nearly 750 Americans were killed in a single day in a training exercise for D-Day, or that during the bloody American retreat back from the Yalu River in late 1950 thousands of our frozen dead were sent back stacked in trucks like firewood. Our grandparents in the recent past endured things that would make the present ordeal in Iraq seem almost pedestrian — and did all that with the result that a free Germany could now release terrorists or prosperous South Korean youth could damn the United States between their video games.

Instead, we of the present think that we have reinvented the rules of war and peace anew. After Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the three-week war to remove Saddam, we decreed from on high that there simply were to be no fatalities in the American way of war. If there were, someone was to be blamed, censured, or impeached — right now! Click here for full article

Kerry to "Fight" again in 2008!

Hillary Clinton is a "fresh face"? John Kerry is a "fighter"? Heck, why don't the Dems just nominate Howard Dean and call him a "sober statesman"?...T
"He's continuing the fight he began in 2004," said Kerry spokesman David Wade. "He wants to make it very clear he's a fighter who is going to continue to fight for his agenda." . .
Despite such political spadework, Kerry can expect an uphill fight in 2008. . . . In 2008, Democrats will probably be eager for a fresh face, said Thigpen, citing New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead in early polls and her ability to raise large sums of money.
"There's not a lot of fire out there for Kerry," he said. Click here for full article

The Democratic plan...

The left HAS a plan after all!!!........T

Is The New York Times' NSA Story the Next Memogate?

"Just think what you all will be missing...you won't have Dan Rather to kick around anymore..." The MSM is at it again...T
It seems like a common pattern lately. A mainstream media outlet publishes a bombshell story, and within days, the whole thing unravels quicker than a cheap sweater swarmed by kittens. Such is beginning to look like the case for The New York Times' eavesdropping controversy, which is showing a lot of wear and tear for its age.

Wednesday wasn't a very good day for the ongoing health of this story, or for members of the media hoping that the recent revelations concerning National Security Agency espionage tactics could lead to impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

The day started with a former member of the Clinton White House voicing strong words of support for the Bush administration?s behavior. In a Chicago Tribune op-ed entitled "President Had Legal Authority to OK Taps," former associate attorney general John Schmidt refuted media protestations concerning the illegality of the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens who are in contact with known members of al Qaeda without a court order allowing it to do so:

"President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents." Click here for full article

Have The Democrats Walked Into a Trap......Again?

They are in for the same fate they suffered in the 2002 midterm elections. Remember Bush flying from city to city, pounding the podium demanding that the Democrats "stop holding up the creation of the Homeland Security department over union quotas!"...T
Not recognizing the political ground had shifted beneath their feet, Democrats continued to press forward with their offensive against the President. They've now foolishly climbed out on a limb that Rove and Bush have the real potential to chop off. One would think that after the political miscalculations the Democrats made during the 2002 and 2004 campaigns they would not make the same mistake a third time, but it is beginning to look a lot like Charlie Brown and the football again.

First, the Democrats still do not grasp that foreign affairs and national security issues are their vulnerabilities, not their strengths. All of the drumbeat about Iraq, spying, and torture that the left thinks is so damaging to the White House are actually positives for the President and Republicans. Apparently, Democrats still have not fully grasped that the public has profound and long-standing concerns about their ability to defend the nation. As long as national security related issues are front page news, the Democrats are operating at a structural political disadvantage. Perhaps the intensity of their left wing base and the overwhelmingly liberal press corps produces a disorientation among Democratic politicians and prevents a more realistic analysis of where the country's true pulse lies on these issues.

With their publicly defeatist language, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean reinforce these "soft on security" steroretypes [sic], a weakness that more sober-minded Democrats have been trying to mitigate since the late 60's and 70's. . . .

One of the major problems working against Democrats is many on their side appear to be rooting for failure in Iraq and publicly ridicule the idea that we actually might win. When this impression is put in context of the debate over eavesdropping or the Patriot Act, Democrats run the significant risk of being perceived to be more concerned with the enemy's rights than protecting ordinary Americans. This is a loser for Democrats. Click here for full article

ANGRY BUSH: CONGRESS MEMBERS WERE BRIEFED ON EAVESDROPPING -- A DOZEN TIMES...

So now it is revealed that Bush not only proudly authorized the surveillance, but that Congress has been briefed, DOZENS OF TIMES! Here's an idea, Sen. Spector, Sen. Kennedy, et al...how about a special prosecutor to probe who LEAKED this?! how about charging the NY Times with leaking classified government secrets? If Valerie Plame, a desk warmer, is fodder for taking out members of the administration, than what about activity that could reasonably be interpreted as...Treason!? These pompous stuffed shirts go on camera feigning outrage, while all the time knowing full well that they not only knew of this program, but approved of it...SHAME, Sen. Specter, Shame! Hugh Hewett put it best:" ...The Senate, hobbled by a hard left Democratic Caucus, can't even renew the Patriot Act, which will now lapse at midnight on December 31, 2005 thanks to a Democrat-led filibuster.In less than eleven months the country will get to vote on what it believes about the priority that ought to attach to national security. The past month has revealed the true nature of the Democrats: committed to defeat and retreat in Iraq, open borders, and a crippled intelligence system. The collapse of the Democrats' credibility on national security is complete. It isn't a political party anymore. It is a suicide pact...T
Here are President Bush's remarks from his Saturday radio address, broadcast live, in total:

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks.
This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the September the 11th attacks, and the commission criticized our nation's inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad. Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late.
The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time. And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad.
The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation's top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups.
The NSA's activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA's top legal officials, including NSA's general counsel and inspector general. Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it. Intelligence officials involved in this activity also receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization.
This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And that is exactly what I will continue to do, so long as I'm the President of the United States.

The Mask Slips

"MSM for Dummies!" Get it here now! Think about this before you casually open a copy of the NY Times at the airport...T
"The past year has seen a spate of shocking statements revealing hatred and contempt for President Bush and his supporters on the part of important media figures who claim objectivity and sneer at conservatives unafraid to characterize themselves as such. Regrettably, we cannot credit a sudden outbreak of honesty for this phenomenon, and thereby anticipate improved news coverage from these folks. A pathology is at work.
A sudden loss of status and influence is a profound shock to most people who have spent their lives aimed at the acquisition and enjoyment of socio-political standing. Relieved of the ability to shape the consciousness and behavior of others, a certain number unburden themselves of the inner restraints which kept them from openly voicing the condescension and scorn they have for those whom they regard as their social, intellectual, and moral inferiors.
The rise of alternate media- talk radio, Fox News, and the internet - has not simply allowed competing voices to be heard in the public square, it has robbed many media grandees of the ultimate reward of their striving after careers as shapers of mass opinion. Some have become unbalanced mentally, and emotionally overwhelmed by the loss. They strike out with blind fury at their "enemies" (the subjects whom they have covered as "unbiased" journalists), and thereby let the mask of objectivity slip from their faces, revealing spiteful, arrogant and bigoted visages. By dismissing those who disagree with them as unworthy of consideration, they expose to light the long-hidden dark vision of the rest of humanity that enables them to regard themselves as worthy."... Click here for full article

I am shocked - shocked!

A great article in support of my contention of the 60 + year anti-Americanism of the Left...T
Thanks to CornetJim for this one!

Democratic Implosion

You see, it's the anti-Americanism which I keep returning to. They want high gas prices (to be more like Europe), military failure anywhere we try, higher taxes, more welfare, having wept openly after the fall of the Soviet Empire (wanting, as they do, to be more Canadian/European-like in everything we do), to be defeatist in all ways (including kicking our foreign policy over to the crooks at the UN). It is exactly this anti-Americanism that has defined the liberal establishment, propped up by their MSM pimps for 60 years, which is the central focus of this page...T
... "In the background, old Vietnam-era themes provide the chorus for the growing antiwar sentiment: apparent disdain for the Iraqis, mirroring the way that liberals pooh-poohed anti-Communist Eastern Europeans, Cubans, and Vietnamese; endemic pessimism that does not match the rapidly evolving events on the ground; and political opportunity that an American embarrassment abroad might reverse a long-term and ongoing unfavorable political realignment at home.
...Instead the war, as wars almost always do, has morphed into something quite different than expected ? a regional referendum on Lebanon, the future of Syria, reform movements in the Gulf and Egypt, about-faces in Pakistan and Libya, and continued pressure on a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. And despite the heartbreak of 2,100 deaths, we are not just winning in Iraq, but on the verge of something far larger, and more permanent: not a return to the ancient caliphate or another dictatorship, but the real chance for the birth of a new Middle East that takes its place at last among responsible nations.
...Contrast the Democratic reactions to respective advice offered by Congressman Murtha and Senator Joe Lieberman. The former is a respected but not nationally known Democratic figure; the latter ran for the vice presidency of the United States. The Democrats gushed over Murtha?s bleak Dean-like assessment that the war is essentially lost and that we must leave as soon as possible. But then when a vote was called on the issue, they voted overwhelmingly not to follow the congressman?s prescription.

In contrast, when Lieberman returned from Iraq and gave a cautiously optimistically appraisal that our plan of encouraging elections, training Iraqis, and improving the Iraqi economy is working both inside Iraq and in the wider neighboring region, he was shunned by Democrats ? who nevertheless by their inaction essentially agreed with Lieberman and so made no move to demand an immediate withdrawal. How odd to be effusive over the Democrat whose advice you reject while ignoring the spokesman whose advice you actually follow."...
Click link for full article

The Mad King and the Crazy Left

Edited and reshaped a bit here (read the whole article!) This analysis of Liberalism is as intellectually sound as Chambers' "Witness" was on communism...T
There seems to be a refusal among liberals to believe in reality these days. It is as if an entire segment of the population has lost their collective minds. Just what is happening?

An entire segment of the population has lost its collective mind. According to author Phillip K. Dick, reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Using this benchmark to judge the sanity of the Left, it becomes apparent that they have, indeed, lost their cats-eyes and pearly whites. The modern Liberal is madder than a haberdasher at a Lewis Carroll tea party.

We see it in the refusal of the Left to accept the results of the elections of 2000 and 2004, of their unwillingness to believe they are not in power. We see it in the standing ovation given by many Democrats to Michael Moore`s insane propaganda, in the "all about Halliburton"/"Bush lied to get us into war" view of Iraq. We see it in the attempt to equate running the air conditioning at Gitmo with Saddam`s torture chambers.

Liberalism has been King for a very long time. Liberalism has been the driving force in the West since the 18th Century, and gained almost complete ascendancy in the 20th, where it reigned almost unchallenged from the 1930s until the 1980s. The power of the Left derived from its control of the dissemination of information, and leftists' understanding of the value of propaganda has always propelled their Kingship. They have come to consider their rule as being by Darwinian Right, and grew smug in their assurance of power. To their utter amazement, the reign of the left has come to an end, and like poor King George III (after losing the colonies) they are suffering an acute mental breakdown.

What has happened to the Left? Like Teddy Kennedy, they seem to have driven off the bridge of sanity into the dark waters of madness, becoming incapable of grasping the reality of the world around them. We see evidence of this everywhere we look these days; from Dan Rather`s insistence that his National Guard documents were valid even though forged, to Senator Joe Biden arguing on Meet the Press to bring Iran in to help with Iraqi reconstruction, to the Democrats' hope for a "Merry Fitzmas", in the deification of Cindy Sheehan, the mad rantings of Dick Durban, and the backstabbing of former President Jimmy Carter. We see it in the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" comments by John Kerry and by the stubborn refusal to accept that we are actually at war...(Click Here for Full Article)

We Surrender, Mon Dieu!

Watch the GOP "White Flag-Dean-Pelosi-Kerry" video by clicking this link.
"Retreat & Defeat", yeah, worked well for the French, too...but I forgot, this is "Vietnam"...T

Oh, how they want us to LOSE! Oh, how they hate America!...T 

Deep Thoughts, Parte Quatre

"Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil."

Walter Williams

A Moral War

The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling.
...I have refrained from posting some redundant (in my opinion) articles lately. Yes, Bush's inevitable comeback is proceeding apace, and yes, the economy, the courts, and the war are all in great shape, the MSM notwithstanding (who listens to THEM anymore, anyway?). This Article is THE exception, and it "says it all".Please read, in it's entirety, and save it for reference!......T
..."Zarqawi and the radical Islamicists are slowly being squeezed as only a war at their doorstep could accomplish...what Iraq did is ensure that al QaedaÂ's Sunni support is being coopted by democracy. Jordan, the terrorists' old ace in the hole that could always put a cosmetic face on its stealthy support for radicals, has essentially turned on Zarqawi and with him al Qaeda. Syria is under virtual siege and its border sanctuary now a killing zone. Bin Laden can offer very little solace from his cave. And somehow Islamists have alienated the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, Japan, and increasingly Middle East democracies like those in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq, and reform movements in Lebanon and Jordan.
...The Left now risks losing its self-proclaimed moral appeal. It had trashed the efforts in Iraq for months on end, demanded a withdrawal -- only recently to learn from polls that an unhappy public may also be unhappy with it for advocating fleeing while American soldiers are in harm's way. Another successful election, polls showing Iraqis overwhelmingly wishing us to stay on, visits by elected Iraqi officials asking continued help, and a decreasing American footprint will gradually erode the appeal of the antiwar protests -- especially as triangulating public intellectuals and pundits begin to quiet down, fathoming that the United States may win after all.

Deep Thoughts, Parte Trois

"Isn't asking a San Francisco Democrat for strategy on the war like asking David Duke for strategy on protecting the civil rights of blacks?"

When France Polls America...

L'OH ! mon seigneur ! Ce ne peut pas être vrai ! Ce ne peut pas être vrai ! le whoa est est !..................T
Apparently the US media are not the only ones interested in manipulating US public opinion by biased polls. The French are doing it, too! In an article called “When France Polls America…” John Rosenthal reports that the lowest scores for President Bush are consistently found by the “AP-Ipsos” poll. Who is Ipsos? It just happens to be Jacques Chirac’s favorite pollster.

There’s now a mounting pile of evidence for deliberate Anti-US media manipulation by France. This is just another layer of the pile.

The US may not need to try for regime change in Paris. French voters have a say

Call them what they are -- TRAITORS

Traitors they are! When dead Americans serve one's craven political goals!...T
"Senators Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy have accused President George W. Bush of lying about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, insisting that he 'lied us into war.' Some Demo wing nuts are even floating the idea of impeachment. Their charges have no substance, of course; they're merely contrived to keep Republicans off balance through next year's midterm elections. In other words, Democrat Party leaders are using the gravely serious matter of the Iraq War for trivial political fodder -- and their politicization of our mission there has put our Armed Forces in the region in greater peril.
Let's be clear: There is nothing wrong with honest criticism of an American president; to the contrary, we have written extensively about President Bush's policy failures. The dishonest and politically motivated accusations of Kennedy, Reid, Durbin and their ilk, however, are nothing short of -- and we don't use this term lightly -- treasonous. "

403 to 3. The "Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing" Democrats.

This from Hugh Hewitt yesterday, exposing the hypocrisy of the democrats. Look for the next article for more details!...T

The Murtha proposal for immediate withdrawal from Iraq was defeated 403 to 3 last night. So much for the idea of cut and run.
Many Democrats were emotionally undon by the exercise of having to confront their own rhetoric, and the anti-war left must be stunned this morning: Only three votes? All that work? All those marches? All those posts at the fever swamp bulletin board? For three votes?
The Dems have more excuses than a teenager: It wasn't the real Murtha resolution; it's a terrible political trick; I will not participate in the assault on Congressman Murtha etc, etc, etc.
But the talk around the turkey this week should review that the elections in 2002, 2004 and the vote on Friday night in the House underscore the county is committed to victory in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and everywhere else the GWOT is being waged. That talk should also dwell on the profound hypocrisy of the left and its Congressional representatives, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." They only believe what they believe when the country as a whole isn't watching. Supermen on the web, when Congress assmebled they went into their phonebooths/cloakrooms and came out as Clark Kent.
The Democrats took their walloping last year and instead of resolving to return to D.C. as an opposition party that would work to craft alternatives to domestic policies while remaining supportive of the GWOT and of the troops, have spent a year digging deeper and deeper into anti-war conspiracy theories and committing themselves to Vietnam Syndrome 2.0. The GOP abetted their descent by failing to do what happened yesterday: Call them on their nonsense and debate it, in full view of the public, and not in MSM-mediated soundbytes.
The Chamber was full and the tempers high --as they should be when a great party confronts its opposite over a serious issue. The Democratic Party is committed to retreat, but they hate to be asked to defend that inclination. The Republicans are committed to victory, but seem hesitant because of the high costs of the war, even though the costs of retreat would be much higher still.
If the GOP stays the course of clarity, and keeps its purposes front and center, the elections of 2006 will be another milestone in the Democrats road to Whigdom.

Win the war.

Confirm the judges.

Cut the taxes.

Control the spending.

MSM Missing Headlines!

...A new feature highlighting all the (good) news that's (not) fit to print in the world of the MSM...T

“US jobless claims fall to lowest level in 7 months”

The indigenous "French Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey". Notoriously Xenophobic & Racist, it has long existed only in areas consistently dominated and warred over by other species. Although once numerous, they are widely believed to be in an advanced state of extinction.... 

Deep Thougts, Parte Deux...

"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me." —General George S. Patton

"The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee." —Regis Philbin

An old saying: Raise your right hand if you like the French.... Raise both hands if you are French.

"OH mon Dieu ! Nous nous rendons ! Nous nous rendons!"
Yeah, this is for real. When at google.com, after entering the search phrase, enter "I'm feeling lucky", and this is the result. THEN, click on "defeats"....and open a bottle of cognac. You'll be in for some bed-time reading!......T

Stampede

Is the GOP in disarray or has the party finally gotten its momentum back?
In the same vein as the article posted below...great reason for optimism!..............T
"ALMOST EXACTLY one year ago, President Bush was reelected with more votes than had ever been cast for a presidential candidate, breaking Ronald Reagan's 1984 record. Not only did Bush sweep to victory by a three million vote margin, the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate, the first time this trifecta had been accomplished since the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964."
...Most important, there are signs that Bush's decline in the polls has bottomed out. Some of the polls showing precipitously declining support are obviously flawed, to such an extent as to suggest that they were designed to produce that result. Polls that are administered consistently over time are starting to show a significant rebound in the president's standing. In the >Rasmussen Poll, Bush's approval rating hit its nadir in October, but has rebounded steadily since. Currently, it stands at a respectable 46 percent. More important than the number, however, is the trend: There can be little doubt that the administration is on the upswing. In order of importance, at least three factors have brought the party's conservative base, and some other voters, back into the president's camp: his nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court; his counter-attack against the Democrats on Iraq; and the dashing of the Democrats' hopes for Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the Valerie Plame "leak."

That thundering sound in the distance might be a solid phalanx of elephants, on the move once more.

Politics, Puerto Rico style

Keep an Eye turned for this Barone's analysis. He ALWAYS gets it right, the old fashioned way: he works the numbers, on the ground............T
Politics, Puerto Rico style by Michael Barone Nov 14, 2005:
...The 2005 elections suggest that we have the same kind of Puerto Rican style politics we've had since 1995-96. If so, turnout will decide the outcome in 2006...

"Let them eat cake, mon amie!"

Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys

Time for a little history Lesson (courtesy of "CornetJim")........................T
"The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.'' "

Should Bush Fire Rove?

Exactly.......Fight back hard, we have the truth as our strongest ally......T
...No...Between the 2000 election and the 2004 election, Rove became the master of polarization politics. And now, with this year's ill-fated experiment in trying to govern from the middle surely over, polarization along ideological and party lines is a fact of life. Ethics classes won't ameliorate Democratic hostility to Bush. Nor will firing Rove. In fact, throwing Rove overboard--dropping the political adviser who has been with Bush during his past comebacks and greatest triumphs--will increase the sense of a White House in disarray and retreat.

...Keeping Rove; being unapologetic about the war; explaining why Saddam had to be removed, that there were terror ties between Saddam and al Qaeda, and why the war needs to be seen through to victory; fighting for Alito, and other well-qualified conservative judges at the appellate level; advancing pro-growth, pro-family tax reforms--this agenda won't enamor Bush to liberals. But it could lay the groundwork for a Bush comeback. The alternative is three long years of ducking, dodging--and defeat...

Deep Thoughts...

"We went to war because Bill Clinton told the truth. The Dems would now have us believe that we ought to consider everything Mr Clinton said was a lie. If Mr Bush lied, it was because he relied on the lies of Mr Clinton. Presidents rely on each other when it comes to protecting the homeland.
There you go. Said about as succinctly as can be said. Either Bill Clinton told the truth about WMD, and Bush believed him. Or he lied about WMD, and Bush believed him."

Liberal Democrats, So Hypocritical

Print it, frame it, carry it in your pocket, learn it! (And read "Witness" once more...). They are NOT just moronic, they are, in their hearts, traitors...and they have been for 70 years...T
"Conservatives are rolling their eyes watching the political left's outrage over the Valerie Plame identity controversy, wondering when it was exactly that liberals suddenly became the super patriots defending the virtues of the CIA. For a half-century the American political left has done everything in its power to undermine the national security of this country. Now we are to believe, as they wring their hands in agony and outrage - outrage, I say! - over Ms. Plame's outing, that they...care? This goes beyond rank hypocrisy. It is intellectual dishonesty.
Let's visit the left's record on national security matters. History is not kind. Where was the left when the Rosenbergs, communists both, fed our nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union? Both were deep-fried for the treason they'd committed. Liberals tut-tutted then and tut-tut now, and don't tell me there aren't hardened leftists who favored giving nuclear weapons to the Soviets to thwart what they considered America's imperial ambitions. What of Alger Hiss, another Soviet spy who also committed treason against his country? To this day he remains a darling of the political left. Up until the moment he died he was the left's poster child for American national security oppression."
Trackback URL for this post:
http://newsbusters.org/trackback/2633

The Left's Cruelest Month

The recovery has been swift, complete and stunning.............T
"OCTOBER, 2005 will turn out to be the left's cruelest month since . . . well, in a long time. A couple of weeks in, it seemed so promising. October was going to be the month that would mark the meltdown of the loathed Bush presidency. Iraq was failing, gas prices were rising, a weak Supreme Court nominee was under assault, and the White House was under siege from a special prosecutor. What more could a Bush-hater want?
But it was a false dawn for the left."...

Democrats' Desperation

No Fitzmas?!! Bwahh!, Wahh! Bwahhah!!!! ..............T
With Democrats' efforts to criminalize policy differences over Iraq having failed, they have turned in desperation to politics, led by Harry Reid, the Senate's minority leader. First, over the weekend, Reid demanded the resignation of Karl Rove, the White House's deputy chief of staff. By this logic, Reid also should resign, since he, like Rove, has not been indicted.
Then yesterday, Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin engineered a partisan publicity stunt. The Associated Press describes it:
Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that President Bush used in the run-up to the war in Iraq and accusing Republicans of ignoring the issue.
"They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why," Democratic leader Harry Reid said. . . .
Democrats sought assurances that Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas would complete the second phase of an investigation of the administration's prewar intelligence.
After about two hours, senators returned to open session having appointed a six-member task force--three members from each party--to review the committee's progress and report back to their respective leaders by Nov. 14.
Democratic senators are transparently playing to the party's moonbat base, who've been taunting them for years demanding that they "stand up" to the Bush administration and who were demoralized when they didn't get the indictment for the war that they wanted for "Fitzmas"--the Angry Left nickname for the day indictments were handed up in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle.
The problem with such base-rallying stunts is that they rally the other side's base too. President Clinton, an advocate of free trade, capital punishment and welfare reform, was never popular with the hard left of the Democratic Party, but they were his most fervent defenders once impeachment was on the table.
President Bush has just had a rough month with his political base; the Harriet Miers misstep brought to the surface disagreements over other matters such as spending and immigration. He repaired much of the damage with the excellent appointment of Sam Alito on Monday, and the Democrats now look to be finishing the job for him.
Republicans should welcome anything that rallies the bases of both parties, for two reasons. First, the Republican base is bigger (see election results, 2004). Second, the Democratic base is totally insane. These people are now, according to the Village Voice, touting Cindy Sheehan for president. Democrats love to mock the Republican base for believing the Bible is true. Democratic basemen believe "Fahrenheit 9/11" is true!
Searchlight's Harry Reid, who backed Iraq's liberation, may not be the brightest bulb on the Fitzmas tree, but surely even he is smart enough that he doesn't believe all this nonsense about how BUSH LIED!!!! Indeed, like John Kerry*, who also knows better, Reid is reduced to incoherence in trying to explain his putative position, as quoted by Fox News: "We know that there were no [weapons of mass destruction] now in Iraq. We didn't know it at the time. We know now that we didn't know at the time that there was no Al Qaeda connection. We know now that we didn't know then that there was no 9/11 connection. We know now that they had no plan for winning the peace. We didn't know that at the time." (Durbin, on the other hand, seems to be a true believer, to judge by his apparently sincere comparison of American soldiers to Nazis.)
Blogger Marshall Wittmann, a McCain Republican turned moderate Democrat, notes that pandering to the tinfoil-hat crowd carries dangers beyond a reinvigorated GOP base:
Will the American people have faith in and trust a party that claims that it was gullibly duped, or as George Romney claimed about another war--that it was "brainwashed"? Moreover, should the objective be re-fighting the reasons to go to war and making the Democrats the official anti-war party or should the goal be achieving reasonable success in Iraq? If you believe in the former than you would encourage more efforts like the one Senate Democrats undertook yesterday. If you believe in the latter, you want the opposition party to present a better plan for winning this war.
While the war is increasingly unpopular, the Democrats should be careful that they are positioning themselves as a party that is gullible, feckless and indecisive on national security.
The Angry left is right about one thing, though: Democratic politicians are wimps. After all, they won't even stand up to the Angry Left.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way has not been indicted for war crimes in Vietnam.