THE BRAINS OF A “CLARK” BAR

General “Dugout” Wesley Clark is an asshole.

Appearing on Fox and Friends this morning, Clark said the following:

“If George Bush had grasped the reins of government, 9/11 wouldn’t have happened.”

Clark, who’s press briefings during the war in Kosovo were legendary exercises in self-promotion and hubris, has finally come out and said in plain English what John Kerry has been only hinting at for 6 months: George Bush is to blame for 9/11.

Forget that the major plotters of 9/11 all came in and out this country during the Clinton Administration as if the nation’s borders were a revolving door.

Forget that the Clinton Administration failed to penetrate the plot and, in fact, made it impossible for the CIA and FBI to share information thus insuring the success of the strike.

Forget that the Clinton Administration had Osama Bin Laden in their sights on at least two occasions and failed to pull the trigger (not to mention refusing the offer from Sudan to have OBL turned over to the US in chains).

Forget that BOTH the 9/11 Commission AND the Senate Intelligence Committee report cleared the Bush Administration of just such a baseless, partisan, charge.

We have less than 48 hours before people start going to the polls and this…this…self-aggrandizing, self-important, lickspittle of a political HACK says something so outrageous, so untrue, so UNAMERICAN (didn’t Osama just say that less than 48 hours ago?) that it makes one wonder how this worthless piece of human waste got to be an important cog in the Kerry campaign.

After all…didn’t Michael Moore endorse him for President?

WHY SO CLOSE?

Ron Brownstein of the LA Times, while being pretty much of a Kerry partisan, has a thoughtful article in Sunday’s Times about the polarization of the country.

He attributes the rabid partisanship to the way George Bush has governed:

“With his repeated tax cuts, his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and the war in Iraq, Bush has consistently pursued goals that generate strong support among Republicans and conservatives, but at the price of provoking antipathy among Democrats and liberals.”

While giving Bush his just due for his leadership following 9/11, Brownstein takes Bush to task for his political strategy:

“In his political strategy, he has sought more to deepen his support among groups that lean in his direction than to broaden his appeal among groups that have resisted him.”

This may be true…but why? Brownstein makes a stab at it:

“The war in Iraq blew away the last fragments of post-9/11 unity. Indeed, in its political effect, the war has functioned like a social issue such as abortion. It has divided the country most profoundly along cultural, not economic, lines — thus reinforcing and even intensifying the divisions evident in 2000.”

That’s only part of it.

The reason this country is divided happened BEFORE the war in Iraq even started. In fact, the Iraq conflict is a SYMPTOM of what’s really eating at Democrats:

GEORGE BUSH IS NOT THE LEGITIMATELY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Although 9/11 temporarily lessened the anger Democrat’s felt over the 2000 election, their actions and rhetoric leading up to 9/11 and prior to the 2002 election proves that whatever unity was demonstrated following the attacks it was but a temporary respite from the most virulent and personal assaults on a sitting President in living memory. (BTW, did the far left EVER recognize the President as legitimate?)

The “instant” myth making of the MSM that somehow, before the Iraq war, we were a united country is belied by the facts. This from “Common Dreams,” a liberal magazine, in 2002:

“The Harken-Halliburton attack on Iraq is Stage Two of the coup d’etat that began with the installation of an unelected president. It could be completed November 5 with the final capture of the House and Senate.”

This is BEFORE the invasion and subsequent problems of reconstruction. At the time, Americans were behind the invasion by a 2-1 margin.

What’s a President to do when there IS no loyal opposition?

Lincoln faced a very similar problem in 1864. With the Democrats at that time opposed to his war policies as well as his proposed reconstruction policies, Lincoln was forced by circumstance to rely on the Republican “bitter enders” who helped him drive the war to its successful, bloody conclusion. Bush, faced with a situation where 40% of the electorate thinks him illegitimate, must rely on HIS conservative base to win a second term.

Pray God whoever wins gets some kind of mandate to govern.


WHY WE FIGHT (PART IV)

Why is it that the Bush-Cheney team has to rely so much on others to make the best case for the war in Iraq?

John McCain’s speech at the Republican Convention was a strong, straightforward, point by point annunciation of the Administrtaion’s rationale for going to war:

“The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal.”

“Our choice wasn’t between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not our critics abroad. Not our political opponents.”

And Norman Podhoretz’s outstanding piece in “Commentary Magazine” puts the Iraq War in the context of the GWOT…and in the context of historical forces at work in Iraq and the middle east:

“For today, no less than in those titanic conflicts, we are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands. It is this, then, that (to paraphrase George W. Bush and a long string of his predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike) we in our turn, no less than the “greatest generation” of the 1940’s and its spiritual progeny of the 1950’s and after, have a responsibility to uphold and are privileged to defend.”

And now, Bill at INDC has made another sterling case for fighting in Iraq and linking it to the broader GWOT. He does so in the context of the re-election campaign, making the point that this inability of the Bush Administration to communicate the underlying strategic rationale for the war is not only hampering its re-election efforts, but putting the US in grave danger”

“In this sense, the difficulty of the task renders me far more forgiving than the author regarding the Bush Administration’s failure to adequately communicate rationale and setbacks during the war. I’d rather have flawed leadership that takes action and unfortunately risks flagging political will than an Administration that does the opposite. But make no mistake – if we return to a never-never-land that embraces diplomatic processes that have been exposed time and time again as failures, through a corrupt multilateral organization that’s merits are not adequately adjusted for the self-interest of its member states, we greatly increase the chances of decline and ultimate catastrophe for the United States, within a generation.”

Bill links to an article in “Esquire” by Walter Russell Meade, whose book “Power, Terror, Peace and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk” was the best birthday present I received this year. Mr. Meade examines the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq and compares their efforts to Lincoln (note: see my post above for more Lincoln comparisons).

“Lincoln made a lot of mistakes in that war. There were times when things looked very bleak for the United States. International public opinion was on the side of the South. Enormous scandals rocked the government, analysts and pundits blasted Lincoln’s administration, and even his allies sometimes despaired.
But Lincoln knew that he had to hold on, to fight the war through thick and thin, to engage the enemy and grind him down with the North’s superior numbers and wealth. In Grant he found the general who could fight this kind of warfare: ugly, costly, and at times ruinously unpopular.”

Read Bill’s entire post.

I don’t know about you, but the fact that Osama Bin Laden is alive and apparently well enough to stand behind a podium for 17 minutes without collapsing scares the holy livin’ bejeebeez out of me.

I know I should be braver. I know I should laugh in the face of death, spit in the eye of this tormenter, this murderer of innocents, this completely worthless piece of human excremento extreminium (pig latin people…don’t go running to look it up in your “Ceasar’s Commentaries).” Couple this tape with the video of Our American Cousin who just happens to have gone over to help Al Qaeda create their Halloween costumes (Osama as a ghost? Ayman al-Zawahiri as the Wicked Witch of the West?) and we may be in for a very rough few days. The Capn’ thinks so:

“This portends something unpleasant. That makes two videotaped “warnings” to the US, which may signal some action upcoming in the immediate future. Al-Jazeera only played one minute of the video statement, probably to minimize the possibility of inadvertently broadcasting any coded messages to remote cells. Since Madrid, we’ve expected to see some action from AQ to rattle us or affect the election, and it may be that the tapes are all they have—but of course, we don’t know that.”

I think you’ve got your sails trimmed correctly here, Capn’. If I lived in New York, Washington, Los Angeles…or Algonquin, IL for that matter (we’re less than 50 miles from Chicago) I would make some simple, common sense preparations today. Enough canned food to live without electricity for a couple of weeks to start. Batteries for the flashlight…I’m sure you all could think of something to do that would make you just a little more prepared for whatever comes…or doesn’t.

Looking at the tape from a purely political point of view (hard to do) David Limbaugh has hit the nail on the head (he even predicted it) with Kerry’s now discredited “outsourcing” meme on Tora Bora:

“Can you believe this? After he praised the mission at the time! After Tommy Franks was very clear that no one was sure he was there. After he knows we had Special Forces in there!”

I CAN believe it, David. The note of desperation creeping into Kerry’s campaign since the Al Qaqaa fiasco started to completely unravel 48 hours ago reached its zenith yesterday with Kerry SCREAMING in a high pitched, whiney voice for Americans to “Wake up!” (significant Otherhawk noticed it and was amazed).

Kerry’s internal numbers must be dropping like a stone for him to take this tack. This deliberate attempt to divide the American people over the Bin Laden tape shows that perhaps Kerry’s only hope IS a massive terrorist strike that will make him look like a prophet and swing the election his way. At the very least, he’s trying one last time to firm up his base (isn’t it a little late in the game to bring in a starting pitcher?)

How about Wretchard’s take on this…that OBL is surrendering?

“There is no more anticipation that Islam will sweep the world. He is no longer boasting that Americans run at the slightest wounds; that they are more cowardly than the Russians. He is not talking about future operations to swathe the world in fire but dwelling on past glories. He is basically saying if you leave us alone we will leave you alone. Though it is couched in his customary orbicular phraseology he is basically asking for time out.”

Ordinarily I’d say, “wishful thinking friend” except that our buddy at the Belmont Club is one of the smartest people on the net. When he talks, we listen.

Ace, in fisking Mickey Kaus’s ridiculous notion that Osama is “straddling” between Bush and Kerry makes a great point:

“Hmmmm… that picks up directly on a John Kerry attack. If he’s “straddling” between the men, I wonder, where are the Swift Vets references? Seems to me he might have poked fun at Kerry’s three, ahem, Purple Hearts. Everyone else has (except partisan liberals, natch).”

Which brings us to the Fundamental Question…the Urian Query…the absurdo infinitium inquiritos.

WHY THE HELL MAKE A TAPE USING MICHAEL MOORE TALKING POINTS?

Here’s Hindrocket:

“Do you suppose there are any Democrats honest enough to be embarrassed that Osama bin Laden has enthusiastically adopted their campaign themes?”

Perhaps the rat knows OUR rats better than we give him credit for. Maybe he knows our our rats better than WE do. I think he’s trying to divide us. Jeff Goldstein illustrates:

“Ellis Henican, appearing on “The O’Reilly Factor,” called UBL “crafty,” and is convinced bin Laden wants Bush re-elected-that today’s speech was a “crafty” effort to push stupid Americans in that direction. Thankfully, Ellis arrived to redirect the rubes.”

CW says that this is a Kerry campaign commercial. Kerry aides are talking about the tape as if that’s what OBL WANTS us to think but he’s really pushing Bush. And then there’s Walter Cronkite:

“So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, IÂ’m a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing…” (HT: Polipundit)

(Superhawk sighs and shakes his head sadly, remembering when Walter was “The Most Trusted Man in America”).

If we ARE hit in the next 72 hours…it’s going to be a mess.

How many Iraqi’s have died in the invasion and its aftermath?

Dr. Les Roberts has the answer…or not.

“An estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.” (NY Times, 10/29)

Dr. Roberts, an epidemiologist and environmental engineer who works for the International Rescue Committee, headed up the survey which interviewed all of 1,000 Iraqi families.

“In the study, teams of researchers led by Dr. Les Roberts fanned out across Iraq in mid-September to interview nearly 1,000 families in 33 locations. Families were interviewed about births and deaths in the household before and after the invasion.

Although the authors acknowledge that data collection was difficult in what is effectively still a war zone, the data they managed to collect is extensive. Using what they described as the best sampling methods that could be applied under the circumstances, they found that Iraqis were 2.5 times more likely to die in the 17 months following the invasion than in the 14 months before it.”

“The best sampling methods that could be applied under the circumstances?” What the hell does that mean?

“The researchers said they were highly technical in their selection of interview sites and data analysis, although interview locations were limited by the decision to cut down on driving time when possible in order to reduce the risk to the interviewers.”

“Cut down on driving time?” Are they kidding?

“The research team decided that asking for death certificates in each case, during the interviews, might cause hostility and could put the research team in danger.”

So, let’s get this straight…You don’t go very far from Baghdad because the surrounding environs are too dangerous and where civilian casualties will thus be greater and to put the icing on your study you don’t check to see if the people who you’re interviewing are telling the truth?

This gets better…

“Some of those killed may have been insurgents, not civilians, the authors noted. Also, the rise in deaths included a rise in murders and some deaths were caused by the decline of medical care.”

Terrorists…insurgents…murders…and “the decline in MEDICAL CARE?”

Something is fishy here. After all, the anti-war group Iraq Body Count.net puts the civilian death toll in Iraq at a maximum of 16,289. And they include:

“... civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation.”

Whom to believe? Could there be another motivation for Dr. Roberts et. al. to release this hit piece?

“Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online Friday, apparently so it could circulate before the election.”

Don’t you love the NY Times ability to understate a fact?

Why publicize this study in the first place? With all the qualifiers, (that, of course, appear at the end of the article) the political bias of the group that participated in this project should be obvious. Even the Times acknowledges this:

“But Dr. Roberts and his colleagues are critical of the Bush administration and the Army for not releasing estimates of civilian deaths.”

I’ll bet.

Simply put, this study is a load of crap. And it does an enormous disservice to history and to the Iraqi people who someday, will have to deal with this episode in their history and will need the most accurate information possible in order to come to terms with Saddam and the aftermath of his bloody rule.


WHY WE FIGHT

Varifrank is a blog I’ve linked to on several occassions because I think the posts are amongst the best written, most reasoned and impassioned posts on the election around.

Go here now. And don’t come back until you’ve read the entire post. Look at the pictures while repeating what the poster wants you to repeat. AND THEN YOU COME BACK HERE AND TELL ME THAT WE SHOULDN’T HAVE LIBERATED IRAQ.

(Warning: Disturbing and graphic images)


UPDATE: KERRY’S DISCHARGE “LESS THAN HONORABLE”

Via Powerline.

“We got it finally. We have the Former Secretary of the Navy who stated, “Yes, Kerry did receive an Other Than Honorable Discharge”.

While the credibility of the report has not been assesed, the number of rumors floating around the last few weeks about Kerry’s discharge have been astounding. The most credible info I’ve seen suggests that Kerry has not revealed his standard DD214 discharge paper that everyone gets when they’re discharged from the service. Here’s more on that from Buzz Patterson published in “Human Events Online.” (Hat Tip: LIttle Green Footballs)

Patterson found a cover letter in Kerry’s military file posted on his campaign website that suggested there had been a change in the status of his discharge after he left the service. Most speculation centered on the year 1978 when Jimmy Carter gave a general amnesty to all Viet Nam era protestors. Kerry’s traitorous activities would be something that would certainly be in need of offical “pardoning”; something I suspect most people reading this will never do.

SEE ALSO:

Pat at Kerryhaters has been directing traffic on this story for weeks. He has a link to “A New Conservative Voice” who’s writing a letter to Sean Hannity asking his help.

Good morning, Mr. Kerry. I hope you slept well. By the way, sir, have you seen the “Washington Times” this morning?

“RUSSIA TIED TO IRAQ MISSING ARMS”

John Kerry’s Presidential campaign died today. It expired as a result of the extraordinary desperation and hubris of its candidate who, in what could only be termed a “hail mary” pass attempt to finally overtake the incumbent, ended up with the quarterback flat on his ass and seeing stars.

Kerry gambled that the “missing” weapons stocks in Iraq would be his ticket to the White House. He has now lost that gamble with the shocking revelations contained in the WA Times article.

It seems that our friends in Moscow assisted the Butcher of Baghdad in spiriting out of Iraq huge stockpiles of weapons and explosives to Syria,. Lebanon, and even Iran. The weapons transfer occurred in March, 2003 before the war.

Evidently, the Russkies were more interested in destroying the paper trail of violations of the the arms embargo imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War than in the weapons themselves. While probably no WMD was part of this transfer, chemical precursors were involved.

The reports are too detailed, too precise to be figments of the Administration’s imagination.

“John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad”

“The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units,” Mr. Shaw said. “Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units.”

“Most of Saddam’s most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.”

Shaw said that he confirmed this information with two separate European intelligence services who were familiar with the Russo-Iraqi arms transfers.

“Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.”

“Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border,” the defense official said.

This is unbelievable. This cuts the heart, the soul and the testicles out of Kerry’s Iraq critique. The Russians were violating the UN arms embargo with impunity. Does anyone wanna guess if the French had a similar “arrangement” with Saddam? How about the Chinese?

Read the whole article. It’s a bombshell!

One question the Democrats will be asking tomorrow is if Bush was aware of this, why not tell everyone about it?

First, we’ve got to work with the Russians in the war on terror. No sense in antagonizing them unnecessarily. My guess is that Rove & Co. didn’t like what they were seeing over the last 48 hours of polling and figured it was time to go public to save Bush’s Presidency…which is fine with me, although the damage done to our relationship with Putin may be extensive.

Second, why let Syria know that we know, that they know where those missing weapons are? Here, the Bush administration is on shakier ground as far as releasing information that could compromise some future plans we might have for Syria. Given the alternative, let’s worry about picking up the pieces AFTER the election.


UPDATE: OH THOSE CRAZY RUSSIANS

Bill at INDC has some startling information with regards to our erstwhile “allies” in Moscow.

March 24, 2003

“Tensions increase between the United States and Russia. The United States charged the Russians of supposed deliveries of Russian weapons in Iraq. The spokesman of the American President, Ari Fleischer, rejected denials of Moscow and assured that Washington has “evidence” of these deliveries, which could give the Iraqis invaluable assets against the Anglo-American forces. Devices listed are binoculars for night vision, GPS units, and anti-tank missiles.

Bill speculates we knew the Russians were up to something both before and during the war. To that end, there was an apparent attempt to interfere with the Russian operations by ambushing a Russian convoy headed towards Syria:

“The coalition special operations HQ were sure that the embassy column would contain secret devices taken from military equipment captured by Iraqis. In this connection one cannot shut out the possibility of “revenge”from the coalition command.”

Read the entire post…especially the very interesting links to sources of information I wasn’t aware of…

The other big issue raised by the Gertz article was the apparent violations of Russia (and probably others) of the UN arms embargo imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War. In fact, Gertz has written a book detailing French duplicity in this regard. What makes these revelations so serious is the impunity with which the international community routinely violated the sanctions against Iraq. “Grown-up nations” as Kofi Annan called France and Russia were not only up to their armpits in the ever-unfolding Oil For Food scandal, but actually sold banned materials to Saddam as if the UN didn’t even exist. (Note: The next time you hear that santimonious son of a bitch Chirac dissing the US for acting unilaterally, throw your popcorn at the TV like I plan to. That kind of hypocrisy deserves to be answered with a glove to the face and pistols, at dawn, at 20 paces).

In the cold light of dawn here, what’s becoming depressingly clear is that the UN is worse than a hollow shell, it is in fact an obstacle to peace in any form, of any kind. How can the United States in good conscience follow the dictates of an organization, so corrupt, so filled with cynicism, graft, and outright thievery that it won’t enforce it’s most fundamental dictums and instead, turns a blind eye to these kinds of outrageous violations of its OWN rules?

Is it time to marginalize the United Nations? Certainly the UN does a decent job of pooling international resources when it comes to humanitarian efforts. The World Health Organization has virtually eliminated smallpox and malaria which combined to kill millions in the past. And the various UN agencies that assist when refugee crisis arise are, despite the horrible conditions of most of these camps, doing a job that would be done piecemeal and ineffectively if left to the international community (read the United States) to resolve.

But when it comes to the BIG issue of war and peace, the UN is an impediment to either preventing war or keeping the peace. Perhaps it’s time to stop pretending that the UN can make a difference in these matters and turn the UN into a supranational relief organization. It might upset some of the fat cat envoys and bureaucrats who make their living trying to outdo one another in their anti-American rhetoric…but it might just be the biggest contribution to world peace since the US Army rolled into Baghdad.


EXPLANATION: SO THAT’S WHAT A TRACKBACK IS FOR

Jeff at Backcountry Conservative did a post on blogging etiquette that surprised and embarrassed me. I had always thought a trackback was for directing readers to related posts on the same story or subject. Imagine my horror when I discover that it’s customary to LINK BACK to the post you’re tracking back!

While ignorance is no excuse (I’ve only been blogging since late Sept.), I want to apologize for any violations of this etiquette and I assure one and all I will endeavor to do better in the future.


ALERT!: COMRADES! MAN THE BARRICADES!

TO ARMS! TO ARMS!

Comrade Commissar has been kidnapped and taken hostage…by himself!

“The Commissar, who is holding himself hostage, was seized last week while at his New York office. The Commissar, 50, was born in America and has lived and worked in America for 30 years and is married to an American. He holds American citizenship.”

Our beloved apparatchik is in mortal danger…he has threatened to behead himself unless his demands that the US remain in Iraq and all female prisoners in Iraq be executed are met.

Comrade Commissar needs your unwavering support and obedience at this terrible time. All good little socialists will IMMEDIATELY go here and receive marching orders.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION! LONG LIVE SOCIALIST FRATERNAL FEELINGS! LONG LIVE OUR BELOVED COMMISSAR!

Any citizen not showing sufficient sympathy and support for our Commissar shall be immediately executed.


UPDATE: IS THERE A PRAYER FOR SOLDIERS GOING OFF TO WAR?

Kevin at Boots on the Ground is going back to Iraq. He found this out on his birthday.

“The bad thing is, it’s my birthday today, and my family don’t even know about it yet. They don’t even know how I’m now stopped loss and wont be able leave the Army the actual date my enlist ends, which is in March. I don’t know if telling my family on my birthday that I have going back to Iraq soon is such a good idea.”

Read the whole post. Anyone who knows a prayer for soldiers going off to war…say one for Kevin and all of our protectors that they come back to their loved ones.

Reading Kevin’s post reminded me (and I think we all need reminding) that this war we’re advocating is taking our best and bravest away from their families…some for a while, some forever. The right we take for granted to be cheerleaders and armchair generals is WHAT THEY FIGHT AND DIE FOR. It’s impossible to overstate the feeling of humility that these strong young men and women give me to be blessed to live in a country which produces such loyalty and devotion.

Stephen Ambrose, in his book “Citizen Soldiers” talks about the gamble Hitler took in WW II. Hitler believed that young men who grew up in his totalitarian, regimented society would be able to outfight the young men who grew up in the freedom and, what he considered, the “decadence” of America. Guess who won.

The Greatest Generation? The American Generation.

For two days now, the best minds and resources of the blogosphere have been concentrated on digging into what’s become known as “nytrogate,” the hit job by CBS and the New York Times on the President that purports to show the Administration’s incompetence in guarding Iraqi ammo dumps following the fall of Baghdad.

Excellent work has been done by Captains Quarters, Powerline, Wizbang and Just One Minute to name a few. These and other center-right blogs have examined in minute detail every possible aspect of the Times story, including finding soldiers with the 3rd ID who were first to arrive on the Al Qaqaa site and testified to the fact that the 380 tons of explosives may in fact have been moved by Saddam before the war even started.

The effort has been as intense and as thorough as the effort devoted to Rathergate. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter one iota.

On election day, perhaps as many as 110 million Americans will go to the polls. The purpose of this piece was to move a very small percentage of that number-perhaps two percent-away from voting for President Bush and towards voting for John Kerry.

That’s a four point swing. And in this election, that could be the ballgame.

All of the fact checking, research, and intelligent speculation done by the collective wisdom of the blogosphere is going for naught because true or false, right or wrong, the story HAS DONE EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS INTENDED TO DO: PUT THE PRESIDENT ON THE DEFENSIVE.

Even if the NY Times were to issue a retraction tomorrow, it would be too late. The story is out there…has been out there for 48 hours. It has dominated the news cycle in a way that Kerry’s lies about his UN “meetings” and recent revelations that Kerry betrayed his country by cooperating with the enemy during the Viet Nam war have not and now, will never do. The story, as they say in the business, has “legs.” And no amount of factual corrections and alternate story telling will change that fact.

Certainly conservative media organs are doing their best to change the tenor of the story. But as of yet, I don’t see it. It’s like the tree falling in the woods…if no one hears it, does it still fall?

Of course it does. But that doesn’t change the fact that NOBODY HEARS IT.

A better analogy is being trapped in a cave. The blogs are yelling for help at the top of their lungs…but all the rescuers hear at the cave entrance are unintelligible noises. The noise tells them the bloggers are alive but beyond that, the words disappear in the echo chamber that is the cave.

The 110 million voters are the echo chamber. At the moment, they are being overloaded with a barrage of ads, news, lies, distortions, half-truths, intimidation, and fear. The two percent of voters this hit piece was targeting are the least attentive amongst us. Hence, when something like this is plastered all over every media outlet for 48 hours, they can’t but help to become aware of it. And this makes any subsequent information that contradicts the original story that much harder to penetrate the clutter.

I don’t know whether the situation can be retrieved at this point. At the very least, this has made the race much closer than everyone thought just 48 hours ago. At worst, it’s cost George Bush a second term.

We need a break…some “smoking gun” revelation that will make this story backfire in Kerry’s face. Right now, all we’ve got is circumstantial evidence that the stuff wasn’t there before our guys secured the location.

We’ve got to find a way to clear the entrance to the cave so the bloggers can be heard.

“I think what we’ve discovered is a smoking gun,” (Jerome)Corsi said. (Corsi is co-author of “Unfit for Command“) “We knew when we wrote ‘Unfit for Command’ that Kerry had met with Madame Binh and then promoted her peace plan.”

“This document enables us to connect the dots,” he emphasized. “We now have evidence Madame Binh was directing the antiwar movement … and the person who implemented her strategy was John Kerry.” (WND: 10/26/04)

For going on thirty years, I defended people like John Kerry from my conservative friends who thought that the anti-war movement was anti-American and amounted to treason against the United States. I always believed the protesters were wrong-headed. I thought that they were Lenin’s “useful idiots,” unintentionally giving aid and comfort to the enemy while undermining Nixon’s efforts to get our troops home with some semblance of honor. I took this position because of family members who vehemently opposed the war but who I knew were, at bottom, acting on what they believed what was best for America.

Then, in the early 90’s as documents surfaced following the collapse of the old Soviet Union, it was discovered that some of the leaders of the anti-war movement were in fact in contact with Soviet agents, received money from KGB sources, and willingly and knowingly worked with the sworn enemies of this country to defeat the United States on the field of battle. Groups like The World Council of Churches received funds to publish full page ads in the New York Times against the war while others, including newsmen and prominent anti-war activists were mentioned prominently in soviet cable traffic from the era.

So it didn’t come as a total shock that documents have now surfaced showing that John Forbes Kerry, scion of an old-line, honorable American family, is a traitor.

What IS shocking is that, unless the conservative press organs start shouting this story from the rooftops thus forcing the mainstream media to deal with the accusations, John Kerry may very well be elected President of the United States. Think of it…a man who betrayed his country in his youth by working with an enemy during war time to ADVANCE THE CAUSE OF THAT ENEMY ON THE BATTLEFIELD AND AT THE CONFERENCE TABLE COULD HOLD THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE UNITED STATES IN HIS HANDS.

The web of Kerry lies about his dealings with the enemy are extensive. While admitting to only one meeting in Paris while on his honeymoon in 1970 with “both sides” to ascertain the status of POW’s, the FBI has evidence of one other meeting in 1971 where Kerry met with the head of the Viet Cong delegation, one Madame Binh, to apparently coordinate the activities of Kerry’s group Viet Nam Veterans Against the War.

It should be noted that Kerry took his honeymoon in Jamaica and that when in Paris in 1970, Kerry met with “both” sides alright…both the Viet Cong insurgents and the North Vietnamese Government!

The documents were discovered in an archive at the Viet Nam Archive at Texas Tech University and had their authenticity verified by archivist Stephen Maxner.

A story in today’s “New York Sun,” reveals what the documents (translated from Vietnamese) have to say about the traitorous activities of John Kerry:

“The CDEC Viet Cong document titled “Circular on Antiwar Movements in the US” notes, “The spontaneous antiwar movements in the US have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (VC/NVN) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks.” It also notes that “The seven-point peace proposal (of the SVN Provisional Revolutionary Government) [the Viet Cong proposal advanced by one of its envoys, Madame Binh, operating out of Paris] not only solved problems concerning the release of US prisoners but also motivated the people of all walks of life and even relatives of US pilots detained in NVN to participate in the antiwar movement.”

The significance of the documents lies in the way they dovetail with activities of the young Mr. Kerry as he led the VVAW anti-war movement in the spring of 1971.”

The “seven point peace proposal” was propaganda. In the privacy of the Paris peace talks, the communist delegations issued much more outrageous proposals, including not releasing POW’s until after the “reunification” of the two Viet Nams and the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government by the US Army.

Now…read what Kerry did after he got back from the above mentioned second meeting in Paris with the communists:

The purpose of these meetings by the two top VVAW members, Messrs. Hubbard and Kerry, has always been assumed to be informational. But the documents in the Texas archive suggest another possibility. On July 23, 1971, The New York Times reported that Mr. Kerry held a demonstration in Washington in support of the “seven-point peace proposal” and, according to the Times, “Mr. Kerry, who is 27 years, introduced wives, parents and sisters of prisoners to plead for support.”

“The Times’s dispatch stated that Mr. Kerry charged “...the latest Vietcong peace offer in Paris, which promises the release of prisoners as American troops are withdrawn, is being ignored by Mr. Nixon…”

KERRY WAS DOING THE BIDDING OF HIS NEW FRIENDS FROM PARIS!

The “Sun” is much more circumspect in its interpretation of these facts. I, however, operate under no such constraints. I will, every day between now and the election, trumpet to the skies the fact that it is my belief that John F. Kerry is a man of divided loyalties and is unfit to be President of the United States.

By now, everyone knows about the Washington Times story that John Kerry “stretched the truth” when he said that he met with the UN Security Council for hours prior to the vote on the Iraq resolution. It turns out that Mr. Kerry, adhering to a long established pattern of serial exaggeration, did not meet with all members of the Council but rather he spoke with “representatives” of the UN including Britain and (of course) France with the possibility of a few others.

This is a yawner. I disagree with the Capn’ who believes it might costs Kerry “1 or 2 points.” And I reject Bill OF INDC’s take that this is a serious issue:

“These aren’t exaggerations. This isn’t a case of lying about sex. It’s a story about a man that’s pathological enough to look a nationally televised audience of 55 million people in the eye and tell them a manufactured story, and then use it to propose a conclusion about a deadly serious matter of foreign policy.”

By bringing up President Clinton’s lack of veracity, Bill disproves his own point. Thanks to Mr. Clinton’s Presidency, the American people are now inured to the idea that politicians lie about just about everything.. This consequence of President Clinton’s falsifications was predicted in two fantastic books on the subject: Robert Bork’s “Slouching towards Gomorrah” that examines this issue in an eye-opening analysis using polling data and interviews with ordinary Americans culled from press accounts. And Bill Bennett’s timeless “Book of Virtues that warns of exactly this phenomena when it came to even important issues like war and peace.

The American people have already factored Kerry’s lack of veracity into their calculations when deciding whether or not to vote for him. Thanks to the mainstream media’s and the liberal’s vigorous defense of Bill Clinton during the impeachment, truth in politics just doesn’t matter anymore. To pretend otherwise is wishful thinking.

BTW, Spoons, besides showing his remarkable intellectual acumen by agreeing with me on this, has an excellent round-up of reactions from blogs.


JAY ROSEN: FEELING HIS WAY IN THE DARK:

The writings of Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, have always, it seems to me, involved an honest attempt to find a new way of disseminating information to the public. What Rosen calls “public journalism,” has never been, as many of his conservative critics contend, a veiled movement towards government owned press organs, but rather advocacy for a new paradigm for journalists themselves.

The idea of “bottom up” news gathering and reporting is an attractive goal. At a 1997 forum on the subject, Rosen likened the goal of public journalism to critic Irving Howe’s approach to socialism:

“... I and other journalists created the notion that we began to call “public journalism,” which we approached the way the critic Irving Howe always approached socialism. He called it: “The name of our desire.” That’s all it was—public journalism was simply what we were in search of, as we tried to find a way that this institution, the American press, could help revive democracy in its participatory forms and improve civic life at the local level. Public journalism had nothing to do with socialism, but it was, as Howe said, “the name of our desire.”

*And while he would probably deny it, Mr. Rosen can rightly be called “The Father of the Modern Blogosphere.” After preaching in the wilderness for years, Mr. Rosen’s ideas are now starting to resonate with both the mainstream media and the “new media” that Mr. Rosen thinks came of age during the conventions:

“The bloggers, for all their faults and shenanigans and self-absorption, really were the news at this convention. They represented the new. And that is why they received so much attention.” For several days, in traditional media, bloggers were the story, because “there’s an arrow over their heads that points forward. They represent the future, to journalists.” The traditional press was “going through the motions while the bloggers were defining their motions for the first time.”

*(Summary of interview with Barry Lydon at the Democratic Convention)

In a succinct summary of the impact of this new media, Rosen gives a great definition of bloggers and their new role in journalism:

“Blogs are undoing the system for generating authority and therefore credibility of news providers that’s been accumulating for well over 100 years. And the reason is that the mass audience is slowly, slowly disappearing. And the one-to-many broadcasting model of communications—where I have the news and I send it out to everybody out there who’s just waiting to get it—doesn’t describe the world anymore. And so people who have a better description of the world are picking up the tools of journalism and doing it. It’s small. Its significance is not clear. But it’s a potentially transforming development… I like [it] when things get shaken up, and when people don’t know what journalism is and they have to rediscover it. So in that sense I’m very optimistic.”

Is this the face of the future of journalism? Rosen himself is unsure. This past weekend on his excellent blog “Pressthink,” Rosen grapples with 20 issues that define the problems with mainstream journalism and touch on the “new journalism” of blogs. The issues came out of what Mr. Rosen himself describes as an “unsatisfactory” interview with a BBC reporter: Here are some of those issues:

“There’s too much happening. The public world is changing faster than we can invent terms for describing it. Here are some of the things the BBC reporter and I were trying to discuss:

Political attacks seeking to discredit the press and why they’re intensifying
Scandals in the news business and the damage they are sowing
The era of greater transparency and what it’s doing to modern journalism
Trust in the mainstream media and what’s happening to it
Bloggers, their role in politics, their effect on the press: their significance
How the Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news
The collapse of traditional authority in journalism and what replaces it
Amateurs vs. professionals; distributed knowledge vs. credentialed expertise
The entrance of new players of all kinds in presidential campaigning
The producer revolution underway among former consumers of media
Jon Stewart and why he seems to be more credible to so many
The political divide and the passions it has unleashed this year
The problem of propaganda and the intensity of its practice in 2004
Why argument journalism is more involving than the informational kind
Assaults on the very idea of a neutral observer, a disinterested account
And then there’s this: the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters

Good questions. Sounds like a good basis for a book. I sincerely hope Mr. Rosen writes one.

Hat Tip: Instapundit for the link.


UPDATE: SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT…

Bill at INDC has taken me to task for my post on the Washington Times story this morning. His comment was that I was “part of the problem” because I “abetted” the idea of the public perception that politicians lie.

When I pointed out that my intent was to bemoan this loss of public veritude, he answered:

“I don’t think that your analysis is terrible, and I understand your
motivation, but much of the rightie blogosphere is writing this ticket
itself. We aren’t just media commentators any longer – we’re the media.”

Given my post above on Jay Rosen’s quest, Bill makes an excellent point. And I may have taken too much of a flippant attitude…a cynical, world-weariness about Kerry’s lies that, in a way, makes me an enabler of Kerry’s tall tales.

I think what Bill is trying to say that when confronted with this, it’s best to get up on your hind legs and FIGHT IT…and not give in to cynicism.

A lesson taught…a lesson learned.


JOHN KERRY IS A LYING FUCK (PART II)

A few weeks back, I wrote a post entitled “John Kerry is a Lying Fuck” after Mr. Kerry went on national TV and brutally attacked the President’s Iraq policy using so many distortions and lies that it Took my breath away.

Now, I rarely write angry. But what came out of my poison keyboard when writing about his lies two weeks ago is chickenshit compared to what I’m going to say about this moronic, lying, lickspittle, commie loving, traitorous, weak kneed, lily livered, jello brained, monkey shit, two faced arrogant son of a fucking bitch

What set me off you ask? In today’s Opinion-Journal, Fuckface gave an interview to some Polish Newspaper. YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT THIS…THIS…ARROGANT TWO FACED AMERICA HATING TRAITOR SAID!

In its entirety…I give you John Fuckface Kerry…betrayer of America and hypocrite extraordinaire:

America must give its allies a stake in stabilizing Iraq. (REALLY, FUCKFACE? SINCE YOU DIDN’T BOTHER TO MENTION THEM IN THE DEBATE?) The best way to achieve that is through binding their interests with the peaceful future of that country. On the economic front this will mean granting true and tried friends—like Poland— (A COUNTRY YOU’VE DISSED ON REPEATED OCCASIONS BY CALLING THEM “COERCED?”) a share in the multibillion-dollar reconstruction contracts, in a share proportional to Poland’s contribution to the coalition. (IN OTHER WORDS, I CAN INSULT YOU AS ONE OF OUR “BRIBED AND COERCED ALLIES” WHEN I’M TALKING TO BUSH BUT WHEN I OFFER YOU A BRIBE IT’S “COALITION BUILDING”) I assure you that just as Poland was treated as an equal with other members of the coalition, so she will be an equal partner in the task of rebuilding Iraq.(YEAH, YOU TREATED THEM AS AN EQUAL SHIT FOR BRAINS…AN EQUAL JOKE)

AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHH! And that’s not all, folks.

“Poland is playing a significant role in the coalition and I fully appreciate the contribution of Polish units in Iraq. . . . (EVEN THOUGH YOUR CASUALTIES DON’T COUNT BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS ONLY AMERICAN DEATHS COUNT WHEN IT COMES TO ATTACKING THE PRESIDENT’S POLICY) Poland showed courage when she joined american and allied forces in Iraq.(COURAGE THAT I’VE NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED AND ONLY BELITTLED) My countrymen are grateful for that and I myself will also never forget that.”(I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT, AS OF THIS MOMENT IT’S SEARED…SEARED INTO MY MEMORY).

Of all the two faced, hypocritical, lying stunts that John Fuckface Kerry has pulled, this is THE ABSOLUTE WORST!

WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO BEAT THIS GUY…AND NOT JUST BY A FEW PERCENTAGE POINTS…WE HAVE TO SLAUGHTER HIM, BURY HIM, DRAG HIM THROUGH THE MUD, TAR AND FEATHER HIM, AND RUN HIM OUT OF THIS COUNTRY ON A RAIL.

I’m not a not believer in conspiracy theories.

I’m one of the less than 25% of Americans who believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy in the back to get attention. Period. End of story.

I base that on several common sense factors, not the least of which is that every conspiracy theory I’ve ever read about (and I have a library to prove I’ve read all the “serious ones”) would necessarily involve an enormous number of people, too many to keep a secret of this magnitude for 40 years.

This is NOT a post on the Kennedy assassination…although, if you’re interested I highly recommend “Death of a President” by one of the preeminent historians of the 20th century William Manchester and “Case Closed” by Gerald Posner who has also debunked the ML King and Robert Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

This post is about a conspiracy theory that COULD be happening right now. It’s not even much of a secret since the meeting where the conspiracy was hatched has been reported in a few places notably “The New Yorker.” But Clayton Cramer, a software engineer and writer, has some very interesting dots that he connects rather persuasively with regards to the current price of oil and how it might…just might…have something to do with damaging the chances of President Bush to be reelected. The link to this story comes via Verifrank.

I don’t have near the expertise to comment on hedge fund manipulation, the oil futures market, or any gaming of the markets that are explained so ably by Mr. Cramer. Using quotes from several sources, Cramer shows how a conspiracy to jack up the price of oil before the election in order to damage the economy and hurt the President’s reelection chances could…just could be going on now.

It’s possible…but is it likely? Ten years ago I would have laughed off such apparent foolishness in the same way I laughed off Clinton conspiracies of murder (so-called “Arkancide”: the belief that suspicious deaths of Clinton associates like Vice Foster were murder) and drug running. Given the depths to which the left has sunk in rhetoric and deeds this election, however, is it beyond imagining?

George Soros is on record as saying that he would spend his entire multi-billion dollar fortune if it would guarantee the defeat of George Bush. Other billionaires have given tens of millions of dollars to liberal 527 groups. Would it be so surprising that a small group of immensely wealthy Americans would combine their fortunes in an effort to cause a massive rise in the price of a barrel of oil so that gasoline prices, which are extremely sensitive to the futures market, would skyrocket before the election and hit voters in a direct, painful way? Who would they blame for an almost doubling in the price of gas?

What gives me pause in believing in this conspiracy is that there ARE other explanations for such a rise in the price of oil. And while Cramer mentions these factors, I would like to have seen a better comparative analysis of these causes vis a vis any conspiracy theory.

So for the moment, I’m a skeptic. More proof please.

A HINGE OF HISTORY?

One of the things that makes this election so very important is that everyone in America, even the most casual observer of politics, KNOWS that this election is important.

This is not one of those events that historians look back on 100 years from now and tell us that this was a turning point or that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We don’t need to wait 100 years to know that something fundamental to the nation is at stake here.

These moments are extremely rare in history. One analogy that comes immediately to mind for me is the battle of Gettysburg.

Every soldier on both sides knew that the winner of that battle would win the war. We know this because of the diaries, letters, and regimental histories of the soldiers themselves. Like Colonel Joshua Chamberlain of the 2nd Maine, who simply could not retreat from Little Round Top. Outnumbered 10-1, Chamberlain ordered his men to charge the southerners coming up that hill and won against impossible odds. Or like Southern General George Pickett’s 12,000 men who walked across the deadliest 8/10 of a mile in American history to charge cemetery Ridge and pass into southern history and folklore. The war would go on for almost 2 more years, but it was decided on the soft rolling hills and bloodsoaked fields outside of a small, insignificant Pennsylvania town. And everyone there knew it.

In a similar way, American’s today know deep down that we’re at a crossroads; or more descriptively I think, a doorway. We can vote for John Kerry and stay on this side of the door, stuck in the past (more like WISHING for the past) or we can vote for the President, open the door and walk towards a very uncertain future. The election therefore, is a hinge of history.

I plan on walking through the door. I hope to God enough Americans are coming with me.

Here’s a great editorial linked through one of my favorite blogs, “The Patriette.” The writer says it a hell of a lot better than I can.


IF IT’S NOT CLOSE THEY CAN’T STEAL IT…OR CAN THEY?

Read this column by George Will. My jaw dropped halfway to my more than ample belly. No wonder Kerry is going to name his national security team before the winner is known if there’s a repeat of 2000. He knows that voter fraud is going to be so massive that NO ONE IS GOING TO BELIEVE THAT AN AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTY WOULD CARRY IT OUT!

Power Line points out the following:

“The bottom line is that if this election is close enough, it will be stolen. If it is too close to steal but still close, the result will be months or years of litigation, designed either to give John Kerry the Presidency, or to deny President Bush legitimacy in his second term. Under current law, there is no solution to the problem of voter fraud other than a one-sided election. And this year, that doesn’t look likely.”

This has been the mantra of the Democrats since September; if we can’t beat you, we’ll make your election illegitimate in the eyes of the world.

Ann Coulter was right. How can the party of Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy do this to the United States IN A TIME OF WAR? The answer is they don’t care. They seek power for the sole and exclusive purpose of power for power’s sake. They have sold their souls to the devil. And like Faustus, they may find there’s hell to pay when the bill comes due.

Rants, observations, humor and more from the fabulous WWW…(No, not the Wacky World of Wombats)

PARDON ME, CAN I BORROW YOUR TIRE IRON?

Backcountry Conservative has some disturbing news on early voting in Florida. It appears that there is some voter intimidation going on by Democratic bully-boys. (Superhawk shrugs his shoulders and sighs deeply.)

I worked for a construction contractors PAC back in the day and let me tell you something about construction trade unions. While there’s no evidence that the intimidators here are members of any union, much less any construction workers group, the Democratic party is notorious for using mobbed-up AFL-CIO “Business Agents” to do their dirty work. Although Florida is a Right-To-Work state (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) the power of construction trade unions is nationwide and it wouldn’t be beyond imagining that the donks would fly in outsiders to do this kind of “work.”

LET’S ALL SAY THE SERENITY PRAYER TOGETHER NOW…

You don’t think Lawrence O’Donnell is a jerk? I did a post a few days ago when O’Donnell tried to overturn 300 years of western thought on the natural rights of man. Well, last night, Mr. OD(ous) went totally, completely, and finally insane!

On Scarborough Country, Pat Buchanan (subbing for Joe) had swiftee John O’Neill on to talk about the new swiftee ads (Go here to view). That’s when O’Donnell pulled a Three Mile Island, a Chernobyl, and a Wicked Witch of the West all rolled into one by becoming a crazed, wild eyed, raving, screaming LOON! Meltdown doesn’t begin to describe Mr. OD(ous)’s
malady…He seemed to be afflicted with some weird kind of convulsive disorder. His movements were jerky and unnatural. His head seemed to swell up like a pumpkin. His face contorted, saliva drooling from a perpetual snarl that curled his lips, he screamed about 200 times LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!

What made this performance so hilarious was John O’Neill’s calm, measured attempts to get a word in edgewise and Buchanan’s desperation as he realized that his colleague had gone ‘round the bend and, worse, HE HAD LOST CONTROL OF A LIVE BROADCAST!

Polipundit has a great post with links to audio (Michelle Malkin) and Video (Daily Recycler).

WOULDN’T MIND KILLIN’ A FEW FER’NERS MYSELF!

Frank J. is a very funny fellow. His take on the Pentagon studying the possibility of using women in combat (via Buck the Marine) proves that Mr. J. needs more than medication (although modern psychotropic pharmacology can work miracles these days); he needs a very long, very quiet, very relaxing stay at some out of the way spa…say, St. Jude’s Sanitarium for Lost Causes?

FIDEL CASTRO IS A MOONBAT

Capn’ Kevin’s Wizbang has an interesting post on some weird goings on in Cuba…well, that seems to be an oxymoronic statement. Cuba IS weird, on its face. Castro, besides being a murderous thug, is bizarre. During the Rio summit on global warming back in the mid-nineties (too lazy to look up exact year this AM), Castro regaled conferees with a speech lasting nearly 4 hours talking about…THE INCOME INEQUITIES BETWEEN THE INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS AND THE THIRD WORLD! The only relationship the speech had to global warming was the enormous amount of carbon dioxide Castro exhaled during the rant.

Our own Al Gore was there too take it in…all 4 hours. I’ve often thought what the consequences would be if an American leader in Gore’s position just got up and walked out when moonbats like El Commandante dissed America. After all, third world cutthroats do it all the time. (Superhawk shakes his head dejectedly).

HEY! CHICKEN LITTLE! IS THE SKY FALLIN’ OR WHAT?

There was an old Twilight Zone episode about a woman going through a day where the sun is moving closer to the earth and things are getting unbearably hot. Just when the earth is about ready to fry, the scene shifts to the woman lying in bed wrapped up in blankets, passed out. It turns out that the earth is moving AWAY from the sun and things are getting colder!

Read this post from the Commissar about new information on global warming. As in all communist societies, things are not always as they appear, am I right Comrade? DA!

This kind of thing happens in science all the time so there’s no need to start goosing the conspiracy mill. What’s interesting is that this is at least the third such backtrack in the last couple of years from climatologists. This illustrates the enormous complexities involved in trying to figure out our climate problems. Scientists can’t even agree on how to MEASURE gases in the atmosphere much less how much of the greenhouse gases actually make it up to a point in the atmosphere where it can do the most harm. Some of the gas evidently turns into harmless compounds before it reaches the upper stratosphere. It does this by colliding with other molecules and “sloughing off” atoms.

The process isn’t understood very well. And yet, Euro-weenies want the US to cut emissions to pre-1990 levels by 2012…something that would cut our growth rate from 1-3 percent per year! I’ve linked here to a fantastic Cato Institute publication about global warming. (PDF reader required).

More later…after the games!


UPDATE: REMEMBER ME TO MANAGUA

Here’s more on violence by the Democratic thugs polls in Florida.

Registration fraud, voter intimidation, violence against Bush supporters…I’VE GOT IT! It’s the Sandanista’s!

For those of you too young to remember, the Sandanistas were a group of nazi-like thugs that helped overthrow Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Somoza was your typical run-of-the-mill authoritarian President for life banana republic (NOT the clothing store) dictator. Not much different than most of the central American thugs who ran pro-US countries at that time except for one thing…he had the misfortune of getting on the bad side of that sanctimonious fruit-and-nutcake Jimmy Carter.

Back in 1979, Nicaraguans were angry. They had a devastating earthquake 7 years before and the country still looked like…well, that an earthquake had hit. That’s because Somoza took the aid money earmarked for rebuilding and parceled it out to his cronies (who didn’t know much about reconstruction but knew where the best clubs in Miami were). Somoza, who was fabulously wealthy due to his family running the country for about a century, also kept some of the loot for himself.

When Jimmy Carter found out about this he was SHOCKED! Just SHOCKED! He immediately cut off aid to one of the poorest countries on the planet which precipitated wide-spread protests. A coalition of small businessmen, the Catholic church, and the largest newspaper in the country, La Prensa, was formed to force Somoza out. Also joining this coalition was a small, insignificant group of left wing ideologues calling themselves the Sandanistas. This group was the tip of the spear for the coalition as they battled with Nicaragua’s National Guard in the streets. When it became clear that the US wouldn’t assist him in maintaining power, he fled for more hospitable climes.

What happened in the next few months was vintage Stalinism. This small, insignificant group of leftists, using nazi-like tactics in the streets, forced out all other members of the coalition (including the editor of La Prensa who was jailed for his trouble). The Sandanistas then expanded the Nicaraguan army from less than 15,000 to more than 100,000, embraced Fidel Castro, kissed Soviet leader Breznev full on the mouth, and tried to export their “revolution” to other Latin American countries.

After a US sponsored rebellion (opposed by Democrats because it could have “turned into another Viet Nam,”) the Sandanistas said uncle and agreed to elections, confident that if they couldn’t win fair and square, they could steal it.

The election campaign was something to watch. In one corner, a bunch of geeky, middle class businessmen, Catholic lay organizers, Mesquito Indians (who, when the Sandanistas tried to steal their land in the name of “land reform” found out the meaning of “guerilla war”) and housewives. In the other corner were brownshirted bully-boy thugs who broke up opposition campaign rallies using violence, attacked opposition regional headquarters, intimidated ordinary citizens and generally acted the way you’d expect communists to act when faced with having to answer to the voters for 8 years of dictatorial incompetence.

The Sandanistas had a secret weapon…American leftists! They came to Nicaragua by the thousands to “help” in the Sandanista’s effort to steal the election. It was quite a sight. For an uproarious take on this read “Give War a Chance” by P.J. O’Rourke.

Reagan outfoxed Nicaraguan’s rock star dictator Danny Ortega by getting him to agree to international election observers. Danny was so convinced he was beloved of the masses that he failed to notice that, in order for people to love you, they need something to eat. And people voted for dinner everyday rather than starvation with a message. Despite the incredible violence and intimidation, the people of Nicaragua voted overwhelmingly to throw the Sandanistas on the ash heap of history where they’ve remained ever since.

I have no doubt that some of the same leftists who tried to kill democracy in Nicaragua are doing the same thing here. And like the Nicaraguan people back then, we have to be brave enough and determined enough to overcome these threats and do what is necessary to protect our country from the darkness these people represent.

I’m exhausted.

This race, with its ups and downs, surges and collapses, resembles not so much a rollercoaster but rather a modified version of the rack with John Kerry tightening the screws one day and George Bush the next.

Today, I’d like to get away from this torture and delve into something I’ve been thinking about for going on well nigh 25 years; the idea of conservative governance.

What brought this on was a thoughtful article by Mark Schmitt who writes for his blog “The Decembrist,” named for a group of early 19th century liberal Russian aristocrats who briefly rebelled against Tsar Alexander I. Scmitt is a former aide to Senator Bill Bradley, another thoughtful man (who proved to be just a little TOO thoughtful to be President).

The thesis of Mr. Schmitt’s article is that the Presidency of George Bush has destroyed modern American conservatism. This is a large indictment for so small an article. And while Schmitt makes many interesting points about the fumblings of Bush and his advisors with regards to budget busting social programs and intrusive federal social engineering projects, I believe Mr. Schmitt is looking in his rear view mirror rather than at the road ahead. The ideas of Hayek, Buckley, Goldwater, and to a certain extent Reagan, have crashed on the shoals of real politik formulations in foreign affairs as a result of 9/11 (an event Mr. Schmitt deems not important enough to mention) and, more importantly, the political necessity of governance in a liberal democratic society. All of this begs the $64,000 question:

Can conservative ideas and values achieve majority status in a nation governed for nearly 100 years by liberal ideas and values?

Mr. Schmitt starts off his article by pointing to three well-known conservatives on various pegs of the conservative plinko board who will not be voting for President Bush on November 2. Since elections are about choice, one shouldn’t begrudge people their opinion of who will serve best as a vessel for their ideological predilections. Hence, while revealing an interesting schism in current conservative thinking (that everyone EVERYWHERE believes will erupt into a full blown war after the election, Bush win or lose) it’s hardly a basis for trumpeting the end of conservatism as we know it.

Mr. Schmitt then delves into what he sees as the essence of conservatism and its cohesive nature:

“For the last several years, liberals have bemoaned the idea that conservatives seemed to have a coherent, relatively simple philosophy: small government, low taxes, free trade, strong defense but non-interventionist foreign policy. But what is left of conservatism now except tax cuts, especially tax cuts that benefit particular financial interests? Tax cuts are not conservatism. They are not a coherent worldview.”

“Non-interventionist foreign policy?” I had to scratch my head and wonder where Mr. Schmitt may have been hibernating for the last 25 years. In order; Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. (The latter two interventions not possible without STRONG conservative support in Congress). The list does not include the odd MIG shot down over the Gulf of Sidra or the occasional cruise missile lobbed in the direction of Mr. Bin Laden. Leaving all that aside, the major argument that Mr. Schmitt and many conservatives seems to be making is that George Bush has abandoned the principle of small government. There’s a very good reason for this:

The principle of small government is as dead and outmoded as the horse and buggy.

President Reagan, God rest his noble soul, was perhaps the last Republican President to actually believe he could completely roll back the idea of of a large, centralized government. Unlike the crash-and-burn, do-or-die Goldwaterites of the 1960’s, Reagan, according to his hagiographer Dinesh D’Souza, believed the key to victory was a “wily and opportunistic” effort in “finding issues that allow(ed) him to neutralize his strongest opposition and allow(ed) him to find his greatest common ground with his popular constiuency.” This common ground included, but was not limited to restoring America’s national defense posture and status as the preeminent superpower on the planet.

Reagan’s national security stance drove a stake through the heart of the old Democratic Party coalition by stealing white urban ethnics from key battleground states. These working class voters were opposed to Mr. Reagan’s economic policies but disgusted with the McGovernites who had captured the party and turned it towards pacifism and surrender. Most of these ethnics were first or second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe who were outraged at what they saw as the Democratic Party’s abandonment of their friends and relatives in Warsaw Pact countries. Reagan appealed to these voters with a combination of patriotic sentiment and realistic confrontation with the old Soviet Union.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, these ethnics returned to the party of their fathers and helped elect Bill Clinton to the Presidency. By necessity, the Republican party was forced to change tactics and try to appeal to some of these same voters while trying to expand a narrow base of so-called “Main Street” Republicans, whose bread and butter issues were economic, and social conservatives, whose activism on issues like abortion and school prayer scared the bejeebeez out of many potential voters who ordinarily would lean Republican.


Enter Newt Gingrich. It’s a shame that Mr. Gingrich was such a polarizing figure. Blessed with a first class mind, Mr. Gingrich was cursed with a partisan streak a mile wide. It was his partisanship that doomed his attempt to try and fashion a governing majority of conservatives housed under a big tent Republican party. This partisanship, while it led to a political majority in Congress, proved to be an impediment to fashioning a one party super-majority of conservatives that could implement the kind of radical restructuring Mr. Gingrich had envisioned.

Mr. Schmitt rightly questions the last 10 years of Republican majority rule in Congress by asking the “what if” question of a Bush loss:

“If Bush loses, serious conservatives, with the possible exception of extreme social conservatives, will have to ask themselves what they gained from four years of unfettered power, and ten years of domination of American politics. Government is “bigger” by every measure, and more intrusive. A pet idea, Social Security privatization, was actually discredited by their president’s incompetence. Younger voters are increasingly turned off by the social conservatism, so the movement is not expanding its base. A huge new entitlement was created. The federal role in education expanded.”

All of the above is true. And what Schmitt calls “Bush-DeLayism” (an odd but revealing combo given that Schmitt passes over mentioning the Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert who is known for his efforts at cross-party coalition building while highlighting the lightning rod DeLay) has failed utterly and miserably to restrain the growth of federal spending while using high-handed partisan tactics (reminiscent of tactics used by Democrats in the 1980’s) to ram through the Republican’s agenda.

But what Mr. Schmitt fails to realize or refuses to acknowledge is the truly transformational nature of Mr. Bush’s policy proposals. What he so blithely dismisses as a “contrivance,” the idea of an “ownership” society is a truly radical departure from the idea of “dependency.” It is an attempt to overturn and radically alter the social contract in America that exists between the governed and the governors. Mr. Schmitt doesn’t think so:

“Bush-DeLayism’s greatest betrayal of conservatism is in its rejection of this modesty about social scheming. Because of its corruption and incompetence, their practice has consisted of ever more complicated schemes of incentives and penalties to change behavior: No Child Left Behind, for example, whose main flaw is not that its underfunded, but that it tries to micromanage local schools through pokes and prods from a set of rules set in Washington. The Medicare bill and the Bush health plans, which attempt to incentivize one thing or another, and are horribly contrived even if you believe that the combination of Health Savings Accounts and catastrophic plans will improve American health care and not destroy it.”

I reject Mr. Schmitt’s gratuitous use of the words “corruption and incompetence” as they relate to the Bush administration’s efforts to fix an educational system near total and complete collapse as a direct result of his party’s being beholden to the most radical group of social engineers in the country today; teachers and their bloated and misguided unions. As far as Medicare reform, all one can say is that it’s a small step towards much-needed reform. Beyond that, may I request of Mr. Schmitt that he at least wait until the damn program is fully up and running before he judges it a failure? And if he has a crystal ball that allows him to see the future so clearly , perhaps he’d allow me to borrow it for a few days as I wish to purchase some stock options.

Whither then conservatism? I’m not alone in believing that George Bush is a transformational figure in American politics. Norman Podhoretz’s September, 2004 “Commentary” article entitled “World War IV” not only gives the best rationale for the war in Iraq I’ve seen to date, but also lays out a compelling argument that, forced by circumstances following the attacks of 9/11, Bush transformed American foreign policy by radically altering the conditions and intellectual underpinnings regarding the use of American power to the point that future President’s will only be able to change this policy in the margins, not overturn it.

Kerry can brag all he wants to about coalition building. But, to borrow a recent line from one of his campaign speeches, “Look behind you, Mr. President…there’s no one there.” It is beyond belief that Mr. Kerry actually thinks he can revive a moribund trans-atlantic alliance as long as France, Germany, and Russia work towards an EU (or somebody…anybody) that can act as a counterweight against American power. It is, to my mind, delusional. “Old Europe” as Donald Rumsfield indelicately called them, will cooperate with the US as it suits their national interests, and not much beyond that. It would take someone with considerably more charm and diplomatic skill than Mr. Kerry to alter this. For the forseeable future, our allies will be found in tradition (England and Australia) and in the emerging democracies of eastern europe and Asia.

As for domestic policy, Mr. Bush’s prescriptions presage broader reform involving not only health care and education, but also housing, welfare, scientific research, and perhaps social security. I’m surprised Mr. Schmitt did not mention social security, given that the President’s proposal to allow younger workers to invest part of their contribution in private accounts is perhaps the most radical of all Bush “ownership” society ideas. Budget shortfalls as a result of such a change in the retirement system may doom its passage…but that doesn’t mitigate it’s revolutionary nature.

Finally, Mr. Schmitt closes with an apology of sorts:

“I recognize, though, that I am not a conservative, and have about as much right to offer my opinion about what American conservatives should think or say as I do about whether the Catholic mass should be in Latin or English. But I’ve learned a lot from conservative writing and thinking, and I am very serious in believing that we will be worse off without its insights.”

Mr. Schmitt’s ideas and criticisms are always welcome. Reasoned discourse among people is what’s missing from today’s political climate. Schmitt, who has a first class mind, is I believe, wrongheaded in his thesis. But his civility is a breath of fresh air in the poisoned partisan atmosphere that permeates the body politic.

CORRECTION:

I stated incorrectly that Mr. Schmitt did not mention social security reform in his article. Mr. Schmitt used the phrase “social security privatization” and says that it’s discredited.

I don’t think any responsible politician has advocated scrapping the current federal retirement system for wholesale “privatization.” The rather modest proposal regarding younger workers would be voluntary and has hardly been discredited.