Eerie Similarity

Somebody couldn't resist taking a shot at Bush today:

Why don't you tell them how many million citizens of America and its allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people's sons in order increase your profits?

Was it Ted Kennedy? Patrick Leahy? Al Gore? Nancy Pelosi? John Kerry?

Nope. It just sounds like them.

Allen Lacks a Certain Something

It's not the use of the N-word...it's the context:

It seems that while Bush went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard to drag Black men to death behind his pick-up truck, Virginia Senator George Allen (R) was spewing racial epiphets around his college campus like a busted sewer main. According to some of his University of Virginia classmates, Allen used the N-Word frequently in the 1970’s, and without wearing the appropriate amount of bling.

Let that be a lesson to the bling-less.

Liberal Bias "?"

Hugh Hewitt interviews recently retired Thomas Edsall, and Jonathan Alter:

Edsall:

I agree that whatever you want to call it, mainstream media, presents itself as unbiased, when in fact, there are built into it, many biases, and they are overwhelmingly to the left.

Alter:

...the threshold question that you have to look at is how much does that affect their coverage? Now I think some. I think liberals who say well, that doesn’t affect their coverage at all are wrong.

What in the world are they talking about? Have I missed a chance to be perceptive? What is this...bias?

Partisan Leakers Strike (Inaccurately) Again

Contrary to frothing media reports boldly stating that our actions in Iraq are making terrorism worse, the now famous NIE includes a ringing endorsement for victory in Iraq:

Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighteres will be inspired to carry on the fight.

While the report does note that there is an increase in terrorists, does that really come as a surprise? For heaven's sake, we are at war with them. Did we expect that they wouldn't attempt to fight back? In any case, far from laying the blame at the feet of the war in Iraq, the NIE includes a host of reasons for the spread of jihad: grievances, fear of the west, lack of substantive reforms in the region, and pervasive anti-U.S. sentiment, to name a few.

The report also goes on to state that we have done "serious damage" to al Qaeda. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite sure a considerable amount of that damage was a product of operations in Iraq.

Far from the "nail in the coffin" that knee-jerk liberals and unhinged media portray the NIE to be, it is a reasonable assessment of the state of jihad. For those who think that the methods of fighting back have produced more terrorism, what did you expect?

That suggests that by doing nothing we could ultimately alleviate terrorism. Doing nothing was exactly what we did through the 90's and into the 21st century. In fact, that's what we did right up until Sept. 11, 2001.

While some might be stupid enough to believe that America and its efforts in Iraq are the primary breeder of terrorism, I am not.

What About Me?

In the pursuit of a society with no competition, competition is fierce:

"Why couldn't Hugo Chavez hold up one of my books?"

We can't all be Chomsky.

They Know What's Best

Writer Phelim Mcaleer realizes what most of us have known for years. Environmentalism is becoming a major hurdle to overcoming poverty. Mcaleer recalls how environmentalists lied (gasp!) about local conditions, a company's intentions, and the level of pollution, in order to keep a mine from being built in an area of Romania.

But that wasn't even the worst part:

As I spoke to the Western environmentalists it quickly emerged that they wanted to stop the mine because they felt that development and prosperity will ruin the rural "idyllic" lifestyle of these happy peasants.

This "lifestyle" includes 70 percent unemployment, two-thirds of the people having no running water and using an outhouse in winters where the temperature can plummet to 20 degrees below zero centigrade.

One environmentalist (foreign of course) tried to persuade me that villagers actually preferred riding a horse and cart to driving a car.

Of course the Rosia Montana villagers wanted a modern life - just like the rest of us. They wanted indoor bathrooms and the good schools and medical care that the large investment would bring.

If the villagers only understood what these modern luxuries would bring in the long run, like enslavement to eeeevvvviiilll capitalism, they might think twice about giving up crapping in a hole.

Anything But Yoko Ono

For all the unhinged "torture" loyalists out there who protest the use of harsher interrogation techniques, "torture" ought to be at least as bad as voluntary military training, don't you think?

SERE training in the U.S. includes:

extreme temperatures
waterboarding - being tied to a board with the feet higher than the head and having water poured into the nose
noise stress - playing very loud and dissonant music and sound effects. Recordings have been reported to include babies wailing inconsolably, cats meowing, and irritating music (including a record by Yoko Ono)[1]
sexual embarrassment
religious dilemma - being given the choice of seeing a religious book desecrated or revealing secrets to interrogators.
flag desecration
prolonged cramped or restrictive confinement
sleep deprivation/starvation
excrement familiarization/humiliation
mock execution
overcoming food aversion (eating bugs, roadkill, dumpster diving, urine drinking)
height/water/enclosed spaces
physical beating
"stress inoculation"

I would submit that some of the things allowed in SERE training are actually worse than what the administration is looking for regarding interrogation. I mean really. Yoko Ono?

Is That So, Howard?

In the "over before it starts" category, Howard Dean starts out a commentary in the Wall Street Journal thusly:

We need a Democratic Congress to fight the war on terror

He never really does say why. At least, nothing new.

Goodbye To a Hero

Up here in the great north the weekend was dominated by the arrival and funeral of Johnathan Benson. I attended the visitation on Saturday and witnessed the funeral procession on Monday morning. I must say that the city was at its best and many came out in the rain Monday morning to bid Johnathan a final goodbye.

Governor Tim Pawlenty attended the funeral on Sunday and did so without fanfare. As my editor described, she didn't even know he was there until he got up to speak. She has the story on the solemn event.

I spoke with a friend or two of Johnathan's on Saturday and they all said the same thing. A very sweet guy with a great sense of humor and an unstoppable desire to fight for his country.

Semper Fi Johnathan. You were the real deal.

Is This 'Truth to Power?'

In a column entitled "Head in the Sand Liberals," self-proclaimed liberal Sam Harris has a moment of clarity rare to the breed.

...they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

This passage would be especially relevent to Tankwoman, who thinks Israeli cluster munitions just magically appear in Lebanese neighborhoods. I know writing space in the blogosphere is hard to come by, but would it have been so difficult to add one sentence on Hezbollah's use of neighborhoods as rocket launch-pads?

Harris has all the prerequisite slams of the "religious right" and of course they come without any hint of evidence that its a group that deserves it. But along the way he comes to a startling conlcusion:

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

Well...no duh.

Because It's a Picnic Now

The NYT regurgitates the "soldiers at risk" excuse for not allowing interrogation techniques that employ the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

One section of the administration bill would put American soldiers in grave jeopardy by rewriting the Geneva Conventions, condoning the practice of hiding prisoners in secret cells, and permitting the continued use of interrogation methods that violate the Geneva Conventions at the C.I.A. prisons.

Ya. It isn't any less ridiculous when the NYT says it. Is there a fear that our enemy will use duller saws? If so, I haven't heard.

Why is everyone pretending that, historically, our soldiers haven't been subjected to horrible treatment far outside the Geneva Convention? This war is certainly no different, and in fact it couldn't get much worse in that regard. Let's stop pretending that allowing harsher interrogation techniques would somehow transform how our prisoners are treated.

Powerline slices and dices.

Is He Not Paying Attention?

John Warner, one of the Republicans who has suddenly gone squeamish on intelligence gathering, needs a history lesson. One of his reasons for opposing legislation that would protect interrogators from prosecution in doing their job is a concern of...

...other countries following the lead of the United States, redefining the Geneva Conventions and subjecting American soldiers to abuse.

Is this man daft? Is he not paying attention? That boat has long since sailed Mr. Warner.

Free Speech Isn't Free

Ad revenue was off the charts before it wasn't. Assassination chic before it was chic. They made not getting a paycheck a point of liberal pride. Now, the only leftist radio station to have its blockbuster movie reviewed by the staff at Les Enfants Terrible is facing bankruptcy.

Air America ran out of money promptly after it launched in 2004, after disgraced former chairman Evan Cohen inflated the amount of money he had raised to fund the network. Since then, Air America has seen a litany of troubles, executive departures, talent shuffles, and lawsuits. Six months ago, the network was booted from its flagship station in New York City, WLIB, to a much weaker signal that doesn't cover the entire city, and it laid off five staffers on September 11, according to the New York Post.

Franken isn't the only person Air America is in hock to. Last year, the network settled a multi-million-dollar lawsuit by Multicultural Broadcasting, the owner of its Chicago and Los Angeles stations, for its failure to pay for rented time. But according to Multicultural's attorney, Randy Mastro, the network still hasn't paid up.

Just to add a human element to the story, a relative of mine, an advertising genius, has never been paid for ads commissioned by Air America leading up to its debut. If there is anybody out there with any sway at the ol' Flagship, it would be really cool if she got that check.

Over at Think Progress, the news is being broken very gently to the faithful. Here's a positive:

Air America succeeded at creating something that didn’t exist: the progressive talk radio format.

I can't but marvel at the idea that the brain trust at Air America argued daily that they knew best how to run a country.

Mark Steyn sums up the enlightening lesson in liberals at the helm, calling Air America, "The brilliant pre-publicity campaign marred only by an ill-advised decision to actually launch the product."

That's One Way To Go

New Republic's Bradford Plumer, in an absolute moment of clarity, on why liberals should oppose any restrictions to pork-barrel spending:

...while it's easy to see why small-government conservatives and knee-jerk deficit hawks dislike earmarks, there's a liberal case for supporting pork. It's not because pork projects are defensible on the merits, although they sometimes can be. It's not because they create jobs, although they can do that, too. Rather, it's because, without pork, activist government would wither and die.

***

The point is this: Any big-government program on the progressive wish list will likely prove even more difficult to pass than the 1986 tax reform or 1993 budget. Single-payer health care? Card check for unions? Reductions in carbon emissions? It won't get done without an orgy of earmarks to entice the inevitable skeptics in Congress.

Get that? Plumer is okay ethically with keeping a cool billion around to grease the wheels.

Thanks to Captain's Quarters for pointing this column out. Ed offers much more by way of analysis, including why Plumer is exactly right.

Hack This

Via The Corner, Bush responds to critics who believe he should not speak of the single most important issue of our time on the anniversay of the attack that made it so:

"Imagine what they would have said if I hadn't talked about Iraq—`failed policy, won't talk about it.' If did talk about Iraq—then, `It's politics.'"

That's the left for you. A party of political hacks bent on making sure, no matter what route is taken, that everyone else looks like a hack too.

Remembering Today Minus Five

Lileks sums up pretty well how many of us felt that fateful morning in September of 2001:

9:24 Have sudden strong need for a cigarette, and a gun.

There are few things with the capacity to capture the mood I was in. One is Lileks entry for the day. I read it every year on the anniversary. Perhaps you might too.

God bless America.

Make Us Look Good or Lose Your License

I must say that I have no intention of watching The Path to 9/11 this weekend. Sunday is dedicated to the Manning Bowl and the Vikings open their season against the Redskins (gasp!) on Monday. Besides, I already know about Clinton's incompetence in dealing with terrorism.

But it has made an interesting study in Democratic fascism. The letter Senate Democrats sent ABC today is pretty appalling. It incuded this passage, a not-so-thinly-veiled threat:

Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation.

The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events.

Captain Ed thinks it is a threat to take away ABC's broadcast license. I must say, that's what it sounds like to me. If airing the broadcast would be a miscarriage of law, than it stands to reason the Democrats are implying a punishment. The reference to CA of 1934 spells out the rest pretty clearly.

It's the kind of thing Democrats are always warning is the end result of Republican rule. Government dictatorship of information.

Of course, they wouldn't be doing this if there wasn't plenty to hide. IBD summarizes all of the missed opportunities of the Clinton administration and concludes:

It was the Clinton administration that could have put Osama bin Laden out of commission.

It was under Clinton that Americans were killed by terrorists on three continents without a meaningful response.

It was under Bill Clinton that we left Somalia in disgrace after dead Americans were dragged through the streets, giving bin Laden all the proof of our lack of will he needed.

And it was Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, who created the wall of separation between the FBI and CIA that kept us from connecting the information and preventing 9-11.

What's the word that describes all this? Ah, yes, incompetence.

If people knew that, it might change their vote this November. We can't have a little thing like reality messing up the Democrats' plans for a sweep.

Ed sums it up well:

Welcome to the Enforced Perspective Party.

The funny thing is, I would never have thought to go over all of Clinton's failures again. Been there, done that, ready to move on. It is only the Democrats' insistence that they dictate what we see on TV that has brought Clinton's terror response to light and put it center stage.

Anybody want to bet that this latest brilliant strategy by the left is going to backfire?

Want to Honor 9/11? Go To Work

I penned a column for the paper this week on the subject of a 9/11 national holiday. In short, I am not in favor. Here's a snippet:

Do we really need another holiday? Or would the victims of 9/11 be remembered best by people working, and the stark realization that it was in doing so that our brethren were struck down.

Personally, being "trapped" at work that day was one of the hardest parts about the experience. However, had I not been learning how to properly dress a head-end that day, I would have been denied the sensation of seeing the very same bridges I passed under that morning now draped with messages of hope and American flags.

I would also have been denied the unique experience of finally arriving home and collapsing into my Dearly Befuddled's arms, at last able to weep for the loss. Like most things in my life, good and bad, 9/11 wasn't real until it was shared with her.

That she knew I would need her, that instead of waiting in the house she met me halfway up the sidewalk in a much needed embrace, and that she let me mourn right there for a world that no longer existed as I knew it, reminded me just how much I have always needed her to see me through.

That day also forged a bond between myself and my nephew Jeremy that will no doubt last a lifetime. He was with me when we heard the first news reports, as we talked of hope that it was just a tragic accident, as that hope disappeared when the second plane hit. He was with me when we walked into the conference room and told 15 people they needed to turn on the news right now, and watched them absorb the horror for the first time. He was with me as we drove home in silence, listening to the news on the radio as we passed under all of those bridges.

As a child I never quite understood what adults meant when they talked of knowing exactly where they were and what they were doing when Kennedy was shot. That has all become crystal clear. I remember Sept. 11 in stunning detail, and no doubt will recall it just as well when I'm 90.

Newspaper of Record

Yesterday I noted that the NYT continues to be guilty of misrepresenting basic facts in the Rove/Plame debacle. Now Andrew Cline, writing in the American Spectator, picks up on the NYT's failure to present those facts:

The Times also, incredibly, persists in asserting that "Mr. Wilson debunked the claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons." Do the Times editorial writers read anything other than their own editorial page?

We know the answer to that, of course. Cline concludes:

The Post's editorial board has concluded both that Wilson did not debunk the Iraq uranium-shopping story and that his wife was not outed by an administration bent on revenge. That's because the evidence refutes Wilson's claims. And yet the Times editorial board chooses to ignore the evidence and perpetuate Wilson's delusional story.

That is an amazing dereliction of journalistic duty, particularly for America's unofficial "newspaper of record."

And that's some record.

Preserving the Clinton Legacy at All Costs

From the accounts I've read, "The Path to 9/11" is billed as an unbiased, critical look at the years leading up to 9/11. That appears to include major missteps by the Clinton administration in the mid and late 90s.

The braintrust at Democratic Underground is concerned that establishing Clinton's weakness on terrorism will hurt the party in the mid-term elections. To combat that, they intend to do everything in their power to make sure the truth gets muddled in an organized effort to mislead the voting public:

To counteract the effects the ABC 9-11 movie could have on the midterm elections, I recommend this course of action:

The night of, and the morning after, people will be hitting the internet looking for information on the events as depicted in this movie.

Our biggest opportunity will be to have nearly identical blog posts waiting, then submit them to be found internet wide the morning after the movie. Google and Technorati will pick up on these posts quickly. We can make these entries dominate the first several pages of the search engines.

MAKE SURE THE POST TITLE HAS THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE IN IT!

Get every Democratic friendly blog on board as possible... you e-mail the ones you know, they'll e-mail the ones they know, etc. Make SURE these blogs are on the Technorati network and have also been submitted to Google's blog search.

For one day, change the title of your blog to the title of the movie.

Agree on a clear, detailed, and sourced body of information -- I've seen several examples on DU lately disputing what is in the movie. Media Matters has one. One was posted today on DU by Richard Clarke.

Everyone post it. Right after the movie is over or the next morning at the latest.

MAKE SURE THE POST TITLE HAS THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE IN IT!

DU JOURNALS WILL ALSO WORK! They're indexed in Technorati! To use DU journals for this, the admins will need to allow a forum for everyone who want to to post and almost identical post with facts concerning intelligence failures leading up to 9/11.

MAKE SURE THE POST TITLE HAS THE TITLE OF THE MOVIE IN IT!

When simple reality is so damaging to a party's prospects that it must be systematically blurred in an organized effort, things aren't as rosy as they seem.

Via Michelle Malkin, who also has an example of what right wing bloggers have planned to mark the anniversary of 9/11.

Why Bother?

The NYT today is trying to save face on Rove/Plame. In attempting to salvage what has become a disaster for the paper and the left, the editorial deems to hold Fitzgerald's feet to the fire. However, they fail to get one of the most basic facts of the case straight.

Mr. Wilson debunked the claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons.

Wilson "debunked" nothing. In fact, his report actually bolstered the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium, and the fact that Iraq was after yellow cake has been shown time and time again by other sources - of a much more reputable nature - as well.

If the NYT is unable to publish this one basic fact, which frames the entire situation, they are just pissing in the wind and cannot be taken seriously.

State Department Gets a Free Pass

Rowan Scarborough has a nice column on the implosion of the Rove/Plame meme. Included is this gem from Tom Mattzie, Washington director of MORon.org:

"This conspiracy clearly reaches into the highest levels of our government. This could be among the worst presidential scandals in our history. ... Again, we call on the president to keep his promise and fire Karl Rove. How long will the cover-up continue?"

No scandal. No cover up. In fact, no conspiracy save for the one perpetrated by Bush haters at the expense of people it turns out didn't do anything wrong.

I now breathlessy await a quote from Mattzie about the "conspiracy" at the "highest levels" of the State Department. Could it be "among the worst scandals" in department history? After all, the "cover up" lasted three years.

Something tells me that Mattzie will spend very little space on his website pursuing "justice" in this matter.

Let's Be Reasonable Here

Fred Barnes gets my vote for understatement of the year suggesting the appropriate media reaction to the hoax that was Rove/Plame:

A correction--perhaps the longest and most overdue in the history of journalism--is in order.

Never happen. The media hates corrections almost as much as they hate...Republicans.

How Will We Signal Him?

Scientists are "tempering" their predictions of disaster resultant from global warming. They have now reduced forecasted increases from almost six degrees celcius to three degrees celcius over the next hundred years.

In light of this news it only makes sense for Australian Conservation Foundation energy program manager Erwin Jackson to demand immediate action to correct the remaining three degrees and get the planet back to its normal temperature.

No one ever said that saving the planet would cost nothing - that's the bottom line.

Immediately following the statement Mr. Jackson disappeared in his blue and green Dr. Planet outfit and presumably emerged wearing regular street clothes somewhere else, leaving stunned observers to wonder where, and when, the masked crusader might appear again.

Meanwhile, all are comforted by the notion that he is out there, somewhere, working to save the whole ball of wax.

Cutting to the Chase

Robert at Thorn Tree speaks "truth to power" for fellow liberals who think they are above Bush assassination fantasies:

...to all the lefty bloggers out there falling all over yourselves to say "Of course, I wouldn't want the president killed", shut the hell up. You know you would do a little dance if someone whacked that idiot. You just want to appear "above" such a thing.

Plain truth from the left has a way of clearing the cobwebs doesn't it?