The Winning Strategy?

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Meanwhile, the supposedly all-powerful Republican noise machine’s greatest victory is allegedly the George W. Bush presidency — which he barely won the first time. And, recall, Bush had to campaign as a “compassionate” conservative to get as far as he did. If we’re so good at p.r., why did conservatism need the adjective? Netrooters want it both ways. The GOP is evil and intellectually bankrupt because it doesn’t care about anything but winning. But it would be the greatest thing in the world if Democrats could be just like Republicans! That doesn’t sound like a winning strategy to me.

Fred Knows His History

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Sometimes folks around the world mock Americans for not having more of a sense of history. They might be right, but I think it is often for a good reason. Americans are a people who look to the future instead of the past. We hope and believe that things can and will get better. We are more than willing to forgive our old enemies and move forward together in peace. So we tend to forget the bad things we left behind. Unfortunately, some of our enemies feel differently. They neither forgive nor forget. Listening to the messages of al Qaeda’s leaders, you understand that they see their old defeats in very personal and contemporary terms. They are in a “long war” against us, even if we don’t know it. And they’re committed to winning it.

OTOH...

clipped from billhobbs.com Cutting Taxes Grows the Economy - It Doesn't Shrink Government I've said it before, and I'll say it again: conservatives who think the key to shrinking the size of the federal government is cutting taxes are always going to be disappointed. President Ronald Reagan proved that tax cuts stimulate the economy and lead to record tax revenue - and Congress proved it can spend every last dollar and then some. (The Reagan era deficits were not caused by tax cuts as revenue growth soared, but instead were caused by Congress passing budgets that spent even more.)

This is of course the great persistent liberal myth about Reagan. If the tax cuts didn't actual cause federal revenue growth, we couldn't have "buried" the Soviets since we couldn't have spent the insane amounts we did...

Reagonomics Doesn't Work?

clipped from www.bizzyblog.com Still, you’d think this dramatic fiscal turnaround would cheer up Capitol Hill. Instead, Congressional Democrats seem to live in a parallel universe — one that they claim is starved for revenues, with a runaway deficit, and is dominated by the rich who pay no taxes at all. The reality is that the wealthy are financing Democratic spending ambitions, and the deficit could easily vanish within a year or two if Congress has the good sense to leave current tax policy in place.

What Rules?

clipped from www.instapundit.com Corzine isn't the only one. There's an increasing hubris among many elected officials that their job is so important, their time so much more precious than ours and their position in public life so privileged, that they can zip by us on the road, pushing everyday folk aside so they can get to their far more important destinations. This is about more than just traffic laws, of course. It's about the arrogance of power. These politicians not only assume their lives, meetings and fundraisers are more important than everyone else's to the point that they don't have to follow the rules, they're willing to put other people on the road at risk to prove their point.

Verboten Speech At PBS

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

The beheaders don't like it...

The Vital Lie

clipped from onecosmos.blogspot.com And it all begins with a vital lie of the left, that men and women are identical. Since no normal person believes this, it must be mandated by law. Put another way, it is against the law to be normal. Once a vital lie such as this is accepted, freedom must be constrained in a thousand ways -- not just for men, but obviously for woman as well, since a normal girl doesn't have much spontaneous interest in being a cheerleader at a girls' softball game. For that matter, at least back when I was in high school, no, ahem, "normal" boy wanted to be "yell king."

Safe Houses Needed

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com What we need in France and much of Europe; in Iraq and Afghanistan; and anywhere else women are at risk; is a series of "safe" houses for muslim women who wish to escape from their loving husbands and families; and to protect them legally from the politically correct left; who would abandon them to their fate.

Martin Awakens

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com

Of course a lot of his fellow citizens had to die first...

The Signs Of A Lightweight

clipped from instapundit.com WHY IS OBAMA SO TIRED? "During a campaign speech, Barack Obama overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll by a factor of approximately 1,000, saying 10,000 had died when only 12 did. He later explained that he made a mistake because he was tired."

The Man Behind Oil-For-Food

... has no shame of course.

clipped from opinionjournal.com Mark Malloch Brown spoke Monday to a crowded auditorium at the World Bank's headquarters, warning that the bank's mission was "hugely at risk" as long as Paul Wolfowitz remained its president. Only hours earlier, news leaked that a special committee investigating Mr. Wolfowitz had accused him of violating conflict-of-interest rules. A coincidence? We doubt it.

All Ears On Pelosi

clipped from instapundit.com For now, it appears that the problem is less with Pelosi’s disclosure on this particular earmark and more with the state of earmark reform in general. The Democrats swept into power making a lot of noise about cleaning up the “culture of corruption” in Washington. Earmark reform was a big part of their stated agenda. First, they put a “moratorium on earmarks” until new rules governing them could be put into place. Then the House passed new earmark-disclosure requirements. “It’s good that we’re even having this discussion about Pelosi’s earmark,” Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, tells NRO, “because now [thanks to new disclosure requirements] we know that she’s the one who asked for it.”

By Their Fruits...

... ye shall know them...

clipped from onecosmos.blogspot.com It is simply a truism that no one is more blind to his Christian assumptions than the anti-Christian atheist who is the beneficiary of 2000 years of Christian conditioning. Thus, he values all of the precious things that uniquely developed in the Judeo-Christian West and nowhere else: democracy, individuality, liberty, science, freedom of conscience, etc, but then attacks the metaphysical roots of these things -- as if any of them were developed by atheists living in purely secular cultures. In reality, the most atheistic cultures are tied (or is it hanged?) neck and neck with Islam for producing the most cruel and barbaric cultures (with the possible exception of primitive tribes). It should be sufficient for us to reject Confucianism and Buddhism on the basis of the sort of societies that developed around Confucian or Buddhist values (again, while still appreciating timeless insights that illuminate our own tradition).

He's Pretty Busy...

... for someone who's not an official candidate...

clipped from article.nationalreview.com The CIA could have been on the short side or on the long side of the estimate. They have underestimated the capabilities of hostile nations before, such as North Korea’s missile technologies. Also, Tenet acknowledged that before the Gulf War, the CIA had underestimated how far along Saddam was on his nuclear program. All of this hardly fits with the notion that Saddam posed no threat. As Tenet made the media rounds, he may have helped the administration as much as hurt it, but he was in no danger of having that fact highlighted by his interviewers.

French Car-b-que Update

"Anti-Sarkozy protests turned violent overnight in France’s second city of Lyon, in Lille, Toulouse, Nantes and Rennes.

More than 500 cars were set alight in cities and suburbs across the country, according to police reports gathered by AFP, many more than the 70 to 100 vehicles that are attacked on an average night in France." [ So let's make sure we've got this straight. If we scaled this up to U.S. demographics (multiply by 6x population), we would have 600 car-b-ques on an average night and 3,000 when the "youths" became especially unhappy. All the smoke and fire engine sirens would make this take over virtually all the big city nightly news. But since it's France and France must be portrayed in unrelentingly positive terms as what we Americans should aspire to be when we recover from our long fascist nightmare, it goes nearly unreported in the U.S. And of course, it's not a scandal that the French themselves are trying to cover up what everyone can smell and hear. (Ah, yes ... that's why they elected Sarkosy in the first place! Even the French tire of bullsh** when it's up to their eyeballs!) I guess it's a lot like the dirty little secret that the French produce most of their electricity from nuclear plants. It doesn't fit the MSMeme... -ed. ]

No Redemption

"Maybe the reason why the Left hates Sarkozy and that renegade "woman of color" Hirsi Ali so much is not because of what they stand for as much as because both remind them of the principles they have betrayed. This secret guilt may stand at the center of the inexplicable hysteria with which the Left regard the neocons and President Bush in particular. Recently a Ramussen poll showed that "only four in ten Democrats will commit to the idea that George Bush did not know of the 9/11 attack in advance. Sixty-one percent of them either believe he did or are unsure." What could account for such a widespread belief in a bizarre conspiracy theory? Why do otherwise intelligent people insist, in the face of incontrovertible evidence that "fire does not melt steel" and embrace all kinds of ridiculous fantasies? I think the extreme demonization of George W. Bush and the neocons is psychologically necessary in order to restore a feeling of moral superiority to the Leftist universe. They would be guilt stricken without it. The more intelligent Leftists must be subconsciously aware of how monstrous the enemy is and secretly cognizant of how great is the betrayal of their own ideals. They can't confront this fact; cannot accept that they are delivering children, as Caroline Glick's example above shows, to cruel murderers. And in order to obtain some kind of solace and to have the effrontery to march in support of "freedom fighters" who are nothing but sadistic thugs, it is necessary for them to invent something worse; to make a caricature devil of GWB to place them once again, if not upon the side of angels, at least in the camp of the lesser evil. George Bush must be made nothing less than the moral equivalent of Hitler or else their ethical universe would collapse.

But George Bush is not Hitler. And one day the better men among the Left will face up to the fact that they have failed a huge moral and historical test. And from that memory, there will be no redemption." [ Which is why they're also so busy constructing the MSMemory Hole -- the more mechanisms of forgetfulness the better... -ed. ]

UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS: "How anyone can have BDS and still believe that an al Qaeda attack can not happen here. The fact that nothing has happened in these many years should tell them that their conspiracy theories are wrong. The best way for President Bush to become the dictator they imagine is to have an attack on the US to get the “security over freedom” cry going. " [ Bingo. -ed. ]

Problem? What Problem?

"A soccer game bringing Muslim imams and Christian priests "shoulder to shoulder" on a field in Norway was cancelled Saturday because the teams could not agree on whether women priests should take part.

The game was to mark the end of a day-long "Shoulder to Shoulder" conference in Oslo that encouraged religious dialogue between the two faiths.

Church of Norway spokesman Olav Fykse Tveit said differences began when the imams refused to play against a mixed-gender team of priests because it would have gone against their religious beliefs in avoiding close physical contact with women." [ Yes. They might have to behave like gentlemen. And learn not to attempt to cut off the women's clitoris when they rightfully kick their pea-brained imbecilic asses. -ed. ]

Nothing To Hold Up The Hair

(link) "The Washington Post has a good piece about John Edwards' plans to combat poverty. Edwards has made his program to "end poverty in 30 years" in this country his signature domestic issue. The Post story, by Alec MacGillis, provides insight into both Edwards and the issue.

The centerpiece of the Edwards plan is to do away with public housing projects and replace them with one million rental vouchers through which to disperse the poor into better neighborhoods, closer to good schools and jobs. However, as the Post explains, a major federal experiment started during the Clinton administration shows that dispersing poor families in this fashion does not improve earnings or school performance. When this inconvenient truth was brought to Edwards' attention during his November 2005 symposium on poverty, he apparently had no answer."

Iowahawk Has James Covered!

"Dear Subscriber:
According to our records, your 1957 subscription to The Claxon is scheduled to expire soon. Please don't let this happen! $2 per month will buy you the Quint-State area's leading newspaper, delivered each morning by one of our cheerful Junior Claxoneer news lads -- like 12-year old Claxon Carrier of the Year Skip Olbermaier! Each issue is packed with items of interest around our community - like:
- Goings-on at City Hall, including the controversial $0.0032 sales tax plan!
- Publisher Felton Beswick Jr. keeps you up-to-date on the Red Menace!
- The latest Capitol dispatches from our Washington DC cub reporter Bob Smalls!
- Friendly sportscribe Jocko Culligan follows the Quints on another pennant run, and the QSU - - Scalpin' Injuns all the way to the Petunia Bowl!
- "Kiddie capers" with adorable 7-year old Beswick twins Eileen and Feltie!
- Complete TV listings for both channels!
- Household cleaning tips for the ladies from beloved Beswick Manor maid Ol' Aunt Mammie!
- Full color Sunday comics featuring Lil' Chester, Swirley, and Buzz Galvin All-American!
Plus the latest market quotes for stocks, and crop forecasts for local turnip farmers. Just try to get that coverage from so-called "television news"! And if you order now, we'll include free daily delivery of the Evening Ledger. Don't delay, renew today!" [ And it gets much, much better... -ed. ]

Warren's Back

"The Church in its nature addresses adults, with counsel. The State in its nature addresses children, with force. It is for adults to regulate children, and not the State to regulate all. The “secularisation” of everything involves, necessarily, the idiotization of the masses, the reduction of human life to the conditions of a kindergarten in which we are told what to do and accept fatuous reasons.

In America (our America; Canada is an American country), we had a population that would not be nannied, for a long time. This was chiefly thanks to pioneering conditions on a new continent, combined with the sort of immigrants we used to get from Old Europe -- the enterprising types, who did things for themselves, and were eager to assimilate.

The continent is now settled. The proportion of our income that is taxed has gone from negligible to nearly half. In addition to the many enterprising immigrants -- and from all over -- a significant number are attracted chiefly by the welfare provisions of our Nanny State, demand support by right, and often refuse assimilation. Moral relativism and "multiculturalism" are established as public doctrines. The conditions have changed, and we have changed: "evolving" towards dissolution.

And we can’t go back, in time, only forward. But would that we could choose our way forward, rather than having it chosen for us, by the fate that awaits any society whose members are unwilling and unable to act for their own good, or the common good."

What's Left Of It: Barry On Lileks Edition (And I Do Mean Left)

"James Lileks, a terrific writer and one of the best newspaper columnists in America, says on his blog today that his newspaper, the Minneapolis-St.Paul Star-Tribune, has decided to kill his column and have him write straight local news stories. This is like the Miami Heat deciding to relieve Dwyane Wade of his basketball-playing obligations so he can keep stats.

Sometimes I don't understand the newspaper business. What's left of it."

UPDATE: "I wonder if Barack Obama will chastise Barnes and Ridder for the violence they have inflicted on their staff?"

Deja Vu All Over Again

"Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river.

The reports in Hong Kong said the disease began killing pigs after the Chinese New Year celebrations in February, and is now spreading. But state-controlled news outlets in China have reported almost nothing about the pig deaths, and very little about the wheat gluten problem.

A man answering the phone at the city government offices in Gaoyao, 140 miles northwest of Hong Kong, confirmed late this afternoon that pigs were dying there. He declined to give his name."

Obama CW Watch From Mickey

"Old CW: Not Black Enough; New CW: What's All This Black Business? Tom Maguire wonders why Jodi Kantor's front-page NYT piece on Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, hasn't generated more controversy. Having now read it, I tend to agree. I'd certainly be more comfortable with a presidential nominee whose main spiritual man 1) hadn't visited Col. Qaddafi (even back in '84); 2) talked less about "oppression" and "this racist United States of America;" 3) when discussing the solution to poverty, talked more about individual achievement and less about the role of "community"--including maybe even celebrating "middleclassness" instead of using it as shorthand for selfishness; 4) in general wasn't so obsessed with race--as evidenced most negatively in talk of "white arrogance" and derogatory reference to the "Great White West." ... I suspect Rev. Wright is going to be a bigger problem for Obama's campaign than has been conventionally perceived. When Obama declared "we worship an awesome God in the blue states," were voters expecting this?...

P.S.: The attack on "the pursuit of 'middleclassness'" referred to by the NYT and in this Freeper post doesn't seem to appear on the church's web site. At least doesn't appear to be where bloggers once said it was. Has it been expunged? I don't know. ... Update: Several emailers point to this Web Archive site. ...

P.P.S.: Obama's views aren't necessarily his pastor's, as he points out. But Obama himself seems to have embraced the idea that poverty is "rooted in societal indifference and individual callousness"--reflecting Wright's Disturbing Tendencies #2 and #3. Do you think poverty is rooted in "individual callousness"? I don't. ...

[How does Wright's "Black Value System" talk differ from the parallel semi-tribal sentiments you might hear, say, in a synagogue?--ed Relevant question. Further discussion required. I don't think many synagogues rail against "gentile arrogance," for one thing. But I haven't spent a lot of time in synagogues.] 2:15 A.M. link"

Touch Your Nose

"So one year after 9/11, when everyone wondered what connection Saddam Hussein might have to al-Qaeda, the CIA still was not ready to conduct an intelligence briefing on that subject with the Vice President. What had they been doing for that year? We had tens of thousands of troops committed to Saddam's containment, Iraq was a security threat in the region -- hence the containment -- and the CIA couldn't prepare properly for questions about its connections to radical Islamist terrorism a year later, by Tenet's own admission.

Maybe he's both a liar and an incompetent."

Nuttier Than...

"ZAWAHIRI: One percent of the way to his goal. Looking at Zawahiri's quota for American casualties in Iraq, Don Surber is not impressed: "At this rate, al-Qaeda will meet its goal . . . in about 2353. I’ll be 400 years old then."" [ ... a room full of Cuckoo Clocks. Of course, there could be more follow-ons to the chlorine bombs they've been using on the Iraqis lately. But it wouldn't change my verdict of course. Oh, and did I mention there is no Al Qaeda in Iraq? Sigh. -ed. ]

All Truthers, All The Time

"MIAMI — Many potential jurors in the Jose Padilla terrorism-support case say they aren’t sure who directed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because they don’t trust reporters or the federal government.

“There are too many ifs, too many things going on,” one male juror said. “I don’t know the whole story.” Others say they just don’t pay close enough attention to world events to be certain." [ So let me be sure I have this straight. All those MSM 24-hour-a-day attacks on W are just to cover up that they're in bed together covering up that W was the real evil one behind 911? Oh. And yes, it's much more important that we instead pay attention to American Idol and Paris/Britney/< insert-today's-bimbo-here >. I won't write the bad words I'm thinking but I'm sure anyone with an IQ above 60 can guess what they are... -ed. ]

The BDS Pulse Beats Ever Stronger

"Only four in ten Democrats will commit to the idea that George Bush did not know of the 9/11 attack in advance. Sixty-one percent of them either believe he did or are unsure. Bear in mind that no evidence exists that he knew about it in advance, and also bear in mind that Democrats have spent most of the last four years blaming him for the fact that the attack successfully surprised the US when it occurred. Now they also want to believe that Bush was in on the plan that killed almost 3,000 Americans and could easily have killed thousands more."

The Purpose Of Freedom

"And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God. (Rev 22:1)

In fact, the only way we can perceive the abnormality is to reconnect with what is normal, but doing so requires a considerable amount of.... I don't know if "courage" is the right word, but you must be extremely secure in your beliefs, and you must be willing to stand out from the group and risk rejection and ridicule. As I have mentioned before, human "groupishness" long preceded the emergence of true human individuality, and 99% of human evolution took place in an archaic environment in which the group took precedence over the individual. Therefore, human beings have many built-in evolutionary tendencies that we must actively counter in order to be spiritually "normal," one of which is the desire to "fit in" and sacrifice our individuality to the group (and leftsim begins and ends with our primitive groupishness).

Another way of saying it is that we have many traits that are biologically or genetically "normal," but humanly abnormal. Much of religion, in its more conventional, exoteric sense (which I am not in any way belittling) involves teaching us what is normal for our created self, or soul. A perfect example is the Ten Commandments, as we were discussing a couple of weeks ago. None of the commandments are "normal" in the Darwinian sense. Rather, if we were to assemble a list of Darwinian commandments, it would be very short -- perhaps as few as two: 1) survive, by any means necessary, and 2) reproduce, by any means necessary. That's pretty much it, is it not? At best, you could extend it a bit to possibly include some superficially altruistic behaviors, but they would ultimately have to link back to the survival of one's genetic line.

That in itself is a critical idea: that there are cultural arrangements and attitudes that are normative for human beings. The source of these is not found "below," but "above." It is not genetic, but archetypal. We have a human past which is genetic, below, and behind, and a human future that is archetypal, above, and ahead. Spirituality allows us to be drawn into the attractor of our true self, which is located in the "future," but is in reality outside space and time-- to requote Schuon, The purpose of freedom is to enable us to choose what we are in the depths of our heart."

MI-5: There's Too Many Of Them...

"When people argue that the War on Terror "cannot be won by military, only by political means" they often exclude from consideration any political decisions which would deprive threats of their force-generation mechanisms or their means of command and control. Jihadi cells were allowed to flourish; operatives allowed to come and go; recruitment was permitted, sometimes openly in mosques because political considerations required that these activities not be impeded. Operational necessity often creates contradictions with the most cherished political institutions of a democracy that are very hard to reconcile. But that does not mean the contradictions are not real.

The "political" challenges facing the West are not only about setting up "democratic institutions" in the Middle East, or forcing Israel to accomodate Palestine. They also have to do with finding ways to shut down enemy force generation mechanisms without instituting an authoritarianism or creating a domestic tyranny. But the problem won't be solved until it is squarely recognized as needing a solution.

One of the most worrisome effects of the political decisions that the Counterterrorism Blog regrets is that it may have allowed terror groups to obtain "authority supremacy" within the Muslim communities in Britain, which occurs when a group of citizens fears and respects a shadow government more than it does the legitimately constituted and elected authorities." [ Bingo. -ed. ]

I'm Sure Everyone Will "Help"

"You have to hand it to the Pakistanis. When they lose something important -- such as nuclear material -- they don't keep it a secret. They want everybody, no matter how militant or crazed, to be on the lookout for it." [ Move along now. Nothing for you to see here... -ed. ]

Fred's "Firemen"

"Sometimes, you read or hear something, and an image forms in your mind that just won’t go away. For me, one of those images comes from the 2002 news stories about religious police in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, who beat young girls trying to escape a burning school. Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and black robes, 15 innocent girls were locked in a blazing building to burn while firemen watched helplessly. [ Unfortunately, he may be a bit off here. If they were firemen worth the name they would have saved them regardless. I suspect they're more like Ray Bradbury's "Firemen" in the final analysis. How I wish someone would prove me wrong. -ed. ]

Not all Saudis support this sort of extremism, but many Muslim radicals reject the premise that women should have even the most basic rights. These include the right to vote, to work, to drive, to choose one’s own husband, to charge a man with abuse or simply to move about without male escort." [ But of course my criticism is small potatoes. RTWT. And I don't see any other candidate of either party being this (properly) agressive. Oh, I forgot. He isn't a candidate. Yet. -ed. ]

Drum Jumps The Truther Shark?

"Nuclear and biological weapons? What nuclear and biological weapons, or genuine threat of same exists in the Middle East, Kevin? Iran assures us they only [want] nuclear power for peaceful use. Iraq ... well, do you even want to go there? I thought there was no WMD threat in Iraq, Kevin. Do tell, what have I missed? Or are you simply conjuring this threat to America up out of whole cloth, the way the Left always insists the Right has been doing all along?

And as for, how to reduce Arab resentment of the West? You mean, as in talk, the way we did with North Korea until one day the weapons miraculously one day just ... emerged from the ground?" (HT Glenn) [ I'm sure Kevin will retract it quickly. Otherwise he'd have to learn to think independently... -ed. ]

And It Really Is A Hole...

(link) "TIME.COM WON'T LIKE DON SURBER'S TAKE: "The 1,363rd most visited Web site in the world tried to diss the president of the United States as not being among the world’s 100 most influential people.""

But What Does Al Qaeda Think?

"What makes this so odd is that al Qaeda itself has repeatedly said that Iraq is the biggest battlefield in their war against civilization. Here is Zawahiri, for example, writing to Zarqawi in July 2005:

I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with
in terms of fighting battle in the heart of the Islamic world, which was
formerly the field for major battles in Islam’s history, and what is now the
place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era…

Democrats like Murtha are so committed to surrender that they feel constrained to deny the obvious fact that our precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would hand al Qaeda a victory of historic proportions."

MSMemory Hole Watch (Part 23965)

(link) "MORE BOGUS KYOTO HISTORY FROM REUTERS: "President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing it would cost U.S. jobs and that it wrongly excluded 2012 goals for poorer nations such as China."

Er, no. The U.S. refused to ratify Kyoto under President Clinton. We've been over this before. It's all spelled out in Wikipedia, even. Really, if Reuters can't get simple things like this right, why should we trust them for actual news?"

Why Fred's Coming...

"But the key to Thompson's hesitation may lie elsewhere: It's what presidential candidates have traditionally had to do to get elected. You go hat in hand and you beg money from people who have had enough success in life to give them a sense of entitlement. If you've had the ability to make millions selling plumbing fixtures, shouldn't you have some input on the next Secretary of State?

It is this sort of system that produces a George Bush as a presidential candidate. I had a conversation with a rich young man, more thoughtful than most, who has had some success in politics. He had been in one of those rooms with Bush, everyone there just like him, just like Bush. He wondered if Bush ever met anyone other than the people just like him—wealthy, confident and privileged. Is this a system that produces a president that has any idea how most of the people in America live?

The worst time running for president is in the early months, going door to door like a condo salesman, asking the guys with check books to invest in your campaign. Mitt Romney is great at it. Thompson hates it. His strategy may be to come in in the middle of this campaign, capitalize on the discomfort Republicans have with the field and gamble on good poll numbers to create excitement. If that happens, the money will come.

But what are the odds it can happen? Romney raised $23 million during the first quarter of 2007. But Thompson just announced he was considering a run for president and his poll numbers jumped Romney to put him in third place behind John McCain and Rudy Giuliani—with no announcement, no organization and no campaign.

The internet and the power of average people to raise huge sums for candidates has been demonstrated, by Howard Dean in 2004 and by Barack Obama this last quarter. Thompson may finally be able to see how he can get there with small contributors and build a grassroots organization without the inevitable compromises that big money campaigns dictate. Go to Google and type in “Draft Fred.”

***

The problem with our politics is that the people who can get elected president are the people we wouldn't want as president. If there is anybody who can upset the status quo, create a new dynamic and overcome the process it would be Fred Dalton Thompson." [ Ding ding ding ding ding. He's got a shot at breaking through the essential problem we face as a culture. My traditional formulation has been: Anyone smart enough to be President is smart enough NOT to want to be President. But that last paragraph has another essential element in its first sentence. Lots more on this later... -ed. ]

The "Plan" Of The "Tiny Lights"

"This is just stunning. Neither of these tiny lights of American politics (nor their colleagues) seem to recognize that just as it takes two sides to wage war, it takes two sides to end it. The Democrats think they can end the war simply by packing the troops up and bringing them home.

Is it possible for two such prominent politicians to be that stupid?

1. The war will not end in Iraq just because US troops evacuate. The insurgencies will continue more intensely. The power vacuum created by American departure will have to be filled by someone. Iran is already operating inside Iraq; we can expect their presence there to climb dramatically if the US packs up and leaves. Many knowledgeable observers say there is a real risk that Saudi Arabia will send troops into Iraq to protect Iraqi Sunnis from the Shias and their Iranian sponsors. This is a recipe for a regional war that no one wants, even Iran.

2. The enemy of the United States in Iraq is not really either Shia or Sunni militias. It is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda will not agree that the war is "ended" just because Pelosi and Reid say so. They will absolutely see the Democrat-envisioned withdrawal of US troops as a stunning victory on their part. But, in al Qaeda's mind, it will not be a fin de la guerre victory. It will be a victory that will embolden them to intensify their offensive operations against the West.

The Democrats' plan to "end the war" is really a plan to prolong it, increase its violence and bloodshed and raise the probability that the war will be brought to our shores in ways and lethality we cannot yet foresee."

Where Is The Truck Debris?

This will be just hilarious for the idiot "truthers" to "explain". Now why is it that they have a predominantly paranoid schizophrenic relationship to reality? Maybe this might be related...

This is my favorite comment from the thread. Heh:

"So, let me see if I have this straight: Bush & Friends can't even
get away with firing 8 lawyers without news of it being turning into a national
scandal.

But...Bush & Friends are savvy enough to orchestrate the most
diabolical plot in our history, killing thousands, and nobody among the
thousands of people that would've been involved in this elaborate plot has
opened their yap to anyone, anywhere. Oh yeah, and if Bush & Friends are so
good at hoaxing people, why didn't we "find" any WMD's in Iraq? If they could
kill over 3,000 people on our own soil it wouldn't be hard to plant a small nuke
in a bunker near Baghdad and call it Saddam's."

UPDATE: And how can this not be my favorite picture?

Diane The Flower Poster Child?

"If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove true, she may be on the way to morphing from a respected senior Democrat into another poster child for congressional corruption.

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband’s pocket — the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband’s companies. . . .

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while”there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest … because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein’s conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts.”

And the director of the Project on Government Oversight who examined the evidence of wrongdoing assembled by California writer Peter Byrne told him that “the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein’s conflict of interest is irrefutable.”"

On (Ethnocentrically) Availing Ourselves Nought

"Do you remember that little difficulty a few months back over the Pope’s indelicate quotation of Manuel II? Many Muslims were very upset about his speech (or his speech as reported on the BBC et al), so they protested outside Westminster Cathedral in London demanding “capital punishment” for the Pope, and they issued a fatwa in Pakistan calling on Muslims to kill His Holiness, and they firebombed a Greek Orthodox Church and an Anglican Church in Nablus, and they murdered a nun in Somalia and a couple of Christians in Iraq. As Tasnim Aslam of the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad helpfully clarified, “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.” So don’t say we’re violent or we’ll kill you. As I wrote in National Review at the time, quod erat demonstrandum.

But that’s a debating society line. Islam isn’t interested in winning the debate, it’s interested in winning the real fight – the clash of civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla. That’s why it doesn’t care about the inherent contradictions of the argument: in the Middle East early in 2002, I lost count of the number of Muslims I met who believed simultaneously (a) that 9/11 was pulled off by the Mossad and (b) that it was a great victory for Islam. Likewise, it’s no stretch to feel affronted at the implication that you’re violently irrational and to threaten to murder anyone who says so. Western societies value logic because we value talk, and talks, and talking, on and on and on: that’s pretty much all we do, to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just something else to talk about interminably. But, if you don’t prize debate and you merely want to win, getting hung up on logic is only going to get in your way. Take the most devastating rapier wit you know – Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward – and put him on a late-night subway train up against a psycho with a baseball bat. The withering putdown, the devastating aphorism will avail him nought."

About That War For Oil

"Iraq is currently the central battlefield in a complex struggle to over ideology, geopolitics and energy. It is a test of strength between radical Islamic ideology and the West. It is about sectarian conflict within the Muslim world. But it is also about Russia's place in the Middle East and Europe's energy future. Those issues are not bound up by anything local to Baghdad. Blocked or diverted from one place, it is like a current that will move somewhere else." [ Like I just said, just go camp at Wretchards. No war for oil? How about war for survival then? And you were so certain the Cold War ended weren't you? Fred gets it too. -ed. ]

Stopped Clock At The BBC!

"Showing Islam the benefits of democracy, eh? That will go down well with Democrats in Congress. Maybe the idea will fare better in Europe. After all they have already retreated to their home ground and find they don't have enough "boots on the ground" even there. BBC Newsnight reports on how Islamic attacks on the United States and Europe originated in large part in London itself. (Hat tip: LGF)"



[ Watch the whole thing. This is a jaw-dropper even if it didn't come from the BEEB. Wretchard is rocking this week. -ed. ]

Fred Gets It

"It bothers Americans when we’re told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up — and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we’d rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again.

But we cool off. We’re big boys and girls, after all, and we don’t really bruise that easily. We’re also hopeful that, eventually, our ostrich-headed allies will realize there’s a world war going on out there and they need to pick a side — the choice being between the forces of civilization and the forces of anarchy. Considering the fact that the latter team is growing stronger and bolder daily, while most of our European Union friends continue to dismantle their defenses, that day may not be too long in coming.

In the meantime, let’s be realistic about the world we live in. Mexican leaders apparently have an economic policy based on exporting their own citizens, while complaining about U.S. immigration policies that are far less exclusionary than their own. The French jail perfectly nice people for politically incorrect comments, but scold us for holding terrorists at Guantanamo.

Russia, though, takes the cake. Here is a government apparently run by ex-KGB agents who have no problem blackmailing whole countries by turning the crank on their oil pipelines. They’re not doing anything shady, they say. They can’t help it if their opponents are so notoriously accident-prone. Criticize these guys and you might accidentally drink a cup of tea laced with a few million dollars worth of deadly, and extremely rare, radioactive poison. Oppose the Russian leadership, and you could trip and fall off a tall building or stumble into the path of a bullet." [ Wow. RTWT. This is not only clear but seems to have set a topics/labels per paragraph record. I was impressed with his stint on Paul Harvey and it's looking like it wasn't a fluke. -ed. ]

"No Kuffar Is Innocent"

But don't worry, MPAC ends the piece by pointing out that "he isn't really an extremist". It's fascinating to speculate on what it would take to make him one, isn't it?

Are You Still In Denial?

"Polling data just released (April 24, 2007) in a rigorously conducted face-to-face University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org interview survey of 4384 Muslims conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007—1000 Moroccans, 1000 Egyptians, 1243 Pakistanis, and 1141 Indonesians—reveal that 65.2% of those interviewed (almost 2/3, hardly a “fringe minority”) desired this outcome (i.e., “To unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”), including 49% of “moderate” Indonesian Muslims. The internal validity of these data about the present longing for a Caliphate is strongly suggested by a concordant result: 65.5% of this Muslim sample approved the proposition “To require a strict [emphasis added] application of Shari’a law in every Islamic country.”

Notwithstanding ahistorical drivel from Western Muslim “advocacy” groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which lionizes both the Caliphate and the concomitant institution of Shari’a as promulgators of “a peaceful and just society,” the findings from the University of Maryland/ WorldPublicOpinion.org poll are ominous."

I See Nothing!

The Dems would have you believe that this video doesn't exist. Or that they were so stupid as to be brainwashed by W. Including back in '98. Sigh.

Al Qaeda Mind Control Beams Silence Democrats

"Awareness of al Qaeda is slowly growing in the minds of mainstream media reporters who have been hamstrung by the civil war schema that they simply cannot get out of their heads. Even so, there is not the slightest mention of the fact that al Qaeda was probably behind yesterday's bombing. Millions upon millions of readers of countless stories like this all over the world will read about that bombing and then shake their heads at the escalating "civil war" in Iraq. And then they will rage at George Bush for what he has done. Here is CNN's coverage of that event, and, again, not the slightest hint that this was an attack by al Qaeda (because, I assume, the reporter thinks this was part of the civil war). The CNN story even notes that this was a suicide bomber. Many stories fail to mention that key detail. It is important because virtually all suicide bombers are members of al Qaeda, as I detailed here. As such, this bombing was not part of that civil war. It was another atrocity designed to provoke a civil war that has largely abated since the troop surge began. That's the key distinction, and it cannot be emphasized often enough. People just don't get it, so it needs to be explained repeatedly until they do. In fact, what's missing from discussions by Bush and McCain and others who have the details right is the emphatic statement that these attacks are not part of the civil war; they are attempts by al Qaeda to provoke a civil war. Just stating that these attacks were perpetrated by al Qaeda does not go far enough to change the thinking of those whose minds are ensnared by an obsolete civil war schema. You have to specifically tell them that they are wrong to think like that. That gets their attention (because they are under the comfortable impression that the civil war debate was settled long ago), and it momentarily arouses disbelief (trust me -- I've been down this path with people many times). When they are presented with incontrovertible facts regarding the role of al Qaeda in Iraq in a moment of disbelief, it has been my experience that minds change (including liberal minds). But you have to directly assert that these attacks are not examples of the civil war in action, nor do they represent sectarian violence. If you don't, people have great difficulty assimilating the idea that attacks by Sunni al Qaeda against Shiite civilians do not constitute examples of sectarian violence/civil war. ***

Al Qaeda's strategy is simple, but it is also amazingly effective. It has even magically caused Democratic leaders to adopt an eerie code of silence on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq. Using some sort of secret mind-control ray beam (I guess), al Qaeda directs Democrats to robotically talk about going to Afghanistan to fight terrorists. Meanwhile, al Qaeda slaughters hundreds of innocent Shiites every month Iraq -- right before your very eyes -- which mainstream media reporters then obediently mischaracterize as "sectarian violence." It's creepy. I feel like I've just slipped into the Twilight Zone..." [ And lucky for us the Iranians would never ever cooperate with Al Qaeda. Never. Really? -ed. ]

COIN Down The Gravity Well

"The measure of an insurgency's gravity well is its drawing power: its gravity. This takes two forms. It's the form of the people under the threat of insurgents at the end of the day, as Kilcullen noted when he said that insurgents won when, "the Sun goes down and the insurgents show up saying, 'If you’re not on our side, we’re going to kill you.'"

The other form is when people who are not under threat of the insurgents are drawn to them, because they think the insurgents are the wave of the future, or the forces of right. These people don't have to join the insurgency out of fear. They do it willingly, because they want to fight America.

The measure of the gravity of an insurgency is those two things added together. We want to reduce that gravity.

So, we want to do two things.

1) We want to lessen the mass of the yellow-red "star," and therefore decrease the size and power of its gravity well.

2) We want to pull the green and blue objects away from it.

How do you do it?

Goal One:

The first goal is the province of military and clandestine/covert intelligence operations. You have to build intelligence on where the insurgents are, who they're dealing with, and so forth. The clearest model here is how we captured Saddam. Our military engagement allowed us to start gathering intelligence. We put every scrap of intelligence into a database, not just on what we knew, but on how people we encountered were related to each other. We were building a map of the gravity well.

Once we had the map, we found Saddam. He was, you might say, right at the center of it.

Where we engage the enemy directly, whether with military or civilian intelligence forces, this is the method. You map the insurgency with databases of this kind. Once you begin to have a clear picture, you start breaking up the mass. Killing and capturing yellow/red nodes is part of this.

But it's not the only part. Yellow nodes are easily replaced with red ones; red ones can be replaced with blue ones. More important than killing the members is breaking its myths. Organizations like this are built on stories: powerful stories, that everyone around it believes. Stories like, "America is weak and decadent, and the faith of the pure will defeat her Marines." Break those stories, and you radically decrease the mass of the insurgent star.

Do that, and its pull becomes weaker. It gets smaller, it weakens, it starts to die away.

Goal Two:

If an object is in the gravity well of a star or a planet, you can pull it away. You just need an object with a much deeper gravity well. You need a competitor.

Imagine if we had a star a whole lot bigger than the sun, a lot denser. We can pick it up and move it around. Let's say we set it down on the mattress, right by our solar system, so that it sank in deep.

What would happen is that all the objects currently in orbit around the sun would begin to drift in its direction. They would start rolling that way. If our huge star was big enough, and close enough, it would even tear off the outer layers of the sun.

There are many places in the world where our enemies might go for shelter, and try to set up new networks. In those places, we need to build opposing, competing gravity wells.

What would these look like? Probably they would already exist, and therefore have an in-built legitimacy. They would be Muslim organizations for the most part, because the insurgency is so heavily committed to Islam. They would be able to reach out to the networks of young men who might otherwise be drawn into terrorism.

Maybe they would look like the Nahdlatul Ulama.

The NU is a gigantic Muslim organization in Indonesia. It has fully forty million members. While it is religiously conservative, and therefore able to speak to the deeply religious Muslims that might be drawn into al Qaeda or Jemmah Islamiyah, it is not hateful. It even has a paramilitary organization, the Banser, that defends Christian churches on Christmas Day, and at other times they seem in danger of attack by radicals." [ Blackfive just got added to the classics. RTWT. And where do you think the Dems come out re breaking Islamist myth building? I know what I think... -ed. ]

In Iraq Iran Vietnam With Petraeus

"There were some followups later on, in which Petraeus was pressed on the “how high up the Iranian line does this chain of command go? And he repeated that we know that some of the people we’re interrogating report to General Sulemaini, the head of the Qods Force, but beyond that we don’t know.

As I’ve said before, this is lawyer-talk, not intelligence talk. And of course the journalist’s question betrays the usual lack of knowlege of the Iranian chain of command. The Revolutionary Guards, of which Qods is the foreign arm, report to the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), NOT to the president. So the reference to Ahmadinejad shows the journalist’s ignorance. But to believe that a Qods campaign is being conducted without Khamenei’s approval is as silly as the belief that a Special Forces campaign could be conducted without White House approval. No way.

Finally, notice the data he provides on suicide attacks: eighty to ninety percent are carried out by foreigners via Syria. Put that together with the knowledge that the most dangerous explosives are coming from Iran. Then ask yourself why so many people keep talking about “insurgency,” which implies a domestic reaction to the presence of coalition forces on Iraqi soil.

And the answer is: because it’s all about Vietnam."

And the first commenter has it nailed: "This war began November 4, 1979 in Iran and that is exactly where it will end. The US and the West will come to that conclusion eventually but only after the stakes have been stacked catastrophically high."

Our Crappy MSMemory Hole Today

""All of these papers had hours after the Times of London report to get the London bombings into the story. The Times goes to bed at 7 pm ET and hits the feeds and wire services. None of the American media bothered to check on Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. Readers should ask themselves whether that comes from a lack of intellectual curiosity, or whether it comes from a bias that puts the circumstances of the detention of a terrorist at a higher priority than the terrorism itself."

Either way, they're doing a crappy job. But if he'd had a connection to Jack Abramoff, you can bet they'd have mentioned it!"

Omar On Stakes And (Tinfoil) Consequences

"Instead coming up with ideas to help the US Democrats are trying to stop the effort to stabilize Iraq and rescue the Middle East from a catastrophe.

I am an Iraqi. To me the possible consequences of this vote are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say, ‘Well, it’s not worth it.Time to leave’.

To the Democrats my life and the lives of twenty-five other million Iraqis are evidently not worth trying for. They shouldn’t expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes. The administration made mistakes and admitted them. My people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.

But now, in the last two months, we have had a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics. These were reached after studying previous mistakes and were designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

This strategy, although its tools are not yet even fully deployed, is showing promising signs of progress.

General Petraeus said yesterday that things will get tougher before they get easier in Iraq. This is the sort of of fact-based, realistic assessment of the situation which politicians should listen to when they discuss the war thousands of miles away.

We must give this effort the chance it deserves. We should provide all the support necessary. We should heed constructive critique, not the empty rhetoric that the ‘war is lost.’

It is not lost. Quitting is not an option we can afford—not in America and definitely not in Iraq.

I said it before and I say it again; this war must be won. If it is not the world as you in the United States know it today (and as we here in Iraq dream for it to become) will exist only in books of history. The forces of extremism that we confront today are more determined, more resourceful, and more barbaric than the Nazi or the communists of the past. Add to that the weapons they can improvise or acquire through their unholy alliance with rogue regimes, combined with their fluid structure and mobility… well, they can be more deadly than any forces we have faced in the past. Much more." [ Democrats think they can cut and run and everything will be fine (well, not counting the immediate genocide that will ensue in Iraq -- what Cambodia? -- and renewed pressure on Afghanistan as the Islamists refocus there afterwards). They forget that AQ keeps coming back again and again to their favored pressure points -- inevitably NYC and DC. Remind me again whether those places are predominantly red or blue? Getting it yet? -ed. ]

Who Said This?

"Do you think it’s possible to win the Iraq War?

Here’s what I think: this is a real war, extended beyond the borders of Iraq.

As in the more general war on terror?

The war on terror is real. People would have you believe it’s not real. This is not Vietnam. This particular situation is not the same wherein we can walk away and just leave destruction behind us. No, we can’t. Anyone who has paid attention to what [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad is saying, what all the mullahs are saying in this country and in England, and in all of the Arab world, this is serious—they’re calling for the destruction of America and all democracy and that’s what’s going on. We could lose this war." [ Would you believe Jon Voight? Cool. -ed. ]

On Obama's Puerile Socialism

"In case you don't know what comparable worth is, it's an idea concocted by feminists in the 1970s or early 1980s. They said that jobs typically held by women pay less than jobs typically held by men. To eliminate this inequity, somebody–the courts, maybe, or some administrative agency, presumably with appeals to the courts–should decide what those jobs were really worth, based on some sort of convoluted criteria. ***

Earth to Obama: There's something out there called the labor market."

Who Controls The Present: Fred Thompson

"The British are, in the main, a particularly polite people, but there is a point when the desire not to offend the easily offended becomes an even bigger problem. We've already seen an English organization ban images of Piglet, the harmless character from the classic Winnie the Pooh books, because of protests by those who imagine that simply seeing a cartoon pig is a violation of their civil rights. We've even seen the banning of pins bearing St. George's cross, because it reminds some of the Crusades -- accompanied by demands that Great Britain get rid of the venerable Union Jack for the same reason.

These views, common in the Middle East, are not just an academic or intellectual challenge. We have seen homegrown British terrorists act on the same lies and conspiracy theories that are now being used to silence teachers. Ideas do have consequences and we all need to understand that the war on terror is taking place as much in the realm of ideas as it is on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

America is a free country and we do not tell people what they can believe or say. We should realize, however, that there are people in America who are also telling their children that the holocaust is a lie and that those who say otherwise are their enemies. We cannot prevent them from doing so, but we also cannot let them promote their agenda by claiming they are victimized by historical facts.

This would be a good place to quote an important British writer, George Orwell, who wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." Even in America, our children are often taught a watered down, inoffensive and culturally sensitive version of events ranging from the Crusades to the battle at the Alamo.

It's time for people who believe that they have a stake in Western civilization and its traditions to get a little backbone -- even if it offends somebody."

Unless Harry Reid Does It For Them...

"It's possible that Reid imagined that his analytical problems are over simply because he has identified the war's loser. The truth is that his troubles are only beginning. He must tell Americans to whom they wish their army to surrender in Iraq.

That Reid is desperately trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory isn't surprising. His party requires an American defeat in Iraq in order to win the congressional and presidential elections next year.

What is generically known as "the war" is, in fact, three wars.

The first war was about changing the status quo in Iraq. ***

The second war was triggered by forces that wanted to prevent America from creating a new status quo that favored its interests along with the interests of a majority of Iraqis. ***

The third and current war started toward the end of last year when the disparate forces fighting against the democratic government found a new point of convergence in a quest for driving America out. The Bush administration understood this and responded with its "surge" policy by dispatching more troops to Baghdad.

Unlike the two previous wars in which anti-American forces pursued a variety of goals, their sole aim this time is to drive the Americans out. In that sense, al Qaeda and other Islamist agents in Iraq have forged an unofficial alliance with residual Saddamites, criminal gangs, pan-Shiite chauvinists and small groups of Iraqis who fight out of genuine nationalistic but misguided motives.

Despite continued violence, America and its Iraqi allies are winning this third war, too. Their enemies are like the man in a casino who wins a heap of tokens at the roulette table, but is told at the cashier that those cannot be exchanged for real money.

The terrorists, the insurgents, the criminal gangs and the chauvinists of all ilk are still killing many people. But they cannot translate those killings into political gains. Their constituencies are shrinking, and the pockets of territory where they hide are becoming increasingly exposed. They certainly cannot drive the Americans out. No power on earth can. Unless, of course, Harry Reid does it for them."