RWN returns Monday! Until then, consider this to be an open thread, enjoy the links below, and make sure to take a look at some of the fantastic guest bloggers who filled in today.
Lorie Byrd from Byrd Droppings & Polipundit.
Cassandra from Villainous Company.
Michael Fumento from C-Log & Michael Fumento.com.
Patrick Hynes from Ankle Biting Pundits & The Channel Changer.
Right Thinking Girl, whose blog is now defunct.
Whether they acknowledge it or not, the GOP has a genuine moral values problem. I have written about this subject over at the American Spectator and at my blog Ankle Biting Pundits. Essentially, the GOP has completely and thoroughly alienated its base, perhaps because it believes their electoral strength in 2004 was based on something other than what the exit polls said it was: moral values.
Now my friend Charmaine Yoest from the Family Research Council brings to my attention some very troubling survey data regarding the GOP’s failure to represent its base while in control of Congress.
This is a genuine problem. The GOP is losing ground on its signature issue. Things may have to get worse before they get better. Fortunately – and here is where the self-promotion kicks in -- there is a fascinating new book coming out titled In Defense of the Religious Right …
The MSM, sitting on their fat butts in comfy offices in the U.S., would have us think Iraq is a tumbling house of cards. Oddly enough, journalists who go over there seem to have a different opinion. Among them is Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, whose March 17 column is "Fighting Smarter In Iraq." He agrees that for a long time we fought dumb in Iraq but, "Three years on, the U.S. military is finally becoming adept at fighting a counterinsurgency war in Iraq."
"I had a chance to see the new counterinsurgency doctrine in practice here this week," he wrote. "U.S. troops are handing off to the Iraqi army a growing share of the security burden. As the Iraqis step up, the Americans are stepping back into a training and advisory role."
Writes Ignatius, "A brutal stress test came on Feb. 22, when Sunni insurgents destroyed a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra. For a moment, Iraq seemed to be slipping toward civil war, but the Iraqi army performed surprisingly well. In many areas Iraqi forces -- backed up by overwhelming U.S. firepower -- helped restore order."
Ignatius concludes with the obvious, that he's only able to see so much of the war himself and "wouldn't pretend" it's "an accurate representation of the whole of Iraq. If that were so, the country wouldn't be in such a mess. But this is the way this war is supposed to be going. It's a few years late, but the new U.S. strategy is moving in the right direction."
I'll be going back to Iraq myself in early April with my primary mission being to observe the efficiency of the handoff to the Iraqi Security Forces. Unlike Ignatius, I'll actually be patrolling with the troops, both U.S. and Iraqi. I, too, will only be able to provide snapshots of what I see and hear; but my snapshots should prove interesting indeed.
This time, after promoting his forthcoming eco-freako home movie “An Inconvenient Truth” (why does every liberal think they are qualified to be a movie producer these days?) to a group of conservatives, Al claims he was bum rushed by free market types who had suddenly seen the light and joined his fringe crusade. Only, according to the Washington Post:
While energetically flacking his new documentary at a convention of theater owners in Vegas Monday, Gore told a story about the warm reception he got at a Grover Norquist breakfast gathering here in January. In Variety's account of the speech, Gore said that D.C. conservatives "stood up afterward and said, 'You're absolutely right.' "
How many conservatives? Three people at the convention tell us Gore left the distinct impression he received multiple kudos, "many" in Variety's telling. That got a chuckle from the breakfast club, whose members recall a polite response but only one attendee approaching Gore with praise. Gore's people deny any hyperbole, saying he never claimed more than one enviro-conversion at the meal and may have been misquoted. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," hits theaters in May.
When it comes to Al Gore and his obsession with global warming, I cannot help but think of this pro wrestling fan screaming, “It’s still real to me, dammit!”
I was tipped to the ABC website report on the Iraq documents while listening to Rush Limbaugh just a few minutes ago. I have stated before that I can't imagine what it would take now to convince the media and Democrats that they could have been premature (and frankly, dead wrong) about their declarations that Saddam had no WMD and no terrorist connections. Already, in this first batch of documents, there are some pretty amazing revelations. ABC isn't buying it, though. Check out their document summaries and editorial comments. The following is just one of four documents summarized and editorialized at the ABC News site:
Note: Document titles were added by ABC News.
"Osama bin Laden and the Taliban"
Document dated Sept. 15, 2001
An Iraqi intelligence service document saying that their Afghani informant, who's only identified by a number, told them that the Afghani Consul Ahmed Dahastani claimed the following in front of him:
That OBL and the Taliban are in contact with Iraq and that a group of Taliban and bin Laden group members visited Iraq.
That the U.S. has proof the Iraqi government and "bin Laden's group" agreed to cooperate to attack targets inside America.
That in case the Taliban and bin Laden's group turn out to be involved in "these destructive operations," the U.S. may strike Iraq and Afghanistan.
That the Afghani consul heard about the issue of Iraq's relationship with "bin Laden's group" while he was in Iran.
At the end, the writer recommends informing "the committee of intentions" about the above-mentioned items. The signature on the document is unclear.
(Editor's Note: The controversial claim that Osama bin Laden was cooperating with Saddam Hussein is an ongoing matter of intense debate. While the assertions contained in this document clearly support the claim, the sourcing is questionable — i.e. an unnamed Afghan "informant" reporting on a conversation with another Afghan "consul." The date of the document — four days after 9/11 — is worth noting but without further corroboration, this document is of limited evidentiary value.)
To Lowry’s thinking, the race boils down to two attractive presidential aspirants: Sen. George Allan from Virginia and Gov. Mitt Romney from Massachusetts. Lowry is correct in presenting these two guys as potential political stars. But I’m not sure either of them truly qualifies as the conservative who will “stand athwart the sometimes unorthodox, party-defying McCain for the nomination.”
Let us first look at Sen. George Allen, who is a remarkably attractive candidate (but who, I must add, has been somewhat uninspiring during his sparse visits up here to New Hampshire). Lowry tips his hat to Sen. Allen’s “down-the-line conservatism.” And it is true that Sen. Allen’s stump speech could have been ripped from a Reagan anthology. But has he really behaved as a true conservative in the Senate? I don’t see it. He has been absent in the drive to curb spending, being virtually silent on the effort to eliminate (or at least curb) earmarks. Worse, Allen voted for the wildly unpopular (in fiscally conservative circles) prescription drug benefit; a burden Mitt Romney (and Sen. McCain, interestingly) doesn’t share.
Much more troubling to me, however, is the freeness of Gov. Romney’s ride, thus far. He has done a notably fabulous job of organizing quietly for a run for president. He has made a lot of eyelashes bat here in the Granite State. And he has a top-notch political operation (headed, I am told, by media strategist Mike Murphy.) But to call Mitt Romney a conservative is to torture that label worse than a terrorist at Gitmo!
Mitt Romney has no discernable position on abortion. Living in the Boston media market, I have watched Mitt Romney’s political career since his 1994 Senate campaign against Sen. Ted Kennedy, during which he stated to the Boston Globe: “I don’t think government should either promote or prevent abortion,” and told the Boston Herald, “I think it’s important that people see me not as a pro-life candidate.” I still don't know where he stands on the issue, but these statements are troubling.
Romney has claimed to oppose federal funding for abortions, but he endorsed taxpayer-funded distribution of RU-486. He has repeatedly reiterated his support for the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, while consistently and erroneously professing to be pro-life, meaning, essentially, that he has the same position on this vital issue as disgraced former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
I care very much about this important issue. And I am not alone. That is why I am so troubled that Gov. Mitt Romney has (so far) succeeded in schookering so many true conservatives. At a time when President George W. Bush is under constant attack from his fellow Republicans for not being sufficiently conservative, it astounds me that some of those same conservative Republicans are looking to Mitt Romney.
It's been a few years since I observed that scientists seem to find adult stem cells wherever they look. Well now Japanese researchers have harvested stem cells from human menstrual blood, according to a report just released at a medical conference. That's not nearly as strange as it sounds, since it's been known for some time that placenta and umbilical cord blood are an excellent source for them. Besides, when I said "wherever" they look, I meant just that.
At the meeting of the American College of Cardiology, the researchers from Keio University in Tokyo collected menstrual blood from six women and harvested stem cells that originated in the lining of the uterus. They said they were able to obtain about 30 times more stem cells from menstrual blood than from bone marrow, which remains the most common source of adult stem cells. They then differentiated these into heart cells. (The use of marrow cells to repair heart muscle is on the cusp of becoming routine.)
What's the importance of this? To date, the much-celebrated embryonic stem cells have yet to cure or treat a single human being. Their "magic" lies strictly in their potential to become any type of the approximately 220 mature cells in the human body. One response to this is that beginning in 2002, almost countless teams of scientists began discovering adult stem cells that formed all three germ layers that give rise to those 220 cells. Another is that even if adult stem cells are less pliable, if you find them in enough places and can cultivate them easily enough then you don't need "one size fits all."
Get the word out: embryonic stem cells are the cold fusion of biology. And you men with an inordinate disgust at menses, maybe you'll have a new-found respect for tampons and sanitary napkins.
Thanks to John Hawkins for inviting me to guest blog here today. I hope you will make it a habit to visit Fumento.com for more blogging and to read my weekly column. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall in love all over again.
Rich Lowry makes the right argument on illegal immigration: the empirical one. This is, ultimately, the only tack likely to withstand charges of racism and garner bipartisan support for serious immigration reform:
President George Bush, a strong supporter of the guest-worker program, has long said that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." We are supposed to believe, however, that the work ethic does stop there — it is only south of it that people can be found who are willing to work in construction, landscaping and agricultural jobs. So, without importing those people into our labor market, these jobs would go unfilled, disrupting the economy (and creating an epidemic of unkempt lawns in Southern California).
This is sheer nonsense. According to a new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, illegals make up 24 percent of workers in agriculture, 17 percent in cleaning, 14 percent in construction, and 12 percent in food production. So 86 percent of construction workers, for instance, are either legal immigrants or Americans, despite the fact that this is one of the alleged categories of untouchable jobs.
Oddly, the people who warn that without millions of cheap, unskilled Mexican laborers, this country would face economic disaster are pro-business libertarians. They believe in the power of the market to handle anything — except a slightly tighter labor market for unskilled workers. But the free market would inevitably adjust, with higher wages or technological innovation.
Ironically I have not been necessarily opposed to the guest worker program. I view it as a welcome attempt to grapple realistically with one of the great third rails of modern politics. Though I respect the objections of those who oppose it on principle, I see no evidence that they have the support needed to implement any of the alternatives they propose. In this atmosphere, it then becomes a choice between adopting an admittedly imperfect proposal and continuing to do nothing as we have for decades. As a pragmatist, the latter option is a hard sell.
Lowry's argument, however, offers a ray of hope for embattled immigration reform proponents:
The average "consumer unit" in the U.S. spends $7 a week on fresh fruit and vegetables, less than is spent on alcohol, according to Martin. On a $1 head of lettuce, the farm worker gets about 6 or 7 cents, roughly 1/15th of the retail price. Even a big run-up in the cost of labor can't hit the consumer very hard.
Martin recalls that the end of the bracero guest-worker program in the mid-1960s caused a one-year 40 percent wage increase for the United Farm Workers Union. A similar wage increase for legal farm workers today would work out to about a 10-dollar-a-year increase in the average family's bill for fruit and vegetables. Another thing happened with the end of the bracero program: The processed-tomato industry, which was heavily dependent on guest workers and was supposed to be devastated by their absence, learned how to mechanize and became more productive.
So the market will manage with fewer illegal aliens. In agriculture, Martin speculates that will mean technological innovation in some sectors (peaches), and perhaps a shifting to production abroad in others (strawberries). There is indeed a niche for low-skill labor in America. The question is simply whether it should be filled by illegal or temporary Mexicans workers, or instead by legal immigrants and Americans, who can command slightly higher wages. The guest-worker lobby prefers the former option.
Unspoken, of course, in Lowry's analysis is that mechanization means fewer jobs over the long term, but this would be somewhat ameliorated by higher wages for the workers still retained, and furthermore those workers would be American citizens. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat Congressman beholden to big labor, what's not to like in this proposition?
As so often happens in American politics, success is often a matter of framing the question clearly. But when dealing with an apathetic and often reactionary public that won't take the time to understand nuanced issues and a divisive and polemic Congress more concerned with maintaining power than ensuring the welfare of their constituents, clear-headed arguments like Lowry's are likely to be lost in the partisan screeching.
That crazy Jim Hoft. He is actually suggesting that news organizations, like the AP, should consider including some facts along with their Bush-bashing rather than just picking up and relying on previous bogus stories they find at the top of their Google searches. What is he smokin'? Like that is ever gonna happen.
But seriously, read Jim's post. What gets me about these stories insinuating (or like the one Jim cites, outright stating) links between Republicans and their big wig contributors and bad behavior is that the reporters are either completely ignorant of the way government works or they are banking on the fact that most of their readers are. When the White House, the Senate and the House are controlled by Republicans, there are quite a few companies and individuals that are going to decide it is in their best interest to contribute more money to that side of the aisle. You know, because that is who is in actually in office.
Thanks to John Hawkins for inviting me to guest blog here today. I hope you will make it a habit to visit Polipundit for more political blogging and Byrd Droppings for blogging about just about everything else.
No matter your political affiliation, it is hard to think of a more divisive and distressing issue than abortion. It looms in the background of every political race, every judicial confirmation hearing; forcing candidates to walk a gauntlet between zealots on both sides of the issue.
During the Roberts hearings abortion assumed such importance that the old euphenism, "a woman's right to choose", no longer served to mask the disproportionate time and attention devoted to this single issue. And so Senators suddenly discovered a longstanding love for precedent and stare decisis. Surely no judicial nominee in the history of the United States has been so closely questioned on what remains a fairly entrenched judicial practice: that of letting settled matters lie. The notion that SCOTUS is the highest court in the land (and therefore is not bound by precedent in the same way as lower courts), or that most Americans would consider decisions like Dred Scott well reversed, was lost in a welter of Senatorial genuflection at the altar of judicial inflexibility.
Was all this fuss about abortion much ado about nothing? It begins to seem that, surprisingly, the answer to that question may be "no". The South Dakota legislature has thrown down a challenge to existing abortion laws and now another suit, dubbed Roe v. Wade for Men, challenges the idea that women should have all the "choices" when it comes to parental rights. It would appear Ted Kennedy's worst nightmares have come true: the Roberts Court is well on the way to chaining women to their Easy Bake ovens.
On first glance, the Dubay case appears to have some merit. After all, as I have noted before, there is little doubt that the status quo regarding parental "choice" and responsibility is unfair to men:
As we are constantly reminded, the abortion debate is all about something called reproductive choice. Of what does this reproductive choice consist? If a man and a woman, married or unmarried, conceive a child together, both are on the hook financially to support that child until he or she is grown. But there are rules. If the woman decides to rid herself of a fetus that she does not want, but the man does, she may kill it and this is perfectly legal. If the man decides to rid herself of a fetus that he does not want (perhaps by slipping her an abortifact that does not otherwise harm her), but the woman does, this is murder and he will go to jail.
Thus, two utterly contradictory things occur at the moment of conception:
Legally, from the point of view of a woman: the fetus is a lump of tissue which may be excised at will if she subsequently regrets having conceived a child. It imposes no obligation or legal duty unless she chooses to accept it.
Legally, from the point of view of the man: the fetus is a human being which must be allowed to live, even if he subsequently regrets having conceived a child. It imposes an absolute and irrevocable legal duty, regardless of his wishes in the matter.
In other words, if you have a y chromosome you have no reproductive choice. Except, of course, to pay at least a half-share of whatever "choices" your sexual partner may make, whether you are married or single - it makes no difference. When one considers that women can have multiple orgasms (and that ours generally last longer), something tells me men are getting the short end of the stick.
It is impossible to arrive in New York and feel pessimistic. It is the only city in the world that demands and inspires you live up to your potential - and scorns you when you fail. But no matter what, one always, one begins one’s relationship with New York on a positive note. I certainly did.
Sean had come to Washington DC to look at some real estate. We decided to fly up to New York together for the weekend, then back to DC on Sunday so he could put in an offer on a house. The flight had been utterly unremarkable until the last few minutes. As we were on final descent into LaGuardia, and the buildings became distinct and glassy in the late afternoon sunlight, my heart caught in my throat. Not only is New York a beautiful, astonishing city, it is a place where you know, deep in your bones, that you can achieve things, great things, things that last. Monuments. You must remember that even those permanent-looking skyscrapers, after all, started off as a dream.
The last time I was here it was mid-summer. Everything was dull heavy green. I would drift to the windows of Sean’s apartment and peer down at the tourist’s carriage horses on the edge of Central Park shifting in the heat and humidity. But now, as we taxi up, it is cold and the leaves are bare. Everything is a little brighter, harder, more intense. On Central Park West in the mid-70s we get out, he hands the driver some money and we lug our bags up to his apartment.
It is like walking into my own life. I think what I mean by that is there has been a life here waiting for me – home, I guess is the word I am struggling to find.
We spend an hour trying to decide what to do and in the end, he calls his parents and asks them if they can watch his son while we go have some dinner. I’m putting on lipgloss in the bedroom when the doorbell rings. I am always nervous about seeing his parents, though they have never been anything but wonderful to me. I always feel self-conscious. I sense that over my shoulder hovers the ghost of Sean’s deceased wife. I sense her sometimes, here in this immense apartment. The breath of her body, the thin scent of her skin mingling with the silk of her dresses and her Aveda shampoo: this was the impression she left in the house, visceral and real even after five years.
His parents are true to tradition: wonderful. They embrace me. They ask how I am doing. After ten minutes of catch up, Sean and I sneak out. We walk to Arte Café, an unpretentious Italian place on West 73rd Street. We drink (wine for him, bellinis for me), which is good because what I’m about to request from him requires a little external motivation. We eat, and order more drinks. We talk about the house he wants to buy in Washington D.C, and an art show in Soho, and all kinds of filler that are just biding time until I can say what I want to say. We talk and order yet more drinks, and then almost spontaneously, as I did not realize I was asking until I was already asking, I said: “Will you take me to Ground Zero?”
Hot pink spots appear in my cheeks; I can feel them burning just as I can feel my sense of decency burning a hole in me. I have been to Ground Zero several times – but never with Sean. Never even thought about it. He’s not a tourist; he doesn’t have the luxury of viewing the artifacts of 9/11 with a disinterested or journalistic point of view. Plus, his wife’s remains are buried in the footprints of the buildings; I’m essentially asking him to take me to see his wife’s grave.
I force myself to look up into his face. To my eternal surprise he doesn’t look mortified. He takes a sip of the wine and nods his head, then places the wine carefully on the white linen tablecloth. “Okay,” he says.
We finish our dinner, and taxi downtown. I love the way he hails taxis. He’s known how to do it since high school, maybe earlier. Sometimes when I’m in a playful mood I beg him to turn on his New York accent. “Please, Seany, please say ‘Gimme my f’n’ coffee!” And he’ll grumble, “Gimme my fckn kwafee.” Then I squeal and giggle hysterically. The New York accent, like the hailing of the taxi, is something that thrills me because while it's uniquely his own, it's also part of New York. Once in a while, he’ll turn on the New York accent and I’ll do the Texas accent and we sound like a culturally impossible couple.
On the observation wall on Church Street, we find her name. Around us, the city is bright and alive, though it is well past midnight. A block away, cars drive by as they always have. People walk past what looks like a construction site, their hands in their pockets, talking to their friends. Sean says, “My building was there,” and then he points. “Hers was here.” And now we are standing at the wall, and her name is on a list of 3,000 other names. He is talking like he’s said this many times, and I get the image in my head of a map that is falling apart because it’s been folded the same way over and over and over again. “And then I came over here,” and he points, “and there was an SUV. I crawled under the SUV and hid there until the ash had cleared somewhat….”
He tells me the story again, how he came home and got in the shower in his suit. How the water would not get hot enough. How he could not cry then, not for his wife or his country or himself. The tears wouldn’t come. It was much later, when he reached over and touched the cold empty spot in the bed beside him, when he realized what her absence meant, that the tears came, hot and wet and neverending.
We are shivering. It is very cold. He’s telling me again how tall the buildings were. In his mind’s eye he can still mark the height. The buildings, which I never had the pleasure of seeing, remain real and alive to him. To this day he can recall the color of the carpet and the sound of the computers humming. He can remember how negligent he was of the view from the windows, how after a few weeks of working way up there in the sky, he almost forgot he was nearly a quarter mile up. I look up, up, up, but all I see is the symmetrical black sky. I can’t see them, but I know he is seeing them. Maybe he is seeing his wife. In fact I know he is. She’s still here for him the way the buildings are. One thing I’ve learned from Sean is that the shape of time is larger than anything it can hold.
I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders. He puts his arm around me, and then looks at me. “Are you ok?”
I nod. In silent accord we begin to walk away. We find a coffee shop. We go inside. We order something hot. We sit close together. I am not sure how to proceed. To my surprise, Sean tells me that after 9/11 he wanted to buy a gun and go to Afghanistan and hunt down Osama bin Laden himself. Again, I am stunned at just how intimate his hatred for Osama is, how very very close they are. They’re forever intertwined – as closely intertwined as murder victim to perpetrator. Imagine for a moment the bravery and force of will that it takes every single day to carry that dark knowledge with you.
We drink our coffee and talk about 9/11 and politics and war. He is so even-keeled. I wonder about the process of how our personalities assume loss and get stronger, how things like hatred and agony can fortify us just as much as love. He places his hand on top of mine and the warmth is the most real, tangible thing I’ve felt in a long time. I don’t want to talk about war anymore, or death or destruction or loss. We finish our drinks and taxi back to the Upper West Side. His parents tell us the boy has been asleep for hours, and all is well.
He goes into his bedroom to get ready for bed. Alone in the dark living room, I drift, again, to the large windows, and I look down at the street so far below. The cars move like shiny black beetles up the avenue. I can hear the vibration of the city, the muffled traffic, and the tension of twelve million people living on the little island. I press my forehead against the cold panes of the window. Oh, this complicated city. Nothing is ever easy here. I try to imagine jumping from this height, to know what those others knew at that fatal moment. I think, irrationally, of San Francisco and how every person who ever jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge has done it on the east side, looking back at the skyline, taking that one image of sky and city with them into the drink. Even in those perpetually darkening seconds, there was part of the human spirit that reached out to take some comfort in beauty, and the complicated mess of a city skyline. New York is not like other cities though. It is the physical product of Man’s ability to achieve. It is the heart and breath of ambition, not just for Americans but for all human beings who have the urge within them to do something great. It’s a secret that almost everybody has forgotten: the sky really is the limit.
“Goodnight, New York,” I whisper, and turn to go to bed.
A lot of attention has been given lately to President Bush's most recent poll numbers. Just for the record, here is my take on the current batch of approval numbers. I will also attempt, in this same post, to bring in the subject of comparisons being made of Russ Feingold's effort to censure President Bush to Diane Feinstein's attempt to censure Clinton. (Bear with me -- there really is a connection.)
Of course, I would love for the President's approval numbers to be sky high, as they were following 9/11. Mostly I would love for them to be that high because then they would not be reported or discussed by anyone in the media and reporters might be forced to discuss matters of substance. (Yeah, I know, Birdshotgate and similar stories would still get top billing, but at least there would be one less distraction.)
I know that approval numbers are important. If a President's numbers are high, there is more pressure on those in Congress of both parties to go along with him and his agenda has a much better chance of being enacted. When support for a President is high, members of his own party are not going to be going out of their way to oppose him, as some have recently. But that being said, Presidential approval numbers are not terribly important to me. They certainly aren't as important to me as they are to those in the media and in the Democratic party -- at least as important as they are to them when those numbers are bad for Bush.
So, why don't I panic when the President's numbers plunge? I guess because I am looking at the big picture, not some snapshot popularity contest. I would much rather see my President do what President Bush has done in Iraq, even in the face of all the criticism and the drop in the polls he has taken for it, than to see my President do what President Clinton did in Mogadishu. In other words, I am more concerned with what the President actually does, rather than how it is perceived, even though I realize that the perception is more important to his political fortunes. I thank God for a President that I believe has acted (for better or worse) based on what he believed was best for the country, in contrast to a former President that based many of his actions on what Dick Morris's latest poll revealed.
I would prefer that President Bush's poll numbers be in the thirties (or even in the teens) rather than see him bring those numbers up the way Bill Clinton did by having sex acts performed on him in the Oval Office by an intern, spending hours on the phone engaging in phone sex with her and opening himself and the nation's security up to potential blackmail, and then branding the intern as a psycho stalker until he found out his DNA was left on her dress. Remember, that is the scenario that brought Clinton's numbers to their highest point.
Actually, more specifically, it was the successful effort to portray the Republicans, who thought such behavior was beneath the dignity of the office of the President, as hate-filled political hit men persecuting a victim President that brought those numbers to their apex. That is one lesson that some of the Democrats now revelling in Bush's low numbers, smelling blood and continuing to attack him, should remember. The public does not particularly like to see their President attacked and if Democrats continue to do so at their current pace and intensity, eventually it will wear thin.
I have heard more than a few Democrats wanting to compare Feingold's censure stunt to Diane Feinstein's attempt to censure Clinton. Their point is that if Feinstein and others were willing to censure the beloved Clinton for what they describe as purely personal indiscretions, then surely they should be willing to censure the evil Bush for supposed civil rights violations. Attacking the President because he wants to give those charged with our security the ability to listen in on terrorists plotting to kill innocent Americans is a real stinker of an argument, no matter how low his approval numbers currently stand. Even those Americans that love Bill Clinton can tell the difference between those wanting to reprimand a President for doing the hired help in the Oval Office and lying about it, and those wanting to reprimand a President for wanting to listen in on murderous terrorists. Some issues are just that clear, regardless of poll numbers.
Thanks to John Hawkins for inviting me to guest blog here today. I hope you will make it a habit to visit Polipundit for more political blogging and Byrd Droppings for blogging about just about everything else.
Excerpt Of The Day: But "Bush Lied" About WMDS. Yeah, Right...
"Many months after the fall of Baghdad, a number of senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe it possible that Iraq still possesed WMD capability hidden away somewhere. Saddam attempted to convince one audience that they were gone while simultaneously convincing another that Iraq still had them," the report says.
Senior Iraqi officials told their interrogators that Hussein had no idea what the true state of the country's weapons was, because everyone lied to him and refrained from giving him bad news for fear of being executed.
Hussein's deputy Tariq Aziz told interrogators, "The people in the military industrial commission were liars. They lied to you, and they lied to Hussein. They were always saying they were producing special weapons."
"A captured military industrial commission annual report of investments from 2002 showed more than 170 research projects. When Hussein asked for updates on the nonexistent projects, they simply faked plans and designs to show progress," the report says.
Many in Israeli intelligence still believe Hussein had chemical weapons, which were transferred to Syria before the war. Israel discussed this with the Americans, but the latter no longer believe that Israeli evidence is conclusive on the matter." -- Haaretz on a recently declassified internal report by the American military
Paul Craig Roberts, the lunatic paleocon who used to work for the Wall Street Journal and in the Reagan Administration, is speculating that Bush is going to stage a nuclear attack on America so that he'll have a good excuse to nuke Iran.
Here's the latest from Roberts' nutty new column: 'Is another 9/11 in the works?," which was gleefully reprinted by the ultra-left-wing nutjobs at the Smirking Chimp:
"It is obvious that Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about.
Yet, Bush has no conventional means of waging war with Iran. His bloodthirsty neoconservatives have prepared plans for nuking Iran. However, an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran would leave the US, already regarded as a pariah nation, totally isolated.
Readers, whose thinking runs ahead of that of most of us, tell me that another 9/11 event will prepare the ground for a nuclear attack on Iran. Some readers say that Bush, or Israel as in Israel's highly provocative attack on the Jericho jail and kidnapping of prisoners with American complicity, will provoke a second attack on the US. Others say that Bush or the neoconservatives working with some "black ops" group will orchestrate the attack.
One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush's illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the world's doubts of the explanation.
Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn't it?
Fantasy? Let's hope so."
In a way, people like Roberts fascinate me. Here's an educated man, a man who was once considered to be such a standout that he was actually brought into the Reagan administration. Moreover, when he worked for Reagan, you have to figure that if someone came up with a cuckoo theory like this about the Gipper, he would have thought they were nuts. But now? He's a complete drooling wacko himself.
Does that mean Roberts is so crazy that he could officially be considered to be mentally ill? My gut instinct would be to say, "yes," if there weren't so many fellow believers in conspiracy theories nodding their heads right along with him. Keep in mind that not only did Roberts write this, apparently the people at antiwar.com and the Smirking Chimp, two large websites, looked at it, didn't think it raised any red flags, and posted it. Moreover, at the Smirking Chimp, their audiences seem to be used to this sort of fare. At the time I'm writing this, there's not one single soul in the thread there who has said anything remotely akin to, "Gee, I don't like Bush either, but I don't think he would stage a nuclear attack on the United States. That's nuts!" Instead, you see comments like these:
shonen: How long will it take for you guys to have another revolution? In not now, when?
111aaaaardvark: We can have another revolution after -
1 - Absolute corporate control of all media is abolished
2 - Th'avidge murrikkkan learns to think
3 - Th'avidge murrikkkan wakes up to the idiocy of the luney, fascistic, religious murrikkkan Taliban
4 - Th'avidge so-called Democrat in DC grows some balls
5 - Things get substantially worse fer th'avidge murrikkkan with, say,15% unemployment
Sounds like a tall order to me.
313: He's stupid, yes.
But he's just a puppet. The reason his handlers have put him before us is simple: the U.S. sheep aren't smart enough to have seen through this lunacy.
People like us MIGHT be a hope for our country, although I think things have gone too far now.
Martial law is right around the corner.
Some have suggested a second U.S. Civil War is inevitable.
Watching daily...
Bush Derangement Syndrome: it's spreading like wildfire and the people infected with it are becoming crazier by the day...
Hot Dog! We're Going To Get A Censure Vote In The Senate!
The left-side of the blogosphere is ratcheting up the pressure on the Democrats in the Senate to support Russ Feingold's censure motion and it's having an affect:
"Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has become the third U.S. senator to back a move to censure President Bush over the warrantless wiretapping program. She joins Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Boxer's office said she would support the measure.
"Senator Boxer has said she would vote for the Feingold resolution," Boxer press secretary Natalie Ravitz told RAW STORY.
..Harkin told Roll Call “I think it makes sense. ... Quite frankly, I think we ought to have a full-fledged debate on this.”
I sooooooo agree with Harkin! We desperately need to have a "full-fledged debate" on the floor of the Senate about this issue. Then, the Democrats can argue that Bush should be censured for protecting America and Republicans can respond by pointing out things like this (from a Dick Morris column back in December of 2005):
"Equally irresponsible is the criticism Democrats are leveling at President Bush for his use of National Security Agency wiretaps to catch terrorists. Before Clinton and Schumer criticize this policy, they'd do well to reflect on the fact that the Brooklyn Bridge might well be rubble, with thousands dead, if Bush did not use these wiretaps.
In 2002, the feds (presumably the NSA) picked up random cellphone chatter using the words "Brooklyn Bridge" (which apparently didn't translate well into Arabic). They notified the New York Police Department, which flooded the bridge with cops. Then the feds overheard a phone call in which a man said things were "too hot" on the bridge to pull off an operation. Later, an interrogation of a terrorist allowed by the Patriot Act led cops to the doorstep of this would-be bridge bomber. (His plans would definitely have brought down the bridge, NYPD sources told me.)"
How's this for a line: "The Democrats want to censure George Bush for saving the Brooklyn Bridge." Sounds pretty good to me! How about this line from George Bush: "No matter what the Democrats say, I will never apologize for defending this country!" Oh yeah, that's beautiful!
The good news is that Tom Harkin and I are both probably going to get our wish. Here's what Bill Frist had to say in an interview with Hugh Hewitt yesterday:
"Well, there are two things, and this gets down then, in sort of the mechanics of the Senate. I can got out and just leader to leader say if you're ready to vote on this, I'm ready. Let's do it right now. Well, that didn't work. Then I tried a little bit different time, and that didn't work. I can continue trying that, which I do, and as you see us talking on the floor as we're moving around between votes. And then the other thing that I've done is referred it to committee. And when it goes to committee, there is this process of a markup of the resolution itself. And it's been referred to committee now, and that week of March 27th, it should be coming out of committee, in which case it can be taken directly to the floor."
Translation: we're going to get a vote and when we do get that vote, folks, the GOP should jump on the Democrats like they're a pogo stick. The Democrats have been, thanks to Russ Feingold, foolish enough to reveal part of their agenda for the next two years to the America people: it's censure and impeachment.
Do Americans really want the Democrats undermining our security by spending the next two years launching trumped-up charge after charge at the President in an effort to impeach him, so that a bunch of wackos on the left who think Bush is Hitler will be happy? That's the Democratic agenda and it doesn't measure up very well to the Republican agenda, which is to allow George Bush to continue to aggessively fight to protect America. Let's put these two agendas out there and see which one Americans prefer in the 2006 elections.
Question: What Happens When A Man With The Mentality Of A Suicide Bomber Runs A Nation Pursuing Nukes? Answer: You Crank Up The Bombers
Over at Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson seems to be interpreting these comments by radical Islamic psychopath Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a less-than-subtle admission that he intends to build nuclear weapons and launch them at Israel. I think he's right...
“Our enemies on the one hand oppose our nation’s acquisition of nuclear energy and on the other hand want to divert the attention of other nations from the key issue of Palestine to give an opportunity to the Zionist regime to prolong its existence”, he said.
“One of the main reasons why the big powers oppose Iran on the nuclear issue is for the sake of the Zionist regime, so as to let this regime live on. But they are unaware that not only will the Iranian nation continue in the path of obtaining nuclear energy till the end, it will not even for one instant divert its attention from the issue of Palestine”.
“The regime occupying Qods [Israel] is the key to [Western] countries’ domination in Muslim lands, and with every blow at this occupying regime, it’s the pillars of the Global Arrogance (the West) that are targeted”.
Is Ahmadinejad crazy enough to risk an American and/or Israeli bombing run on his country? Looks like it. Is he enough of a madman to actually launch nukes at Israel? I take him at his word and believe the answer to that question is, "yes." Would a lunatic like Ahmadinejad, who leads people in chants of, "Death to America," hand nuclear weapons over to a terrorist group to use against the United States? It seems entirely possible. Even if none of these things were to happen, a nuclear Iran would certainly set off a nuclear weapons race in the Middle-East and within a few years we'd soon see a nuclear Saudi Arabia, a nuclear Egypt, and a nuclear Iraq -- at a minimum. In and of itself, that nuke spiral increases the chances of a nuclear war or nukes being used in terrorist attacks tremendously.
What is being done about it? Since we have no diplomatic relations with Iran, we've farmed out all the negotiations on this issue to Europe. The negotiations have been quite the "multilateral" affair, but they've also failed utterly. Now, we're planning to take the issue to the UN Security Council. However, that's nothing but a charade since one of the members of the UN Security Council, Russia, is the country helping Iran to build nuclear weapons. So, just how far do we think they're going to go to stop a problem they're deliberately creating? There's also the possibility that Ahmadinejad might be assassinated, overthrown, change his mind, etc., but since we may be talking about a situation where Iran's nuclear facilities will have to be bombed in months, not years, in order to stop them from ultimately obtaining nuclear weapons, it seems unlikely that the problem is going to be solved peacefully.
That means a bombing run by either the US or Israel with a lot of repercussions. Prepare yourself, because it's almost as much of a certainty at this point as the war with Iraq was back in mid-2002. It would be great to resolve this peacefully, but unless something changes drastically, that doesn't appear to be in the cards.
Democratic Underground Quote Of The Day: Christians Shouldn't Be Allowed To Have So Many Children
This probably isn't representative of the views of most people on the left, but the sentiment was just so outrageous that I just couldn't bear to pass it up...
Odin2005: It's things like this that make me support population control. Theocons have no respect to the enviroment, Gawd told them to multiply like rabbits and that protecting the enviroment isn't needed because they think Jebus is gonna come down a rapture them. These people are dangerous and should not be allowed to have more kids then secular people do.
Hat tip to RWN reader Heather Voges for pointing this comment out.
The Media's Continuing Obsession With The Non-Existent Civil War In Iraq
You don't even have to go beyond this short, first paragraph of a piece at Reuters to see exactly what's wrong with the way the media covers Iraq:
"Three months after it was elected, Iraq's parliament was finally sworn in on Thursday but the 20-minute session was an empty formality that did nothing to break a government deadlock or halt a slide to civil war."
The media has been claiming that Iraq is about to, "slide (jnto) civil War," for three years and they've been wrong every single step of the way. Yet, despite the fact that they haven't gotten it right yet, despite the fact that multiple US Generals have come out and said that Iraq is not about to descend into civil war, the media arrogantly and obliviously keeps repeating the same lines.
Also, you've got to love the way they've slanted the news about the first meeting of the Iraqi Parliament. Here we have a historic event, elected Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds offically meeting for the first time to represent their constituencies and help guide their country towards freedom and it's just brushed off. "Oh, they didn't fix all of Iraq's problems in their 20 minute session, so who cares?"
In all seriousness, folks, and this is not hyperbole, this is not an exaggeration; if Al-Qaeda were paying most of the mainstream media, including Reuters, to try to undercut the war in Iraq, but not make it too obvious -- you know, no "Peace be upon Osama Bin Laden, the wondrous friend of the West" stuff -- the coverage would probably be exactly the same as it is today. That's how pessimistic, warped, and misleading the coverage we get from the MSM in this country is day to day. It's a genuine disgrace, it unnecessarily aids our enemies, and it's part of the reason why so many people, justifiably, no longer trust the press in this country to tell them the truth.
Democratic Underground Thread Of The Day: Americans Are Among The Stupidest People In The World
Here's an absolutely priceless exchange from a sadly all too typical (See here, here, & here) Democratic Underground thread called "Americans are among the stupidest people in the world."
antifaschits: for myself, I am thinking about emigration.
slackmaster: Do you think emigrating will make you smarter?
antifaschits: it will keep me out of a Haliburton prison longer.
There is no Republican up on Capitol Hill more disliked by his own GOP brethren than John McCain. That's why, despite the size of his fan club in the mainstream media, McCain seems rather unlikely to capture the party's nomination for President in 2008.
Here's a short, but sweet primer that may help explain why so many conservatives believe John McCain would be a very poor choice as the Republican nominee in 2008.
The Age Issue
John McCain will be 72 years old in 2008, which will make him 3 years older than Ronald Reagan was when he became the oldest man to ever be inaugurated as president back in 1981. In the Senate, where doddering fossils like Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd can be elected over and over, McCain looks like a spring chicken in comparison. But, Reagan's age turned out to be a campaign issue and McCain, who would be 80 years old at the end of his 2nd term, would certainly have a lot of people questioning --with good reason -- whether he's up to the job. Were McCain to be the nominee, his age could be the deciding factor that puts a Democrat in office.
How Electable Is McCain Really?
The mainstream media loves John McCain and they regularly write fawning articles referring to him as a "maverick" and a "straight-talker." Because of this, McCain polls well among Democrats and Independents.
However, the reason McCain is so well liked by the media is because they're liberals and they love it when he trashes other Republicans. But, what would happen if John McCain actually became the Republican nominee? The same members of the mainstream media who gush over him today would turn on him in a Minnesota minute and once his great press ended, his poll numbers with Independents and Democrats would start to drop precipitously.
Moreover, it's no big secret that McCain is roundly despised by more than a few conservatives. The thinking there usually goes, "Well, what are they going to do, vote for Hillary?" No, they won't, "vote for Hillary," but will they contribute money to McCain, volunteer for his campaign, or defend him from attacks made by Democrats or the press? No, they won't.
More importantly, they may throw their votes away by voting Libertarian or for the Constitution Party in 2008. Given that the outcome of three of the last four elections may have been decided by these sorts of protest votes (for Perot in '92 and '96 and Nader in 2000), this is not an issue that should be taken lightly.
What's Wrong With Actually Having A Loyal Republican As The Republican Nominee?
One of the most galling things about the idea of having John McCain as the Republican nominee in 2008 is that whether he's a loyal Republican or not is a question that can't truly be answered. Back in 2001, there were rumors that McCain might, depending on how the election turned out, switch parties in order to help the Democrats retain the Senate. In 2002, there were rumors that McCain was considering switching parties and running for President as a Democrat. In 2004, "on several occasions," McCain talked with John Kerry about becoming his vice-president. Obviously McCain hasn't pulled a Jim Jeffords yet, but you have to wonder about where he really stands.
How Can You Be Pro-Life And Pro-Roe v. Wade At The Same Time?
Overall, John McCain does have a fairly solid pro-life voting record (The glaring exception is that he has gone off the reservation on embryonic stem cell research). However, McCain has specifically said, on more than one occasion, back in August of 1999, that he opposes overturning Roe v. Wade:
"I'd love to see a point where (Roe v. Wade) is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even-the long-term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."
"I would not seek to overturn Roe v. Wade tomorrow, because doing so would endanger the lives of women."
Has McCain also said he wants to repeal Roe v. Wade on many occasions? Yes. But, how can pro-lifers trust a man who has flip-flopped like John Kerry on Roe v. Wade to appoint the Supreme Court Justices who may end up deciding the issue? Simply put, we can't.
Kyoto By Any Other Name Would Still Smell As Rotten
John McCain has proposed a radical bill, the McCain-Lieberman Stewardship Act, that is not all that different from the Kyoto Protocol. McCain's bill would do cataclysmic damage to our economy. In the name of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an insignificant percentage, that not even the biggest proponents of Kyoto believe would have a significant impact on the weather, here's the damage John McCain would be willing to do to our economy (from an article by Marlo Lewis in National Review):
"Proponents will undoubtedly argue, as they did last fall, that we need not worry about the bill's economic impact because Phase I (of McCain's bill) is just a "modest" first step in addressing global climate change. A recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysis suggests otherwise. According to EIA, Phase I would increase: gasoline prices by 9 percent in 2010 and 19 percent in 2025; natural-gas prices in the industrial and electric-power sectors by 21 percent in 2010 and 58 percent in 2025; and electricity prices by 35 percent in 2025."
Would you support a Republican candidate for President who pledged to sign America on to Kyoto Protocol? If not, then why support John McCain, who wants to do almost the same thing under a different name?
McCain Vs. The Bush Tax Cuts
Most conservatives believe the biggest domestic success of George Bush's first term were his tax cuts. John McCain voted against them, more than once, before finally flip-flopping and voting for them this year. Enough said.
McCain May Not Like Bush's Tax Cuts, But He Loves Illegal Immigration
McCain has teamed up with Ted Kennedy to propose a bill that rewards illegal aliens by allowing them to stay in the US permanently after they pay a modest fine, brings in hundreds of thousands of new guest workers as well, and does almost nothing to enforce immigration law or prevent new illegal aliens from entering the country. In other words, if you love George Bush's illegal immigration policy, John McCain is offering more of the same. On the other hand, if you believe we need to clamp down on illegal immigration, John McCain is not a candidate you should support.
The Gang-Of-14 Disaster
Just as Republicans in Congress were about to step in and put an end to the Democratic filibusters of judges once and for all, John McCain and the rest of the "Gang-Of-14" stepped in with a deal that kept the filibuster alive. This got John McCain and the other participants in the deal lots of favorable press, but the GOP paid a real price so that the "Maverick" could be in the spotlight again. Several GOP judges were thrown over the side and have, as of yet, never been allowed to get a vote.
Furthermore, the Gang-of-14 deal explicitly no long applies after the 2006 elections occur. So, if the Democrats gain seats in the Senate and decide to start filibustering again, it's entirely possible that this time, the GOP won't be able to muster the votes to stop them. That means that if a liberal Supreme Court Justice steps down during the last two years of Bush's term, because of John McCain and Company, it may not be possible to replace them with another Alito or Roberts. That's the price the party may have to pay so that John McCain can continue to be the New York Times' favorite Republican.
The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Debacle
John McCain's signature piece of legislation is the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill, which was one of the worst pieces of legislation to make it through Congress in the last decade. The idea behind this nightmare, which was a failure on every level, was that it was going to, "take the money out of politics." Well, not only did McCain-Feingold fail to, "take the money out of politics," more money was spent than ever before during the 2004 elections. Moreover, the bill unconstitutionally curbed free speech, protected incumbents, gave a fund raising edge to the Democrats, and opened up the door to regulating bloggers. If McCain says that he'll do for America what he did for campaign finance reform, it should be taken as a threat.
Conclusion
That should give you a pretty good idea of what some of McCain's biggest flaws are, but what you've seen so far is by no means a comprehensive list. Keep in mind that McCain opposed Bush's attempt to protect marriage by enshrining it in the Constitution, committed adultery in his first marriage, attacked the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, endangered the lives of all Americans by handcuffing our military interrogators, had a meltdown over a boxing commission...you can go on and on like this.
The long and short of it is that John McCain is a deeply flawed candidate who's unlikely to capture the Republican nomination, unlikely to win the presidency, and is unlikely to be a good President even if he somehow makes it to the White House.
Over at USAToday, Phillip Longman worries that liberals are slowly breeding themselves into extinction. Incidentally, he's probably right to be worried:
"Today, fertility correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural and religious attitudes. In the USA, for example, 47% of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.
In Utah, where more than two-thirds of residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 92 children are born each year for every 1,000 women, the highest fertility rate in the nation. By contrast Vermont — the first to embrace gay unions — has the nation's lowest rate, producing 51 children per 1,000 women.
Similarly, in Europe today, the people least likely to have children are those most likely to hold progressive views of the world. For instance, do you distrust the army and other institutions and are you prone to demonstrate against them? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids or ever to get married and have kids. Do you find soft drugs, homosexuality and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? Europeans who answer affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone or be in childless, cohabiting unions than are those who answer negatively?
...Tomorrow's children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents' values, as often happens. But when they look for fellow secularists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born."
Secularism is definitely bad for birth rates and it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if the libs' sour, pessimistic view of the world made them less likely to want to bring children into it. But also, it's fascinating that the word "abortion" didn't appear anywhere in the article. Could Longman have felt that it was too politically incorrect to mention that millions of liberal votes have likely been aborted out of existence? Some people might deny that, but undoubtedly when you have one group of people who believes abortion is murder and another group that looks at it as birth control, the former group is going to have more children per capita than the latter.
Does that mean the left is doomed demographically? No, not necessarily. They might be able to make up for it in other ways. For example, giving Amnesty to illegals could help bring millions of new voters into the fold. They could also -- don't laugh -- freshen up their philosophy and ideas and gain a much higher percentage of new converts.
However, in the short term, because of birth rates and Americans voting with their feet, Conservatives are slowly but surely gaining an advantage. President Bush carried " 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties" in 2004. Moreover, the blue states lost electoral votes to the red states last time around and it's going to happen again in 2010.
This is looking like a slow motion train wreck for the left and it'll be interesting in the coming years to see if these trends continue.
Many Republicans, with good reason, are worried about the elections in November of this year. But, never fear, because James D. Miller has the ultimate solution. An idea so powerful, so -- let's call it what it is -- unbelievably awesome -- that voters will flock to the GOP banner by the millions in order to request, no, scratch, in order to DEMAND, that we build -- THE SPACE ELEVATORS:
"For the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans should propose an idea so big that it stretches to the stars. Republicans should commit the government to building a space elevator by 2020.
A space elevator would essentially be a 62,000-mile cable stretching from the earth's surface out into space. Because one end of the cable would be in high orbit, gravity would prevent it from falling back to earth. Once the cable was in place, space travelers would board an elevator-like device and ride up the cable.
..I admit it: part of the reason I want Republicans to make space elevators part of their 2006 campaign is that I am a Republican and fear that otherwise we will lose considerable power in the midterm elections. A space elevator proposal would be visionary, pro-defense, pro-environment and easy to understand, so it could attract significant support for Republicans.
It would be difficult for Democrats to enthusiastically support a space elevator proposal. The left-wing environmentalists view the threat of global warming primarily as a means of combating capitalism, and they would be horrified by any proposal that could reduce the harm of global warming without curbing commerce.
The Democrats would be uncomfortable with the militarization of space that U.S.-owned space elevators would allow. They would undoubtedly prefer that space elevators be built not by the U.S. but by some international coalition. Such Democratic opposition to a U.S. space elevator would allow Republicans to portray Democrats as being not only weak on defense but also hypocritical on the environment."
That's right, Democrats! We're going to ride the space elevator to victory in 2006 while you sit back, feet planted firmly on the ground, eating our space elevator dust! Plus, imagine riding the elevator up for a space vacation -- then hitting golf balls off the side of the station in an effort to clip Chinese satellites a few thousand miles away. That would beat going to Disneyland by a mile!
Ok, that's enough making fun of Miller's belief that this would actually help the GOP in the 2006 elections. Certainly, that's not very realistic. But, all kidding aside, this would likely be a more exciting, beneficial, and cheaper project than Bush's, "We're spending all the money in the world to go back to the moon by 2020," idea.
Excerpt Of The Day: The Cruelty Of Affirmative Action
"My enemies say my career would have gone nowhere without affirmative action. I don’t think that’s true, but because there is affirmative action, they can say that. There are no blacks who are free from that stigma, and that’s a terrible thing to do to people who are trying to succeed on their own. I think affirmative action is the worst cruelty blacks have endured since slavery.
At that point, blacks made the worst mistake in our history: putting our faith in the hands of outside saviors. The idea that somebody else can lift you up, can teach you skills, and make you competitive is just ridiculous. That sort of abject dependence has never worked, and it never will.
Blacks do well in sports, music, entertainment, and literature—because there’s absolutely no white intervention, paternalism, affirmative action, or anything else. We’re asked to compete without any assistance, and sure enough, we compete. We succeed. In these areas, whites never intervene, so we ask the best and we get the best. But in colleges and other places, there are a billion excuses. Whites intervene and convince themselves not to ask much of us. It’s the same old vicious cycle.
...Affirmative action and all of its sundry manifestations should be completely eliminated. It stigmatizes all blacks, and it’s not voluntary. One of the real cruelties of affirmative action is that whether we want it or not, it is imposed on us, simply because of the color of our skin. You don’t get to opt out.
You shouldn’t be able to go onto a campus and have a separate black graduation ceremony, a separate black student union, a black studies department. Why do I get all these racial things, but you can’t have them? Why?
White paternalism and guilt is behind it, because it allows whites to effectively take credit for our advancement. Just like slavery, affirmative action allows blacks to be used, and bestows on us a stigma of being inferior. It’s a stunning cruelty. We ought to be marching on Washington to end paternalism and affirmative action; not marching to keep it." -- Shelby Steele
The Democrats have been putting politics ahead of national security for roughly four years now, but it looks like Russ Feingold's partisan and ridiculous attempt to call for the President to be censured has finally been judged by Republicans up on the Hill as going beyond all bounds of decency.
Here we have George Bush authorizing wiretaps of international calls between terrorists and Americans and we have Democrats who think this is a bad thing. Sure, nobody questions that Bush can fire a missile at these terrorists without asking for anyone's permission, but they're all upset that he's listening in on their phone calls. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
Negroponte replied that the NSA program has been "effective and important … in dealing with the terrorist threat," and then asked his deputy, Hayden, to elaborate.
Hayden said the intelligence community had "learned information from this program that would not otherwise have been available," and that it has "helped detect and prevent terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."
None of this matters to liberals like Feingold because politics comes before the safety and security of the American people to them. But, on the upside, Feingold's ludicrous censure resolution has inspired Republicans in the Senate to start firing back.
"The fact that the Senate Democratic Leadership has failed to call this stunt what it is - political grandstanding - is outrageous. Senator Feingold's actions reaffirm that the Democratic Party is more interested in playing politics than coming up with their own ideas.
"Do Democrats have another way to monitor surveillance on communications with al-Qaeda? Do Democrats have a better way to protect Americans from another terrorist attack?"
"Of course they don't, that's why Democrats are always willing to heckle the starting quarterback from the cheap seats but they are never willing to get in the game themselves.
"Not one Democrat has offered an amendment or a bill to repeal this important national security program. They like to harp about it at Democrat fund raisers and at red meat partisan clubs but when it comes to actually trying to stop it they don't have the guts. Once you get past their left wing rhetoric, even their own members know this is a vital program."
Here's Tom Tancredo (received via email from Kingston's office):
"I thought the Democrats' national security agenda couldn't get any whackier, but they've outdone themselves once again. Russ Feingold and the Democrat base want an immediate troop withdrawal in Iraq and an end to monitoring terrorists' calls into the U.S. What's next, creating a Department of Radical Islamic Understanding? Feingold should at least be consistent and censure the Democrats who for months were briefed on the terrorist surveillance program and didn't raise an objection."
al Qaeda communications intercepted by Feingold Resolution: 0
Terror attacks prevented by Feingold Resolution: 0
Also, according to Drudge, Frist plans to try to force a vote on the censure resolution:
"Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to push Democrats for a vote of censure against President Bush!
After facing down Senator Russ Feingold's censure bill on Monday and seeing Democrats of all ranks fold, Frist thinks it's time to call Democrats on their antics, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
"He pushed them to the mat today, and they blinked," said one Frist associate. "He dared them to vote, and Democrat Leader Harry Reid looked like he was going to be sick as he said 'No.'''
Applause!
Hey, you liberal weenies, don't sing it, bring it. Let's have a vote, right there in the Senate, and we'll see who's serious about America's security and who'd rather cater to the wackos at the Democratic Underground and the Kos crowd. America deserves to know where the Senate stands on this issue, so, by all means, let's have a vote!
The New York Times' editorial board has come out in favor of a proposal to do away with the electoral college. Here's their basic argument:
"The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic. Everyone who remembers 2000 knows that it can lead to the election of the candidate who loses the popular vote as president. But the Electoral College's other serious flaws are perhaps even more debilitating for a democracy. It focuses presidential elections on just a handful of battleground states, and pushes the rest of the nation's voters to the sidelines.
There is an innovative new proposal for states to take the lead in undoing the Electoral College. Legislatures across the country should get behind it.
..The answer to all of these problems is direct election of the president. Past attempts to abolish the Electoral College by amending the Constitution have run into difficulty. But National Popular Vote, which includes several former members of Congress, is offering an ingenious solution that would not require a constitutional amendment. It proposes that states commit to casting their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. These promises would become binding only when states representing a majority of the Electoral College signed on. Then any candidate who won the popular vote would be sure to win the White House."
To begin with, although the Times and the people at the National Popular Vote obviously don't agree, it seems highly likely that their plan would be judged unconstitutional because it would subvert Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution which does not provide for picking the President via the popular vote.
Setting that aside, choosing the President by popular vote instead of the electoral college wouldn't solve anything; it would just create a different set of issues.
For example, imagine the exact same situation we had in Florida in 2000, except with the popular vote deciding the winner -- instead of the electoral college. The Gore voters are probably thinking, "That would have been fantastic because it means Gore would have won!" Perhaps...or perhaps not. Because with a vote as close as it was, it's entirely possible we'd have seen legal challenges, perhaps even in all 50 states as both candidates tried to pad their vote totals. Does spreading the Florida debacle nationwide sound like a great idea? Is that something we'd like to see happen in the future?
Then there are other problems that would pop up. For example, let's say that on election day, there was a heavy rain across much of California. Would it affect the results of the presidential election? Under the current system, that's highly doubtful. But, if the popular vote were the deciding factor, it could result in a net loss of hundreds of thousands of votes that would have otherwise gone to the Democratic candidate. If the popular vote were how we decided the presidency, we could legitimately see cases where who becomes President could have a lot to do with which states get a lot of rain on election day.
Also, the New York Times' complaint that the candidates spend all their time in "battleground states" seems like a classic, "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence," argument. While what they're saying is true, if the election were decided by the popular vote, many of the smaller battleground states that have gotten a lot of attention previously would be ignored while bigger states that lean one way or another, like ** ahem ** New York, would suddenly start getting loads of attention. Why would the candidates waste time in little battleground states like New Hampshire or New Mexico when there are so many more votes to be had, for both sides, in Texas or California?
Last but not least, is any change really necessary given how seldom we've seen a President win the popular vote, but lose the electoral vote? The last time that happened before 2000 was back in 1888 and it's entirely possible that the next time it'll occur will be another century hence. Given that and the fact that changing over to a popular vote system would just lead to a different, and perhaps worse, set of problems, it's better to just leave the system be -- rather than pursue a harebrained, likely unconstitutional, scheme that would surely lead to massive controversy and confusion.
Excerpt Of The Day #3: We've Cut Spending Down To The Marrow?
"Arlen Specter apparently has been reading a little too much of Tom DeLay's press releases. He told the press that Congress is now "beyond cutting the fat and beyond the bone. We're down to the marrow." Specter wants to introduce more expansion in health care, education, and worker safety (by "billions of dollars above the president's request") along with the higher spending on security issues.
Let's look at that fat/meat/bone/marrow analogy a little closer, shall we? The Heritage Foundation has the numbers which make that assertion look entirely asinine. The federal budget has escalated from $1.46T in 1994, when the GOP first came to power in the House, to an estimated $2.77T for this year, almost double in spending. Discretionary spending in that period has increased from $541B to $969B, and even in 2001 only came to $649B. That means that discretionary spending has increased almost 50% in the time when the GOP controlled both the House and the White House.
Did that spending go to defending the nation? Some of it did. Between 2001 and 2006, defense and security spending rose $231B, a 76% increase, but defense is hardly alone. One of Specter's priorities, education, increased a whopping 137% in the same period. Medicare rose 58% and Medicaid 49%. Health research went up 78%. Unemployment benefits increased 27% in a period where unemployment has actually dropped from 2001 levels.
This is the marrow? What would we have seen without the cuts that Specter and others decry so bitterly? In fact, what these politicians criticize as cuts are in reality a lower rate of expansion than they would like. Only a lunatic or a politician could possibly look at these numbers and talk about having cut the federal budget to the meat, bone, or marrow..." -- Captain's Quarters
Excerpt Of The Day #2: US Fatalities Down Since Media Declared Civil War In Iraq
"The US has lost 12 soldiers so far this month in Iraq. In the month of February, the US lost 58 of its finest in the War in Iraq.
As sad as these numbers are, we are seeing a low number of US fatalities since the media declared a Civil War in Iraq.
The average US fatality number for the last month and a half in Iraq is 1.63 which makes it the lowest average since March of last year and one of the lowest fatality periods since early in the war.
If the figures for March continue (0.92 average for the month so far) they will be the lowest number of fatalities for US forces in Iraq in over two years (0.79 fatality average in February of 2004)." -- Gateway Pundit
Excerpt Of The Day: Murderers, Rapists, And Robbers Sneaking Over The Border
"In the last five months alone, the Border Patrol has arrested 42,722 aliens with criminal records attempting to cross the border. Among them were 6,770 felons; 148 persons wanted in connection with a homicide; 42 associated with a kidnapping; 164 associated with a sexual assault; 298 associated with a robbery, 1,957 wanted for assault, and 4,161 connected with drug crimes. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 139,000 of the 1.1 million people apprehended on the border in 2005 were criminal aliens seeking to illegally reenter the United States." -- Senator Jon Kyl
*** Update #1 ***: From the comments section:
"Hey, lighten up.
They're just coming across to commit the murders, rapes and bank robberies that Americans won't (do)." -- Cartman
Quote Of The Day: The Difference Between Americans And Canadians
"A couple of years back, I began some generalization or other by saying, "The difference between America and Canada is . . ." And the American I was imparting this insight to interrupted me with: "The difference between America and Canada is that Americans don't care what the difference between America and Canada is." -- Mark Steyn
