Stupid Stickers

Don't you just hate this bumper sticker? I do. And here's an in-depth analysis of it's inherent stupidity.

In Case You Have Any Doubts Left That Harry Reid Is A Complete And Utter Moron

From Jill Lawrence at Politics Daily:

"LAS VEGAS – Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, was having second thoughts – or was he? – about the way he had characterized people who are disrupting town halls with "lies, innuendo and rumor," and not letting others speak. They are, he had said, "evil-mongers."

A day after tossing out the term "evil-mongers" in the closing speech of his annual clean energy conference, Reid was alternating between pride in his coinage and knowing that he probably should be trying to defuse, not escalate, the turmoil erupting at town meetings across the country on health care reform.

"It was an original with me. I maybe could have been less descriptive," Reid said. He also said, "I doubt that you'll hear it from me again." But a few minutes later, he couldn't resist a sardonic little joke. "I feel I haven't done anything to embarrass them," Reid said of his children. "Except maybe call somebody an evil-monger."

Thanks, But No Thanks

Andy McCarthy passes on a chance to sing "Kumbaya" with Eric Holder:

May 1, 2009

By email (to the Counterterrorism Division) and by regular mail:

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.

The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clear—most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany—that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.

Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.

Beyond that, as elucidated in my writing (including my proposal for a new national security court, which I understand the Task Force has perused), I believe alien enemy combatants should be detained at Guantanamo Bay (or a facility like it) until the conclusion of hostilities. This national defense measure is deeply rooted in the venerable laws of war and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi case. Yet, as recently as Wednesday, you asserted that, in your considered judgment, such notions violate America’s “commitment to the rule of law.” Indeed, you elaborated, “Nothing symbolizes our [adminstration’s] new course more than our decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay…. President Obama believes, and I strongly agree, that Guantanamo has come to represent a time and an approach that we want to put behind us: a disregard for our centuries-long respect for the rule of law[.]” (Emphasis added.)

Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting. After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.
For what it may be worth, I will say this much. For eight years, we have had a robust debate in the United States about how to handle alien terrorists captured during a defensive war authorized by Congress after nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans were annihilated. Essentially, there have been two camps. One calls for prosecution in the civilian criminal justice system, the strategy used throughout the 1990s. The other calls for a military justice approach of combatant detention and war-crimes prosecutions by military commission. Because each theory has its downsides, many commentators, myself included, have proposed a third way: a hybrid system, designed for the realities of modern international terrorism—a new system that would address the needs to protect our classified defense secrets and to assure Americans, as well as our allies, that we are detaining the right people.

There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.
The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness. But I can decline to participate in the charade.

Finally, let me repeat that I respect and admire the dedication of Justice Department lawyers, whom I have tirelessly defended since I retired in 2003 as a chief assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. It was a unique honor to serve for nearly twenty years as a federal prosecutor, under administrations of both parties. It was as proud a day as I have ever had when the trial team I led was awarded the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award in 1996, after we secured the convictions of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his underlings for waging a terrorist war against the United States. I particularly appreciated receiving the award from Attorney General Reno—as I recounted in Willful Blindness, my book about the case, without her steadfastness against opposition from short-sighted government officials who wanted to release him, the “blind sheikh” would never have been indicted, much less convicted and so deservedly sentenced to life-imprisonment. In any event, I’ve always believed defending our nation is a duty of citizenship, not ideology. Thus, my conservative political views aside, I’ve made myself available to liberal and conservative groups, to Democrats and Republicans, who’ve thought tapping my experience would be beneficial. It pains me to decline your invitation, but the attendant circumstances leave no other option.

Very truly yours,

/S/

Andrew C. McCarthy

cc: Sylvia T. Kaser and John DePue
National Security Division, Counterterrorism Section

Is There Any Wonder CNN Is Last In The Ratings?

Smarmy condescension from the likes is this female reporter? The woman is a tool.

We're All Rightwing Extremists Now

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided in a recently released report that the specter of violent rightwing extremism now stalks the country.

First, let’s start Homeland Security’s definition of rightwing extremism:
“Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Just take the hate-oriented groups off the table for the purpose of this discussion. It’s safe to say that they are by no means a major player in 21st century domestic American politics. So that leaves us with “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority” and “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

Since rejecting federal authority makes you a rightwing extremist – can you tell me who said this earlier today?
“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,”
“That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”
That would be Governor Rick Perry of Texas. Apparently he didn’t get the memo just like more than half of the states of this country which already have bills pending in their state legislatures telling the federal government to re-read the 10th Amendment and back off.

Even being “dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration” is enough to qualify you as a rightwing extremist. Surely Homeland Security must mean “illegal immigration” since not many folks are upset by lawful immigration. Even so, that’s a mighty big brush they’re painting with. It just seems that a differing opinion is all that is required to be labeled a rightwing extremist.

“Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of rightwing extremist groups, as well as potentially spur some of them to begin planning and training for violence against the government. The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by rightwing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement.”
That, of course, would be the firearm restrictions and weapons bans that the President promised he would not impose when he was running for office and needed your vote. I can’t imagine why concern over something as basic as usurpation of our Second Amendment rights would cause citizens to buy every gun and box of ammunition in sight or how that would swell the ranks of rightwing extremist groups.

“Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in
expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential
sympathizers.”
“Perceived stance on a range of issues”? You must be kidding – his actual stance on a range of issues is enough to make most of us rightwing extremists take another inventory of our weapons caches. But I keep forgetting no one is allowed to have a different opinion about, well, anything. So get in line, speak only when spoken to, drink the Kool-Aid and remember that The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working tirelessly to keep you safe from those dreaded rightwing extremists.

The Road To Hell

Shredding The Constitution Pelosi Style

From TigerHawk:

"With the ridiculous granting of a vote to the District of Columbia's representative in the House, let us not hear any more about the Bushies "shredding the Constitution." If it is lawful to do this by statute, then why not just decide that Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam should each get a seat or two? Indeed, why stop there? Why not give Americans living in France their own seat? What about each Indian Tribe? In fact, what does geography have to do with it? I think we need to give each disadvantaged minority group their own seat, broken down by skin pigmentation, accent, quantity of vowels in last name, and type of mental and physical handicap. Oh, and each NFL city should have its own representative, and each college football team that gets screwed because we do not have a post-season playoff system in lieu of the BCS. And why not give General Motors and Chrysler their own actual vote, instead of making them grovel for the votes of others? And school teachers. Don't forget them.

Goddamn. What a bunch of clowns."

Just One Example

Victor Davis Hanson asks for examples of "Big Brotherism" I have often wanted to see myself:

"If you are a civil libertarian, if you are in the ACLU or a law professor, or a liberal in good standing who swore that George Bush from Texas, with strut and twang and mangled vocabulary, destroyed your liberties with FISA, with the Patriot Act, and with Iraq, then please extend that outrage to Barack Obama, for whom all such shredding of the Constitution suddenly has become merely complex and problematic rather than fascistic. Please list, cite, name just one instance from 2002-8 in which you lost your freedom, or you were censored on the library internet, or you were followed around by the FBI, or your letter to the editor earned a wiretap, or even one instance of the loss of any freedom under Bush—and if so, just one example of how the election of Obama has once again restored your lost liberty. Nothing in the abstract, please—something concrete, an example both real and personal."

How To Argue Like A Liberal

From Vox Day:

1. Make an untrue statement, preferably on the subject of something about which you know nothing.

2. Express astonishment that your source could possibly be inaccurate.

3. Demand what motivation your source would have to lie.

4. Assert that the other party’s inability to articulate this motivation is tantamount to proof that your source is not lying.

5. Question the motivation of the contrary source.

6. Argue that all sources are equal and that therefore the contrary source is irrelevant.

7. Change the subject.

Alternatively …

1. Make an untrue statement.

2. Deny that you said what you said.

3. Deny that the other party understood what you said.

4. Deny that the words you used mean what the other party claims they mean.

5. Redefine your definition and hope the other person forgets the previous one. Repeat as needed.

6. Assert that since definitions are irrelevant and subjective, the other person is mean-spirited, racist, sexist, intolerant and obsessive.

7. Change the subject.

The Arts And Croissants Crowd

From Russ Vaughn at The American Thinker:

We're Oh So... (a poem)

We’re hip, we’re cool and oh so arty;
We’re Democrats, the smarter party.
We’re sophisticated unlike you;
We understand merci beaucoup.
We’re urbane while you’re provincial;
We’re worldly-wise, so existential.
We’re cultured, complex, so refined;
We’ve left you ignorant serfs behind.
We’re witty authors of clever puns,
While you clods cling to God and guns.
Were you not so closed and clannish,
We’d have you peons speaking Spanish.
We say all this with knowing smirks;
We’re Democrats, you red-state jerks.

Uniting The Divide And The Making Of Kings

TigerHawk dissects the Democrats:

"Today, while on a run through Princeton, I noticed that somebody had tacked up signs on telephone poles at key intersections: "Unite the Divide: Draft Gore." My main thought was to wonder if this were the natural denouement of identity politics.

The Democrats have spent the last forty years building a coalition around the idea that group identity not only does matter, but that it ought to matter. This year it would appear that Democratic identity politics has reached its apotheosis, insofar as the two standing candidates of the party are a black man and a woman. The result? In a liberal college town in one of the two or three most Democratic states in the country, the activists want a fat, wealthy, white man to "unite the divide.

"There is another version of this story, in which the old white men choose, rather than putting the matter to a vote. That seems to be the next grand plan to rescue the donks:

DEMOCRAT grandees Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president....Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats."They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence."An appeal by both men for Democrats to unite behind Clinton's rival, Barack Obama, would have a powerful effect, and insiders say it is a question of when, rather than if, they act.

So let me get this straight. Jimmy Carter, who would not dream of telling murdering thugs such as Yassir Arafat or Khaled Meshal to "stand down," is going to furrow his brow and in his Nobellish wisdom advise Hillary Rodham Clinton that she needs to back off? And he is going to be backed up in this by Al Gore, who tried to litigate his way into the presidency rather than "stand down"?

What a sad joke of an arrogant idea this is."

Five Years In

This is a simply amazing, at times almost biblical post from Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest:

"Five Years In
[Republished from last year at this time.]

Five years in. An inch of time. Five years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.

Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer long sent down to riot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. "We shall... over... come." Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them that much is certain.

Five years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.

Five years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

Five years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers. They all went into the fire and the ash just the same. But they, now, are not important. Nor is the message their deaths still send us when we listen. That message is to be silenced. The rising brand new message is "All we are say-ing is give...." And it is always off-key.

Five years in and they are upset that their party of the 90s has been so long interrupted; that their raves are foreshortened; that their sleep is persistently shaken by car bombs beyond the far horizon; that their time at the mall can not be entirely, completely, and utterly without guilt.

Five years in and the clear and present danger to the nation must be closeted in favor of the unclear and distant end of the world if we insist on exuding, as all life does, carbon dioxide. Send the nation and its armies and its wards and protectorates to the block, but keep the polar bears cold.

"Can't you see that worldwide wall of water sweeping in to inundate all life in 30, 50, 100, 500 years?"

"No. I cannot see it from here."

"Ah well, you are a warmonger, an evil person, a vile Christian, a shameless, shameless American.

"You must have shame. Shame is what we have when we look around us. We are ashamed of what was given us. You must join us; share in our shame at being Americans, at being the last best hope of earth.

"Join us and join the rising despair of people who, believing in nothing, believe only in the self, the life of the senses, the mollifying of guilt, of 'the expense of reason in a waste of shame.'"

Five years in and the fools in the streets multiply. They are tired of the war, but full of themselves.

Hear me now. This is my answer to you. This is my answer and this is my prophecy.

It is taking too long. It will be with you, blowing hot and cold, for decades yet to come.

It is costing too much. How much will it cost to rebuild a burned and irradiated Los Angeles?

Too many soldiers have died. Even one soldier's death is too much. What is the nature and duty of a soldier? Is a soldier there only to come in and sandbag a flooded New Orleans? Bring you a Red Cross sandwich and a cup of weak coffee after a tidal wave?

We shall overcome. Overcome who? Your fellow citizens? Certainly not the enemy. You'll not get over on this one with your Ghandiesque platitudes, unless you are ready to all go like lemmings over the cliff and onto the spikes. You don't strike me as the kind of people with that level of commitment. You strike me as the kind of people who like to prance, rant, and chant, and then go home for a nice chilled Chardonnay and a slab of grilled tofu. Then you spend an hour bitching about Bush before taking a bong hit and sucking up some MTV. I know you well. I was you.

We shall take our no balls and go home. You will return when your children are slaughtered in their schools. You will return when one of our cities burns. You will return when your cities freeze in the winter, your drinks warm without ice in the summer, your iPods go flat as you walk streets with few lights, when your electricity is rationed, and the shelves of your store are bare. You will return when the crops fail and the trucks cannot run.

Look around you. Everything you have, everything, is there because of oil. The brute fact of the planet right now and into the next few decades is that without oil, the machine that enables you to be you runs on oil. If that oil runs out, your nation, any nation, will do all that it can to get it back. And you will be back not "with peace, but with a sword" of a terrible fire. In your name. In all our names.

It will not be our fault because we marched and spoke up. We moved on. You have made a festival out of your foolishness if you are young, and, if you are old, out of a yearning for a lost youth you left behind on the last day of 1969. You have carried that yearning forward all your life. You re-enact that foolishness again because you know no other, and you know no better.

"We shall not/ We shall not be blamed." If we leave because of your pouting and pique, we will return because of your stupidity. There will be blood after and blood later and fire to follow. That war will not take Five years. It will take an afternoon at best, but decades of digging out will follow. A million may die here but many millions will die there.

What follows will make the Great Depression seem a mild recession. History will unfold in ways we cannot now fathom. The American experiment, still young, may falter -- may fail.

Should America falter or fail other forces, not so sweetly congenial to freedom, shall rise. The utopian world you seek will be set back a century at the least. We will all have to bear the brand of that fire, but on your foreheads the mark will be sharp and deep. And we will know you for what you are. Worse still, you will know.

Five years in and the only way out and out now would be to quit. Capitulation is not a policy. It is procrastination. There is a way out, but it is years away and many people, people who swoon easily in the sunlight of this "war lite," do not have the ability to endure any war; even so tepid a war as this. They do not have the simple patience.

It is in patience alone that our enemies outstrip us. After all, when you look at what they have made of their "civilization" what indeed do they have to lose?

Five years in and what do we have to lose should you force us to lose?

In time, everything."

Ferraro and the Democrats

Rush Limbaugh made these comments about Geraldine Ferraro on his show this afternoon (emphasis added):

"George Neumayr who writes today in the American Spectator on this whole Ferraro flap, has a great point. "Since liberalism is not based upon natural justice but willfulness, [liberalism] never fails to devour its supposed beneficiaries. Ferraro's condescension captures the tone of paternalistic liberalism perfectly. Its 'victims' should know their place and plot their ascent according to the progressive charts set up by the white liberal establishment," meaning Obama has reached too far here. So even though this is the party of affirmative action, the party that tells us that this equals fairness, when this fairness affects them, guess what? Somebody like Geraldine Ferraro says he's only there because he's black. That's what she said -- and now, she's mad that people are upset at her. Now, you could look at this in any number of ways. Obama is receiving 90% of the black vote in the Democrat primary. Why is that? Are the differences between Obama and Hillary on policy so different? They're not. Why are most women voting for Hillary? What is the party of segregation? You tell me. What is the real party that segregates people and puts them into groups and makes victims out of them?

It's the Democrat Party, and now they're being done in by their own policies, by their own beliefs. They end up eating themselves with this. Of course we're helping out with the Rush the Vote and the continual chaos that we're causing, but they're doing a lot to help this along themselves. I mean, to be honest here, Hillary Clinton wouldn't be where she is but for the fact that she has "Bill Clinton's wife" on her résumé and that she's a woman. Obama would not have received the kind of attention he's received from the media for who he is, would he? We can't ask this question? We're being told we can't ask the question. Geraldine Ferraro can't say this. But it looks to me like most of the blacks are voting for him, most of the women are voting for her. That party is segregated. There's no policy difference, so what's going on here? "

Paradise

This is a must read for every American voter; BARACK OBAMA’S ECONOMIC AGENDA.
To summarize:

• You are not intelligent enough to buy a house - I WILL PROTECT YOU
• You are not intelligent enough to know how much house you can afford as well as how you are going to pay for it - I WILL FUND YOU
• You are not intelligent/wealthy enough to take advantage of the current home mortgage deduction on your taxes - I WILL CORRECT THIS INJUSTICE FOR YOU
• You are a middle class victim of "the regressive payroll tax system" (still looking for that all important definition of "middle class") - I WILL GIVE A TAX REBATE TO YOU
• You are retired, making less than $50,000 and still paying taxes? - NOT YOU
• You are not intelligent enough to enroll in your employer-based retirement plan - I WILL DO IT AUTOMATICALLY FOR YOU
• You are not intelligent enough to save for retirement - I WILL PROVIDE AN INCENTIVE TO YOU
• You are not intelligent enough to understand that credit cards are the work of the devil - I WILL GIVE A BILL OF RIGHTS TO YOU
• I WILL FIX THE HEALTH CARE "CRISIS" BY PROVIDING UNIVERSAL COVERAGE AND I WILL STIMULATE THE ECONOMY BY PROMOTING "GREEN" TECHNOLOGIES TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING FOR YOU

Feel free to correct me but it seems that half of this economic plan is missing. Anyone one that is willing to do this much FOR YOU is also willing to do a great deal TO YOU - all in the name of the common good, of course. As President Gerald Ford once said “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

"Human Sacrifice, Dogs And Cats Living Together - Mass Hysteria"

What other reaction should one have when The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal write similar editorials and agree with each other? It seems that all of the Democratic presidential candidates need an Iraq wake up call. And their handlers need to tell them that the surge worked.

The Washington Post said:
"AT SATURDAY'S New Hampshire debate, Democratic candidates were confronted with a question that they have been ducking for some time: Can they concede that the "surge" of U.S. troops in Iraq has worked? All of them vehemently opposed the troop increase when President Bush proposed it a year ago; both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama introduced legislation to reverse it. Now it's indisputable that the surge has drastically reduced violence. Attacks have fallen by more than 60 percent, al-Qaeda has been dealt a major blow, and the threat of sectarian civil war that seemed imminent a year ago has receded. The monthly total of U.S. fatalities in December was the second-lowest of the war.

A reasonable response to these facts might involve an acknowledgment of the remarkable military progress, coupled with a reminder that the final goal of the surge set out by President Bush -- political accords among Iraq's competing factions -- has not been reached. (That happens to be our reaction to a campaign that we greeted with skepticism a year ago.) It also would involve a willingness by the candidates to reconsider their long-standing plans to carry out a rapid withdrawal of remaining U.S. forces in Iraq as soon as they become president -- a step that would almost certainly reverse the progress that has been made."

"But any U.S. policy ought to be aimed at consolidating the gains of the past year and ensuring that neither al-Qaeda nor sectarian war make a comeback. So far, the Democratic candidates have refused even to consider that challenge."

The Wall Street Journal went on to say:

"Even allowing for the stresses of the endless campaign, these responses are astonishing. Has the self-directedness of these candidates gone so deep that they now believe they can get away with saying anything at all on national TV?

We are not arguing that one had to agree with the surge or the Bush decision to go into Iraq. Dissent is a deep tradition in U.S. politics, and this war has become a bitter subject.

It is evident, though, that the opposition to Iraq after the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 has put these candidates in a corner. For the past year, Democrats in both the Senate and House have enforced rock-solid party opposition to every jot and tittle of the Bush policy. They now have four candidates running for the U.S. Presidency who seem to believe it is to their political advantage to deny manifest reality."

The Democrats may be pandering to fringe elements during the primary elections when they evince denial on this scale but eventually they will have to go before the entire American public with this nonsense. The defense of this nation can not be put into their hands and everyone, except them, knows it. And that knowledge can change an elections outcome.

In The Belly Of The Beast

It seems The New York Times has decided to offer Bill Kristol a weekly commentators column according to The Huffington Post. Yes, that Bill Kristol, the evil neo-con with the White House on speed dial. The comments to the post are priceless!

Give Them Bread And Circuses

This ad is has to be viewed to be believed. The premise is that Hillary Clinton is a kind hearted woman who will give us all of our fondest wishes, wrapped in beautiful paper and tied up with a bow. And if that wasn't enough of a stretch, the very first present has a tag that says "Universal Healthcare". Are you freakin' kidding me? The only thing scarier than the possibility this woman might get elected are the people that believe this foolishness and will actually vote for her.

Vote for me and I'll set you free ...

Through A Glass Darkly

I know it is hard to believe but I do read Daily Kos now and then, if for nothing more than posts like this one. Let me try to enumerate all of the illogical assumptions which go along with it:

• The Democrats 2006 election was a mandate to bring the troops home.
• The Democrats are the majority now so the Republicans will have to do what they say and bring the troops home .
• Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have the ability and congressional backing to defund the war and bring the troops home.
• All the Democrats need to do is put forward one more bill to bring the troops home ...

And now, for your reading pleasure (emphasis added) ....

com·pro·mise
1 a: settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions
Compromise. Its meaning is clear, yet whenever Democrats compromise with Republicans, they somehow manage to forget the mutual concessions part of the equation.

And now we learn, the day after reports of their latest cave-in, that they apparently can't get that right either:
The White House budget director warned on Saturday that President Bush was prepared to veto a $500 billion spending package being assembled in Congress if Democrats pushed for too much additional money for domestic programs. [...]

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, was among those who met with Mr. Nussle and he has said that money for Iraq free of conditions must be part of any final spending deal. But he described as unacceptable any Democratic effort to drive up federal spending as part of the bargain.

So, the Democrats are working on a plan that would give George Bush $70 billion more dollars for Iraq, would take timelines for troop withdrawals off the table, all in exchange for increased domestic spending. Except Bush and the Republicans are saying no dice. So what's their next canny maneuver?

Democrats say that if the deal collapses, their next step may be to strip the spending bills of individual projects sought by lawmakers, a move that would be painful for many members of both parties.

Translation? They'll still give Bush what he wants and the hell with what a majority of the American people want. That'll show him.

Said Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi:
America expects this president to lead — that means working in a bipartisan way with Congress to responsibly address our country’s priorities rather than issuing veto threats without even knowing what he is threatening to veto.

News flash, Harry and Nancy: America expects you to lead - that means working to keep your many promises to stand up to George Bush and to bring the troops home. Now, that may mean messing up your holiday plans and it might even mean that Dana Perino and Republicans say mean things about you. Suck it up. Stop compromising away your dignity and morals and do the job you were elected to do. For God's sake, fight.

God And Man - Everywhere

Robert Maranto has a very interesting article on the liberal bias of universities in the Washington Post today:

"Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach."

"All this is bad for society because academics' ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right."

"Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement, higher education needs to encourage intellectual diversity in its hiring and promotion decisions with something like the fervor it shows for ethnic and racial diversity. It's the only way universities will earn back society's respect and reclaim their role at the center of public life."

The "Dissent" School Of Patriotism

This is from Jonah Goldberg at NRO. I could not have said this better myself - and, believe me, I have tried. This post actually delineates the infantile intellectual paralysis which commonly afflicts those on the Left. If you don't believe me, visit Daily Kos, Democratic Underground or the Left leaning site of your choice and then tell me how wrong I am. Emphasis is mine:

"So, Jonah, here's the problem I have all too often with the "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" line. Patriotism, as I see it, is love of country—an actually-existing, historically grounded, geographical, political, and social entity. It's not uncritical, it's not unwilling to acknowledge flaws or misdeeds, but it's a fundamental attachment to an entity, a place, a thing, a group of people, and in the case of America, of course, a set of ideals enshrined in our founding documents.

The "dissent" school seems to acknowledge love not of the actual country, but the Country of the Future, once all the flaws are fixed, which is not only utopian but utterly quixotic, since no group of human beings can ever organize themselves in a fashion without problems. Moreover, it's a very subjective standard. You're dissenting on whatever the hell problem is your own hobby horse. Feminist A is upset about the state of women and is patriotically "dissenting"; Klansman B is upset about the state of white folk, and in his mind, he's equally patriotic in his "dissent." There isn't a hell of a lot in the "dissent" principle that can distinguish the two. A historically-grounded analysis says the feminist is (perhaps) appealing to American ideals of equality while the Klansman is appealing to an ugly tradition of anti-black bigotry, but neither are, in any real sense, showing their love of country. The former may be offering a constructive criticism, the other clearly is proposing a destructive one, but both are equally ideological and neither is expressing a love of America qua America, but rather a love of what they think America should be.

While that's a grand American tradition, I don't think it's patriotism. Moreover, it easily descends into narcissism and paranoia when the messy reality of America meets the pure, pristine clarity of their ideals—"I hate this country so much because it's not the country I want it to be, but because I have in mind the Other Country It Should Be, I'm a patriot of the Ideal America of My Mind.

The great, truly patriotic reformers of American history have the country for what it is despite its flaws, which they dedicated themselves to amending. It's only of late, under the influence of Marxism and the tumult of the '60s (perhaps the Kennedy assassination, if you believe that guy's new book) in which you see large numbers of people expressing the loopy theoretical proposition that you can despise your country out of love for it, which seems to be the bottom line for a lot of petty university-educated intellectuals these days."

And the intellectual Lefts love of "The Country of the Future" might also explain why they are the last bastion of socialism/communism - since it is all quite lovely on paper. But then reality intrudes and "therein lies the rub".