Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Scenes from the Democratic Class War

Via Pejmanesque and Professor Bainbridge http://www.pejmanesque.com/archives/010490.html ; we learn how the middle class is abandoning the “party of the middle class” in droves:

This is the kind of headline Democrats have come to expect from their opponents: "Middle Class Voters Reject Democrats at the Ballot Box." But this time, the charge comes from inside the party, in a new report issued by the centrist group known as Third Way.


"Rather than being the party of the middle class, Democrats face a crisis with middle-income voters," the study argues.
"The 45% of voters who make up the middle class -- those with household incomes between $30,000 and $75,000 -- delivered healthy victories to George Bush and House Republicans in 2004."


Black voters supported the presidential candidacy of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and House Democrats by significant margins regardless of their income levels, but white middle-class voters tended to vote more like wealthy voters. "Democrats were not competitive at all among the white middle class," according to the study.

The report also contained alarming news for Democrats about Hispanic voters. The more Hispanics move into the middle class, the less they vote Democratic.

Why? Maybe it is whom the Democratic party lustily associates themselves with. From Tim Blair, we quote Democratic/Air America hero Michael Moore, who tells his middle-income audience http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/economic_prediction_astray :

Listen, friends, you have to face the truth: you are never going to be rich. The chance of that happening is about one in a million. Not only are you never going to be rich, but you are going to have to live the rest of your life busting your butt just to pay the cable bill and the music and art classes for your kid at the public school where they used to be free.

And it is only going to get worse.

Don’t try to back off of Moore now, Dems, because we remember how you put him on a throne at the Convention in August, right next to the other symbol of the Party, Jimmy Carter.

Now back to the Pejman:


I figure that the tax issue should pay a large role in the distribution of middle class votes--especially given the belief among middle class voters that if they work hard and obey the rules of society, they can become quite prosperous.

Therein lies the truth. Republicans want to give the equal opportunity to all, regardless of race/color/creed, to be rich, and figures the best way to do that is to trust them with their own money, and to allow them to achieve according to their own ability.

The Democrats don’t want their constituents rich; they’re afraid they’ll become Republicans. So tell ‘em all it’s just a pipe dream, that their best hope is in socialized medicine (and the taxes that pay for it) and hybrid cars. Try some race-based incentives to help certain poor groups (and keep them on-board); and make that striving middle-class pay for it. Don’t worry, it’s all in your best interests...

What do you mean, you’d rather vote Republican?

Monday, May 30, 2005

Trust the Times….

"Don’t bother reading that long, boring, EU Constitution!" says the New York Times when discussing the “no” vote in France…http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/international/europe/30france.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=ac5a223e7e2d8b52&hp&ex=1117425600&partner=homepage...let us sum it up for you!

The constitution is essentially a vehicle to streamline decision-making in the expanded 25-member bloc and a blueprint for the next stage of its growth and unification.

OK, the Times makes it’s mission statement here; now it goes on to tell us essentially what “essentially” means here:

It eliminates the six-month rotating European Union presidency, creating a president with a maximum five-year term;

“Creating a President”; not “Electing” a President? Who votes on this President, the citizens of the EU or their intellectual elites in Brussels? Well, eliminating the messy process of voting does "streamline decision making…"

details a list of basic rights;

That’s huge, determining what your basic rights are or entail…are they being streamlined as well? What type of a blueprint for the future are they? Never mind, that’s not worth discussing, it’s just a “vehicle”, after all…

and determines what functions, such as issuing visas or making rules on immigration, will be governed by the European Union headquarters in Brussels;

Just curious here: Does the EU Constitution stipulate that the EU Headquarters will be limited simply to a center for passports and immigration visas? Or is it possible that they may take on, oh, other types of responsibilities?

and what others, like foreign policy and defense, will remain with member states.

Does the Times know this, or is it just trying to reassure us that nothing could ever be less than wholesome under a centralized Socialist government? Look at that part of the sentence again in its entirety:

and determines what functions, such as issuing visas or making rules on immigration, will be governed by the European Union headquarters in Brussels and what others, like foreign policy and defense, will remain with member states.

How is the Times so sure that Brussels will not eventually control a centralized EU foreign policy? Has not Chirac called for this time and time again, Europe (not France, Europe) as a counter-weight to America?

The Times blithely papers over the legitimate flaws of the EU Constitution; The EU must come together for the Times, you see, because its constitution, with its myriad of Rights, Rules, Regulations, Safety Nets, Housing and Work Guarentees, is the epitome of political correctness and liberal social theory combined. To the Times, the citizens of the EU, not unlike the citizens of “Red State America”, should not be allowed to get in the way of the realization of their progressive dogma. Can't they see their enslavement to government bureaucrats would be a benign one? Argh, democracy, what a pain!

Now you know why the Left are always swooning over the Stalins, Castros, and Saddams…now these guys knew what it takes to implement a liberal agenda!

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Sacre Freakin' Bleu !!

French Reject Europe's First Constitution
http://news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20050529/ap_on_re_eu/france_eu_referendum
tee-hee...
chuckle...

French voters rejected the European Union's first constitution Sunday, President Jacques Chirac said — a stinging repudiation of his leadership and the ambitious, decades-long effort to further unite the continent.

snort...
cough/chuckle....

France's rejection could set the continent's plans back by years. The nation was a primary architect of European unity.

"There is no more constitution," leading opponent Philippe de Villiers said. "It is necessary to reconstruct Europe on other foundations that don't currently exist."

De Villiers called on Chirac to resign — something the French leader had said he would not do — and called for parliament to be dissolved.


I can't take it...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll post deeper later; I'm waiting for some of the Idiotarians to provide me with some juicy quotes...don't worry, they're coming...

Memorial Day 2005

I often remind my family of the truth of these words, and they are appropriate to lead off my site for the rest of this weekend:

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
-George Orwell

And for all those whom dare to forget whom to thank for the freedoms we enjoy today; whom elevate themselves to a higher pedestal by declaring their opposition to war anytime, anywhere, for any reason, and to all those in the media who poison the body politic with these sentiments daily, I leave you with this thought-

"War is an ugly thing," wrote 19th Century political philosopher John Stuart Mill, "but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war is worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature...."

Show your support here http://patriotpetitions.us/USMIL/ - sign the letter !

Germany Lies as the EU Dies...

Mr. Medienkritik; resourceful as always, digs up this doozy http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/without_sheddin.html, from German Ambassador to the United States Wolfgang Ischinger, as quoted in The New Yorker, 5/30/05:

As older societies, we tend to think of ourselves as more experienced in the way societies evolve, and we tend to be skeptical of Americans who seem to think that if you believe hard enough, and you muster enough resources, you can change the world."

"In the last year or so, as we've engaged in discussions about the transformation of the Middle East and democracy, I have told my American friends that the region in this world that has seen the most transformation and change is Central and Eastern Europe--without shedding a drop of blood. So don't preach to us."


Please click the link, as David Medienkritik takes you through a quick photoessay, of what this so-called ambassador calls, without a drop of sarcasm, a bloodless transformation. Unless, of course, he was refering to Europe's decline from an economic and international powerhouse to a broken bunch of semi-socialist states, vainly attempting to tie their fate together via a "union" that allows them to feed off each other's carcasses until the bitter, inevitable end.

Note that the above-mentioned European Union's constitution is about to be voted down by the countries whom leaders were the most vocally in favor of it. As leftists usually do, they are beginning to realize the mistake of allowing people the right to vote on their schemes. From Samizdata http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/007592.html :

If the French and the Dutch reject the EU Constitution on Sunday and Wednesday, they should re-run the referendums, the current president of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said.
"If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again", Mr Juncker said in an interview with Belgian daily Le Soir.


There is only one right answer, only one acceptable vote, you see...as told straight from the mouth of the EU's President....and who elected him, exactly?

Sounds like something right out of Orwell's "1984"!

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Liberalism's European Failure - Can it Happen Here?

Always interesting to read the foreign MSM; here the Times U.K. gives another reason for the recent losses by Germany's ruling party and the upcoming "non" vote in France on the EU Constitution
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1061-1627759,00.html:

WHY ARE THE PEOPLE of Europe so angry? The standard answer, as the Germans, French and Dutch all turn against their governments, is that the European project has gone too far and that political elites have overreached themselves, losing touch with the ordinary people....In my view, the answer is simple: it’s the economy, stupid. The British and American economies have on the whole been performing well since 1992. Europe, meanwhile, has become an economic disaster.

The people of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands may be angry about globalisation or ultra-liberalism or immigration, but this reflects a deeper malaise. Their living standards are falling, their pensions are in danger, their children are jobless and their national pride is turning into embarrassment and even shame. In sum, they feel that their countries, which numbered among the world’s richest and most powerful nations as recently as the middle of the last decade, have gone to the dogs under the leadership of the present generation of politicians. And, at least in the economic sense, they are absolutely right.


Interesting. Now what will Europe do - roll up their sleeves, take on a new direction and get to work; or blame the Jews and the Americans for their own self-defeating policies? The answer will tell a generation all they need to know about the nature of the citizen of Europe...

Now, as for American liberals, or more precisely their political organ, the Democratic Party - how did it become a clearinghouse for self-appointed special interest groups to get their policies enacted into law? This interesting historical essay of sorts from Opinion Journal http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006723 has an answer; tying it into the change in large scale philantropic donations:

A significant shift in liberal philanthropy took place after McGeorge Bundy, a former dean at Harvard and national security adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was appointed president of the Ford Foundation in 1966. Sharply preferring activism to research and expertise, Bundy pioneered a strategy of "advocacy philanthropy." Soon Ford and other liberal donors were investing in a maze of activist groups promoting feminism, affirmative action, environmentalism, disarmament and other cutting-edge causes. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Women's Law Fund and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund were among the products of this initiative.

These groups claimed to speak for and to be the legitimate representatives of their respective causes. In that capacity, they promoted ideas that led to legislation, and then sought to influence the regulatory bodies and federal courts that implemented and interpreted the laws. Thus, Ford and Bundy helped develop an institutional structure that, by means of litigation and the leverage it exercised over administrative agencies, could push its favored programs beyond any limits contemplated by the politicians who enacted them.

Over the long run, the Bundy approach was instrumental in inventing what is by now a familiar phenomenon on the American political scene: the well-placed advocacy group nursing a grievance against American society and seeking compensation on behalf of its members.

Reinforcing this trend was the fact that, simultaneously, the Democratic Party was beginning to alter itself along parallel lines....The groups that now found a home in the party began to look very much like the ones Bundy had tried to organize through the Ford Foundation. In many cases, they were the same groups.


Finally, liberalism itself came to be recast along interest-group lines. The welfare state was redefined from a package of programs through which Americans lent assistance to the poor, the sick and the disabled to a system through which certain defined groups could command government support as a matter of right and as compensation for past injustices. Society was cast as the guilty party, the recipients as its aggrieved victims. This sleight-of-hand in turn made it difficult for government to require the beneficiaries of its aid to adapt their behavior to the standards of middle-class life.


Hence the failure of liberalism, noted in the first story about Europe's pending upheavel. The Democrats cannot align their welfare state with mainstream, middle class values; therefore they must oppose/dismantle them, by raising taxes on the so-called "rich" (try living on less than $100K w/a family of four in New Jersey), forcing gay marriages upon hetrosexual societies, sneering at the religious beliefs of the middle class, barring them from recieving tax credits for sending their kids to private schools, and forcing them under penalty of civil law to accept "multiculturalism", even as it defines down the basic morality of American middle-class society.

Again see the first story about the despair of Europeans on their falling quality of life, and remember what type of doctrine brought it on. I'll quote my own post, here - http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2005/05/democrats-second-rate-eurotrash.html :

The ideas, assumptions and prejudices held by the statistically typical Democratic voter, according to the Pew study, are quite simply, European.

Remember this, when the Democrats accuse you of being immoral for not supporting their initiatives to salve the pain of their interest group de jour...

Friday, May 27, 2005

Updates! We Have Updates!

...on a few posts recently...posted.

al-Reuters http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2005/05/al-reuters-lies-hopes-americans-die.html isn't the only MainStream Media outlet writing misleading and outright false stories/headlines in a vain attempt to bolster News-weak. Michelle Malkin http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002578.htm shows us the Washington Post wins hands-down, taking thirteen paragraphs to admit its story is, well...fabricated.

Next up, it appears as if I showed some irrational exuberance at the local electoral defeats in Germany of Gerhard Schroeder's SPD Partyhttp://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2005/05/schroeders-anti-american-platform.html. The NY Post's Ralph Peters says the voters are rebelling against Gerhard because he tried to make miniscule attempts at reforming their failing socialist economy http://www.nypost.com/seven/05242005/postopinion/opedcolumnists/47023.htm

The chancellor who stabbed the United States in the back over Iraq appears headed for political doom. Time to pop the champagne corks?
If only it were. The voters of Germany's rust belt didn't turn on Schroeder and his party because they realized their national economy desperately needs reform. They punished the SPD for its feeble attempts to loosen the killing grip of the welfare state

Cradle-to-grave security sounds wonderful. But it gnaws at the sinews of any economy and poisons the moral bloodstream. Socialist policies destroy the work ethic, while rewarding the least-productive members of society.

But Germans remain convinced they can have it all. The results? A stagnant economy. The highest unemployment since the end of World War II — 12 percent nationally and as high as 25 percent in industrial cities such as the Ruhr's Gelsenkirchen. A national pension system in deep crisis. Collapsing social benefits. And punitive taxation.

There's more: Unsustainable worker protections. Crippling taxes on industry for each worker employed. Massive outsourcing abroad as a consequence. A higher-education system in ruins. Talent flight. Political demagoguery. A dwindling birth-rate. A restive Islamic immigrant community. Hate crimes.


Germany can no longer compete globally. And it isn't just the strong euro. Mercedes automobiles — the nation's flagship brand — have dismal reliability ratings these days. Most German forays into high-tech limp behind the United States and even India.
In the end, it's capitalism that's more humane, providing a bigger pie for all. Socialism subdivides ever-shrinking slices.


Sorry - Shroeder's Party wasn't defeated because he was too liberal; it's becuase he isn't liberal enough. That's just terrifying...and for more terrifiying news from The Fatherland, via Damain Penny http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/004381.html , read how the Nazis are rising again in Germany, and how the elder generation who wreaked murderous havoc on the word half a century ago simply sit back and smile, seeing their children pick up their unfinished life's work...savages.

Finally, remember Linda Foley? She's here, http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2005/05/no-excuses.html, but is no surprise if she slipped from sight/mind - yes, the head of the Newspaper Guild accused US troops of intentionally killing US and foreign journalists, but read here http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000937480 why a terrified mainstream media buried the story in a vain attempt to stem the bloodletting in the wake of the Newsweek fiasco...

Finally, unrelated, I'm going to lift a post verbatim from Instapundit, probably violating some type of blog decorum, but it is just too good http://instapundit.com/archives/023259.php :

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:
ROME (Reuters) - A judge has ordered best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book.
Fabrizio Quattrochi was unavailable for comment. However,
Jeff Goldstein sees this as a "velvet insurgency."

Basically, where people warn about theocracy in the United States, we're seeing what amounts to a trial for blasphemy in Italy.

Tom Wolfe once said that Fascism is forever descending on the United States, but that somehow it always lands on Europe. Perhaps the same is true with theocracy?


I'll follow up on this one shortly; let me chew on it a bit...

Democrats = Second-Rate Eurotrash?

From E-Nough: Are the Democrats simply domestic Europeans, who insist that we must follow our "intellectual betters" down the road to ruin?

The ideas, assumptions and prejudices held by the statistically typical Democratic voter, according to the Pew study, are quite simply, European. Europeans believe in a strong social welfare state, for rich and poor alike. Europeans are cynical. They look askance - these days - on patriotic sentiment (hence the rush to form a new European nation). The church pews of Europe would make a great hideout for bank robbers since they're always empty. The United Nations is, in the typical European's worldview, the last best hope for mankind. From the death penalty to gay marriage, the more similar you are to a typical European in your political and social outlook, the more likely you are to be a Democrat.

Do we really want to follow France, Germany,Spain, et al...? The Dems think we should.

Read her here http://www.e-nough.hmdnsgroup.com/archives/000984.html ; and follow the link in her post to Jonah’s article…

How a liberal came to his senses!

You must, MUST peruse this article, called “Leaving the Left” http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL .

Here’s a teaser:

I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

All of this came back to me as I watched the left's anemic, smirking response to Iraq's election in January…

Read. It. All.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

al-Reuters lies, hopes Americans die...

The headline, from al-Reuters http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20050525/ts_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc:

FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

Pretty inflammatory, no? Better have the facts to back this up:

An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The Pentagon said the allegation was not credible.

SO YOU HAVE NOTHING - NO FACTS TO BACK UP THIS CLAIM, NO NAMES TO ATTACH TO THE MEMO, NOTHING - BUT WHY LET THAT STOP YOU FROM WRITING A HEADLINE THAT COULD GET MORE INNOCENT PEOPLE KILLED?????

More contradictions:

In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards. But one document cited a detainee who accused a guard of dropping a Koran, prompting an "uprising" by prisoners, when it was the prisoner himself who dropped it.

So where's the headline "Gitmo Inmates Spark Riots With False Claims"???? Not in our lifetime...Wait! Reuters finds someone to quote:

"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

If lies by admitted terrorists are good enough to blow up into headlines, what's wrong with printing unsubstantiated claims by left-wing Muslim lawyers WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER??

Of course, the opposite is true; most of these spurious terrorist claims have been investigated and repudiated. But why would that stop the filthbags at al-Reuters from printing terrorist propoganda?

Somewhere, Josef Goebbels is reading Reuters, and smiling...

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

No Excuses!

The Media and its apparatchiks can’t be excused any more; they have resorted to boldfaced lies (the same ones that got Eason Jorden fired from CNN – Dumb*sses!)

NEW YORK -- Linda Foley, national president of The Newspaper Guild, drew criticism Thursday from some conservatives for comments she made last Friday about the killing of journalists in Iraq. Foley said, among other things, that she was outraged by "the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it's just a scandal."

Exact quote here: http://www.donaldsensing.com/?p=214

Journalists are not just being targeted verbally or politically. They are also being targeted for real in places like Iraq. And what outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.”

It’s not just U.S. journalists either, by the way. They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries, at news services like Al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios, with impunity. This is all part of the culture that it is OK to blame the individual journalists, and it just takes the heat off of these media conglomerates that are part of the problem.”

When that liberal media gets hold of a lie (see "100,000 civilians dead in Iraq"), they just can't let it go...so much for our intellectual superioirs...
Of course, she claims she was “taken out of context”…I’m too disgusted to even post the link

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Boycott Pepsi?

At a commencement speech at fallen ivory tower Columbia University, hotbed of radical Islam, anti Americanism, anti-Semitism, the President & Chief Financial Officer for PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, let this anti-American bilge slip out of her fat trap:

This analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents leaves the long, middle finger for North America, and, in particular, the United States. As the longest of the fingers, it really stands out. The middle finger anchors every function that the hand performs and is the key to all of the fingers working together efficiently and effectively. This is a really good thing, and has given the U.S. a leg up in global business since the end of World War I.

However, if used inappropriately -- just like the U.S. itself -- the middle finger can convey a negative message and get us in trouble. You know what I'm talking about. In fact, I suspect you're hoping that I'll demonstrate what I mean. And trust me, I'm not looking for volunteers to model.
Discretion being the better part of valor...I think I'll pass.

What is most crucial to my analogy of the five fingers as the five major continents, is that each of us in the U.S. -- the long middle finger -- must be careful that when we extend our arm in either a business or political sense, we take pains to assure we are giving a hand...not the finger. Sometimes this is very difficult. Because the U.S. -- the middle finger -- sticks out so much, we can send the wrong message unintentionally.

Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now. Not as part of the hand -- giving strength and purpose to the rest of the fingers -- but, instead, scratching our nose and sending a far different signal.

Link to full transcript here: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2005/nf20050520_9852.htm?campaign_id=topStories_ssi_5

Of course, she claimed it was all a misunderstanding (http://www.pepsico.com/msgfromindra.shtml ), but the US as a “middle finger to the world” ? We know exactly what you meant, Pepsi Lady…

Pepsi now has the above explanation on the top of their website, flagged as an apology http://www.pepsico.com/ …nervous about the repercussions, boys? You should be…

The JerseyNut is now a man of Coca-Cola products only… !

Things The Times wouldn’t Print…

The New York Times is about to swap out its current public editor, Daniel Okrent. He was decent enough, I suppose. He makes a few interesting points in his final column, saying things I suppose he couldn’t/wouldn’t say while still in their employ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/weekinreview/22okrent.html :

Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.
No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is.
But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.
I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.


… Reader Steven L. Carter of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., asks, If "Tucker Carlson is identified as a conservative" in The Times, then why is "Bill Moyers just, well, plain old Bill Moyers"? Good question.

….It's a story, say, about the New York City public schools. In the first paragraph a parent, apparently picked at random, testifies that they haven't improved. Readers are clearly expected to draw conclusions from this….
But it isn't clear why the individual was picked; it isn't possible to determine whether she's representative; and there's no way of knowing whether she knows what she's talking about. Calling on the individual man or woman on the street to make conclusive judgments is beneath journalistic dignity. If polls involving hundreds of people carry a cautionary note indicating a margin of error of plus-or-minus five points, what kind of consumer warning should be glued to a reporter's ad hoc poll of three or four respondents?


It’s a start, I guess, but this barely scratches the surface of some of the damage the Times has done to America (not to mention intellectual discourse) over the last five years…

Monday, May 23, 2005

Schroeder’s Anti-American platform a failure!

All of Gerhard Schroeder’s anti-American blustering was not enough to distract the German people from their abysmal economy and growing international irrelevance.

From David Medienkritik’s site http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/schroeders_soci.html :

Not even hard-core anti-capitalism could help them this time: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) decisively lost state elections in North-Rhine/Westphalia, Germany's most populous state and a long-standing Social Democratic stronghold. The election defeat marked the first time in thirty-nine years that the SPD will not be governing the state and represents the worst election result for the Chancellor's party there in fifty years. Foreign Secretary Joschka Fischer's Green party went down in defeat as well. Voters were particularly unhappy about the state's economic situation, with unemployment levels recently surpassing the one-million mark for a dismal post-war record high.

How is the media going to explain this? Why, he agreed with them on everything: War against Terror is bad, America is bad, Capitalism is bad…

Will we see the headline, " How could Millions of Germans be so dumb?"

Coming up Next: The Fall of Chirac !!

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Newsweek "trashes" America, literally...

Via Riding Sun http://ridingsun.blogspot.com/2005/05/newsweek-america-is-dead.html , see a Newsweek Japan cover (Feb 2nd '05) showing a sullied American Flag in a garbage pail, titled "The Day America Died.". See their international edition, featuring a picture of W. on the cover, with the caption "America Leads ...But is Anyone Following?" . But there's more:

...Both of the editions featured a cover-story article by Andrew Moravcsik, titled "Dream on, America". (This was translated into Japanese as "Yume no kuni Amerika ga kuchihateru toki", which is even harsher; it means, roughly, "America, the dream country, is rotting away".) According to Newsweek itself, the article described "the world's rejection of the American way of life." Moravcsik's article did not run in the American edition of that same issue. The cover was also a bit different. It featured Hilary Swank, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx, with the title "Oscar Confidential"

This is almost too Orwellian to be true - Newsweek peddles anti-Americanism abroad to an increasingly hostile international community, then offers American readers puff pieces on the Oscars?

Are they:
- telling us Americans are too stupid to understand "complex" issues like the "rotting of the United States", so we must be given entertainment-based news to read?
-intentionally working as a propoganda outlet for hostile powers, spewing anti-American bile overseas while presenting a happy face here in America?
-simply so base, that they are doing nothing more than chasing the dollar by peddling crude anti-Americanism to less sophisticated overseas readers?

I believe it's all three (yes, even the propoganda part - the media elite's loathing of W. is reason enough for them to throw their whole country overboard). Riding Sun can finish for me:

It's one thing for Newsweek to actively promote the notion that America is a "dead", "rotting" country overseas. But it's quite another thing indeed to hide those efforts from its American readers. If Newsweek really thinks America is dead, and our flag belongs in the trash, why won't it tell us? If I were to offer Newsweek a suggestion, it would be this: Any story or cover you're ashamed to run in America probably shouldn't be used in other countries, either.

Right on.

The wonders of fact-checking!

If Newsweek had even put the slightest bit of effort into fact-checking their inflammatory "flushed-Koran" story; they might have discovered this:

Log entries by the guards indicate that in about a dozen cases, the detainees themselves somehow damaged their Qur'ans. In one case a prisoner allegedly ripped up a Qur'an; in another a prisoner tore the cover off his Qur'an. In three cases, detainees tried to stuff pages from their Qur'ans down their toilets, according to the Defense Department's account of what is in the guards' reports. ...prison commanders concluded that certain hard-core prisoners would try to agitate the other detainees by alleging disrespect for Muslim articles of faith.

...one of these incidents bears special notice. Last week, NEWSWEEK interviewed Command Sgt. John VanNatta, who served as the prison's warden from October 2002 to the fall of 2003. VanNatta recounted that in 2002, the inmates suddenly started yelling that the guards had thrown a Qur'an on or near an Asian-style squat toilet. The guards found an inmate who admitted that he had dropped his Qur'an near his toilet. According to VanNatta, the inmate then was taken cell to cell to explain this to other detainees to quell the unrest. But the incident could partly account for the multiple allegations among detainees...

In fewer than a dozen log entries from the 31,000 documents reviewed so far, said Di Rita, there is a mention of detainees' complaining that guards or interrogators mishandled their Qur'ans. In one case, a female guard allegedly knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the detainee's bed. In another alleged case, said Di Rita, detainees became upset after two MPs, looking for contraband, felt the pouch containing a prisoner's Qur'an. While questioning a detainee, an interrogator allegedly put a Qur'an on top of a TV set, took it off when the detainee complained, then put it back on.

So this is it. Apparently, the only recorded cases of Koran desecration where those perfomed by Islamic terrorist themselves, in an attempt to cause unrest. Unless, of course, one considers the touching of a terrorist's Koran as an act worthy of riot and murder.

But the terrorist sympathizers that make up the mainstream media did not bother to check the facts; they saw an opportunity to embarrass the Bush administration and befoul America's image, and they jumped on it. The terrorists are many things, but stupid is not one of them; they know the media is looking for this type of red meat, and they feed it to them, in the form of baseless allegations, videotaped executions, and the mass murder of innocents. No mattter how henious the crime, they know that the media will absolve them, and blame their common enemies, the American people and their president, George W.Bush.

The media is now playing the same game that CBS played when the Rathergate documents were easily proven to be hoaxes; "False but true"/"Where there is smoke there is fire", etc. etc....

They are liars, and no matter how fast they dance, the audience is beginning to slip out of the theatre, first in trickles, now in droves....

Link to the above info here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7937016/site/newsweek/
Great example of flatuant liberal media blame-Bush bombast here : http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/opinion/22rich.html

UPDATE: Washington Post treis to defend Newsweek by printing its own lies, and gets busted
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001472.html

A May 18 article incorrectly stated that former Army translator Erik Saar said in previous media interviews that guards at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, routinely tossed Korans on the ground. Saar has said there were "chronic problems" with the way military guards handled the Koran and failures to follow military procedures for respectfully handling the Muslim holy book when guards inspected cells, but he did not say that guards routinely tossed copies of the book.

Liars.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Media liberals and their Democrat lapdogs

Many have wondered how the Koran-down-the-john story made it past editors...hmm, Mark Alexander has a thought http://www.townhall.com/columnists/markalexander/ma20050520.shtml :

Michael Isikoff knows that stories advancing the Leftmedia's editorial agenda have a better chance of being published than those that do not. For example, when Isikoff submitted a report on Paula Jones's accusation that Bill Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, had exposed himself to her, his employer at that time, The Washington Post, declined to run the story. Then, when Isikoff proffered Kathleen Willey's account of being sexually accosted by then-President Clinton (including plenty of evidence), Newsweek declined to run the story. Finally, when Isikoff broke the story about Clinton's relationship with a 21-year-old White House intern (something feminists used to regard as a no-no), Newsweek once again declined to run the story.

So if you really want a buyline, what type of story do you need to poffer to your editorial staff?

... given the chance to undermine the foreign policy of a Republican president and sully the reputation of our nation's fighting forces, the Leftmedia throws all caution to the wind.

Just like the falseified memos of Rathergate...can these *ssclowns ever learn? Well, apparently not:

In an altogether fitting expression of the Leftmedia's contempt for America's armed forces and their Commander in Chief, this year's Peabody was awarded to -- you guessed it -- Dan Rather.

Note how the media is lashing out at everyone around them as they sink towards the bottom of the briney deep. It's the blogger's fault, first and foremost http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006302:

"Salivating morons." "Scalp hunters." "Moon howlers." "Trophy hunters." "Sons of Sen. McCarthy." "Rabid." "Blogswarm." "These pseudo-journalist lynch mob people."

This is excellent invective. It must come from bloggers. But wait, it was the mainstream media and their maidservants in the elite journalism reviews, and they were talking about bloggers!


No, wait, it's all the fault of the Bush Administration! Correct, Ms. Carlson? http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=aCQ_35j2SmoI

It's understandable that the administration might want to flush Newsweek down the toilet and spread the blame for its mistakes. How cathartic it must be to have something other than those famous photos from Abu Ghraib to blame for rampant anti-Americanism? How comforting, after Ahmad Chalabi, to have someone other than the CIA or White House publicly burned by a bad source.

And of course the Democratic lapdogs leap to the defense of their Media Masters, especially when it affords them the opportunity bash both the Bush Administration and the young soldiers that are protecting their lives. Chief Democratic dog Nancy Pelosi spits out:

Instead of calling for cancellation of subscriptions, as some Republicans have suggested, Congress should do its job and investigate the treatment of detainees, particularly the interrogation techniques employed against them. Democrats on the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees have repeatedly requested such hearings; Republicans have refused.

That's from a news release from her office on the Newsweek scandals
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usnw/20050520/pl_usnw/pelosi_statement_on_newsweek_article134_xml

The Democrats and the Mainstream Media: Wallowing in anti-American filth, together.

How appropriate.

The Religion of Peace?

Or "Flames of Hate", as this article http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/18759971?source=PA&ct=5# calls it, reporting in an anti-US rally held by Muslims outside of the American Embassy in London:

Muslim protesters today called for the bombing of New York in a demonstration outside the US embassy in London.
There were threats of "another 9/11" from militants angry at reports of the desecration of the Koran by US troops in Iraq.

Demonstrators in Grosvenor Square, some with their faces covered with scarves, waved placards which included the message: "Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow."

The protest was organised by groups including the Muslim Council for Britain and the Muslim Parliamentary Association of the UK. Their protest follows fury in the Islamic world over the claims in a Newsweek magazine that US soldiers at Guantanamo Bay had abused the Koran.

Well, certainly, Islamic fury is understandable here. After all, wasn't there riots in Buddahist nations worldwide after the Taliban destroyed the twin Buddah statues in Afghanistan? And of course, everyone knows that after Sabbath services, those pesky Jews come out with their faces wrapped in black scarves, shouting "Death to Islam!", while proclaiming their willingness to kill Muslim women and children, right? And who can forget those riots across Christian lands after it was discovered that the Palestinians who holed up in Bethleham's most sacred church ( the Church of the Nativity) had desecrated relics and used the Bible for toliet paper?

What? You don't remember any of that? BECAUSE CIVILIZED PEOPLE DO NOT RIOT EVERY TIME THEY PERCIEVE (wrongly, in this case) THAT THEIR RELIGION HAS BEEN INSULTED!!

It is not the Americans that must dig deeper to find understanding of the Muslim world. It is the responsibility of the Muslim people to grow up, and stop using every and any excuse to riot, maim, and murder. Because whatever sympathy you may have among mainstream America (not the useful idiots of the far-left) is slipping away fast; and trust me, there are many leaders in this country who do not contain the Christian charity that George W. Bush does. If the Muslim people are pinning their hopes on the second coming in 2008 of a bootlicking appeaser a la John Kerry, they will be disappointed. They had better start to get their act together, and fast.

Because underneath the black scarves are the grinning skulls of fascists. Woe to the future of the Muslim people if this is whom they chose to ally themselves with.

Ann Coulter Smacks down Newsweek !

While most of the media tries to protect their own; throwing their pale, pitiful bodies in front of Newsweak and flailing away at our president, Ann Coulter breaks into the ring and delivers the kill shot:

Somehow Newsweek missed the story a few weeks ago about Saudi Arabia arresting 40 Christians for "trying to spread their poisonous religious beliefs." But give the American media a story about American interrogators defacing the Quran, and journalists are so appalled there's no time for fact-checking -- before they dash off to see the latest exhibition of "Piss Christ."

Don't stop, Ann, don't stop!

Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas justified Newsweek's decision to run the incendiary anti-U.S. story about the Quran, saying that "similar reports from released detainees" had already run in the foreign press -- "and in the Arab news agency al-Jazeera."

Is there an adult on the editorial board of Newsweek? Al-Jazeera also broadcast a TV miniseries last year based on the "Protocols of the Elders Of Zion." ... Al-Jazeera has run programs on the intriguing question, "Is Zionism worse than Nazism?" (Take a wild guess where the consensus was on this one.) It runs viewer comments about Jews being descended from pigs and apes. How about that for a Newsweek cover story, Evan? You're covered -- al-Jazeera has already run similar reports!

GIVE IT TO ME, ANN!

Newsweek couldn't wait a moment to run a story that predictably ginned up Islamic savages into murderous riots in Afghanistan, leaving hundreds injured and 16 dead. Who could have seen that coming? These are people who stone rape victims to death because the family "honor" has been violated and who fly planes into American skyscrapers because -- wait, why did they do that again?

I'm sure our liberal apologist media could come up with over a hundred good reasons to...

Mmmm...you're the best, Ann!

Link via Roger Simon:
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/05/scenes_from_the.php

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Newsweek Kills 16, injures 100, admits lies...

Not a surprise if you read my two posts from yesterday...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20050515/ts_nm/religion_afghan_newsweek_dc :

Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Koran down the toilet.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from
Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza.


In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League. On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.

But wait! They have a good excuse!

The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based "only on the testimony of detainees."
"We believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item," Whitaker said.
"Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Koran incident in the report we cited," he wrote.


OK, you see, because other propoganda outfits posing as media released similar reports, it was acceptable for Newsweek to do so as well. No problem inciting populations all over the world and putting American soldiers at risk, because you need an anti-American scoop, and fast - no time to check the facts.

The people are smarter than you think, Mr. Editor. Expect your circulation to go the way of CBS's News ratings shortly...

But how many more must die to fulfill the anti-American bloodlust of our (and the world's) media? I cannot even think of the words to describe this type of depravity; but just remember, these were the people who insisted that we must vote for John Kerry...will our self-annointed intellectual elite sell out their country and aid its enemies out of sheer, childlike spite?

UPDATE: Roger Simon, again on the story http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/05/theres_no_busin.php finds t Newsweek's excuse revolting. From their apology via Roger's site:

But Westerners, including those at NEWSWEEK, may underestimate how severely Muslims resent the American presence, especially when it in any way interferes with Islamic religious faith.

Thanks for reminding us, Newsweak, that is all America's fault. The fact that all was fairly calm in this new democracy until Newsweak printed its blatently falseified claims seems to have escaped them. I think liberals are starting to mistake excuse making and lying for intelligence; that's the only way I figure they can sleep at night...

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Newsweek Lies, People Die!

We used this link in the post below (CBS hits Bottom...)http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/14/world/main695223.shtml in order to show the depravity of CBS News; now it seems that the rioting that have caused deaths worldwide may have been caused by a media ally's sloppy reporting. Newsweek/MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7693014/site/newsweek/:

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash

And much like the Reuters report I posted on yesterday http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2005/05/reuters-declares-sheeba-farms-disputed.html (towards bottom), unnamed witness are quoted authoritatively, and "sources" with no reference are used exclusively. Roger Simon hits it http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/05/what_newsweek_s.php :

Even the simple mind would like to know how you flush a Qur'an down a toilet? It doesn't take the late Johnny Cochran to see there is a problem here. ("If the Qur'an don't fit, you must acquit!") Of course, someone could have been doing this desecrating page by page, though it is unlikely, unless Guantanamo has some extraordinary plumbing, that he or she would have gotten very far.

Now personally, I'll take the word of a named source, one whom would lose his job if caught lying:

According to the Reuters article linked above, [Joint Chiefs General] Myers said "the only incident recorded in the prison logs was of a detainee tearing pages from a Quran and using them in an attempt to block a toilet as a protest, and even that incident, he said, was unconfirmed."

First CBS trying to recast a political debate by blatently pulling quotes out of context; now Newsweek causing riots in Afghanistan and in Uzbekistan with an unsourced story that upon even the most cursory glance appears extremely improbable?

Has the media gone from soft bias to outright treason? Have they joined al-Jazeera in their attempts to spread every anti-American falsehood possible, with the hope it might cause negative repercussions for the current administration? Is the slaughter of innocents the price of their pride?

Madness.

CBS hits bottom, continues to dig...

This may make the Rathergate memos seem like child's play...CBS aired a report on the ongoing controversy about the proper use of filibusters, and, according to Powerline http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010443.php :

The segment included an interview with Ken Starr, in which Starr, seemingly in reference to the Republicans' effort to end the filibuster, said: "This is a radical, radical departure from our history and from our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government."

The only problem is, he was talking about something else completely. After seeing the report, Starr emailed the following:

I sat on Saturday with Gloria Borger for 20 minutes approximately, had a wide ranging, on-camera discussion. In the piece that I have now seen, and which I gather has been lavishly quoted, CBS employed two snippets. The 'radical departure from our history' snippet was specifically addressed to the practice of invoking judicial philosophy as a grounds for voting against a qualified nominee of integrity and experience. I said in sharp language that that practice was wrong.

Applying random out of context quotes to a completely different story? This is the journalistic bottom of the barrel. While the mainstream media bemoans the public's free-falling confidence in traditional media (and lashes out at bloggers), they have no one to blame but themselves when they conduct themselves so shamefully. I do not believe this will become as big of a story as Rathergate, simply because this behavior is now expected of the media (and CBS in particular) by the public. That's why they don't watch/read it...

Interestingly, CBS has refused to provide a copy of the tape to Starr...wonder why?

View the report here: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/search/search.php?searchString=ken+starr&source=cbsvideos&sort=1&type=any&num=10&offset=0

UPDATE: Where does CBS' sympathies lie? Not with their home country. View this headline about a story that has virtually nothing to do with the United States http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/14/world/main695223.shtml.
Just Pitiful, folks...

Reuters declares Sheeba Farms disputed

Well, the headline is somewhat accurate:
Hizbollah, Israeli forces clash in border area
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=3&u=/nm/20050513/wl_nm/lebanon_israel_shells_dc ; but the bias slips through early:

Israeli artillery and aircraft pounded the outskirts of Lebanese border villages on Friday in a fierce clash with Hizbollah guerrillas that ratcheted up tensions on the volatile frontier.

The fighting in the disputed Shebaa Farms strip comes as Lebanon prepares to hold its first general election without a Syrian military presence for 33 years.

Disputed? Not by the UN, who actually believes they are actually Syrian territories:
http://talkaboutculture.com/group/soc.culture.lebanon/messages/224575.html:

Jan 28 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Friday rebuked Beirut by declaring that the disputedShebaa Farms area was not part of Lebanon...For the first time in years, the Security Council mentioned Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report in May 2000 that verified Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon behind a U.N.-drawn frontier, called the "blue line." This frontier put the Israel-occupied Shebaa Farms in Syria.

So why do the Syrians refuse to confront Isreal directly over Sheeba, the way they will not confront them over the Golan Heights? Because it serves a greater purpose http://www.lebanonwire.com/0503/05031801LBLW.asp :

Only one week after the Israeli withdrawal, Syria concocted the problem of the Shebaa Farms and made a hot issue out of it, cloaking around it a false cause for a new resistance to replace the resistance pretext that was lost with the Israeli withdrawal...The Syrian producer of this tragic comedy had decided to hand over the South to Hezbollah under the pretext of a continued Israeli occupation of the Shebaa Farms.

Since Syria knows any physical attempts to take back Sheeba would result in destruction by Israel (whom siezed Sheeba as the same time as the Heights), they instead claim it to be "occupied territory", set up terrorist lackeys to do the dirty work they are too cowardly to undertake, and use it as a way to attempt to retain some control over parts of Lebanon. Now that most of the Syrian armies have been forced out of Lebanon; the Sheeba Farms "dispute" is one of the few cards they have left in their dealings with both Israel and Lebanon.

The above article, by an expat Lebanese, declares Lebanon to be the rightful claimant to Sheeba, and ends with this hopeful assertion:

Let the Baath rulers of Damascus drop the lie of the Shebaa Farms and concern themselves with the Golan and Iskenderun, and the Lebanese are capable – after implementing resolution 1559 and ridding themselves of the hegemony of the Syrian Army and Intelligence Services – of recovering the Shebaa Farms peacefully through the United Nations and without firing a single bullet.

I honestly believe that Isreal would hand over Sheeba in a second to a Lebanese government that it felt could guarentee the safety of the northern border. The final humiliation, the final nail in Baby Assad's coffin...

Maybe Reuters should do some more research on its "disputes"; so that they may be aware of who and what the claiments are...

BUT BACK TO THE ARTICLE! Reuters knows Israel fired first here, because, well...

Hizbollah and Israel accused each other of firing first... "In response to the Israeli assault that targeted the border town of Kfar Shouba and struck civilian houses, the Islamic Resistance attacked the Israeli enemy position in Rweisat al-Alam ... with the appropriate arms and struck it directly," a statement from Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah said.

Minutes before the Hizbollah attack, witnesses said Israeli forces had begun shelling a hillside east of Kfar Shouba, which lies closest to the disputed strip. Israeli machine-gunners also fired on residential areas of the town, they said.

And whom were these mystery witnesses, that claim Israel launched an attack on a civilian population base, that Reuters chose not to identify in name, nationality, or even location? May they have been Hezbollah partisans? We'll never find out; Reuters knows if it shows its cards here, the impartiality gig is up.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Hillary Clinton/Bill Clinton Newsbreak!

First, from Bill, regarding the Middle East:
http://www.bangladesh-web.com/news/view.php?hidDate=2005-05-08&hidType=RIN&hidRecord=0000000000000000043914 :

"It is obvious, if I could be candid, that we've got another chance at peace in the Middle East because Yasser Arafat died and really because Abu Mazen wants to do it," Clinton told the American Jewish Committee.

Jeez, Bill, it was OBVIOUS to most of us that you were wasting your time (not to mention debasing the morality of our foreign policy) when you has that proud murderer of woman and children over the White House 47 times, more than any other foreign leader. What did it get Isreal? Nothing but more dead women and children. And what did it gain us? Certainly not the respect and love of the so-called Arab Street. And how about the Palestinians? By strengthing a tyrant, you weakened the hands of those who would have freedom instead.

Your appeasement of a terrorist caused war, both in the Middle East and on our shores, that may have been prevented had you taken a harder line earlier, when you had the chance, after the first World Trade Center attack, or after the bombings in Africa and Saudi Arabia, or following the attack on the USS Cole (which was a wanton act of war that you chose to ignore). It was obvious then, Bill, only you chose not to see it, and thousands of additional people have died needlessly.

So what of the future, Bill? http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/43562.htm

In one of the dreams that former President Bill Clinton hopes to make a reality with his upcoming world forum in New York City, Palestinians would make solar panels for energy and it would "work like hot cakes."

OK, Bill...it's obvious to me that you don't have, nor did you ever have, a flippin' clue...Jimmy Carter will be joining Bill at the forum; think of those two when you think of the Democratic Party...

Wait! Think of Hillary Clinton too, while you still can!
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050508/ap_on_go_co/clinton_fundraising_probe_1

Campaign donations made more than four years ago at a celebrity-studded Hollywood gala have led to a federal criminal trial against a former finance director for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that could hamper her future campaigns... David Rosen, who was Clinton's finance director during her 2000 U.S. Senate run, faces three counts of filing a false statement...A FBI agent speculated in an affidavit that Rosen was trying to duck federal financing rules so the campaign would have more money to spend on other expenses.
Rosen pleaded not guilty in January. He could face up to 15 years in prison and $750,000 in fines if convicted.


What? A Clinton tied in with illegal campaign donations? The heck you say!
No one now can even accuse the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy of tossing mud here; 'ol Hillary brought this one on herself...say bye-bye, Hillary...

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Iraqi War Leaders - Three-Peat Complete!

With the re-election of Tony Blair yesterday, the three leaders of the the nations most involved in the war for freedom in the Middle East - Bush, Australia's Howard, and of course Blair - have all been re-elected. While both Bush and Howard succeeded with larger majorities than their previous victories; Blair's Labour party had their majority reduced significantly in Parliament. The Iraq war had something to do with this, but I don't believe it affected the vote of the average lunchpail Brit. Instead, the growing immigrant Muslim minority voted as a bloc against Labor (due in no small part to the war); and instead supported many far left/far right parties with views repugnant to the mainstream. Melanie Phillips writes a downbeat article about what the victory of candidates like George ( I LOVE Saddam!) Galloway means to the future of Great Britian http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001187.html:

...the Galloway victory is a symptom of the tide of irrationality and hatred which has overwhelmed our mainstream culture.
It is not such a large step from that mainstream irrationality and hatred to fascism. That is why, since the Iraq issue first emerged, we have seen the phenomenon of conservative audiences applauding Trotskyite agitators denouncing President Bush as a greater war criminal than Saddam Hussein and urging action against the 'rogue state' of Israel.


Mark Steyn goes further http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=22 as he blogged the British election:

The word is that George Galloway is ahead in Bethnal and Bow Green. The defeat of Oona King, a black Jewish pro-war Labour MP, will mark an ominous development in British politics. I think there's no doubt that, under cover of "anti-Zionism", there's now an explicit anti-Jewish component to the political scene. And, disreputable as it is, Labour nominating committees will be thinking very carefully about whether they want to run Jewish candidates.

Nasty stuff. I don't know how upset I am about Blair's slimmer majority; his liberal policies on immigration, gun control, rural hunting, and now "thought-crimes" are endangering British society like nothing since the Black Death of the mid - 1300's. And the conservative Tory party did pick up a nice amount of seats; albiet nowhere near a ruling quorom. However, if the Tories cannot position themselves as anything other than "the same as Labour but different" party, then, much like Canada's Conservatives, they will be a party in the wilderness for a generation.

Still, I must confess some surprise. I thought that the populations of all three of these countries were wildly against the war in Iraq; that it was the issue that would frame the elections; that the voters would rise up with outrage and toss out these warmonging neo-fascists...well, at least that's what the American Mainstream Media/BBC/ABC were saying, non-stop...

Wrong. Again. Losers.

UPDATE 11:30PM: Tim Blair reminds the media of just how clueless they are, with a selection of pre-election campaign prognostications - http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/one_down_three_up/ - so smug, so pithy, like this one:

Bush, Blair and Howard have lost control of the story. It’s fallen apart, and so have they."—Margo Kingston

...Australia's Maureen Dowd, from the sound of it...

Friday, May 06, 2005

Germans, strap on your Jackboots!

The Germans have found their new Jews - the Americans! From David Medienkritik's site http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/threepeat_tony_.html :

From the German perspective, things look bleak indeed. Iraq has formed a sovereign government, Afghanistan is preparing for what will likely be successful parliamentary elections in the fall, and there is even the potential for progress on the seemingly intractable problem of Israeli-Palestinian relations. So how do you keep your world-view intact if international events fail to support it?

If you’re German media you ignore the good news and redefine the problem. America has been recently discovered to be the cause of Germany’s crumbling economy. It started when GM had the nerve to announce what every German already knows. Opel, GM’s German subsidiary, makes cars no one wants to buy. It was as if eliminating ten thousand overpaid jobs and closing a factory was the moral equivalent of war. Rather than address the root cause of German non-competitiveness, German government officials immediately announced plans to travel to Detroit so their constituents would know who was to blame. IBM will surely be the next national villian. With its poll numbers falling inversely with the rise in unemployment Schroeder's Social Democrats are reverting to their roots. Not only has the SPD compared capitalists to locusts, it has also announced that publicly held companies have a moral obligation to serve the social good as defined by government. In other words, shareholder profits should be directed toward maintaining Germany's welfare state, and thereby assuring the re-election of the SPD.


Hitler was an evil man; but there are sickos on every street corner on Manhattan preaching the same dogma. Why haven't we risen up, slayed the Jews, and assumed the world domination that is rightfully ours? Better Question: Why were the German people so eager to follow Hitler; and why are they so anxious to believe every bit of anti-American crap thrown out to them by Schroeder’s government and the rabid German media?
Think of this, every time our liberal media calls these Germans our "allies"...

UPDATE May 7th: From Damian Penny http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/004291.html:

The hosts of the German Open tennis tournament
apologised yesterday after a programme published for the event described the host club as enjoying a "golden age" after Jewish members were expelled by the Nazis.

No Comment, indeed....

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Letters to the Editor: One Opinion Allowed!

Three primary topics in today's New York Times letters section:

"The Republican Thumb on PBS" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/opinion/l05pbs.html
(FYI see yesterday's post, one of many on this issue)
"When Soldiers Mistreat Iraqis" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/opinion/l05herbert.html
"Laura Bush, Comic: They're Not All Laughing"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/opinion/l05tierney.html

There is a total of 15 letters on these three items of Times coverage; 14 of them support the paper's position.

Question: Does the Times only print letters that agree with their content (remember liberal rule #1: Diversity in thought is FORBIDDEN); or are 93.3% of their readers liberal dittoheads?

Pathetic, in either case...just look at the three leftist titles and their assumptions: Republicans are squeling free speech at PBS, American soldiers are brutalizing Iraqis, and the First Lady is not funny, no matter what so many are saying. If I was a psychologist, I would say the Times has to print these letters of support for their position, in order to maintain the echo chamber around their rapidly fracturing worldview...