10/31/2005
I had planned on posting about the nomination of Judge Alito today, but I got hung up at a doctors appointment until a little while ago. I am physically and emotionally exhausted. It’s been a real crappy day. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
10/30/2005
SF Chron Uses Leakgate In An Effort To Discredit The War
In a stunning display of either ignorance or outright lying the SF Chronicle has decided to use the Leakgate case to discredit the war.
Just as the prosecutions of administration officials in the Watergate scandal were only tangentially tied to a “second-rate burglary,” the charges against Lewis “Scooter” Libby cast a bright glare on the extent to which the White House has gone to pre-empt scrutiny about how this nation was lured into a war on false pretenses.
We weren’t “lured” into anything under false pretenses. The thing Democrats fail to mention is that if indeed Bush did lie to the American public about why we went to war, then so did Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry. The intelligence that the President had at the time showed that Saddam Hussein was seeking furtherance of a WMD program.
There was no crime apparently in leaking Plame’s name, so now the left must make it into lying about the war.
It is impossible to predict whether the indictment of Libby will lead to others being charged, or to the unraveling of a presidency. Frustratingly, the indictment shies away from identifying others who were involved in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent married to Joseph Wilson, the retired ambassador, who had the temerity to challenge President Bush’s false assertion that Saddam Hussein imported yellowcake uranium from Niger.
The unraveling of a Presidency, they almost sound Giddy about the possibility. Unfortunately, some on the left don’t understand, when the President looses, the country looses. And I don’t understand anyone who would cheer the demise of their own country.
The biggest question of all is why the American people were misled about the reasons for provoking a war that continues to take an intolerable toll in lives and dollars — and the credibility of the Bush White House.
No, the real question is why papers like the Chron keep publishing lies and half-truths about what got us and didn’t get us into the war.
10/29/2005
I would expect an announcement about who the next Supreme Court nominee is close to the first of the week. President Bush needs to get the attention off of the indictment of “Scooter” Libby. This indictment may be the push the President needs to get him to nominate a judge with a long standing record of being a constructionist rather than an unknown, like we got with Miers.
As far as Libby’s indictment, it doesn’t make sense. Why would he lie about a perfectly legal conversation he had with the VP? Unfortunately because the prosecutor has asked Libby not to defend himself on Tv, we won’t know until the trial. Does anyone know why Libby is not allowed to come out on Tv and give his side of the story?
10/26/2005
Right Wing News has a great post about why the fight over the Miers nomination matters. Go check it out.
10/24/2005
Thoughtless Insensitive Jack#$*
Mark Morford has decided to throw another sick perverted leftist article onto the op-ed page at the San Francisco Chronicle. After the last of his screeds that I read I decided that my blood pressure couldn’t handle it. Unfortunately, sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me and I go back and check out his latest offering of tripe.
This time he has decided to attack Christians as a group and the Duggers as a family. I am extremely offended by his latest piece of ‘work’. For one, who are you to say how many children they can and can’t have. This is one thing I have noticed about Liberals; they’re all for choice unless is it coming from a Republican or Christian (particularly the later).
Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that’s right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Dugger is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?
And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband — whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he’s hankerin’ to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in socio-political pain when you say that — isn’t more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by “touching” and races right past “disturbing” and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into “Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?”
Mr. Morford, you don’t even know these people, what right do you have to claim that they’re sad, unhinged, or any thing else. Most people in America would consider the depraved things you write about (open free sex (homosexual or heterosexual) with anyone anywhere, drugs, drunkenness, etc.) to be sad and unhinged, I certainly do .
But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Dugger family of 18 spotless white hyper-religious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other’s Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.[emphasis mine TR]
I have seen a couple of shows focusing on the Duggers and I don’t consider them hyper-religious. No more than any other protestant Christian in America.
It’s wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that’s making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it
Is it wrong to notice how all the Dugger kids’ names start with the letter J (Jeremiah and Josiah and Jedediah and Jesus, someone please stop them), and that if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong? But I’m not judging.
Oh, so now we get to the heart of the matter, it’s about them being Christians and conservatives. Nope, don’t deny it, he even says it in a later paragraph.
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyper-breeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words — assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right — where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?
Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Dugger’s squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain’t lookin’ good.
See, I told you so. Like I said, Morford’s problem with the Duggers is mostly the fact that they are conservative Christians. I would like to know where is the counterbalance to the tearing down of what this country has stood for since it’s foundation. Mainstream America has been besieged for years by “progressives” tearing at Christianity and it’s holidays. Take for instance the hundreds of thousands of Halloween parties that will be taking place in schools in the next couple of weeks. Can students in most schools have a Christmas party? Only if it is renamed and watered down so that it has nothing to do with the reason for the season — Christs birth. In most schools you can’t even hold a bible study after school. Not on school grounds, heaven forbid. That would violate the non-existent separation of church and state clause.
Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin’ tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation. Is that an oversimplification?
Why does this sort of thoughtfulness seem so far from the norm? Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?
You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God’s little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty’s own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: “We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them.” This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.
I am very offended by the sarcastic anti-religious tone Mr. Morford takes in this piece — as I believe most rational people would be. Secondly, when did we get to the point where we can badmouth a private citizen in the paper. And, they are private citizens, they aren’t public figures who can come out and fight against this kind of attack journalism.
Jim Bob, you are in the process of building a 7,000 square foot home for your family and are committed to building it debt free. Why the commitment to debt-free living?
14 years ago Michelle and I went through Jim Sammons’, “Financial Freedom Seminar†on video (available from IBLP Publications @ 1-630-323-9800). It was life changing! He teaches practical Bible principles of finances that have made us thousands & saved us thousands of dollars. He teaches how to get the best buy, learning to live within your income & purposing to get out of debt, to name a few. Our whole family loves to watch these tapes! We took Romans 13:8 literal which says, “Owe no man anything but to love one another.†We purposed to get out of debt & stay out of debt. We have witnessed, God is faithful & has always met our needs! We have paid cash for some small real estate investments & God has multiplied our income to take care of our growing family. He also enabled Jim Bob to have the freedom to run for & serve in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2002 & to run for the U.S. Senate in 2002. We are currently building a 7000 square foot all steel home, as the Lord provides. It is our family project & we hope to be in by the end of this year. Jim Bob & the two oldest sons have built it from the ground up with the help of a friend who is teaching them about construction as they go.
Bush’s Freedom Revolution Making Roads To Former Russian Occupied Countries
So, today I’m reading the WaPo and I find this. It appears that President Bush has managed to encourage Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan to come to the ‘free and fair elections table’. This is a huge step, for three reasons. Number one, both are Muslim countries that have been ruled by dictators for years. This is a revolution on the order of what’s happened in Iraq and what may be happening in Lebanon. The second reason is that both of these countries have untapped oil resources. The third and final reason is that they are strategically located between Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan. This will be a huge bonus for the fledgeling democracy in Afghanistan. To have two partners in freedom in the imediate area will allow the other two to hold each one accountable.
The WaPo of course doesn’t paint quite as rosey a picture. But, this is from their editorial page so that’s no big surprise.
In fact the last thing the administration wants is turmoil in another Muslim oil state. It is hoping that a combination of proffered carrots and fear of the consequences of fraud will cause Aliyev and Nazarbayev to reform just enough that they can be embraced as democratic allies. But time is running out quickly; what if one or both of the regimes are flunked by the OSCE? [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] “You have to mean what you say, which means we have to be prepared to be disappointed,” one official told me. And if people then take to the streets to call for democracy, as they have elsewhere? For now, the administration isn’t saying what it does then.
Well, so much for my Plame leak series. The NYT archived the article over the weekend, and I refuse to spend the money to “buy” the article. So, onto different topics.
10/23/2005
I’ve been trying to put together a post all day. I over did it late last week and have had to take it easy this weekend. I’ll try to get something out tomorrow. For now, it’s off to bed.
10/22/2005
Facts Are A Tough Thing To Ignore
Ok, so this post is turning out to be longer than I expected. So, I’m going to break it up into a couple of posts so that I can get some of this meat out on the table. Here is post number one in the series.
Much of what I am about to put in this post has already been written about by several other blogs. However, in light of the fact that the grand jury is about to adjourn and may or may not hand down an indictment in the Plume/Rove/Wilson/Novak mess I thought it might be helpful to go back over what we know about the situation. This will probably be a lengthly post, so bear with me.
First let’s cover some of the facts from Judith Miller’s testimony in front of the grand jury. Most of my source information for these facts is Ms. Millers article in the NYT titled “My four hours testifying in the federal grand jury room”. Any other sources will be linked in the fact. This was a lengthly article, somewhere around five pages.
recall that Mr. Libby was displeased with what he described as “selective leaking” by the C.I.A. He told me that the agency was engaged in a “hedging strategy” to protect itself in case no weapons were found in Iraq. “If we find it, fine, if not, we hedged,” is how he described the strategy, my notes show.
I recall that Mr. Libby was angry about reports suggesting that senior administration officials, including Mr. Cheney, had embraced skimpy intelligence about Iraq’s alleged efforts to buy uranium in Africa while ignoring evidence to the contrary. Such reports, he said, according to my notes, were “highly distorted.”
It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses. On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name “Valerie Flame.” Yet, as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled. I testified that I did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby, in part because the notation does not appear in the same part of my notebook as the interview notes from him.
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
What was evident, I told the grand jury, was Mr. Libby’s anger that Mr. Bush might have made inaccurate statements because the C.I.A. failed to share doubts about the Iraq intelligence.
“No briefer came in and said, ‘You got it wrong, Mr. President,’ ” he said, according to my notes.
10/21/2005
I’m working on a big post recapping the facts of the whole Plame leak case. I know a lot of this has been covered elsewhere, but I find it amazing — given the facts I have available to me — that this investigation has continued. At a glance it looks like a lot of administration opponents on a witch hunt. Chief amoung them former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Stay tuned, I hope to have this post up by this evening.
10/19/2005
Progress now has an area where you can create your own billboard and enter their contest… well, I didn’t exactly use it as intended, but it was fun anyway!!
10/18/2005
Atomizer at Fraters puts the whole Global Warming thing in perspective. Good question!
According to the National Climatic Data Center, last month was the warmest September on record with global temperatures coming in at 1.13°F above “average”. I’m certain that the usual suspects will embrace this information as more indisputable proof that global warming is gripping our fragile globe with its grisly claws of death. They are all fools.
The recurring flaw in these monthly proclamations is in those two little words “on record”. Reliable record keeping began in 1880 so any mention of “average” or “mean” or “normal” is strictly limited to information gathered in the past 125 years. Since the earth has been around for some 4,500,000,000 years, can someone please explain to me why I’m supposed to be alarmed about climate changes over a 125 year span?
125 years constitutes .00000277% of the earth’s entire lifespan. To put this in human perspective, a similar percentage of my 38 year lifetime is equivalent to roughly 33 seconds. How many of you out there would care to have their lives evaluated on a mere 33 second span? If one were to look at a certain 33 second segment of my life that occurred in November of 1982, I would be characterized as a babbling inebriate with a propensity towards evacuating the contents of my stomach all over a certain pub owner. Okay, bad example, but you get my point.
So, when you hear the inevitable cries of alarm about global warming in the coming days, remember to put it all in perspective. And be careful about what you do in the next half minute or so…your reputation is on the line.
I for one am not going to get worked up over 0.00000277%, or 33 seconds.
Hat Tip: CC
10/17/2005
C & D Hysteria From Progress Now
Our lefty neighbors at Progress Now have put together a “lighthearted” look at why we must pass Ref’s C & D. My gosh, if we don’t pass this huge tax increase your children will have to fix their own potholes because the state won’t have the money to do it.
Now, of course we could look at the other side of this (and it is as silly as the “pro C & D” side). If we don’t pass C & D, imagine how many wonderful opportunities it will provide for mothers and their children to get out and do stuff together. They could patch potholes, clean up the green belt in their neighborhood. Maybe even take courses on how to repair bridges. Of course, the real problem is amendment 23 that allows for out of control K-12 spending without regards to TABOR restrictions. Funny how the Democrat’s solution to most things is to throw more of our money at the problem. Rarely has that ever worked.
10/15/2005
All The News That’s Fit To Spin
The Media Research Counsel has put together a great synopsis of the alphabet networks coverage of the Iraq war. Here are some of the facts that they found:
Network coverage has been overwhelmingly pessimistic. More than half of all stories (848, or 61%) focused on negative topics or presented a pessimistic analysis of the situation, four times as many as featured U.S. or Iraqi achievements or offered an optimistic assessment (just 211 stories, or 15%). News about the war has grown increasingly negative. In January and February, about a fifth of all network stories (21%) struck a hopeful note, while just over half presented a negative slant on the situation. By August and September, positive stories had fallen to a measly seven percent and the percentage of bad news stories swelled to 73 percent of all Iraq news, a ten-to-one disparity. Terrorist attacks are the centerpiece of TV’s war news. Two out of every five network evening news stories (564) featured car bombings, assassinations, kidnappings or other attacks launched by the terrorists against the Iraqi people or coalition forces, more than any other topic. Even coverage of the Iraqi political process has been negative. More stories (124) focused on shortcomings in Iraq’s political process — the danger of bloodshed during the January elections, political infighting among politicians, and fears that the new Iraqi constitution might spur more civil strife — than found optimism in the Iraqi people’s historic march to democracy (92 stories). One-third of those optimistic stories (32) appeared on just two nights — January 30 and 31, just after Iraq’s first successful elections. Few stories focused on the heroism or generous actions of American soldiers. Just eight stories were devoted to recounting episodes of heroism or valor by U.S. troops, and another nine stories featured instances when soldiers reached out to help the Iraqi people. In contrast, 79 stories focused on allegations of combat mistakes or outright misconduct on the part of U.S. military personnel. It’s not as if there was no “good news†to report. NBC’s cameras found a bullish stock market and a hiring boom in Baghdad’s business district, ABC showcased the coalition’s successful effort to bring peace to a Baghdad thoroughfare once branded “Death Street,†and CBS documented how the one-time battleground of Sadr City is now quiet and citizens are beginning to benefit from improved public services. Stories describing U.S. and Iraqi achievements provided essential context to the discouraging drumbeat of daily news, but were unfortunately just a small sliver of TV’s Iraq news.
This is certainly an interesting finding. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I’m got to say, it’s almost as if they want the war to fail. It seems to me they’ve pulled this kind of stunt before though — in the Vietnam War. The problem with all of the negativity though is that they have short changed the positive accomplishments of our military and it’s leadership.
10/14/2005
I’m really not surprised, the media has tried it’s best for the last five years to beat up the administration. Now with Rove facing possible indictment, Delay facing conviction by a over zealous partisan hack, and Bill Frist being sopoenaed in an insider trading investigation the media has more than enough ammo to do their damage.
I really don’t put much stock in the charges for any of them. In most every case mentioned the evidince is scarce and circumstantial. Take Delay for example — the prosecution — doesn’t even mention any evidence in the indictment. It just lists charges that seem to make Delay guilty by association rather than by action. Delay was charged under a law that doesn’t even apply to him. Furthermore, in recent days it has become more and more apparent that the prosecutor not only let a camera crew follow him around to “document the downfall of Delay” but went grand jury shopping as well. Add that to the fact that he showed up at a Democratic fundraiser promising to “get Delay” and the charges begin to look more and more like an attempt to destroy Delay and the Republican party rather than to get justice for a crime committed.
“The Rove thing has gotten to be enormously distracting,” said one outside adviser to the White House. “Knowing the way the White House works, being under subpoena like this, your mind is not on your work, it’s on that.”
I don’t understand why this continues to be a story after the prosecuter has assured us that Rove is not a target of the investigation.
Into the picture comes the WaPo today with the unbiased [sic] headline “Scandals Take Toll On Bush’s 2nd Term”.
A series of scandals involving some of the most powerful Republicans in Washington have converged to disrupt President Bush’s agenda, distract aides and allies, and exacerbate political problems for an already weakened administration, according to party strategists and White House advisers.
Funny how they fail to mention any names of these party strategists and Whitehouse advisors. Somehow I can’t see the parties inner circle or Bush’s advisors throwing the administration under the bus like this. What’s more, I can’t see anyone in the inner circle calling this a weakened administration. President Bush has a lot going for him right now, certainly there are problems, but even I can see — from here in fly over land — that it’s not as dire as the WaPo makes it out to be.
Most of the scandals have little direct connection with one another, but their accumulation in a compressed period has challenged a White House already beset by political problems stemming from the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and high gasoline prices, according to Republican advisers close to the Bush team, several of whom said they could speak candidly only if they were not identified by name.
First of all, the Iraq war is not going as badly as the Democrats and their media sympathizers make it out to be. Ask any of the Military bloggers whether or not they believe in their mission and the result is a resounding yes. Ask any of military bloggers if they are doing good over there and they will say yes to that as well.
As our vehicles coiled around the neighborhood the first waves of children started spilling out of the narrow alleys in nervous anticipation, clustering together in small chattering groups. By time our vehicles settled into overwatch positions they were joined by a half dozen teenagers boys, who tried to mask their excitement at our arrival by casually strolling down the narrow lanes toward our positions. In many areas of Baghdad the locals greet our patrols with an almost casual disinterest, but the shantytowns are a far cry from those “developed†areas. In these drab neighborhoods the arrival of our patrols elicits the kind of excitement normally reserved for a holiday parade.
This quote is taken from a post at 365 and a wakeup. As you can see, it seems that many Iraqis are quite happy that we’re there. No, I admit they’re not all happy, but not all the German population was happy when we went into Germany during WWII to kick Hitlers butt.
As far as hurricane Katrina, it’s a non-issue. The facts have finally brought out the truth. There was loss of life, and that’s a tradgedy, but it was nowhere near the catastrophy that it was once — in the immediate aftermath — portrayed to be. The facts have also borne out that Naggin’ Nagin, Blanco, and the rest of the corrupt and inept infrastructure at the state level is far more at fault than the Federal Government. There were problems at FEMA but those have been handled with the termination of Brown.
Gas prices are high, but they’re coming down rapidly as our refineries on the gulf coast get back up to speed. Just in my neighborhood, prices have dropped from $2.90 a gallon in the aftermath of Rita to $2.65 a gallon just yesterday, and further help is on the way –assuming that the Senate passes the new energy bill.
“In my administration,” Bush told voters in Pittsburgh in October 2000, “we will ask not only what is legal but what is right, not what the lawyers allow but what the public deserves.”
It was a vow that was welcomed in a capital weary of scandal, and the Bush White House made it through the first term without losing many scalps . With the lapse of the independent counsel statute and congressional oversight committees in the hands of the president’s party, the instruments of political investigations were more limited.
Okay, that’s a bit of a cheap shot. The post would like to portray a Republican Congress shielding it’s corrupt administration from scandal, and that’s simply not true. The Congress and the Whitehouse have done everything sensible and possible to comply with the Democrats and their partisan witch hunt.
Other White House advisers see politics behind the recent spurt of investigations. “Some of it is cyclical politically,” said Leonard A. Leo, who has taken leave as executive vice president of the conservative Federalist Society to help promote the Miers nomination. “And some of it, I’ll be honest, is when the left and the Democrats are losing the battle of ideas, they turn to manufacturing scandal.”
The fair and balanced WaPo waits until 17 paragraphs in until they bring this one forward. Talk about burrying the lead. So while the WaPo — in the famous words of chicken little — is crying “the sky is falling … the sky is falling” around the administration, the rest of us who pay any attention to what is going on know that it is not falling, and shake our heads in amazement at their bias.
10/12/2005
Which is something that happens more often than not. After listening to an on air conversation between Dr. James Dobson and his announcer John Fuller about the nomination of Miers, I’ve come to the conclusion that conservatives must back the President and Harriet Miers. Here’s some of the text of the conversation:
But we also talked about something else, and I think this is the first time this has been disclosed. Some of the other candidates who had been on that short list, and that many conservatives are now upset about were highly qualified individuals that had been passed over. Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list and they would not allow their names to be considered, because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter, that they didn’t want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it.
So, even today, many conservatives and many of ‘em friends of mine, are being interviewed on talk shows and national television programs. And they’re saying, “Why didn’t the President appoint so-and-so? He or she would have been great. They had a wonderful judicial record. They would have been the kind of person we’ve been hoping and working and praying for to be on the Court. Well, it very well may be that those individuals didn’t want to be appointed….
So it seems to me that some of the nominee’s conservatives put forth backed out because they did not want to subject themselves or their families to the culture of personal attack that many of the Democrats have fostered in Washington.
It’s time now to put aside the hurt feelings and get behind this nominee, because it’s likely that Miers is the best Bush could get….
Howard Kurtz interviewed George Clooney over the weekend and if there ever was a case for someone in Hollywood following Laura Ingraham’s advice, George Clooney is it. Kurtz interviews Clooney on the state of the media today, and both of them show there lefty stripes.
KURTZ: We’ll get you moving in just a moment, but you’ve been very critical of television news lately, saying that people are less well-informed now than 15 years. Does that mean that CNN, MSNBC, FOX, are doing a lousy job?
CLOONEY: I don’t think I’ve ever said that people are less informed. I said that what the difference is, or the problem is, is the information that is out there, it’s just tougher to find because there’s so many — it’s fractured in so many different pieces.
I don’t think …
KURTZ: You wouldn’t want to go back to the days of three broadcast networks, would you?
CLOONEY: I don’t know, sometimes I have a romantic vision of that, when everyone started with the same basic facts and then sort of took them into their own social and political experience, and then came up with their own opinions, so that everyone started with somewhat of the same fact base, rather than starting with very different fact levels.
KURTZ: In other words you think that many of these media outlets — we’re awash in 24 hour news networks …
CLOONEY: Sure.
KURTZ: … as you well know, are too opinionated and that’s part of the problem?
CLOONEY: I don’t know if it’s too opinionated. I think that there is — like magazines and newspapers over the years have become, you go now to the place that best represents your own personal social and political beliefs.
It’s OK, it happens. It creates, oftentimes, polarization, I think. But I don’t find — growing up as the son of an anchorman, I don’t find that to be — my father’s job as a news director — he wrote his own news, was constantly to fight the powers that be, the people who had the money, to keep entertainment from pushing news off the air. So it’s not something new, it’s something that’s been going on for a long time.
KURTZ: And you think that today’s media organizations don’t do as good a job? They surrender to entertainment?
CLOONEY: No, but I think that there are times that we have certainly dropped the ball in the last few years. I think that there were — I think that when “The New York Times,” for instance, admits that they shirked their responsibility in the lead-up to the war and says, we should have asked some tougher questions about some Judith Miller’s articles, you know, I think that there is a very dangerous step, because to me, growing up as a son of a journalist, the most important thing, as Thomas Jefferson taught us, was he would rather have a free press than a free government.
KURTZ: A lot of news organizations, like “The Times,” could have done a more aggressive job. Now, you could have made “Ocean’s 13,” “Ocean’s 14″, “Ocean’s 15.”
So, if I understand them correctly, competition is bad. We should go back to the days where the big three ruled the air and people had left leaning bias shoved down their throats…. Like I said, shut up and act.
10/10/2005
Al-Qaeda Opening Up Shop In Gaza
Our policy of supporting a Terrorist … Ahh, I mean Palestinian state is coming back to haunt us. Al Qaeda has reared its ugly head in the west bank and, of course, Hammas and the PLO are already there.
Has al-Qaida started operating in the Gaza Strip? A leaflet distributed in Khan Yunis over the weekend by al-Qaida’s “Palestine branch” announced that the terrorist group has begun working towards uniting the Muslims under one Islamic state.
“The Muslim nation has been subjected, through various periods, to conspiracies by the infidels,” the leaflet said. “[The infidels] have brought down the Islamic Caliphate, dividing the nation into small and weak states. They also managed to dilute the Islamic and character of the nation.”
The leaflet said unity was the only way for Muslims to achieve victory over their enemies, adding that the terrorist group’s chief goal was to enforce Islamic law in the entire world.
[…] […] […] […] According to Nizar, some areas in the southern Gaza Strip are already beginning to resemble Afghanistan when it was ruled by the Taliban. “This is very disturbing,” he remarked. “You see more and more women covering their faces and in the mosques you hear extremely radical sermons. The people there are behaving as if they were members of a tribe in Afghanistan.”
Another Gaza City resident, Fadel, urged al-Qaida to stop tampering with the future of the Palestinians. “They’re not welcome here,” he said. “Their presence will only destroy our lives.”
The time is coming very soon where we’re either going to have to firmly back Israel or face having another terrorist state bent on our destruction.
Hat Tip: Power Line
Well, here it is. Yup, that’s right, the first snow storm of the season. State DOT was requiring chains for all tractor trailers at the approaches to the Eisenhower tunnel and Vail pass. Brekenridge, where I spent last Sunday taking pictures of the fall colors and spending time with family received over 20 inches of the “white gold”. Here in Denver though, it’s been a little tamer. We’ve only received a trace of snow in our neighborhood, although we were without power last night for almost 2 hours due to rain and wind knocking out transformers in the area. Speaking of rain, it’s been raining here since about noon yesterday (with the exception of the little bit of snow we’ve gotten). I hope to have pictures of the neighborhood later, if the weather cooperates and gives us a little more snow to photograph.
As a kid, I always loved the first snow of the season. I knew that Christmas and my birthday were just around the corner. As a truck driver, I learned to hate the first snow because it meant a lot more stress and hard work. I was always left wondering whether or not I would make it across the rockies without putting chains on, or worse, getting in an accident. Now, thankfully, I don’t have to worry about that anymore, although I still worry about the friends I still have out there gettin’ it done every day.
10/8/2005
Think Progress, a left wing blog, has come out decidedly against President Bush’s speech and decidedly uninformed. They equate President Bush’s resoluteness to continue the fight in the war on terror as fear mongering.
America is losing confidence in President Bush. A Newsweek poll reveals that “across the board…his most visible policies only pull the support of a third of the country: on the economy, 35 percent approve; on Iraq, 33 percent; on energy policy, 28 percent.†When all else fails, start fear mongering…
Fear mongering? Really? Let’s take a look at what President said:
All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel.
And while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane.
[…] […] […] With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation.
[…] […] […] No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
[…] […] […] In truth, they have endless ambitions of imperial domination and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves…They seek to end dissent in every form and to control every aspect of life and to rule the soul itself.
[…] […] […] Defeating a militant network is difficult because it thrives like a parasite on the suffering and frustration of others.
[…] […] […] [W]e’re determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and to their terrorist allies who would use them without hesitation.
[…] […] […] Evil men who want to use horrendous weapons against us are working in deadly earnest to gain them.
[…] […] […] This would be a pleasant world, but it’s not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday’s brutality.
These are all quotes selected by Think Progress from the President’s speech. The funny thing is I don’t see any fear mongering anywhere. What I see is a President laying out what we are doing, and what we are facing in the coming months.
One can only assume that Think Progress feels that this is fear mongering because they don’t believe there is a threat from Al-Qaeda. How quickly the left forgets the fear, pain, and confusion that we all experienced on 9-11-01. How quickly the left forgets that Mohammed Atta didn’t check voter registration cards before he drove his plane through the World Trade Center Tower and along with his buddies killed over 3,000 Americans. How quickly the left forgets that the Koran calls for the murder of anyone who won’t convert to the religion of Islam. Rediculous? Could be.
After a close vote in the House the new energy bill calling for building of new refineries along the coast and off the coast will go to the Senate. I suspect it will be a close vote their as well. The bill passed in the House along party lines 212-210.
Opponents of the bill say it does nothing to address the high costs of gasoline and natural gas. A new refinery — by simple economics — will drive down the cost of gasoline. If we have more available then the price will fall. It will be a while before we see the effects of the bill because it will take time to build the refinery and get it on line, but this is a step in the right direction. Now all we need to do is get intoANWAR.
Supporters of the measure said that hurricanes Katrina and Rita made clear that the country needs more refineries, including new ones outside of the Gulf region. Critics argued it would allow the oil industry to avoid environmental regulations that would lead to dirtier air.
The bill passed 212-210. Its prospects in the Senate were uncertain.
The vote, which was supposed to be taken in five minutes, lasted more than 40 minutes as GOP leaders searched for the last two votes they needed to get the bill approved. They buttonholed lawmakers for last-minute lobbying as Democrats complained loudly that the vote should be closed. Finally two GOP lawmakers switched from “no” to “yes,” giving the bill’s supporters the margin of victory.
During the fight, some Democrats who had supported the legislation also switched their votes to “no.” In the end, no Democrats voted for the legislation.
10/6/2005
From the funny but oh so true files:
The Ant and the Grasshopper, OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for
the winter.The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant
is warm and well fed.The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
————————————————————————————————————-
The Ant and the Grasshopper, MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS! , NBC, a nd ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy
Being Green”Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
Tom Daschle & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share.”
Finally, the EEOC drafts the “Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act,” retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.
The ant loses the case…
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican
Ivins Falls Back On Anti-Religious Bias
Well, Molly Ivins — without any other method to fall back on — has decided to use the old separation of church and state argument to oppose Miers. The idea that anyone with a Evangelical Christian outlook should be unable to serve or looked at with skepticism is ridiculous. 90% of the country considers themselves to be religious, even John Kerry considers himself to be religious — a Catholic, and we certainly didn’t hear Ivins screaming separation of church and state then.
She [Miers] ran for city council in 1989 as a moderate, but struggled during her interview with the lesbian/gay coalition. (At the time, it would have been considered progressive to even show up.) The Dallas Police Department did not then hire gays or lesbians, and when asked about the policy, Miers replied the department should hire the best-qualified people, the classic political sidestep answer.
When pressed, she said she did believe one should be able to legally discriminate against gays, and it is the recollection of two of the organization’s officers that the response involved her religious beliefs.
Miers’ church states on its website that it believes in biblical inerrancy, full immersion baptism, original sin and salvation dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to hell.
I have said for years about people in public life, “I don’t write about sex, drugs or rock ‘n’ roll.” If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t write about the religion of those in public life, either, as I consider it a most private matter. Separation of church and state is in the Constitution because this country was founded by people who had experienced both religious persecution and state-supported religions. I think John F. Kennedy’s 1960 statement to the Baptist ministers should stand as a model of how public servants should handle the relation between religious belief and public service.
What Ivins seems to be getting at here is that unless Miers is willing to commit to abortion, gay rights (as liberals see them), and a host of other liberal positions, she is unqualified to serve. As I said before, this is ridiculous. No, I’m not all that excited about Miers either, but my reasons are completely different than those put forward by Ivins and her ilk. My reason for — if not opposing at least not being excited about it — is that she has no track record of being an originalist. This has nothing to do with her religious beliefs or her positions on cases likely to come before the court. One other issue raised by Ivins is that the religious right feels like it is being driven from the public square.
Nevertheless, we are now beset by people who insist on dragging religion into governance — and who themselves believe they are beset by people determined to “drive God from the public square.”
What do you call it when a widely recognized columnist uses as her reason for opposing a Supreme Court nomination that nominee’s religious beliefs? I call it driving religion and evangelicals from the public square.
10/5/2005
George Bush A Political Genious?
The blog Mike Huckabee for President — not actually maintained by Huckabee or his staff — lends an interesting point of view to the nomination of Harriet Miers. Here’s the important part of the post:
Some conservatives were disappointed by the President’s choice because, they believed, he did so because he had no stomach left for a political fight. We don’t necessarily believe that is true. Quite the opposite. We think the President may have deliberately set the stage to drag liberal Democrats into the biggest and most defining political fight of modern times.
We’ve blogged here before about the left’s war on religion– how the Dems filibuster lower court nominees based on thinly-veiled opposition to their religious beliefs, and how the Dem’s liberal base and funding is composed of organizations that have overtly declared war on religion. We’ve also blogged here before about our belief that the stage is set for a civil war in the Democratic party. We based our opinion at the time on the fallout we expected from the “nuclear option” planned by Republicans to get the President’s judicial nominees through the Dem’s filibuster attempts. The Dems managed to avoid the nuclear option through the now famous “filibuster deal” manufactured by a gang of Democrats and some traitorous Republicans. But they (the Dems) saved for themselves the option to filibuster future nominees under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Therein lies the President’s genius.
By selecting a nominee with no record of legal opinion to pick apart, but who is widely reported to be an evangelical Christian who is pro-life, the President has put the Dems in an exceedingly uncomfortable position. Their radical base, from which their funding comes and which has already launched outright war on religion, will DEMAND that the Democratic leadership fight to the death to keep Ms. Miers out of the vital “swing seat” on the Supreme Court. But based on what? In this circumstance, the Democratic leadership will not have the luxury of heaping their opposition on years of legal writings to mask their real motives. This time, they will be drawn into a fight based solely upon their base’s opposition to Mier’s personal, religious views. This runs in direct contradiction to Howard Dean’s widely discussed strategy of appealing to religious voters in order to win back the majority and the White House.
The scenario that President Bush has laid out before the Democrats puts them in the position of appearing to believe Christianity is an “extraordinary circumstance” worthy of filibustering or, on the other hand, alienating (infuriating) their base. The President may well have fired the first shot in what will become the civil war within the Democratic party.
Interesting, very interesting….
I had the opportunity to go spend the day Sunday in Frisco/Brekenridge with my parents and my Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. We had a great time, I haven’t seen my Cousin Josh in about three years. Fortunately he was home on leave from Fort Bragg. Here are a couple of pictures of the great fall foliage in the Colorado mountains.
Also, if you get the chance, go check out Uncle Mike’s art work. Thanks everyone for a great weekend.
LAT Editorial Board Shortsided On GWOT
I am surprised that I actually agree with one conclusion in the op-ed. Pakistan does need to do more to help fight terrorism.
BOMBINGS, SHOOTINGS AND VIOLENT deaths continue in Afghanistan, site of the first post-9/11 American war. Although the campaign in Afghanistan became the “other” conflict once the invasion of Iraq began, the country remains dangerous and uncertain, and international cooperation there is as crucial as ever.
However, some of the other conclusions reached are short sided. They are still taking the side that the war in Iraq and the GWOT are two different wars. This is a fatally short sided view of the conflict that was started on 9-11-01 by islamofacists.
The explosion near Afghan troops boarding buses was an ominous echo of suicide attacks in Iraq. It occurred a week after President Hamid Karzai claimed that his country no longer was the source of terrorist threats. Karzai was overly optimistic. Afghanistan may not be the source, but terror still plagues the country.
So, which is it? Is Karzi overly optimistic, or is Afghanistan no longer the source of terrorist threats?
…These troops provided security during last month’s parliamentary election.
But the army has not been able to stop Taliban and Al Qaeda attacks. This year, more than 80 U.S. servicemen have been killed in Afghanistan, the deadliest year since the 2001 invasion.
Once again, we see the typical pessimism that has become so dangerous in this country. No, things are not perfect in Afghanistan, but they are a site better than they were on 9-10-01. The successes in Afghanistan an