The Art of the Blog

THIS IS MY OLD SITE!

2005-02-03T23:33:00.000-06:00

Click to go to my new site:

The Art of the Blog . com

TTLB Ecosystem Ranking

2004-12-30T01:44:00.000-06:00

I just realized that this site, the OOOOOLLLLDDDDD one which I haven't use since April, is ranked #1324 in the TTLB Ecosystem. Who the heck is still linking to this site anyway?

My new site is #3569 .

Put my two sites together and I would be at 195 inbound links . . .which would put me in the Large Mammals category, somewhere around #956 or so.

I wonder if I can get NZ Bear to add the two together . . . .

Please visit my new site, TheArtoftheBog.com for continued coverage of the world at large.
Thank you!

John Kerry: Beautiful

2004-04-15T14:13:00.000-05:00

John Kerry: Beautiful

Not beautiful in the same way as Michelle Malkin, but this bit from the Drudgereport about Kerry's wife and her refusal to dislose her tax returns is at least worthy of being called "classic."

TERESA FIGHTS TO KEEP HER TAX RETURNS PRIVATE

Besides a blurring of Heinz-Kerry assets, the campaign is also wresting with past quotes made by Kerry himself.

In his 1990 Senate race, Kerry asked his challenger to "clear the air" by releasing tax returns.

"I think people want to know whether someone they possibly might send to Washington to represent them in the Senate is someone who pays their fair share of taxes,'" Kerry said. "Why is James Rappaport hiding his tax returns?" Kerry asked. "Why is it some people can live up to that standard and he can't? It seems to me that he ought to be able to release those returns and clear the air...

"Why doesn't he just release them? What is he hiding?"

And at the height of last year's primary race, Kerry vowed that "openness" would be the "hallmark" of his administration.

"As president, openness will be the hallmark of my administration, not some talking point... The highest office in the land requires the highest level of openness for the American people."

Music in the OR

2004-04-15T13:44:00.000-05:00

Music in the OR

What's the big deal? They've been doing this since before I worked in an OR back in '92-'94. I seem to remember that the the liver transplant team had a penchant for AC/DC.

How'd you like to here "Highway to Hell" or "Hell's Bells" as you're going under? ;-)

Surgical Tunes: Music Strikes a Chord in the OR

"Screw Her"

2004-04-15T13:30:00.000-05:00

"Screw Her"

This girl needs to be punished now.

Too bad they'll most likely let her off with a handslap and a "strong talkin' to."

Coed Hoaxer to Try For Plea Bargain

"She obviously is dealing with a lot of trauma related to this, she's going through a very difficult time. She's having both some emotional and some physical problems to deal with as you might expect somebody who's gone through something like this," Hopper said after appearing in court.

Yep, the old "I did this to myself but you should forget it and let me skate since I am so pitiful" technique. Sorta like the "I murdered my parents; have mercy on me because I'm an orphan" strategery.

To misquote Kos, "Screw her."

Asked about the possibility of a plea bargain, Blanchard said his office always tries to reach an agreement "if that can be done in the interest of justice and reaching a fair result. ... We'll see if that's possible with this case."

Sure it is . . . toss her in jail for a while. That's be fair.

Hundreds of people from Madison and Seiler's hometown searched for her after she disappeared, and her claim about an armed man touched off a major manhunt that authorities said cost the police about $96,000.

In addition, she should have to pay back the city its costs and pay each of the searchers minimum wage for each hour they searched. Maybe she should pay the businesses that lost man-hours to the search for their lost productivity, too.

Coulter on Commissions and Air Travel

2004-04-15T09:25:00.000-05:00

Coulter on Commissions and Air Travel

Ann Coulter tones it down, mostly, in this latest piece.

She skewers 9-11 commission member Jamie Gorelick for "building a wall" between intelligence and law enforcement in 1995 and CURRENT anti-discrimination laws thaty disallow ssearching more than two Arabs on any particular flight.

Thank you for choosing United, Mr. bin Laden

Last week, 9-11 commissioner John Lehman revealed that "it was the policy (before 9-11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory." Hmmm ... Is 19 more than two? Why, yes, I believe it is. So if two Jordanian cab drivers are searched before boarding a flight out of Newark, Osama bin Laden could then board that plane without being questioned. I'm no security expert, but I'm pretty sure this gives terrorists an opening for an attack. . . .

I have news for liberals: Bin Laden is still determined to attack inside the United States! Could they please tell us when and where the next attack will be? Because unless we know that, it's going to be difficult to stop it if we can't search Arabs.

ARPNOW.ORG

2004-04-14T13:24:00.000-05:00

ARPNOW.ORG

Kack Kemp, Dick Armey, and the unfortunately named Dorcas Hardy have set up an organization based on promoting Social Security privitization.

Jack Kemp: The FICA slush fund

I, along with former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and former Social Security Commissioner Dorcas Hardy, have created the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity (www.arpnow.org). We want to make it possible for today's workers to move half of their payroll taxes into personal accounts that would be there for their retirement. For a single worker earning $30,000 a year and a two-earner married couple earning $30,000 and $40,000 that would mean annual savings of $2,000 and $4,500, respectively.

Most importantly, large personal retirement accounts would be a real source of prosperity and ownership and bring to fruition our vision of democratizing the American dream - making every American worker a shareholder and investor in our capitalistic system.

Michelle Malkin - Beautiful

2004-04-14T13:21:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin - Beautiful

Yeah, she's pretty . . . she's also a hell of a columnist.

She absolutely nails it in this retrospective on the attitudes of the NYT.

The liberals who cried 'didn't do enough!

That's right. The same editorial board that has barbecued the Bush Justice Department after the Sept. 11 attacks for fingerprinting young male temporary visa holders traveling from terror-sponsoring and terror-friendly nations (editorial, June 6, 2002); temporarily detaining asylum seekers from high-risk countries for background screening (editorial, Dec. 28, 2002); and sending undercover agents to investigate mosques suspected of supporting terrorism (editorial, May 31, 2002) now expects us to believe it would have applauded Bush for his vigilance if he had swiftly ordered airport security officials to stop thousands of young Middle Eastern men at airports during the summer of 2001 on the basis of an ill-defined threat.

Pre- v. Post- 9-11 Dems

2004-04-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

Pre- v. Post- 9-11 Dems

Retroactive hard-liners

The pre-9/11 Democrats, as portrayed by their reaction to the work of the 9/11 Commission, are not plagued by niggling civil-liberty concerns. . . .
The pre-9/11 Democrats don't care about planning or diplomacy. . . .
The pre-9/11 Democrats are ethnically insensitive. . . .
Finally, the pre-9/11 Democrats are perfectly willing to act on sketchy intelligence. . . .

Ashcroft Bombs Gorelick

2004-04-14T13:00:00.000-05:00

Ashcroft Bombs Gorelick

Ashcroft laid this devastating comment and the feet of 9-11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick yesterday during his testimony.

Gorelick's conflict

Attorney General John Ashcroft came out swinging in testimony before the 9-11 Commission on Tuesday. "In 1995, the Justice Department embraced flawed legal reasoning, imposing a series of restrictions on the FBI that went beyond what the law required," he said. "The 1995 Guidelines and the procedures developed around them imposed draconian barriers to communications between the law enforcement and intelligence communities. The wall left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents. In 1995, the Justice Department designed a system destined to fail."

But Ashcroft's bombshell wasn't his description of the Clinton Administration's policies, which have been discussed by previous witnesses. "Somebody built this wall," Ashcroft told the commissioners, and then went on to accuse one of the commission's own.

"The basic architecture for the wall . . . was contained in a classified memorandum entitled 'Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations,'" said Ashcroft. "Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this Commission." Ashcroft was referring to Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration.

Bush's Press Conference Highlight

2004-04-14T12:56:00.000-05:00

Bush's Press Conference Highlight

A great response to a fair question.

Sounds like Bush has been listening to the pundits/bloggers out there who have been critiquing those who are Post-Emptive now but wish we'd been Pre-Emptive then.

Washington Post: Text of Bush's Press Conference

QUESTION: You have been accused of letting the 9-11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough. First, could you respond to that general criticism?

And, secondly, in the wake of these two conflicts, what is the appropriate threat level to justify action in perhaps other situations going forward?

BUSH: Yes. I guess there have been some that said, well, we should've taken pre-emptive action in Afghanistan, and then turned around and said we shouldn't have taken pre-emptive action in Iraq.

And my answer to that question is, is that, again I repeat what I said earlier, prior to 9-11, the country really wasn't on a war footing. And the, frankly, mood of the world would have been astounded had the United States acted unilaterally in trying to deal with al-Qaida in that part of the world.

It would have been awfully hard to do, as well, by the way. We would have had -- we hadn't got our relationship right with Pakistan yet. The Caucus area would have been very difficult from which to base. It just seemed an impractical strategy at the time. And, frankly, I didn't contemplate it.

Clarke's Big Adventure

2004-04-14T11:38:00.000-05:00

Clarke's Big Adventure

A fun satire of what the movie of Richard Clarke's new book may look like . . .

Ben Shapiro : Richard Clarke's new movie

BUSH (begins to suck his thumb, petulantly)

Well, fine, if you say so. But try to find out how Saddam's involved. Do I at least get to bomb somebody? Somebody Muslim? I hate those [Arabs]. They don't believe in my favorite philosopher, Jesus.

(proudly)

That's what Pat and Jerry told me.

Vice President Cheney enters the room.

CHENEY (soothingly)

I'll take it from here, George. You go back to playing with your blocks. And, yes, we get to bomb somebody.

Cheney puts his arm around Bush and smiles evilly.

NOTE: I object to the term used to describe Arabs in this piece so I edited it out.

Prager on Racism

2004-04-14T10:43:00.000-05:00

Prager on Racism

A fairly weak column by the normally fantastic Dennis Prager.

He did make on great point though . . .

Dennis Prager: Bob Kerrey clarifies the liberal view of blacks and women

It is probable that belief in black inferiority, or at least in black differentness, also helps to explain white liberal support for the lowering of standards for blacks, i.e., affirmative action and quotas. Conservatives believe that no changing of standards is necessary in order for blacks to succeed.

Two from the Sowell

2004-04-14T10:38:00.000-05:00

Two from the Sowell

Thomas Sowell's reactions to the 9-11 panel's activities.

Titanic irresponsibility

All this political grandstanding is taking place in the shadow of the greatest danger our nation has ever faced. North Korea is not only rebuilding its nuclear capacity, it is a threat to sell nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations, including those who planned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Titanic irresponsibility: Part II

Most of us at the time would probably not have believed that we could have gone this long without another and perhaps more catastrophic terrorist attack on the United States. Do you remember how every symbolic occasion -- the World Series, Christmas, New Year's Eve, the Super Bowl -- brought widespread fears that this could be when the terrorists would strike us again?

Yet our respite from terrorist attack has seldom brought even a grudging acknowledgement that perhaps the government's anti-terrorism policies and activities might deserve some credit, instead of the constant barrage of media and political criticism and carping.

Make no mistake, a new and more terrible terrorist attack could happen here at any time -- especially now that Spain has shown how easy it is to panic politicians. But the fact that our enemies see our politics as the weakest link in the chain of American national security means that we need to recognize that as well.

Economy Issues

2004-04-14T10:15:00.000-05:00

Economy Issues

USA TODAY: Dazzled by data, economists see blue skies ahead

WASHINGTON — Some economists are raising their forecasts for growth in the first quarter of 2004, based on surging consumer spending, rising factory orders and glimmers of a turnaround in the job market. . . .

"Off the top of my head, I would say that we just moved from 4% gross-domestic-product growth in (the first quarter of 2004) to something like 5%." . . . [says Steve Stanley]

Brian Wesbury . . . predicted the government could report a 6% growth rate in the GDP . . . .

The . . . Labor Department reported April 2 that the economy created more than 300,000 jobs in March - a sign the "jobless recovery" may be easing. . . .

A survey of 1,200 businesses . . . found that 88% of business owners were optimistic about the next six months, with 21% planning to add full-time employees.

9-11 Widows Talk too Much*

2004-04-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

9-11 Widows Talk too Much*

A great column on those ubiquitous 9-11 widows - the "Jersey Girls."

Here are some choice comments from this excellent article.

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG: The 9/11 Widows - Americans are beginning to tire of them.

Debra Burlingame--lifelong Democrat, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, did manage to land an interview after Ms. Rice's appearance. When she had finished airing her views critical of the accusatory tone and tactics of the Jersey Girls, her interviewer, ABC congressional reporter Linda Douglass marveled, "This is the first time I've heard this point of view." . . .

. . . TV and newspaper editors were [interested in telling] a different story--that of four intrepid New Jersey housewives who had, as one news report had it, brought an administration "to its knees"--and that was, as far as they were concerned, the only story. . . .

The venerable status accorded this group of widows comes as no surprise given our times, an age quick to confer both celebrity and authority on those who have suffered. [Ed. note - what a profound statement this is.] . . . All that the widows have had to say . . . has been received by most of the media and members of Congress with utmost wonder and admiration. They had become prosecutors and investigators, unearthing clues and connections related to 9/11, with, we're regularly informed, unrivalled dedication and skill. . . .

. . . with every passing month, their list of government agencies and agents guilty of dereliction of duty grew apace. So did their assurance that it had been given to them, as victims, to determine the proper standards of taste and respectfulness to be applied in everything related to Sept. 11, including, it turned out, the images of the destroyed World Trade Center in George Bush's first campaign ad . . . .

. . . Ms. Breitweiser's analyses . . . of the ways the Sept. 11 attack might have been foiled. If the Federal Aviation Administration had properly alerted passengers to the dangers they faced, she asked, how many victims might have thought twice before boarding an aircraft? And "how many victims would have taken notice of these Middle Eastern men while they were boarding their plane? Could these men have been stopped?"

A good question. One can only imagine how a broadcast of the warning, "Watch out for Middle Eastern men in line near you, as you board your flight," would have gone down in those quarters of the culture daily worried to death about the alleged threat to civil rights posed by profiling and similar steps designed to weed out terrorists. Consider . . . what the response would have been if John Ashcroft had issued a statement calling for such a precaution, prior to Sept. 11. [Emphasis added.]

*"Kate! Time out, Kate! You've had three times now. That's enough for you. Women talk too much!" -- Mark Shields to Kate O'Bierne on "The Capital Gang," CNN, April 10

RNC Has a Sense of Humor

2004-04-13T23:45:00.000-05:00

RNC Has a Sense of Humor

This is great!

Kerry made up his own Misery Index . . . so so did the RNC . . . but theirs is funnier!

U.S. Newswire - RNC Announces Index De Le Miserables

Kerry Repudiates St. Petersburg Dems

2004-04-13T23:38:00.000-05:00

Kerry Repudiates St. Petersburg Dems

FINALLY!

I am enheartened to hear that a major Dem has actively denounced someone from their party who made a statement which, if it had been uttered by a conservative, would have been both considered hate speech AND immediately decried by conservatives around the nation.

Keep it up conservatives! (Denouncing "our own" when they do something wrong, that is.) The Dems just may be learning something by osmosis!

USATODAY.com - St. Petersburg Democratic club ad says 'pull trigger' on Rumsfeld

MIAMI (AP) — Florida Republicans are crying foul after a St. Petersburg Democratic club placed a full-page ad in a weekly newspaper, saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be "put up against a wall" and someone should "pull the trigger."

The ad, appearing in last Thursday's edition of the Gabber, a weekly paper covering the Pinellas County community of Gulfport, included a lengthy criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq and then singled out Rumsfeld.

"And then there's Rumsfeld who said of Iraq 'We have our good days and our bad days.' We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger," the ad read under a banner "St. Petersburg Democratic Club." . . .

Mark Kornblau, a Kerry campaign spokesman, said the club was not working for their campaign "in any official capacity" and called for an apology.

"It is outrageous and does not in any way reflect the position of our campaign. We hope that those responsible will retract the statement, apologize for it and move on to more productive pursuits," Kornblau said.

Maddox said in a statement that the ad was "reprehensible and in poor taste" and urged its immediate removal and a formal apology.

State party spokeswoman Allie Merzer said the group is a social club chartered by the state Democratic party but does not receive funds from the state party and did not consult party before the ad was placed. She said the state party was reviewing the club's charter membership.

Bush Pre-Emptively Attacks Afghanistan . . . 2001

2004-04-13T00:23:00.000-05:00

Bush Pre-Emptively Attacks Afghanistan . . . 2001

Nice satire of the current situation and outcry v. what would have happened had Bush done what today's detractors are saying they wished he'd have done.

The New Republic Online: Easterbrook

AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: Washington, April 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner. . . .

5.19.2002

2004-04-13T00:18:00.000-05:00

5.19.2002

5.19.2002.

That's

2002

just in case you did not notice.

Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S. (washingtonpost.com)

The top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush on Aug. 6 carried the headline, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," and was primarily focused on recounting al Qaeda's past efforts to attack and infiltrate the United States, senior administration officials said.

The document, known as the President's Daily Briefing, underscored that Osama bin Laden and his followers hoped to "bring the fight to America," in part as retaliation for U.S. missile strikes on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998, according to knowledgeable sources.

This memo has been known for a while now.

Thanks to James Taranto at OpinionJournal for the head's up in his Best of the Web Today.

Kerry Loves Misery

2004-04-12T21:27:00.000-05:00

Kerry Loves Misery

Rush et al. have this one right: if it's bad news for America, it's good news for Kerry and the Dems.

Here's a story about Kerry's trumped up "Misery Index" - the 2004 version.

FOXNews.com - You Decide 2004 - Kerry Economic Plan Relies on Safe Numbers

WASHINGTON - Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (search) unveiled his own version of the 'misery index' on Monday, claiming Americans are miserable because President Bush has done such a bad job with the U.S. economy.

And now a word from Factcheck.org:

FactCheck.org: Kerry's "Misery Index" Accentuates the Negative

The original ‘misery index’ is simply the jobless rate added to the inflation rate. The term was coined by economist Arthur Okun, an economic adviser in Lyndon Johnson’s administration. It was widely used during the "stagflation" of the '70s and '80s when stagnant economic growth kept unemployment high and inflation reduced the buying power of wages.

By that classic misery measure the country is faring better than average under Bush: the unemployment rate for March was 5.7% -- which is just 0.1% above the average for all months since 1948. And the inflation rate remains historically low – the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index rose only 1.7% in the 12 months ending in February, the most recent month on record. So the classic “misery index” number is currently 7.4.

That's lower than it's been in all but 20 of the previous 56 years on record. It never got this low during any of the years under Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan or Bush's father.

And the classic "misery index" was higher in every one of Clinton's first four years than it has been in any of Bush's years. It was not until Clinton's second term that the long economic boom of the 1990's pulled the index down to below its current level. . . .

So it's not surprising that the Kerry campaign has come up with another way of looking at the economy. On April 12 Kerry issued a news release saying "Middle-Class Misery Hits Record Under George Bush," based on a new index put together by former Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling and former Al Gore adviser Jason Furman.

The Kerry index is, to put it mildly, selective.

Rather than use all consumer prices, the Kerry index cherry-picks three items that have gone up faster than the overall rate of inflation: college tuition (at public four-year universities only), gasoline, and health care.

And rather than use the overall unemployment rate -- which was 5.5% at this point in Clinton's first term, only two-tenths of one percent lower than now -- Kerry has used the number of jobs, which produces a more negative picture.

Other statistical indicators chosen by Kerry are median family income and bankruptcies, which have both worsened under Bush, and home ownership -- the only one of the seven indicators in the Kerry index to show improvement. . . .

Contributing the most to the gloomy picture presented by Kerry's index is college tuition. Kerry aides used only the figure for four-year public colleges and universities, which has shot up 13% under Bush, even after adjusting for inflation. But they excluded tuition for private colleges and universities, which went up only 5%. (Both figures are from the College Board's annual survey of college costs.)

When it came to measuring the change in employment, however, the Kerry aides focused on the loss of private sector jobs only, not total employment. That ignored gains in hiring of local, state and federal workers. The economy has lost 2.6 million private-sector jobs since Bush took office, but government hiring has kept the total job loss to just 1.8 million. The Kerry index uses the larger figure, making their index look worse.

This from the semi-neutral Factcheck.org.

Of course, the story about Kerry fumbling the numbers just wasn't enough. Here's their final paragraph:

Kerry isn't the only one spinning economic figures, of course. We pointed out earlier a Republican attempt to claim that after-tax income was up when the Census Bureau reported it was down. Our advice: be wary of all politicians spouting economic statistics.

They just couldn't resist.

Canadian Fair Play

2004-04-12T11:08:00.000-05:00

Canadian Fair Play

Free speech is all fine a dandy unless it is something the gov't disagrees with.

Remember folks, this article is abOOt FREE SPEECH, not homosexual rights. I hate to break it to you on the Left (and the Right for that matter) but you DO NOT have a RIGHT to silence people who disagree with you. Deal with it.

When two people disagree with what each other is saying, say one is a pro-choice activist and the other a pro-life activist, who would get to stifle the other? According to the principle above, EITHER one could claim that the other was saying something they did not like and which, they felt, oppressed them. So who would win? The first guy to the courthouse?

It's happening here as well, folks.

Stomping on free speech

'Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian country," Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said a few years ago. An example of what he means is Bill C-250, a repressive, anti-free-speech measure that is on the brink of becoming law in Canada. It would add "sexual orientation" to the Canadian hate propaganda law, thus making public criticism of homosexuality a crime. It is sometimes called the "Bible as Hate Literature" bill. . . . It could ban publicly expressed opposition to gay marriage or any other political goal of gay groups. The bill has a loophole for religious opposition to homosexuality, but few scholars think it will offer protection, given the strength of the gay lobby and the trend toward censorship in Canada. Law Prof. David Bernstein, in his new book "You Can't Say That!" wrote that "it has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate traditional Christian opposition to homosexual sex." Or traditional Jewish or Muslim opposition, too.

Since Canada has no First Amendment, anti-bias laws generally trump free speech and freedom of religion. A recent flurry of cases has mostly gone against free expression. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruled that a newspaper ad listing biblical passages that oppose homosexuality was a human-rights offense. . . . a British Columbia court upheld the one-month suspension, without pay, of a high school teacher who wrote letters to a local paper arguing that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation but a condition that can and should be treated. The teacher, Chris Kempling, was not accused of discrimination, merely of expressing thoughts that the state defines as improper.

That anti-free-speech principle, social conservatives argue, will become explicit national policy under C-250, with criminal penalties attached. Religious groups say it would become risky for them to teach certain biblical passages. . . . And since C-250 does not mention homosexuality but focuses broadly on "sexual orientation," Canada's freewheeling judiciary may explicitly extend protection to many "sexual minorities." Pedophilia and sadism are among the conditions listed by the American Psychiatric Association under "sexual orientation."

Jacoby: No One Did it Right

2004-04-12T10:51:00.000-05:00

Jacoby: No One Did it Right

Jeff Jacoby points out the fantastic Monday Morning Quarterbacking of the current MEDIA circus.

The point: NO ONE was worrying too much about Islamist terrorists before 9/11. Not the President and his administration. Not the Dems. Not the Senate Intelligence Committee. NO ONE.

Jeff Jacoby: Everyone got it wrong before 9/11

We'll get to last week's big Washington story -- Condoleezza's Rice's testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission -- in a moment. But first, a short quiz:

1. Identify the following list of topics:

"The World Bank's mission creep"
"Getting debt relief right"
"Russia's unformed foreign policy"
"Japan, the reluctant reformer"
"With a friend like Fox"
"Caspian energy at the crossroads."

No clue? Don't feel bad. You would have to be suffering from acute foreign-policy wonkishness to recognize the table of contents from the September/ October 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, the flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. Like the curious incident of the dog in the night-time -- in the famous Sherlock Holmes tale, the "curious incident" was that the dog didn't bark -- the significance of these headlines is not in what they say but in what they don't say: The nation's leading journal of international relations was paying no attention to the threat from Islamist terror even as Islamist terrorists were planning the deadliest attack ever committed by foreign enemies on US soil.

2. Which US senator admitted on Sept. 11, 2001, "We have always known this could happen. . . . I regret to say -- I served on the Intelligence Committee up until last year. I can remember after the bombings of the embassies, after TWA 800, we went through this flurry of activity, talking about it -- but not really doing the hard work of responding.''

That was John Kerry on "Larry King Live," ruing his and his colleagues' pre-9/11 failure to give the threat from international terrorism the urgent attention and "hard work of responding" it should have had.

3. President Clinton's final national security policy paper, submitted to Congress in December 2000, was 45,000 words long. Yet it never once mentioned which international menace?

Al Qaeda. The document referred to Osama bin Laden just four times, and its discussion of terrorism spoke not of wiping out the killers in their nests but of extraditing "fugitives" to make them "answer for their crimes."

Economic Reality

2004-04-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

Economic Reality

The doom and gloom crowd will dislike this column.

All about number which show the economy is upward bound . . . and has been.

OpinionJournal.comThe Dangerfield Economy

By nearly every objective measure, the U.S. economy is strong and getting stronger. Just look at the Misery Index, the measure created by the late economist Arthur Okun adding the rates of unemployment and inflation. This may not be the most sophisticated of metrics, but it does capture the two greatest threats to household wealth and security. And it's indicating that, comparisons to the 1990s' bubble years excepted, the U.S. economy is doing very well.

Today's unemployment rate of 5.7% is close to the level Bill Clinton boasted about as he sought re-election in 1996. Meanwhile, inflation has fallen by a full percentage point over the past eight years. As the nearby table shows, the economy compares favorably by re-election standards and President Bush's policies should be enjoying at least a modicum of respect.

Blair: Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

2004-04-12T10:23:00.000-05:00

Blair: Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

An incredible piece from Tony Blair.

Anyone anti-Iraq should be required to read this piece.

Tony Blair: Why we must never abandon this historic struggle in Iraq

We are locked in a historic struggle in Iraq. On its outcome hangs more than the fate of the Iraqi people. Were we to fail, which we will not, it is more than 'the power of America' that would be defeated. The hope of freedom and religious tolerance in Iraq would be snuffed out. Dictators would rejoice; fanatics and terrorists would be triumphant. Every nascent strand of moderate Arab opinion, knowing full well that the future should not belong to fundamentalist religion, would be set back in bitter disappointment.
If we succeed - if Iraq becomes a sovereign state, governed democratically by the Iraqi people; the wealth of that potentially rich country, their wealth; the oil, their oil; the police state replaced by the rule of law and respect for human rights - imagine the blow dealt to the poisonous propaganda of the extremists. Imagine the propulsion toward change it would inaugurate all over the Middle East. . . .

They know it is a historic struggle. They know their victory would do far more than defeat America or Britain. It would defeat civilisation and democracy everywhere. They know it, but do we? The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find.

So what exactly is the nature of the battle inside Iraq itself? This is not a 'civil war', though the purpose of the terrorism is undoubtedly to try to provoke one. The current upsurge in violence has not spread throughout Iraq. Much of Iraq is unaffected and most Iraqis reject it. The insurgents are former Saddam sympathisers, angry that their status as 'boss' has been removed, terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda and, most recently, followers of the Shia cleric, Muqtada-al-Sadr.

The latter is not in any shape or form representative of majority Shia opinion. He is a fundamentalist, an extremist, an advocate of violence. He is wanted in connection with the murder of the moderate and much more senior cleric, Ayatollah al Khoei last year. The prosecutor, an Iraqi judge, who issued a warrant for his arrest, is the personification of how appallingly one-sided some of the Western reporting has become. Dismissed as an American stooge, he has braved assassination attempts and extraordinary intimidation in order to follow proper judicial process and has insisted on issuing the warrant despite direct threats to his life in doing so.

There you have it. On the one side, outside terrorists, an extremist who has created his own militia, and remnants of a brutal dictatorship which murdered hundreds of thousands of its own people and enslaved the rest. On the other side, people of immense courage and humanity who dare to believe that basic human rights and liberty are not alien to Arab and Middle Eastern culture, but are their salvation. . . .

By 1 June, electricity will be 6,000MW, 50 per cent more than prewar, but short of the 7,500MW they now need because of the massive opening up of the economy, set to grow by 60 per cent this year and 25 per cent the next.

The first private banks are being opened. A new currency is in circulation. Those in work have seen their salaries trebled or quadrupled and unemployment is falling. One million cars have been imported. Thirty per cent now have satellite TV, once banned, where they can watch al-Jazeera, the radical Arab TV station, telling them how awful the Americans are.

The internet is no longer forbidden. Shrines are no longer shut. Groups of women and lawyers meet to discuss how they can make sure the new constitution genuinely promotes equality. The universities eagerly visit Western counterparts to see how a modern, higher-education system, free to study as it pleases, would help the new Iraq.

People in the West ask: why don't they speak up, these standard-bearers of the new Iraq? Why don't the Shia clerics denounce al-Sadr more strongly? I understand why the question is asked. But the answer is simple: they are worried. They remember 1991, when the West left them to their fate. They know their own street, unused to democratic debate, rife with every rumour, and know its volatility. They read the Western papers and hear its media. And they ask, as the terrorists do: have we the stomach to see it through? . . .

But our greatest threat, apart from the immediate one of terrorism, is our complacency. When some ascribe, as they do, the upsurge in Islamic extremism to Iraq, do they really forget who killed whom on 11 September 2001? When they call on us to bring the troops home, do they seriously think that this would slake the thirst of these extremists, to say nothing of what it would do to the Iraqis?

Or if we scorned our American allies and told them to go and fight on their own, that somehow we would be spared? If we withdraw from Iraq, they will tell us to withdraw from Afghanistan and, after that, to withdraw from the Middle East completely and, after that, who knows? But one thing is for sure: they have faith in our weakness just as they have faith in their own religious fanaticism. And the weaker we are, the more they will come after us.

It is not easy to persuade people of all this; to say that terrorism and unstable states with WMD are just two sides of the same coin; to tell people what they don't want to hear; that, in a world in which we in the West enjoy all the pleasures, profound and trivial, of modern existence, we are in grave danger.

There is a battle we have to fight, a struggle we have to win and it is happening now in Iraq.

Ad Hominem Challenge

2004-04-11T10:33:00.000-05:00

Ad Hominem Challenge

To date, not a single person on the Left has taken up my challenge. Mostly because they know that they cannot meet it's requirements. But I still want the point to be made: the Dems and the Left are often engaged in the odious practice of directly attacking the person rather than his or her record. They call people names, float incredulous trheories without any proof, and generally demonstrate all that is the worst in American politics. And I mean MAJOR, HIGH PROFILE, Dems and Lefties, not just the far-left folks at democraticunderground.com.

Reps do not do so. While they are not perfect, you cannot find a SINGLE incidence of a HIGH_RANKING, OFFICIAL REP representative who has done the same. That's my challenge.

Here's a re-issue of that challenge:

Ad Hominem Challenge Update

Last week I posted a challenge to my liberal friends to supply me with a single cite of Rep attacks. Here's what I said:

A challenge to the Left: find me ONE, just ONE, instance of Bush or another Senior Administration Official calling Kerry names. I don't mean saying that he did such and such as a Senator. I mean calling him "crooked" or a liar or some other ad hominem attack. Just ONE pure ad hominem attack.

I am extending that challenge and offering an incentive:

Find me one high-ranking Rep OFFICIAL (equivalent on the Rep side as Gore, Kerry, Dean, etc. are to the Dems) who has called Kerry and compatriots names and engaged in outright ad hominem attacks.

Find me one verifiable cite, WITH SOURCE MATERIAL FOR CHECKING IT OUT, and I will put a link to your site at the top of my blogroll and encourage everyone who visits this page to go a read your site daily.

Are you up to it Media Revolution or Rickfman or any of my other liberal (oh, sorry, I mean "progressive," isn't that the current euphemism?) readers?

Digital TV on Its Way To a Set Near You

2004-04-11T03:45:00.000-05:00

Digital TV on Its Way To a Set Near You

Why in the hell is THIS a law?

What bureaucratic nincompoop decided that ALL US TV STATIONS need to broadcast only in digital by 2006?

What possible purpose could this rule serve?

Will programming get better? I doubt it.
Will advertisers get a better return on their money spent? I doubt it?
Will this "help the children"? Uh-uh.
Will it help TV makers sell more expensive HDTV sets? Yep.

I am a decided capitalist folks, as regular readers know. But this is GOV'T forcing the issue.

If the market, if PEOPLE, decide that they need HDTV and prefer digital signals . . . then it would happen. Why do we need a GOV'T RULE requiring such a transition?

Will it help national security? The economy? Whiskey tango . . . ?

FOXNews.com - Foxlife - TV Gets Up Close and Personal

Foul Ball from Left Field

2004-04-11T03:34:00.000-05:00

Foul Ball from Left Field

Here's is James P. Pinkerton's assessment of Dr. Rice's testimony and the subsequent release of the PDB.

It is an excellent source for an all-in-one-place recount of how the Left will approach these event.

He willfully twists all of it into to sounding as though Bush got a memo saying, "Bin Laden, 9-11-01, early morning, Twin Towers, Pentagon, Capital, 4 planes."

He also likes making Dr. Rice sounds as though she was a schoolgirl out of her depth at the hearings.

If that's how the Left wants to see it, fine. I think that the average American who read the text of the memo, and hears the comments of Mr. Ben-Veniste's fellow panel members, will understand that this was a warning from 3 YEARS earlier.

When someone comes up to you and tells you that, three years ago, someone threatened the last guy who held the job you now hold, but who hasn't been heard from about it since, would you jump up and do something? Or would you, like most people, think that that was interesting but not enough to act on just yet since there WERE reports of other things happening that WERE recent and immediate?

All of this is the Left imploding. They cannot stand Bush and will purposely make it sound as though Bin Laden called up and said he was a-comin'.

He didn't . Get over it.

Newsday.com: Pre-9/11 doings are coming to light

Just Damn II

2004-04-09T14:55:00.000-05:00

Just Damn II

Will the administration EVER stop allowing itself to be blackmailed by BIG MEDIA?

FOXNews.com - Politics - Presidential Brief to Go Public

MSNBC - Does Rice really know her role?

2004-04-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Howard Fineman v. The Rock

KNOW YOUR ROLE!

That's the famous taunt that pro wrestler The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) screams at opponents when they overstep their bounds.

It's a play on the old misogynistic attitude of a he-man telling the lowly woman that she should be barefoot and pregnant . . . she should "know her role" and not get such high falutin' ideas about things off-limits like reading, having friends, and making what SHE would prefer for dinner.

But The Rock can say it to anyone he wants because he's the ultimate bad-a** and can show contempt for anyone (or so the scenario goes).

Today, Howard Fineman, Newsweek’s chief political correspondent and an NBC News analyst, tells Dr. Condileeza Rice to "KNOW HER ROLE"; Apparently in his mind has overstepped her rightful place by becoming one of the most powerful women in the world with the ear of the President of the United States . . . and not doing it the way Mr. Fineman would have her do it.

At one point her says of Dr. Rice that she is "[a] self-proclaimed expert at understanding 'structural' change in large institutions . . . ."

How condescending can you get?

What are her credentials in this area? I don't know. Does he? He might want to make a note of her actual experience and thus prove that she does not have any in the concept of "change" in a large institution. Instead, like so many leading Libs nowadays, he simply makes the accusation and does nothing to back it up. (cf. Howard Dean to Diane Rehm, John Kerry on Foreign Leaders, Edward Kennedy on a War made up in Texas)

MSNBC - Does Rice really know her role?
Let's look at that non-biased portray of Dr. Rice in this article:

"A self-proclaimed expert . . . ."
"Rice wasn't aware — may still not be aware — . . . ."
"The student of bureaucratic change didn't really attempt to foment any, at least not with the kind of urgency we know she needed to have." Gotta love hindsight, eh Libs?
"And Rice's tone was perhaps too steely: The response to terrorism over the years had been "insufficient," she said. What a bland word when a soothing sense of regret was required. She was a bureaucrat explaining "structure" to a national audience (and a chamber full of family members) that yearned for blunt talk."
"Rice . . . is just a cog in a machine."
"The president was given the now-famous PDB of Aug. 6, 2001, which suggested not only that Osama bin Laden was "determined " to attack inside the United States, but that the FBI had picked up a pattern that suggested the possibility of hijackings here." According to testimony, that's incorrect. The PDB talked of PAST threats made in the PAST but not NOW . . . PAST. This was NOT a warning that "planes a acomin' . . . ."
"Already on the defensive for his leadership in the post 9/11 world . . . ." Being attacked, yes. "On the defensive"? No.

Finally, we have this wonderful bit toward the end of the piece:

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom being told by Andy Card of the attack? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated. That won him enormous sympathy and patience from the voters. But what if he was literally on vacation — at the ranch in Crawford — when he should have been making sure that someone was ringing alarm bells throughout the bureaucracy?

So you mean Bush WASN'T "thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated"? Then what exactly DID happen, Mr. Fineman?

What a weird conspiracy theory twist to an otherwise unexceptional piece of non-biased media.

Thank god we don't have any bias in the press.

Kerry on Clarke: He's Wrong

2004-04-08T12:45:00.000-05:00

Kerry on Clarke: He's Wrong

Bob Kerrey, president of New School University in New York and a former Democratic senator from Nebraska, is a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the "9/11" Commission).

The Search for Answers: Richard Clarke is wrong about Iraq.

Mr. Clarke's most startling statement was that there have been more terrorist attacks against the United States in the 30 months since 9/11 than in the 30 months prior to the attack. You could almost hear a clap of thunder when he went on to say that this happened because we substantially reduced our efforts in Afghanistan and went to war in Iraq, causing a loss of momentum in the war against al Qaeda.

That's his argument. I think he's wrong, but I don't think he is being duplicitous. He is wrong because most if not all of the terrorism since 9/11 has occurred because al Qaeda and other radical Islamists have an even dimmer view of a free and independent Iraq than they do a free and independent United States. A democracy in Iraq that embraces modernism, pluralism, tolerance and the plebiscite is a greater sacrilege than anything we are doing here at home.

Mr. Clarke's views on Iraq notwithstanding, after 9/11 we could not afford either to run the risk that Saddam Hussein would be deterred by our military efforts to contain him or that these military deployments would become attractive targets for further acts of terrorism. I supported President Bush's efforts to persuade the United Nations Security Council to change a 10-year-old resolution that authorized force to contain Saddam Hussein to one that authorized force to replace his dictatorship. And I believe the president did the right thing to press ahead even without the Security Council's support. Remember, the June 25, 1996, attack on Khobar Towers that left 19 American airmen dead happened because of our containment efforts. Sailors had also died enforcing the Security Council's embargo and our pilots were risking their lives every day flying missions over northern and southern Iraq to protect Iraqi Kurds and Shiites. . . .

This debate becomes all the more important since the work of this commission--to examine an attack against the U.S. that occurred nearly three years ago--has been overshadowed by the events taking place in Iraq. The war there is not over. Twelve marines were killed in Ramadi Tuesday night in what has become a dramatic escalation of violence against coalition forces. I believe this escalation is taking place precisely because the country is about to be handed over to the Iraqi people to run themselves.

Sowell on Hidden Costs of Gov't

2004-04-08T12:37:00.000-05:00

Sowell on Hidden Costs of Gov't

Two excellent articles from Thomas Sowell, award-winning economist, on the hidden costs of Gov't regs.

Counting the costs

Government restrictions are attractive to people who want to impose their pet notions without having to count the costs. There may be estimated costs -- often disputed estimates -- but there is nothing to force those estimates to include all the things that will become more costly because of a given policy.

Nor is there anything to force the original estimates to bear any resemblance to the actual costs that end up being paid by the taxpayers and others.

In the marketplace, you can believe that every additional cost your decision creates is likely to show up in the price tag. . . .

The government can overlook all sorts of costs -- but those costs do not go away. There is no free lunch.

Counting the costs: Part II

Not so when it is the taxpayers' money or -- better yet -- money that business is forced to spend, which does not even show up on the government's budget.

One of the reasons costs do not get counted is that costs are often confused with prices. All the political noises being made about importing pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, or other schemes to reduce drug prices, do not face up to the 800-pound gorilla staring us in the face -- the $800 million it costs to develop a new drug.

You can control the price of drugs all you want, whether by imports from Canada or in numerous other ways, but if that $800 million is not covered, you are not going to keep getting new drugs created at the same pace. That's when sick people will pay the real cost in needless pain and preventable deaths.

But the politicians do not have to count any such costs, especially if those costs materialize only after the next election.

Volokh on Condi Rxns

2004-04-08T12:20:00.000-05:00

Volokh on Dr. Rice Rxns

Eugene Volokh has a great post on expected reactions to Rice's testimony.

"Hardball" Bingo:

I'm sufficiently confident about this that I think I can write up the scripts. Here are the buzzwords I expect from both sides. Play bingo at home (or, if you want, make it into a drinking game: one drink for each iteration of one of these words).

Of her demeanor, Rice supporters will say she was: "poised," "confident," "authoritative," and/or "polished."
Of her demeanor, Rice detractors will say she was: "defensive," "visibly annoyed," and/or "brusque" ; bonus (if they feel strongly) "petulant" and/or "schoolmarmish"

On the quality of her arguments, Rice supporters will say: "persuasive," "convincing," "firm," and/or "powerful"; bonus (if they feel strongly) "overpowering"
On the quality of her arguments, Rice detractors will say: "unpersuasive," "weak," "vacillating," and/or "shaky,"; bonus (if they feel strongly) "incoherent"

Overall, Rice supporters will describe her performance as: "a home run," "putting doubts to rest," "answering all the questions," "showing Clarke to be a liar," and/or "letting us get on to the people's business"; bonus (if they are really partisan) "refuting the demagogues on the other side"
Overall, Rice detractors will describe her performance as: "raising more questions than it answers," "a missed opportunity to inform the American people," "vindicating Richard Clarke," and/or "raising troubling questions about this Administration"; bonus (if they are really partisan) "you're the demagogue" (followed by: "am not!"; "are too!"; "am not!"; etc.)

Dodd on the KKK

2004-04-07T14:28:00.000-05:00

Dodd on the KKK

UPDATE:

The Washington Times has a damning piece which included the following quote from Sen. Dodd commenting on the Trent Lott kerfuffle in 2002:

Mr. Dodd was among the Democrats who called for Mr. Lott to lose his leadership post and said his party would deal with such comments differently.

"If Tom Daschle or another Democratic leader were to have made similar statements, the reaction would have been very swift," he said on CNN's "Late Edition" on Dec. 15, 2002. "I don't think several hours would have gone by without there being an almost unanimous call for the leader to step aside."

Many, if not most, conservative pundits called Lott on the carpet for his statements.

Most Dems cannot seem to bring themselves to do the same to analogous comments made by Dodd.

Typical do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do Dem reaction.

Original post:

Sen. Christopher Dodd wishes that the KKK's views had held sway during the Civil War. No really. I mean he DID praise Robert "KKK" Byrd as a "man for all seasons" and one which would be appropriate in all times of our great history. Therefore he must think that Byrd would have been appropriate during the civil war.

No one REALLY thought Lott wanted the segregationist version of Strom Thurmond to make policies.

No one truly believes that Dodd wants the KKK version of Byrd to make policies.

But Lott was railroaded and no one has said hardly a WORD about Dodd.

Poor Little Soldiers?

2004-04-07T08:21:00.000-05:00

Poor Little Soldiers?

An excellent vetting of a Progressive screed about how the American military is a dumping ground for poor kids and how they all live in poverty.

If you believe this sort of thing, or know someone who does, point them here for a correction.

Thanks to Instapundit for the heads up.

Jason: The Progressive Disorder

But between the glaring factual errors, the total misunderstanding of military pay and benefit structures, and the condescending cultural elitism built into her prose, it's clear that Ehrenreich has no idea how to report on the military community. Neither does the editorial staff at The Progressive.

My Impression of the Hare

2004-04-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

My Impression of the Hare

I know, I know. I am terribly late in picking up on this.

In a fit of self-absorption, I was Googling for "The Art of The Blog" and "TAoTB" and came acrose Glenn Reynolds article about what makes a blog good. It linked to an old Lileks piece deconstructing an article in Britain's far-left Guardian.

Damned funny stuff.

The best part?

Here's the deal: we don?t need your support. But understand that if Iraqis had flown planes into Big Ben, we?d take out Saddam, because we understand that an attack on you is an attack on us. The West is not defined by Belgian edicts on acceptable levels of tomato sauce viscosity. The West is a set of ideas that need defending. Forgive us our passable wines; forgive our standardized veal. Forgive us our simple-mindedness, for we - from Alabama on outward to outer, distant Alabama and beyond - have a gut feeling that ?quarrels? usually boil down to two sides. Forgive us for believing that fascism's side ought to lose.

Enjoy! =)

Clarke Lied and the Lying Liar who Lied Lying Lied

2004-04-06T14:04:00.000-05:00

Clarke Lied and the Lying Liar who Lied Lying Lied

Boortz brings up a GREAT bit to use in an discussion of Dick Clarke's claims.

Neal Boortz on Clarke's Claims

(BTW - after today, 4-06-04, you can click the original link and find the archive of today for the post.)

You are former president Bill Clinton. Your chief anti-terrorism guy, Richard Clarke, says that Al Qaeda was an absolute top priority during the final years of your term. In fact, Richard Clarke writes a book and testifies under oath telling everyone who will listen how focused you were on Al Qaeda while you were president.

So .. it's the end of your eight years in the White House. December, 2000. You are writing a report detailing your views on the major security threats facing the United States as you leave office. The report, which Richard Clarke helped you write, is 45,000 words long. That would be 168 pages using Microsoft Word, and if published as a book it would be about 220 pages long. Now that's quite a lot of words describing what you think are the major security concerns the next president needs to be aware of. And guess what? In all of those 45,000 words you don't mention the name "Al Qaeda" even one time. The greatest security concern facing America; isn't that what Richard Clarke said? And you don't even mention it one time in your report? Richard Clarke says that Condi Rice looked confused when he mentioned Al Qaeda ... but he didn't manage to get any reference to Al Qaeda included in your final report on security threats?

UPDATE: Here's a link to the Washington Times article on the subject: Al Qaeda absent from final Clinton report - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics

Free Speech v. Boycotts

2004-04-06T13:15:00.000-05:00

Free Speech v. Boycotts

A blogger wieghs in on the Kos kerfuffle.

Someday people will learn that FREE SPEECH and any violation thereof applies ONLY to the GOV'T and NEVER to PRIVATE CITIZENS who call someone on the carpet for saying (or doing) something stupid, wrong, reprehensible, evil, what have you.

What follows is the text of my comment on his post.

Why I don't raise money for politicians

I think no one should boycott anyone.

When Jesse Jackson calls for a boycott of someone for saying something reprehensible and racist, do you feel that the person who made the racist comment is having their "right to free speech" assaulted? Or do you feel that a private citizen is trying to mobilize people of like mind to convince advertisers (and other monetary supporters) to abandon the cretin?

This is the marketplace at work, guys. Sometimes it goes against the left, sometimes the right, sometimes the center. . . .

This time it was someone on the left who said something reprehensible and he was called on the carpet for it. As it should be.

If a bunch of lefties wanted to block Instapundit or Andy Sullivan, I'd be just as vociferious in defending their right to free speech.

When will people come to understand that FREE SPEECH is about the GOVERNMENT taking away your right to say something.

It has NOTHING to do with a private citizen (e.g. Michael Friedman) calling for what amounts to a boycott of someone else (e.g. Kos). Even if they do so in a particularly public way.

If The Heritage Foundation was truly supporting someone who says nuking Iraq is a good idea (it's not if you read the whole article btw), then I would expect and encourage the left to go after them. It would not be an abridgement of free speech but exactly the opposite - free speech in action.

What I find so silly, or outrageous, is that after a few e-mails . . . Democratic candidates ran like little bitches. . . . Hell, if they had investigated the situation, they would have found out the worst thing about the guy is that he's a Cubs fan . . . .

So saying to these murdered, mutilated veterans "screw 'em" is not as bad as being a Cubs fan? Funny. But not true.

The Dems realized that they did not want to be associated with that sentiment and I applaud them on their quick dissociation from such a vile comment.

Do I count as a right-wing troll or not?

Reacting to Terrorism

2004-04-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

Reacting to Terrorism

Three articles about terrorism: the way we should react to Fallujah, the failures of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), and the price to non-terrorist Muslims.

David Limbaugh: Iraqi violence should strengthen U.S. resolve

Once again, they'll be off base. The issue isn't simply whether there was a direct connection between Saddam and Osama. The more relevant question is whether military action against Iraq furthered our cause in the War on Terror.

Even if we don't have taped transcripts evidencing collusion between Saddam and Osama, we know beyond doubt that Iraq was a terrorist-sponsoring state and a safe-haven for Islamo-fascists.

Indeed, the terrorists' desperate and persistent efforts to thwart Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule vindicate the Bush Administration's conclusion that Iraq was and remains a pivotal target in the war. The violence fomented by Iraqi Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr, and his brazen overtures to Hezbollah and Hamas, support President Bush's broader view that there is worldwide solidarity among international terrorists.

Joel Mowbray : Tolerating Terrorism

CAIR’s spokesman was given the opportunity to condemn Hamas and Islamic Jihad by the Washington Post in November 2001. His response was telling: “It’s not our job to go around denouncing.” Asked a similar question about Hamas and Hezbollah by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in February 2002, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper called such inquiries a “game” and explained, “We’re not in the business of condemning.”

But when Israel is to blame, CAIR seems to be very much “in the business of condemning.”

After Israel recently killed the founder of Hamas—a man responsible for the deaths of 52 mostly young Palestinian suicide bombers and 377 mostly civilian Israelis—CAIR saw fit to “condemn” the Jewish state without a moment’s pause. In its press release, CAIR said it “condemned the assassination of a wheelchair-bound Palestinian Muslim religious leader, calling it an act of ‘state terrorism.’”

CAIR couldn’t bring itself to call the founder of one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations on earth even a “militant,” let alone a “terrorist.” To them, a man with the blood of over 400 people on his hands was a handicapped “religious leader.” Seems awfully instructive about the kind of Islam they must follow if they label terrorist masterminds “religious leaders.”

Dennis Prager: Why no Christian suicide bombers? and other thoughts on Islamic terror

So, to better understand the subject, I offer three conclusions I drew about terror during my week of broadcasting from Israel last month.

First, Islamic terror is caused by Muslims, not, as Islamic and leftist apologists would have it, by the non-Muslims against whom it is directed. In our morally confused world, Spain, Israel and America are blamed for having their men, women and children blown up: What did these countries do to arouse such enmity among otherwise tolerant Arabs and Muslims?

Palestinian terror provides the answer. About 25 percent of Palestinians are Christian, yet if there are any Palestinian Christian suicide bombers, I am unaware of them. Now why is that? Don't Muslim and leftist apologists incessantly tell us that the reason for Palestinian terror is "Israeli occupation and oppression"? Why, then, are there no Palestinian Christian terrorists? Are Christian Palestinians less occupied? . . .

Second, despite the Spanish cave-in to terror, in the long run, terror doesn't work. By any rational calculation, to take the Palestinian example, it has become the most self-destructive policy Palestinians could pursue. Palestinian terror has convinced almost all Israelis outside of academia that the moral gulf between them and the Palestinians is so wide that there is presently no hope for peace. . . .

Third, there is a terrible long-term price that Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in particular are paying for the minority that engages in terror and for the majority that says nothing about it or supports it. . . .

Just as the German nation, fairly or not, has had to grapple with the moral legacy of Nazism, and the name of Christianity still suffers (unfairly) because of medieval persecutions of non-Christians, so, too, Islam, Arabs and Palestinians will have to struggle for generations to shed their identification with murdering innocents.

While it is Americans, Israelis and other targets of terror who most suffer individually from Palestinian and other Muslim terror, those with the most to lose are Palestinians, Arabs and Islam.

Sowell on Fixing the Jury System

2004-04-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Sowell on Fixing the Jury System

Thomas Sowell: Fixing the jury system

If we are serious about wanting justice in our courts, then we need to start getting serious about preventing witnesses and jurors from being intimidated. We might start by getting all cameras out of the courtroom.

There is no reason why the identity of the jurors has to be known by the media. The whole jury could be put behind one-way glass, so that they can see the proceedings but cannot be seen. It can be made a felony to publish their names.

The requirement for unanimous jury verdicts is long overdue for reconsideration. One pig-headed juror can cause not only a costly mistrial but also verdicts that do not reflect the seriousness of the crime. . . .

The time is also long overdue to reconsider the current practice of having jurors selected with vetoes by the lawyers in the case. When prospective jurors are given 30-page questionnaires made up by lawyers, asking intrusive questions about their personal lives and beliefs, the situation has gotten completely out of hand. . . .

Anonymous jurors, selected by lottery, and not restricted to unanimous verdicts, should be good enough for anyone in an inherently imperfect world. In such a system, cranks and ideologues would not have nearly the leverage that they do now.

There could also be professional jurors, trained in the law, for cases involving complex legal issues. That would cost more -- or rather, the cost would be visible in money, rather than hidden in the corruption of the legal system, the way it is now.

Bartlett on Relative Taxation

2004-04-06T12:29:00.000-05:00

Bartlett on Relative Taxation

Bruce Bartlett: Who pays the taxes?

Looking at the share of taxes paid shows a similar pattern. From 1984 to 2001, those in the bottom quintile reduced their share of the total tax burden from 2.4 percent to 1.1 percent. Those in the top quintile saw their share rise from 55.6 percent to 65.3 percent. Among the ultra wealthy, the top 10 percent increased their share from 39.3 percent to 50 percent, the top 5 percent raised their share from 28.2 percent to 38.5 percent, and that of those in the top 1 percent went up from 14.7 percent to 22.7 percent.

In short, the poor paid half as much of the federal tax burden in 2001 as they did in 1984, while the rich paid about 50 percent more. Those in the middle paid about a third less.

One would think that those on the left would be happy about this trend. Instead, they constantly demagogue the wealthy as deadbeats unwilling to bear their "fair share" of the tax burden, and berate the Bush tax cuts for having "slashed" taxes for the wealthy, while the rest of us pay more. As is so often the case, the truth is exactly the opposite of that portrayed in the liberal worldview.

PC EU Anti-Semitism Report

2004-04-05T17:13:00.000-05:00

PC EU Anti-Semitism Report

The summery of a major EU report on Anti-Semitism is redacted to show that disaffected white youths commit the majority of the anti-Semitic crimes in the EU - despite that fact that the body of the report contradicts that assertion.

EU 'covered up' attacks on Jews by young Muslims

But most of the report focuses on Jew-baiting by Muslim youths. It paints an alarming picture of daily life for France's 600,000 Jews, the EU's biggest community.

In schools, Jewish children are beaten with impunity, and teachers dare not talk about the Holocaust for fear of provoking Muslim pupils, it said.

Britain, which saw a 75 per cent rise in incidents last year, was gently rebuked for hesitating to take "politically awkward" measures against Islamic radicals.

"The government is very anxious not to upset the Muslim community," the report said.

Kos Kerfuffle and Stoller's Comments

2004-04-05T13:34:00.000-05:00

Kos Kerfuffle and Stoller's Comments

Blogger Matt Stoller has some interesting thoughts on the whole Daily Kos "Screw 'Em" kerfuffle.

This bit, however, caught my attention.

When Mainstream Political Kibitzing Comes Online

Because normal political speech is now part and parcel of the pseudo-scandal industry, we are currently in political crisis mode where communications is becoming impossible. It's not that there's too much information; it's that there's too much spin with too much ammo. Just as an increasing amount of cultural product is becoming regulable because it's moving online, so too is there now an unlimited amount of information that you can connect to any political movement. No doubt, three clicks away from GeorgeWBush.com lies some nutty neo-Nazi site, and the same goes for JohnKerry.com. A media that won't differentiate between what the candidate says and who the candidate is near can't effectively describe modern democracy, because in the online political world, everyone is three clicks away. The only check upon the political pseudo-scandal industry, the inability to find damaging information to link to a candidate, is now gone.

Stoller seems to be implying that there is something wrong with having information, and the ability to comment on it, adding your own opinion and analysis (pejoratively referred to as "spinning"). Or maybe it is just that too many have the opportunity to do so ("it's that there's too much spin with too much ammo")? Or is it that a few people express their opinion and analysis too often or with too large an audience? Or even that it's too easy to "spin" info in such a way that it connects to a campaign?

Would he think it wrong of someone to say that Bush is wrong for linking to a site that harbors Neo-Nazi sentiments? Of course the Bush campaign would not do so directly, but what if it were second or third hand? Wouldn't Stoller expect, rightfully so, the Bush campaign to either

delink from the further referring site or
convince the site they link to to delink the offending site?

Seems only natural to hold them accountable for this sort of thing. As a conservative who finds such sentiments reprehensible and wrong, I would be in the front of the parade to convince Bush to repudiate the attachment.

Just as I would find Bush absent malice if his campaign did delink from such a site, I do not think for a moment that Kerry's campaign supports Kos' statements based on their immediate renunciation upon hearing what Kos had said. Bravo on them!

Stoller is right that the MEDIA should differentiate between the candidate and sites linked to linked to linked to sites. But websites on which the candidate DIRECTLY ADVERTISES must be held accountable by the candidate.

The candidate should be given a chance to repudiate statements with which he or she disagrees. If the candidate refuses to do so and continues to advertise despite the content therein, the candidate should be held accountable for all the content on those sites.

Given a chance to repudiate incorrect, wrong, even evil sentiments, candidates who refuse to do so implicitly (or worse, explicitly) support those ideas.

In the end, it is not the blogsphere that would sully a campaign, but rather a campaign that sullies itself by not disavowing comments made by sites on which they chose to advertise.

Dean - J'Accuse

2004-04-04T13:54:00.000-05:00

Dean - J'Accuse

Dean, the man behind the Watergate problems if you believe a different conspiracy theory (Silent Coup), accuses the Bush administration of being lying liars who lie and are secret.

Telegraph | News | Bush's administration is worse than Nixon's, says Watergate aide

"Bush and [Vice-President Richard] Cheney are a throwback to the Nixon time," Mr Dean, 65, told The Telegraph last night. "All government business is filtered through a political process at this White House, which is the most secretive ever to run the United States.

"This is not in the public's interest. It's in the White House's interest, and the interest of Bush's re-election. The White House is being run like a private business, with the difference that it is not accountable to the shareholders - in this case the voters."

Libs Can't Read?

2004-04-04T13:50:00.000-05:00

Libs Can't Read?

I was listening briefly to Air America just now, approx. 1:40 PM 4-04-04. The host, I think it's "Randi Rhodes" (I think that's what they said, if someone knows differently, please let me know and I'll correct this attribution) has just said, in essence: this book (American Dynasty) might be a bit high-level for her listeners to read. They haven't read a book, you see. So maybe this might be too much for them to understand when starting to read about the Bush family. (Everything after the colon is her direct sentiment - not in quotes because I could not get the exact wording, but this is pretty close to what she said.)

Pretty funny - a liberal who believes that the Left's constituency is ignorant, unread, and cannot even understand the concepts of the Far Left's whacky conspiracy theories if they did not have far-left-wing conspiracy theorists to explain it to them in simple words (and had to read it for themselves).

Also, as I have been typing this out, in the background the host and her guest have kept talking. Seems like they are discussing the Bush's plans to create chaos in the Middle East so as to bring about the end times demanded by their (the Bush's) fundamentalist faith.

Click the link at the top of this page and you can listen to this stuff for yourself.

KEEP TALKING AIR AMERICA - you're the most potent force the right has found yet to convert people to conservative views. ;-)

World Anger, Oh My!

2004-04-02T23:05:00.000-06:00

World Anger, Oh My!

BTW - You do know that James Lileks has one of the funniest sites on the web, right? It's the Gallery of Regrettable Food. Too funny! Support great bloggers like James and buy his book.

Lileks on World Anger

I mean, there are countless numbers of things that we could be doing to enhance the world's view of us and to minimize the kind of anger and ... almost recruitment that has taken place in terrorist organizations as a result of the way the administration has behaved.

And that’s the second money quote, right there. We stopped pretending we would ratify Kyoto. We only spent $15 billion on AIDS in Africa. We did not take dictation from Paris. If we had done these things, it would minimize the world’s anger.

Is the world angry at Russia, which spends nothing on AIDS and rebuffed Kyoto? Is the world angry at China, which got a pass on Kyoto and spends nothing on AIDS for other countries?

Is the world angry at North Korea for killings its people? Angry at Iran for smothering that vibrant nation with corrupt and thuggish mullocracy? Angry at Syria for occupying Lebanon? Angry at Saudi Arabia for its denial of women’s rights? Angry at Russia for corrupt elections? Is the world angry at China for threatening Taiwan, or angry at France for joining the Chinese in joint military exercises that threatened the island on the eve of an election? Is the world angry at Zimbabwe for stealing land and starving people? Is the world angry at Pakistan for selling nuclear secrets? Is the world angry at Libya for having an NBC program?

Is the world angry at the thugs of Fallujah?

Is the world angry at anyone besides America and Israel?

Boortz on the Internet and the UN: a Love Story

2004-04-02T13:55:00.000-06:00

The Internet and the UN: a Love Story

As in "the UN would LOVE to get its hands on control of the Internet." This is something everyone reading this should be concerned about.

Once control is ceded to the UN, they will be able to do things like shut down Blogger and Blogspot. Why? Because many people who use these sites promote ideas antithetical to UN principles and goals.

Do YOU truly want to leave your access to information in the hands of a group that kicked the US off the Human Rights committee while allowing Libya and Syria to sit on, and even HEAD, same? Yeah, that's a group with it's priorities straight and they would NEVER consider doing something to restrict US citizens.

These are the same folks who want to ban handguns . . . EVERYWHERE for EVERYONE. Exceptions made only for gov'ts.

Kofi's Internet

To be sure, the UN Human Rights Declaration offers lip-service to basic freedoms. Article 19 reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

So, Boortz, how in the world can you say that the UN would initiate a campaign to control Internet content when its own Human Rights Declaration guarantees the freedom to “impart information and ideas through any media and regardless to frontiers.”

Grab your handy copy of the Declaration and read on … read on to Article 29. Section 3. No … wait. I’ll just print it here for you to read: “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

Well, so much for Article 19. It seems your right to freedom of opinion and expression is wholly dependent on just whatever the purposes and principles of the United Nations might be at that particular time. And this is Bill Clinton’s idea of the best document ever written promoting the idea of human freedom? Has he never read something called the Declaration of Independence?

The United Nations is no friend of freedom .. and its eyes are on your Internet. If operational control of this fantastic source of information is ever transferred to the United Nations you can rest assured that Article 29, Section 3 will be used to destroy what we enjoy so much today.

2004-04-02T13:49:00.000-06:00

Bozell on Priorities

Brent Bozell: Terrorism, a Clinton priority?

Or she could have responded with a list of the real Clinton foreign policy priorities:

1. Maintaining Clinton's approval ratings. This would include ineffective military strikes on terrorist targets and pharmaceutical factories, transparently timed to shift the news media's attention away from inconvenient topics like impeachment and lying under oath about sexual sloppiness.

2. Building Clinton's legacy and his chances for a Nobel Peace Prize. This would include ruling out any U.S. response to the killing of Americans on the U.S.S. Cole, since it might have jeopardized Clinton's end-of-term Middle East "peace" partnership with Yasser Arafat.

3. Globe-trotting apologies for everything America has done in its history, real or imagined. This correlates to No. 2, see: Nobel Prize, pandering for.

4. Broadening "national security" to include panicked theorizing about global warming from cattle flatulence and other imminent threats. Al Gore told Clinton Earth was hanging in the balance.

5. Fighting the bad guys with that intimidating tool, the treaty designed to ban weapons and weapons testing. Let's not forget how this exercise in Realpolitik affected North Korea. They signed a treaty with Clinton to end weapons development in exchange for aid, which it began violating with impunity about two minutes later.

6. Shaping military-technology export policy to fit the demands of campaign contributors, both domestic and the illegal foreign kind.

At the very least, the National Security Advisor could have reminded Mr. Brokaw that President Clinton was so anti-anti-terrorism that he let members of the Puerto Rican terror group FALN out of prison in 1999. (This group was best known for their bombing of New York's historic Fraunces Tavern in 1975, killing four and wounding 60.) The move was so politically tin-eared that the Senate voted 95-2 to call Clinton's clemency "deplorable." Interestingly enough, Tom Brokaw didn't cover that vote.

In November of 1999, a White House memo surfaced showing Clinton counsel Charles Ruff was urged to add his support for FALN clemency to help Al Gore's political aspirations: "The VP's Puerto Rican position would be helped" by the clemency. Brokaw didn't cover that story, either. . . .

How, after punishing the Bush White House for years for supposedly squashing civil liberties and generally acting too aggressively in the War on Terror, can you turn around and completely bash their failure to pass the Patriot Act or attack Afghanistan sooner? . . .

But worse than this shooting bullets at Bushies from every direction is the annual compounding of historical ignorance on the real Clinton record. Not only did the networks avoid the dithering failures and craven political calculations as they unfolded, but now they're repainting the Clintonistas as vigilant comic-book heroes who make Bush look weak and apathetic by comparison. That's not just prevarication. That's hallucination.

Improving Iraq

2004-04-02T13:46:00.000-06:00

Improving Iraq

Jeff Jacoby: What has gone right in Iraq

"As the dogs of war slouch towards Baghdad, we need to be reminded that as many as 2 million refugees could become a reality, as well as half a million fatalities."

Writing on the left-wing website AlterNet last March, senior editor Tai Moses dreaded the coming of a war that "could create more than a million refugees in Iraq and neighboring countries." The BBC, citing a "confidential" UN document, predicted that up to 500,000 Iraqis would be seriously injured during the first phase of an American attack, while 1 million would flee the country and 2 million more would be internally displaced -- all compounded by an "outbreak of diseases in epidemic if not pandemic proportions." The Organization of the Islamic Conference foresaw the "displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees," plus "total destruction and a humanitarian tragedy whose scale cannot be predicted."

Wrong, every one of them, along with all the other doomsayers, Bush-haters, "Not In Our Name" fanatics, and sundry "peace" activists who flooded the streets and the airwaves to warn of onrushing disaster. How many have had the integrity to admit that their visions of catastrophe were wildly off the mark? Or that if they had gotten their way, the foremost killer of Muslims alive today -- Saddam -- would still be torturing children before their parents' eyes? Instead they chant, "Bush lied, people died," and seize on every setback in Iraq as proof that they were right all along. . . .

Nearly a year after the fall of Baghdad, Iraq is hugely improved. Unemployment has been cut in half. Wages are climbing. The devastated southern marshlands are being restored. More Iraqis own cars and telephones than before Saddam was ousted. Some 2,500 schools have been rehabbed by the US-headed coalition. Spending on health care has soared thirtyfold, and millions of Iraqi children have been vaccinated. Iraqi athletes, no longer terrorized by Saddam's sadistic son Uday, are training for the summer Olympics in Greece.

Above all, Iraq's people are free. The horror and cruelty of the Saddam era are gone forever. In the 12 months since the American and British troops arrived, not one body has been added to a secret mass grave. Not one woman has been raped on government orders. Not one dissident has been mauled to death by trained killer dogs. Not one Kurdish village has been gassed.

Is everything rosy? Of course not. Could the transition to constitutional democracy still fail? Yes. Do innocent victims continue to die in horrific terror attacks, or at the hands of lynch mobs like the one that dragged the corpses of four Americans through the streets of Falluja this week? They do.

But none of that changes the bottom line: In the ancient land that America liberated, life is more beautiful and hopeful than it has been in many decades. Bush's foes may loudly deny it, but the refugees streaming homeward know better.

Two on Condi and the Commission

2004-04-02T13:43:00.000-06:00

Two on Condi and the Commission

Linda Chavez: The Commission

The president's decision to send National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly, under oath, before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks is not likely to quell the furor sparked by former White House terrorism expert Richard Clarke's testimony before the panel last week. Clarke's testimony, which accused President Bush of ignoring the terrorist threat to this nation prior to the 9/11 attack, has so politicized and poisoned the commission's work, it is doubtful it can be salvaged. Thanks to Clarke, the commission has become just another forum for partisan bickering, score-settling and finger-pointing. . . .

It's easy to say that these members can put aside partisanship in the national interest -- but it is a great deal more difficult to do. This commission should not have been bipartisan but rigorously non-partisan. It is too late to fix now; the damage has already been done. The real tragedy is that we may never learn the necessary lessons from our past intelligence and policy failures to prevent future ones from occurring -- and costing American lives.

I still do not agree that Condi Rice should testify before the Commission, but Greenberg's column is worth readin anyway.

Paul Greenberg: 'Condoleeza Rice, do you swear...'

Harry Truman would understand the problem. He was once asked to testify before a congressional committee about what he knew about Communists in government and when he knew it.

In his pithy way, Mr. Truman summed up the reasons any president would have for declining a summons from Congress. The separation of powers "would be shattered, and the president, contrary to our fundamental theories of constitutional government, would become a mere arm of the legislative branch of the government if he would feel during his term of office that his every act might be subject to official inquiry and possible distortion for political purposes."

Mr. Truman was in good company. The doctrine of executive privilege is almost as old as the Constitution itself, and flows naturally from it. The privilege has been invoked by presidents going back to George Washington in 1796. Among others who've cited it were Presidents Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, both Roosevelts, Coolidge and Hoover. And, in more recent times, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. . . .

The commission's hearings already had taken on a partisan cast, and a bitter debate-by-sound bite was taking place between Dick Clarke, the star witness for the prosecution, and Condi Rice, who was playing defense. All this hullabaloo had obscured the commission's early findings, namely that both the Bush and Clinton administrations had failed to act effectively against the gathering danger. Not just civility but perspective was being lost. Perhaps now the air can be cleared. But only if all concerned act responsibly - and remember that there's a war on, not just a presidential election.

Three Stories on Outsourcing

2004-04-02T13:35:00.000-06:00

Three Stories on Outsourcing

Jacob Sullum: Work Ethics

In any case, a job lost because of foreign competition is no more of a misfortune than a job lost because of productivity-boosting technology. Neither is it a stronger justification for crying foul and demanding the sort of government intervention that John Kerry seems to be contemplating when he promises to review all free trade agreements and faults President Bush's "secret plan to send more American jobs overseas."

That "secret plan" is neither secret nor a plan. As N. Gregory Mankiw, Bush's chief economic adviser, noted in February, it is simply "the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about" since Adam Smith: "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically."

In this light, Mankiw said, "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade. More things are tradable than were tradable in the past, and that's a good thing."

Bruce Bartlett: Fighting back on outsourcing

A new study from the respected economic forecasting firm, Global Insight, found that the total number of jobs lost to IT outsourcing last year was only 104,000. This amounts to just 2.8 percent of IT jobs in the U.S. A much larger number were lost due to unrelated factors, including the collapse of the dot-com boom in 2000, the recession, and rising productivity.

The most important finding of the Global Insight study is that the cost savings from outsourcing don't just flow into higher corporate profits. They contribute significantly to higher output in the U.S., which leads to job increases elsewhere in the economy. The study estimates that the gross domestic product was $34 billion higher last year because of outsourcing and that this created over 90,000 net new jobs. These figures will continue to rise in future years. By 2008, GDP will be $124 billion higher and the number of new jobs created by outsourcing will rise to 317,000.

It's important to recognize that these new jobs are almost entirely outside IT. According to Global Insight, the largest beneficiary is construction, which will gain 75,757 net new jobs due to outsourcing. Other industrial gainers are transportation and utilities (63,513), education and health services (47,260), and wholesale trade (43,359).

Additional benefits of outsourcing are lower inflation, lower interest rates and higher real wages, which flow to all Americans. Global Insight gets these results because it looks at the ripple effects of outsourcing throughout the entire U.S. economy and not just on IT, as other studies often do.

Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke also emphasizes the broader economic benefits of trade and outsourcing. The narrow focus on jobs tends to be misleading, he says, because much of the payoff accrues to consumers in the form of lower prices. Moreover, careful economic analysis has shown no relationship between jobs and trade in the aggregate. "There is little basis for blaming the recent poor employment performance on import competition," Bernanke concludes.

Faced with the reality that there was nothing they could do about outsourcing even if they wanted to, Republicans are slowly going on the offensive. Greg Mankiw was once again allowed to speak publicly. His colleague on the CEA, Kristin Forbes, made a forceful defense of free trade. And Treasury Secretary John Snow even spoke out in defense of outsourcing. It may not be enough to reverse the tide of public opinion, but it's a start.

The Heritage Foundation: Ten Myths about Jobs and Outsourcing

Myth #1: America is losing jobs.
Fact: More Americans are employed than ever before.

Myth #2: The low unemployment rate excludes many discouraged workers.
Fact: Unemployment is dropping, despite a surging labor force.

Myth #3: Outsourcing will cause a net loss of 3.3 million jobs.
Fact: Outsourcing has little net impact, and represents less than 1 percent of gross job turnover.

Myth #4: Free trade, free labor, and free capital harm the U.S. economy.
Fact: Economic freedom is necessary for economic growth, new jobs, and higher living standards.

Myth #5: A job outsourced is a job lost.
Fact: Outsourcing means efficiency.

Myth #6: Outsourcing is a one-way street.
Fact: Outsourcing works both ways.

Myth #7: American manufacturing jobs are moving to poor nations, especially China.
Fact: Nations are losing manufacturing jobs worldwide, even China.

Myth #8: Only greedy corporations benefit from outsourcing.
Fact: Everyone benefits from outsourcing.

Myth #9: The government can protect American workers from outsourcing.
Fact: Protectionism is isolationism and has a history of failure.

Myth #10: Unemployment benefits should be extended beyond 26 weeks.
Fact: Jobless benefits are already working

Conclusion

America's workers deserve a more informative, less partisan debate on outsourcing. The negative impact of outsourcing on the economy and American employment has been greatly exaggerated, and the benefits of outsourcing almost entirely ignored.

Two Stories of Kerry's Past and Present Selves

2004-04-02T13:29:00.000-06:00

Two Stories of Kerry's Past and Present Selves

The first by Mona Charon.

Kerry's past

There he was, the 27-year-old John Kerry, hair spilling down over his eyes, Kennedyesque a's (as in "cahn't imagine") rolling off his tongue, and lanky legs seeking room on the cramped talk show set. C-SPAN was rebroadcasting an episode of "The Dick Cavett Show" from 1971. Opposing Kerry was a hard-charging, highly intelligent Vietnam veteran named John O'Neill, who gave the future senator no quarter.

It was just two months after Kerry's pyrotechnic performance before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, in which he had famously declared that American soldiers in Vietnam had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

I will admit to being a sorehead about Vietnam. I'm one of those people who resents the fact that Kerry's side is so often portrayed as having been right in that terrible argument, when as we know, the fundamental struggle against communism was moral and honorable, whatever may be said about the advisability of putting American troops on the ground in that place (a decision taken not by Nixon, Kerry's nemesis, but by John F. Kennedy, Kerry's hero). . . .

On this subject, O'Neill, who had served in the same unit as Kerry, though not at the same time, was loaded for bear. He noted that he had served in Vietnam for 18 months, in contrast to Kerry's four, and had seen nothing to "shock the conscience." He demanded to know if Kerry had personally committed war crimes. Kerry squirmed. O'Neill persisted.

Kerry elected to say that, well, he had participated in burning the huts of noncombatants, which qualifies as a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

The second by Daivd Limbaugh.

John Kerry 2004 = John Kerry 1971

Just imagine someone with the mindset of Jane Fonda circa 1971 leading our war on terror. Forget the allegedly doctored photographs showing Kerry and Fonda together. We don't need to know that these two may have met to discuss the evils of American "aggression" against the North Vietnamese.

We know from Kerry's own words that he possessed the same contempt for America's cause and our armed services around that time. And don't tell me that his distinguished military record immunizes him from accountability for his later despicable behavior. . . .

Kerry's congressional testimony in 1971 seemed to suggest that he had firsthand knowledge of such horrible acts and may have even participated in them. Of course, we are supposed to laud him for his "courage" in coming forward and shining the light of truth and thereby exempt him from any role he may have played in it.

But how outrageous is that! If he was privy to such crimes and didn't report them, he should be held accountable. There is nothing noble about him reporting those alleged crimes and not naming names or assuming responsibility. . . .

No, you say, John Kerry neither participated nor had firsthand knowledge of any barbarous acts; he was merely reporting what he'd been told. Well, who told him? Ho Chi Minh? Either he had reliable information or he was spewing thirdhand hearsay likely spawned by nefarious communist propagandists.

The type of testimony he so proudly gave at those hearings wouldn't be admissible in the most primitive tribunals with the most relaxed rules of evidence, unless Kerry owned up to his own specific participation or divulged his sources. He didn't do either because outlining his participation would have been incriminating, and he had no sources to divulge. . . .

We are entitled to know whether Kerry still stands by his testimony. If so, did he participate or witness these events? If so, why didn't he name names? If not, why did he rush to believe the worst about his own colleagues still in the jungles of Vietnam? . . .

And if Kerry refuses to repent -- and it's obvious he does, since he wears his protesting days as a badge of honor -- what does that tell us about his present attitude about America's enemies?

I think he still harbors an attitude that America is an ugly bully on the world stage, that we have no business acting to protect our security without playing "Mother, may I?" with France, Germany and the United Nations, and that there is little connection between international terrorists and sponsoring states. Sure, just like there was no coordination between communists worldwide during Kerry's antiwar heyday in the seventies.

Yes, I'm thoroughly convinced that the John Kerry of today is the John Kerry of 1971, who has no more business steering this ship of state than Jane Fonda. In these sobering times with our security, national sovereignty and freedom at stake, I shudder at the possibility that John Kerry could become our wartime president.

Gas Prices and Terrorism

2004-04-02T13:20:00.000-06:00

Gas Prices and Terrorism

Gary Adlritch, think-tank-head and former FBI agent, muses on the connections between gas prices, terrorists, Kerry, and Bush.

Pumping Terrorism?

Such a power shift is certainly not in this nation’s best interests. And to many common-sense Americans, this problem constitutes a national security emergency. Unfortunately, if John Kerry promises otherwise ill-informed swing-voters lower gas prices at the pump, more than a few greedy, registered ignoramuses will follow him anywhere.

Krauthammer: Definitive Clarke

2004-04-02T09:53:00.000-06:00

Krauthammer: Definitive Clarke

Charles Krauthammer really nails it this time. He lays out the case against Clarke and his critique of the administration's actions pre-9-11 with impeccable logic.

Clarke's blabbering

Thus, doing everything demanded by the most hawkish, most prescient, most brilliant, most heroic, most swaggering antiterrorism chief in American history -- i.e. Clarke, in his own mind -- would not have prevented Sept. 11. Why then should the administration apologize?

What exactly was the failure? What was Bush supposed to do in order to prevent Sept. 11? Invade Afghanistan? Clarke has expressed outrage at Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. So: Bush deserves excoriation for pre-emptively invading Iraq based on massive, universally accepted intelligence of its weapons, to say nothing of its hostility and virulence; and simultaneously, Bush deserves excoriation for not pre-emptively attacking Afghanistan on the basis of ... what? Increased terrorist chatter in the summer of 2001?

At the hearing, Clarke was particularly brilliant in playing to the gallery, mainly to the families in the gallery. By some strange cultural transmutation, the families -- or more accurately, a small number of politically active families -- have claimed, and been ceded, special status in the war on terrorism.

Surely they deserve our sympathy and our care. And they have received an extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, outpouring of both from the public and from the government. But some families go much further, and claim the moral high ground in judging the war on terror and how it is to be waged.

On what grounds? Did the Pearl Harbor families enjoy special status in critiquing FDR's decisions in World War II? The Oklahoma City families were denied any special status at all -- they never even got compensation of the sort the Sept. 11 families received.

Just this week the widow of Daniel Pearl was denied a claim for similar government compensation, on the grounds that, while Pearl was surely a victim of the war on terror -- and, in fact, was engaged in it by pursuing the truth about those waging war against us -- he happened to die on a date other than Sept. 11.

Clarke's clever pseudo-apology -- we failed, meaning, they failed -- played perfectly to the families in the gallery, who applauded and warmly embraced the very man who for 12 years was the U.S. government official most responsible for preventing a Sept. 11. A neat trick.

Malkin on the Rove Incident

2004-04-01T13:10:00.000-06:00

Malkin on the Rove Incident

As I noted the other day, "protestors" invaded the grounds of Karl Rove's home the other day - tearing up his yard, pounding on his windows, and generally "terrorizing" the people inside (including two young boys - "Won't someone please think of hte CHILDREN?")

Michelle Malkin exposes the group that did this for the left-wing extremists they are.

Michelle Malkin: A closer look at left-wing thuggery

After meeting in Washington for its annual convention this weekend, NPA members descended on the Washington, D.C., homes of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and White House adviser Karl Rove. NPA targeted Chao after the Department of Labor refused to meet with the group and acquiesce to its demand to "form a partnership" to "improve opportunities for low-wage workers." In other words, the gang didn't get a government contract through legal channels. So it's going to bully its way into the public coffers.

An estimated mob of 800 protesters trampled on Rove's lawn to demand passage of Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch's abominable "DREAM" Act granting amnesty to illegal alien college students and allowing them to receive in-state tuition discounts. The Washington Post reported that after chanting and knocking on Rove's door, the "crowd then grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read 'Say Yes to DREAM' and pounding on the glass." An angry Rove called the authorities and berated the protest leaders for driving the children inside his home to tears.

As a vocal critic of Rove's idiotic pro-illegal alien policies, I am not all that sad to see Rove come face to face with the consequences of his politically expedient ideas. (Rove is the one who declared that Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., the nation's leading advocate for secure borders and immigration enforcement, would "never darken the White House door.") Now Rove knows how millions of ordinary Americans -- who don't have Secret Service protection -- feel when illegal invaders overrun their homes and darken their doors.

That said, NPA's militant tactics cross the bounds of decent political debate. (Aren't liberals always the ones moaning about the need for civility?) Grievance-mongering belongs on the Capitol steps, not private doorsteps.

If NPA's agenda were the protection of unborn life or Second Amendment rights, the New York Times would be calling for the arrest of its leaders. Sen. Hillary Clinton would be barking again about the vast right-wing conspiracy. Civil rights leaders would be demanding that President Bush condemn NPA's extremist tactics. And crusading lawyers would be lining up to find clever ways to use federal anti-racketeering laws to shut NPA down.

Instead, the left-wing thugs get away with their lawlessness. And we are, literally, paying for it.

Flash: GW Bush Working Employment

2004-04-01T13:01:00.000-06:00

Flash: GW Bush Employment

Did you know that Clinton's unemployment rate three years into his presidency was 5.6%? Exactly like GW's current numbers. Fancy that.

Flash: GW Bush Employment

Franken on Class Warfare

2004-04-01T12:57:00.000-06:00

Franken on Class Warfare

What a lovely sentiment:

Al Franken, in trying to discredit the Rep claim that the Dems approach to taxes ("Only the RICH will pay more taxes!") is class warfare, recounted the charming story of a peasant revolt in France in 1350 (according to him).

In this Grimm tale, peasants stormed a castle, cornered the knight who lived there with his wife and children, stuck the knight on a spit, roasted him, and then forced the wife to eat pieces of this "entrée" while the kids watched. "THAT'S class warfare," said Franken. (approx. 12:45 PM CST 04-041-04)

Even Franken's co-host seemed appalled by this story. I could hear it in her voice.

Immediately after this, the cut to commercial and then went on to other topics when the resumed.

Maybe that was bright production by their tech guy, maybe it just so happened before a commercial break. I am guessing the first since this show is brand new out of the box.

Robert Reich on Air America

2004-04-01T12:30:00.000-06:00

Robert Reich on Air America

Franken and Co. played a tape of an Ernst & Young consultant advising a company to move it's headquarters offshore so as to take advantage of tax savings.

They went on to complain that this was immoral. How dare they try to avoid the unfair tax and regulatory burden placed on corporations by the Federal gov't.

"You [companies] owe it to this country to pay what is due to this country," said Reich, displaying the Left's penchant for thinking that any monies available are gov't monies which you simply haven't handed over yet.

They decided that is was hypocritical for someone to claim to be patriotic and accept that corporations would do such a thing.

They blamed high middle class taxes on it, as well. (And here I thought that they were supporting the guy would RAISE taxes . . . hmmmmmmm.)

Overall, they made this sort of running from confiscatory taxes out to be the fruit of the devil.

Sorry, but when will the Left figure out that you CANNOT tax a corporation? ALL companies pass increased taxes and fees on to consumers in the form of higher costs for their goods or services.

Not to mention that these are the same people who complain about job loss. How many fewer people would be employed by corporations who pay too much in taxes? These same corporations who flee the US's confiscatory tax structure and thus pay less in taxes can afford to not only employ more people but also pay each employee more. YES the corporate shareholders and directors make more money via savings in tax payments . . . but much of that same savings get's funneled back into the company to pay for overhead, expansion, R&D, etc.

Franken on Rush

2004-04-01T11:36:00.000-06:00

Franken on Rush

In gist: I hope that Rush get well and get's over his addiction. And, consistent with his deepest convictions, I hope that he asks, no demands, to be given the maximum sentence in Florida's toughest jail. And I hope that he gets a black, uh, African-American cell-mate, who remember his racist comments on ESPN.

That's almost but not a direct quote. (I can't type fast enough to get it word for word with that long of a rant.)

He also said that he did not know that radio programming earns more money when a personality does the ads instead of running a canned ad supplied on the advertiser.

Franken does a passable Limbaugh in small doses. It seems to break down when he tries to go on too long.

BTW - you can call the O'Franken Factor at 1-800-???-????.

Garafalo on Right-Wingers

2004-04-01T11:27:00.000-06:00

Garafalo on Right-Wingers

"There's a lot of right-wingers who cannot stand anyone not being like them." - in a promo on the Air America "network".

Is that why I keep hearing about right-wing student groups being denied funding or the right to speak at a school sponsored event, etc., but I never hear about a pro-choice or other left-wing group being muzzled?

Franken On Lying

2004-04-01T11:24:00.000-06:00

Franken On Lying

Al Franken, 11.18 AM CST, 04-01-04: "It's one thing for a President to lie about sex, it's another thing for a president to lie about reasons for going to war."

I suppose there's also a difference between "lying" during a speech and lying under oath? Bet Al would never admit that. . . .

John Kerry, 1/23/03, Georgetown: "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. ... The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real."

Was Kerry "lying" or relying on misinterpreted/misrepresented intelligence?

Remember, whichever you attribute to Kerry (lying or being the recipient of bad intel), you must also attribute to Bush since they were relying on the same intelligence.

Coulter on Iraq et al.

2004-04-01T11:15:00.000-06:00

Coulter on Iraq et al.

In her typical firebrand fashion, Ann puts forward a timeline of terrorists and presidential responses.

How 9-11 happened

Bush came into office telling his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, he was "tired of swatting flies" ? he wanted to eliminate al-Qaida.

On Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush had been in office for barely seven months, 3,000 Americans were murdered in a savage terrorist attack on U.S. soil by Muslim extremists.

Since then, Bush has won two wars against countries that harbored Muslim fanatics, captured Saddam Hussein, immobilized Osama bin Laden, destroyed al-Qaida's base, and begun to create the only functioning democracy in the Middle East other than Israel. Democrats opposed it all ? except their phony support for war with Afghanistan, which they immediately complained about and said would be a Vietnam quagmire. And now they claim to be outraged that in the months before 9-11, Bush did not do everything Democrats opposed doing after 9-11.

What a surprise.

Air America Morning Show

2004-04-01T10:03:00.000-06:00

Air America Morning Show

Oh my god this is boring.

I am listening to it on the internet on 620 AM.

They have a woman with a very pleasant British accent interviewing Sandy Berger. Pushing him relentlessly to say that Bush has screwed up and is responsible for 9-11. TO his credit, Berger seemed to keep _most_ of his comments on facts rather than left-wing attacks.

It's all very left-wing . . . which, believe it or not I could not care less about. More power to 'em. We need discourse and disagreement. Total agreement on everything leads to stagnation.

But GEEZ is this boring.

So far the only "humor" I've heard was a skit about papers found at Dunkin' Donuts (a spin of the papers found at Starbucks). I hope Franken didn't write those jokes. Ugh.

The biggest problem, IMO, is that they seem to be very uncomfortable on the air. Maybe it's a lack of material and unease about what they should do because of it.

I wonder what their experience is in radio . . . if it is extensive, I am impressed with the generosity of their former employers.

Like most shows that don't have enough material, they seem to be planning on having lots of guests on the show including Gen. Wesley Clark and Pat Buchanan. Interesting. . . . developing.

-------------------------
10:17 AM Central - current topics: jokes about Bush blaming the Civil War on Clinton, that whacky Terror Alert Level color coding system, backpacks on trains exploding (semi-serious about this one) - except for the Indiana Jones reference I guess.

Maybe their on-air uncomfortableness is because this is their second show ever. Didn't they practice this stuff in the months prior to coming on-air?

----------------------

The Wesley Clark interview included lots of questions about the bodies in Fallujah (even being compared to the LA Riots).

Q: "Do you think it's true that the US military CAN'T do something about this?" (emphasis added)
A: I think that the US military can and will do something about this. (general idea, not a quote)

-----------------------
10:39 AM Interview with Pat Buchanan

Lead-in: Buchanan is, to liberals a "Prince of Darkness" . . . no problem with this, believe it or not. It was said in a joking fashion. But is was followed up with a joke that maybe he is actually the "Prince of Whiteness" (the commentator, Mark Riley, is black).

If a white commentator said this about a famous, if fringe, liberal, he would immediately be attacked as a racist, even though it was delivered as a meant as a joke.

I think it should be left alone since it WAS a joke.

But I will be interested to see if ANY media outlet reports this. You KNOW that a white commentator would be crucified.

All in all, the were all three very respectful to Mr. Buchanan and did not interrupt him or raise their voice or anything. Well done, on that point.

Catch 9-11

2004-03-31T14:33:00.000-06:00

Catch 9-11

These same people who are complaining now that Bush and Co. did not do enough to stop the 9-11 attacks are the same people who complain every time an Arab-looking person is picked out for extra attention now, post 9-11.

Imagine what they would have been saying had the Bush administration targeted Arabs in the US prior to 9-11 in an attempt to stop the attacks. Wire taps? Can't do that. Following suspects? Not if it's because they look/act like terrorists. Keeping Arabs off of planes, trains, etc.? No way, Joseph. That's discrimination and it's illegal.

If they complain about these things now, they would NEVER have allowed them to happen before the sea change of 9-11.

Predictions 04-04

2004-03-31T11:10:00.000-06:00

Predictions 04-04

When the US pulls out of Iraq in June, the MEDIA, as part of the Dems political machine, will claim that Iraq is being left in the lurch . . . despite the decrying of "nation building" now going in the MEDIA and by Dems.
During the transition period, we will once again hear the "Arabs are not culturally ready for democracy" line from those libs who accuse Reps of being racists and then don't recognize it in themselves.
John Kerry will continue to blame outsourcing as the bugbear that is costing the nation jobs. The Reps will respond to this by passing yet another Dem bill; this one aimed at making it illegal to outsource jobs overseas. This will, in turn, cost the US consumer BILLION$ until it is repealed. It will also slow the economic recovery.
Bush will continue to portray Kerry as a flip-flopping, tax-and-spend liberal. As opposed to his straight-talking, untax-and-still-spend conservatism.
The polls will continue to show Bush gaining on, and passing, Kerry in many if not most states. The MEDIA will blame this on negative campaigning. Any Kerry resurgence will be attributed to his personal magnetism and the popularity of his message. It will certainly NOT be attributed to the one-new-attack-a-day and float-rumors-without-proof-then-call-for-an-investigation theme of the Dem's campaign apparatus.
By the end of April, Richard Clarke will on the lips of only the most partisan of Dems. Even the Kerry campaign will only mention him occassionally. Everyone else will have realized that he has made numerous contradictory statements and is a Dem supporter looking to make money on his book. Only Moveon.org, Democratic Underground.com, and other far-left folks will still think he's a big deal.
Al Qeada will step up their attacks in hopes of making the Americans run. They will mutilate a soldier's body or torture a captured soldier (and broadcast it), in an effort to turn the US citizenry against the War on Terror. It will work on those who already hate Bush, but Bush will hold his ground and step up action against those responsible.
Kerry will anounce another $100 billion or so in federal programs he wants to start when he is elected. The Reps will call him on it and the MEDIA will say this is dirty campaigning.
more to come . . . . . . . . . .

Bartlett on Outsourcing

2004-03-31T10:57:00.000-06:00

Bartlett on Outsourcing

The quote, the final paragraph of his piece, sums it up exactly. Outsourcing is NOT the CAUSE of slow employment growth.

Bruce Bartlett: Outsourcing restrictions only will hurt us in long run

Outsourcing is an issue only because employment growth is slow. But it isn't the cause. So policies directed at restricting outsourcing are unlikely to create any jobs and run the risk of actually making the situation worse.

Seller Collusion

2004-03-31T10:03:00.000-06:00

Seller Collusion

Walter Williams, prize-winning economist, explains how minimum price laws cost you money but are unlikely to go away.

Minimum gasoline prices

A couple of weeks ago, heading down to George Mason University, I pulled into my favorite Wawa gasoline station just off the Bel Air, Md., exit on I-95 South. At each of the 20 gasoline pumps, there was a sign posted that Wawa would no longer dispense free coffee to its gasoline customers. Why? The station was warned that dispensing free coffee put it in violation of Maryland’s gasoline minimum-price law.

Here’s my no-brainer question to you: Do you suppose that Maryland enacted its gasoline minimum-price law because irate customers complained to the state legislature that gasoline prices were too low? Even if you had just 1 ounce of brains, you’d correctly answer no. Then, the next question is just whose interest is served by, and just who lobbied for, Maryland’s gasoline minimum-price law? If you answered that it was probably Maryland’s independent gas-station owners, go to the head of the class.

Let’s first establish a general economic principle. Whenever one sees statutory or quasi-statutory minimum prices, he is looking at a seller collusion against customers in general as well as against particular sellers, those who are seen as charging too low a price. This economic principle applies whether you’re talking about minimum wages, minimum dairy prices or minimum real-estate sales commissions. Members of a seller collusion call for statutory and quasi-statutory minimum prices so they can charge customers higher prices than they could otherwise in the absence of a statutory minimum.

Debate: Emotion v. Reason

2004-03-31T00:10:00.000-06:00

Debate: Emotion v. Reason

A great example of someone who (I assume) means well but relies on emotion and appeal to pity to make her argument versus someone who relies on reason and appeals to objective criteria to make an argument.

Boston.com / News / Education / K-12 / MCAS / A Test of Wills

Marcella I think of MCAS as a classist, racist test. It is unfair, and it contributes to leaving behind the very students it claims it wants to help. It doesn't take a genius to see that children from affluent communities and with educated parents do very well on the test. And who doesn't do well? Special-education kids. Trade-school kids. Minorities and underprivileged kids.

Marina If you look at the actual test questions, they are not in themselves racist or classist. The test is not constructed poorly. It is very important to have standardized tests such as MCAS to ensure that all kids, no matter what their background, are striving to achieve the same level.

Marcella Many children are disadvantaged from the moment they are born. The idea that these children are to be given the same kind of test as kids who have come to school already so much more advanced is bogus.

Marina You're saying, well, kids come to school from different levels so they should be given different standards so we can say they've made enough progress. And you think that's OK? Isn't that just kind of an excuse for a teacher to say, well, this kid's parents can't read, so I have to set a lower standard? I agree that children come to school with different levels and learn at different rates. But when you graduate high school, you have to have a certain base level of skills, a base standard that everyone should have reached.

It only gets better from there. Joe Bob says check it out.

Even the EU is Figuring Out that Kyoto Won't Fly

2004-03-30T11:21:00.000-06:00

Even the EU is Figuring Out that Kyoto Won't Fly

Europe's Cold Sweat Over Kyoto

The erratic weather of recent years in Europe, from devastating floods to lengthy heat waves, has convinced many on the Continent that human-induced climate change is no mere theory.
Then why are so many European Union leaders getting cold feet about doing something about global warming?

Because despite the change in weather patterns and Europe's green rhetoric, the EU faces a reality check on March 31, the day each member nation must submit a plan for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

The projected costs, as well as the likely loss of economic competitiveness with the United States, has the EU wondering if it can virtually go it alone in implementing the Kyoto Protocols on climate change. The protocol has yet to take effect as a binding treaty since the US and Russia won't sign on, and China and India were given a pass for now. . . .

But Europe's auto and electric industries recently warned of a slowdown in growth if they are forced to invest in clean energy technologies. The warnings come as the EU has acknowledged that it's falling further behind in its plan to match the US in productivity, employment, and growth.

Those kinds of warnings about slow growth are what compelled the US Senate, and President Bush, to reject Kyoto. If Europe now backpedals, the global effort to influence climate change will be driven mainly by the market, as car buyers and the auto industry choose to become less polluting. And Europe will lose its claim to global leadership in pushing Kyoto.

Got 'Em!

2004-03-30T11:10:00.000-06:00

Got 'Em!

Of course, it's not over. From the very beginning the War On Terror was open-ended and widespread. . . but these fellows won't be causing the havoc they want to.

Terror bombs seized

An al Qaeda plot to blast London was dramatically foiled by police today.

Seven hundred police swooped in a series of 6am raids in the capital and the Home Counties. They found half a tonne of fertiliser explosives - enough for a series of terror "spectaculars".

The terrorist suspects arrested by police are believed to have chosen "soft targets" for bombings including pubs and clubs. One of the suspects being held had a job at Gatwick Airport, immediately raising concerns over airlines and passengers.

A total of eight men - all of them British citizens of Pakistani descent, three of them teenagers - were arrested in the operation, with police from five forces searching a total of 24 addresses across London and the South-East.

Just Damn: Bush Caves, Rice to Testify in Public

2004-03-30T10:48:00.000-06:00

Just Damn: Bush Caves, Rice to Testify in Public

The Senators won. And the people lost.

Now they get to grandstand for the cameras when questioning Dr. Rice.

What do they think she will say in open testimony that she did not say in private testimony? Does that make ANY sense at all?

But what off the public's "right to know"? Well, get over it. It doesn't exist here.

The public's "right to know" was vested in the Senator's they voted for . . . and the Senators ALREADY KNOW. They have already heard EVERYTHING Condi Rice has to say.

But the White House Reps have shown once again they have NO SPINE when dealing with the Dems. Executive privilege be damned.

If you were an advisor to the President, would you know feel safe giving unadulterated advice? Saying exactly what you want to say? Knowing that someday you might be forced to testify before congress in open session? Or might you guard your words against just such an eventuality? I suppose your answer to that would depend on your intelligence . . . . . . . .

"But but but the White House made the Senators promise that this testimony doesn't hurt the separation of powers and executive privilege and that it won't mean that Congress can call on other administration officials later to testify" you sputter.

SURE it doesn't. SURE they won't. Congress NEVER takes more than they say they will, right? They NEVER take the caving in of an opponent to mean that they can do it again, right?

Just damn.

White House to Let Rice Testify in Public

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a reversal, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as long as the panel seeks no further public testimony from White House officials, the administration said Tuesday.

And just what will the administration say if the panel changes its mind and DOES want more testimony? Will they cry the ancient playground plaint of "No FAIR!"? Will they come back and say, "HEY! You guys said you wouldn't DO that!"

Or will they again give in to supposed "public outcry" (which doesn't actually exist - then or now) and break down the separation of powers even further?

Good idea folks - let's make the Executive branch a wholly owned subsidiary of the Legislative. Damn.

In addition, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have agreed to a single joint private session with all 10 commissioners, with one commission staff member present to take notes of the session, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales said in a letter to the panel.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, on Air Force One with President Bush, said the commission had unanimously agreed to the administration's conditions for the testimony.

The decision was conditioned on the Bush administration receiving assurances in writing from the commission that such a step does not set a precedent and that the commission does not request "additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice," Gonzales' letter said.

Terrorism: Did Something

2004-03-30T10:20:00.000-06:00

Terrorism: Did Something

Top ranking Al Qaeda operator Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has told interrogators that more plans were on the horizon. We stopped them. Too bad we went into Iraq and got distracted from fighting terrorism.

Additionally, does anyone really think that terrorists have been sitting on their hands NOT trying to cause problems and attack targets in the US since 2001? Yet there haven't been any, have there? Wonder why . . . . . . . . .

Chicago, L.A. towers were next targets

LONDON -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.
Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization's plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators.

A Short Lesson in Short Loans: Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! II

2004-03-30T10:14:00.000-06:00

A Short Lesson in Short Loans: Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! II

For those who are knowledge impaired about things economic, here is a good explanation of why short term, high interest loans are often a good thing. And why knee-jerk political reactions are so often worse than the "crisis" they address.

Douglas Bandow: Politicians' interest in payday loans misguided

Moreover, to focus on the cost of payday loans misses the most important point. Critics of advance payday loans ignore the cost of the alternatives.

For some people it's not meeting an unexpected expense - a pressing car repair, bill, dental procedure, or medicine, perhaps. The result could be loss of work and income, increased costs, pain, and inconvenience, and more.

Another alternative is to rack up hefty late fees and interest charges by failing to pay a bill on time. Or by bouncing a check.

A Georgetown University study figured that taking out a $100 payday loan to pay a $50 credit card bill and $50 utility charge cost less than the late fees from failing to pay. The payday loan also won't damage a person's credit rating, making it more difficult to win affordable longer-term loans in the future.

People who need money also might find a more expensive alternative to raise funds. Like a pawn shop. Or a loan shark.

Given these alternatives, a National Taxpayers Union poll found that nine of 10 people considered advance payday loans a useful service.

But payday lending critics don't care about people's actual needs and don't believe that people are smart enough to decide what is in their best interest. Complains Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP: payday lending is "threatening the livelihoods of hardworking families and stripping equity from entire communities."

Actually, what threatens "the livelihoods of hardworking families" are the money emergencies that payday loans help address. Eliminating the means of meeting financial challenges without addressing the financial challenges themselves would make people worse off.

Clear, Concise, Damning

2004-03-30T10:06:00.000-06:00

Clear, Concise, Damning

Jack Kemp: Hell hath no fury ...

In Clarke's own words, "There was no plan on al-Qaida that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration." So how could anyone in good faith possibly lay responsibility for al-Qaida's attack on America at the doorstep of the Bush administration seven months after the inauguration? The administration had begun from day one to put together a comprehensive anti-terror plan, and there is no doubt that al-Qaida managed to strike before the plan could be completed and implemented. But Clarke himself admits that even had the Bush administration not concentrated on formulating a comprehensive plan but instead adopted every one of the ad-hoc, stopgap recommendations Clarke was urging on the president, it wouldn't have stopped al-Qaida's 9-11 attack.

Nine-11 Commissioner and former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton asked Clarke directly: "Assuming that all (your recommendations) had been adopted, say, on Jan. 26, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9-11?" Clarke's answer was emphatically, "No!"

Did this and previous administrations make mistakes in their handling of the terrorist threat prior to 9-11? Of course. They, like every administration before them, were made up of fallible human beings, and it didn't help that this administration had to devise and implement a new anti-terrorism plan on its own and on the run because its predecessor had failed to do so. The question is, were mistakes made by the Bush administration in any way responsible for 9-11?

Even the administration's chief tormentor admits not.

Will On Clarke

2004-03-30T09:58:00.000-06:00

Will On Clarke

George Will: Clarke's book will quickly be forgotten

More On Clarke

2004-03-30T09:53:00.000-06:00

More On Clarke

WAR ON TERROR: Clarke's friends say he's lost credibility - Until just before 9-11 nearly all officials were Clinton holdovers

At that point the president's own defense and security team was still taking shape. His top NSC special assistant for intelligence programs, Mary K. Sturtevant, had been on the job only eight weeks before the 9-11 attacks.

For months, Levin personally had held up the confirmation hearings of Bush's appointees who were to design the U.S. antiterrorism strategy – Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Programs J.D. Crouch and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Peter W. Rodman – refusing for apparently partisan purposes to allow them to take office until late July 2001.

While Levin was holding up their appointments, the incoming Pentagon policy team had no legal or political authority to do their vital jobs – a fact that helps explain why it took eight months for the Bush administration to draw up a strategic operational plan to destroy al-Qaida. . . .

According to NSC Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley, Bush had asked for a strategy to destroy al-Qaida in the earliest days of his presidency. For whatever reason, Clarke gave no indication in his book or his recent public comments that he knew of such a plan, and indeed alleged the opposite. Vice President Richard Cheney told reporters that the failed Clarke "wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff."

Cheney's comment is consistent with previous news reports, which administration officials confirm, that the White House national-security process is unusually compartmented, so that even senior NSC officials would not necessarily know of secret strategic planning. . . .

In October 2001, Rice demoted Clarke to a staff rank on the NSC and put him in charge of cybersecurity. Bush passed him over for an appointment as deputy secretary of the newly created Department of Homeland Security, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, whereupon the bristling Clarke began to boycott regular NSC meetings that Rice chaired.

There was talk in the NSC of Clarke quitting just as his self-described "best friend," NSC Senior Director for Combating Terrorism Rand Beers, was readying to leave to become coordinator of national-security and homeland-security issues for Kerry's presidential campaign in early 2003. After leaving the NSC, Clarke and Beers became adjunct lecturers at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, coteaching a course called "Post-Cold War Security: Terrorism, Security and Failed States," according to a Harvard Website.

The White House has released Clarke's January 2003 resignation letter, which expressed no dissatisfaction or concern about the president's policies.

"I really don't know what Richard Clarke's motivations are," Rice told CNN, "but I'll tell you this: Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction, and he chose not to."

Rice went further in an op-ed for the Washington Post, noting that, contrary to what he is saying now, Clarke never presented her with a plan to go after al-Qaida.

"In response to my request for a presidential initiative, the counterterrorism team, which we had held over from the Clinton administration, suggested several ideas, some of which had been around since 1998 but had not been adopted. No al-Qaida plan was turned over to the new administration," she emphasized. . . .

The White House says it has no record of Clarke and Bush being together at that time. Clarke produced his former deputy, Roger Cressey, as a witness, to verify that the conversation did indeed occur. But Cressey, when questioned by the New York Times, "backed off Mr. Clarke's suggestion that the president's tone was intimidating." Another unnamed witness said the same, according to the Times.

"He's a very dedicated public servant, he's very credible, but he's selling books," said John Lehman, a member of the 9-11 commission, in talking to MSNBC the day before Clarke testified. The next day during the hearing, Lehman was disturbed that Clarke, whom he says he has admired for years, was destroying his credibility.

"You've got a real credibility problem," Lehman told Clarke during the testimony. "Because of my real, genuine, long-term admiration for you," he said, "I hope you'll resolve that credibility problem, because I'd hate to see you become totally shoved to one side during a presidential campaign as an active partisan selling a book."

Oil Prices: Don't just Do Something, Stand There!

2004-03-30T09:39:00.000-06:00

Oil Prices: Don't just Do Something, Stand There!

A lesson in reserve, literally.

Here's to hoping that this administration will forgo the easy (and, really, ineffective) answer to higher gas prices and think of strategic interests instead.

What's Up With Oil: A guide to why prices are so high.
Why are they high?

But current prices do raise an interesting question: What has happened over the past 10 months to ruin forecasts of oil at $22 per barrel? The short answer is plenty.

Most important, demand has skyrocketed. Not only in the U.S., where economic growth has been gangbusters, but also in China, which has leapt ahead of Japan to become the second largest oil market in the world. While there is some debate about whether China is consuming oil or using it to build a strategic stockpile, the result is the same strong demand. China's growth has also sparked an economic recovery and higher oil demand in the rest of Asia. Count India, too, as an increasingly oil-thirsty economy.

What should be done about it?

But hundreds of millions of barrels of oil is a seductive target for political manipulation, as Bill Clinton proved when he released reserves to tame gasoline prices before the 1996 election. We hope President Bush resists that temptation, because in the long term such a response would be dangerous.

If every President turned to the oil reserve when prices shoot up, companies would reduce the amount of inventory they are willing to carry and exacerbate the supply problem. In the short term, there is also no economic need to draw on the reserve. The economy is humming along and panicking would only create other dislocations. The oil reserve was not designed, nor should it be used, to relieve consumers at the pump for a few weeks.

"Soaking the Rich" also means "No Work for You"

2004-03-30T09:28:00.000-06:00

"Soaking the Rich" also means "No Work for You"

A great line from a wonderfully explanatory article by Herbert Meyer, a former Reagan administration official, on how to increase job growth in this country.

Short on the nut's and bolts of how to do it, but long on the reasons why to look at the big picture in this way. Once perception is changed, then maybe we can change the reality.

Creating Work

There is one more reason we aren't creating jobs fast enough, but saying it out loud would be so unpopular, and so politically toxic, that none of our leaders — including those few who actually understand it — seem willing to take the risk. So, here goes: We aren't creating jobs fast enough because we have crippled the people who do the creating, and turned them from the heroes and heroines they are into villains. Read the last sentence again, then say it aloud to whoever happens to be nearby. This is the core of the problem — no, it is the problem — and until we fix it we aren't going to start creating new jobs fast enough. And yes, it really is this simple. . . .

Until we get Americans to understand that their welfare depends utterly on those few among us who create work — that "soaking the rich" also means "no work for you" — we will never create enough new jobs no matter how rapidly our economy may grow. Entrepreneurs will survive, for we are a hardy species. It's the workers who will suffer, and for their own sakes they need to understand how the world works. This means we want more than merely their tolerance. We want their understanding and even, perhaps, their gratitude. . . .

Maybe Kindling should be required reading not just for MBA students, but for politicians, union leaders, high-school seniors — and especially for ambitious prosecutors who know how easy it is to trip up an entrepreneur on some technical violation, then trick the public into thinking they have "stood up for the little guy" when all they've really done is thrown a monkey wrench into the jobs machine those little guys so desperately need to keep running.

The Ban Coming

2004-03-29T14:35:00.000-06:00

The Ban Coming

A legal product that injures those who use it voluntarily is now all but outlawed in Ireland. It will be here as well if activists and the nanny-gov't have their way.

We're from the gov't and we're here to protect you . . . from yourself.

When they come for your coffee and your sugars and your fats, well, can you say that you stood when they came for his tobacco?

And what if a neighbor reports him regularly smoking in his home office? Will you decry the "jack-booted gov't thugs" (and they always wear jack-boots) who come to stop this illegal activity? Or will you shrug and say, "No big deal. After all it was that eeeevil tobacco."

If that's is your attitude, I sincerely pray that you never have to see the effects of the slippery slope of gov't nanny-hood in your own home. But I would not bet on it no matter what odds you offered.

Ireland Launches World's Toughest Smoking Ban

DUBLIN, Ireland — Ireland (search) outlawed smoking in workplaces Monday, imposing the strictest anti-tobacco measure ever adopted by any country on earth — and one certain to change the atmosphere in the country's national institution, the pub.

"I guess I'll be staying home a lot more. It'll be the only place I can have a smoke with my drink," said Sean Hogan, a 46-year-old construction worker, who lit a final melancholy cigarette as the barman at the Brian Boru pub in north Dublin (search) called for last orders Sunday night. . . .

[Even] Home-offices, company cars and truckers' cabs are also supposed to become no-smoking zones (search), although the government has conceded that the law won't be enforceable in such private areas.

Environmental Disasters, Oh My!

2004-03-29T14:02:00.000-06:00

Environmental Disasters, Oh My!

According to this "news article" (which showed not the slightest bit of the famous "journalistic skepticism" seen so frequently when reading articles which disagree with enviro-wackiness), the Earth will implode in about 7 minutes.

Ok, so that's an exaggeration: 9 minutes, really. . . .

Just wait and see. Here it comes..................

Oh wait, maybe some of the numbers in my projection software were off or my studies were a bit "data challenged" . . . but I swear that the Earth is going to implode any minute now. Give me $10 billion in research funds and I'll tell you the same thing (or worse) in a couple of years.

Even better: the Earth will implode in 150 years.

(That way I don't have to worry about being right or wrong because you'll never be able to verify my prediction until long after I cash your check! Bwaaahaaahaahaaa!!!!!)

According to this ONE article, here's what the Earth will be like in a few years:

The world's oceans will be toxic to fish.
The spreading zones have doubled over the last decade and pose as big a threat to fish stocks as overfishing . . . .

The new findings tally nearly 150 dead zones around the globe, double the number in 1990, with some stretching 27,000 square miles.

Dead zones have long afflicted the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, but are now spreading to other bodies of water, such as the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Adriatic Sea, Gulf of Thailand and Yellow Sea, as other regions develop, UNEP said.

They are also appearing off South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Everything presented as straight fact. Not even a hint of "this UN environmental group whose livelihood depends on there being enviro-disasters to fight says that . . . ." Or that maybe these "areas" are being discovered through better detection techniques rather than through appearances of new areas (assuming that the data is correct and the studies could survive the light of scrutiny).
The main cause is excess nitrogen run-off from farm fertilizers, sewage and industrial pollutants. The nitrogen triggers blooms of microscopic algae known as phytoplankton. As the algae die and rot, they consume oxygen, thereby suffocating everything from clams and lobsters to oysters and fish.

"Human kind is engaged in a gigantic, global, experiment as a result of inefficient and often overuse of fertilizers, the discharge of untreated sewage and the ever rising emissions from vehicles and factories," UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement.

"Unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly," Toepfer said.

UNEP urged nations to cooperate in reducing the amount of nitrogen discharged into their coastal waters, in part by cutting back on fertilizer use or planting more forests and grasslands along feeder rivers to soak up the excess nitrogen.
Again, not a hint of "UNEP claims that" . . . just predetermined facts that are "proven" even if not challenged. I bet that there are scientists, respected scientists even, who might disagree with these claims. But the author did not find a single one to say that maybe this zealous enviro-group might just possibly be wrong, or exaggerating, or not entirely right, or mostly right but with such-and-such reservation . . . nothing. It's presented as if no on could possibly contradict or disagree in the slightest with the FACTS presented here.
The sun will be blotted out by dust storms.
The growing frequency of dust and sand storms is another concern, especially storms caused by land degradation and desertification in Mongolia and northern China.

Scientists have recently linked similar storms, originating in the Sahara, with damage to coral reefs in the Caribbean, UNEP said.
While not explicitly saying so, the clear impression from the article is that these bad things are caused by humanity. If they aren't, how exactly are we supposed to stop Nature from changing which areas of the world are desert and which are not? If they are, how about so supporting docs and, again, an opposing point of view or two in an effort to be fair and balanced?
Everyone will die of thirst. Ok, so a couple of people (rich people, I am sure) will still have drinking water
UNEP warns that without concerted effort to improve access to safe drinking water, a third of the world's population is likely to suffer chronic water shortages within a few decades. About 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water in 2000, while another 2.4 billion lacked access to basic sanitation, UNEP said.

That meeting will assess progress toward United Nations targets of halving the proportion of people with no access to safe drinking water or basic sanitation by 2015.

I wonder if this is the same group that was predicting global cooling in the 70's or that the polar ice caps would be reduced by 25% by 2000 . . . .

Clarke Sucks

2004-03-29T11:52:00.000-06:00

Clarke Sucks

I figure we should just cut through the bull and lay it on the line.

Clarke is a partisan who has made directly contradictory statements concerning the Bush administration and its handling of terrorists. He has also made contradictory statements on the Clinton admonistration's actions (or inactions as the case may be). He also has strong ties to the Democratic party including contributions to campaigns, voting for Al Gore, and a deep friendship and working relationship with a top Kerry advisor.

He has lots of experience in matters of national security. He should be someone with a lot to say and the credentials to back it up.

Unfortunately, he decided to go for the money and fame and change his story.

Which statement should we believe? The one made when he did not have a financial stake in it or the one made now that his book is out and sales depend on the public hearing about it and becoming interested in it?

Which Clarke should you believe?

"Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism," Clarke told CBS's Lesley Stahl. "He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.

Maybe. We'll never know."

What we'll never know is how Clarke could say this. He probably assumed his 2002 background briefing would never pop up again. But not only did he reveal in this earlier briefing that there was "no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," he also said that the Clinton Al Qaeda strategy had failed to evolve since 1998, leaving "on the table" such vital questions as Pakistan policy and aid for the Northern Alliance. As a result, he said in 2002, "the Bush administration decided then, you know, mid-January (2001), to do two things.

One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings ... (and) initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided." By the end of the summer, Bush officials -- who, Clarke reminded the media, "didn't get into office until late March, early April" -- had "developed implementation details" and, even more important, changed the Clinton strategy of "rollback" to "a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda." As Clarke put it then, "President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve the problem."

9-11 Families Against Clarke

2004-03-29T10:49:00.000-06:00

9-11 Families Against Clarke

The Left exhibits a couple of people who think GW's use of images from 9-11 is wrong in his re-election campaign. Why aren't those same people complaining about Clarke's use of 9-11 for increased profits? Here's a different group of families and friends who hold that view.

NO THANKS, MR. CLARKE

It was very disturbing, then, to learn that Mr. Clarke would be releasing his book immediately before his scheduled public testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

We are well aware that the friends and family members of those killed in 9/11 do not speak with a single voice on all issues. Nonetheless, the notion of profiteering from anything associated with 9/11 is particularly offensive to all of us.

We find Mr. Clarke's actions all the more offensive especially considering the fact that there was always a high possibility that the 9/11 Commission could be used for political gain, especially now, with the presidential election less than eight months away.

Surely, Mr. Clarke knew this. Yet he decided to risk the actual and perceived impartiality of this important process to maximize book sales.

As family and friends of those killed on 9/11, we believe it inappropriate for Mr. Clarke to profit from and politicize 9/11, and further divide America, by his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Indeed, we are now seeing some partisans more interested in somehow laying blame for 9/11 at the feet of President Bush - even though what we heard from both Bush and Clinton administration officials confirms what we already believed: that while al Qaeda was a known threat, no one could have known that 19 terrorists already in the United States would hijack domestic aircraft and fly them in to the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Had there been real evidence, "actionable" or otherwise, that this was being planned, we believe that President Bush, President Clinton - indeed, any president of the United States - would have done everything possible to prevent it.

Editorial Blasts Kerry

2004-03-29T10:10:00.000-06:00

Editorial Blasts Kerry

Kerry once claimed that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were murdered by the United States. Now he says that's not right. Read the Union Leader's take on it.

‘Murdering’ troops?

What could Kerry have meant?

BACK IN 1971, John Kerry said that 200,000 Vietnamese a year were “murdered by the United States of America.” Now he says he didn’t mean “murdered” and wasn’t referring to U.S. soldiers. Well then, what in the world did he mean?

After accessing transcripts of testimony Kerry gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, The Boston Globe reported Kerry’s “murdered” comment last Thursday. The paper also reported that Kerry claimed to have flown to Paris and “talked with both delegations at the peace talks,” clearly giving the impression that he was in some way involved in the Paris peace negotiations.

Now Kerry says his Paris trip was a private affair with his wife, and he only met the Vietnamese for a few minutes. But back in 1971 he wanted people to think the trip was of some significance. The claim is reminiscent of Kerry’s more recent boasts that he has talked with world leaders who want Bush out of office and that he had a close friend in Massachusetts who heard on good authority that Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped. Kerry has a habit of claiming that he is privy to inside information, then backing off when questioned about such boasts.

But back to his charge that the United States was murdering 200,000 Vietnamese a year. Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan told the Globe that Kerry “never suggested or believed and absolutely rejects the idea that the word applied to service of the American soldiers in Vietnam.” If he wasn’t referring to the United States military, then who in the world could he have meant? The USO?

Either the 1971 John Kerry was lying, or the 2004 John Kerry is lying — or both. We think both.

Ron Paul Nails It on FCC Regs

2004-03-29T10:07:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul Nails It on FCC Regs

Ron Paul, outspoken representative from Texas, takes on the current "do something" attitude about "decency on TV".

Paul: Market, not U.S. should regulate the airwaves

There's nothing new about this latest congressional attack on expression. The political right wing has always embraced censorship, believing that government can foster and protect moral values through strict regulation of speech. But this curious attitude conflicts with the central tenet of conservatism, namely a healthy mistrust of government. Why do conservatives feel compelled to have a federal nanny state protect their children from indecency? Why do conservatives, who once questioned and resisted the growing involvement of government in our lives, now trust FCC bureaucrats to determine moral standards?

Conservatives should know that a decent society is rooted in strong families, churches and civic institutions, not government speech codes.

The political left is no better when it comes to free speech. The left may be more permissive toward lurid or obscene material, but it has zero tolerance for political, religious and social commentary that falls outside the bounds of rigid political correctness doctrines it created.

Liberals are happy to restrict so-called commercial speech; happy to jail those who commit phony hate crimes merely by speaking their minds; and happy to impose speech codes on college campuses.

Conservatives must understand that the powers they grant the FCC today might one day be used against them. It is not hard to imagine a future where criticism of abortion is deemed hate speech against women, or criticism of affirmative action considered an unlawful attack on minorities. It is not hard to imagine President Hillary Clinton ordering the FCC to shut down Rush Limbaugh for using the term "feminazi." Already a petition has been filed with the Justice Department to investigate The Passion of the Christ for possible hate crimes against those who dislike the film's theology! Big-government conservatives will learn that heavy-handed federal control of speech is far more likely to result in a rigidly secular, politically correct society than a moral society filled with Christian virtue.

Finally Someone Stands Up to the PC Police

2004-03-26T23:56:00.000-06:00

Finally Someone Stands Up to the PC Police

Take what Bob Ryan (search) said a few days ago. Ryan is a sportswriter for the Boston Globe . . . .

Recently, in discussing the NCAA (search) men’s basketball tournament on a program on ESPN Radio, Ryan said that Vanderbilt’s basketball team had “too many white guys” on it to beat Western Michigan. As it turns out, Ryan was wrong; final score: Vandy: 71, Western Michigan: 58.

Ryan’s real error, though, was in the realm of political correctness. The ist vigilantes descended upon him like ants on icing.

Didn’t Ryan insult white guys, not blacks, and isn’t it okay to insult white guys?

Well, yeah, I guess, of course, but . . .

And didn’t he praise black guys, at least indirectly, by suggesting that they are likely to be better basketball players than whites?

Yeah, he did, but, see, that’s the problem. Because if you praise blacks for their athletic skills, you imply a corresponding lack of ability in other realms, such as the intellectual and the moral. Political Correctness 101.

Huh?

So wretchedly loony is political correctness that the ist vigilantes not only pounce when you insult a favored group, they pounce when you praise a favored group for the wrong reason.

Bob Ryan’s response to the furor, which, admittedly, is a furor of more limited scope than that being caused by the Iraqi occupation, is worth quoting at length:

“The audience at ESPN is presumably a sports-savvy audience, which means that in terms of basketball they know the code, ethics and culture of basketball, which is, in case anyone new to the game like some of these idiots that apparently have responded in a negative fashion, the code is it’s a black man’s game and the white man is privileged to be allowed to step on the court. That is known by both blacks and whites. If it weren’t easy to joke about this in the culture, you wouldn't be able to have a movie entitled White Men Can’t Jump.”

Ryan is right. I have played basketball all my life — junior high school, high school, college, and now in various geriatric competitions. Race is openly discussed, casually joked about; the atmosphere on a basketball court is so free and easy when it comes to matters of race that it should be the envy of the society as a whole.

I take issue with Ryan on only one point. He called those who criticized his comment “idiots.” They are worse. They are poisoners of the well, people so eager to dress themselves up in robes of virtue that they will impute vice to others in order establish their own superiority.

White men can't jump. The politically correct can’t think.

A Logical Truism in Effect

2004-03-26T13:14:00.000-06:00

A Logical Truism in Effect

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

"There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda," said former White House counterrorism official Richard Clarke to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes. It’s a statement often made by Democrats and critics of the Bush administration.

The problem is it’s flat out wrong. As CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2002, "We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes has documented copious evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

Such evidence is not conclusive. But it is evidence. Clarke and others who state with certainty that we know of no ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime are simply wrong. On the basis of the evidence currently available, we cannot know for sure that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq or that Saddam was not connected in some way to the September 11 attacks. And we probably never will know those things for certain.

Clarke = Partisan?

2004-03-26T13:12:00.000-06:00

Clarke = Partisan?

Giving only to Dems for 10 years and teaching a course with one of Kerry's advisors isn't proof per se, but it does raise some interesting questions about Clarke's motives.

And that's on top of the purely financial motive that controversy sells more of his book.

Records Show Richard Clarke Gave Only to Democrats

Former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke insists his attacks on President George W. Bush have nothing to do with politics, but an Insight check of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records shows that his only political contributions in the last decade have gone to Democrats.

Clarke is suspected of using his former post in the Bush White House as a weapon with which to slash and wound the president during his re-election campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). The Kerry campaign's coordinator for national security issues, Rand Beers, has described Clarke as his "best friend." According to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where Clarke and Beers are adjunct lecturers, they teach a course together about terrorism. Clarke's detailed Harvard biography specifically mentions his service under President Ronald Reagan and the elder President Bush, but says nothing about his eight years working for President Bill Clinton.

MRC Skewers Media Coverage of Clarke's Claims

2004-03-26T13:08:00.000-06:00

MRC Skewers Media Coverage of Clarke's Claims

Networks Undeterred by Any Doubts About Clarke’s Credibility

Three events on Wednesday served to undermine former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s contention that the Bush administration failure to adequately pursue al-Qaeda in it first months in office made the attacks possible: First, the Fox News Channel released the text and audio of an August 5, 2002 background briefing given by Clarke in which he countered claims that the incoming Bush team had in any way fumbled the pursuit of terrorists in taking over from the Clinton administration; second, during his testimony before the 9-11 Commission hearing, Clarke conceded that any actions by the Bush team coming into office in early 2001 would have been too late to prevent the 9-11 attacks; and third, during the hearing commissioners pointed out how Clarke hadn’t made any of his anti-Bush claims in 14 hours of private testimony.

Lowry on Clarke

2004-03-26T13:06:00.000-06:00

Lowry on Clarke

Sick today. Not much commentary. Just resources to use against those who think Clarke will bring down GW.

CLARKE'S COLLAPSE

Was he merely parroting talking points given to him by the Bush team? That's the explanation he offered at yesterday's hearing. But he can't get off the hook so easily.

At the very least, what he said in August 2002 must have been factual. Otherwise, Clarke has revealed himself to be an opportunist who will lie at the direction of his superiors.

So, if what Clarke said was true (and no one has contradicted it), why didn't he include it in his book?

A crucial (false) claim of Clinton defenders is that the Clinton team forged an anti-al Qaeda war plan that was then handed over to the Bush administration and ignored. In his August 2002 briefing, Clarke said, "I think the overall point is, there was no plan on al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration." His book seems to confirm that, but nowhere puts it so starkly.

In his 2002 briefing, Clarke said that the Bush administration decided in "mid-January" 2001 to continue with existing Clinton policy while deciding whether or not to pursue more aggressive ideas that had been rejected throughout the Clinton administration. Nowhere does this appear in his book.

He said in 2002 that the Bush administration had decided in principle in the spring of 2001 "to increase CIA resources . . . for covert action, five-fold, to go after al Qaeda." Nowhere is this mentioned in his book. . . .

Finally, in his 2002 briefing, Clarke made it clear that there was no "appreciable" change in U.S. terror policy from October 1998 until the Bush team began to reevaluate policy in the spring of 2001 and get more aggressive. His book implausibly argues the opposite, that Clinton was on the ball and Bush dropped it.

This is just the beginning of the contradictions and mistakes.

* In his testimony yesterday, Clarke said that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than fighting terror. No. In his own book, he says trying to force a Middle East peace agreement was more important to Clinton than retaliating for the attack against USS Cole.

* Clarke says in his book that Bush asked him to look into a possible Iraq connection to 9/11 in an "intimidating" way. No. Two other witnesses say there was nothing intimidating about Bush's manner.

* Clarke says Condi Rice appeared as if she hadn't heard of al Qaeda before he mentioned it to her in early 2001. No. Rice made public statements in late 2000 noting the threat from bin Laden.

Given all of this, it's hard to believe that anyone takes Richard Clarke seriously - including himself.

Time's Up Clarke

2004-03-26T12:51:00.000-06:00

Time's Up Clarke

Even Time, noted conservative media bastion that it is, says that Clarke "sexed up" his stories about the Bush Administration.

Isn't "lied"the Lib word for "sexed up"?

Richard Clarke, at War With Himself

Perhaps Clarke's most explosive charge is that on Sept. 12, President Bush instructed him to look into the possibility that Iraq had a hand in the hijackings. Here's how Clarke recounted the meeting on 60 Minutes: "The President dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this'.....the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this.'" After Clarke protested that "there's no connection," Bush came back to him and said "Iraq, Saddam — find out if there's a connection." Clarke says Bush made the point "in a very intimidating way." The next day, interviewed on PBS' The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, "It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, Dick, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened."

How does this square with the account of the same meeting provided in Clarke's book? In that version, Clarke finds the President wandering alone in the Situation Room on Sept. 12, "looking like he wanted something to do." Clarke writes that Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room" — an impetuous move, perhaps, but hardly the image that Clarke depicted on television, of the President dragging in unwitting staffers by their shirt-collars. The Bush in these pages sounds more ruminative than intimidating: "I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way." When Clarke responds by saying that "al-Qaeda did this," Bush says, "I know, I know, but see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred....." Again Clarke protests, after which Bush says "testily," "Look into Iraq, Saddam."

Nowhere do we see the President pointing fingers at or even sounding particularly "vigorous" toward Clarke and his deputies. Despite Clarke's contention that Bush wanted proof of Iraqi involvement at any cost, it's just as possible that Bush wanted Clark to find disculpatory evidence in order to discredit the idea peddled by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Baghdad had a hand in 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush rejected Wolfowitz's attempts to make Iraq the first front in the war on terror. And if the President of the United States spoke "testily " 24 hours after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, well, can you blame him? . . .

In a few other instances, Clarke's televised comments seem designed to disparage the President and his aides at all cost, omitting any of the inconvenient details — some of which appear in the pages of his book — that might suggest the White House took al-Qaeda seriously before Sept. 11. Bush, Clarke says, "never thought [al-Qaeda] was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security advisor to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject." This has been a constant refrain in Clarke's public statements — that Bush's failure to call a "Principal's Meeting" of his cabinet to discuss terrorism until the week before Sept. 11 showed a lack of interest in al-Qaeda. While it is technically true that the White House did not hold a Cabinet-level meeting on al-Qaeda until Sept. 4, the charge is still misleading, since Bush, as early as April 2001, had instructed Rice to draft a strategy for rolling back al-Qaeda and killing bin Laden, saying he was tired of "swatting flies" —, a line Clarke does include in his book. Rice's response was to task a committee of deputies to study the U.S.'s options for rolling back the Taliban; the group ultimately concluded that the U.S. should increase its support to the Northern Alliance and pressure on Pakistan to cooperate in a campaign to remove the Taliban. It was essentially the same plan Clarke had drafted during the Clinton Administration. As his book details, the plan was scuttled by intransigence at the CIA and the Pentagon, neither of which Clinton wanted to confront head-on.

The Big Picture

2004-03-26T12:43:00.000-06:00

The Big Picture

A President's Job

Or consider this episode from the 9/11 Commission's staff report on the U.S. response to news that terrorists linked to Iran had killed 19 Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996:

"Albright emphasized to us, for example, that even if some individual Iranian officials were involved, this was not the same as proving that the Iranian government as a whole should be held responsible for the bombing. National Security Adviser Berger held a similar view. He stressed the need for a definitive intelligence judgment. The evidence might be challenged by foreign governments. The evidence might form a basis for going to war."

Yes, it might. But the failure to act without "definitive" evidence and "foreign" agreement might also encourage the terrorists to think that they can get away with it and so hit us again.

The idea that every President would have toppled the Taliban after 9/11 is also wishful thinking. The press at the time was full of hand-wringing about the dangers. The establishment consensus, even so soon after 9/11, was that the U.S. could end up bogged down in Kabul like the British and Soviets. President Bush is the one who took the risk of using force to rout the Taliban and the al Qaeda camps they were protecting.

All of this is what we ought to be debating this election year, not how selective Dick Clarke's memory is. Even if everything Mr. Clarke says is true--and he's already contradicted himself numerous times--it is beside the point. What matters is which strategy against terrorism the U.S. should pursue now and for the next four years.

This is also the case that Mr. Bush needs to make, rising above the Lilliputians who want to fight over intelligence and yellowcake uranium in Niger. Mr. Bush should tell Americans that he too is disappointed that U.S. intelligence in Iraq wasn't as good as it might have been, though even Bill Clinton was convinced Saddam Hussein had WMD.

Krauthammer on Clarke

2004-03-26T12:24:00.000-06:00

Krauthammer on Clarke

Partisan Clarke

Clarke's answer is unbelievable; ``Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. ... There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.''

This is significant for two reasons. First, if the Clarke of 2002 was telling the truth, then the Clarke of this week -- the one who told the 9/11 commission under oath that ``fighting terrorism in general and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly (there was) no higher priority'' -- is a liar.

Second, he becomes not just a perjurer but a partisan perjurer. He savages Bush for not having made al Qaeda his top national security priority, but he refuses even to call a ``mistake'' Clinton's staggering dereliction in putting Yasser Arafat and Yugoslavia(!) above fighting al Qaeda.

That Darn Christ is Making People Do Things Again

2004-03-25T14:38:00.000-06:00

That Darn Christ is Making People Do Things Again

Yeah . . . the RIGHT things.

'Passion of Christ' moves
man to confess killing 'suicide' victim

RICHMOND -- Detectives say the death of a 19-year-old woman originally ruled a suicide has turned into a murder case after a repentant man who'd watched The Passion of the Christ confessed to killing her because she was carrying his child.

The Economy Tanks Again

2004-03-25T14:34:00.000-06:00

The Economy Tanks Again

4.1% and looking to get even better as the year goes on. Isn't it just awful? ;-)

Economy Grows at Solid 4.1 Percent Pace

WASHINGTON (AP) - America's economic recovery ended 2003 on a good note, growing at a solid 4.1 percent annual rate, and is expected to do even better in the opening quarter of this year.

The latest reading on gross domestic product for the October-to-December quarter was the same as a previous estimate made a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That was consistent with economists' forecasts.

GDP measures that value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the most important barometer of the economy's health.

Economic growth in the current January-to-March quarter is expected to clock in at a rate of 4.5 percent, according to some analysts' forecasts. Growth in the April-to-June quarter also should be around that pace, they said.

Tax refunds and other tax incentives should motivate consumers and businesses to spend and invest more - energizing the economy in the first half of this year, economists said.

Hope Springs Eternal

2004-03-25T13:56:00.000-06:00

Hope Springs Eternal

Libya's Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, Moammar Gadhafi's son, is urging Arab nations, including Libya, to take up Democracy.

YEEEEEHAAA!

We can only hope that there are others who feels as he does.

Gadhafi's Son Says Arabs Should Support U.S. Call for Democracy - from TBO.com

"Instead of shouting and criticizing the American initiative, you have to bring democracy to your countries, and then there will be no need to fear America or your people," said Seif al-Islam Gadhafi. "The Arabs should either change or change will be imposed on them from outside."

Seif denied reports that he is a candidate to succeed his father, who rules Libya with little tolerance of opposition.

"Many Arab countries are now following the policy of inheriting the leadership, but there are hundreds of Libyans who are better (suited) than I," Seif said.

How To Approach Statistics

2004-03-24T12:51:00.000-06:00

How To Approach Statistics

A great primer for approachng statistics if you have never studied the concept.

Reading Between the Numbers

How can we trust research?

The question is not trivial, since studies and statistics form the basis for many of the laws under which we live. If they are wrong, then the laws may be as well.

Short of taking a course on statistics and poring over data, the best way to get a sense of which data to trust is through common sense. There are five questions you should demand of any statistic.

Who Says So?
How Does He Know?
What does the competition say?
Did Someone Change the Subject?
Does It Make Sense?

Our society rewards those who construct problems. They receive financing and media attention, write books and become "experts." Statistics are tools and those who wield them should be neither glamorized nor ignored. But they should be required to answer basic questions before being included in that rare category: purveyor of truth.

You might also find and read the following books:

Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists by Joel Best, a look at the use of numbers in modern society; and
How to Lie With Statistics
by Darrell Huff - a classic from the 50's.

Ijaz on Clarke

2004-03-24T09:16:00.000-06:00

Ijaz on Clarke

Uh-oh. Direct contradiction of Clarke's claims . . . from someone who supplied the intelligence which provides the contradiction with specific dates, times, and acts.

Yet another listing of Dick Clarke's credibility gap.

Politicized intelligence . . .

Mr. Clarke's premise that Bush national security officials neither understood nor cared to know anything about al Qaeda is simply untrue. I know because on multiple occasions from June until late August 2001, I personally briefed Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security adviser to President Bush, and members of his South Asia, Near East and East Africa staff at the National Security Council on precisely what had gone wrong during the Clinton years to unearth the extent of the dangers posed by al Qaeda. Some of the briefings were in the presence of former members of the Clinton administration's national security team to ensure complete transparency.
Far from being disinterested, the Bush White House was eager to avoid making the same mistakes of the previous administration and wanted creative new inputs for how to combat al Qaeda's growing threat.
Mr. Clarke's role figured in two key areas of the debriefings -- Sudan's offer to share terrorism data on al Qaeda and bin Laden in 1997, and a serious effort by senior members of the Abu Dhabi royal family to gain bin Laden's extradition from Afghanistan in early 2000.

Podhoretz on Clarke

2004-03-24T08:54:00.000-06:00

Podhoretz on Clarke

The final bit from Joh Podhoretz' column on Dick Clarke.

Good stuff.

DICK'S TALL TALE

They were not Bush's fault, and they were not caused by his inattention. Nor were they Clinton's fault. They were the fault of Osama bin Laden, who attacked and killed 3,000 Americans and would happily have seen that number read 30,000 or 50,000.

We need to remember this, and we are in danger of forgetting it in the raging partisan kerfuffle.

In the months after 9/11, the Bush administration refused - absolutely refused - to try to blame the attacks on the Clinton administration's failure of vision. The nation needed to be united in its determination and could not afford to surrender to finger-pointing.

Well, guess what? The Clinton administration's senior foreign-policy officials will be appearing this week before the 9/11 commission - to do to the Bush administration exactly what the Bush administration refused to do to them.

"It is essential that we prevent further attacks, and that we protect the Constitution," Clarke writes, "against all enemies." It is clear from the context of this sentence that he includes George W. Bush among the enemies along with Osama bin Laden.

Is this really a sentiment that mainstream Democrats want to support and echo?

Yeah, Alleged, That's It

2004-03-24T08:45:00.000-06:00

Yeah, Alleged, That's It

I think the final paragraph of this article says it all.

Summary: the Georgia legislature passed a non-binding bill "urging" universities "encourages schools to recognize and promote intellectual diversity on campus".

But Lib professors don't like it because:

Students fight alleged political prejudice

"We feel it's OK for a teacher to talk about political perspectives as long as it's done in a learning situation," Harty said. "Not to the point where you're attacking the ability of someone else to express an opinion."

In other words, politics in the classroom is fine unless it isn't liberal or "attacking."

"Present everything you want in a biased way, just don't yell" seems to be the message.

Combining Popular Threads: Outsourcing and Foreign Policy

2004-03-23T12:41:00.000-06:00

Combining Popular Threads: Outsourcing and Foreign Policy

Sowell intertwines the current buzzword "outsourcing" with an analysis of foreign policy.

Outsourcing foreign policy

Spain's decision to turn tail and run, in response to a terrorist bombing, not only tells terrorists how to get their way in the future, it should also tell us about the dangers of outsourcing our foreign policy to our allies or to the United Nations, as so many on the left want us to do. . . .

The sheer repetition of words -- the mantra of "the international community" and the anathema of "unilateral action" -- has become a substitute for examining the hard realities and the track record of those to whom we are supposed to defer when it comes to a mortal threat in a nuclear age.

Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated -- pre-emptively and unilaterally, if necessary.

The so-called "international community" that the left has so long envisioned consists in reality of disunited nations, too many of whom are short-sighted enough to cooperate with terrorists in hopes of deflecting their wrath toward someone else.

Throwing others to the wolves is a strategy that has been tried before. France threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves in 1938 to try to buy off Hitler. Less than two years later, Hitler's armies invaded France -- using, among other things, tanks made in Czechoslovakia.