Vocal Minority

Hamas Kid Puppet Kills Bush with Sword, Turns White House Into Mosque

Whenever I hear from the Left how radical Islamic terrorist groups are just misunderstood, basically decent people and they wouldn't be doing what they're doing if America (and Israel) stopped bothering them, consider this story, from Little Green Footballs:

Video: Hamas Kid Puppet Kills Bush with Sword, Turns White House Into Mosque Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 9:19:28 am PDT

Sick and evil beyond belief, Hamas TV broadcasts a puppet show in which a young Palestinian boy murders a puppet version of President Bush with a sword, and turns the White House into a mosque. (Aired March 30, 2008, on Al Aqsa TV. Courtesy of MEMRI TV.)

Click picture to play video. Requires Windows Media Player; Mac users should install Flip4Mac.

Bush: Who are you? What brings you to my home? How did they let you in, boy? My guards! My soldiers! Get this boy out of here.

Child: Nobody will take me out of here.

Bush: Who are you to come here and threaten me?! You are on my own turf, you little child, you! Get out. My dear, bring your father, your grandfather, or your mother, so I can talk to them. Get somebody older and smarter than you. What, you came here on your own?

Child: You killed daddy in the Iraq war. It’s true, you killed him in the Iraq war. As for my mom – you and the criminal Zionists killed her in Lebanon. You and the criminal Zionists also killed my younger and older brothers in the Gaza holocaust. I’m an orphan, you criminal!

Bush: What are you talking about? Where did you come from? Don’t I have enough troubles already? Where did you come from?

Child: I have come to take revenge with this sword – revenge for my mother and my sisters. You are a criminal, Bush! You are despicable. You made me an orphan! You took everything from me, Bush! I must take revenge on you, with this sword of Islam, the Prophet’s Al-Battar sword.

Bush: No... No, my dear. I give you my word that this is it. I repent, just don’t kill me. Where are my guards? Where are my people? Help! Help! He wants to kill me. Help!

Child: There are no guards, and your people have surrendered, Bush. I have not come alone, Bush. I have brought thousands of thousands of children from Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. You have denied all these children their fathers and mothers. That’s why I have come to take revenge on you and on all the criminal traitors who collaborated with you.

Bush: Okay, fine, that’s enough. I will give you whatever you want from me.

Child: What can you give me? All I want is one thing. Bring back my father and mother. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want anything from you, just bring back my father and mother. I place my trust in Allah. I need to kill you.

Bush: No, my dear. Enough. I will give you anything you want. I also... Enough with that. Come with all your friends to the White House. I will give you food and toys. We will sit in the White House and talk. You will get whatever you need.

Child: You are impure, Bush, so you are not allowed inside the White House.

Bush: What are you saying?! Why am I not allowed into the White House?

Child: Because it has been turned into a great mosque for the nation of Islam. I will kill you just like Mu’az killed Abu Lahab. I will kill you, Bush, because that is your fate.

Child stabs Bush repeatedly

Child: Ahhh, I killed him.

Now, do not tell me that ultra-left Bush-haters in Hollywood and the media would'nt be salivating at this video. Hollywood has put out movies where Bush gets assassinated. I can just see Barbra Streisand DVR'ing this and then watching it over and over again.

Quotes of the Week

Well, last week anyway.

Here's why El Rushbo is so motivational:

I am all for innovation, invention, creativity. I am all for this is this magical new alternative energy that will replace oil. I'm all for it. But ain't there. We're nowhere close. Oil is the cheapest, it is the most abundant, as I have pointed out timeless times, it is the cheapest, it is the most abundant, it is the most efficient fuel source we have. It is the fuel of the engine of freedom and democracy.

Biofuels. There are more and more stories that are hitting the decks here, these biofuels are just causing all kinds of damage. They are not cost efficient whatsoever. They are using more energy to produce them than they save in their usage.

I've got a big story here, in Norway, 400% more water is being used. You ought to see the price of rice worldwide. There are rice shortages. Rice grows in water.

All of these alternative fuel sources, they sound so wonderful, wind farms, diddly-squat. Solar, fine.

But nothing is out there yet that is going to replace oil. And the trashing of oil and with such phrases as "no blood for oil" and so forth is dangerous because oil has led to our freedom and our advancement and our prosperity. You ought to stop and think about just how relevant it is and how dependent we are on oil, not for wherever it comes from. We're dependent on oil for our very freedom. We are dependent on it for our very security. We are dependent on it for our lifestyle and our ability to grow. It is the blood flow of the United States and of the free world. There's nothing anywhere near out there that is in quantity or in cost that's anywhere near to replacing it.

Next, from my girl Ann [Coulter], on the "swiftboating" (or is it???) of Hillary Clinton. This is from her March 26 article:

The reason no one claims Hillary is being "swiftboated" is that the definition of "swiftboating" is: "producing irrefutable evidence that a Democrat is lying." And for purposes of her race against matinee idol B. Hussein Obama, Hillary has become the media's honorary Republican.

In liberal-speak, only a Democrat can be swiftboated. Democrats are "swiftboated"; Republicans are "guilty." So as an honorary Republican, Hillary isn't being swiftboated; she's just lying.

Indeed, instead of attacking the people who produced a video of Hillary's uneventful landing in Bosnia, the mainstream media are the people who discovered that video.

I've always wondered how a Democrat would fare being treated like a Republican by the media. Now we know.

Suppressed Story: Mass Graves Found in Iraq

Oh, you didn't know about this? That's because the MSM didn't report it. It would detract from their template that "America is no better than Al Qaeda. Who's to say who the real terrorists are?" But the Washington Times covered it:

Mass grave uncovered in Iraq March 31, 2008

By Richard Tomkins - ZAHAMM, Iraq — The graves of more than 50 people thought killed by al Qaeda in Iraq during their two-year reign of terror in Diyala province's "bread basket" region have been found in a pomegranate orchard in a village near the town of Himbus.

Excavations at the site began last week and were expected to continue after troops of the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment were tipped to the location by a man who claimed to have escaped from al Qaeda's "jail" there last summer.

Only about a third of the untended orchard, located off a road leading from the village to Himbus, about three miles north, has been searched so far.

...

In 2006, al Qaeda in Iraq declared Diyala province the center of its Islamic State of Iraq caliphate. The Himbus area, with its fruit orchards providing cover from aircraft, became a major weapons storage area and training center. And it ruled with an iron fist.

"When they first came into the area, they said they were mujahideen fighting the occupation forces. But later they started forcing people to give them money and forcing them from their homes. People who worked for the Iraq Army or the Iraqi Police were punished," said Sheik Abbas Hussein Khalaf, the leader of nearby Taiyah village.

"They imposed their rules: no music, no smoking, the woman had to wear the veil, and there were no wedding celebrations allowed. No one was allowed out after 5 p.m.

"Some people were shot in front of the people in the street, others were kidnapped, killed and put in the mass graves."

One of them was a cousin, he said, the brother of the man who had escaped and told U.S. troops about the graves.

Mass executions, once associated with Saddam Hussein's regime, became a tool of terror used by al Qaeda as it took over vast swaths of Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

With tens of thousands of Sunni fighters joining the year-old U.S. troop surge, al Qaeda fighters have been forced out of former strongholds, giving locals security needed to report horrors like this mass grave discovered here.

...

In contrast to much of Iraq, which is divided into Sunni and Shi'ite areas, Diyala province northeast of Baghdad is said to reflect the mixed ethnic makeup of the entire country.

As a result, it has suffered some of worst — and least reported — violence in five years since the U.S.-led invasion.

...

Most of those unearthed had not been decapitated. They had been bound and shot in the back of the head. The cords that bound their wrists were still there. Many skulls still had blindfolds over the eye sockets.

...

Digging is expected to continue for weeks. It's spring in Iraq and time to clean the fields. And the discarded clothing found nearby — including children's clothing — held the promise of more horror to come.

My First Hate Mail!

I knew this day would eventually come. Here's liberal tolerance, compassion, and open-mindedness on display in all its glory:

"Pale Rider," in a Digg response to my post about the veteran-censors at Forest Lake Area H.S. in Minnesota, brilliantly writes:

What's the matter, fucko? Mad because your link to your lameass rendition of "sweet home alabama" got posted on DIGG?

What is this intelligent comment referring to? Well, I discovered this tolerant, open-minded liberal actually took the time to hunt me down online and found a YouTube video of one of my performances (which was not, incidentally, "Sweet Home Alabama"). This inspired them to post on Digg the following message: "Jeebus, dude. You suck, by the way." They then proceeded to post my email address, phone number, and mailing address.

Isn't that great? You take on a liberal, they post your personal information on Digg. What courage ...

Sue the Oceans! They're not doing what Gore wants them to do!

This article was posted on the Canada Free Press websote. It's by Dennis Avery, co-author of a great book called Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years:

The Oceans Have Stopped Warming! By Dennis Avery Wednesday, March 26, 2008 This year of 2008 is starting out cold—but according to the “consensus” climate watchers it’s still likely to be one of the “top 10 warmest” in the thermometer record before it’s over. After all, the Greenhouse gasses continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. But wait. Something isn’t following the Greenhouse script. The oceans, which contain 80 to 90 percent of the planet’s heat, have recently stopped warming! Over the past 4-5 years, “there has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently told National Public Radio. Nothing very significant—except the ocean warming trend has stopped?! This, in the midst of the biggest furor over global temperatures and climate overheating in human history? Willis monitors the data from a nifty new set of Argo ocean buoys. They not only record sea surface temperatures but periodically dive 3,000 feet under water and record sub-surface temperatures as they rise back up. These wonderful new Argo floats say the oceans have been cooling slightly for the past 4-5 years, instead of accentuating a continuing global warming trend. But how can the ocean warming stop? Greenhouse gases have continued to spew from Chinese factories. Even Europe’s Kyoto-bound economies are still increasing their greenhouse emissions. There should be no relief from the planet’s heating. Except that over the last 13 months, the earth’s thermometers have dropped for the first time in 30 years. Three global monitoring sites measured a decline of 0.5 to 0.7 degree C. Now we learn that the ocean warming stopped even earlier, 4-5 years ago. We should have been expecting this, because the sunspot index turned down nine years ago. There’s a 79 percent correlation between the sunspots and the earth’s sea-surface temperatures—with roughly a ten-year lag. Is ten years the time required for the oceans to respond to changes on the sun? There is nothing in the climate record that ties the earth’s temperatures to CO2 levels. Al Gore’s movie showed Antarctic ice core temperatures and CO2 moving closely together through four different Ice Ages. Gore implied that more CO2 leads to higher temperatures. But Gore reversed cause and effect. Three different Antarctic studies show the temperatures change 800-1200 years before the CO2 levels. Higher temperatures cause more CO2 in the air, not the other way around. The big question is what warms the oceans. It it CO2 or sun? For the past nine years, CO2 has continued to rise in the atmosphere, but the earth hasn’t gotten warmer. The sun is winning the debate. NPR asked Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmosphere Research where “all the extra heat from the CO2” was going. He said it was probably going into outer space, through the “natural thermostats, including clouds,” which can either trap solar heat in earth’s atmosphere, or deflect it out back out into space. Thank you, Dr. Trenberth, for finally admitting that the earth does, indeed, have natural thermostats such as clouds. And what seems to control those natural thermostats? The level of activity on the sun, through varying numbers of cosmic rays that create more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that deflect solar heat back into space. It’s unthinkable, but what if there’s no “extra heat” being trapped by CO2 right now? What if CO2 levels don’t matter much? What if the earth is starting to cool in response to the sun’s declining level of activity? What an inconvenient truth.

Yes, what an inconvenient truth indeed. Now, how much you like to bet that this sanctimonious windbag hypocrite is even aware of the above report? Doubt it. Especially since the Goracle said this to Lesley Stahl on an episode of "60 Minutes" that's to air this Sunday [h/t JunkScience]:

"You're talking about Dick Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat ... That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."

Oh, well, at least he admits to being demeaning! But seriously, what an embarrassment this loser is! In the middle of his GW discussion he has to bash Dick Cheney!? What intelligent human being debates like this? Here's what Czech scientist Luboš Motl says on his Reference Frame blog about the matter:

Thank you so much for your revealing message, Mr Gore, even though you are not exactly the only person at your intellectual level who is sending me similar messages. When you listen to him, you can see that this guy must genuinely believe that it is possible to learn how Nature works or settle an argument by sticking with a majority. That's the scientific method, Gore edition. For example, if you want to know whether the mankind or the German nation can survive without exterminating the Jews, you listen to the leader and to the majority who says "It can't" and to be really sure that you are right, you send the tiny, tiny minority to the same camps as the Jews. But are those who disagree with Gore a minority? Read the comments at the CBS link above or below a similar article in USA TODAY. An overwhelming majority of the commenters criticize Al Gore, the scientists who follow him, Gore's hypocrisy, Gore's politicization of science, and they offer link to skeptical resources. Some of their wise comments and jokes are pretty good. ... Al Gore should be finally "realized" that his 15 minutes of fame are up.

Well said. Dr. Motl, incidentally, is one of four hundred man-made-GW-denying scientists (some tiny minority, huh!?) listed in a December 2007 report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. I'll take his word over this has-been blowhard Al Gore any day.

Moral Confusion: China-Tibet vs. Israel-Palestine

Two excellent and thought-provoking articles came out this week on the current uprising in Tibet against its long-standing occupation by China. Both articles touch on the following points:

(1) The errors of comparing the situation with the Israeli “occupation” of Palestine, the conclusion in both articles being that the latter “occupation” is nothing of the sort and that there is nothing in common between peace-loving Tibetans and bloodthirsty Palestinians.

(2) The twisted moral confusion of the do-nothing U.N. and the world community—the same U.N. and world community whom U.S. Democrats constantly look to for approval.

March 25, 2008

Why do ‘Palestinians’ get much more attention than Tibetans?
By Dennis Prager

[...] Consider the facts: Tibet, at least 1,400 years old, is one of the world’s oldest nations, has its own language, its own religion and even its own ethnicity. Over 1 million of its people have been killed by the Chinese, its culture has been systematically obliterated, 6,000 of its 6,200 monasteries have been looted and destroyed, and most of its monks have been tortured, murdered or exiled.

Palestinians have none of these characteristics. There has never been a Palestinian country, never been a Palestinian language, never been a Palestinian ethnicity, never been a Palestinian religion in any way distinct from Islam elsewhere. Indeed, “Palestinian” had always meant any individual living in the geographic area called Palestine. For most of the first half of the 20th century, “Palestinian” and “Palestine” almost always referred to the Jews of Palestine. The United Jewish Appeal, the worldwide Jewish charity that provided the nascent Jewish state with much of its money, was actually known as the United Palestine Appeal. Compared to Tibetans, few Palestinians have been killed, its culture has not been destroyed nor its mosques looted or plundered, and Palestinians have received billions of dollars from the international community. Unlike the dying Tibetan nation, there are far more Palestinians today than when Israel was created.

None of this means that a distinct Palestinian national identity does not now exist. Since Israel’s creation such an identity has arisen and does indeed exist. Nor does any of this deny that many Palestinians suffered as a result of the creation of the third Jewish state in the area, known — since the Romans renamed Judea — as “Palestine.”

But it does mean that of all the causes the world could have adopted, the Palestinians’ deserved to be near the bottom and the Tibetans’ near the top. This is especially so since the Palestinians could have had a state of their own from 1947 on, and they have caused great suffering in the world, while the far more persecuted Tibetans have been characterized by a morally rigorous doctrine of nonviolence.

So, the question is, why? Why have the Palestinians received such undeserved attention and support, and the far more aggrieved and persecuted and moral Tibetans given virtually no support or attention?

The first reason is terror. Some time ago, the Palestinian leadership decided, with the overwhelming support of the Palestinian people, that murdering as many innocent people — first Jews, and then anyone else — was the fastest way to garner world attention. They were right. On the other hand, as The Economist notes in its March 28, 2008 issue, “Tibetan nationalists have hardly ever resorted to terrorist tactics…” It is interesting to speculate how the world would have reacted had Tibetans hijacked international flights, slaughtered Chinese citizens in Chinese restaurants and temples, on Chinese buses and trains, and massacred Chinese schoolchildren.

The second reason is oil and support from powerful fellow Arabs. The Palestinians have rich friends who control the world’s most needed commodity, oil. The Palestinians have the unqualified support of all Middle Eastern oil-producing nations and the support of the Muslim world beyond the Middle East. The Tibetans are poor and have the support of no nations, let alone oil-producing ones.

The third reason is Israel. To deny that pro-Palestinian activism in the world is sometimes related to hostility toward Jews is to deny the obvious. It is not possible that the unearned preoccupation with the Palestinians is unrelated to the fact that their enemy is the one Jewish state in the world. Israel’s Jewishness is a major part of the Muslim world’s hatred of Israel. It is also part of Europe’s hostility toward Israel: Portraying Israel as oppressors assuages some of Europe’s guilt about the Holocaust — “see, the Jews act no better than we did.” Hence the ubiquitous comparisons of Israel to Nazis.

A fourth reason is China. If Tibet had been crushed by a white European nation, the Tibetans would have elicited far more sympathy. But, alas, their near-genocidal oppressor is not white. And the world does not take mass murder committed by non-whites nearly as seriously as it takes anything done by Westerners against non-Westerners. Furthermore, China is far more powerful and frightening than Israel. Israel has a great army and nuclear weapons, but it is pro-West, it is a free and democratic society, and it has seven million people in a piece of land as small as Belize. China has nuclear weapons, has a trillion U.S. dollars, an increasingly mighty army and navy, is neither free nor democratic, is anti-Western, and has 1.2 billion people in a country that dominates the Asian continent.

A fifth reason is the world’s Left. As a general rule, the Left demonizes Israel and has loved China since it became Communist in 1948. And given the power of the Left in the world’s media, in the political life of so many nations, and in the universities and the arts, it is no wonder vicious China has been idolized and humane Israel demonized.

The sixth reason is the United Nations, where Israel has been condemned in more General Assembly and Security Council resolutions than any other country in the world. At the same time, the UN has voted China onto its Security Council and has never condemned it. China’s sponsoring of Sudan and its genocidal acts against its non-Arab black population, as in Darfur, goes largely unremarked on at the UN, let alone condemned, just as is the case with its cultural genocide, ethnic cleansing and military occupation of Tibet.

The seventh reason is television news, the primary source of news for much of mankind. Aside from its leftist tilt, television news reports only what it can video. And almost no country is televised as much as Israel, while video reports in Tibet are forbidden, as they are almost anywhere in China except where strictly monitored by the Chinese authorities. No video, no TV news. And no TV, no concern. So while grieving Palestinians and the accidental killings of Palestinians during morally necessary Israeli retaliations against terrorists are routinely televised, the slaughter of over a million Tibetans and the extinguishing of Tibetan Buddhism and culture are non-events as far as television news is concerned. [...]

In this next article, Joe Klein focuses on Tibet and the actions (or lack thereof) of the U.N.:

The U.N.’s Hypocrisy in Tibet

By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, March 28, 2008

It’s a storyline tailor-made to arouse the United Nations’ ire. Troops move in to occupy the land of an indigenous population; civilians have been murdered and imprisoned en masse; local residents have been displaced to make way for settlements by outsiders sent by the occupying power. And, indeed, were Israel the main culprit in this scenario, one may be certain that the U.N. would waste no time condemning its conduct.

But China, it appears, is held to a different standard. Thus, in just in the last few days, the world’s premier human-right organization has looked on, mostly in silence, as dozens of Tibetan demonstrators have been reportedly killed and many more have been languishing in jail cells, with the less fortunate subjected to torture at the hands of the occupying Chinese. In the face of such atrocities, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour have issued only the mildest of criticisms and sidestepped calls for an international investigation. [...]

The history of that conflict is well-known. The Chinese occupation of Tibet predated the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by nearly two decades. With the Chinese invasion in 1951, the Tibetans lost their homeland and religious freedoms. Although the Chinese invasion violated international law, the Chinese suffered no repercussions from the UN or from any other international body.

On the other hand, the Palestinians could have been living in their own internationally recognized state since 1948, when the United Nations recommended the creation of Palestinian and Jewish states co-existing side by side. The Jews living in Israel accepted the UN proposal and declared independence within the borders demarcated by the international body. The Palestinians refused the offer.

Instead, they thought Israel would be crushed in a matter of days as the neighboring Arab countries violated international law and invaded Israel right after it declared its independence. The Palestinians made the wrong choice. They lived in the West Bank and Gaza under Jordanian and Egyptian control respectively for nearly twenty years. Israel finally did occupy the West Bank and Gaza as defensive buffers against more Arab invasions, after winning the territories and Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War.

If the Palestinians’ claim to victim status is tenuous at best, the Tibetans’ case is more straightforward. According to various estimates, up to 1.2 million Tibetans have died due to the Chinese occupation. By contrast, the U.N.’s own estimates conclude that, as of 2006, the post-1967 rate of avoidable mortality in the Palestinian territories is at most 300,000. But as the UN General Assembly came under the sway of the Islamists and their allies, including China, Israel became the UN’s singular villain. Despite the far graver harm that China was inflicting on the Tibetan people, China’s brutal occupation of Tibet received little notice.

This glaring double standard continues today. The UN harshly condemns Israel for its settlements in the Palestinian territories, failing to give Israel even the slightest credit for removing Israeli settlers from Gaza when that territory was turned over to the Palestinians in 2005. But the remaining Israeli settlements in the West Bank pale in comparison with the vast Han Chinese migration into Tibet that the Chinese government has been actively pushing for years.

Consider the numbers. In 2006, there was a total Israeli West Bank settlement population of 267,163. This is about one tenth of the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank. On the other hand, the migration of Han Chinese into Tibetan lands has inundated Tibet with millions of Chinese setters seeking to turn the Tibetans into a minority within their own homeland. Thus, in the cities of Tibet, where the best jobs are available, the Han migrants outnumber the Tibetans about three to one. When one counts the rural areas in Tibet’s autonomous regions—Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan—the Chinese population still exceeds the indigenous Tibetan population by nearly two million people. [...]

By contrast, the Palestinians have not been forced to give up their religious autonomy while living under Israeli occupation. Despite all of the sermons of hate and incitement to violence being preached daily in the Palestinian mosques, the Israelis have not denied the Palestinians their freedom of worship. There has been no attempt by Israel to interfere with the Muslims’ practice of their own religion or to replace even their incendiary religious leaders with any hand-picked puppets of Israel’s choosing. [...]

The U.N.’s disparate approach toward Israel and China is a lesson in hypocrisy. Israel is the constant target of vitriol from the UN Human Rights Council on which China sits along with other serial human rights violators. Indeed, while China has gotten away with regularly breaching the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which is supposed to protect Tibetan civilians living under Chinese occupation from being deliberately targeted for violence, Israel is regularly accused by U.N. bodies of violating this same Convention whenever it tries to contain Palestinian terrorism against Israeli citizens. China also has escaped any reproach for its repeated violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which recognize that freedom of religion is a basic human right.

Most tellingly, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (“OHCHR”) did not mention Tibet even once in its Human Rights Program for Asia-Pacific (2008-2009). It had only this to say concerning China’s human rights record: “OHCHR will also continue its technical cooperation program with China and work in close partnership with the UN Country Team, particularly as the 2008 Olympics create further impetus to reform.”

This silence speaks volumes. For the U.N.’s morally challenged establishment, it is more preferable to enable the phony façade of progress that China intends to display at this summer’s Olympic Games than to speak out against its slaughter, torture and imprisonment of hundreds of innocent Tibetans. It is much easier—and more politically correct—to make Israel the UN’s favorite punching bag.

Two well-thought-through expositions by two men whose moral compass isn’t skewed by politics, ideology, and revisionist history. Which is a lot more than I can say for the U.N., the mainstream media, and other bastions of Leftism who equate the manufactured plight of “Palestine” at the hands of Israel with the real oppression of Tibet by China. Or worse: Make the Israelis into evil personified while ignoring the actions of China altogether.

From AP: US: Saddam Paid for Lawmaker's Iraq Trip

Can we question their patriotism now???????

WASHINGTON (AP) - Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

read more | digg story

Articles of Note: The Disgrace of Liberalism (J.R. Dunn)

March 27, 2008
The Disgrace of Liberalism

By J.R. Dunn
2008 marks the end of liberalism as a governing force in the same way that 1968 marked the end of liberalism as a political doctrine.

American liberals spent the '60s seeing their programs and policies collapse one after the other. The War on Crime, the War on Poverty, civil rights legislation, Vietnam, all were either unmitigated disasters or textbook examples of the law of unintended consequences. The Democrats went into the 1968 presidential election as crippled as any political party in American history, choked with failure, bereft of ideas, and facing a general uprising from their own younger elements.

The Democrats' 1968 Chicago convention marked the end of FDR-style liberalism. Media coverage revealed American liberals as incapable of controlling their own constituency, much less directing a country. As delegates cowered within the convention center, Movement rioters ran wild throughout the downtown area, fighting knock-down, drag-out battles with the police. Not a single liberal figure made any serious attempt to confront, control, or even communicate with the rioters. Little more than a decade after declaring itself the "American civic creed", liberalism was on the ropes.

Instead of joining the Whigs and Know-Nothings in historical oblivion, liberalism surrendered to its internal rebels, the Democratic Party's left wing, indistinguishable in beliefs and intent from any hardcore socialist party on the international scene. In 1972, they ran one of their own, George McGovern who in 1948 had served as delegate for communist front-man Henry Wallace) for the presidency.

McGovern's defeat at the hands of Richard M. Nixon represented no real setback for the new ideology. American leftists commenced their "Long march through the institutions" using techniques developed by Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci to take over the media, academia, and much of the bureaucracy. Political liberalism, due in large part to its control over massive urban machines, many of then going back to the days of Tammany, continued as a kind of husk animated by the new leftist persona. But liberalism in the traditional sense existed only in the minds of the naive, the ill-informed, and terminally nostalgic.

Followers of the mutant ideology were in no way open with their agenda. Instead they operated under the cover of two pretenses -- superior governance and high morality. Liberals presented themselves as technocrats with a clearer understanding of policy and governance than the opposition. Pragmatism was their creed, results their only criteria. Utilizing the old gimmicks of constituent services and favors and the new ones of planning and centralization, liberalism was able to maintain its dominance in backward and desperate areas of the country such as the Northeast and Upper Midwest.

The claim to higher morality was more inchoate, a kind of luminous abstraction beyond the grasp of money-grubbing Republicans, clearly understandable only by liberals themselves. Liberals claimed a monopoly on compassion, decency, and social justice (as defined by themselves), posing as the sole defenders of civic virtue against a horde of backwoodsmen, racists, and religious fanatics.

This elaborate double imposture served to keep liberalism alive for over three decades in the absence of ideas, doctrine, and serious accomplishments. But 2008 has brought the charade to an end. Events this year have exposed, once and for all, in a way that cannot be denied, elided, or spun, Democratic liberals as the party of abject incompetence and institutionalized corruption.

Eliot Spitzer worked his way to the governorship of New York State as the living embodiment of liberal higher morality, crusading against a series of dubious financial and corporate villains. His downfall as the result of a prostitution scheme too moronic for fiction might be taken as evidence of personal failings and no more were it not for the fact that his replacement, David A. Paterson, confessed to similar activities as the first official act of his administration. (If not even more egregious -- no one, after all, has accused Spitzer of trading jobs for sexual favors).

We need only add James McGreevey, ousted in 2004 from New Jersey's governorship for homosexual escapades with an aide (apppointed to a homeland security job with the state for which he had no qualifications), to conclude that liberalism has subsided to a level of corruption of European dimensions.

It's often overlooked -- thanks in large part to the Clinton "legacy" -- that such misbehavior is almost always accompanied by corruption in other spheres. Insistence by Clinton's defenders that his various lady troubles were "personal matters" succeeded in obscuring the moral connection between Big Bill's follies and the endless bribes, kickbacks, suicides, illegal mass firings, and vanishing files that made the "most ethical administration in history" so entertaining to watch.

So it needs restating as a simple truth that a man who cannot control his sexual impulses is unlikely to succeed in more complex matters. In little over a year, Spitzer threw away the goodwill engendered by his landslide victory through a series of petty conspiracies and dirty tricks, bringing New York state government to a standstill in the process. While McGreevey was a better governor than he's ever likely to get credit for (he solved the longstanding auto-insurance "crisis" that made New Jersey a laughingstock for half a dozen previous administrations), his penchant for putting his muscle boys on the state payroll undercuts any other claims for his record. The same can be said for Paterson. Though, being both blind and black, he may likely survive, revelations concerning his practice of awarding jobs and positions don't bode well for the future.

These men are clearly representative of the post-Clinton Democratic Party. They set out to follow in Bill's footsteps, have ended up much the same as he did, and have dragged their party and political doctrine along with them. (At this point somebody will bring up the names Foley and Craig. But neither stood anywhere near the center of American conservatism in the way that the Northeastern governors do with liberalism as a matter of course. Foley and Craig were rotten apples. With the Democrats, it's the whole barrel.)

In turning to the presidential campaign, we need do no more than mention Madame Hillary. The Ma Barker of Little Rock is in a class by herself when it comes to political iniquity (not to mention dodging snipers). The chief puzzle concerning Hillary is how, being so blatantly what she is, she succeeds in holding onto any support whatsoever. There's a process in quantum mechanics called "renormalization", in which certain quantities with values of infinity are arbitrarily dropped back to a more manageable "zero" for the sake of solving the equation. This encapsulates Hillary's political career: truly mindboggling levels of corruption and ineptitude have been continually renormalized by fellow politicians and the media to enable her to survive. These people made a particular type of bargain when they bent the rules for Hillary. Now the ground is opening up under their feet. It has been a pleasure to watch.

(The question I have about Hillary that's least likely to be answered is this: what did she do to Daniel P. Moynihan? Recall the staged ceremony in which Moynihan handed the mantle of senator over to Hillary. Here was one of the greatest minds of recent American politics, possibly liberalism's last political intellectual, a tower of strength, who for years answered the mad dogs of the UN General Assembly in the only tones they understood, standing beside Hillary, staring at the ground before him, face a mask of shame and self-disgust, and answering in monosyllables. What possible explanation can there be for this?)

Barack Obama was supposed to be another matter. Obama has ascended on a cloud of pure moral superiority and nothing else. That has now evaporated, thanks to impolitic comments from his wife and the news that he has for two decades belonged to what amounts to a racist cult. Obama has nothing else to offer in the way of experience or achievements. Beyond his current difficulties, there lie his continuing and as yet unexplained entanglement with Tony Rezko (He barely knew the man, he insists. All he did was show Rezko his new house before closing. I always clear major purchases with people I scarcely know, don't you?), along with pending revelations concerning his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former terrorist who began his career as one of the driving forces of the Weather Underground.

Obama's response, his "Kennedyesque" speech on race, was in fact purely Clintonian in that it attempted to transform his failings into virtues while placing the blame on the country as a whole. (Not to mention his innocent typical white grandmother.) In less than two weeks, Obama has succeeded in lowering himself to the same level as Madame Hillary. Quite an achievement.

(As for Obama's claims to be a necessary "racial reconciliator", this reconciliation has in fact been going on since the end of segregation, quite successfully too. As is often the case with liberals, Obama is offering a solution to a problem that is solving itself.)

To this gallery we can add Jennifer Granholm, who assured that Michigan's current slide was as drastic and damaging as possible, Ed Rendell, Hillary's consigliere for Pennsylvania, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Kwame Kilpatrick, charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, and malfeasance in office. That's the Democratic Party, the bastion of American liberalism, as it stands. A party whose entire leadership cadre, including presidential candidates, state governors, and Congressional leaders, are corrupt or incompetent or both, a party more suitable to ruling a Balkan or Central African peapatch than the world's reigning superpower.

2008 is being promoted as the year of the Democrats. Under the circumstances, it's difficult to see this as anything but media hype. Weak as the Republicans may be, they do boast such figures as Schwarzenegger, Jindal, Crist, and Coburn among many others, not to mention a presidential candidate who, whatever his drawbacks, is a different order of being than the opposition.

But there have been danger signs. In the past few years, we've seen a number of "conservative" politicians who have adapted the liberal style, masking their own flaws with acceptable rhetoric. The latest of these is Mike Huckabee, who presented himself as a conservative messiah while governing Arkansas like... well, like a typical governor of Arkansas. Liberalism has demonstrated that these tactics lead nowhere. We must be careful not to succumb.

Liberalism will stagger on. It still has control of all those urban political machines, along with the unions and bureaucracies. But it has no future. Personality cults and ideology will take you only so far. We may yet live to see this albatross removed from the nation's back.

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.

But Don't Question Their Patriotism: Forest Lake Area (Minn.) H.S.

This story is absolutely infuriating. From the Power Line blog:

HEROES TOO HOT FOR FOREST LAKE AREA HIGH SCHOOL

Pete Hegseth is an alumnus of the Forest Lake Area High School and the founder of Vets for Freedom, which brings its National Heroes Tour to the Twin Cities today. Today's schedule included bringing the tour to social studies students at the high school.

But the principal abrupty cancelled the event when "parents and others" called the school and objected. The Star Tribune story reporting the cancellation is ambiguously headlined and written to suggest that the scheduled event raised concerns that the event was political in nature, but it is evident that the "concerns" about politics were confined to accusations by the objectors and that the principal simply kowtowed to them. What a disgrace.

UPDATE: Katherine Kersten, Kathryn Lopez, Hugh Hewitt, and Uncle Jimbo pierce the fog of the Star Tribune article.

JOHN adds: From Kathy Kersten's post:

At “Democratic Underground Forums,” there was an announcement of a press conference by various unidentified groups opposing the Vets for Freedom appearance. The announcement exhorted “Veterans for Peace” to oppose the appearance and listed contact info for Massey; school board president Bill Bresin, and the Forest Lake Area Schools district office. The post expressed “outrage” that Vets for Freedom was going to meet with students to “indoctrinate them on the joys of war.”

Shame on Forest Lake High administrators for caving to political pressure under the guise of preventing political pressure. Apparently, they only understand the sort of political pressure exerted by left-wing anti-war groups.

The Forest Lake principal said there had been complaints from "parents and others." Apparently the "others" are denizens of the Democratic Underground fever swamp. It would be interesting to know how many of those who objected to the veterans were "others" rather than parents.

It's hard to discern any consistent standard for who and what is too "political" for Minnesota's public schools. Last year, the high school that my children attend invited Al Franken to speak to the National Honor Society. If Al Franken isn't too "political," how can Pete Hegseth and his fellow veterans be?

To comment on this post, go here.

Oh, I got comments all right:

This decision was not about politics. There's a crap-load of politics in schools - left-wing politics. I'll bet anyone money that all the following is true about "FLake" High School:

The Science curriculum includes the obligatory showing of Al Gore's socialist manifesto "An Inconvenient Truth" and sends all the kiddies home with those cute curly fluorescent light bulbs.That's (left-wing) politics.

The English curriculum has banned any book containing any words the least bit offensive, intolerant, or un-P.C., like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. But there's plenty of books with drugs and sex (straight, gay, and bi). That's (left-wing) politics.

Dodge ball has been deleted from the Gym curriculum, so no one's feelings get hurt. That's (left-wing) politics.

The History and Social Studies curricula are poisoned with the P.C. notions of "dump some of those dead white males and include more Satan-worshiping transgendered Zimbabweans that helped make the country great." And I'm sure they're teaching the kiddie-poos not to celebrate Columbus Day; after all, Columbus was nothing other than a white racist killer of red people. That's (left-wing) politics.

The Sex Ed curriculum teaches putting condoms on bananas, but you're not allowed to preach the "a" word (abstinence!)! And I'm sure they've told the girls that abortion is a constitutional right and that if they want to get one, they'll make it happen without their parents' knowledge. That's (left-wing) politics.

Dodge ball has been deleted from the Gym curriculum, so no one's feelings get hurt. That's (left-wing) politics.

And, as writer "A. Lincoln" wrote:

How many of the teachers at that school are members of the NEA?

How much of the curriculum is dictated by members of a labor union?

...

You want POLITICS removed from the school? Then get rid of every teacher who belongs to a labor union and whose dues are contributed to POLITICAL causes and POLITICAL candidates. Until then, I suggest that you left-wingers just cry in your own beer and allow the STUDENTS to to make up their OWN minds.

Exactly.

Let's make one thing clear: Canceling the Vets for Freedom at "FLake" H.S. was about one thing and one thing only: Shutting up a group who stands for the things the leftists detest: America's greatness, America's liberty, America's exceptionalism, America period.

In case anyone is curious, I am absolutely all for teaching patriotism in school. In fact, American schools have a duty, and obligation to teach our children to be patriotic Americans. The left, who have run our schools for decades, knows that they have our children's impressionable brains at their disposal, which is exactly why they use the schools to indoctrinate the next generation into hating America as much as they do. Prove me wrong.

And another thing: How is loving your country now equivalent to "politics"? That's not politics! How dare the left drag us down with that premise. Patriotism is not politics! Arghhh!

"FLake" High School leaders: I don't have to question your patriotism. You don't have any.

Liberal Media Bias: Bashing Rush, No Matter What

What Rush says is true: Even with half his brain tied behind his back, he is always one step ahead of the clueless liberal media.

In typical liberal fashion (placing ideology, agenda, and stereotypes over facts and reality), Washington Post Magazine's Gene Weingarten reveals why his journalism degree needs to be revoked. Here's Weingarten appearing on Michel Martin's "Tell Me More" on NPR, where the two were discussing Rush. Weingarten -- stuck in the liberal mindset that conservatives are racists and Rush is "king of the racists" -- twists reality into the most distorted pretzel in order to fit that template.

Here are the relevant clips and Rush's comments, from yesterday's show.

WEINGARTEN: ... [Rush is] mean, but -- but he's mean in a way that you don't really get involved with. You -- you know he's kind of kidding. And so the worst thing that happened to me was that I found myself grudgingly respecting Rush Limbaugh, which is just a terrible thing to do if you're a -- a liberal. But gradually what happens is, you get into it, and -- and I find -- I found things to really despise about his eventually. Yes.

RUSH: You know what's interesting about this? ... Jeffrey Lord has a piece today at the American Spectator Online bouncing off a famous quote of Bill Buckley's in his book, Up From Liberalism, called "Liberal Mania," and basically the theory is that these liberals all live in their little cocoons and anything that interrupts their worldview ... Anything that interrupts and penetrates their little cocoon and their worldview sends them into conniption fits; they actually become manic and don't know how to deal with it because they've never had to ... The same thing happened to this Weingarten guy. He's got this little liberal cocoon worldview that he has lived in for all these years, and he listens to this program, and he almost got sucked in. He almost got sucked in, but, finally, for his own salvation, he found reason to hate me.

There's one more bite here, though, that I want you to hear. Michel Martin said, "Well, what did you despise about Limbaugh?"

WEINGARTEN: Well, you know, he's very much, uh, against Obama, which is -- which is fair game, you know, he's, uh... Limbaugh will attack Obama in areas where he's vulnerable, and that's fine, you know, but -- but then he discovered he was saying his name kind of interestingly, O-bama, and I decided this was a racial thing, this was like "yo mama."

MARTIN: Yeah. To try to make him the black guy.

WEINGARTEN: Yeah, make him the black guy.

RUSH: See what I mean? (laughing) They are that stupid. The whole point here... Read Jeffrey Lord's piece today in the American Spectator Online. They hear me pronounce ... "O-bama," and they haven't the slightest clue. They think it's a racial thing? They think that I'm trying to say "yo mama." Everybody knows Obama's black! So what?

You know, I'll tell you what, Mr. Weingarten. You need to look at your buddies on the left if you want to find racism in this campaign. There is a virtual civil war going on in the Democrat Party: Jeremiah Wright, Geraldine Ferraro, the Clintons, all this talk about Obama not being black enough and then is he too black and is he not black enough, "What about his white half?" You had the Clintons' campaign people in New Hampshire talking about not just his drug usage but perhaps he might have been selling drugs, all with racial undertones -- and you hear me pronounce "O-bama" that way and think that I am doing it in a racial sense, and it's that that made him hate me?

Honestly, the ideology-influenced ignorance of both these people is staggering. I don't know if it was Rush who coined the phrase "journalistic malpractice," but let me tell you, there's enough of it to fill an encyclopedia from these libs-with-a-keyboard who dare call themselves "journalists." OK, I'll admit the Weingarten clip is an interview, not a news report, but please! Give me a break, Gene! You think this ideology doesn't taint the impartiality in his work?

By the way, doesn't this seem to be eerily similar to what the liberal media -- in particular the Washington Post -- did to destroy Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate George Allen in 2006? He called some reporter (who happened to be non-white) a theretofore unheard-of word "Macaca." Suddenly, people are coming out of the woodwork claiming Macaca is some sort of racial epithet from north Africa or somewhere. Then, it's all over the press: "Allen's a racist!!! Macaca! Macaca! Macaca!" And with that one media hatchet job, Allen's political aspirations are 86'ed.

But unlike a politician like Allen, who has to walk on egg-shells, Rush doesn't have to kowtow to anybody. So he laughs in the lib media's face, and rightfully so!

Here, incidentally, is that Jeffrey Lord piece that Rush refers to. A portion of it is here:

All of these people -- Clinton the ex-president, Obama the would-be president and his pastor Wright, ... and the ESPN executives -- exist in an intellectual bubble. They spend their time talking to, agreeing with and being agreed with by other liberals. Their personal one-on-one exposure to ideas that challenge their world-view is protected by their existence in the bubble, a bubble that is at once a shield from the reality of "the other" as it is a warm and comfortable intellectual bath of reassuring moral superiority.

Thus Clinton's shock and anger when he ventures forth from the respectful cocoon of the ever-adoring left-wing mainstream media. How dare he be treated in such fashion! He turns beet red, he angrily wags the famous finger that denied an affair with Monica Lewinsky, he hisses about a fancied "smirk" on Wallace's face. All this because he is afforded precisely the same kind of utterly professional treatment that Wallace viewers have seen dished to the likes of a Rumsfeld or Rice, both of whom (and many more) handle the probing questions with graceful aplomb.

Thus Senator Obama's blissful Sunday morning ignorance as he, his wife and daughters listen to the visceral anti-Americanism, racism and paranoia of Jeremiah Wright. Everybody else in this bubble-church shares the same view, as was captured repeatedly on the now famous tapes of Wright being thunderously applauded by his cheering congregation. Hey, no problem here. It's an entire church of liberals on duty.

...

Finally there is ESPN and its hysterical reaction to a breach of their bubble by no less than El Rushbo himself. Horrors! No one they know speaks this way! Bubble breach alert! Bubble breach alert! Fire Limbaugh!

Spot on!

Why I Left Liberalism #15 - They View America as Evil and Nothing Else

Someone recommended I watch on YouTube a presentation made by comedian Evan Sayet for the Heritage Foundation. It's a brilliant commentary about the religion of modern liberalism, which strives at nothing but tearing down this country. He makes some excellent points, the most eye-opening to me being this: Liberals, with their stranglehold on the schools in this country, are so hell-bent on non-discrimination and the empty concepts of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" that, as a result, our children enter adulthood not knowing how to think discriminately. That is, they have no ability to think critically because all they've been taught since they were five was that "discriminating is bad" and that "there's no such thing as right and wrong."

The result of this brainwashing is generations of completely morally confused citizens from who -- like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and their ilk -- say: Who are we to claim that America is any better than Saddam's Iraq or Islamofascist regimes? Who really are the terrorists? I highly recommend this presentation, which runs a half-hour or so.

Along the same lines, check out this fantastic article by Bruce Walker on today's American Thinker site:

The religion of eternal racism and eternal sexism By Bruce Walker

The Civil Rights Act was passed forty-three years ago. The feminist movement was more or less officially launched about forty years ago. And yet today in the Democrat Party there are serious voices complaining of racism and sexism among Democrat voters (and, presumably, among the American people.) How many "civil rights" leaders talk as if racism is an immutable, eternal characteristic of American society? How many feminist leaders talk as if sexism is an immutable, eternal characteristic of American society?

The mere passage of years, the mere enactment of statutes or adoption of polices, the decades long public relations campaign against bigotry -- none of this can be allowed to make a difference.

Why? Because the sins of America are a religious article of faith to self-appointed black leaders and to self-appointed representatives of the female sex. And it is crucial that the sin is not racism or sexism, but specifically American (or, perhaps, Western) racism and sexism. There is a reason why black leaders long ignored the genocide in Sudan, in which whites were enslaving and murdering blacks: the whites in question were not American. There is a reason why feminist yawned when told about honor murders, female circumcision and the imprisonment of rape victims: the men in question were not American. The catechism of the Left is that America is evil.

...

The outspokenness of civil rights leaders and feminists -- indeed, the outrageousness of their comments -- is the best evidence that racism against blacks and misogyny are very weak in America. If we lived in the land and time of the Taliban, feminists would be silent and shuddering. If we lived in the land and time of Jim Crow, then blacks would be overly polite and subservient. Thank goodness we do not.

Hating America is a religion with radical feminists and militant blacks. It is a very bad religion. It is a religion immune to any cure. It is a religion founded upon lies. It is, in fact, more like a sick cult than any religion that normal Americans might follow. The greatness and goodness of America, as has so often been the case, is well defined by its mortal enemies.

Both Sayet's presentation and Walker's article hit so many nails on the head, they could support an entire skyscraper. The distorted liberal view of America, on the other hand, is as sturdy as a house of cards.

Liberal Media Bias: L.A. Times

Josh Scharf from the blog View From a Height makes these astute observations regarding an L.A. Times report about the trouble the U.S. seems to be having tracking and cutting off terrorism financing [via NewsBusters]:

The L.A. Times runs a story today about the difficulties that the US is having in tracking and shutting down terrorist financial operations. The story leads with a number of factors impeding both our domestic and international efforts:

The U.S.-led effort to choke off financing for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is foundering because setbacks at home and abroad have undermined the Bush administration's highly touted counter-terrorism weapon, according to current and former officials and independent experts.

In some cases, extremist groups have blunted financial anti-terrorism tools by finding new ways to raise, transfer and spend their money. In other cases, the administration has stumbled over legal difficulties and interagency fighting, officials and experts say.

But the most serious problems are fractures and mistrust within the coalition of nations that the United States admits it needs to target financiers of terrorism and to stanch the flow of funding from wealthy donors to extremist causes.

Apparently the Times doesn't think that the media's disclosure of the nature, procedures, and targets of those programs could have a deleterious effect on their effectiveness and foreign cooperation.

Moreover, the Times doesn't thing that the House Democrats' refusal to grant immunity to telecom companies who helped the government with foreign intelligence gathering could be interpreted by foreign banks and governments as a warning of might be in store for them if they, too, make the mistake of assisting the US is tracking down terrorist transactions.

And certainly, the House Democrats' refusal to renew the PAA couldn't have any effect on our ability to locate and track new targets for investigation?

No, certainly not. But we wouldn't want to question their patriotism.

Definitely not!

But Don't Question Their Patriotism: Erica Jong & Robert Fisk

The Dr. Sanity blog today discusses columns by two hopelessly psychotic Lefties, one on each side of the Atlantic. It isn't pretty.

Let the analysis begin

Dr. Sanity, I'm no psychoanalyst, but lemme take a crack at these two crackpots ...

The two patients:
#1: ultra-leftist American Erica Jong
#2: ultra-leftist Brit Robert Fisk.

Both see the war in Iraq as a miserable failure, describe George W. Bush and former British P.M. Tony Blair as evil and arrogant “cage-rattlers,” and explain the connection between Islam and terrorism only as the invention of the aforementioned leaders in order to sell the war to the people.

As we will see, these are nothing but left-wing talking points and conspiracy theories. There is nothing written by these two that is remotely based in reality.

Patient #1: Jong, Erica

For those of you not acquainted with the uber-feminist Erica Mann Jong, here is an excerpt from her 1973 book “Fear of Flying.”

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

What a role model this woman is! Women and girls are so much better off because of all you've contributed these 35+ years. If I ever have a daughter, this is who I want her to look up to!

Anyway, here's her rant this weekend from the Puffington Host. (Thank you, Dr. Sanity for extracting this blurb. I don't know if my heart could've taken it!):

And yet we have had great candidates before--think Al Gore--and lost to the low-level conniving, smearing and swift boating of the GOP (Grandiose Old Plutocrats). The GOP stands for nothing today but looting the national treasury for the rich. George Dubya Bush once addressed them as the "haves and have mores"--clearly he is one of them--but maybe he will have less now that the Carlyle Group is running out of money. Maybe he'll have a little rachmones for the have-less and have-nots, though I doubt it.

If anyone in Washington read history, they'd understand that any empire that spends more in war than on its people eventually goes down in flames. The Persians, Greeks and Romans proved it--see Herodotus--and the British, French, Belgians, Dutch and Germans proved it all over again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But does anyone care?

Apparently not. It's a rule of history that when an empire gorges on guns and forgets butter, that empire winds up on the scrap heap of history.

But he doesn't know and doesn't care. He thinks, "The surge is working." Dick Cheney and Condi Rice tell him so. And now McCain echoes them. And our idiot corporate press--which has no time to read or think or dig for information (too busy getting pix of Kristen-Alexandra's tattoos) doesn't give a shit either. Leave that to the book-writers. That's safe enough since Americans don't read--especially not big thick books about history.

Oh, this is too easy …

“And yet we have had great candidates before--think Al Gore …”

ROTFLMAO

“... low-level conniving, smearing and swift boating of the GOP”

= Liberal fallacious talking point (FTP) #1: The GOP is eeeeevil!!!

“Grandiose Old Plutocrats,” “The GOP stands for nothing today but looting the national treasury for the rich.

= Liberal FTP #2: The old standby: the class warfare card – Republicans are for the rich! Democrats are for the little guy!

Of course, Jong doesn’t elaborate on exactly how the GOP is “looting the national treasury for the rich.” (She doesn’t need to, you see; she’s a Bush-hating liberal). Most likely, she referring to Bush actually letting “the rich” (and anyone else who pays taxes) keep more of their hard-earned money. In which case she’s showing her Marxist-socialist colors by admitting her belief that this money doesn’t belong to the people who actually worked for it, but instead to the government, whose job it is to then redistribute that wealth to people Jong deems deserving.

“… but maybe he will have less now that the Carlyle Group is running out of money.”

= Liberal FTP #3: This is one of those loony conspiracy theories that appeared in Michael Moore’s crockumentary about September 11. The conspiracy is that the Bushes and the bin Ladens are really in bed together by way of this weapons company. Not only is this obviously bull, but, on the contrary, Moore’s friend, the Bush-hating ultra-leftist George Soros has invested a hundred million dollars in Carlyle. Oh, and in 2004 Carlyle became part-owner of Lowe’s Theaters. Wait, didn’t they show Moore’s film? Yup! I know, Ms. Jong, agenda ahead of facts. It’s the liberal way …

“Maybe he'll have a little rachmones for the have-less and have-nots, though I doubt it.”

= Liberal FTP #4: Bush does not, never did, and – Jong concludes – never will, have rachmones for the have-less and have-nots.” Meaning Bush doesn’t share Jong’s demands for Marxist-socialist wealth redistribution.

If anyone in Washington read history, they'd understand that any empire that spends more in war than on its people eventually goes down in flames … It's a rule of history that when an empire gorges on guns and forgets butter, that empire winds up on the scrap heap of history.”

I don’t know what to categorize this as except Marxist-socialist stupidity.

If Erica Jong read history, she would know that despite the current war, the percentage of the budget the Bush administration spends on defense is significantly lower than in previous decades …

And if Erica Jong read history, she would know that a nation can’t survive if it’s spending more on national defense and instead spends more on its people than it’s supposed to. What Jong means by “spending on its people” is full-blown cradle-to-grave socialism. The countries of Western Europe ever since WWII have become socialist havens for lazy unproductive people with no strong defense; that’s ‘cuz they had the U.S. to cover their ass!!! Over a half-century later, as Islamo-fascism is putting pressure on their way of life both internally (mass immigration) and externally, they have no way of defending themselves.

And if Erica Jong weren’t such an America-hating Marxist-socialist, she would realize that what has always made America great is the ability of its people to take care of themselves. We even make our own butter without the government's help. How about that!

“Dubya could have learned this at Yale had he not been drunk or stoned all the time and figuring out ways to avoid going to 'Nam.”

= Liberal FTP #5: This typical dig also exposes a typical liberal double standard. The woman probably has erotic dreams about Bill Clinton, who, like quite a lot of her liberal friends, was drunk and stoned all the time and figured out ways to avoid going to ‘Nam. But because as a president thirty years later Bush made the decision to take the country to war (and because he’s an evil Republican), then that’s bad.

“But he doesn't know and doesn't care.”

= Liberal FTP #6: Even this simple short sentence is chock-full of empty liberal blather. See, Bush and conservatives/Republicans don’t care. They don’t care about anything but themselves and corporations. But liberals care. All they do is care.

Fine: If conservatives don’t care, then liberals don’t think! How do ya like them apples? What a coincidence this comes the day after my post on how liberalism is based primarily on emotion and not thought. If this one single sentence by Erica Jong is not illustrative of that point, I don’t know what is.

“He thinks, "The surge is working." Dick Cheney and Condi Rice tell him so. And now McCain echoes them.”

= Liberal FTP #7: Bush doesn’t know anything. Like a good little puppet, he just does everything Dick Cheney and Condi Rice tell him.

“And our idiot corporate press--which has no time to read or think or dig for information …”

= Liberal FTP #8: Corporations = Republicans = Corporations = Republicans = Corporations = Republicans … Has it sunk in yet?

The claim is the media is in cahoots with Bush in selling the war. Which of course is a load of crap, as summarized in my post last week on the media and the war. The Media Research Center’s ample evidence of five years of the media’s thwarting of Bush and the war.

“… doesn't give a shit either.”

There we go! Not bad: it took quite a long time for there to be the obligatory liberal profanity. Lefties like Jong and the writers of Rolling Stone magazine will tell you: Cussing makes you intelligent and cool!

“That's safe enough since Americans don't read--especially not big thick books about history.”

= Liberal FTP #9: Americans are stupid; they don’t read. This probably refers to one of those slanted liberal studies that showed that liberals read more books per year than conservatives. Whatever. To this statement Dr. Sanity retorts:

Yes, only the courageous "book-writers" (like her!) care. Note the casual dismissal of stupid American (except, I imagine those who are clever enough to read her books).

I disagree, Dr. Sanity, that Jong’s dismissal of stupid Americans was casual; it seemed quite direct to me!

Patient #2: Robert Fisk

Probably the only one more clueless than Jong is Robert Fisk, who in the London Independent, writes:

And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.

OK, let's deconstruct this gem:

“And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan.”

= Liberal FTP #1: We’ve lost Afghanistan, we’ve lost Iraq, we’re gonna lose Pakistan. We're just losers! (And you know who that makes the winners.) I didn’t even know were in Pakistan.

“It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss.”

Liberal FTP #2: WE are the problem. WE are the terrorists. Read this again. Fisk isn’t merely saying we are no better than the Islamofascists. He’s saying in no uncertain terms that we are worse than the Islamofascists.

“And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver.”

Liberal FTP #3: Boo hoo hoo. These “Muslim peoples” were just minding their own business, making the world a better place by suppressing, beheading, hanging, or mutilating women, children, and anyone deemed infidels. Kites were flying in Baghdad, just like Michael Moore showed us in his movie. Women were frolicking in Kabul. And then the arrogant, imperialist West came along and messed everything up!

“There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.”

My jaw is on the floor. This man isn’t merely stupid. He’s dangerously and criminally stupid. This type of thinking gets innocent people killed. Who gives this pathetic excuse for a thinking creature a forum to write this garbage?

Dr. Sanity concludes:

Both are certainly audacious enough to hope for the defeat of the REAL enemy:Bush, America, Israel and the West. That they come together on the Easter op-ed pages--is that not a perfect example of a zipless fuck, or what? …

With great intellectuals like these two giants of the left, who needs stupidity?

Yup. That just about sums it up for me.

But Don't Question Their Patriotism: Iraq War Protestors '08

Liberals keep saying that it's not unpatriotic to question the government. No conservative would disagree. They say it's not unpatriotic to question the war. Again, no conservative would disagree.

But as far as I know, no liberal has come forward to denounce the disgusting acts of "peace" rally participants, like those perpetrated this past week at the fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq.

Marooned in Marin has comments about one particular war protest in Portland, Oregon:

Last year, it was defecating on a burning American flag, burning an American solider in effigy and marching with a banner reading “F**k the Troops.”

Well, Portland Lefties who claim to “support the troops but not the war” marched with this sign, “Put the gun down or turn it around” (pulled off Indybay).

Essentially, they're calling for soldiers to “frag” or kill their officers.

And these people claim to represent “peace?”

Apparently. Not only that, but they claim to be the real patriots in this country. What an upside-down world we live in.

Gateway Pundit also provides this beautiful sight:

Students scale City Hall in Portland this Friday
at an “antiwar” protest.

 

In all seriousness, how do any of these animals think this behavior is helping their cause?

Liberal Hypocrisy: Ted Kennedy

This was posted last week from NewsMax.com:

Ted Kennedy Dumps Fuel into Nantucket Sound

Friday, March 14, 2008 9:14 AM

Ted Kennedy has called Nantucket Sound near his Massachusetts estate “a national treasure” — but that didn’t stop the senator from having oil dumped from his yacht into its waters.

A local photographer spotted an oil slick coming from Kennedy’s yacht Mya as Kennedy and his guests left the vessel in a launch following a race that ended in Hyannis, the Cape Cod Today newspaper reported.

The lensman was so shocked that he rowed his dinghy out to question the crew member left aboard the yacht.

He asked the crewman, “What the hell are you doing?”

The crewman said that diesel fuel had gotten into the bilge and he was told to dump it.

When the photographer pointed out that the yacht was moored in coastal waters near shellfish beds and people swimming, the crewman replied, “Whatever.”

Cape Cod Today published a photo showing the oil slick emanating from Mya.

As Newsmax reported earlier, Kennedy has opposed a proposal to construct a wind farm in Nantucket Sound to produce cheap, clean energy. Asked why, he said: “That’s where I sail.”

Quotes of the Week

These quotes come from El Rushbo's shows last week. They're all directly or indirectly related to Obama's speech last Monday and the continuing fallout from his relationship with Jeremiah Wright and his church.

On how liberals let blacks get away with hatred and racism:

How many white politicians and people in public life, have been forced to disown this or that or some other thing, and "distance" themselves, or at least tell 'em they're wrong? How many times has it happened? It has happened a plethora of times, and I'm tired of the excuse: "Well, original sin, years and years of discrimination. We have to understand their rage. We have to cut them some slack." No. Not if we're going to have unity. We make racists of black babies and infants if we grant them this kind of latitude. We are, by definition, saying, "We have so much guilt, you guys can go ahead and be racists and hatemongers because we did it, to you— and yeah, we'll occasionally let you spank us for what our ancestors did all those hundreds of years ago." That, to me, is insulting. That is derogatory in and of itself, when you adopt a guilt-based attitude that permits bad behavior — incorrect, uninformed behavior and thinking — to thrive and to continue. This whole speech is trying to put America on defensive. The Democrat Party is doing enough of that as it is.

Hillary Clinton is out there saying we can't win in Iraq. We can't win. Hell's bells, we are the United States of America! We can do anything we want when we set our mind to it. But we have a political party destined to see this country crumble, if for no other reason than so they can get their dirty little hands on it and control it and remake it as they want.

On how Obama's speech was not about racism; it was about imposing socialism (wealth distribution, nationalized health care, etc.):

Can I summarize Obama's speech for you, ladies and gentlemen? Here it is in a nutshell: "Racism is wrong. Barking-mad racism and hate — yes, as uttered by Reverend Wright; yes, barking-mad racism and hatred — is wrong, but it's justified, because we don't have nationalized health care."

That's Barack Obama's speech. Reverend Wright's justified. Barack's justified. All the racism, all the hatred, all the bigotry out there for this country on the left is justified 'cause we don't have national health care and because we don't get the troops out of Iraq and because we're bailing out Wall Street firms, and because the schools are going to hell in a handbasket .

Oh, that's another thing! Barack Obama correctly identifies that urban schools are failing. Well, who's fault is this? Who is maintaining these schools as they are? Is it not the American left and its cozy relationship with teachers unions? I mean, the last time I looked there are a lot of Republican right-wing philanthropists who have come along and offered vouchers or free tuition to private schools, and the people I see lining up faster than anybody are African-American parents who want their kids out of these sinkhole schools they're in that Barack Obama just got through ripping to shreds. But who maintains 'em? Who established them? Who is it that's constantly speaking out against them and hoping that they change? It's people like us, who only want the best for everybody in this country. It doesn't matter whether they're black, white, indigenous American, whatever.

This racism business is going back and forth and it currently resides primarily on the left of this country as the Democrat Party's presidential campaign has clearly shown. So what has happened now? America, I think, for the most part (there are, of course, exceptions to this) has transcended race. There's so much evidence of that that I don't even want to waste time citing it. But Barack Obama's church hasn't. Barack Obama's church has not transcended race nor has it transcended hate. Barack Obama has not spoken out about that until now, and as a good politician, he doesn't want to be left behind so he has to speak out about it. This speech was an act of political necessity, not courage. This was an act of political necessity.

On the liberal assault on our inalienable rights, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence:

We all want opportunity for our kids. We all want a growing, expanding economy. The argument we have is how do you get there? The argument is very simply put, or the distinguishing aspects of the argument are: Liberals want to use government based on a contempt and lack of understanding and confidence that average Americans can overcome things in life. Conservatives like us believe that if you just trust people, the inherent goodness and decency of people will come to the forefront if you don't tamper with their freedom, if you don't tamper with their liberty, if you understand what our Founding Fathers understood, that our freedom and liberty comes from our Maker, from our Creator … We are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

My view of the Democrat Party today is that those are under assault. We know that life is under assault. We know that liberty is under assault. Don't make me give you all the examples. This is something that's not even arguable. We're talking about banning certain kind of lightbulbs; talking about how you can use your property, all these examples — liberty is under assault at the leadership level of the Democrat Party. Pursuit of happiness, they're not happy; they don't want anybody to be happy. They are miserable. They look out across America and they see misery and they enjoy it. These are people who are happily miserable. So, all three of the basic tenets of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, are under assault by the American left today.

On how liberals, white or black, thrive on keeping Americans feeling like helpless victims:

I get frustrated because this country is what it is, and it's not a secret. You don't get a password when you're born to access only certain parts of this country that are good. Everybody can. The frustrating thing to me is that so many — and it's not just black people, liberals in general are trying to tell as many people as possible they have no chance, for whatever "ism," be it racism or be it sexism or be it bigotry-ism or be it capitalism or be it victimism. Liberals in this country are trying to dissuade people from the notion they can be great, they are trying to dispirit them from having any ambition to overcome obstacles …

… [A] lot of people in this country, from the moment they're born, they end up going to school and so forth, they're told how the deck is stacked against them, for all these various reasons, and it's all done on purpose by liberals who want those people forever dependent on a government run by liberals, robbing them of their humanity, robbing them of their potential, robbing them of their dreams, robbing them of their desire. That's what frustrates, angers, and even saddens me: to see what liberalism is willing to do to average people in order to keep liberal elites in seats of power.

Brilliant. And true. As always.

David Mamet: *Former* Liberal

Ultra-liberal playwright David Mamet published an article last week in the Village Voice titled, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'." The meat of the lengthy piece is here:

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

...

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

...

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

...

Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.

And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).

And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

...

This public coming-out was met with some fanfare. Columnist Andrew Klavan writes in the New Hampshire Union Leader "Welcome to the Right, Mr. Mamet":

So now Mamet has grasped the nettle. He will come to find out just how small-minded, exclusionary and intellectually corrupt many on the left can be. Colleagues might abandon him; theater critics will contrive to ignore and attack him; his dependable audience might turn away.

But he also will discover a right wing he never knew. He will discover thinkers who seek historical and moral truth as if it really mattered, and writers who defend liberty as if it were what in fact it is: the prerequisite of full humanity. Rather than the low and tiresome obsession of the left with the color of people’s skins, he will find people who embrace a philosophical colorblindness. He will meet women of intelligence and competence who -- mirabile dictu -- don’t despise men and manliness but openly admire them. Yes, he will find that a gathering of right-wingers is less welcoming to gay people than the left is, but he also will watch something astounding unfold. Unlike liberals, rightists, after a period of open discussion and thought, actually will admit when they’re wrong and change their minds. This anti-gay prejudice will fall -- it’s falling now.

The big question is whether the good men and women of the right will realize what a gift they have been given in Mamet. Will they turn out for his plays and embrace their excellence? His is a hard language of four-letter words and scorching insights. Will rightists, despite their commitment to good behavior and values, remember that art is an examination of the world as it is, not as we would have it be?

...

Public announcements of political conversions often cause some in the right-wing blogosphere as well. The Anchoress blog says:

Welcome, Mr. Mamet! Some of us know precisely how it feels to suddenly realize that the jerking knees are not in sync with your life’s realities, and to take a wide step rightward.

Be careful not to step too widely; as with the stock-market and most industries, corrections easily become over-corrections (I’ve been there, done that) until one realizes that extremes no longer fit comfortably anymore because, as your rabbi pointed out, hearing out “the other guy” actually matters.

Enjoy all the havoc you’ve just created, sir, in your little world! You may find that you’ve just given others around you permission to free themselves, too. Maybe the word “liberal” can even be reclaimed, someday, to once again mean “broad minded, open and fair,” which is a far cry from what it means, these days.

Blogger Neo-Neocon discusses her response to the article here.

Finally, conservative screenwriter and novelist Roger L. Simon ponders on his self-titled blog:

[I]t's a cause for celebration when anyone breaks with the sclerotic Hollywood-Broadway orthodoxy - and when it's someone as distinguished as Mamet, it could be cause for a holiday.

It doesn't happen often, but will see how happy Mamet is once his fairweather liberal friends start throwing him to the lions. One thing you can always count on with tolerant and open-minded liberals, is that they are neither tolerant nor open-minded!

Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Liberal #14: Emotion over Thought

Dennis Prager often talks on his show about how at the core of liberal/Democrat decision-making, whether you're a policymaker or average citizen, is "Does it feel good?" and not "Does it do good?" That is, liberal Democrat policymakers don't ever seem to ask: "Will the policy or law we propose actually solve the problem; and if it does, does it create undesirable consequences?" Look practically anywhere in this country and you will see the destructive results of liberal policies that are all about "feeling good" and nothing else. Examples include welfare, affirmative action, and failing public schools.

To be sure, supposedly conservative Republicans -- to the chagrin of their base -- often slip into this lapse of judgment, shaping policy with their "heart," rather with their brain. George W. Bush is one of the most blatant violators, being one of the highest spending Republican presidents ever and being basically paralyzed on confronting illegal immigration.

But there's one recent issue where the "feel good about it, don't think through it" philosophy is most prevalent: the environment. On virtually every environmental policy, liberals/Democrats and unthinking Republicans turn their brains to the "off" position.

For years, especially since 9/11, liberals have talked and even written books about how Republicans use the "politics of fear!!!" to coerce the electorate into supporting their policies. What a scream! Liberals invented the politics of fear. There is nothing more effective in getting people to vote with their heart and not their brain than with fear. And the lion's share of environmentalism and the policies enviro-wackos in power try to impose are based on nothing but the frequently irrational emotion of fear. Without the politics of fear, Al Gore would be just another long-forgotten failed Democrat presidential candidate.

Now, consider the "hybrid" car movement. Not that I don't support the theory of cars that are environmentally friendly. But the operative word here is theory. Not too long ago there were reports on how, despite their huge difference in gas mileage, the environmental impact of a Hummer ends up being much less than that of a Prius, due to the materials used to build the latter. Yet, Priuses are flying off the car lots! Now, lest anyone reading this accuse me of being bought off by Hummer or "Big Oil," I am not suggesting that people should trade in their Prius for a Hummer. But it should make a person think, shouldn't it?

Eric Peters, writing for the American Spectator, thinks so. The other day I saw, in addition to many Priuses, this very tiny, futuristic, silver two-seat car. It was very neat, I initially thought, but then realized I wouldn't want to be in it when ending up in an accident with anything bigger than a bicycle!

Turns out yesterday this article came out about this thing, ironically named the "Smart Car":

Smart Shoppers
By Eric Peters
Published 3/19/2008 12:07:29 AM

How smart, really, is the Smart car?

It's not especially inexpensive -- $11,590 for the base Pure coupe -- $13,590 for the "loaded" Passion coupe (and $16,590 for the convertible). At least, not relative to what else you can buy for that money -- for example, a Chevy Aveo ($10,235), Toyota Yaris ($12,225), Kia Spectra ($12,895), or Hyundai Accent ($12,925).

And those are subcompact sedans; they can carry four people. The so-called Smart car is a hypercompact two-seater. If you need room for even three people, you'll need to buy another car. How smart is that, exactly?

But it gets great gas mileage -- right?

Actually, not that great. EPA rates the Smart car at 33 mpg city and 40 mpg on the highway. That's not bad. Then again, a Toyota Yaris (with four doors and room for four people, remember) gets 29 city, 36 highway. So the "smart" car gets exactly 4 mpg better mileage in town and on the highway. Big whoop. And unlike traditional subcompacts, which can be driven pretty much anywhere, the Smart car is only usable as an in-city commuter.

With just a tiny 1.0 liter, 70-hp engine, the Smart is dangerously underpowered at speeds where traffic is moving faster than 45 mph or so. It needs 15-16 seconds to reach 60 mph (about 5 seconds more than the slowest current-year subcompact) and has a best-case top speed of about 90 mph, flat out. That leaves not much of a margin when trying to keep up with highway traffic running 70 or faster.

And it is at a bone-crunching disadvantage if it ever gets hit by a standard-sized car at anything above stop-and-go driving speeds. Take one out in traffic at your own risk.

How, exactly, is that smart?

If the car cost $6k -- even $8k -- it might make sense. It would be cheap transpo, especially as an in-city runabout. And at that price point, one could buy a Smart for local trips and have another, larger (and more roadworthy) car available for longer/highway trips -- and it could possibly make economic sense. But why buy a Smart that costs as much as a conventional subcompact economy car -- but which is only slightly more efficient and a lot less usable?

The only people who can live with a two-person-only vehicle as their only vehicle are singles -- and even then, what happens when you have more than one friend who needs a ride? Or one friend -- and the two of you want to go shopping? Where do you put the stuff you'll buy?

The Smart's mileage, though, is the real disappointment. It's barely better than what the best economy compacts currently deliver. An extra 4 mpg is okay -- but it's only a slight improvement and if you do the math, most of your over-the-road savings will have already been consumed by the Smart car's higher up-front costs.

One thousand dollars -- the approximate price difference between the base Smart and the lowest cost current model year economy subcompacts -- will buy you around 333 gallons of fuel at $3 per gallon. That translates into almost 10,000 miles' worth of free gasoline if you bought something like a Yaris instead (29 mpg times 333). And that's using the Yaris's city mileage for the numbers crunching. Assuming 36 mpg -- the Yaris's EPA highway mileage rating -- you'll get almost 12,000 miles of "free" gas if you bought it instead of the Smart.

And you'd have room for your friends/family -- and their stuff.

Hell, you could go out and buy a used late model Corolla or Echo, pay maybe $5,000 bucks for thing, and have free gas for the life of the car relative to what you'd spend just to buy the not-so-smart car. Or -- even better -- buy a 1999-2000-2001 VW New Beetle TDI turbo diesel. These things get 42 city/49 highway -- superior to the Smart on both counts; a good one with low mileage will cost you about $6,000-$8,000 or so, according to the used car pricing guides.

And you can take it out on the highway without first writing your last will and testament, too.

SO, WHAT IS THE APPEAL of this thing? I suspect it's of a piece with what I like to call hybrid fever. There is a segment of the population that likes to wear their green on their sleeves -- showy environmentalism rather than plain Jane common sense.

It's the reason why people spend several thousand dollars more to buy a hybrid over an otherwise equivalent standard car. They probably realize they're not saving any money (and the "environmental cost" of hybrids is actually pretty high when you take into account the totality -- raw materials, manufacturing/disposal costs, etc.), but these folks like to present a public display of their politically correct values whenever they drive. A Prius does that; an older Corolla doesn't.

If you doubt the power of image over actuality, consider the Honda Civic hybrid. Though very similar to the Toyota Prius in terms of function, it looked like an ordinary Civic -- so its owner was unable to enjoy the image boost of driving an obvious hybrid. It was a sales flop -- while the Prius has sold gangbusters.

Likewise, the Smart car isn't about being smart. It's about showing how cool/trendy -- and politically correct -- you are.

A genuinely smart Smart car would be a minimalist subcompact that weighs about 1,800 lbs., gets 55 mpg or better via a modern turbo-diesel engine -- and which has a base price of around $11,000. Unfortunately, no such car is currently available.

Which shows just how smart we really are.

Eric Peters is an automotive columnist and author of Automotive Atrocities (MBI

The topic of liberalism being driven by emotion, rather than thought, will be addressed in future posts ...

Articles of Note: The Next Black President Won’t Be A Democrat (Bob Parks)

We need more people like conservative and (gasp!) African-American commentator Bob Parks. Here's why:

The Next Black President Won’t Be A Democrat

While drinking my morning coffee, I watched an editorial from the president and general manager of our local ABC affiliate. He seemed to be genuinely hurt by the turn the presidential primaries has taken.

He concluded,

“And the most toxic political ism of all, racism, has sparked a firestorm touching all voters --- black, white, male, female, young and old.

“This week Senator Obama felt he had to address the elephant in the room. Even at the highest levels -- whether it is a prominent minister or a former vice-presidential candidate --when it comes to the issue of race, Americans harbor beliefs and private hurts that erupted in public.

“Let open and constructive debate continue on a festering problem plaguing America -- it's a discussion long overdue.”

– Bill Fine, WCVB

I believe America IS ready for the next female or Black president. However, should that happen, that person will not be a Democrat, as that party has yet to acknowledge it’s racist and sexist past, and we all know what happens to those who don’t learn from the sins of their past.

Think about it.

It’s the liberal theology that deems it necessary to segregate students. Almost every high school and college has a Black Student Union. That thinking has also spawned feminist groups, Latino groups, gay groups, and whatever other “group” that they deem worthy of additional recognition.

It’s liberal thinking that has created a hypersensitive atmosphere in the workplace. It’s progressive thinking that’s dictates that some people need a special advantage to compete with the mainstream. It’s their policies that make it so people have to watch what they say (depending on whom they are talking about) in order not to offend.

A more mainstream electorate supports Black Republicans by nature, while they are opposed and hated by white and Black Democrats alike. Racial slurs directed towards Black Republicans are tolerated and even performed by white liberals with glee. This I know from  experience.

The first Black Secretary of State was a Republican. The first Black National Security Advisor was a Republican. The first Black female Secretary of State was a Republican. With that, I predict, the next female or Black person to become President of the United States will be a Republican. Democrats just haven’t “grown” enough.

Most of us remember the political circus that was the nomination of Republican Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court. Even after surviving the “high tech lynching” that was the Anita Hill sideshow, Thomas continues to be a Black punching bag for liberals to this day.

 

 

When President Bush nominated Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, while receiving 76% of the vote electing her to the California Supreme Court, many Democrats not only opposed her nomination, but also proudly displayed the very intolerance they lecture the general population to avoid.

When Republican Ken Blackwell, former secretary of state of the U.S. state of Ohio, ran for Governor in the 2006 election he was, as he put it, “called everything except a child of God”. He was vilified on racial terms, and the very taboos liberals lecture the general population to avoid, they laughed at and participated in when aimed at Blackwell.

 

The appointments of Colin Powell and Dr. Condoleezza Rice to Secretary of State, the highest appointments of people of color in our nation’s history, should have prompted a celebration. Instead, it was the “tolerant, inclusive” left that put on public display the very intolerance they decry.

Democrats can bemoan the current, internal tone of the Democrat presidential primary, but until they come to grips with the racism that is apparently in their blood, they will never reach the pinnacle of tolerance and inclusion they instruct us to achieve.

The irony of this situation almost reaches the level of parody.

It sure does. I was reminded last week of many of the incidents Parks sites. Add to that one of Wright's many tirades (which Obama in his speech earlier this week "warned" media outlets to stop airing), he referred to our Secretary of State as "Condo-skeez-a Rice." Yeah, that's tolerance for ya.

Yesterday, one of my Obama-supporting friends (a white gay Reagan Democrat) said he was seriously considering changing his mind in light of this Obama-Wright mess. My friend reminded me he had spent nine years on the south side of Chicago, as both a University of Chicago student and a church organist. He listed by name a huge number of prominent churches the Obamas could have joined. He also described how he spent those nine years in fear for his physical well-being due to the anti-white hatred fomented there by angry -- and always liberal Democrat -- politicians and activists. And this was not in Obama's white grandmother's time; this was the mid 80's to the mid 90's, the period during which Jesse Jackson sought the Democrat presidential ticket.

As for me, a "typical white person," I reject the hatred for me from angry -- and always liberal Democrat -- blacks. And just like Bob Parks, I'm fed up with watching liberal Democrats' hatred of conservative Republican blacks, while at the same time holding themselves up as the tolerant ones. Gimme a break.

Five Years in Iraq - And the Media Is Still Rooting for Defeat

Today is the 5th anniversary of the U.S.-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq. To mark this occasion, the ever-vigilant Media Research Center has released their latest of several Special Reports documenting the mainstream media’s slanted coverage of the War on “Terror.”

As usual, the report exposes the MSM’s coverage as blatantly and undeniably anti-American, anti-military, and anti-victory. This, not surprisingly, echoes the blatantly and undeniably anti-American, anti-military, and anti-victory platform of the Democrat Party.

Below are highlights from seven Executive Summaries of the past five years of MRC special reports on the MSM’s war coverage. Prepare to be disgusted and enraged.

[All these summaries are abridged by me and all highlights are mine. Click on each title to link to the original summary text (from which you can also link to the full reports.)]

Charge #1:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – hates and mistrusts the Bush administration, but protects and trusts our “allies.”

The Proof:

World News Tonight’s Anti-War Agenda
Despite Pledge of Objectivity, ABC Spent Pre-War Period Undermining Support for Bush
March 18, 2003

MRC analysts reviewed 234 Iraq stories from World News Tonight between January 1 and March 7, plus ABC’s live coverage of breaking news during the same period. They found a pervasive pattern of bias on four fronts:

• Blaming Bush, not allies. Despite UN incompetence and French intransigence, ABC reporters insisted that the lack of a compromise was Bush’s fault … [Peter Jennings] charged “the administration is prepared to jeopardize its relations with several of its oldest and best friends in order to get its way about Iraq.” Jennings would not say that several of America’s “oldest and best friends” were jeopardizing relations with us to get their way about Iraq.

• No doubting the dictator. While ABC treated U.S. claims skeptically, comments from Saddam’s Iraq were usually relayed to American audiences without question. On February 28, ABC’s Baghdad reporter Dan Harris aired an Iraqi nurse’s claim that U.S.-led military action would be a disaster. “For sure there’ll be premature labors, and for sure there’ll be a high percentage of miscarriages.

• Sanitizing the radical “peace” movement. As with the last Gulf War a dozen years ago, organized protests against U.S. military action have been led by radical groups such as the Workers World Party, a Stalinist organization. But as they did in 1991, this year ABC went out of its way to show reasonable “peace activists,” who mainstream Americans could identify with … ABC omitted the radicalism of organizers and extremism of many anti-American speakers from sympathetic protest news.

• Playing with polls. ABC stressed polls finding reservations about Bush’s strategy, and downplayed surveys showing public support. On February 24, for example, ABC found support for war at 63%, steady from the previous period. But Jennings painted the public as anti-Bush: “We find that 56% of Americans want the administration to take it slower and try harder to get more UN support.” Astonishingly, the same poll revealed Americans’ low opinion of the UN — only 38% approved of its handling of Iraq, vs. 55% for Bush.

— Tim Graham and Rich Noyes

Charge #2:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – suppresses or dismisses successes in Iraq, while boosting or exaggerating every setback.

The Proof:

TV’s Bad News Brigade
ABC, CBS and NBC’s Defeatist Coverage of the War in Iraq
October 13, 2005

MRC analysts reviewed all 1,388 Iraq stories broadcast on ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News from January 1 through September 30 … Among the key findings:

■ 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 …

Charge #3:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – mistrusts and hates the Bush administration, but trusts and sympathizes with Saddam Hussein.

The Proof:

Covering Saddam's Shenanigans, Not His Crimes
ABC, CBS, and NBC’s Trial News Stresses Ex-Dictator’s Outbursts, Not Evidence or Victims’ Testimony
March 20, 2006

MRC analysts reviewed every mention of the trial on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news from October 16 (when the networks began previewing the trial) through March 15 (when Saddam himself took the stand).

MRC found the networks spent nearly three times as much airtime on Saddam’s courtroom antics as on the serious testimony of his victims and the documentary evidence that Saddam himself ordered the killing of more than 140 residents of the Shiite town of Dujail and the imprisonment and torture of hundreds more townspeople. Details:

■ He’s No O.J. Simpson. Saddam’s trial has been mentioned in just 64 stories (include­ing brief anchor-read items) over the last 5 months. Total coverage amounted to just under 90 minutes … In contrast, the first six months of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial garnered 431 stories (824 minutes) from those same networks, a 1994 Center for Media and Public Affairs study found. Simpson was accused of killing two people; Saddam is thought responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.

■ Saddam Steals the Show. In spite of a record equal to some of the worst tyrants in human history, reporters found Saddam’s personal reactions and orchestrated antics more compelling than the witness testimony against him. The networks gave Saddam’s behavior more airtime than any other topic — nearly 30 minutes, one-third of the coverage.

In contrast, the networks allotted just 11½ minutes for witness testimony and evidence, just slightly below the nearly 12 minutes devoted to suggestions Saddam would not get a fair hearing. On the Oct. 18 World News Tonight, ABC’s Jim Sciutto pointed out how “human rights groups doubt the former dictator will get a fair trial.” On March 15, after Saddam’s testimony was cut off by the judge, ABC showed complaints from Ramsey Clark: “Look, he’s on trial for his life. A defendant has a right to give his background and his thoughts and his emotions.”

■ Hiding the Evidence. The networks provided merely sporadic coverage of the evidence. ABC was the only newscast to air a full report on Saddam’s admission on March 1 that he ordered the Dujail killings. (CBS and NBC gave that news just 11 and 18 seconds, respectively). Only CBS mentioned the December 21 testimony of Ali al-Haydari, who was 14 when he saw evidence of torture: “I heard screaming and shouting, then silence as a body came out in a blanket.” But that same night all of the networks mentioned Saddam’s claim that U.S. soldiers had beaten him.

Despite the severity of the crimes, reporters fixated on the villain. “Saddam seemed like he was still president,” claimed NBC’s Richard Engel (Oct. 19). To CBS’s Lara Logan, Saddam’s disruptive shenanigans were winning the day: “The appearance of credibility is what really matters in this trial, and that’s what’s missing at the moment.” (Feb. 2)

— Rich Noyes

Charge #4:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – hates the troops.

The Proof:

Touting Military Misdeeds, Hiding Heroes
ABC, CBS and NBC Broadcast Hours of Charges Against U.S. Marines But Ignored 14 Top U.S. Heroes
June 12, 2006

MRC analysts tallied all stories regarding charges of U.S. military misconduct that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC’s morning, evening, primetime and late night news shows from May 17 through June 7, before the networks’ pessimism was interrupted by the successful termination of terrorist menace Abu Musab al-Zarqawi … They found that none of America’s heroes received anywhere near as much attention from the broadcast networks as TV gave the latest allegations of military wrongdoing — and many received no coverage at all.

Pushing Hard on Haditha [T]he networks have presumed a guilty verdict and a blow to the overall American military’s reputation. “Will Haditha be the My Lai of the Middle East?” asked Nightline co-host Terry Moran on May 25 … Filling in as anchor of the May 31 CBS Evening News, Russ Mitchell pronounced that “if the allegations prove true, they’d be a huge new blow to the American military’s standing with Iraq’s government and it’s people.”

On the June 7 Today, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell similarly labeled Haditha a “black eye for American policy,” while her colleague Richard Engel seemed upset that Iraq’s television network wasn’t making more of the scandal. “It’s barely on the news,” Engel fretted on the June 5 Nightly News.

Where Have All the Heroes Gone? The highest award, the Medal of Honor, was given to the family of Army Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, who lost his life while protecting more than 100 fellow soldiers during the battle for Baghdad’s airport in April 2003. Nineteen servicemen received the second highest honors, all for “extraordinary heroism” in combat. The list includes two fallen members of the Air Force who were awarded the Air Force Cross; three soldiers who merited the Distinguished Service Cross; and three sailors and 11 Marines who received the Navy Cross, one posthumously.

Most of these men have never been recognized by ABC, CBS or NBC. None have been given more than a fraction of the attention that the latest allegations against the military have received. And while the networks have told of acts of heroism by others in the military — with Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester of the Kentucky National Guard getting the most coverage among those honored with a Silver Star — none of those other positive stories have interested the networks as much as news of possible military misconduct …

The most heavily-covered hero was Medal of Honor winner Paul Smith, who received 41 minutes of coverage during a 24-month period, 79 percent of the heroes’ total …

— Rich Noyes, with research assistance from MRC analysts Geoff Dickens, Brian Boyd, Michael Rule and Scott Whitlock.

Charge #5:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – accuses Fox News of slanted war coverage to benefit the Bush administration, whereas in reality it's the MSM that's slanting the news to damage the Bush administration.

The Proof:

The Iraq War on Cable TV
CNN and MSNBC vs. The Fox News Channel
December, 2006

MRC analysts reviewed all three cable news networks’ reporting on Iraq during a crucial ten weeks this year, from May 15 through July 21, a period that included heavy news coverage of allegations of U.S. military misconduct at Haditha as well as the successful air strike that eliminated al-Qaeda terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Analysts looked at weekday coverage during the 10am EDT and 2pm EDT hours, a time of day when FNC, CNN and MSNBC all emphasize traditional news reporting from field correspondents, not opinionated talk show-style debate.

The results show clear editorial differences between the three cable networks. CNN and MSNBC resemble the big broadcast networks, emphasizing a bad news agenda of U.S. misdeeds and mistakes, while FNC was better able to balance the bad news with news of U.S. achievements in Iraq. Key findings:

• FNC was the most balanced network. All three cable news networks ran more stories reflecting bad news about the situation in Iraq than stories about coalition achievements. But FNC was the most balanced, with 20 percent of stories emphasizing optimism, compared with 30 percent that stressed pessimism.

• CNN was the most pessimistic network. Fully three-fifths (60%) of all CNN stories on the war emphasized setbacks, misdeeds or pessimism about progress in Iraq, compared to just 10 percent that reported on achievements or victories. MSNBC’s tilt was closer to CNN, with four times more bad news stories (48%) than reports stressing good news (12%).

• CNN and MSNBC sensationalized charges of U.S. wrongdoing. While FNC provided significant coverage to unproven claims of U.S. military misconduct in Iraq (12 stories), the other networks took a much more sensational approach to the story. MSNBC aired three times as much coverage of alleged misconduct as FNC (36 stories), while CNN aired a whopping 59 stories — nearly five times the coverage of FNC.

• Fox News Channel aired more stories about coalition success in Iraq. FNC aired a total of 81 stories announcing coalition victories in Iraq, nearly as many as MSNBC (47 stories) and CNN (41 stories) combined. During the ten weeks of our study, most coverage of Iraq’s political process reflected optimism about the democratically-elected government, a topic that FNC also showcased more than either MSNBC or CNN (63 stories vs. 34 and 38 respectively).

• Even on the best day, CNN and MSNBC found negative themes to promote. While all three networks presented news of Zarqawi’s death as a victory for the U.S. coalition, CNN chose that day to interview a Middle East journalist who complained, “There’s no good news in Iraq. There’s no corner that’s been turned, there’s no milestone....I just feel very depressed and hopeless.” Over on MSNBC, the network took time away from covering the breaking news of Zarqawi’s death to feature positive profiles of United States military deserters.

Charge #6:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – is hoping for and rooting for U.S. defeat in Iraq.

The Proof:

TV's Pre-Emptive War Against Iraq
Before Iraq Plan Unveiled, Reporters Said It Was Unpopular, Wouldn’t Work & War Was “Lost Cause”
January 11, 2007

The media’s air war against the plan to try to actually win the Iraq war assured that most of Bush’s audience would have already heard journalists claiming the new mission is wrong-headed and doomed to failure.

■ “Like a folly.” Last Tuesday on NBC’s Today, anchor emeritus Tom Brokaw argued that the way Saddam Hussein was executed revealed Iraq as “a deeply divided country along tribal lines,” and that sending more troops would “seem to most people...like a folly.” Brokaw added: “I think a lot of people who are raising their hands to join the armed services are wondering, ‘I’m giving my life for that?’”

■ “Wrong Way Corrigan.” The next morning on Today, political analyst Chris Matthews declared the President’s plan dead on arrival: “I expect it will be treated the way Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia was reacted to. The American people aren’t gonna like it.” Matthews insisted that the voters wanted to end, not mend, Bush’s Iraq policies and “for the President to go Wrong Way Corrigan on this thing and to increase the number of troops, take us deeper into Iraq, would be to reject the opinion of the American people.”

■ “Absolutely no difference.” This week, as more details of the President’s plan were revealed, the anti-surge drum-beat got louder. On CBS’s Early Show, co-host Harry Smith asked Baghdad reporter Lara Logan if extra troops would make a difference. “The best thing we have is to look at what has happened already. When the U.S. brought in 12,000 more troops into Baghdad last summer, it made absolutely no difference,” Logan replied. “In fact, security here in Baghdad got even worse.”

■ “Lost Cause?” On Tuesday’s Today, NBC’s White House reporter David Gregory suggested even White House insiders have lost faith. “As the President prepares to start a new phase of the war in Iraq, the White House is fending off charges that key figures in the administration have concluded the war is lost.” NBC’s graphic headline read “Lost Cause? Can U.S. Win the War In Iraq?” Gregory also cited unnamed “critics” to suggest Bush’s motives were psychological: “U.S. commanders who opposed adding troops to Iraq have been replaced, prompting critics to charge the President’s resolve has become stubbornness.”

■ “Roll Call of Critics” On Wednesday’s Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer confronted White House aide Dan Bartlett: “I just want to run through a partial roll call of the number of people who have either opposed what the President is going to do, or expressed serious reservations.” As she read off names such as Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel, their names and faces scrolled over her right shoulder. “I could go on and on,” Sawyer told Bartlett. “What don’t they get? What don’t they understand?” Bartlett objected, saying some of the generals she listed as critics “helped devise this plan.”

■ “Breaking Point.” On yesterday’s Today, co-host Meredith Vieira doubted that the U.S. military could meet the challenge: “The cornerstone of his plan is sending around 20,000 additional U.S. troops into the war zone. But is the military stretched to the breaking point already?” Reporter Jim Miklaszewski suggested it was: “The pace of two wars has left two-thirds of the Army’s combat brigades rated ‘Not Ready to Fight.’”

■ “The cost has been enormous.” Uniquely last night, CBS’s Katie Couric decided to introduce Bush’s speech by repeating the war’s terrible toll: “Four years into the war, the cost has been enormous. More than 3,000 American military killed, more than 22,000 wounded. The dollar cost, close to $400 billion.” Emphasizing her point, CBS posted each demoralizing statistic as a full-screen graphic.

The new plan may succeed, or it may fail. But the media’s mantra these past few days has been that failure seems inevitable, so we shouldn’t even try.

— Rich Noyes

Charge #7:

The MSM – in lockstep with the Democrat Party – is hoping for and rooting for the 2007 surge to fail.

The Proof:

Fewer U.S. Dead = Less TV Coverage of Iraq
Networks Minimize Good News From Iraq, Don’t Press Democrats on “Wrong-Headed” Predictions
February 28, 2008

One year ago, liberal journalists depicted the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq as a certain failure. “A lot of people are going to go to bed tonight terrified,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews opined just minutes after President Bush announced the policy on January 10, 2007. Other journalists were only slightly more subtle. “Many experts warn, it’s too little, too late,” NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski argued on the January 8, 2007 Nightly News. The next morning on NBC’s Today, the network’s graphic describing Iraq was “Lost Cause?” …

MRC intern Lyndsi Thomas helped tabulate all ABC, CBS and NBC evening news stories about Iraq since the beginning of 2007, just as the surge strategy was being implemented. After heavy coverage of the shift to a new Iraq policy in January and February 2007, the TV coverage began to closely track the rising and falling death rates for U.S. soldiers in Iraq. When the number of U.S. fatalities jumped in May, TV coverage jumped, too. When U.S. casualties began to steadily decline, TV coverage of Iraq dramatically decreased. …

While the amount of coverage has shriveled, the tone remains more negative than positive. So far this month, the three evening newscasts have aired just 41 items on Iraq, most (23) just brief items read by the anchor. A mere seven stories were field reports from Iraq. Only ABC’s World News (February 13) noted the passage of key legislation by the Iraqi parliament, followed by a unique story the next evening on the success of the surge. The CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News offered no such stories in February, but NBC did find time to report a visit to Iraq by actress Angelina Jolie.

Back in December, NBC’s Tim Russert conceded that the media were less interested in covering a successful U.S. mission in Iraq, telling anchor Brian Williams that “with the surge in Iraq and the level of American deaths declining, it is off the front pages.”

This is not neutral news judgment, but a great favor to anti-surge Democrats, since TV’s lack of interest in Iraq spares them the chore of defending their now-discredited opposition to the surge. Does anyone think the media would have let John McCain off the hook had the surge failed as spectacularly as it has succeeded?

— Rich Noyes

Well, there you have it. Five years of MSM Bush-bashing, America-bashing, and military-bashing. Instead of doing their job (i.e., reporting the news), members of the MSM have instead regressed back to their anti-Vietnam bash-America youth and have abused their positions by selling American defeat in Iraq.

All to obstruct the Bush administration and the U.S. military, whom they despise.

All to prop up the Democrats, with whom they align and want back in power.

And all at the expense of your life, as well as the lives of your family, the troops, the American people, the Iraqi people, and future victims of radical Islamic terrorism worldwide.

But don't fret: Obama wants you to vote for change in November!