Right Wing Nut House

If true, this is very bad news:

Militants in Iraq today claimed to have executed an American hostage in a statement on the internet, which was accompanied by pictures of the man’s driving license.

The group, headed by al-Qaeda’s frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said the victim was a US pilot.

“Your brothers in Al-Qaeda in the Land of Two Rivers got their hands on a US pilot who turned out to have bombarded several mosques and the Sheraton hotel in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, as well as several civilian homes,” the statement said.

“After questioning this infidel, the divine verdict was applied to him.”

There’s been no confirmation of this from the Pentagon or the US government.

A while back, the Jawa Report listed several civilian American hostages still being held in Iraq. The hostage in question, one Neenus Y. Khoshaba, was not listed in the Jawa’s report. However, as Rusty points out, that may not mean much:

It is unclear how many other American hostages are still being held or are missing in Iraq. The Pentagon has been tightlipped about non-military casualties leaving it to private companies to choose whether to release information to the public or not.

It’s also possible that an American citizen would be kidnapped and held for ransom by one of the numerous criminal gangs that have sprung up in Iraq following the chaos that ensued after liberation. It’s even possible that one of these gangs could have “sold” the victim to Zarqawi’s group.

The claim that Mr. Khoshaba was a pilot in the military is probably false. It would be pretty hard to keep something like the taking of American military personnel quiet for very long unless he was with the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency.

We haven’t heard from Mr. Zarqawi and his Merry Band of Beheaders in a while so this may be just a quick grab for cheap publicity. Then again, it may be real which would be very bad news.

Cross Posted at Blogger New Network

It seems probable that, unless they can be dissuaded by China, the North Koreans will indeed go through with a nuclear weapons test. This is extremely troubling news for the United States. But for South Korea and Japan, the news borders on the catastrophic:

The North Koreans are basically hellbent on proving to the world that they need to be taken seriously. That’s dangerous,” said Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

“A North Korean test would embarrass China and might actually rally other nations to our position. But the result might push Kim Jong Il to take whatever steps he felt were necessary to rally his people into war,” Weldon said.

Weldon, who led a delegation to North Korea in January, said he met last Monday in New York with North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Han Song Ryol, and told him, “If you do a test, you’re going to set this process back years and years, and it’s going to lead to consequences neither of us want.”

Geography and military reality are two reason that US options would be limited in the event of a weapons test. The North Koreans have thousands of heavy artillery pieces trained on Seoul, the South Korean capital. Any military action taken by the United States to destroy the North’s nuclear capability would probably be met by a conventional military response that would devastate the capitol city which lies just 30 miles from the Korean DMZ. This would start a war the US can’t afford to fight. With our military engaged in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s doubtful we could send enough help to stem the onslaught from the North Korean’s 1.2 million man army.

In addition, a North Korean nuclear test would cause a radical shift in Japanese defense priorities and philosophy:

The potential downside of a test is enormous,” said Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of defense for Asia in the Clinton administration. “It would set off a chain reaction in the region with completely impossible-to-predict consequences.”

It could even lead South Korea and Japan to rethink their current policy against nuclear arsenals, Campbell said.

North Korea says it has removed fuel rods from a reactor at its main nuclear complex — a step toward extracting weapons-grade plutonium. U.S. officials say spy satellites spotted the digging of a tunnel and the construction of a reviewing stand in northeast North Korea, possibly suggesting an upcoming test.

During the cold war, it was an important American policy goal to keep Asia relatively nuclear free. While China exploded it’s first bomb in 1964, their nuclear arsenal was aimed mainly at Russia. And Japan, whose constitution forbids an extensive defense establishment, was one of the worlds best nuclear citizens in that they followed all treaties and conventions regarding nuclear power and were noted for the transparency of their program.

Recently however, Japan has taken the first tentative steps toward projecting its military power beyond its shores. Their deployment of a tiny contingent to Iraq as well as their military assistance during the recent tsunami are the first real deployments since the end of WWII. In addition, by some estimates, the Japanese extensive nuclear power program has produced enough separated uranium over the years to make 10,000 nuclear warheads.

That’s only the first step, of course. As far as we know the Japanese don’t yet have the capability to turn that enriched uranium into weapons grade material or even if they have a design or delivery systems for a bomb. But Japan is the most technologically advanced society on the planet and it would seem logical to assume that the time between making a decision to go nuclear and having a nuclear capability would probably be measured in months.

China’s reaction to a nuclear Japan would be extremely negative. The Chinese haven’t forgotten the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1933 and the resulting devastation wreaked by the Japanese military on much of the country. If Japan felt compelled to go nuclear as the result of an overtly nuclear North Korea, it could trigger a nuclear arms race in Asia.

So what’s holding the North Korean’s back? More than any potential action by the United States, the North may be worried about angering their best trading partner, China. In the last year, China has almost singlehandedly kept the North Korean people from massive starvation as their deliveries of foodstuffs and energy is keeping Kim Jong Il’s “worker’s paradise” from collapsing altogether:

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar (news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., said he concluded from a recent meeting with Bush that the president expected other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — including Russia and China — to join him in seeking U.N. penalties against North Korea if there were a test.

China has indicated it opposes such action as a means of leverage over North Korea.

But Lugar said Bush “feels the Chinese … would take a dim view of the test, to say the least, and would be prepared to go to the U.N. if that is required.”

Clearly the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula is about ready to come to a head. Unless the US can get the North Koreans back to the bargaining table where the six powers involved - the US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea - can work to contain the crisis, the consequences flowing from a nuclear test by North Korea would change the face of politics and security in Asia forever.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

Okay…You asked for it and here it is…

For the next 48 hours (if I can figure out how) this post offering you, the reader, the opportunity to speculate to your hearts content on the multitude of loose ends that need to be tied up during the final two hours of the show will stay right at the top of this blog.

There are so many questions to be answered:

What happened to Behruz?
Is Dina really dead?
Will the President recover?
Who’s the mole?
Is there a mole?
Does anyone care if there is or isn’t a mole?
Who’s gonna die?
Michelle and Tony? Discuss among yourselves.
Jack and Audrey? Ditto.
Where did all the American turncoats come from?
Is the F-117 pilot who shot down Air Force One dead?
What about the Chinese?
Where’s the missile headed?
What about the “Iowa Cell.” Will they be caught?
Will Chloe and fat geek Edgar do the nasty nasty…geek style?

The big question for me and I suppose for everyone is “Who’s the mole?” If the writers decide not to have a mole then an entirely different set of loose ends present themselves like where did Marwan get the transponder codes to track the football and the like.

A general bit of speculation involves how the final two hours will play out. Help yourself on that one. I don’t have a clue.

ATTENTION: Please, for the love of God, NO SPOILERS! I understand that some sites that will remain nameless have some inside info. Please don’t ruin it for the rest of us. If you know something, keep it to yourself.

C’mon everyone! Dig in and help yourself to some pure fun! The wilder the better. Because if I know the writers, the wildest we can come up with will pale in comparison to what they’ve got in store for us Monday nite!

The Battle of Trafalgar as seen from HMS Victory

In English history, the Battle of Trafalgar is considered to be that nation’s greatest triumph. Not only did Admiral Nelson’s destruction of the Franco-Spainish fleet ensure that Napoleon’s plan to invade the British Isles would be frustrated, the battle set the stage for British supremacy on the seas for the next century.

In one glorious afternoon, the combination of British high technology ship construction and rigging along with the indomitable spirit of the British sailor beat the combined might of the French and Spainish fleets. It’s considered the most important sea battle in history.

This June, the Portsmouth ship yard will host dignataries from around the world to mark the 200th anniversary of that titanic contest. Plans are that a re-enactment of the battle will cap the festivities using high tech pyro-technics and lasers.

This should be a truly awesome sight and a marvelous show except for one tiny little detail; the PC police have struck with a vengance:

Organisers of a re-enactment to mark the bicentenary of the battle next month have decided it should be between “a Red Fleet and a Blue Fleet” not British and French/Spanish forces.

Otherwise they fear visiting dignitaries, particularly the French, would be embarrassed at seeing their side routed.

(HT: Sir George)

That’s right. In order not to upset the French, the combatants who took part in the battle will remain nameless. Even the name of the battle is to be expunged from the historical record for the day:

Even the official literature has been toned down. It describes the re-enactment not as the battle of Trafalgar but simply as “an early 19th-century sea battle”.

Frankly, I don’t see what the French should be so upset about. After all, they haven’t won a war since the middle ages. The fact that a couple of times in the 20th century they ended up on the winning side of a conflict is purely an accident. You couldn’t say that the French won WWII since the Petain government did everything they could to defeat the allies including actively opposing our landings in North Africa. And as far as WWI was concerned, by the time the war was over the French were almost ready to surrender anyway. Only the intervention of the United States in 1918 saved the French from a humiliating defeat.

But, deferring to French sensibilities (or insensibilities as the case may be) seems to be the thing to do in Europe these days. And maybe the Brits have the right idea. Maybe we should try something similar here.

Imagine the next time the Battle of the Little Bighorn is re-enacted. We wouldn’t have the US Army. We wouldn’t have Lakota warriors. We could have “shirts” and skins.” And we wouldn’t call it a battle between cultures or a conflict by Native Amerians to preserve their way of life. We could say it was “a disagreement over water rights” or “a misunderstanding about the intentions of the indigineous peoples of the prarie.”

Political correctness has become the bane of Western civilization. It has penetrated our schools, our art, our culture, our workplace, our government, and even our churches. Anyone who believes that this kind of doublespeak is harmless or is actually beneficial needs to take a second look.

The Canadians have “Language Police” who pursue and prosecute people for not obeying the law regarding bi-lingual signage. In America, any hint of religious expression in a public place will result in the ACLU slapping a lawsuit against you faster than you can say “bigot.” And the legions of leftists who police public thought on the airwaves are ready at a moment’s notice with the whiny, self-serving press release about all sorts of PC transgressions from incorrect language to improper thoughts.

Is there any hope that society will rise up and rid itself of this disease? Not as long as we continue to coddle the practioners of political correctness. If we were to simply ignore these social tyrants, there’s a chance they might simply give up and go home.

Yeah sure.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION: Will Rafuse. Visit Will at willrafuse.com.

Humorist Dave Barry has written a column in which he says, by implication, that dogs are better than cats. (HT: John at Right Wing News)

Mr. Barry is in error. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT CATS ARE SMARTER, MORE LOVELY, MORE DISCERNING, AND ULTIMATELY, MORE INTERESTING THAN DOGS.

There. I’ve said it. I’ve just angered the 52 million Americans who keep dogs as companions. Ask me if I care! It’s not my fault that 52 million of my fellow countrymen have been programmed by years of media bias to buy into the propaganda that dogs are “Man’s Best Friend.”

This debate has been raging for nearly 5,000 years. Ever since the African Wild Cat discovered that simply by looking cute and capturing a few mice, (making sure to drop the dead carcass at the feet of whichever human could be trained to feed it for doing such simple, boring work) cats have carried out the most massive hoodwinking in the natural history of the planet…and are laughing all the way to the litter box.

Defenders of dogs point out that canines do much better in laboratory studies comparing the innate intelligence of the two creatures. I, like all cat aficionados, laugh uproariously at the gullibility of both dog lovers and scientists who’d be stupid enough to try and administer ANY test to a cat. For you see, cats, like very smart children attending your average American public school, get extremely bored and frustrated if they’re not continuously challenged to expand their minds and broaden their horizons. Any test given to both dogs and cats by definition must necessarily be so insipidly moronic that dogs will inevitably do better due to the sheer and utter boredom inflicted on the cat.

In his column, Mr. Barry makes a virtue out of a dog’s single minded quest to please humans. He writes of a dog’s “special toy”"

“Finally I yank the Special Toy free and hold it triumphantly aloft. The dog watches it with laser-beam concentration, his entire body vibrating with excitement, waiting for me to throw it … waiting … waiting … until finally I cock my arm, and, with a quick motion I … fake a throw. I’m still holding the Special Toy. But WHOOOSH the dog has launched himself across the room, an unguided pursuit missile, reaching a velocity of 75 miles per hour before WHAM he slams headfirst into the wall at the far end of the room.”

I tried this trick once on my cat Ebony. For a while, she found it amusing to chase a plastic ball across the floor that was filled to the brim with catnip. Having already gotten high by gorging herself on the uncontrolled substance, she would temporarily take leave of her senses and imitate a dog by “retrieving” the ball by batting it back to me with her paw. She unerringly would bat the ball so that it came to rest directly at my feet EVERY TIME. Try having a dog even attempt something like that. Come to think of it, she was more accurate than some professional baseball players I’ve seen who play for the Cubs.

At any rate, after several successful retrievals I tried pulling the old fakearoo on her. She started off like a shot and then stopped dead in her tracks. She gave me the most scornful look of contempt she could muster, turned her back on me, and wandered off with her tail held high and swishing back and forth angrily.

She ignored me for two whole days.

I once read that “Dogs are from Mars and Cats are from Venus.” Whoever wrote that obviously has never been kept by cats. Cats aren’t from Venus…they’re extra-galactic. They’ve descended from somewhere near the outer fringes of the known universe where basic laws of physics don’t apply and intelligent life has taken on an ineffable quality unknown to man and beast alike. They are otherworldly.

Watching cats closely can be deceiving. When you see them staring off into space, you might think that they’re not thinking about anything, that they’re simply existing or perhaps waiting for their next meal. Nothing could be further from the truth. When cats stare off into space, they’re communing with their equals, the Gods.

Ordinary human chatter bores them to death. They see no reason to come when they’re called, sit, lie down, beg, or perform any of the stupid pet tricks that dogs have become famous for. Not only don’t they see any good reason to obey, but they realize that it would too revealing of their true nature if they began to behave the way that other animals do. Such a revelation would allow humans to take them for granted…something that would be utterly disastrous for a cats relationship to its slave. For if humans were to place the cat on the same plane as a dog, the beast wouldn’t be able to manipulate its charge into doing exactly what it wants when it wants it done.

T.S. Elliot’s collection of 14 poems “The Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” (from which the Broadway musical “Cats” was derived) contains one particular poem that perfectly describes a cat’s uniqueness. Entitled, “The Naming of Cats,” the poem reflects on why cats are so special:

But I tell you a cat needs a name that’s particular
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Elliot, an extremely perceptive judge of catdom, points out that, in addition to the name we give our beloveds, the cat also has another name:

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over
And that is the name that you never will guess
The name that no human research can discover
But the cat himself knows and will never confess

When you notice a cat in profound meditation
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name
His ineffable, effable, effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name

We don’t wonder if a dog has a name that it gives itself. The very concept of a dog doing anything without human approval is foreign to its nature. Not so, the cat. I wouldn’t be surprised if cats have names for US! I’m sure they would be impossible to pronounce and would be extremely unflattering. After all, cats know full well that they’re the center of our universe.

Perhaps that’s why we love them so.

In honor of Armed Forces Day, I thought it would be appropriate to hear from someone who is directly affected - in a true-to-life-and-death way - by the anti-military bias so prevalent in the MSM.

Dadmanly bills his blog as “Just one man’s point of view, from the heart of Mesopotamia.” The uncommon common man just happens to be one of the more eloquent and passionate members of our military I’ve read to date.

Following the Newsweek imbroglio, Dadmanly had some thoughts that go straight to the heart and soul of the issue of consequences. Consequences for the troops. Consequences for the American people. Consequences for our image abroad:

You are creating greater risk for me personally. You are creating incredible hostility in Muslim countries due to incessant negative reporting out of context and ignoring orders of magnitude of good news in doing so. Yet, in your jaded imaginations, you believe every misconception you spin is ever more confirmation of what you always knew about the U.S. Military. These unrelenting Vietnam analogies are like press versions of drug addled flashbacks.

You create added danger for my soldiers. You feed into enemy (yes, enemy) propaganda efforts in yielding unlimited access to pre-staged voices with calculated intent. You are entirely ignorant of the countries you claim to cover, and you know as little about the U.S. Military, its culture, climate, training, procedures, and ways of operation. You diminish and demean our service.

You cause greater concern, fear and worry for our friends and family. You expand pinpoints of data into grossly distorted exaggerations of fact, and paint broad brush strokes of violence without any context or comparison to relative levels elsewhere. You have no sense of proportion or equivalence. You have no regard for collateral damage, and yet see imagined carnage with every surgical strike, precision bomb, or targeted raid. You can speak of cities destroyed with the destruction of a single building.

Lack of “context” is something that seems to me to be the biggest sin of the MSM. In fact, this is why the charge of bias rings so true. Dadmanly points out that every major accusation of abuse came not from the press, but from the military itself.

We are proud of our Military, our Country, and how, for over 200 years, the U.S. has tried to improve both ourselves and the world around us, usually for little thanks and much scorn and insult. We police ourselves. Every scandal you report, from My Lai to Iran Contra to Abu Ghraib, has been first reported to authorities by military personnel. And that has resulted in prosecutions and punishment. And what do you stress in your reporting? The sins, crimes, and misdemeanors and rarely if ever remark on the ability and willingness for us to identify and correct malfeasance in our ranks.

Never, never claim to support the soldiers, you don’t, you never will in any meaningful way until you can see your prejudices for what they are, work to eliminate them, and for once try to view the world with an open and not a closed mind. You need to rethink how you consider the idea of a just war after 9/11. You need to acknowledge that you don’t know the modern U.S. Military or the men and women who serve.

As an example, yesterday’s New York Times carried a 5000 word screed on the deaths of two Afghans at Bagram Air Force base back in 2002. It isn’t until the 20th paragraph that we find out that after completing its investigation, the army feels that charges should be brought against 27 individuals:

Even though military investigators learned soon after Mr. Dilawar’s death that he had been abused by at least two interrogators, the Army’s criminal inquiry moved slowly. Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to a high-level Army inquiry last year, Captain Wood applied techniques there that were “remarkably similar” to those used at Bagram.

Last October, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.

So the New York Times is pissed that the army 1) took so long and 2) didn’t keep the press updated throughout the investigation. By burying information that, if placed upfront, would have put the entire incident in a different context, the Times writers proved themselves to be either lousy journalists or horribly biased.

Which do you believe it is?

Go read the whole rant by this dedicated soldier. On Armed Forces Day, it’s the least you can do.

There will be light posting this weekend for a variety of reasons:

1. Cubs-White Sox. Need I say more?
2. I’m working on two different articles for publication.
3. Yardwork beckons…and beckons. I may blow it off for another weekend - but risk sleeping alone.
4. Got the first three discs of Sci-Fi Channel’s mini-series “Taken.” Sue and I missed it when it was on last year so we plan on watching it tonight and tomorrow.

I’ll have something up this afternoon around 4:00 pm with the same tomorrow.

For all of you who may have discovered this site in the last few days, may I suggest browsing the archives? I’m particularly proud of the “History” archives. And for some good laughs at the left’s expense there’s Marvin Moonbat, my fictional next door neighbor and the general “Moonbat” category.

Thanks for stopping by…Y’all come back.

About a half an hour ago, my sitemeter registered the 50,000 visitor since February 12 which is when I officially got off Blogspot and opened the New and Improved Rightwing Nuthouse. To everyone who visits on a regular basis, I’d like to say a great big “Thank You” and hope you continue to visit the House for news, opinion, and a few laughs.

And to all who wrote such supportive comments and sent nice emails about my defense of my brother I’d like to also say thank you. For those who weren’t so supportive and sent nasty, insulting emails…

Get stuffed.

If timing is everything in politics, somebody should give Canadian Tory Leader Stephen Harper a stopwatch.

Five weeks ago, the Tories were riding high as revelation after revelation from the Gomery inquiry into the Liberal Party’s electoral slush fund drove the approval numbers of Prime Minister Paul Martin’s ruling party lower than the attendance figures at an old Montreal Expos game. At that point, Harper was in the catbird seat as far as calling for a no-confidence vote in Martin’s increasingly shaky government.

But then Mr. Harper gambled. He decided to wait a while to see if even more damaging revelations would come out of the Gomery hearings. His theory was sound. Wait for the momentum caused by the ugly political scandal to build up to the point that the conservatives, who needed plenty of help in order to bring down the government, could rely on other minority parties to vote their way in any no confidence vote.

The gamble failed:

After his defeat on a vote designed to force a spring election, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper finds himself today with a chunk of his political capital spent, a temperamental image with the Canadian public, and some members of his party sniping at him for what they believe was the frittering away of the massive advantage given to him by the sponsorship scandal.

“He lost sight of the big picture,” one senior Tory said.

“You get so consumed by what’s going on in Parliament, sometimes you forget what it looks like from the outside.”

Harper didn’t help his cause when he got a sudden and severe case of foot in mouth disease:

The first questions about the Harper strategy began to surface after Prime Minister Paul Martin pledged in a speech to the nation to hold an election within 30 days of the report of Mr. Justice John Gomery. In his televised response, Mr. Harper kicked off what was to become a pattern of personal irritation, calling the Prime Minister a sad spectacle.

Later, he told the Commons that Mr. Martin’s career was going down the toilet, and, in perhaps the most controversial remark of all, accused the Prime Minister of waiting for two cancer-stricken MPs to get sicker so they could not make the budget vote.

MMMM…Harper is a conservative but he’d fit in right smartly with our Democratic party, I think.

So while Harper and the conservatives were skewering the liberals in Parliament and the media, the canny Martin was doing a little gambling himself - and with much better results. First, he locked up the New Democrats (NDP) with, what I would call (but Canadian readers have told me otherwise) a shameless budget bribe to increase spending by $9 billion.

Then, he took advantage of a political faux pas by Harper:

Then, in an effort to demonstrate that the Liberals had lost the moral authority to govern, Mr. Harper and his colleagues shut down the House of Commons, a move that one consultant said actually took the heat off the Liberals, who were being battered daily by testimony at the Gomery inquiry.

“Rule one in politics is that when your opponent is in the process of destroying himself, you don’t get in the way,” said Rick Anderson, who was an adviser to Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform Party. The rushed attempt to force an election interrupted what was a growing consensus that the Liberals needed to go.

This is the kind of advice our Republican Senate leaders should listen to. Instead, the Republicans are playing the Democrats game and what’s worse, on their playing field.

Finally, Harper experienced the biggest shocker of all; a high profile MP Belinda Stronach defected to the Liberal Party - in return for a Cabinet post:

Tories and other observers call the loss of former leadership foe Belinda Stronach to the Liberals the ultimate mistake. But Mr. Harper was also blamed for taking the heat off the Liberals by bringing controversy on himself.

Game, set, match, Martin.

The vote was close; 152 to 152, the tie being broken in favor of Martin by the Speaker. But a miss is as good as a mile. And Martin, who has promised elections next fall following the report by Judge Gomery on the scandal, has plenty of time to repair the party’s battered image.

Here’s the Captain on Harper’s future as leader of the conservatives:

Harper made some odd decisions in this fight, and all played against him. Telling people that this vote was an all-or-nothing one-shot deal was his biggest mistake. In light of the corruption already exposed in Ottawa, Harper should have instead made clear that he will not stop until the Liberals were kicked out. He made the decision to drop his challenge to the earlier motions which should have qualified as no-confidence votes for no return whatsoever, a decision which legitimized yesterday’s vote. Harper also failed to come to terms with Canadian ambivalence about his own political image; since he was in effect running for PM, he needed to make his case more publicly for that position. A slew of polls resulted in some contradictory numbers but showed a trend swinging back to the Liberals, driven mostly by a distrust of his leadership, and that needed immediate addressing.

Lastly, though, Harper may have been undone by his own basic honesty. During this entire episode, Harper made clear what he wanted to do and was aboveboard in his efforts to topple the Liberals. Harper clearly underestimated Martin and overestimated the man’s ethics. Harper appeared unprepared for the garage sale that Martin kicked off, buying the NDP with a budget package and Stronach with a second-tier ministerial position. Anyone who paid attention to the Gomery Inquiry should have known better, but even I was pretty amazed at how baldly Martin and his cohorts sold out Canada just to squeeze past the no-confidence vote.

Harper seems like a decent sort. Not flamboyant but certainly earnest and hardworking. As the Captain pointed out, he didn’t try to arrive at the no confidence vote using subterfuge or misdirection. He was straight and upfront about it.

Whether those are the qualities the Tory party wants in a leader as they go into elections this fall remains to be seen.

Keep on the sunnyside
Always on the sunnyside
Keep on the sunnyside of life.
It will help us every day
It will brighten all our way
If we keep on the sunnyside of life.

(Words and Music By Al Carter and Gary Garett)

The fact that Americans are always looking on the sunny side of life has evidently stunned pollsters and members of the MSM. How can this be, they must be asking themselves? After all, we do our best day after day to be so gloomy we could make a hyena weep. Not so, says a poll taken by the New Jersey Medical School in Newark and conducted by McLaughlin and Associates:

The American spirit is alive and well: A landmark study released yesterday from a New Jersey medical school finds that the majority of us are overwhelmingly optimistic about the future, even if catastrophe looms on the horizon.

A sampling: 82 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 feel optimistic about their futures; 82 percent of those ages 25 to 44 do so as well; and 75 percent of those ages 45 to 64 and 64 percent of those 65 or older agree. Only 15 percent to 22 percent of the respondents say they have grown more pessimistic over the past five years.

And the press still wonders what people saw in Ronald Reagan?

What makes this study even more remarkable is the realistic view of the world and world events that people have which is conspicuously pragmatic as to what might happen:

Not all respondents were wearing rose-colored lenses, however: Between two-thirds and three-quarters of those in all the age groups fear the United States will suffer a biological or nuclear attack in the next 20 years.

Thirty percent to 40 percent feel the country can solve all or most of its problems, yet it doesn’t deter the hopeful feelings. Across the board, 75 percent still insist they are optimistic about their futures, despite the global threats.

It’s been a hallmark of the American race for more than 200 years to look to the future and dream. We dream of a better life for our children, a better world for them to inherit. But why is this? In the face of some truly scary scenarios and despite the relentless negativity of the media, Americans still see a hopeful future. Is there something that might…just might be exceptional about this?

I know it terribly unfashionable and downright un-PC of me to even mention out loud the words “American Exceptionalism” but the fact is even if the politically correct left doesn’t believe in the concept the American people obviously do. Simply put, there is no other country on the planet - not in tired old Europe or the go-go economic miracle countries of Asia - where this spirit of optimism and hope is so imprinted on people’s psyches and taken as an article of semi-religious faith that it manifests itself in concrete, measurable economic and social accomplishments.

When people are looking to the future, they work harder, are measurably healthier, and by and large happier than people who are fearful of what’s to come. Nobel Prize winning economist Julian Simon spoke of this on several occasions.

Not to mention that optimists are generally easier to be around and get along with as anyone can attest.

Ultimately, it just goes to show that politicians (and pundits) should never underestimate the wisdom of the American people. And the best politicians are always the ones who appeal to “The better angels of our nature” as Lincoln said rather than the darkness that always seems to be gathering just over the horizon.

Also see:

Daily Pundit
Questions and Observations