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Chickenhawk on the Battlefield of Truth

Saturday, November 24th, 2007

I think I just saw something remarkable on Google. I was up rattling around between 4:30 and 5:30 this morning, and I hit the search engine to find some news about T. Boone Pickens’ million-dollar challenge to disprove anything in the Swift Boat ads from three years ago, and Sen. Kerry’s acceptance of same. Then, now, 7:30 to 8:00, I did it again. I’m seeing in the first two pages of results, not less than six or seven entries are worded exactly the same: “Pickens ‘backtracks’ on SBVT dare” — I don’t think it looked like that two hours ago.

Maybe, earlier, I just went straight to the “News” link with that search term. And maybe it’s just my imagination. But the replication of this one headline is interesting. Clearly, there’s a hierarchy involved in distributing these, and clearly that hierarchy works to the benefit of The Left. It’s not news to anyone who’s been watching this kind of thing for awhile, but strangers to it might find it enlightening. And if those strangers do find it that way, they certainly need to.

But to zero in on this challenge: I was pretty intrigued when I heard about it. To refresh your memory, I’ll just dial up a news website, that polishes over the recent history with the now-customary cliches, at random…

Obama’s response accused Clinton of “Swift Boat politics” — a reference to the 2004 attacks on Kerry’s military record by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry stayed quiet, a decision that some advisers fought at the time and that in retrospect turned out to have devastating consequences for his image in some swing states. [emphasis mine]

The SBVT group is a 527 non-profit. What tends to be lost in the news filter is that the more controversial claims by the SBVT have to do with Sen. Kerry’s war record, and the circumstances under which he won his medals…issues which the Senator brought up in the first place when running for President.

Also lost in the mix is that there very well may be no way to prove one way or the other what actually happened, since the argument deteriorated clear back in 2004 into a he-said-she-said. It could very well be a case of Rashomon syndrome. In fact, it very well may be that among the real veterans who were actually there, everyone is being a hundred percent truthful about their recollections of events even as those various recollections conflict with each other directly.

But the SBVT used their 527 money to get the word out that Sen. Kerry’s recollection of events, was not by any means uncontested. I could be wrong, but to the extent of my knowledge that’s just about the most unkind word they had to say about him…which is a stark contrast to the Senator’s now-infamous 1971 testimony before Congress, the one where he mispronounced the name of Genghis Kahn.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Kerry’s testimony-about-testimony shocked a nation back in 1971, and again, in quite a different way in 2004.

But of course, the real issue isn’t whether or not words can be used to hurt or shock people. The issue is truth. We were reminded of this with the phone-testicle-taping testimony after it was thoroughly discredited…although a lot of people, still just as passionate about that issue as they ever were, have yet to know about that. But back to the subject at hand, and the truth involved in that subject: How did John Kerry win his medals? And what did he personally know about wires from portable telephones taped to prisoners’ nut-sacks? What did he personally verify about blowing up bodies and razing villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn? In fact, what does he personally know about Genghis Kahn?

What I found intriguing about Pickens’ challenge was that it dealt in this truth. Enough with the cheerleading; enough with the fanfare and the name-calling and the cherry-picked “eyewitnesses.” Once such an issue has deteriorated to he-said-she-said, cherry-picked witnesses bring very little value to the table. Just prove stuff. I know it’s tempting to read one’s own motives into the players who are more central to the drama one is watching, but I would like to think Mr. Pickens grew just as weary of the group-cheering and the holding-of-court as I did. Just stop appealing to emotions and prove what you’re trying to prove.

Now, that was earlier this month. A week ago Sen. Kerry made some real headlines by accepting the challenge.

No, he didn’t supply the proof Pickens demanded. That would come later. He made a show of accepting the challenge, and then he was heralded with great fanfare as if he already presented the proof.

In other words, he appealed to emotion yet again.

This is not the way I would have handled things. If someone challenges me to prove something, and I accept the challenge, I’m offering the proof. Especially if the proof exonerates me from being a purple-heart showboater and short-timer. If such an accusation was made, and I knew it to be false, that would strike me as a very personal offense — whether I was running for President or not.

I would never have dreamed of “announcing” I was accepting the challenge. I’d swat it down on the spot.

Now, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I heard that Pickens issued this challenge. Part of me was wishing that after spending an entire election campaign season AWOL from the battlefield of truth, in which facts actually matter more than grandstanding, and things formerly wondered about are proven — or refuted — Kerry would finally “enlist” and be seen in action on that battlefield.

Perhaps I should have known better. It’s time to prove things, and all we see out of him is more showing-off. More speeches. More aren’t I wonderful and aren’t they rotten.

I would request that your check be made payable to the Paralyzed Veterans of America which is doing incredible work every day to meet the needs of veterans returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan. My hope is that by sending this money to such a dedicated organization – founded for veterans, by veterans – some good can come out of the ugly smears and lies of the orchestrated campaign you bankrolled in 2004 in an attempt to discredit my military record and the record of the men who served alongside me on the Swift Boats of the Mekong Delta.

I would be more than happy to travel to Dallas to meet with you in a mutually agreed upon public forum, or would invite you to join me in Massachusetts for a public dialogue and then together we could visit the Paralyzed Veterans of America in Norwood and see firsthand how we can put your money to good work for our veterans.

I look forward to setting up a visit at the earliest possible, mutually convenient time. I trust that you are a man of your word, having made a very public challenge at a major Washington dinner, and look forward to taking you up on this challenge.

Yes, Kerry was in Vietnam. Yes, a lot of Republicans were not. But if he’s that stoic and fearless about running on to battlefields, I’d sure like to see him storm this one. Whatever the outcome. Just see him step onto it — for a change of pace. So far, he’s proven to be just as talented in staying out of that kind of “combat,” as anyone else, anywhere.

What do the facts actually say, Sen. Kerry? And if this isn’t the time to be answering that question, when is? Do you even have it in you?

I don’t think so. I think on the battlefield of facts and evidence and proof and disproof, Kerry has always been, and always will be, a chickenhawk. He goes through the motions of pretending to use logic and common sense and “nuanced” thinking, but I had an entire year to watch him try to persuade myself and others with his rhetoric, and he stayed on the emotional plane the entire time. Every single minute. And I should have realized this from the get-go — Sen. Kerry will throw a lot of stuff at Pickens’ challenge, but none of it is going to have any more to do with proving or refuting anything, according to reason or logic, than a day-old box of donuts.

He simply doesn’t work that way. He’s AWOL.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Deranged Leftists, Elections, History | 1 Comment »

The Third Most Important Issue

Friday, November 16th, 2007

I have mentioned more than once that this country has two critically important issues for next year’s elections, that are running neck-and-neck in terms of how much attention we should be paying them. Which one of them claims the booby-prize, is a question that ends up being just a real squeaker. But ultimately they have to be listed in this order:

1. Who is going to bring me the biggest pile of dead crispy terrorist carcasses each year?
2. Is the democrat party represented by people who are ignorant or careless with reality, or full-blown crazy?

The third-most-important issue, I have commented as I reiterate this short list, is not even close. Whatever that third-most-important issue may be. I’ve said that on a few occasions too.

Well you know what. After listening to some rebroadcasting of Sen. Barack Obama’s comments on illegal immigration last night, I am ready to amend that. There is a third most important issue, and it is almost as important as the first two. And like those first two, I can state it with something that ends with a question mark. It is a question. It’s a question we should be asking a LOT. And I’ve not yet heard of anyone asking it…not even once…not anywhere…not yet.

The question is this. It is the third-most-important issue of next year’s election.

How does a candidate for President of the United States, or any other high office for that matter, even begin to form an enlightened opinion about what illegal immigrants might or might not be here to do?

I mean, the last occupant of any office of that stature who was something even hinting at a paycheck-to-paycheck individual, was Newt Gingrich just before he was Speaker of the House. The last one before that, would have been Governor (not President) Bill Clinton. These folks aren’t exactly the first to be exposed to the dark seamy underbelly of society. They have got to be talking out their asses — there is no other explanation — since they aren’t enjoying any kind of access to the information that would be needed to decide such a thing.

Unless they somehow are…which must mean someone’s about to confess to a Linda-Chavez type of nanny situation. You know, when you’re running for President, I think that’s supposed to be bad news. Last I checked, President was above Labor Secretary.

But seriously. Since we don’t have any logical reason to suppose a bazillion and a half illegal aliens are here to “follow the law and work hard” and “do the jobs Americans won’t do,” and we’ve got this enormous wad of politicians telling us exactly that and few-to-none of them are asserting any way they could possibly know such a thing…this is something that needs some inspection. More than it’s been getting. A whole lot more.

The most incriminating thing about the word “illegal,” when you think about it, is that it is indeed synonymous with the euphemism “undocumented.” That’s the worst thing about it. “Illegal” means YOU DON’T KNOW. You could be hiring Pablo to work at the waffle restaurant, or the daycare center, or at the landscaping business…you might have gotten hold of Pablo’s records to make sure he’s got a clean history…and you have no way of knowing if you’re looking at the real Pablo.

We’re talking about twelve million people here. To say they’re “all” out to do anything, or “none” of them are trying to do something else, is as silly as things get.

Thing I Know #35. The individual attribute ascribed to the aggregate entity, manifests a weak argument ripe for re-thinking.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections, Illegal Immigration | 1 Comment »

Twenty-Three Six

Friday, November 16th, 2007

Okay donks, here are your big-three choices for next year…

…good stuff, all.

H/T: Jawa Report.

Posted in Challenger Scandals | 2 Comments »

Ron Paul’s Jewish Problem

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

A month ago, after looking in to the word neocon, what exactly it is supposed to have meant and what exactly it has come to mean, I came to the conclusion that this is so important that it defines a modern ideological split that has entirely replaced the traditional Republican/democrat schism. We have Republicans that are numerous and passionate, disagreeing viscerally on some issues on which their opponents are equally Republican, numerous and passionate. Abortion rights, gay marriage, grabbing guns, spending money. And you can say the same about the donk party — withdrawing from Iraq and impeaching the 43rd President.

The Republican/donk split pre-dates the civil war. It hasn’t kept pace with the times.

We are now neocons and socialists. And a neocon, used there, is anybody who is not a socialist.

This creates a lot of problems…for certain people. Problems which are ultimately of their own making. And Ron Paul, I’m looking right at you.

Now fed up with the neocon’s wars abroad and the diminishing of civil liberties at home, many conservatives are rallying behind Paul, whom they view as the only Republican candidate who isn’t in the pocket of the Israel lobby. They have helped him become an Internet sensation — the Republican Howard Dean, if you will — who in the last quarter raised over $5 million, outpacing more mainstream candidates like John McCain.

Even with his hardline protectionist stance, Paul has managed to garner the support of Jewish Republicans and Libertarians alike, some of whom have banded together to form an ad hoc coalition called Jews for Ron Paul, which condemned the RJC’s decision to bar the Congressman from their Candidate’s Forum.

Yet, much to his Jewish supporters’ chagrin, Congressman Paul’s willingness to stand up to the neocons has also had the effect of making Paul a popular candidate among those from whom Presidential candidates would typically not desire support: Bona fide antisemites.

Indeed, Ron Paul has become the most popular candidate among right-wing extremists, including white separatists, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists who believe that “the Zionists” were behind 9/11. This group includes Frank Weltner, creator of the antisemitic website JewWatch.com, who in a YouTube video, accuses the “Zionist-controlled media” of attacking Paul’s candidacy. Paul has also received favorable coverage from the Vanguard News Network, a White Nationalist news organ, members of Stormfront, an online neo-Nazi community, as well as the National Alliance, the “mainstream” White Nationalist group featured prominently in Marc Levin’s 2005 film Protocols of Zion.

Of course, Congressman Paul cannot be held accountable for the views of his extremist supporters, unless he publicly acquiesces to those views. Yet, when his extremist supporters begin providing a substantial amount of campaign funds, things get a bit dicier. And that’s Paul’s biggest problem.

According to the Lone Star Times, White Nationalists have become a noticeable source of financial contributions to the Paul campaign. Indeed, even Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, and one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in America, has personally contributed $500 to Paul’s campaign.

Though it’s true that Paul’s campaign has no control over who sends them money in advance, once it becomes apparent that a neo-Nazi leader is sending money, any sensible politician who does not wish to be identified with neo-Nazism should send the money back. Not so for Ron Paul, however, whose campaign is still making up its mind as to whether or not to return Black’s money.

Does Ron Paul deserved to be slimed over this?

I think he does. He’s not nearly as crazy as people say he is, and he’s been in Washington a long time. He’s built his career lately out of opposing the “neocon” threat, and it’s not demanding too much to expect he should have as decent an inventory as anybody else as to who is unsympathetic to neocons: It’s a ghastly menagerie of zealots each clinging to an issue that is cosmetically autonomous from all the others — yet, in reality, and Congressman Paul knows this, those issues have a relationship with each other.

Eye Hayt Boosh. U.S. and Israel are bombing and killing Palestinian babies. We have to legalize pot. Abortion on demand. Capital gains. Roll back the tax cuts. Increase the minimum wage. Unions never do anything wrong. There is no god. Glowbubble wormening ManBearPig. Give peace a chance. Kids’ TV shows should have less violence and more sex.

Show men ten people who believe in any one of those things, pick any one of the others, and I’ll show you nine people who believe in that second thing. You know it as well as I do. The cohesion is amazing. It’s a direct consequence of ingrained hostility toward independent thinking.

And antisemitism is woven thoroughly in there. I expect more from Ron Paul than jumping at the chance to return the money (and he’s failing to do even that); I expect him to have anticipated this. Yes, the “neocons” have a lot of enemies, but some of those enemies are good enemies to have. I know I wouldn’t want them as friends.

Ron Paul doesn’t seem to be quite so decisive about this.

H/T: New Republic, by way of Instapundit.

Posted in Challenger Scandals | 8 Comments »

Learn What You Can While You Can

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

Well, here we go again. Sen. Hillary Clinton, considered a frontrunner on the donk side in the race for the White House next year, got caught in some skullduggery. (Fellow Webloggin contributor Big Dog has a decent write-up about it here.) I’d write something about it, but it occurs to me that’s wasteful. Nobody ever wants to know too much about these things for too long, and while it’s still too recent for anyone to avoid it completely there’s no hunger for details at all. Even among her opponents.

Everybody knows we’re going to be pressured to stop talking about this soon, everybody knows that before too long if you even so much as bring it up you’ll be considered a kook. Everybody knows she’s going to get away with it — again.

It’s gotten a little silly to even feign uncertainty about it, for ritual’s sake.

In fact, it occurs to me with a little bit of utility-grade artwork, I could summarize this to the extent anybody cares to find out about it, to the extent anybody’s ever going to tell anyone about it, and keep it in the realm of one hundred percent what we software developers from the early 1990’s used to call “reusable code.”

So I sat down with Microsoft Windows Paint and did exactly that.

Sen. Clinton got caught Now I have something I fully expect to be able to re-use again and again and again, well into next year. And God knows how many “carbon tons” I’ve saved the planet, over the long haul. There are certain details it doesn’t address…but as has been explained above, it’s really useless to go into those. Nobody cares, nobody ever will care.

Go ahead, borrow it, use it, give it away. The image has it all…every little thing you’re going to be allowed to talk about, and it’s all true, and will continue to be true, scandal after scandal after scandal.

Meanwhile, it looks like the Sacramento Bee got caught behind the news cycle on this one. They chose to reprint, today, this story from the New York Times. I expect this will end up being a little awkward for them.

Late one night last year, while her husband was an Army scout in Iraq, Melissa Storey sat in the quiet of her bedroom to write President Bush a letter. She wanted him to know “we believed in him.” And after Staff Sgt. Clint Storey, 30, was killed by a roadside bomb, his widow put pen to paper again.

“I felt like I needed to let him know I don’t hate him because my husband is dead,” Mrs. Storey said, “that I don’t blame him for Clint dying over there.”

The correspondence did not go unnoticed. In May, Mrs. Storey received a surprise telephone call from the White House inviting her to a Memorial Day reception there. As she mingled at the elegant gathering, too nervous to eat, her 5-year-old daughter clutching her dress, her infant son cradled in her arms, a military aide appeared. The president wanted to see her in the Oval Office.

The Storeys, of Palmer, Mass., joined a growing list of bereaved families granted a private audience with the commander in chief. As Mr. Bush forges ahead with the war in Iraq, these “families of the fallen,” as the White House calls them, are one constituency he can still count on, a powerful reminder to an unpopular president that even in the face of heartbreaking loss, some still believe he is doing the right thing.

Since the war in Afghanistan began six years ago, Mr. Bush has met quietly with more than 450 such families, and is likely to meet more on Sunday, Veterans Day, in Waco, Tex., near his Crawford ranch. Mr. Bush often says he hears their voices — “don’t let my son die in vain,” he quotes them as saying — when making decisions about the war. The White House says families are not asked their political views. Yet war critics wonder just whose voices the president is hearing.

Like Melissa Storey, Bill Adams, who has been leading war protests in Lancaster, Pa., wrote Mr. Bush a letter — not to praise the president, but to question the military’s account of the death of his son, Brent. When Mr. Bush held a town-hall-style meeting in Lancaster last month, Mr. Adams asked a friend with a ticket to deliver his missive to the president. It worked, and a top aide to Mr. Bush later called Mr. Adams.

But when the president met families of the fallen that day in Lancaster, it did not escape Mr. Adams’s notice that he was not among them.

“I can’t help but be left with the suspicion that possibly his advance team screened those families for people who would be sympathetic,” Mr. Adams said. Given the chance, he said, he would have told Mr. Bush “that my son’s life was squandered.”

Mr. Adams’ case is pure conjecture, and it’s a little hollow. He thinks President Bush is doing the same thing Hillary Clinton just got caught doing — pre-screening the audience.

Except.

The comparison I’m making here is unworkable for a lot of reasons. Mr. Adams thinks President Bush is filtering his audience. Sen. Clinton, if you click at the first link in this post, you’ll see has been accused of putting plants into hers.

President Bush is meeting with hurting families in a confidential, private forum. Sen. Clinton is putting on a show.

Most importantly, we have a first-hand account of someone who says she was given a question to ask by a Clinton staffer. Bill Adams has a hunch, and not at all an incriminating one at that. I’m awfully sorry this man lost his son, but to be frank about it, if I were the President I wouldn’t invite him either…even if we did not have that episode with the “absolute moral authority” mom…which we did. It’s simply ridiculous to think Bill Adams wouldn’t take over the session in some way, for however brief a time. There are supposed to be other families there, in similar straights. It simply wouldn’t be appropriate.

Now, in reproducing this story on the front page today, the Sacramento Bee jumped onto Page A14 right after the words “near his Crawford ranch.” So they weren’t quite able to work Bill Adams into the front page. But that’s okay, they re-wrote the headline as…

Many ‘families of the fallen’ still back Bush

…and the sub-headline is cobbled together as

But war critics suspect that president’s private meetings are screened.

Hey, good going Sacramento Bee. You’ve just accused the President, based on one war activist’s extravagant speculation, of doing exactly the same thing we know Sen. Clinton’s campaign is doing. Even worse, by implying there’s something wrong with screening, you’ve pretty much dis-invited yourselves from any pre-Thanksgiving cocktail parties or emergency strategy sessions with any high-fallutin’ blue-blood Clinton fans, who might want to spin the tale that, y’know what, screening and planting is all just wonderful stuff. You better leave the black-tie wardrobe in mothballs unless you can come up with a good explanation for this.

But it can only get so embarrassing for you. Worst-case scenario is, someone is going to connect the dots, and write a letter to the Editor questioning — how come you’re accusing the President of doing something we don’t really know he’s doing, which would actually be appropriate if he was doing it, and letting Sen. Clinton get off scot-free for doing exactly the same thing only worse?

In which case you’ll just use the standard remedy: Print that letter just above, or below, a letter from someone in Davis or West Sacramento accusing you of being too friendly with the “neocons.” This always works. It isn’t even necessary to write an editorial crying “boo hoo, poor us, no matter what we do someone somewhere is always unhappy.” That isn’t necessary. The message is implied, and comes through loud and clear.

Meanwhile, I await that hard-hitting expose in the Sacramento Bee — and the New York Times — about Sen. Clinton and the plants in her audience. Obviously, I’m not holding my breath.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections, Iraq and WoT Stuff | 1 Comment »

Imitation is the Sincerest Form XXI

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

A couple days ago I said, regarding Senator Clinton’s fumble…

I don’t know for a fact that a President Hillary Clinton would certainly end the United States as we know it. But let’s face facts: She’d certainly be able to. She could erode “civil liberties” a hundred times more than President Bush has ever dreamed of doing, and afterward, face one-hundredth as much scrutiny and inspection from the media or from anyone else.

A woman of real courage would just leave that “don’t pick on the girl” card unplayed. You’d get answers out of her, which would have real meaning, that you’d be able to understand.

Now, I don’t know if Hillary’s rival and colleague Barrack Obama reads my blog. I have long operated under the premise that hardly anybody does. But how then do you explain this gem, which appeared in the online edition of the L.A. Times earlier this morning?

“I am assuming and I hope that Sen. Clinton wants to be treated like everybody else,” Obama said on the “Today” show.

Referring to debates where he has come under attack, Obama said, “I didn’t come out and say, ‘Look, I’m being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage.’ “

I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.

It’s easily the most sensible thing I’ve heard of Sen. Obama saying, since…well, since a few short months ago when he dished out his first not-really-positive comment about something, whatever that comment was, after some advisor got hold of him and correctly convinced him he couldn’t win the White House on a bunch of empty bromides and platitudes. He was probably reacting to the Clinton campaign’s YouTube clip, which in my opinion is about as clever as any other, but nevertheless amounts to a whole lot of whining.

One of the things that makes America a great country is we get bitchy about whiners…other countries get bitchy about people who gloat, and end up nurturing cultures opposed to success, eventually festering into unabashed jealousy. But we get particularly bitchy about powerful politicians snivelling away about having to answer tough questions when seeking high office.

In the first 150 years or so of this nation’s history, Hillary Clinton’s boo-hoo-hoo don’t pick on me schtick would have gotten her disqualified. Well, of course, being a woman she wouldn’t have been a likely candidate in the first place. Now things are different. A woman can run for President, and in the mind of Hillary Clinton, that apparently means it has become distasteful to inspect what a perceived front-runner would do about even highly-controversial issues. Now that someone with fallopian tubes is running we’re supposed to stop asking questions and just hope for the best.

I don’t think the man’s been born who’s a worse chauvinist pig, than this one candidate who is arguably more likely than any other to be our next President and happens to female herself. I’ve torn up the sheets with some whiny, weepy women in my time, but I doubt I’ve met anyone with a lower tolerance for confrontation or a lower vision for what a woman can handle than Hillary. Obama nailed it: Sen. Clinton’s tactic is useful only to a candidate hiding something. As if we needed a further demonstration of that after her waffling answer.

But of course, I called it out first, and while it’s a stretch to think he was inspired reading the same pages you’re reading now, I have no hard evidence to prove or even to suggest he did not.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections | 1 Comment »

Hop the Turnstyle, Punch a Ballot

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

What better way is there for us to apologize for our very existence as a nation, than to hunt down those who would kill themselves in order to take a few of us down with ’em…and give them the right to vote for or against our public officials.

Here’s the thing. An immigration investigation by the federal government found 4,000 probable illegal voters in that race. It was decided by less than 1,000 votes. Eight of the 9-11 hijackers, eight of the 19 hijackers, were registered to vote — because they’d gotten driver’s licenses.

This is a “Why We Have Blogs” moment if ever there was one. The Newsbusters pice excerpted above is a little on the long side, jam-packed with interesting tidbits you’re not going to hear on the alphabet-soup networks on the boob tube. Ever write a letter to your senator or congressman and wonder why they aren’t exactly slobbering with anticipation for your latest clear guidance about how they should be voting? Well, it almost seems sensible…they’re so busy, and you’re just one voter.

Well, in all likelihood you’re not even that. America, The Beautiful — where the voters elect leaders, and then the leaders get together and decide who’s going to vote. And then the voters wonder why it is they don’t have a say anymore, when the answer is right in front of our faces the whole time.

The donk party just barely managed to squeak out a congressional victory for the first time this century last year. They’ve managed to win 3 out of 10 presidential elections since 1968.

Overall, in spite of the enormous amounts of money they spend bullying us around and telling us what to think, we just don’t want them running anything. And so, we see through Hillary’s embarrassing performance in that debate earlier this week, and through that asinine Motor Voter law enacted in the first year of her husband’s presidency, they want to give the right to vote to people who enter the country illegally.

If the donks were forced to spend one twentieth as much time proving the above musings false, as Republicans are forced to prove they aren’t sexists and racists, we might have a chance as a country. Me, I’m braced for a full year of listening to Hillary and Co. endure hard-nosed, scrutinizing questions such as “how does campaigning make you feel?”

Speaking of which, I wanted to be sure and capture this (H/T: Duffy), which I expect to come in handy in the long months ahead…

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections, Illegal Immigration, The Muslim Question | No Comments »

Drivers Licenses for Illegal Aliens

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Wow, this was a little tough to find. It was kind of easy running into the water cooler hubbub hear-and-there about Hillary Clinton flubbing up an answer, but getting a link to the actual cilp was no mean feat.

“This is where everyone plays gotcha.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

We need to reform that word “reform.” Ban it from politics altogether. This is a pet peeve of mine and it’s not a Republican/donk thing either; I’m sick to death of some waffling politician using that word, giving not one scintilla of evidence as to his real position on the issue under discussion one way or t’other, and then giving this steely-eyed stare into the camera or just off it, as if s/he’s just gone out on a limb and taken some courageous position on something.

It goes well beyond drivers’ licenses for illegal aliens, and it pre-dates Hillary by a good stretch. “We need blahblahblah reform!!” …it’s become the rallying cry of politicans who try to please everybody. Or have hidden agendas they’re afraid to really talk about.

Hillary thinks guys like me are afraid of her because she’s a strong-willed woman. Damn straight. I’m terrified. This flubbed-up answer was a real occasion for surprise and I have no reason to think it’ll ever happen again. She’s using her female-ness to avoid tough questions, with admirable effect — she could be caught red-handed covering little tiny puppies with gasoline and setting them on fire, and when questioned about it she’ll just say she’s forced to do it because of the incompetence of the Bush administration. And in that circumstance, I would fully expect her to get away with it.

I mean, I don’t know for a fact that a President Hillary Clinton would certainly end the United States as we know it. But let’s face facts: She’d certainly be able to. She could erode “civil liberties” a hundred times more than President Bush has ever dreamed of doing, and afterward, face one-hundredth as much scrutiny and inspection from the media or from anyone else.

A woman of real courage would just leave that “don’t pick on the girl” card unplayed. You’d get answers out of her, which would have real meaning, that you’d be able to understand.

Update: Once again, an unidentifiable, omnipotent cosmic kismet says to itself “Hey that Morgan Freeberg guy is babbling nonsense again, let’s make some stuff happen to prove what he’s saying is true.” Some weepy apologetic male surrounded by feminists, spins like a Turkish dervish to support the canard that Senator Clinton’s position is cohesive as all get-out, just communicated badly. Poor fellow just doesn’t get it. He seeks to measure the achievement of the feminist movement by how many of us have the pardon-my-French BALLS to call women “girls.” Get that number to zero, the movement is success; otherwise, it still has a way to go.

It’s not compatible with a free society. Such a brand of feminism, can only achieve when the spirit of the individual is utterly defeated. Until then, everybody gets to call everything by whatever name they’re compelled to use by the wrinkles in their brains. And that’s just the way things are.

Oh, and Senator Clinton is a duplicitous weasel. It’s no less reprehensible when the girls do it. Sorry if that comes as a shock.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections, Illegal Immigration | 3 Comments »

On Huck

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Courtesy of John Fund’s column in the Wall Street Journal, Friday. It’s headlined “Another Man From Hope” and it calls into serious question the conservative credentials of Gov. Huckabee.

Mr. Huckabee attributes his support to the fact he is a “hardworking, consistent conservative with some authenticity about those convictions.” He is certainly qualified for national office, having served nearly 11 years as a chief executive. I have known and liked him for years; on the stump he often tells the story of how we first met outside his boarded-up office in the state Capitol, which had been sealed by Arkansas Democrats who refused to accept he had won an upset election for lieutenant governor in 1993. But I also know he is not the “consistent conservative” he now claims to be.

Nor am I alone. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once “his No. 1 fan.” She was bitterly disappointed with his record. “He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal,” she says. “Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office.”

I don’t have too much of a problem with the abortion issue, but the tax thing disturbs me mightily and I’ll tell you why: Because it’s 2007. It is logically offensive to continue debating supply side economics. Show me three politicians who want to raise revenue by increasing taxes, and I’ll show you a liar, a liar, and another liar.

That’s not a statement of opinion, it’s a matter of fact.

Things don’t look good for the Huck…are you listening, Buck?

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections | 1 Comment »

Explain

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

Churlish Ass You have the floor, Sen. Barack Obama. I am ready for my explanation. What was going on at the moment the shutter clicked, that everyone in view has their right hand extended reverently over their hearts, and you’re just standing there like some lowbrow boob?

What, they had a false start and you were the only one smart enough to figure out the music wasn’t playing yet?

Maybe that’s it, or maybe you were the one slow on the uptake. Or maybe…maybe…you assumed the proper position, and microscopic aliens conspired to yank your hand down off your chest and interlace your fingers together. Or maybe it’s a Photoshop job. Or…I dunno. Fill in your own excuse. But make it good.

Make it good, or your candidacy is finished. Or it ought to be.

I mean, indulge for me this thought exercise, will you. There’s this foreign country. The foreign country is having an election next year, and there’s no less than fifteen candidates for that high office. Prime Minister or something. The foreign country has a ceremony in which all are called upon to salute that country’s flag, and one of the candidates is so devoid of consideration and good manners, that he stands there like a poorly-bred rude little brat…

…and he’s allowed to continue to run.

What’s the very best thing you can think about that country, that they would put up with this? What’s the very highest level of esteem in which you could hold them? Not real high, huh. Well here we have a situation in which America is that other country.

So my logic is quite simple…solid…and sound. Obama drops out now.

This very instant.

Or else, next time you have some asinine international “poll” talking about how those foreigners don’t hold the US of A in high regard — don’t come crying to me about it. Don’t you dare come snivelling my way about it. Blame Obama.

What a churlish ass.

Update 10/23/07: Welcome Pajamas Media readers, pleased to have ya.

Update 10/24/07: Found video. They’re really butchering the hell outta the national anthem. Obama did applaud at the end, but went the better part of a minute with his hands down like that. There are an awful lot of people with their hands over their hearts, he could have been facing away from all of them. So one possible excuse, although far from likely, is that he’s simply unacquainted with the custom.

Each reader may make up his or her own mind as to whether or not that would be Presidential material. I’ve made up mine.

Just remember. Outside of that one possibility, that extremely remote, fantastical possibility, there’s only one other. Obama has a core constituency whose support will waiver if he’s caught saluting. That would mean we’ve got a lot of people voting in this country — a lot of people, dozens of millions — spitting on the flag. And it goes well beyond the “I love my country but I fear my government” or “I respect my country but I loathe what it stands for lately” stuff. These are people who will distrust and despise you if they catch you saluting the flag. And they must be here, walking around, voting, if politicians are afraid of ’em.

I mean, I just gotta believe Obama knows something I don’t. So if those people exist, is it alright for me to question their patriotism yet?

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Deranged Leftists | 7 Comments »

Forget It Ever Happened

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Like the psychotic penguin says in this movie, you…didn’t…see…nuthin’.

Because Move On From Some Things, Dwell Endlessly On Other Things Dot Org is going to be wiring over the difference — so forget everything. Scandal over.

Move on, as they say.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Private Sector Scandals | No Comments »

Hsu Hsick

Monday, September 10th, 2007

Speaking of Hillary’s fugitive high-price fund raiser, he’s going to be handed over to authorities as soon as his health improves…

…sources say.

The only thing is, I’m not sure why he’s sick. Or even if he is. And the people who do know, aren’t allowed to tell me, because…well…they just say they aren’t allowed to tell me.

Samantha Moe, spokeswoman for St. Mary’s Hospital, said Hsu remained in fair condition. She said she could release no other information.

Hospital officials have declined to say what ails Hsu, or why Amtrak officials called the local fire department on Thursday to report a passenger had become ill on the California Zephyr. Police did not even go to the train station on the call.

Later that day, however, FBI officials in San Francisco called St. Mary’s and said a patient there was wanted on federal fugitive charges. The FBI did not say how they knew he had been hospitalized.

You know, it seems to me the public has enough of an interest in being assured a fugitive is going to be brought to justice, given that said fugitive has enough well-connected friends and other resources that he can stay on the lam for sixteen years. But that’s leaving aside the salient point that this particular fugitive is ready, willing, able, and would piss rusty nails like a racehorse to affect the outcome of our senatorial and presidential elections.

And he’s got some great timing when it comes to contracting mysterious unnamed illnesses. Maybe this is where some intrepid, hard-hitting journalists could ask some…questions?

Posted in Challenger Scandals | No Comments »

Scandals and Leftists

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

Over and over and over again, we keep on seeing it. Scandals are devices that are used to get conservatives out and put liberals in. We are continually reminded of this and most of us just plain can’t see it.

How many liberal donkeys have actually been driven out of their positions because of scandals? I can think of Wright and Torricelli. Anybody else?

Hillary's Dirty Money We keep seeing this played out, and overall, we remain blind…and if anyone wants to step forward and correct me on what a political scandal is for, let them think again.

Hillary Clinton’s money man is on the run again.

Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu was a no-show in a California court yesterday – thanks to authorities who didn’t think an ex-fugitive would jump $2 million bail.

After he surrendered on a 15-year-old fraud rap last week, the rich Hong Kong-born businessman was freed on bail and told to return yesterday.

Surprise, surprise – he didn’t.

And here’s another shocker: His passport is missing, too.

“We do not know where he is as of this moment,” Hsu’s lawyer James Brosnahan admitted to a judge in San Mateo, Calif.

He revealed Hsu even hoodwinked his office, sending them on a wild-goose chase for his passport at his Manhattan condo.

And very little is going to be made out of this. It doesn’t have to do with getting right-wingers out or putting left-wingers in, so it’s going to be played down.

We’re being played. I’ve said so before…it is Thing That Makes Me Barf #2…very little is going to occur over the next year to pose any problems for my theory, and deep down everyone knows it. Scandals have a purpose, and that purpose is to drive Republicans out of power. They have very little to do with fact, or letting “little” people make up their own minds about things. They are about the few exerting control over the many, and installing a more leftist government.

Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

Update 9/11/07: Found the excellent cartoon after a few minutes of frustrated Google-searching which ended here and began over at Malkin’s site here.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Elections | 2 Comments »

Creationist Scandals

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

Panda’s Thumb has an interesting theory for which support has been gleaned from the Larry Craig mess: that scandals disproportionately afflict creationists. Into the supporting data sets waltzes Sen. Craig, who in 1989…

…co-sponsored a constitutional amendment, the “Community Life Amendment,” to authorize teaching “the creation of the earth as accepted in Judeo-Christian tradition.”

I think Panda’s Thumb’s theory might have been in better shape if Sen. Craig’s name had been left unmentioned. It’s not too extravagant to suppose the Senator is innocent of the charges. True, he did plead guilty to a lesser charge, and there are other problems with the supposition — who the hell picks up toilet paper on the floor of bathroom stalls, how can you take it so calmly when a cop calls you a liar, and so forth — but it’s a little strange that so much legal hot water can be churned up out of so little evidence. This is bothersome to quite a few folks, some of whom hate Sen. Craig’s guts and think he’s guilty as hell. A prostitution sting can’t work this way. A lot of other things can’t work this way. A cop can’t bust you for fidgeting, making gestures, gesturing in manners anecdotally associated with…ripping off a stereo system out of a jeep. Pressing chewing gum against a bus seat. Jaywalking. Tearing the tag off a mattress.

And then there’s the thing loyal gentlemen Craig-haters club members refuse to discuss: Do you want to take a crap in a stall next to a cop? A cop who can’t leave his own crapper until he busts someone? Are you in control of where your feet are going and how they’re moving? Really?

So to include Sen. Craig, strikes me as a little bit of a grasping-at-straws exercise. If we’re counting scandals, and measuring them on any sort of a scientific basis, the Craig thing hardly emerges as a creme de la creme specimen, does it? No, if the Craig mess is statistically representative of any phenomenon, it is a phenomenon of people talking about things, and officials being forced to resign over those things — but not of those things actually being done.

And in this respect, Panda is quite correct. Just not in the way Panda thinks.

At this point, we have to confess to an ugly truth about religion. It is more than a belief in one or several deities. It always has been much more than that. It is a system which empowers the few to dictate behavior to many, and avoid any intra-societal debate about whether such behavior would be beneficial or not, or whether there might be alternatives. This is the stigma the secularists continue to slap on religion, and they are quite correct about this. Religion is an ancient method of keeping the riff-raff in line. This is what has kept it around for so long, at least throughout the middle ages. It’s undeniable.

Saying so doesn’t make you a godless heathen. You can admit this truism and still have a healthy belief in and respect for God. This confession has to do with the affairs of men, which is an enclave altogether separate from the dominion of God.

The thing is, though, religion works best when people struggle away in substandard lifestyles. Actually, when people have no lifestyles. This is easy to substantiate. Here we are in 2007, we have an unprecedented surge of atheism…oh, look how popular it is! Can’t swing a dead cat around without hitting an atheist, haughtily lecturing at you that the cat evolved from a ladybug, now there is no cat, and you’re such a drooling idiot if you dare to question his wisdom. Atheist book after atheist book after atheist book hits the best-seller list — there are even “A for Atheism” tee shirts. It’s a big business, one that looks more and more, ironically enough, like evangelism.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going on here. People, we see fairly easily once we really start to pay attention to them and how they do things, aren’t so ready, willing and able to soar above the level of an easily-led zombie as they prefer to believe they are. They like someone else telling them what to do. They might not like the idea of it, and sometimes they’re less welcoming of it than other times. But over the long haul, they certainly can’t be counted on to nurse a viscerally-independent rebellious acrimony toward arbitrary and excessive authority.

Over the long haul, they’ll always make a place for it. For the “natural-born leader” who steps in and starts slinging around commandments…benevolent commandments, malicious ones, duplicitous ones, or just-plain poorly-thought-out ones.

And you can take it to the bank that someone will always be willing to step up and do exactly that. Blame God or blame Darwin — somehow, we have been hard-wired to live in tribes. Tribes with hierarchical command structures. Leaders…followers…neither class with a monopoly on survival-related genetic attributes, since after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, both classes are still here. Goin’ STRONG. No end in sight. Anyone who seeks to assert leading-and-following is learned behavior, only has to hang around groups of people while they do the leading-and-following for awhile. Watch the group put someone in charge. See how much sense it makes. Repeat the experiment a few times…the “learned behavior” theory will be quietly withdrawn in sheepish disgrace. It isn’t learned behavior. It’s genetic coding.

The methodology of communication between these two classes, the “network topology,” if you will, by which the leaders tell the followers what to do — this is the only thing that changes. It changes with technology. In an agricultural society, religion just seems like a natural fit. Try living as a farmer for a year without praying. Try doing it when you have fifteen kids, fifteen kids you need in order to get enough help with the spring planting or the fall harvest. Try it when, at best, you might be able to hope for ten of those fifteen to live long enough to have kids of their own, and only five of the fifteen to live to bury you.

Just try not praying then.

Once you realize that, you realize how cowardly atheism is. There is the factual cowardice of it; it is “right,” because and only because God is an entity whose existence cannot be proven. This means atheism cannot be debunked, and since it cannot be debunked it insists on being awarded the status of “proven,” when all it has achieved is non-debunkery, and a logical assurance of everlasting non-debunkery. No further proof than that. “I must be right, for you cannot say that I am wrong,” is what it tells us.

But there is also the fair-weather cowardice. Atheism pops up to accept accolades and embraces from our society, when it can. Once the starvation and pestilence and Great Depressions and Nazis and under-electrified rural areas and racial oppression have been relegated to the dustbin of history, with the lid of the dustbin riveted and welded in place — up pops atheism! We can afford to be atheists now, although our grandparents could not have. Nevermind that, we can be atheists now, so let’s have at it.

In the end, Panda’s Thumb’s error is to associate the word “scandal” with some kind of honest and even-handed delivery of hard fact. This is why I think so little of Panda’s example, since the Craig Scandal is based on postulation and not fact.

The Thumb has accidentally proven something problematic to the theory it intends to promote; it has stuck a rake handle into it’s own bicycle spokes. Scandals, as we know them today, are not about guilt. They are about control. They are about telling the “little people” what to think and what to do…exactly the task religion was achieving for the powerful, hundreds of years ago.

This is a process that has been repeated countless times in human history, each time a new sovereign has displaced an old one through a revolution. The difference now is that the new emperor, and the former one, are harder to identify. Neither one wore a crown, neither one was an individual, but rather they were & are aggregates of individuals. But now, as in revolutions past, our new ruler has to sweep away the remnants of government wielded by the old one. This is an essential last-phase of any successful revolution — the parliament and the councils and the census-taking establishments of the displaced king, must be broken down, then rooted out, then swept away, and the residue sterilized.

That’s what the new ruler is doing now, and that’s what atheism is all about. Godless people are much easier to control. They don’t think they were put here by a Higher Power for any glorious purpose…of necessity, they must think the whole point to their existence is to eat and poop and inhale and exhale, plus whatever ancillary purpose some employer somewhere might see fit for them to do. An employer which, of further necessity, they must think of as some kind of fool, or a big meanie, or both.

This is why atheists don’t often have too many nice things to say about other people, unless those other people are also atheists. I can pretty much promise you if an atheist happens to trip across this post, he or she will prove this point nicely. Better than even odds the adjective “stupid” will be embedded somewhere in the response, and will compliment yours truly.

Anyway, that’s what scandals are now. Pretty much. They are drummed up artificially, tossed out to us like T-bone steaks to hungry tigers, at times deemed convenient to interested parties. This is not to say everyone afflicted with scandal is innocent. But we might as well admit that scandals are being used as devices, since they doubtlessly are. The scandal is a new Layer 2 network topology — it displaces religion exactly the same way Ethernet displaced Token-Ring. It is a new mechanism to keep the proles and plebes in line, now that the technology is available to sustain a communication medium that relies on rhythm, and there is a pressing need for such a medium that does what the old one did, while eschewing any notion of a deity. Demand…supply.

So I think Panda’s Thumb is right: Scandals disproportionately afflict those failing to demonstrate an inimicable attitude toward religion, failing to embrace secularism. Scandals will continue to be pointed in that direction, toward those targets. The theory is correct, just not for the reasons thought.

Thing I Know #85. As the standard of living improves, people slowly lose their need for a Supreme Being, while their need for a spiritual leader remains.

Thing I Know #175. Atheists are supposed to value their independence, and be determined to live out their lives to appeal to no one, and at the pleasure of no one. But when they’re around other atheists they don’t act like this.

Posted in Gawd Is Bad Mmmkay, Incumbent Scandals, Poisoning Christianity | 2 Comments »

Jewell Down

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Richard Jewell, who was falsely accused of being the Centennial Park bomber but later vindicated, has passed away.

I wonder if Ann Coulter is frustrated about that…she did a pretty comprehensive job reviewing the various episodes in the service of our nations last three Attorneys General. Jewell’s story wasn’t part of it. Deadline comes and goes on her weekly column, and almost in the minute she clicks “send” Jewell breathes his last.

Well you know what…you’ve got to conclude we’ve been sold a bill of goods when the most objective and even-handed review of Attorneys General over the last fourteen years comes from Ann Coulter. There’s just no getting around it.

On Aug. 19, 1991, rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death in Crown Heights by a black racist mob shouting “Kill the Jew!” as retaliation for another Hasidic man killing a black child in a car accident hours earlier.

In a far clearer case of jury nullification than the first Rodney King verdict, a jury composed of nine blacks and three Puerto Ricans acquitted Lemrick Nelson Jr. of the murder — despite the fact that the police found the bloody murder weapon in his pocket and Rosenbaum’s blood on his clothes, and that Rosenbaum, as he lay dying, had identified Nelson as his assailant.

The Hasidic community immediately appealed to the attorney general for a federal civil rights prosecution of Nelson. Reno responded with utter mystification at the idea that anyone’s civil rights had been violated.

Civil rights? Where do you get that?

Because they were chanting “Kill the Jew,” Rosenbaum is a Jew, and they killed him.

Huh. That’s a weird interpretation of “civil rights.” It sounds a little harebrained to me, but I guess I could have someone look into it. It took two years from Nelson’s acquittal to get Reno to bring a civil rights case against him.
:
Reno is the sort of wild-eyed zealot trampling on real civil rights that Hillary views as an ideal attorney general, unlike that brute Alberto Gonzales. At least Reno didn’t fire any U.S. attorneys!

Oh wait —

Number of U.S. attorneys fired by Ashcroft: 0

Number of U.S. attorneys fired by Gonzales: 8

Number of U.S. attorneys fired by Reno: 93

Posted in Incumbent Scandals | No Comments »

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XVI

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

One Dubya-Tee-Eff episode rises, like Venus out of the ocean waves, from another. Must mean a Clinton is involved.

Noted “Hillraiser” Norman Hsu is a fugitive on the run from justice. No, really…

Democratic donor Norman Hsu said Wednesday that he would “refrain from all fundraising activities” until he resolved an outstanding warrant for his arrest stemming from a 1991 criminal case in San Mateo County.

Hsu, a major fundraiser over the last three years for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and other Democrats, issued the statement through his attorney after the Los Angeles Times reported that he had been a fugitive for 15 years.

Prosecutors in California said Hsu disappeared in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that it would donate to charity $23,000 in direct donations from Hsu, a New York apparel executive. And other recipients of his donations distanced themselves from the businessman.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts; Reps. Michael M. Honda of San Jose, Doris Matsui of Sacramento and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania; and Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota, said they would divest their campaigns of Hsu’s donations.

If I jotted this down as fiction, surely no publisher would accept it. And yet, here we are.

Posted in Challenger Scandals | 1 Comment »

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XV

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Democrats have received $200,000 in donations, $45k of that going to Sen. Clinton, from six individuals specifying this bungalow as their address:

The donations have been been coming in since 2005. Two hundred large over two years…that’s…eh, that’s some damn good investing. Hey, there seems to be something familiar about this…

That total ranks the house with residences in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan’s Upper East Side among the top addresses to donate to the Democratic presidential front-runner over the past two years, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of donations listed with the Federal Election Commission.
:
Kent Cooper, a former disclosure official with the Federal Election Commission, said the two-year pattern of donations justifies a probe of possible violations of campaign-finance law, which forbid one person from reimbursing another to make contributions. “There are red lights all over this one,” Mr. Cooper said.

Damn straight.

Well, let’s just see what happens. If the name was “Romney” or “Thompson” instead of the C-word, I damn well know what would happen…as it is, I’m not so sure.

Posted in Challenger Scandals | 2 Comments »

Tortured Debate

Monday, August 27th, 2007

Alberto Gonzales has resigned from his post as U.S. Attorney General, as Charles Krauthammer and I thought he should’ve a long time ago.

This makes me think about something:

I was on a thread somewhere and I got into a bit of a dust-up with some rabid left-wingers on the torture thing. I was pointing out something no different from what I had pointed out in other places, before: I’m not completely sold on the idea that this is “wrong,” and I find it deceptive to lump “humiliation” together with the stuff that comes to mind when you use the T-word. Namely, bodily mutilations, fire and steel. I don’t see these as the same thing and I don’t think there are very many people, at all, who see them as the same thing. To pretend these are on the same footing, in any way, is fundamentally dishonest.

And in my assessment of the argument, the “Torture Is Wrong” doctrine depends completely on those two things being the same. Once you acknowledge they’re different, you realize something: This really is all about de-fanging the United States. It’s about making sure we can’t do anything to win the war, besides getting shot at. Just because a lot of “Torture Is Wrong” people aren’t after that, doesn’t mean there’s some other motive behind it. There isn’t. It’s about emboldening one side of this war, by putting the other side — us — on a short leash, and letting them do whatever they want.

Now, this argument doesn’t have much currency. In the dust-up in which I lowered myself to participating, the left-wingers expressed their horror at my different ideas so all the other left-wingers could see them doing it, and that was the end of it…in short, they argued from personal incredulity…

…but my argument doesn’t have currency outside of left-winger-land, either. People, to their credit, are generally very keen on the idea that governments are corrupt and it’s up to the people represented by those governments, to straighten them out and keep them straightened out. This is a noble goal. Of course, the immature mind is selective about this; he is more receptive to this when the party opposed to his, is the one in power. In other words, the dullard falls prey to the “My guy is okay, the other guy is messed up” mindset.

That’s where our left-wingers are coming from right now. The other guy is in power…so now, the government can do bad things. Alert Mode On. Once a “good guy” is in the White House, we can get back to worrying about confiscating guns, images of Moses in courthouses, price-gouging in the kids’ cereal market, not enough blacks on cable TV sitcoms, and are the taxpayers paying enough that Grandma can buy medicine and dog food for her dinner. And naturally, if any of these problems go unsolved — and trust me, all of them will remain essentially unchanged, no matter how much time is spent solving them — it won’t reflect poorly on that “good guy” in charge. He’ll be “trying.” It’ll be like the nineties all over again.

But for those of us who want the United States to win the war, one issue remains. I’m not sure what you can do to get information out of a “detainee,” if 1) Torture is wrong, and 2) Torture includes everything less-than-comfortable. What then? You’d have to just sit around waiting for him to feel talkative, wouldn’t you? I mean, what else is there?

Well, it turns out this was prophetic. Now that a successor will have to be nominated for Gonzo, we’re about to be dragged through the torture debate. The newspapers and the cable television and the alphabet-soup-network commentators have their own ideas — make that “idea” — about the angle on this story. As usual, the bloggers have a more interesting, enlightening, and multi-point perspective on the issue. Simply put, we have a few more questions about it.

I wish to contribute my own questions to the discussion. The question I thought of since the dust-up was:

What if we were to abolish torture, and not tell anybody?

You see, over the years I’ve noticed something about people. When they say “you shouldn’t do X” and the only answer they can provide as to why, is “because X is wrong” — they typically don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not X continues to be done or not. What they really want, is to be seen intoning to someone that X ought not be done because X is wrong. They’re performing. Style over substance. So my question is…what if we were to do exactly what they want, but only on the layer that deals with substance?

What if the world were to continue to believe we were torturing people, and meanwhile, behind the scenes, we didn’t do it? What if someone were to be completely deserving of the credit of making us stop torturing people…but not get any of the credit for stopping us? That would be like going to the golf course alone and getting a hole-in-one with nobody around to see. But if it’s about right-and-wrong, that’d be okay wouldn’t it?

Granted, this would violate the Living With Morgan Rule #1, in which, deploring false accusations, once I’m accused of something I want to be guilty of doing it. But leaving that aside. Suppose the world community is left to conclude we’re waterboarding these guys and subjecting them to the batteries-in-a-pillowcase debriefing sessions. But meanwhile, behind the scenes all we do is wait hand and foot on Ahmed and Muammar like waiters in some five-star restaurant…all day long, and then the next day we do it again. If they want to talk, we listen. If not, we serve up another banana-nut muffin and make sure there’s a good selection between grape jelly and orange marmalade.

Now, would that be okay? I mean, we wouldn’t be doing anything “wrong”; just, a lot of folks would be laboring under the misconception that we are.

I would have to expect, realistically, my plan wouldn’t get a lot of takers. It would, however, have a unifying effect on those who place more importance on reality itself, than the popular perception of that reality. Those on the “right wing” would rightfully conclude I’d be throwing in the towel on the prospect of getting any information out of these guys. They’d say, as a direct result of this, people will die. I don’t have any information that would contradict this; I don’t think anyone else does either. And those on the “left wing” who ought to be celebrating at our government somehow becoming “ethical,” would doubtless find something else that isn’t up to snuff, and start complaining about that.

Of course, for those who are concerned about image, by design the situtation would remain unchanged. I expect they’d go on and on about polls, and disapproval, and international-community this and we are seen that.

I would expect something else, though.

A lot of substance-over-image left-wingers, would hop the turnstyle. They’d start to worry more about image of what’s going on, than about what’s actually going on. I mean, that’s the part of it that would still suck…so they’d simply change what they find important.

At this point, let’s end the mental exercise. It has achieved what it was tossed out to accomplish. The torture debate has nothing to do with what is actually happening; it has to do with the public image of what is happening. It’s all about perceptions. Let me repeat: The debate is ALL about perceptions. It has butkus to do with reality.

When people say “we should not torture because it is wrong,” what they really mean is “we should not torture because it can be presented as being wrong” or “we should not torture because I can get lots of people agitated over the idea that it is wrong.”

Torture really being wrong, has nothing to do with it. That’s why nobody’s going to stick their neck out and sign on to the idea that “if we stop torturing people we will become noble.” Nobody’s saying that, and nobody will say that.

But they’ll sure as hell say the opposite. They’ll say “people despise us because we torture,” even though they’ll never say “people will start liking us if we don’t torture.”

So their argument is lacking in substance, because it isn’t about substance. It isn’t supposed to be. This is why my “solution” wouldn’t be any solution at all. It fixes the substance while leaving the image unchanged…in what is essentially a public-relations issue.

But the P.R. guys don’t have a solution either. Before we started arguing all over the world about torture, we were arguing all over the world about the invasion of Iraq. How many people do you know who have negative feelings toward the United States over this torture issue, who didn’t have negative feelings against the United States about going into Iraq before we started arguing about the torture issue? I mean, count everybody — people you know, public figures, celebrities…can you think of anyone? I can’t think of a single person.

It’s not exactly a hot news item when liberals and democrats rally around an issue that is phony. This one has captured the mainstream, what you might call the “heartland.” It’s easy to understand why, because who wants to be strapped to a waterboard? It doesn’t seem very appealing. But when you dissect this issue, it turns out, surprisingly, to be more phony than most others. The substance-angle is nonexistent, and the style-angle is ineffectual and goes nowhere. It’s just a talking point in circulation among America’s enemies — those who fight us overtly, and those who insist they’re “patriotic” but never seem to have a kind word to say about the country.

Of course it is an effective talking-point, and it is around, posing problems for us, because of our actions. But since bringing a stop to those actions — in style, as well as in substance — wouldn’t make anything any better, I’d like our senators to do a good job explaining to us why they’ll be debating it, before they do so debate it. I’d like to see them do an excellent job justifying this. I have strong doubts they’ll even perform an adequate one.

Posted in Incumbent Scandals, Overlawyered, Poisoning Western Civilization, TIK 52, Torture and Civil Liberties and What-Not | 1 Comment »

This Is Good XLII

Friday, August 24th, 2007

Wow, did Hillary Clinton ever get under this guy’s skin:

My opinion? A little dignity wouldn’t be a bad thing to add; nobody’s mind was ever changed by having someone call them a stupid idiot. But the message is a good one once the emotionalism is taken out of it. For example, you could seal this up in a time capsule to let people from the future know what kind of team-oriented politics we have going on right now. And yeah, in that statement I am criticizing Hillary’s fans, not the people who criticize Hillary or her fans. Team politics — they, and she, are what those are all about. My team’s great, the other team sucks, whatever my team wants is good, whatever the other team wants is bad…all I care about is points and touchdowns and the clock and what quarter we’re in, nothing else matters. That’s Team Hillary for ya.

The guy simply has a great point. Hillary criticizes the clemency order for Scooter Libby, and she’s hoping people will forget about what her husband did. She hopes for that — to someone with a working memory of inconvenient things, her comments have significant problems — and why shouldn’t she hope for it? Those people are out there. They’ve been mobilized by left-wing blogs and left-wing columnists and left-wing producers of “documentaries.” They think all you have to know about American politics is that Bush is Emperor Palpatine…and there simply isn’t anything worth knowing beyond that. Joe Wilson is caught in lie after lie after lie, real lies not phony ones — assholes in head scarves are trying to kill us, bake us to death in skyscrapers to make political statements — none of it matters. All for the team.

And she goes out there and manufactures all this anger and parades it in front of people. Anger and showmanship. Kind of like the guy narrating this movie himself, ironically…except with a much greater audience, a much greater conviction of self-entitlement to power, and a much greater prospect of directly impacting the lives of everyday people, whether they want her to or not. And unlike the narrator, missing even a cosmetic pretense for even-handedness in these matters. Just rah rah rah, hurray for our side, and down with the other guy.

In short, exactly what people are supposed to be sick and tired of. On the public wanting cooler heads to prevail in politics, my “news” will have no hesitation to clue me in…but I could grow very old waiting around for them to hang it around the neck of her Hillary-ness.

And what in the world is up with that nasal resonance of hers? It’s like she’s talking through the beak of a goose. A metal goose.

This is what scares me about Hillary: That is her appeal. The negativity. People who like Hillary, do not like Hillary because of her readiness, willingness or ability to improve people’s lives. They like Hillary because they expect her to injure certain targeted individuals and classes of people. They want her to hurt someone.

Her husband, crook that he was, and as bad for the country as he was, at least was seen by some of his fans as a medicinal balm. They supported him because they thought he would deliver a better life to people who desperately needed one. Hillary has only token residue of that kind of appeal, if she has it at all. She’s here to take some kind of dirty-rotten-bastards down a peg, and that is all she is here to do; that’s the kind of candidate she is.

Maybe to be a successful female candidate, that’s what you have to do and that’s what you have to be. Sort of a super-weapon candidate. There may be a kernel of truth to that. If there is, that’s unfair and we should change it. But I strongly doubt it’s an airtight thing. I think if you’re a positive person who is a woman, and you want to run for office and make our country stronger and improve the lives of people who live in it, and stand up for what you believe without being a total theatrical bitch like Hillary — I do think, if you’re sufficiently energetic and resourceful and creative, you’ll find a way to get it done.

And if I’m wrong, if that is absolutely impossible, that what I’ve just discussed is a luxury to be reserved for us dudes because it’s our world everybody’s living in and we’re too privileged to realize it — then until that’s fixed let’s just keep men in the White House. Having our first female President in this half of the century, just isn’t worth it. It’s not worth having someone, of either gender, waking up every morning in that mansion and saying to themselves “who am I going to hurt today?”

After the terrorists are dead, our nation could use some time for healing. From what I can see of Hillary, with her we get neither one of those things. With her in charge we get to continue arguing about matters ranging from all-important to comically trivial, and our enemies get to continue killing us.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Incumbent Scandals | 2 Comments »

Nifong’s Disbarment Unfair

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Mike Nifong says his treatment was unfair.

When former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong mailed in his law license last week, he also included a note bemoaning “the fundamental unfairness” of the North Carolina State Bar’s handling of his ethics case.

Nifong was disbarred for his handling of rape charges against three Duke University men’s lacrosse players. State prosecutors later dismissed the charges and declared the players innocent.

In the Aug. 7 letter, Nifong complained about a revision the State Bar issued to its written ruling, which had omitted one of the counts included in an oral ruling.

Robert Mosteller, a Duke law professor, noticed the missing count.

“Am I just missing this reference, is there an explanation, or just an apparent oversight?” he wrote in an e-mail to the State Bar.

The count was added in an amended order by F. Lane Williamson, a Charlotte lawyer who headed the disciplinary panel.

“Mr. Williamson’s e-mail assertion that the addition of a new conclusion of law based on the request of a Duke University law professor is merely a ‘clerical correction’ is preposterous beyond belief, and is further evidence of the fundamental unfairness with which this entire procedure has been conducted,” Nifong wrote.

Aw…

I am not a big fan of this guy. The beef with him that culminated in his disbarment, had everything to do with “fundamental unfairness” so it speaks poorly of his mental acumen that he’d see fit to toss that phrase into his sniveling protest. Did he intend the irony, or is he completely unaware of it?

If I personally had a hand in punishing Nifong, and was nursing some doubts about whether I’d done the right thing for whatever reason, this latest event would purge those doubts straight-away. Nifong doesn’t seem to think he did anything wrong. If that’s not the case, he is narcissistic beyond belief.

Posted in Everyday Dimwits, Incumbent Scandals | 1 Comment »

Taryn Wants Hillary

Friday, July 6th, 2007

This girl has an amazing body. Watch her use it to try to push the platform of a candidate with nothing to say. By far the highest-profile candidate running from any party, who’s been out on the national stage for sixteen years now, and in all that time, apart from her own initiatives has never once been for anything. It is mind-boggling how toxic Hillary Clinton is. As I said about her a week ago…

Hillary Clinton remains as consistent as I expect [Sen. Barack] Obama will be, but in a different way. “If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged, outcry in this country.” Clinton is amazing this way…her political tactic has always been the same: Someone’s overly-privileged, someone’s gotten away with shenanigans, and Hillary’s here to take ‘em down a peg. If the issue under discussion is missing this kind of villain, Hillary will inject a villain into it. You could adjust a precision timepiece by watching her do this. In my lifetime, I don’t think I’ve become aware of a more negative candidate, male or female, for anything.

Hillary was speaking about the Supreme Court decision on the Seattle school district. She was making the point that affirmative action is still needed because the country has a racial divide. She chose to zoom in on white women between the ages of 25 and 34. Now, just think about that for a minute — she could have handled this any one of a zillion ways. If she wants to pimp the whole affirmative action racket, and talk about oppressed people who need it, she could have confined her comments to the desperate situations some people are in…and leave it at that. The way our liberals used to do it, and some still do to this day. What is up with this irrational impulse to single out villains all the time?

She can’t help it. It’s her schtick.

Hillary gets away with this, because — and only because — she is a woman. And a Democrat. John Kerry would not be able to do this. Condoleeza Rice would not be able to do this. None of the candidates running in ’08, besides Hillary, can do this. Sooner or later, they actually have to be for something. Or someone. Hillary just carps. Her critics, and her fans, have long ago stopped expecting her to ever do anything different, no matter what the situation. If ever she’s for something…it’s only because she’s against something else.

Taryn wants Hillary because Hillary has ovaries. Taryn wants a woman in the White House. Not a single peep about what she wants Hillary to do…except maybe be bisexual.

Fantastic-looking body aside, Taryn is in the company of millions and millions of people who don’t look as good from the neck down. Flubbery, blubbery, ditzy people. People who’ve completely lost hope in government actually doing anything productive, and aren’t willing to admit it.

Exactly the way most of us felt about government, right before we got Carter. Boy, there’s a sign of good times ahead, huh? Except Hillary has a much better idea of what she wants to do, once she’s elected, than Carter ever did. And that’s not good either.

Posted in Celebrity Halfwits, Challenger Scandals, Is It Really a Man's World?, Poisoning Masculinity | 2 Comments »

Not Going

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Heh.

Posted in Incumbent Scandals | No Comments »

On the Man Code

Monday, April 30th, 2007

So in late January San Francisco was rocked by a scandal: The Mayor, Gavin Newsom, dorked his best friend’s wife. Here’s what piqued my interest. Name the issue: In San Francisco, things play differently than they do anywhere else. Name an issue that has something to do with men screwing women, or vice versa, or men screwing men or women screwing women. Something to do with fornicatin’. San Francisco becomes an even more different place.

And yet, every paragraph of this story, apart from city & person names, could have been applied to anywhere else. It comes down to this — the gals, single or married, say if the potholes are all filled what do I care about the Mayor’s personal life? It’s all good. And the guys say…wait, what?

Poked his buddy’s wife? That’s WRONG! It’s a betrayal of the man code!

But a funny thing happened after the headlines hit and the buzz began: Many women said they were ready to forgive and forget.

Not men, though. No way. Many said they would never trust Newsom again as long as they lived. Some were livid; many were incredulous. The difference? Apparently it is the Man Code, a set of rigid but unwritten boundaries over which no man may step. Break the Man Code, and you’re toast.

“It’s a huge betrayal,” sputtered Jason Mundstuk, 67, a business owner from Oakland who got upset just talking about it. “It’s big. It’s mythical.”

C’mon, you say, what is this, a TV beer commercial? Evidently not. These guys were dead serious. Make no mistake — having an affair with the wife of a trusted male colleague is an irrevocable Man Code violation.

“Hello?” wrote Mike Mulholland, 43, who grew up in the Bay Area before moving to San Diego County. “Newsom slept with his friend’s wife. What if he stole from a friend? Or tried to frame a friend? Would that also be nobody’s business?”

This clip makes pretty much the same point, offering the same evidence and drawing the same conclusions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3E-7JcS1Jc

But this brings me to the meat of it. I was digesting all this information, and on a whim I did a Google on “Man Code.” There’s a lot of stupid crap out there with man codes. But I was surprised to see the longest “code,” was the one that made the most sense. Worth bookmarking. I’m a little wishy-washy on Nos. 7 and 14, and maybe No. 8 as well, but everything else on the list makes perfect sense. For the most part.

For those wondering, the subject of the beer commercial is covered in #12, and Mayor Newsom’s transgression is mostly addressed by…well, it’s not in there. Some things are just too hideous even for the Man Code.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Incumbent Scandals | 1 Comment »

Why We Have Blogs

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Regarding Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Syria: This is why we have blogs.

The print and electronic media, in both hard news and editorial, have entirely failed us in this area. They’ve had all week long to address this thing the Speaker did. Let me boil down how they addressed it: The hard news resources give us the events and the sound bites. If you’re trying to figure out how to vote in 2008 based on events like this, and you rely on hard news, you must rely on the sound bites from the White House and from the Democrats in Congress. That’s an example of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse if ever there was one. Both sides spin — and rest assured on this, if either side manages to sound more compelling than the other, it’s probably the least honorable side that prevails. So what we call “hard news” sucks, as a tool to address the problem at hand.

Editorials aren’t much better. Speaker Pelosi may have committed a felony here; conservative editorials will play that up, liberal ones will play that down. Occasionally, someone will step back and take a broader view that may be useful to us across a longer timeframe, like Fred Barnes when he wrote for the Weekly Standard:

Something gets into political leaders when they take over Congress. It makes them think they can run Washington and the government from Capitol Hill. So they overreach, but it never works. Republicans tried it in 1995 and were slapped down by President Clinton in the fight over the budget and a government shutdown. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is operating as if she rules much more than just the House of Representatives. This includes having her own foreign policy — a sure recipe for trouble.

Thus is Pelosi’s misstep explained according to her human failings, rather than simply by the corrupting influence of politics.

But such contributions are few and far between, and if the Barnes editorial gets any visibility, the citadel that is the print editorial “industry” will mobilize to get it slimed. Editorials don’t exist, after all, to show us our leaders are human; they exist to show us our leaders are corrupt if they have the letter “R” after their names, or had the best of intentions if they have the letter “D” after their names. And certainly, they aren’t supposed to depict the emperor’s nakedness when said emperor is the first emperess to hold the House gavel.

And even Barnes’ comments fail to address the underlying question: Just how far do we have to position our Democrats from official diplomatic offices, before they’ll stop flying around making promises to foreign heads-of-state that we don’t want them to make? Seems to me, that’s what the American electorate needs to know.

And it falls to the blogging community to answer that. I’ll tell you why. To answer that question, you have to have a certain level of healthy cynicism. There is such a thing, you know. Humans are cynical creatures. It’s a survival instinct. You take your family to a nice restaurant, part with more money than you expected, and get lousy service and lousy food. You give the place a second shot the next month, part with the same amount of money, get lousy service and lousy food. You give the place a third chance the next month, with the same results…you won’t be going back a fourth time. Ever. That’s cynicism. It’s a healthy thing.

And the fact of the matter is — as unprofessional as bloggers can be, and as helpful as “real” editorials can be sometimes — editorials aren’t supposed to be cynical. Good cynicism, bad cynicism, it’s all the same. The first rough draft passes from the pen of the author, and passes under the eyeball of the very first editor, the first casualty after the stuff Microsoft Word underlines as spelling and grammar mistakes, is cynicism. All kinds.

This is a problem. We live in an age where we need our cynicism to help us with our thinking.

And my cynicism tells me things. Things that are unprovable, but still things that are undisputed…or if they are disputed, they ought not be.

Let’s parse what what Speaker Pelosi herself had to say about the administration’s objections:

“Our message was President Bush’s message,” Pelosi told the Associated Press from Portugal. “The funny thing is, I think we may have even had a more powerful impact with our message because of the attention that was called to our trip. It became clear to President Assad that even though we have our differences in the United States, there is no division between the president and the Congress and the Democrats on the message we wanted him to receive.”

Speaker Pelosi’s position is based on two lies. First of all, to believe the things she has had to say about her trip, you have to believe that her office and the White House are in agreement about things. On the other hand, to believe the things the White House has had to say, you have to believe that the House Speaker and the President disagree. Well, guess what: They don’t agree. So to believe Speaker Pelosi, you have to accept that she’s in lock-step with President Bush about everything that needs to be told to Syria, even as those two fail to agree on everything from bacon-or-eggs to tastes-great-less-filling to black-or-cream-sugar.

Second lie: Her talking points are carefully calculated to shore up a constituency that is hopelessly divided. She says “our message was President Bush’s message,” and what she’s doing — you won’t read this in any editorial, but it’s the truth — is addressing two constituencies instead of one. Her job is to keep on doing this throughout Election Day ’08. Moderates who long for an end to partisan disputes and are ready to vote for anyone showing signs of bringing that end, hear these words and interpret them the way they want. Oh, Speaker Pelosi has respect for the President’s authority. She’s discharging that authority in a way President Bush himself cannot…perhaps because she’s more articulate. The results are sure to be positive. Why, think what would happen if we put someone from her party in the President’s chair…and come to think of it, it’s been awhile since they had the chance. Maybe we should give it to them again. After all, the policies won’t change much, but the execution will be better. Perhaps that’s what we need. Hmmm.

And then the MoveOnDotOrgsters, who want anything but an end to partisan divide — they hear the same words and think something else. Pelosi, they think, is pointing out Bush’s incompetence. Go Nan! Because, after all, according to the KOSsacks and MoveOn.Orgsters, there is no point to anyone making a public comment about anything, other than to make Bush look bad. Think about it. When’s the last time you heard a liberal Democrat say something in public that had any other purpose? Been a while, huh?

Pelosi’s comments united these two camps. At least tangentially. Now, you get representatives from these two groups, moderates and extreme leftists, in a room together and — look out. The likely result is flying furniture. But Pelosi has managed to deliver words that each side of the split, will pick out and interpret in the way they want.

Of course, when the words are sufficiently vague to bring about that false emulsification, they become meaningless. “Our message was President Bush’s message.” That really means nothing. But who cares?

Meanwhile, in a sane world, the value of Pelosi’s trip would be measured according to the yardstick of Jimmy Carter’s trip to North Korea thirteen years ago, and the disaster that followed. The House Speaker’s authority to negotiate with foreign governments, is pretty much the same as the authority of a failed former President. Or a football, or expired carton of milk. I do hope the eventual results are better. There is no reason for me to think so.

Time to drag out the dialog between McClane and Ellis from the first Die Hard movie. I wish it didn’t mesh with real events quite so often…

Ellis: It’s not what I want, it’s what I can give you. Look, let’s be straight, okay? It’s obvious you’re not some dumb thug up here to snatch a few purses, am I right?

Hans: You’re very perceptive.

Ellis: Hey, I read the papers, I watch 60 minutes, I say to myself, these guys are professionals, they’re motivated, they’re happening. They want something. Now, personally, I don’t care about your politics. Maybe you’re pissed at the Camel Jockeys, maybe it’s the Hebes, Northern Ireland, that’s none of my business. I figure, You’re here to negotiate, am I right?

Hans: You’re amazing. You figured this all out already?

Ellis: Hey, business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen, what’s the difference? To put it in my terms, you’re here on a hostile takeover and you grab us for some greenmail but you didn’t expect a poison pill was gonna be running around the building. Hans, baby… I’m your white knight.

Hans: I must have missed 60 Minutes. What are you saying?

Ellis: The guy upstairs who’s fucking things up? I can give him to you.
:
:
Hans [on radio to McClane]: I have someone who wants to talk to you. A very special friend who was at the party with you tonight.

Ellis: Hello, John boy?

McClane: Ellis?

Ellis: John, they’re giving me a few minutes to try and talk some sense into you. I know you think you’re doing your job, and I can appreciate that, but you’re just dragging this thing out. None of us gets out of here until these people can negotiate with the LA police, and they’re just not gonna start doing that until you stop messing up the works.

McClane: Ellis, what have you told them?

Ellis: I told them we’re old friends and you were my guest at the party.

McClane: Ellis… you shouldn’t be doing this…

Ellis: Tell me about it.

Ellis: All right… John, listen to me… They want you to tell them where the detonators are. They know people are listening. They want the detonators of they’re going to kill me.

Ellis: John, didn’t you hear me?

McClane: Yeah, I hear you, you fucking moron!

Ellis: John, I think you could get with the program a little. The police are here now. It’s their problem. Tell these guys where the detonators are so no one else gets hurt. Hey, I’m putting my life on the line for you buddy…

McClane: Don’t you think I know that! Put Hans on! Hans, listen to me, that shithead doesn’t know what kind of scum you are, but I do –

Hans: Good. Then you’ll give us what we want and save your friend’s life. You’re not part of this equation. It’s time to realize that.

Ellis: What am I, a method actor? Hans, babe, put away the gun. This is

McClane: That asshole’s not my friend! I barely know him! I hate his fucking guts — Ellis, for Christ’s sake, tell him you don’t mean shit to me –

Ellis: John, how can you say that, after all these years–? John? John?

[Hans shoots Ellis]

Hans: Hear that? Talk to me, where are my detonators. Where are they or shall I shoot another one?

Fortunately, the gunshot was figurative and unlike the hapless Ellis, Speaker Pelosi is okay. But her strategy is just as kooky as his, and I’m afraid every bit as ill-fated.

Update 4-10-07: Welcome Pajamas Media readers.

Posted in GroupThink Nonsense, Incumbent Scandals, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Gonzales Must Go

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

Boortz bookmarked Krauthammer this week, who in turn had the following comments on the phony Fired-Attorney-Gate scandal…

Alberto Gonzales has to go…the president might want to hang on to Gonzales at least through this crisis. That might be tactically wise. But in time, and the sooner the better, Gonzales must resign. It’s not a question of probity but of competence. Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it.

Had this been an argument for political appeasement — “just toss Gonzales overboard, and with full bellies the sharks will swim away and go wherever they go to take their afternoon after-meal naps” — he would have lost me. Such a thing has been tried before, many times. It never works.

But I have to say, if the Bush administration is going to be shaken up and whittled down, the idea of natural-selection toward a greater collective political competence, is appealing to me. The Bush administration has nowhere to go but up in that department. True, he still is the President; his successor has better-than-even odds of coming from his own party. His most recent significant loss, of both houses of Congress, was razor-thin. And if he’s been ineffectual in some areas, then that new Congress has been even moreso.

Politically, however, this White House gives incompetence a new name. The President’s misfortunes do mean something. And I don’t think the country can take much more of this. The lying. The stonewalling. The red herrings.

I’m not talking about what comes directly from the President and his people. I’m talking about the sharks. Every time they get in another feeding frenzy, it seems the first casualty is truth. And the way I see it, here is George W. Bush himself spooning chum into the water. Look at what we have going on now — the President’s defenders say, firing these attorneys is well within his authority. In a sane universe, that should be the end of the so-called “scandal”; those who seek to attack him, would be faced with the option of arguing this point, or else going away.

Well, they figure they don’t have to do either one of those. And who can blame them?

Someone at 1600 Pennsylvania has to be negligent in order to get us to this point. The President is saying he did nothing wrong; our democrats are saying — although I’m sure they’d bristle at the way I’m wording this, in spirit it does not deviate from what I’ve heard them say — they know he didn’t do anything wrong, but if they play their cards right they can create a scandal out of it anyway.

I’m not missing anything in my crude summary, am I?

Well, if that fits, you know what I think…these “vanishing civil liberties” about which we’ve been told so much over the last five years, I think they’re circling the drain right now. Think about it. The opposing party in Congress, and the media…but I repeat myself…can confess that the facts are on the President’s side. Openly. Right there in broad daylight, as the metaphor goes. And make a scandal anyway…outta nothing.

This is where our much-vaunted American “freedoms” go just before they die. In government. In situations where de jeure and de facto sprint away from each other, as fast as their little legs can carry ’em. The President has the right to do X according to law…but according to custom and precedent, being manufactured right here and now in Spring of 2007, he can’t do it.

If he’s a Republican. Get a donk back in the Oval Office, this new precendent is going to go sailing out the window. Nobody who gives the situation even a cursory review, will dare deny it.

And in the days where a babe born today is old enough to get his first driver’s license, trust me on this, we may be wondering why U.S. attorneys at the Department of Justice are so overwhelmingly left-wing, as we’ve often wondered this about the U.S. Supreme Court. Trust me on this too: Our donks are going to come out of the woodwork to haughtily and snottily lecture us that you have to be educated and broad-minded to be a U.S. attorney, and that correlates to being more liberal.

Set the freakin’ clock by it.

But if you have a long memory and you remember back to today, you’ll know different. It’s got to do with championing “what can we get away with doing” over-and-above what the truth really is…and that correlates to being more liberal.

Whatever happened to George Bush “killing soldiers in Iraq” and “alienating our allies” and destroying the earth bit-by-bit because he won’t see Al Gore’s movie? What happened to that? Because I have to believe, if the truth was on the side of the donks and our current President was really guilty of all that stuff — this wouldn’t be a very appealing or sincere way to take him down, would it? Something churned up from an action that all sides readily concede is squarely within his purview?

So I’m going to have to agree with Krauthammer here. I think the country depends on it. Our country’s future rises or sinks with our country’s fastening to truth, and even a lame duck President can save it. He can assemble all who report to him, and let them know in no uncertain terms: This administration is the administration that took down Saddam Hussein — but the administration’s job, here at home, is to be political. We can’t achieve anything without that. Our performance here is far below par. I am determined to do something about it. From here on, if you want to get yourself fired in a hurry, do something embarrassing.

I’m your boss. I have tried to champion reality over appearances, and I was sure reality would reward us for it. I must have forgotten what city we are in. From this day forward, we do a bang-up job at both. That’s the job. If you don’t feel you’re up to it, there’s the door.

Posted in Incumbent Scandals, Moonbat Conspiracies | 2 Comments »

Steyn Nails the Libby Trial

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Nails it, I say. Whack-a-mole, right between the eyes.

Perverse Libby trial was revealing
:
The prosecutor knew from the beginning that (a) leaking Valerie Plame’s name was not a crime and (b) the guy who did it was Richard Armitage. In other words, he was aware that the public and media perception of this ”case” was entirely wrong: There was no conspiracy by Bush ideologues to damage a whistleblower, only an anti-war official making an offhand remark to an anti-war reporter. Even the usual appeals to prosecutorial discretion (Libby was a peripheral figure with only he said/she said evidence in an investigation with no underlying crime) don’t convey the scale of Fitzgerald’s perversity: He knew, in fact, that there was no cloud, that under all the dark scudding about Rove and Cheney there was only sunny Richard Armitage blabbing away accidentally. Yet he chose to let the entirely false impression of his ”case” sit out there month in, month out, year after year, glowering over the White House, doing great damage to the presidency on the critical issue of the day.

So much of the current degraded discourse on the war — ”Bush lied” — comes from the false perceptions of the Joe Wilson Niger story. Britain’s MI-6, the French, the Italians and most other functioning intelligence services believe Saddam was trying to procure uranium from Africa. Lord Butler’s special investigation supports it. So does the Senate Intelligence Committee. So Wilson’s original charge is if not false then at the very least unproven, and the conspiracy arising therefrom entirely nonexistent. But the damage inflicted by the cloud is real and lasting.

As for Scooter Libby, he faces up to 25 years in jail for the crime of failing to remember when he first heard the name of Valerie Plame — whether by accident or intent no one can ever say for sure. But we also know that Joe Wilson failed to remember that his original briefing to the CIA after getting back from Niger was significantly different from the way he characterized it in his op-ed in the New York Times. We do know that the contemptible Armitage failed to come forward and clear the air as his colleagues were smeared for months on end. We do know that his boss Colin Powell sat by as the very character of the administration was corroded. [emphasis mine]

I put those parts in bold because I happen to know a lot of people missed those points. They know something I don’t; or else — assuming the press has a responsibility to “inform the public” — a huge chunk of the mission remains unachieved.

But that’s a big assumption. If the press’ mission, alternatively, is to slime and slander Republican administrations, then such tidbits are off-topic, which would explain why we’ve heard so little about them.

Meanwhile…Toensing and Sanford conducted an analysis two years ago, as to whether a crime was even committed here with regard to the “outing.” So far as I know, none of the salient details have changed since then.

As two people who drafted and negotiated the scope of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, we can tell you: The Novak column and the surrounding facts do not support evidence of criminal conduct.

When the act was passed, Congress had no intention of prosecuting a reporter who wanted to expose wrongdoing and, in the process, once or twice published the name of a covert agent. Novak is safe from indictment. But Congress also did not intend for government employees to be vulnerable to prosecution for an unintentional or careless spilling of the beans about an undercover identity. A dauntingly high standard was therefore required for the prosecutor to charge the leaker.

At the threshold, the agent must truly be covert. Her status as undercover must be classified, and she must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years. This requirement does not mean jetting to Berlin or Taipei for a week’s work. It means permanent assignment in a foreign country. Since Plame had been living in Washington for some time when the July 2003 column was published, and was working at a desk job in Langley (a no-no for a person with a need for cover), there is a serious legal question as to whether she qualifies as “covert.”

Posted in Incumbent Scandals, Moonbat Conspiracies, Overlawyered, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Pardon Me?

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

Via Right Coast, we learn about the latest Krauthammer column…in which an interesting point is raised…

Everyone agrees that Fitzgerald’s perjury case against Libby hung on the testimony of NBC’s Tim Russert. Libby said that he heard about Plame from Russert. Russert said he had never discussed it. The jury members who have spoken said they believed Russert.

And why should they not? Russert is a perfectly honest man who would not lie. He was undoubtedly giving his best recollection.

But he is not the pope. Given that so many journalists and administration figures were shown to have extremely fallible memories, is it possible that Russert’s memory could have been faulty?

I have no idea. But we do know that Russert once denied calling up a Buffalo News reporter to complain about a story. Russert later apologized for the error when he was shown the evidence of a call he had genuinely and completely forgotten.

There is a second instance of Russert innocently misremembering. He stated under oath that he did not know that one may not be accompanied by a lawyer to a grand jury hearing. This fact, in and of itself, is irrelevant to the case, except that, as former prosecutor Victoria Toensing points out, the defense had tapes showing Russert saying on television three times that lawyers are barred from grand jury proceedings.

This demonstration of Russert’s fallibility was never shown to the jury. The judge did not allow it. He was upset with the defense because it would not put Libby on the stand — his perfect Fifth Amendment right — after hinting in the opening statement that it might. He therefore denied the defense a straightforward demonstration of the fallibility of the witness whose testimony was most decisive.

The Right Coast entry raises yet another interesting point.

I haven’t followed the Libby trial that closely, but one aspect of the verdict did occur to me: How is it that Scooter Libby is facing jail time and Sandy Berger got off with a slap of the wrist. At least part of the answer is that Libby was investigated by a special prosecutor, while Berger was not. My guess is that there is more to the story of Berger as well (incompetence at Justice?)

Um…come to think of it, I heard an awful lot of pious pontificating and hand-wringing from our liberals, both famous and otherwise, about “national security” with the “outing of a foreign op” and so forth. I wonder what they think about national security when the subject shifts to Sandy Pants. Maybe not much…and perhaps this is due to a combination of factors, dealing with their desire to “win” one for ~~America~~ Liberalism, and just plain ignorance — can’t call it anything else — about the facts of the Berger-Pants scandal.

The more we learn about Sandy Berger’s brilliant career as a document thief, the clearer it becomes that there is plenty we still don’t know and may never learn. On Tuesday, the House Government Reform Committee released its report on Mr. Berger’s pilfering of classified documents from the National Archives.

The committee’s 60-page report makes it clear that Mr. Berger knew exactly what he was doing and knew that what he was doing was wrong. According to interviews with National Archives staff, Mr. Berger repeatedly arranged to be left alone with highly classified documents by feigning the need to make personal phone calls, and he used those moments alone with the files to stuff them in his pockets and briefcase.

One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them–No. 217–was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy “under his portfolio also.” In other words, he stole the same document twice.

National security huh? We’re just really, really super-concerned about it, and nobody’s above the law?

I’m not the first one to group these two incidents together, and swivel my head quizzically toward the liberals with a cocked eyebrow to see how they handle the juxtaposition. In fact, I’ve watched it happen often enough to glean a pattern out of the liberals’ reaction. It’s a bubbling stewpot of subject-changing, theatrical indignation, name-calling and sarcasm. Not much else.

Certainly no rational explanation as to why Scooter’s looking at years of laundry-folding, and Sandy Pants is as free as you and me.

Posted in Incumbent Scandals, Moonbat Conspiracies, Overlawyered | 1 Comment »

Jesus Would Hate America

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

One of the many things our liberals have been teaching me for the last two-to-four years, give or take, is that America is always wrong. Another thing is, whenever somebody notices our liberals think America is always wrong, that somebody is guilty of putting words into liberals’ mouths. The liberals always have some deeper and more precise meaning, and their words are not being parsed fairly. Always, always, always…there is a little bit more hair-splitting to be done, a little bit more “nuance” to be extracted. And the middleman is always missing out on some crucial meaning.

Poor liberals. So oppressed.

But isn’t it funny? Think how much harder it would be for these middlemen to put words into the liberals’ mouths — if only once in awhile, a high profile liberal went on record and said some good things about America. Not America as our liberals want her to be; America as they find her. Some compliment. Just one. It would make that right-wing smear campaign so much more difficult. So much less effective and practical.

If only.

Well how’s this for a right-wing smear. John Edwards, who ran as the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee in 2004, says Jesus would be disappointed in the United States. The Lamb of God would be appalled at America. There I go, putting words into their mouths. Failing to properly split the hairs.

Huh. Really?

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at how the United States has ignored the plight of the suffering, and that he believes children should have private time to pray at school.

Edwards, in an interview with the Web site Beliefnet.com, said Jesus would be most upset with the selfishness of Americans and the country’s willingness to go to war “when it’s not necessary.”

“I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs,” Edwards told the site. “I think he would be appalled, actually.”

It all looks pretty clear to me. Maybe our blue-staters are right, there’s some “nuance” there I’m just not bright enough to see.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

Fans of Gore

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Former Vice President Al Gore has the backing of Jimmy Carter (we learn via Hot Air and we learn that via Karol).

And, he has the support of communists too.

I repeat myself, huh.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

This Is Good XXXV

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

There is much to admire in Best of the Web by James Taranto, but I thought yesterday’s slicing-and-dicing was particularly artful. I’ll go back and update when there’s a permalink this afternoon, but here’s the item in full:

On Sunday Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at Iowa State University, made this jaw-dropping statement:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.

Wasted! Hard to believe anyone would say such a thing, but there it is on video.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports Obama quickly fired up the nuance machine:

Obama, in an interview with the Des Moines Register right afterward, told the paper, ”I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term,” he said. ”Their sacrifices are never wasted. . . . What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.”

Aha, so this is what he meant to say:

We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and to which we now have spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans that have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy and honesty on the part of civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.

But instead of those last 27 words (which don’t entirely make sense–e.g., “the same attention” as what?), what came out of his mouth was “wasted.” Just a wee slip of the tongue!

The Sun-Times notes that Obama is sorry you took what he said the wrong way, which is to say, the way he actually said it:

By Monday, reporters covering Obama making his first visit as a presidential candidate in New Hampshire, asked Obama, campaigning in a Nashua home, if military families deserved an apology.

“Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they’d shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I’ve made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.”

Me again. Now then class, how did Barack Obama get into trouble here? The same way so many of us get into trouble…all the time. We’re called upon to deliver a few words about what to do about some present situation, and instead, we huff and puff and pontificate instead about what is going on, and whether or not it meets our approval.

But…real life, and the tough decisions therein, seldom gives a shit about whether things meet our approval.

It’s just like liver and desert. There’s something we gotta get done…there’s something else that’s fun to do. It’s a human failing to do the thing that’s fun to do, instead of the thing that we know we need to get done — form a plan.

I’ve often heard it said that it’s a “conservative Republican canard” that Democrats have not yet formed a plan to deal with Iraq — that they have, they have, they have, and those poor oppressed Democrats, nobody’s talking about their plan. Well, how can we? They won’t talk about their plan. They just like to talk about how much they disapprove of the things that are going on…dessert before peas.

Is this plan they’ve cooked up, really what they’re all about, when they don’t want to talk about it? It would splinter up their base somewhat, but at least we’d know what they want to do. And how committed they are to it. Contrasted with that…how many bowls of ice cream have the Democrats had without nibbling at their dinner? How many times have we heard how they don’t like us being in Iraq? We get it. And even a swimsuit thunderstud media sensation like Obama, lacks the rhetorical skill to state it coherently.

I like this thing, I don’t like that other thing over there…it’s yummy, and fun to dish out. But it lacks nutritional value. And not only that, but there’s a point of diminishing returns involved. Having listened to the Democrats give us our instructions that we shouldn’t think highly of the operations in Iraq for four years solid now, I’d say we’re all past that point.

Thing I Know #112. Strong leadership is a dialog: That which is led, states the problem, the leader provides the solution. It’s a weak brand of leadership that addresses a problem by directing people to ignore the problem.

Update 2/20/07: The hyperlink promised above is here.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Justification for Invasion | 2 Comments »

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