Saturday, April 03, 2004

 

California Yankee's 17-year old son has an eloquent response to the killings and celebration over American deaths in Fallujah.

This attack will give new ammunition to many wishing our forces removed from Iraq. I write this imploring them to reconsider. After all I have heard about Iraq, the killings and reconstruction, even the blatant murder of innocents, why do I still support this? Life is supposed to be precious; indeed, what could possibly be more sacred? Why, you may ask, does a teenager support the continued struggle to bring Democracy to the Middle East? My answer is simple, and only three words long:

Freedom. Isn’t. Free.

Live your lives to the fullest; this nation provides you that outstanding opportunity. I believe others should have it as well.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:04 PM 0 comments

 

The Organization of American Historians just had a big convention and honored Howard Zinn for his contribution to American history. Gag. I learn from a bulletin board I'm on for teachers of AP US History that many teachers have their students read some or all of Howard Zinn. Some teach it as a way to see bias in historiography. They often pair excerpts from Zinn with excerpts from Paul Johnson's A History of the American People. If you want a very readable narrative of American history from a more conservative point of view, I recommend Johnson's book. Actually, all that makes Johnson's book conservative is that he has an optimistic and admiring view of the United States. I have only looked at portions of Zinn's book, but here is a review of his book from Michael Kazin that sums up how bad this book is.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:30 PM 0 comments

 

Check out Outside the Beltway's caption contest.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:17 PM 0 comments

 

A political science professor looks at the chances that Bush could end up winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college. While such an outcome would be deliciously ironic, I think the chances are slim to none.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:45 PM 0 comments

 

Even in Massachusetts, people don't seem to want to pay higher taxes. Imagine that. What a surprise.

New tax data reveal a teeny and shrinking number of taxpayers are checking the box to voluntarily cough up 5.85 percent of their income, rather than the mandatory 5.3 percent.

The state check-off was created two years ago by GOP lawmakers, who were annoyed with liberals' tax-hiking efforts.

Only 510 people have elected to pay higher taxes, out of the 1.6 million taxpayers who have filed to date, or .03 percent of the population - and that's down nearly half from this time last year.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:47 PM 0 comments

 

It really is a shame that some Democrats are so dominated by pro-abortion interest groups that they couldn't support a bill to make it a crime of murder to kill a child in utero in an attack on a pregnant woman. And what does it say about John Kerry that he made an appearance for one his few votes this year in the Senate to vote against this bill.

Last week, by a vote of 61-to-38, the Senate passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, also known as "Laci and Conner's Law," which makes the death or injury to a "child in utero" a federal crime when it is committed in the course of another violent federal crime. President Bush immediately applauded: "Pregnant women who have been harmed by violence, and their families, know that there are two victims -- the mother and the unborn child -- and both victims should be protected by federal law. I look forward to signing this important legislation into law."

Abortion, medical treatment, and the acts of the woman herself are specifically exempted. But some people can't get abortion politics out of their heads.

Sharon Rocha, Laci Peterson's mother and Conner Peterson's grandmother, wrote in 2003: "What I find difficult to understand is why groups and senators who champion the pro-choice cause are blind to the fact that these two-victim crimes are the ultimate violation of choice." In a Feb. 26 statement rejecting a substitute bill proposed by Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., Rocha said: "Laci knew that Conner was her son, and I know it too. Two people, Laci and Conner, would be here with us today if they had not been murdered. There were two victims in this crime, not one."

Last week, only 38 senators voted against Laci and Conner's law. Sen. John Kerry was one of them. In a letter to constituents, Sen. Kerry expressed concern that, even though abortion is specifically exempted, recognizing two victims might somehow undermine Roe v. Wade.

Was it a profile in courage? Maybe you think so.

But isn't there something profoundly unattractive about a man who can see a pregnant woman brutally attacked and worry about abortion politics? That's a cold man. Cold, ideological, mechanical, mean.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:43 AM 0 comments

 

Germany is very depressed about itself.

This is how bad things have become in Germany: at the five-star Adlon hotel, close to the Brandenburg Gate, they dump the laundry into lorries every night and ship it 80 miles to Poland.

There it is washed and the following day it is shipped back to Berlin. Yet even after taking into account drivers' pay and fuel, doing the washing in Poland costs only a fraction of German laundering.

The Adlon is not just any hotel. It is a symbol. The building is Berlin's most prestigious establishment, the place for the wealthy and the powerful to stay.

The hotel is a facsimile of an older version built in 1907 and largely destroyed in the war. It was patronised by Kaiser Wilhelm II and inspired Greta Garbo's 1932 film Grand Hotel.

The story of the Adlon's laundry is just one example cited by Gabor Steingart, the author of a new German bestseller, Germany: Decline of a Superstar, which has the nation hooked with its withering portrait of a country on the brink of failure.

The book shot to the top of the bestseller list three days after its publication largely because, according to its 41-year-old author, he is the first German who has dared to break the taboo and reveal the truth.

"It is simply not profitable or viable to have German workers, who cost considerably more than they produce," Mr Steingart says.

"Our productive core is melting away and Germany is going downhill," he says, drawing on a cigar and leaning back in a leather armchair in his glass-panelled office in central Berlin.

"The GDP of both the British and French is higher than the Germans' and this is a shocking discovery for us. In the 1970s, Britain's GDP was only half of ours."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:40 AM 0 comments

 

Norm Scheiber details the bickering over money that split up Kerry's ad team.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:35 AM 0 comments

 

Scrappleface has Senator Kerry's reaction to the Pope's position on abortion.

Kerry Calls Pope's Abortion Stance 'Not Nuanced'

(2004-03-29) -- The strict anti-abortion stance of Pope John Paul II is "tragically not nuanced," according to U.S. Democrat presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry, a practicing Roman Catholic.

"I pray for an America where rosary beads are sold in abortion clinic gift shops," said Mr. Kerry. "But I won't be a Catholic president, or even, as John F. Kennedy called himself, 'a president who happens to be Catholic'. I will be a president who happens to say he is Catholic but doesn't feel constrained by the black-and-white teachings of a church which is the bedrock of values, of sureness about who I am."

Mr. Kerry made the remarks as he left Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Flexible Doctrine.

"I dream of a nation that honors people who understand the difference between personal beliefs and public actions," said Mr. Kerry, who just last week hurried back to the Senate chambers to vote against a bill that makes harming a fetus a criminal offense. "All during that Senate vote, I was meditating on the rosary...you know, quietly repeating 'Hail Marys' and 'Our Fathers,' etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:21 AM 0 comments

 

Powerline links to this quiz by Michele Catalano to guess which of the following quotes were from Democratic Underground.

Guess which quote from Democratic Underground is not real:

[All quotes deal with the death of the four dead American contractors whose bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge in Fallujah]

Contractors wear hardhats and carry lunch pails - These guys are mercenaries.
Death to ALL mercenaries. The beer is on me.
Sad, if I were the wife I would have said hell no you won't go; the wife must have said great pay-check and the hubby, yeah, can buy a Hummer when I get back.
These swine were MERCENARIES. Paid Hessians. Murderers for hire.
They're worse than Al-Queda. At least Al-Queda is fighting for a cause.
I say "too bad, so sad, bye-bye."
They are Mercenaries - They are in it for the money, they are thugs and hoodlums, working outside the boundaries of the law. And yesterday the Resistance got even with 4 of them in a barbecue ceremony, that alas pushed the bounds of good taste.
mercenaries - These men are just serial killers with a good retirement plan. They deserve what they get.
Answer below.

Suprise! They are all real. Every single one of those comments above were posted by real people on this DU thread.

WHile, we can't condemn an entire party for what some wingnuts write on an Internet bulletin board, it is a depressing look at what some people in this country think. They are happy for Americans to be killed and their corpses desecrated. They prefer Al Qaeda to those who are trying to build a functioning democracy and civil society in one of the most oppressed regions of the world.

Powerline also links to the efforts by Michael Friedman to get Democratic politicians to stop advertising on Daily Kos's site after Kos gloried in the death of the men in Fallujah. Friedman has gotten three politicians to pull their ads, but not the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Kos has since taken down his first reaction, but Friedman has a screen capture of his words. Kos is the biggest Democratic/liberal blogger on the web often passing Instapundit in daily hits.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:16 AM 0 comments

 

I don't understand why everyone is upset by what Paul Hornung said. Is it that they don't like him exposing the truth behind the arguments for affirmative action in college admissions?

Call it a Jimmy the Greek moment. This week it was Paul Hornung's turn. In a radio interview Tuesday with Detroit's WXYT-AM, the former Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner opined that his alma mater's football team can't afford to "stay as strict as we are as far as the academic structure is concerned because we've got to get the black athlete."

In came the denunciations. Talk radio had a field day. A Notre Dame official called the remarks "generally insensitive and specifically insulting" to all African-Americans who have worn the Irish jersey.

But amid the high dudgeon, it's easy to miss that essentially what Mr. Hornung was making is an affirmative-action argument. As the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter puts it, "Hornung's statement reminds me of that photo of University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman smiling on the Supreme Court steps after the affirmative-action decision last June, glowing in the assumption that lower standards are OK for black students." Ironically, the Hornung flap comes in the thick of an NCAA basketball tournament that underscores how too many of our colleges and universities already practice what Mr. Hornung preached.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:59 AM 0 comments

 

I dislike it when GOP supporters trumpet triumphalism. That usually goes right before a fall. I'd prefer cautious optimism. However, John Podhoretz is willing to go out on a limb celebrating the effect of yesterday's job numbers on the 2004 campaign.

If the Democrats also lose the ability to talk about the woeful lack of job creation, which is what yesterday's numbers portend for them, then it's nearly impossible to see what issue John Kerry will have to bash the president with.

Iraq? Doubtful. The disgusting desecrations this week of the bodies of four Americans killed in Fallujah seems only to have stiffened the resolve of the American people to stay the course and get tougher. It will be difficult for Kerry to outflank Bush when it comes to pacifying Iraq and continuing the effort to help build democratic institutions there.

Health care? The numbers do suggest that the American people trust Democrats far more than Republicans. But how many voters actually know that a voluntary prescription-drug benefit was added to Medicare last year? They will know after the Bush campaign gets going in earnest in the fall.

Without job growth as an issue, what do Democrats have to throw at Bush? Economic growth? The U.S. economy is growing at the fastest rate in 20 years - and more quickly than that of any other major industrialized nation.

Oil prices? George W. Bush ran in 2000 on the need to expand domestic oil production by drilling in Alaska, precisely to increase the amount of oil available to the world market and keep prices down. His plan was blocked by Democrats like John Kerry, who have no answer other than yelling at the Saudis.

Maalox may not be enough for Kerry and his campaign staff. They might need cases of Zantac and Tagamet also. These medications won't offer a solution to Kerry's electoral problem, but they will provide temporary relief for stomach upset.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:55 AM 0 comments

 

Two researchers conclude that it was racism that cost Bobby Jindal the Louisiana gubernatorial election.

White voters who had backed former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 1991, and who normally vote Republican, instead turned away from Jindal in the 2003 race, according to the analysis by Richard Skinner and Philip A. Klinkner. “Duke voters,” particularly in north Louisiana, were enough to provide the new governor her margin, Skinner and Klinkner suggest.

That's a depressing finding.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:52 AM 0 comments

 

John O'Sullivan asks, "What would FDR do?"

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:42 AM 0 comments

Friday, April 02, 2004

 

Jon Lauck, author of the Daschle v. Thune blog gives some interesting history on Daschle's first run for the Senate.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:44 PM 0 comments

 

Robert Guest looks at why so many countries are failing in Africa. He should read Hernando de Soto's book, The Mystery of Capital, to understand the reason.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:28 PM 0 comments

 

Oh, what a shame. It sounds like Gore's efforts to have his own cable network has fallen through.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:18 PM 0 comments

 

Michael Crowley has a biting article on how Max Cleland became a "mascot" for the Kerry campaign.

Cleland is that rarest of breeds in politics: more interesting as a loser than he was as a winner. He was an extremely unimpressive, and extremely dull, politician. He won his Senate seat in 1996 by a mere 30,000 votes, with just 49 percent of the vote. In that campaign, Cleland made up for his lack of political skill—the Atlanta-Journal Constitution noted that he "has never been known as a deep thinker" and was prone to "platitudes" in debates—by harnessing the emotional power of his war injuries, suffered in a noncombat situation when another soldier accidentally dropped a live grenade near him. His campaign ran ads of Cleland fighting his way through everyday tasks, like driving and getting dressed.

There was little reason to expect Cleland to be a star senator, and he wasn't. Nor was he anything like the Bush-hating, Al Franken liberal he's become on the trail with Kerry. Cleland was one of the Senate's most conservative Democrats. In 2001 he supported the huge Bush tax cut. And although he now fumes that the Iraq war had no rationale other than Halliburton profiteering, he actually supported the Senate's Iraq resolution in October of 2002. Sen. Cleland pretty well embodied the kind of Vichy Democrat Howard Dean raised $50 million attacking.

But at the end of the day, Cleland was still a vote for Tom Daschle to be Senate leader. And so Bush set out to eliminate him. The president visited Georgia six times in support of Cleland's challenger, Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss, turning the election into a referendum on the president's popularity. Most of Chambliss' attacks were based on Cleland's most "liberal" votes on social issues like partial-birth abortion. But in the race's closing weeks, Bush and Chambliss hammered at the fact that Cleland was voting with Senate Democrats against Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department because of its infamous provision limiting union rights. The message was that Cleland was kowtowing to big labor at the cost of protecting America. Most famously, Chambliss ran a vicious ad on Cleland's homeland security votes featuring images of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. In the popular liberal mythology, the ad disgustingly questioned Cleland's patriotism. "To this day I am motivated by—and I will be throughout this campaign—the most craven moment I've ever seen in politics, when the Republican Party challenged this man's patriotism in the last campaign," John Kerry has said.

But that's not what happened. The ad, though sleazy in its use of Osama and Saddam, didn't question Cleland's patriotism. It questioned his political courage and judgment. It focused narrowly on his behavior in office and his actual votes against the Homeland Security Department. With images of Bin Laden and Saddam flashing onscreen, a narrator declared that, "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead." The ad then listed Cleland's votes against the Homeland Security Department and said he was stalling "the president's vital homeland security efforts." It concluded: "Max Cleland says he has the courage to lead, but the record proves Max Cleland is just misleading."

Unfortunately, Cleland did a lousy job of responding to such attacks. As he was pummeled on national security—clearly the issue of the day as war with Iraq neared, Cleland stuck to stale Democratic themes like Social Security. Occasionally, Cleland and his supporters counterattacked, but they were ineffective. They reminded reporters that Chambliss had evaded serving in Vietnam and even tried in vain to drum up last-minute stories about Bush's National Guard service. Cleland also called in former Vietnam veterans to defend him and hit back at Chambliss—including, most prominently, John Kerry.

There's something patronizing about the way Democrats now view Max Cleland—and faux naive about the way they view his defeat. Was Chambliss' ad really that much worse than what happens in any election? Chambliss' criticism was based on Cleland's actual votes. The fact that Cleland volunteered for Vietnam and Chambliss avoided it means something, but it certainly doesn't mean that Cleland should be immune from all attacks on his Senate voting record. Georgians were voting for senator, not platoon leader, after all. And yet Democrats see the attacks on Cleland as categorically worse than any others. It's hard to think that's not partly an emotional reaction to a man confined to a wheelchair. But politics ain't beanbag, as they say. Cleland is hardly the first man ever to be savaged in a political campaign. Michael Dukakis, to name one, had a pretty similar experience: He was brutalized by Republicans who painted him as weak on defense, and he failed to hit back effectively. But you won't see Dukakis warming up crowds for Kerry any time soon.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:52 PM 0 comments

 

Who knew? Duke has bought up the rights to everyhting in the public domain.

Duke University, of Durham, North Carolina, purchased the entirety of the public domain late last evening for a fee of 2.2 trillion dollars. Sources familiar with the negotiation report that Duke's reclamation of the public domain is unprecedented. As a result of the purchase, Duke University is the sole rights-holder to a huge collection of materials, including the Bible, the works of Shakespeare and Dante, and Francis Scott Key's The Star Spangled Banner.

April Fool's

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:46 PM 0 comments

 

Now, Bob Shrum is going to have a bigger job in the Kerry ad campaign. Expect more populist messages from the Boston Brahmin.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:35 PM 0 comments

 

Apparently, dirty politics has spread to campuses. Occidental College got so upset about the ugliness in their student government elections that they shut down student government for the rest of the year. Personally, I never saw that student governments did anything all that significant except give kids an opportunity to feel important. But, it shouldn't be shut down just because some people were getting nasty.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:33 PM 0 comments

 

Shot in the Dark has made the mistake of reading Kos. Liberal blogger Kos is exulting over the deaths in Fallujah.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:25 PM 0 comments

 

Hugh Hewitt thinks that Kerry is a fool.

Dukakis in the tank had a better grasp of campaigning than Kerry, and Kerry's assertion that Bush Administration actions are responsible for the recruitment of terrorists is the most compelling reason yet offered as to why Kerry is unfit for the presidency. If Bush caused the terrorists, Mr. Kerry, who were those people training in Afghanistan throughout the nineties. Did they anticipate the rise of Bush and get their work-outs in early?

How about just a partisan guy with no real core of beliefs and willing to say whatever he thinks will make Bush look bad and Kerry look good.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:19 PM 0 comments

 

Now, environmentalists are upset about Palm Sunday.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:30 PM 0 comments

 

I am so sick of John McCain.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:29 PM 0 comments

 

Rich Lowry looks at the Kerry plan to stop outsourcing.

Kerry has now released a plan to deal with the issue of "outsourcing." One would think it would involve jail, or reeducation camps, or at least the mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance — sans the phrase "under God," of course — by everyone heading an American business. Instead, Kerry is proposing changing the mix of tax incentives for American corporations. On Kerry's own terms, this is absurd — like offering Benedict Arnold increased child tax credits, free dental care and college aid for his five children to try to keep him from betraying his country.

Unless Kerry's "Benedict Arnold CEO" line is a ridiculous, demagogic and unworthy smear of American business. His own tax plan exposes it as exactly that. Kerry wants to repeal a provision that allows companies to defer paying taxes on profits from overseas operations and — in order to keep corporations from getting too hard hit by a more onerous tax burden — also to cut the corporate tax rate. Imagine that — lower taxes for the treasonous! That's even worse than a tax cut for the merely rich. Kerry thus makes a huge intellectual concession: that businesses respond to incentives, that taxes and regulations affect their behavior and that tax-cutting Reaganites have always had a point.

In fact, a reason U.S. corporations do business overseas is that U.S. corporate taxes are so high compared with other countries. They operate overseas for other perfectly benign reasons: to be closer to foreign customers and to achieve efficiencies that make them more productive. Why this is considered a bad thing is not clear — except that it makes for an easy pander to economically illiterate voters. Companies with thriving overseas operations create management jobs back here in the United States, and most economic literature suggests that the phenomenon of "outsourcing" was a key factor in the glorious boom of the 1990s, lowering prices and thus keeping inflation low as economic growth soared.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:27 PM 0 comments

 

Is it a good or bad sign that Bush toilet paper is selling more than Kerry toilet paper?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:25 PM 0 comments

 

Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times looks at how Hollywood opponents of Bush (that is almost everyone) are slipping anti-Bush plots into their programming.

In recent weeks, characters in prime time have progressed beyond the typical Hollywood knocks against Washington politicians to calling out the president directly or questioning his policies, including the decision to go to war in Iraq, the support of the antiterrorism law and the backing of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

On the NBC show "Whoopi," the hotelier played by Whoopi Goldberg delivered an anti-Bush screed when the president, played by a lookalike, appeared at her establishment to use the facilities. "I can't believe he's in there doing to my bathroom what he's done to the economy!" she said.

One of the wise-cracking detectives on the NBC show "Law & Order," played by Jesse L. Martin, referred to the president as the "dude that lied to us." The character went on to say, "I don't see any weapons of mass destruction, do you?" His cantankerous partner, played by Jerry Orbach, retorted that Saddam Hussein did have such weapons because the president's "daddy" sold them to a certain someone "who used to live in Baghdad."

But the season finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO arguably best conveyed the growing sentiment. On that episode, the main character, played by the comedian Larry David, backed out of a dalliance sanctioned by his wife after noticing that his prospective paramour had lovingly displayed a picture of Mr. Bush on her dresser.

Of course, campaign finance laws don't count these as in-kind contributions to Kerry.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:14 PM 0 comments

 

Viking Pundit has coined a new word for Kerryspeak, "Splunge-peranto".

?Free but fair? like ?I voted for it before I voted against it? and ?You are not duped when somebody misleads you and in effect lies to you or doesn't tell you the truth? is all part of a new language Kerry is trying to invent called Splunge-peranto. The defining characteristics of Splunge-peranto are statements that are 1.) non-specific, 2.) self-contradictory, or 3.) laden with escape clauses such that the speaker can later claim he meant the exact opposite.

(Side note: what exactly is the definition of being duped? Hmmmm...)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:56 PM 0 comments

 

Polipundit points out that, as an April Fool's Joke, the Kerry campaign just released an ad about Bush losing jobs.

Let's say you're a Kerry campaign adviser and you want to run a new ad focusing on job losses. Do you:

a) Know that a key employment report is going to be released on April 2; so you should wait until then before airing the ad?

or

b) Release the ad on April 1 so that it can be countered by boffo job creation numbers the very next day?

Someone at the Kerry campaign screwed this up big time.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:52 PM 0 comments

 

I wonder how the Kerry people will spin these job growth numbers.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:46 PM 0 comments

 

I thought the terrorists weren't going to target Spain anymore.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:38 PM 0 comments

 

Is there a movie in Richard Clarke's future? Gag.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:58 AM 0 comments

 

Stephen Moore explains that gas prices are not at historic highs if you adjust for inflation. And he explains why prices are high and what should be done to lower them.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:57 AM 0 comments

 

Bill Whalen looks at all statistical patterns in presidential elections. Following all these patterns either Kerry or Bush should win this year. Here are some samples.

What's in a name? In the 19th Century, gentlemen-candidates who publicly sported a middle name tended not to be two-term presidents: John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, James Knox Polk, James Abram Garfield. It may partially explain why Grover Cleveland dropped his first name, Stephen, from his political persona (that, and his family's habit of addressing each other by their middle names). If the election remains tight after Labor Day, will the New York Times suddenly change its style rule to "George Walker Bush"?

"4" Factor. Since the advent of the two-party system, only once has the party that won in a "0" year election lost it in the subsequent "4" year contest. That was 1884, when one-and-out Republican Chester Alan Arthur (there's that pesky middle name again) chose not to run. Two differences between then and now: Arthur inherited the presidency after Garfield's assassination; and the GOP had controlled the White House for the previous 24 years (whereas the White House changed party hands four times in the 24 years from 1976 to 2000).

Hoop dreams? . . . From 1940 to 1972, the home state of the NCAA men's basketball champ also voted for the winning presidential candidate (the lone exception: 1960, when Ohio State won it all and Nixon didn't). Since 1988, the tournament has alternated from winner to loser, this year being the winning candidate's turn to carry the champ's state. The advantage here: Bush. Three of the teams in next weekend's "Final Four"--Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech and Duke--come from Republican "red" states. If you're a Democrat, the Connecticut Huskies are your team.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:48 AM 0 comments

 

American Spectator looks at the war on the Boy Scouts.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:45 AM 0 comments

 

Bruce Bartlett attempts to explain why outsourcing is not the disaster that some thinkit is.

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

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:38 AM 0 comments

 

Joel Mowbray says that the real division in this election is how the candidates view evil.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:30 AM 0 comments

 

It sounds like Bush will get his opportunity for his first veto.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:26 AM 0 comments

 

Charles Krauthammer is not impressed by Richard Clarke's apology to the families of 9/11 victims.

Indeed, one has to admire it -- the most cynical and brilliantly delivered apology in recent memory: Richard Clarke using the nationally televised Sept. 11 commission hearings to address the families of the victims. "Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you."

Many were moved. I was not. For two reasons. First, the climactic confession "I failed you" -- the one that packed the emotional punch -- was entirely disingenuous. Clarke did the mea culpa and then spent the next 21/2 hours of testimony -- as he did on every talk show known to man and in the 300 pages of his book -- demonstrating how everyone else except him had failed. And they failed because the stubborn, ignorant, ideologically blinkered, poll-driven knaves and fools he had been heroically fighting against within the government would not listen to him.

Message: They failed you.

Second, by blaming the government for the deaths of their loved ones, Clarke deftly endorsed the grotesque moral inversion by which those who died on Sept. 11 are victims of . . . George Bush. This is about as morally obscene as the implication (made by, among others, the irrepressible Howard Dean) that those who died in the Madrid bombings were also victims of George Bush.

This is false. They were all victims of al Qaeda and al Qaeda alone.

Bill Clinton did not apologize for Oklahoma City. Ronald Reagan did not apologize for the Beirut bombing. FDR did not apologize for Pearl Harbor. George W. Bush owes no apology. If an apology is owed, it is owed to the entire country and not just the families, and it is owed by the murderers who planned and carried out Sept. 11.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:19 AM 0 comments

 

Mona Charen watched C-Span's replay of the Dick Cavett debate show with John Kerry and John O'Neill about whether or not there were atrocities committed by American troops in Vietnam. Mona Charen was not impressed with Kerry's answers.

Cavett attempted to remain neutral, but it was ultimately too much for him. Not only did he agree with Kerry, but O'Neill tried his patience by interrupting repeatedly. With barely concealed sarcasm, Cavett said: "Nobody believes that there will be a blood bath if we withdraw. That was a cliche we used to hear a lot. Neither of you believes that do you?" Kerry's answer was emblematic of the antiwar left. He said he thought it was a "baiting argument" by the pro-war side since "there'd be no interest on the part of the Vietnamese to start massacring people after people (the United States) had pulled out."

Following America's withdrawal and Congress' decision to cut off every penny for Southeast Asia, there was a terrible genocide in Cambodia, so terrible that it overshadows the horror of what befell Vietnam. Roughly 800,000 boat people chose to take their lives in their hands rather than remain in communist Vietnam. Some 65,000 were executed, and this does not include those who slowly starved in concentration camps.

Wonder if the senator would care to revise and extend his remarks?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:14 AM 0 comments

 

The White House has released its anti-terror plan that was developed before 9/11. So, what happens to all the allegations that the Bush people didn't pay attention to Al Qaeda before 9/11? Are we seeing more of the President's mousetrap strategy?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:08 AM 0 comments

 

Christopher Hitchens lays into those who now think that Iraq was a waste.

I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?

I hope I do not misrepresent my opponents, but their general view seems to be that Iraq was an elective target; a country that would not otherwise have been troubling our sleep. This ahistorical opinion makes it appear that Saddam Hussein was a new enemy, somehow chosen by shady elements within the Bush administration, instead of one of the longest-standing foes with which the United States, and indeed the international community, was faced. So, what about the "bad news" from Iraq? There was always going to be bad news from there. Credit belongs to those who accepted--can we really decently say pre-empted?--this long-term responsibility. Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:01 AM 0 comments

Thursday, April 01, 2004

 

It sounds like Bush has totally won over Morton Kondracke. Remember when Kondracke used to be the resident liberal on the Mclaughlin Group?

Clarke and various Democrats, including presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., have accused the White House of engaging in vicious character attacks to discredit Clarke.

But Clarke, after all, has been vicious in attacking Bush. The Bush response has been, in the main, factual.

On CBS' "60 Minutes," Clarke declared, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it ... for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."

Besides making some petty observations that Clarke was trying to sell a book, the White House released — and was entirely within its rights to release — a background briefing that Clarke held with reporters in August 2002 in which he defended White House preparations.

Contrary to a Time magazine assertion that the Bush administration rejected Clinton administration anti-terrorism plans out of "animus," Clarke told the reporters that Bush had kept on Clinton officials — notably, Clarke himself — and that Clinton never had actually developed a full-blown "plan" to fight terror.

Questioned sharply by 9/11 commission members about the contrast between the background transcript and his book, Clarke claimed — in essence — that he'd "spun" reporters at the urging of his White House superiors. The only alternative, he said, would have been to resign. Surely, he could have simply declined.

The most damning single challenge to Clarke's credibility is the fact that he urgently sought to stay on in the Bush administration to be No. 2 man at the Department of Homeland Security.

Friends of Clarke have told me that he was deeply bitter when he was denied the job. Clearly, were he in that post today, his book, "Against All Enemies" (The Free Press, 2004), would never have been written.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:48 PM 0 comments

 

Check out James Taranto. He has a great collection of stories with his usual snarky wit.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:37 PM 0 comments

 

Ed Driscoll notes the way that ABC News believes that it is proper to show the corpses of the Americans killed in Fallujah because it might make people think twice about going to war, but that they didn't want to show the pictures of people jumping from the World Trade Center. I guess that would have been too distressing and incite people to anger. So, corpses in pursuit of their political agenda are fine.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:32 PM 0 comments

 

Lileks does a great job fisking Kerry's inane MTV interview. (Kerry is in italics)

I will respect the international community — not that we're tying ourselves to it in a way that doesn't allow us to make decisions and protect our own security. But it's important to try and build real coalitions. It's important to bring people to our side. Even the powerful United States of America needs friends and allies on this planet. And I intend to pursue a foreign policy that faces up to realities.

Again: a real coalition means “Germany and France.” Would he consider a coalition that included Germany and France, but did not include England, to be “real”? What’s the magic number of nations? Do we weight the nations for population and the nature of the government? If the UN is on our side, and most of the governments are autocracies, does that lend legitimacy to our efforts? “I intend to pursue a foreign policy that faces up to realities.” These realities apparently do not include the nature of nations, which is to act in their self-interest above all. Unless he thinks all those Syrian vetoes were done out of high-minded principles.

We continue:

For instance, North Korea, George Bush didn't even negotiate, didn't even begin the process for two years. I would never not open the process of real dialogue to see what the possibilities are.

The government of North Korea is made up of liars and thieves who are starving millions of their own people to prop up a crime gang. They rolled us once. There is no profit in “opening up the process of real dialogue to see what the possibilities are” when you know that the process will result in the same old deals: give us oil and food so we can feed our army and keep building nukes while we insist that we’re not. I heard this line back in the 80s, over and over again: it was important to talk to the Soviets, to have lots of summits and sign lots of papers, because at least we’re talking! That’s preferable to fighting, and it has to lead to something good. Okay, well, imagine that Hitler never declared war on the United States, and conquered Europe by 41. Would you prefer that FDR responded by “opening up the process of real dialogue to see what the possibilities are” or sending the smart boys off to a dark room to draw up Overlord?

Warning: when someone says “opening up the process of real dialogue to see what the possibilities are” they have conceded the first round of negotiations, because the other side knows we can be had, and had cheaply. Because we want to deal. Because we want a deal for domestic consumption. Because we want a deal to legitimize the international apparatus of talks, more talks, summits, signings, banquets where the Secretary of State gavottes with the high-haired brute who sits atop his private gulag.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:27 PM 0 comments

 

Richard Brookhiser says that we shouldn't get caught up in rear-viewing examinations about 9/11 like happened after Pearl Harbor. We need to be forward-looking.

Then what happened, happened. We should think of 9/11 in two ways: first as the horror, absurd but malicious, that we must always remember with grief and wrath; second, as one of life’s little surprises. What were we expecting—the end of history? Passion and ignorance are immortal; having no distractions, they are tireless and protean, always able to take us unawares. So we were taken; let slip the dogs of war.

The question before us, now and for the next few Presidential terms, is: How big a war? Should we, can we, stop with Afghanistan? With Afghanistan and Iraq? Are Al Qaeda and its successors, soul mates and sponsors to be checked by pressing the levers of existing institutions and alliances? What if the United Nations has to wean itself from boodle? Suppose France and Saudi Arabia have not yet figured out what side they are on? Suppose Pakistan, having figured it out, is not able to help us effectively? These are the things our candidates should be thinking about, not what we did before 9/11. We know that was wrong.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:52 PM 0 comments

 

Right Wing News has been trolling through the Democratic Underground and found that they're cheering the murders in Fallujah yesterday. Yes, they applaud the killing of Americans. Pathetic.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:42 PM 0 comments

 

Google is now going to offer free e-mail with the ability to search your e-mails. There will be ads on the e-mails related to the content of the e-mails. Expect privacy nuts to be upset about that.

Apparently, a lot of people think that this is just an April Fool's Joke from Google. If so, they got me and Yahoo News. (Thanks to Ed Driscoll on the April Fool's possibilities behind this story. I'm too out of it to even have been suspicious."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:31 PM 0 comments

 

Check out this joke.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:48 PM 0 comments

 

Boy, the Bush people should pay this guy for this Internet Ad. Very nicely done and I like the music. (Link via The Corner)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:54 PM 0 comments

 

Jim Lileks has an idea for a good attack ad.

You want a hard ad, a tough attack? OK: "John Kerry, he's their man! Can't stop blabbing about Vietnam! John Kerry, he's their guy! Shot a man and watched him die!" Voiceover: "John Kerry may say he's for people, but he's the only presidential candidate ever to admit killing an Asian in another country." Cut to President Bush: "I'm George Bush, and I not only approved this message, I never plugged a guy who was trying to crawl back into the bushes."

Read the rest of this great column. Lileks defines the difference between slimy attacks (when a Republican points out inconsistencies by his opponent) and facts (when a Democrat criticizes a Republican). (Link via Viking Pundit)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:49 PM 0 comments

 

Michael Novak says that Bush was running the Moustrap Play with Condi RIce.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:43 PM 0 comments

 

Check out this faux Google search. (Link via Mickey Kaus)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:32 PM 0 comments

 

It's nice to see that Kerry is maintaining his street cred.

The Boston-born heir by marriage to the Heinz Ketchup fortune, offered his perspective on rap music as the voice of the streets.

"I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important."

How lame and phony is this guy? I predict an avalanche of late night jokes.

Al Gore must be so relieved to have someone even stiffer than he is running for president. Can French kissing his wife at the convention be far behind for Kerry?

As Tim Blair says "John Kerry might be the only old school rapper whose old school is in Switzerland." Read the comments on Tim's page. I like this one.

"I think when you start talking about killing cops or something like that, it bothers me."
Does this guy have some big political balls or what? To come out and say killing cops bothers him? The controversy, the strength of his convictions, the bravado... I can see why he did so well for 4 months in Nam.

(Link via Viking Pundit)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:35 AM 0 comments

 

Which MASH character does Kerry remind you of?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:02 AM 0 comments

 

Kerry was at a big Hollywood fundraiser last night. So many glitterati came out that there was a lot of chaos.

At the $1,000-a-plate dinner hosted by grocery mogul Ron Burkle at his Green Acres estate in Beverly Hills, more than 1,500 people swarmed the event, which, according to officials, took in $3.2 million for the Kerry campaign and an additional $1 million for the Democratic National Committee.

However, from the moment cars were parked at the Beverly Hills shuttle pickup, guests were met with gridlock: hourlong lines, inaccessible buffets and bars, crushing crowds and general understaffing.

During the exodus out of Green Acres, the event reached a nadir when, in a frenzied rush to find an available shuttle, one Kerry supporter shouted, "That's why we are not running the country because we can't even organize a party."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:01 AM 0 comments

 

The Washington Times looks at what Democrats said about an amendment Kerry proposed in 1994 to slash more money from the defense budget.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:53 AM 0 comments

 

Another poor review for Al Franken's debut. They don't think that there are enough Ann Coulter-hating people out there to build a mass audience.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:51 AM 0 comments

 

Bush is threatening to veto the bloated Highway Bill. Sounds good to me.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:47 AM 0 comments

 

Jeff Jacoby looks at what has gone right in Iraq.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:43 AM 0 comments

 

David Broder criticizes Bush for "giving up" Rice.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:41 AM 0 comments

 

Larry Elder looks at Kerry's problems with the likability factor.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:33 AM 0 comments

 

The detailed Daschle v. Thune blog says that Daschle is running into some trouble. Plus, a Native American might run as a Third Party candidate. That would be a severe problem for Daschle since the only way that Tim Johnson won last election by a few hundred votes was the extraordinary Native American turnout. (Link via Powerline)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:29 AM 0 comments

 

Emmett Tyrrelll agrees with me that the Kerry campaign is adopting a strategy to keep their guy out of the public eye.

I believe the Democrats are onto something. I believe they have devised a very clever plan to stop Sen. John Francois Kerry's decline in the polls.

According to news reports, they are checking him in at an undisclosed hospital for tendon surgery on his shoulder. That will keep him out of sight for a while. After that, they can try knee surgery. He has a record of knee injuries. Then there are his allergies. Off and on they can check him into an allergy sanitarium.

When he actually does appear on the campaign trail, if his penchant for he-man boasts and embarrassing fibs again sinks him in the polls, he can always be briefly hospitalized for "periodic checkups." His medical records indicate that he suffers enough additional maladies that periodic checkups are completely understandable.

Essentially, the Democrats are settling on a campaign strategy not unlike the Republicans' famous "front-porch campaign" that worked so well for the dolt Warren G. Harding in 1920. The goal is to keep the dud candidate remote from voter scrutiny. Divert the press until the candidate's polling numbers stabilize.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:23 AM 0 comments

 

Hindrocket at Powerline has a whole line of analysis of the daisy zipper pull on Kerry's ski jacket. Hugh Hewitt says that this is the image of just the man to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Instapundit is all over Flowergate. Judge for yourself the significance of Kerry having a daisy zipper pull.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:16 AM 0 comments

 

Richard Miniter interviewed Clarke extensively for Miniter's book Losing Bin Laden. Miniter says that Clarke then was scathing about Clinton's handling of terrorism last year, but this year he excuses all of Clinton's failures and just bashes Bush. If you want more examples of mistakes in Clarke's book, check out this article.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:07 AM 0 comments

 

Robert Musil does a nice analysis of how Kerry's I voted for it before I voted against it" approach was not unique to the supplemental bill but was his explanation for claiming to vote for the Helms-Burton law toughening restrictions on Cuba when he actually voted against it.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:02 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

 

Viking Pundit explains how the Kerry campaign is like Monty Python.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:13 PM 0 comments

 

It doesn't look like Al Franken's debut was all that funny.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 11:04 PM 0 comments

 

Belgravia Dispatch highlights all the partisan jabs in Clarke's book. (Link via Instapundit)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:27 PM 0 comments

 

It's not encouraging to hear that an aide to Rumsfeld is leaving notes for how to deal with Clarke in a Starbucks. It's a good thing that they weren't real security news. However, these notes don't seem very damaging at all.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:19 PM 0 comments

 

Nick Schultz explains why gas prices are going up. Nothing of Kerry's or Bush's proposals would have an effect.

Economist Lynne Kiesling of Northwestern University who studies energy markets points to three factors. First, world crude prices are high, thanks in part to OPEC and tumult in Venezuela. Second, she points out that "existing environmental regulations" — such as those limiting flexibility at refineries; market-distorting state environmental regulations; mandates for ethanol additives and the like — "are making supply more inelastic." Lastly, new clean air regulations are taking effect in 2004 leading to higher short-term prices.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:48 PM 0 comments

 

Mark Goldblatt says that the Democrats will wish they had never pushed for Condoleezza Rice to testify.

Dr. Rice will tell her side of the story, under oath, in public. And with the suspense that's already gathering around her appearance, it will be a hit. The rest of the nation will soon discover what careful observers of the Bush's inner circle already know: Rice is the most poised, articulate, and convincing speaker in the entire administration. She will mop up the floor with Clarke.

Want a "for example"? In his tell-all book, Clarke asserts that the first time he mentioned al Qaeda to Rice, in January 2001, "her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before." Except in October 2000, Rice gave a radio interview in which she discussed al Qaeda. So much for facial expressions.

Not only will Rice make short work of Clarke, she will emerge from the hearing with conservatives flinging themselves at her feet, begging her to run for president in 2008. (There's already a website devoted to her potential candidacy even though she's said, on multiple occasions, she has no interest in the office.) And it would serve liberals right if she did decide to run, for Rice would be their worst nightmare. She would win the women's vote outright, peel away half the black vote, and set back the Democratic party for a generation.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:39 PM 0 comments

 

The Bush campaign is playing hardball and filing a complaint against Kerry's campaign for violating campaign finance laws.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:34 PM 0 comments

 

Tony Blankley thinks that John Kerry could be a new Thomas Dewey.

In his Sept. 20, 1948, kick-off speech for his "Victory Special" national tour, Dewey proclaimed: "Tonight we enter upon a campaign to unite America. On Jan. 20, we will enter upon a new era. We propose to install in Washington an administration which has faith in the American people, a warm understanding of their needs and the competence to meet them." If you close your eyes, you can hear the Massachusetts Mandarin in Dewey's old words. Listening to Dewey, one understands why the scrappy, uneducated Harry Truman beat the striped pants off him in November.

But what may become the enduring exemplar of the Kerry style was his spontaneous expletive on the ski slopes when his Secret Service guard bumped into him by accident (while guarding him): "I don't fall down. The S.O.B. knocked me over." To instinctively say that about the man who is sworn to put himself between Mr. Kerry and a bullet, paints a lasting and contemptible character portrait. Contrast that with what Ronald Reagan said shortly after he was shot: "Honey, I forgot to duck." It was at that moment that 60 percent of the American public fell permanently in love with the Gipper. As Ernest Hemmingway put it in another time, that is grace under pressure — and Mr. Kerry doesn't have it.

Plus, Blankley calls again for Kerry to release his full medical records. How come there isn't a big hue and cry for this as there were for Bush's 30 year old National Guard records?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:02 AM 0 comments

 

Ronald Rotunda looks at the move to get Scalia to recuse himself and why Scalia has made the correct decision.

There is a statute on the subject, which lists various grounds for disqualification (e.g., the judge has a financial interest in the case, or the judge served as a lawyer in the case before he became judge). None of these provisions apply, so the argument is based on a catchall: The judge shall disqualify himself in a case "in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

This vague language comes from the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct. It is a phrase that most states have adopted. The ABA, by the way, issued an ethics opinion many years ago that advised, prophetically, that one must be concerned about imposing disqualification based on vague standards such as "appearances of impropriety," for the judgment could easily be based on "an instinctive, or even ad hominem basis."

That may be what is happening here. There is a fair amount of case law that interprets the language that Scalia's attackers hurl against him, and the precedent says that Scalia is right. For example, in a case interpreting this exact same language, the Pennsylvania supreme court held that the judge in a murder trial did not have to disqualify himself simply because he knew the victim and was a mourner at his funeral. The convicted murderer did not like that result.

In another case, the complaining witness in an attempted rape prosecution was a high-school classmate and "a close personal friend" of the judge's daughter, who attended the trial; the victim would also be maid of honor in the daughter's forthcoming wedding. The Oklahoma court held that the judge acted properly in refusing to recuse himself.

....There is a good reason why courts, both state and federal, interpret the "appearance of impartiality" language objectively and narrowly. Judges do not divorce themselves from the world when they don their robes. They still are allowed to have friends, go on hunting trips, and live a life. Years ago, when I was clerking for a federal judge, he asked me, after the oral argument, what I thought of the two lawyers' performances. Before I answered he said, "Those are two of the finest lawyers you'll ever meet. One was the best man at my wedding and the other is one of my very best friends." The judge did not think of disqualifying himself.

Nor did Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone disqualify himself from cases involving President Herbert Hoover, although he was a buddy and a member of Hoover's informal "medicine ball" cabinet. (They would throw medicine balls at each other before breakfast.) Nor did Justice Jackson, who was a personal friend of FDR, and took vacations with him. Nor did Justice Douglas, who was a poker buddy of FDR. Nor did Chief Justice Vinson, who was a poker buddy of Truman. Come to think of it, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has given her name and presence to a lecture series cosponsored by the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization that often argues women's-rights issues before Justice Ginsburg. Should she disqualify herself from issues involving women's rights?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:56 AM 0 comments

 

John Podhoretz thinks that the country is settling into Bush Attack Fatigue.

The assaults against the president have been so constant for so many months - on every subject under the sun from his handling of the economy to the war in Iraq and now to the War on Terror - that a law of diminishing returns has set in. The people willing to believe the worst of George W. Bush have already gotten the message. The people who like him have tuned out the liberal criticism. And everybody else is just sick of the negativity.

Clarke's effort to recast the events before and after 9/11 in a fashion almost entirely unfavorable to the president has made him famous and rich. He has been embraced by the Michael Moore-Al Franken crowd, and has been canonized by a liberal media that has basically decided it will do whatever it can to prevent Bush's re-election.

But the very fact that Clarke's criticisms are so patently over the top and false - like suggesting his boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, had never heard of al Qaeda before he mentioned the organization to her - has limited his book's political effectiveness. Had he been more judicious in his criticisms of the president, they might have been more wounding.

The hysterical tone of Clarke's "Against All Enemies" and his absurd claim that he fears the White House is seeking to "destroy" him - this from a man who stands to make as much as $5 million to $10 million on this book alone - means that he has surrendered the possibility of talking to the great American middle.

Ordinary Americans of all political leanings remember vividly the days after 9/11 (it was, after all, only 31 months ago) and formed a pretty solid opinion of Bush's handling of the matter that won't be shaken so easily by Clarke's score-settling and profiteering.

The second factor helping the president is the nature of the 9/11 hearings themselves. There's something about congressional inquiries that just get people's hackles up. The grandstanding of committee members, the discomfort of the witnesses and the way everybody drones on for hours make it all seem a bit unseemly.

This has happened time and time again whenever there are high-level inquiries involving the executive branch. The Iran-Contra hearings boomeranged on those who believed they would destroy the Reagan administration. And of course the Whitewater and Lewinsky proceedings before Congress backfired on Republicans, who were lucky to escape the 1998 elections with their majorities in the House and Senate intact.

It's entirely possible that the president's decision to allow Rice to testify in public and under oath before the commission was a decision made not out of panic, but out of confidence.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:51 AM 0 comments

 

David Brooks has some good advice for high school seniors.

Many of you high school seniors are in a panic at this time of year, coping with your college acceptance or rejection letters. Since the admissions process has gone totally insane, it's worth reminding yourself that this is not a particularly important moment in your life.

You are being judged according to criteria that you would never use to judge another person and which will never again be applied to you once you leave higher ed.

For example, colleges are taking a hard look at your SAT scores. But if at any moment in your later life you so much as mention your SAT scores in conversation, you will be considered a total jerk. If at age 40 you are still proud of your scores, you may want to contemplate a major life makeover.

More than anything else, colleges are taking a hard look at your grades. To achieve that marvelous G.P.A., you will have had to demonstrate excellence across a broad range of subjects: math, science, English, languages etc.

This will never be necessary again. Once you reach adulthood, the key to success will not be demonstrating teacher-pleasing competence across fields; it will be finding a few things you love, and then committing yourself passionately to them.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:40 AM 0 comments

 

Another NSC official discounts what Clarke has been saying. And this guy is a former Clinton official.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:37 AM 0 comments

 

According to newly released documents, the Clinton administration knew the extent of the genocide going on in Rwanda, but chose to pretend that they didn't.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:31 AM 0 comments

 

Paul Greenberg explains the results from the elections in Taiwan.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:19 AM 0 comments

 

Bruce Bartlett examines Kerry's econmic plan to reduce outsourcing and discovers all the problems with the plan.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:17 AM 0 comments

 

Amir Taheri looks at the weak European approach to fighting terrorism.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:13 AM 0 comments

 

USA Today says the same thing.

"For Kerry having won the nomination, voters came away not knowing much about him," says Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution, author of a study of re-election campaigns titled Presidents as Candidates. "He's a blank slate to a lot of people, so negative ads can have a big impact."

Some Democratic analysts say Kerry's decision to take a week of vacation, while hard to begrudge after a grueling primary campaign, meant that Bush's ads went largely unanswered. So far, the Bush campaign has spent more than $20 million on the ads, which began airing March 4.

The Kerry campaign has spent more than $2 million on ads; the liberal Media Fund has spent more than $5 million.

The poll, taken Friday through Sunday, has worrisome results for Bush as well.

The president's standing on handling terrorism has been dented by the testimony of former White House aide Richard Clarke and the scrutiny of the blue-ribbon commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. That's important because the perception of Bush as a strong leader in the wake of Sept. 11 is his greatest political strength.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:09 AM 0 comments

 

The Washington Post looks at the success that the Bush campaign has had in running ads that define Kerry before Kerry had an opportunity to define himself. That was the political strategy of those negative ads that Bush ahs been running and it's worked, at least in the short run.

Since the end of the Democratic primaries, attacks on John F. Kerry by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, backed by millions of dollars in negative ads, have wiped out the narrow lead Kerry enjoyed at the beginning of the month and damaged his public image.

The senator from Massachusetts emerged from the primaries unscathed but still little known, a condition Bush's team set about to change with an aggressive plan to define the senator before he could define himself. A month later, more voters see Kerry as "too liberal," and a solid majority says he is someone who has changed his positions on issues for political reasons -- both charges leveled by the Bush campaign's daily attacks through ads and public statements.

That's probably why the Clarke allegations haven't had as big of an impact on Bush's numbers as might have been expected.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:07 AM 0 comments

 

Go, Zell. He said this yesterday on the Senate floor.

"It's obvious to me that this country is rapidly dividing itself into two camps - the wimps and the warriors," Miller said. "The ones who want to argue and assess and appease, and the ones who want to carry this fight to our enemies and kill them before they kill us."

Of course, he doesn't get the same sort of publicity that John McCain gets when he bashes the GOP.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 5:55 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

 

Natan Sharansky is really giving it to the BBC for its blatant anti-Israeli bias.

The BBC employs a "gross double standard to the Jewish state" that smacks of anti-Semitism, Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky charged in a letter he sent to the British news service Tuesday morning. He was reacting to its coverage of the IDF's arrest of a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber last week.

In comparison to other international news organizations, which focused on the use of children by Palestinian terrorist groups, the BBC portrayed the event as "Israel's cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes," he wrote.

Sharansky said such an approach "reveals a deep-seated bias against Israel. Only a total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups would drive a reporter to paint Israel in such an unflattering light instead of placing the focus on the bomber and the organization that recruited him."

The report, he said, "has not only set a new standard for biased journalism, it has also raised concerns that it was tainted by anti-Semitism."
Sharansky questioned whether the BBC had ever run stories about Palestinian use of children for propaganda purposes or the media spin utilized by Palestinian leaders, actions which are "not a matter of dispute to any serious journalist."

And yet, he continued, BBC correspondent Orla Guerin "did not feel it inappropriate to use an attempted suicide attack by a child to point cynically to Israel's attempt to manipulate the media. By applying such a gross double standard to the Jewish state, it is difficult to see Ms. Guerin's report as anything but anti-Semitic."

Of course, this sort of bias is no surprise for the BBC. It's a pleasure to see them taking some heat.

Here's the story of another Palestinian youth that the terrorists tried to recruit for a suicide mission. I guess this is just another example of the Israelis exploiting a child for propaganda purposes.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:37 PM 0 comments

 

It's pretty bad when Ralph Nader is giving advice to loosen up. Because you know what a wild and crazy, get down and party type guy Ralph is.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:31 PM 0 comments

 

Oh, give me a blessed break. Now some Hollywood types plus Cynthia McKinney are upset because a Bush ad shows an Arabic looking guy as a terrorist in an ad. And how many of the terrorists we've been worried about in the past two years have not been of Middle-Eastern descent?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:25 PM 0 comments

 

One columnist wonders about the real value of military experience in a president.

Film of a younger Kerry in fatigues and with a rifle might lead viewers to conclude that his combat experience somehow makes him better qualified to be president of the United States.

But since when has warfare been a prerequisite for the presidency? The answer is that it never has been.

Intuitively, having a commander in chief who has experienced the hardships of the combat soldier might seem like a distinct advantage. History, however, has illustrated that combat experience is not an accurate predictor of presidential performance.

For starters, Thomas Jefferson did not serve, but he was bold and decisive enough to understand that the Barbary pirates were a threat to our nation's interests.

That understanding led to one of our country's first post-independence foreign wars and gave the Marines the ringing first line of their rousing hymn: "to the shores of Tripoli."

Abraham Lincoln had little military experience, yet he was able to lead and reunite our nation during the four-year-long Civil War. Lincoln's only military involvement was a brief appearance with the Illinois militia, the equivalent of today's National Guard.

Then there are the glorious presidents of military background such as Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 9:22 PM 0 comments

 

A colleague of Richard Clarke disputes a lot of Clarke's first chapter.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 1:10 PM 0 comments

 

So, Condi Rice is going to testify. Of course the White HOuse has extended for a week a controversy that accelerated every day. Now, this puts more attention than ever on her testimony. It could actually end up helping Rice. IF she does well, she'll make much more of an impact than if she hadn't. And she'll be having the last word and her testimony will be what people remember.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:57 PM 0 comments

 

John Edwards is still hoping to get the call. Ain't going to happen.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:00 AM 0 comments

 

Just One Minute has some more entries in Clarke v. Clarke. (Link via Instapundit)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:56 AM 0 comments

 

Bob Kerrey has some questions for Bill Clinton. That's nice of him to telegraph those questions earlier.

I predict that there will be another huge kerfuffle over the fact that Bush won't testify under oath.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:53 AM 0 comments

 

Thomas Sowell gives his platform if he were to run for office.

Since politicians like to have campaign slogans, instead of "Bring it On!" my slogan might be "Get rid of it!" to describe all the laws, policies, and government agencies that I would abolish.

A more positive slogan would be "Conservative Radicalism." That is, my policies would be based on traditional values but would make radical changes in order to restore or enhance those values.

Cabinet-level departments, for example, would be reduced to just two -- the Defense Department and the State Department, with the latter purged of the weak-kneed internationalist crowd who have dominated it for so long. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, etc., would all be abolished as just money-wasting bureaucracies serving outside special interests, instead of the people whose taxes support them.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:47 AM 0 comments

 

I'm sorry to hear that Alistair Cooke has died. I have always liked him. Although being 95, he was still working up to a few months ago.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:45 AM 0 comments

 

Rich Lowry explodes some of Clarke's allegations that Clinton had done so much more than Bush.

But Clarke's tenor is unfair, and his tone is an outrage. For evidence, look no further than the preliminary report of the 9/11 Commission itself, from which all the quotes below are drawn.

Clarke's tenor suggests that it was bizarre that it took Bush officials, many of whom weren't in place until the spring of 2001, eight months to bring to the verge of presidential approval a plan to eliminate al-Qaida. But policy-making takes time. The Clinton administration's Presidential Decision Directive 39 identified terrorism as a national security concern, and was "signed in June 1995 after at least a year of interagency consultation and coordination." At least a year.

Clarke's tone makes it sound as if Clinton officials were extremely solicitous of his anti-terror plans. Well, that's nice for him to believe. He circulated among Clinton officials an anti-al-Qaida plan in September 1998. "This strategy was not formally adopted, and Cabinet-level participants ... have little or no recollection of it, at least as a formal policy document."

Clarke's tenor says it is an outrage that the Bush team approved more CIA counterterrorism spending in principle, but hadn't yet made it happen. Really? In the 1990s, more resources were supposed to go to the CIA, but "baseline spending requests, and thus core staffing, remained flat. The CIA told us that Clarke kept promising more budget support, but could never deliver."

Clarke's tone says it was scandalous that the Bush team considered aiding the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance for eight months before deciding to do it. This is how the Clinton team handled the question of aiding the Northern Alliance: "The debate continued inconclusively throughout the last year and a half of the Clinton administration."

Read the rest to arm yourself with talking points for your liberal friends.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:42 AM 0 comments

 

George Will calls Clarke's accusations puerile, strident, dubious, and flavored by anger, malice, opportunism and meretriciousness.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:36 AM 0 comments

 

Mark Steyn looks at Germany's distress that Americans might be moving troops out of Germany.

Right now, Germany plays host to 175,000 Americans - military personnel plus their families - and reducing that number to 80-90,000 would leave a big hole in an economy that's already looking like a Swiss cheese. See the recent story in Bild: "Can't We Do Anything Any More in Germany?" Also the cover of Der Spiegel: "Germany: A Joke."

The joke keeps getting better. Karl Peter Bruch, a state official in Rhineland-Palatinate who's lobbying the Americans to change their minds, put it this way: "We realised that our installations are in grave danger. And then came the question, what can we do to make us more attractive?"

"Our" installations? As Daffy Duck famously remarked after losing yet another verbal duel with Bugs Bunny and getting his bill shot off: "Hmm. Pronoun trouble." As to what Germany can do to make itself more attractive to the Yanks, how about this? Spend less time running around playing Mini-Me to Jacques Chirac's Doctor Evil. Just a thought. And it seems to have occurred, somewhat belatedly, to Gerhard Schröder.

Even now, the likes of Mr Bruch see the US military presence in Europe in mainly economic terms - all those German supermarkets and German restaurants that depend on American custom. But, looked at in defence terms, if Don Rumsfeld wants a light, mobile 21st-century military, the last place to base it is the Continent: given that the term "ally" is now generally used in the post-modern meaning of "duplicitous obstructionist", it's not unlikely that any future Saddamesque scenario would see attempts to throw operational restraints around the use of US forces in Europe.

This weekend, for example, nearly 60 per cent of French electors voted Socialist, Communist, Fascist or Green. Most of the rest voted for the "ruling centre-Right" - ie, Chirac. Does that sound like an "ally" that's ever again likely to grant overflight rights to the USAF? Better a nice clean flight plan direct from Missouri or Diego Garcia.

What happens when a country becomes just as militant and aggressive about the virtues of "soft power" as it once was about old-fashioned hard power? Germany has a shrinking economy, an ageing and shrivelling population, and potentially catastrophic welfare liabilities. Yet the average German worker now puts in over 20 per cent fewer hours per year than his American counterpart, and no politician who wishes to remain electorally viable would propose closing the gap.

Germany, like much of Europe, has a psychological investment in longer holidays, free healthcare, early retirement, unsustainable welfare programmes, decrepit military: the fact that these policies spell national suicide is less important than that they distinguish Europe from the less enlightened Americans.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:28 AM 0 comments

 

Lileks is trying to teach Gnat some ethical lessons.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:21 AM 0 comments

 

Dennis Prager ponders what it means to say that we're a Judeo-Christian country.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:20 AM 0 comments

 

The Hill reports that Democrats are annoyed that some Jewish leaders have raised money for Bush so they're trying to convince those Jewish leaders that they're strong on Israel too.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:17 AM 0 comments

 

Drudge reports that Clarke himself cited the same privilege that Condi is citing to refuse to testify under oath in 1999.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:15 AM 0 comments

 

Patrice Hill explains that there is little that the government can do to quickly stimulate the growth of jobs.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:08 AM 0 comments

 

A new poll shows that Clarke's allegations and book are not really hurting Bush in the polls. Maybe the American people are better of filtering this out than the inside the Beltway pundits are. Maybe, it's just that those who already don't like Bush are the ones impressed with Clarke. That's why Howard Fineman and Chris Matthews think that Clarke is so harmful.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:04 AM 0 comments

 

Rumor has it that Kerry might pick a running mate early to help him with raising money and being the attack dog. Now, he has to be his own attack dog while Bush can leave that to Cheney. I heard Kerry make fun of Cheney attacking his record on taxes and saying that Cheney had been released from his undisclosed location just to attack Kerry.

1. I'm so sick of jokes about Cheney in an undisclosed locations. First of all, he was hiding because of fears of terrorism. Is Kerry joking about the threat of terrorism? And the joke has been done to death. Let's move on.

2. That's what VP candidates always do, unless they're Jack Kemp or Joe Lieberman. They are supposed to be the attack dogs so that the nominee can float above the fray.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:02 AM 0 comments

 

John Bersia is right about all this finger-pointing at the hearings not accomplishing anything and escaping the reality of what was possible to do before 9/11.

It is not Monday-morning quarterbacking to suggest that the appropriate moment to launch a war against terrorism came a decade ago, long before the miscreants had gathered resources, planted operatives and crafted elaborate plots.

Without a galvanizing event such as Sept. 11, though, no president before the present one apparently felt that he had the political leeway to take the necessary steps against terrorism. Some commentators have speculated that a U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan during the 1990s could have prompted global disapproval and divisiveness similar to the situation in Iraq today. Indeed, former Defense Secretary William Cohen testified before the 9-11 commission that U.S. allies, Congress and the American people would not have supported such action.

Others suggest that an aggressive campaign could have rallied terrorists to attack American interests. Well, terrorist attacks would have come anyway, if not on Sept. 11 then on other dates. The United States accomplished nothing by waiting for the terrorists to take the initiative.

Finally, the bruising experience of the 9-11 commission testimony, designed to seek the truth, could end up deepening national tensions and clouding thinking about related foreign-policy concerns, including the war in Iraq.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 5:57 AM 0 comments

 

John O'Sullivan points out what is being downplayed in the 9/11 hearings.

There has been relatively little interest in al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden -- and, not coincidentally, very little patriotic anger directed at them -- in the hearings. Almost all the emphasis has been on American failures and in particular on the Bush administration.

Al-Qaida's attacks are treated as natural catastrophes such as an earthquake. They simply happen. If they succeed in destroying our homes, then the fault belongs to us for not installing anti-earthquake technology. Thus former anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke is widely praised for apologizing for the failure to prevent 9/11. Yet 9/11 was an act committed by radical Islamist terrorists who deliberately sought out the weak links in our defenses. Clarke had sought valiantly to prevent it -- that was the theme of his testimony -- but he admitted that his proposals would not have succeeded. So the net effect of his apology was to shift the blame from al-Qaida to others in government who might have been negligent in averting the terrorist threat. And the fickle finger of suspicion pointed to -- President Bush and everyone in his national security team except Clarke.

Try to imagine hearings on Pearl Harbor in which imperial Japan's aggression was passed over lightly and America's anger was directed at President Roosevelt for not warding off the attack. Roosevelt avoided any such danger by two decisive actions. He postponed an inquiry into the war until it was won and he dismissed the commander of the Pacific fleet on the grounds that Pearl Harbor was his responsibility in the chain of command if not in fact. These acts directed the American people, including FDR's political opponents, towards concentrating on defeating a ruthless and resourceful enemy.

What the hearings suggest is that many people in Washington are reluctant to face the fact that America faces such an enemy today. Maybe that enemy is not ultimately as powerful as imperial Japan. But it has succeeded in striking a harder blow at the American mainland than Japan managed.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 5:50 AM 0 comments

 

Check out Lucianne's picture of the day.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 5:45 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 29, 2004

 

It's cicada time! Yech.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:36 PM 0 comments

 

David Frum is exactly right about all this complaining about the White House hit machine.

I do think it was rather petulant of Richard Clarke to complain on “Meet the Press” that the administration is out to “destroy” him. Clarke hurls a series of terrible accusations at the administration and its senior staff – and is then outraged when they reply that Clarke is wrong? Or when they point out that what he says today contradicts what he has said in the past? Or that he might possibly have other motives than those he acknowledges? Or when they note that he seems strangely tolerant of far worse mistakes by the previous administration?

Clarke argues that the issue shouldn’t be personalized. At the same time, he himself criticizes his former colleagues in highly personal terms. He complains of being the victim of an “attack machine.” But his own attack has been rolled out with a mechanical precision that should impress BMW.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:34 PM 0 comments

 

John Fund says we need to know more about Kerry's days in the Vietnam Vets Against the War.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:29 PM 0 comments

 

I'm just shocked to think that Yasser Arafat might have ties to terrorism. Who would ever have imagined such a thing. As James Taranto might point out. Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:26 PM 0 comments

 

Bush is using one of Kerry's constituents in a radio ad.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:25 PM 0 comments

 

Congressman Christopher Shays notes another inconsistency in Clarke's attitude.

Congressman Christopher Shays (R-CT), chair of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, expressed concern today about recent claims by former Clinton and Bush Administration official Richard Clarke that the Bush Administration failed to respond to the terrorist threat prior to September 11.

Noting Clarke told the subcommittee in June, 2000 that there was: “no need for an assessment” of the terrorist threat, Shays stated, “Mr. Clarke is engaging in revisionist history, apparently for personal partisan reasons. The fact is, when he had the authority and responsibility to craft U.S. counterterrorism policies, he consistently failed to articulate a cogent strategy or plan to Congress.”


Prior to September 2001, three national commissions - Bremer, Gilmore and Hart/Rudman - had concluded the U.S. needed a comprehensive threat assessment, a national strategy and a plan to reorganize the federal response to the new strategic menace of terrorism. The National Security Subcommittee, which Shays chairs, held 20 hearings and two formal briefings before September 11th on terrorist threats and preparedness.


Shays noted that at a briefing on June 28, 2000, he asked Mr. Clarke, then serving as President Clinton’s Special Assistant and National Coordinator, Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism, when an all-source threat assessment and strategy would be completed. His answer: “No assessment has been done, and there is no need for an assessment, I know the threat.”

Earlier that year, at the Department of Defense Worldwide Conference on Terrorism, Mr. Clarke’s assistant, Ms. Lisa Gordon-Haggerty, was asked when a national strategy to combat terrorism would be completed. She said Mr. Clarke’s office was developing a national strategy, and the plan would be completed over the next several weeks. No national strategy to combat terrorism was ever produced during the Clinton Administration.

(Hat tip to Chuck S.)

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:24 PM 0 comments

 

Christopher Hitchens notes the connections between Saddam and terrorism. Connections that Clarke knew about.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:20 PM 0 comments

 

James Taranto reveals that the guy the Kerry campaign quoted as being upset with Bush's WMD joke before the White House Correspondents bash, is actually an associate of David Duke and had been cast out of the Republican Party.

Also, Taranto solicited comments from members of the military to see what they thought about Bush's joke. Read their approval and wonder why the Democrats suddenly lost their sense of humor. It's a great bunch of comments. A few were offended, but the overwhelming majority thought the President's routine was funny and in fine taste. This one is my favorite.

I served in Iraq, and it sucked. The dust storms that sandblasted your skin raw weren't fun. The heat was unbearable. We placed a thermometer in the sun in August, and it registered 157 degrees. At the same time, a thermometer in the shade read 137. Of course, for the most part, it was a dry heat, except I was in the South, and in late August and September, the wind would shift bringing moist air from the Persian Gulf. How about 120-plus and 90% humidity to brighten your day? Oh and the critters--rats, snakes, scorpions and my favorite, the camel spider. They live on the desert floor and have venom that numbs the poor camels they jump up on. After numbing the area, they chow down on the still-alive camel. The locals told me that its normal to see camels walking through the desert and their guts fall out because camel spiders eat their intestinal walls. The camel spiders also don't discriminate--people, camels, it's all the same to them. Did I mention the critters of the microscopic variety? Explosive doesn't do justice to the intestinal issues I encountered. Of course, I almost forgot the AK-47-wielding locals or the imported locals with explosives and rocket-propelled grenades.
Yes sir, it truly sucked. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat! If you could meet the sincerely grateful Iraqis that I helped liberate, you'd understand.

To answer your question, do I care if the president makes a crack about WMDs? Not at all. Based on my experience, I'd be perfectly happy if the president's reason for going to war wasn't WMDs but rather that he was just having a bad day and wanted a piece of Saddam.

--K.B., Army

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 10:14 PM 0 comments

 

Drudge is reporting some poll numbers from Gallup that should cheer up Republicans who have become glum seeing the barrage that Bush has had to endure this past week from Clarke and the media. Of course, remember that polls in March mean little for November's results. But good numbers are always better than bad numbers.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:06 PM 0 comments

 

Howard Kurtz looks at how everyone is trashing Condi Rice.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:54 PM 0 comments

 

John Kerry will be sidelined from campaigning for a few days while he undergoes surgery on his shoulder. Since he is so unappealing in person, this may actually help him. The Democrats might want to schedule weekly surgeries for him.

Mickey Kaus notes that his poll numbers stopped going up when Kerry returned from vacation. That might just reflect people having second thoughts about Richard Clarke's allegations.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:47 PM 0 comments

 

American Thinker contrasts the treatment of Richard Clarke and Linda Tripp.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 12:44 PM 0 comments

 

If it hadn't been for Richard Clarke this is what we would have been talking about last week.

Lost in the media frenzy over Mr. Clarke's exaggerated claims is the fact Mr. Bush's first military response was to go after al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime there that harbored Osama bin Laden and his terrorist armies.

Also lost in the hullabaloo over Mr. Clarke's self-serving allegations was what the bipartisan, independent September 11 commission looking into the attacks had to say about the Clinton administration's risk-averse policies that let the terrorists train, plot and plan their evil deeds during the eight years of his presidency.

Among some of the panel's early findings:

• The Clinton administration had four opportunities between December 1998 and July 1999 to get bin Laden, but their plans were all abandoned because of White House uncertainty over intelligence and unjustified fears civilians might have been killed in the attacks.

"Having the chance to get [bin Laden] three times in 36 hours and forgoing the chance each time has made me a bit angry," said one CIA unit chief.

• A month after the Clinton administration struck worthless al Qaeda target sites following bombings of U.S. Embassies in east Africa, the Pentagon produced a secret report calling for "a more aggressive counterterrorism posture." But its eight-point antiterrorism plan was abandoned because President Clinton's senior advisers found it "too aggressive."

• Throughout the Clinton years, there was confusion within CIA ranks about whether they could kill bin Laden, though Clinton policymakers have told the commission there was no confusion they knew about.

"But if the policymakers believed their intent was clear, every CIA official interviewed on this topic by the commission, from [CIA Director George] Tenet to the official who actually briefed the agents in the field, told us they heard a different message," according to the commission. "CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said they read the relevant authorities signed by Clinton as instructing them to try to capture bin Laden," not kill him.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:57 AM 0 comments

 

Mike Adams has been accused of making one of his colleagues feel uncomfortable by expressing his opinions. So, he's decided to list all the times that his colleagues made him feel uncomfortable.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:49 AM 0 comments

 

Paul Jacob notes some myths of elections.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:46 AM 0 comments

 

Andrew Sullivan is back and here is his column on Richard Clarke.

And then there's a matter of embellishment. His story of one particular incident, as Time magazine's Romesh Ratnesar, noticed, has been hyped several times in the telling. It's an important incident because it gets to the heart of the case that the Bush administration allegedly sacrificed the war on terror for the war to depose Saddam. On the major television news show, "Sixty Minutes," Clarke described a conversation he had with the president on September 12, 2001:
"The President dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this'.....the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this.'"
On a subsequent interview, this is how Clarke described the event: "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." And in the book itself? Here's what Bush apparently said and did. He took a few senior intelligence aides aside into a closed room and said: "I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way." Clarke simply answered: "Al-Qaeda did this." To which Bush responded, "I know, I know, but see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred..."

Now memories blur; people's attitudes can change with recollection. Especially given what we now know about the weak links between al Qaeda and Saddam and the subsequent controversy over the Iraq war, this conversation could easily be distorted through the prism of hindsight. But what I infer from these passages and their differences are several other things: Clarke is essentially telling the truth. But on the face of it, that truth is in no way damning to Bush. It's the president's job to prod his intelligence and counter-terrorism experts not to jump immediately to conclusions, to keep their options open, to pursue every possible avenue in the shadowy, inter-locking world of terrorism and terror-states. The president would have been remiss not to ask his staff to check whether a known and dangerous enemy of the United States was somehow involved in the attacks, especially since a similar attack with WMDs was on everyone's mind, especially Cheney's. And Iraq had (or was believed to have had) some pretty serious WMDs.

But the personal tone of Clarke's attacks, the exaggeration, the political anti-war agenda of a man who lost his job under this president, cannot but undermine the man's basic credibility. If he had written with less fire, if he had testified in a less partisan manner, if he had not embellished, he'd be a far more important witness. But he has done nothing that fatal to this administration, except give important credibility to the argument (an argument I find callow and too limited) that the war against Saddam and the war against terror were unrelated. The picture he has painted is not too different than the one we already know: the Cliton administration was tracking al Qaeda but never committed to effecting its destruction; the Bush administration was working slowly to grapple with the problem, but by no means urgently enough. There's plenty of blame to go round. But I'd argue that eight years of Clinton failure is a little more damning than nine months of Bush inadequacy.

Sullivan is back to bashing Bush and dithering on the election. He says he wants to use his blog to think out the election and decide in November.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:38 AM 0 comments

 

Jackson Diehl notes that there are several auspicious signs that Arabs are beginning to agitate for democracy. It will take a long time, but the seeds are there.

Yet, they are not. The most underreported and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically backward places in the region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria. They are made up not only of intellectuals but of businessmen, women, students, teachers and journalists. Unlike their governments -- and the old school of U.S. and European Arabists -- they don't believe that change should be gradual, and they reject the dictators' claim that democracy would only empower Islamic extremists. It is the delay of change, they say, that is increasingly dangerous.

These people weren't created by George W. Bush. They are the homegrown answer to a decadent political order, and they ride a powerful historical current. But they will tell you frankly: The new U.S. democratization policy, far from being an unwanted imposition, has given them a voice, an audience and at least a partial shield against repression -- three things they didn't have one year ago.

"In the Middle East today, you talk about food, you talk about football -- and you talk about democracy," says Mohammed Kamal, a young political scientist from Egypt. "Some people condemn the Americans, others say, 'Look at the other side, these are universal values.' The point is that for the first time in many years, there is a serious debate going on in the Arab world about their own societies. The United States has triggered this debate, it keeps the debate going, and this is a very healthy development."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:30 AM 0 comments

 

Robert Novak looks at how Richard Clarke went from being a scathing Clinton critic to Clinton admirer and scathing Bush critic.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:27 AM 0 comments

 

Joel Mowbray is good today. Check out the entire column.

Incoming members of the new Bush administration, according to former Clinton aides testifying before the 9/11 commission, were warned that al Qaeda was the most menacing and dangerous force on the face of the earth—a perception clearly reinforced by Clinton’s cunning strategy of laying low and refusing to respond.

Maybe if, instead of asking the Taliban to “hand over” bin Laden, we had invaded Afghanistan a few months before we actually did, “9/11” wouldn’t have been burned into the American vernacular.

On the one-year anniversary of the war in Iraq, the only second-guessing going on seems to be whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that David Kay reported that Saddam himself believed he had WMD, and that Iraq clearly had the capability to whip up plenty of lethal biological weapons in just a couple of weeks for the purpose of easily killing thousands of innocent civilians.

But lack of WMD is not the primary peacenik argument against the “ominous” doctrine of preemption. Even if it turns out Saddam didn’t have WMD—which we’ll never know unless we comb every inch of Syria—plenty of bad guys openly possess WMD, and peaceniks want them to stay in power just as much as they wanted Saddam to stay put.

So the doves talk about civilian casualties during a war. It’s a brilliant strategy, non? All wars involve civilian casualties, no matter how many smart bombs and no matter how many precautions are taken.

But the numbers not examined are the ones that would happen in the absence of war.

If we had dropped a daisy cutter on Kim Jong-Il’s North Korean palace in 1994 instead of signing a worthless nonproliferation treaty, more than two million North Koreans would be alive today—and they’d be breathing freedom. Would some civilians have died? Of course. But nowhere near two million. Not even close.

And lest we forget that in roughly a quarter-century, Saddam killed anywhere from half-million to over one million people, according to most reasonable estimates. That doesn’t count the untold suffering in Saddam’s torture chambers and rape rooms. Given Saddam’s annual death toll, he could have murdered upwards of 50,000 people this year alone—far more civilians than even the most rabid America-haters contend have died in the past year.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:21 AM 0 comments

 

Apparently, there is going to be a big turnover in the leadership of several key interest groups int he next year. John Sweeney's tenure at the AFL-CIO will be up, but he's running for reelection. It's too much to hope that someone who hates the GOP less will be chosen, I guess.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:19 AM 0 comments

 

Diane Ravitch points out all the references to God in our nation's most revered documents.

So what are the origins of the phrase "under God"? As school children once knew, the phrase can be found in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. At the end of this short, eloquent oration, Lincoln resolved "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth."

Other historic figures also used the phrase. On July 2, 1776, George Washington rallied his troops on Long Island to prepare for battle against the British, who had assembled on Staten Island. In his general orders to the troops Washington said: "The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army."

A week later, only days after the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, Washington ordered a reading of the Declaration to his troops and told them: "This important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of the country depends, under God, solely on the success of our arms."

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 5:36 AM 0 comments

Sunday, March 28, 2004

 

The New York Post has the dope on the wacky juror who is holding out on the Dennis Kozlowski trial. Shouldn't something happen to her for flashing the OK sign to Kozlowski at the trial? That is just bizarre.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:16 PM 0 comments

 

Dave Barry confesses that he used to.....freebase carbs.

probably shouldn't admit this to you younger readers, but when my generation was your age, we did some pretty stupid things. I'm talking about taking CRAZY risks. We drank water right from the tap. We used aspirin bottles that you could actually open with your bare hands. We bought appliances that were not festooned with helpful safety warnings such as ''DO NOT BATHE WITH THIS TOASTER.''

But for sheer insanity, the wildest thing we did was -- prepare to be shocked -- we deliberately ingested carbohydrates.

I know, I know. It was wrong. But we were young and foolish, and there was a lot of peer pressure. You'd be at a party, and there would be a lava lamp blooping away, and a Jimi Hendrix record playing (a ''record'' was a primitive compact disc that operated by static electricity). And then, when the mood was right, somebody would say: ''You wanna do some 'drates?'' And the next thing you know, there'd be a bowl of pretzels going around, or crackers, or even potato chips, and we'd put these things into our mouths and just ... EAT them.

I'm not proud of this. My only excuse was that we were ignorant. It's not like now, when everybody knows how bad carbohydrates are, and virtually every product is advertised as being ''low-carb,'' including beer, denture adhesives, floor wax, tires, life insurance and Viagra. Back then, we had no idea. Nobody did! Our own MOTHERS gave us bread!

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:10 PM 0 comments

 

Instapundit says that the Bush Doctrine is working and links to a story about Syria asking Australia to step in and help them get a better profile in Washington. They're sick of being considered a haven for terrorists. Hey, if the shoe fits.....

But, maybe Instapundit is right that Syria will be the next Libya.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 3:02 PM 0 comments

 

Alan Dershowitz says that the killing of Yassin was totally lawful. You bet it was.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:53 PM 0 comments

 

She's baaaack. Cynthia McKinney, that is.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:50 PM 0 comments

 

Germany is waking up to the fact that the Bush administration is serious about moving military bases from Germany.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:45 PM 0 comments

 

Thomas Friedman says that the terrorists in Israel have been "voting" Likud because they like a hardline approach by Israel since that does more to whip up their peeps. And Friedman thinks that, as the Spanish Civil War was a dress rehearsal for World War II, so terrorism in Israel might be a dress rehearsal for terrorism in Europe.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 2:43 PM 0 comments

 

Peter Solomon looks at what we can learn from from Wal-Mart.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 8:00 AM 0 comments

 

Our the red and blue states the equivalent of England's Roundheads and Cavaliers? One Washington Post writer believes so.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:56 AM 0 comments

 

Now who is politicizing 9/11? Democrats are crowing about how the 9/11 Commission report will help Kerry and hurt Bush.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:50 AM 0 comments

 

Amir Taheri discusses how Arabs think that John Kerry will be easier on them than George Bush. Taheri says that America won't change its positions regarding terrorism no matter who is president. Oh, come on. Kerry is trumpeting how he will change the war on terror. He believes in a law enforcement model and in not aggravating our so-called allies. The "war on terror" will change in hundreds of small ways that will have big consequences.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:43 AM 0 comments

 

The New York Times profiles Shepard Smith and his dislike for verbs.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:36 AM 0 comments

 

A lot of experts are criticizing history textbooks as dull, banal, wrong, adn too concerned about being politically correct to present history.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:33 AM 0 comments

 

Saddam has a lawyer and surprise, surprise....he's French.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:26 AM 0 comments

 

Jack Kelly has it right.

We now know how Campaign 2004 will unfold: A Democrat will accuse President Bush of having started the Chicago fire, or poisoning Halloween candy or whatever. The news media will trumpet the charges, no matter how preposterous. When Bush aides deny the charges, and provide evidence refuting them, journalists will accuse Bush of making "personal attacks."

....Clarke has credibility problems which make those of Clinton and Nixon seem mild by comparison. But it's hard to find a hint of this in the "mainstream" media. In a lengthy "analysis" piece ("Insider Clarke Weathers his Critics"), Mark Matthews and Tom Bowman of the Baltimore Sun somehow fail to mention at all that what Clarke is saying now contradicts what he said before. Dana Milbank of The Washington Post ("Clarke Stays Cool as Partisanship Heats Up") does mention the August 2002 interview, but only to criticize the White House for permitting Fox News to make public a transcript of it.

The news media sometimes go to ludicrous lengths to blame Bush for the sins of his predecessor. A story on the MSNBC Web site March 24 took Bush to task for not having acted against al-Qaida in 1998, when Bush was governor of Texas. In a story that same day, the New York Daily News moved the attack on the USS Cole to "early 2001," during the Bush presidency, when in fact it happened on Oct. 12, 2000.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:24 AM 0 comments

 

Mark Steyn looks at Iraq a year later and at ten predictions that the doomsayers had a year ago and what Steyn thought about those doomsayers then and what is happening now. Another must read by Steyn.

1. ''Iraq's Slide Into Violent Anarchy'' (The Guardian, April 11, 2003). Say what you like about Saddam, but he ran a tight ship and you didn't have to nail down the furniture.

I predicted: ''A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs.''

One year on: Almost. According to the BBC, Basra is booming and its citizens are flush with new spending power. Despite Saddam Hussein's decision to empty the prisons of petty criminals on the eve of the war, in February British authorities reported that crime in the city has fallen by 70 percent.

2. ''The head of the World Food Program has warned that Iraq could spiral into a massive humanitarian disaster'' (The Australian, April 11, 2003).

One year on: No humanitarian disaster. Indeed, no ''humanitarians.'' The NGOs fled Iraq in August and nobody noticed, confirming what some of us have suspected since Afghanistan: The permanent floating crap game of the humanitarian lobby has a vastly inflated sense of its own importance and is prone to massive distortion in the cause of self-promotion.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:15 AM 0 comments

 

The Washington Post wants Kerry to clarify where he stands and what his "blueprint" would be for a Kerry administration.

Kerry has emerged from the Democratic primaries as the "generic Democrat" at a time when the pragmatic goal of defeating Bush has trumped philosophical differences within the party. He embraces establishment Democratic thinking that more government spending is needed on domestic programs but that deficits are a serious problem, that U.S. foreign policy should be muscular but also multilateral when possible, that free trade is desirable but with a growing list of reservations.

Those positions reflect a consensus within the party, but also a fuzziness in their particulars.

A fuzziness? How about contradictions that cancel each other out? How about weaseling to whichever position he thinks sounds better at the particular time?

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:10 AM 0 comments