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