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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Saturday, November 16, 2002
I Didn't Know Anything about
I Didn't Know Anything about Hu, as I displayed in this post. Here's a UPI article that has one take on the new ruler of China. However, apparently we can't forget about Jiang.
That's probably true. In the history of these Marxist-Leninist States (including China), the head guy apparently "retires" from positions but in reality keeps control.
You're Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations.
The United Nations Security Council has just passed a tough new Resolution telling Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction and cooperate fully with inspections or face serious consequences. Iraq's government sent you a letter saying they'll comply, but filled with reservations and abuse. Your job is to.
A) Warn Iraq that they need to cooperate this time without playing games, and stop violating past resolutions, as the new one warns.
or
B) Tell the U.S. to not to be mean to poor little Iraq and start laying the table for defining Iraq's violations as unimportant and not worth bothering about in the hopes of lulling the world back to 90s-era somolience on the matter and rescuing Saddam so the deals your European pals have cut with him will remain valuable.
Obviously, the entire point of the UN and "multilateralism" in general is B.
The patrols enforcing no-fly zones have never been authorised by the Security Council.
Because effectively enforcing the resolutions has never been a goal of the UN.
So, Al Gore is going to run on a platform of "I waz robbed" and the kind of health care program that got all of a quarter of the vote in (fairly Liberal) Oregon.
Good luck with that, Al. But I wasn't joking, man. It's obvious.
I maintain: that dude is dead. It also isn't a big deal one way or another. Personalizing the whole thing to "we're after Osama" has been one of the obsessions of the war's critics, anyhow. Not of Bush or the "hawks". I think he's a gonner, I don't think the impact one way or another on the war is all that great (though of course its nice to have him dead), because it's not about one guy.
Some terrorist members of the Weather Underground weren't caught for twenty years. That doesn't mean they had any greater impact on things, once the movement they were part of was rendered impotent (on the level of violence, at least. More's to be done in the "War on Bad Philosophy" front where that stuff came from, but the members of the Weather Underground who were at large have had no effect one way or another on things for the last twenty years, in spite of the fact that some were in hidding until quite recently).
Then there's James Lileks's views on why Osama isn't appearing on video tapes anymore. In any case, if he isn't dead (that dude is dead), he may as well be dead for all the relevance he has to the outcome of the war.
The meeting between Mr. Innis and Justice Department officials marked the first time since September 11 that federal law enforcement agents have publicly confronted concerns about domestic black Muslims as a national security issue.
"There has been a fear because of racial and religious reasons," Mr. Innis said. "But [many federal officials] have been in denial but this has become a very real danger. And there are signs all over the place.
"If we want to ignore this danger then we are not doing a good job to keep this country safe," said Mr. Innis, who added that yesterday's meeting was "informal" and said he hoped it was a prelude to a conference with Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Mr. Innis said that Justice Department officials at the meeting expressed concerned about the "balance of civil liberties and a national security crisis.
Too bad CAIR's reaction isn't like CORE's when it comes to concern over recruitment efforts by terrorist groups. The Onion's satire drives the point home.
Blair Hits the Airwaves against Saddam, in an address aimed at Iraq's people. Always a good idea. Things like this helped dissident movements in Eastern Europe.
Casper Weinberger, chairman of Forbes, Inc. and Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, said that Reagan's moral strength in opposing communism provides a model of how the Bush administration should develop policy to pursue terrorists.
Yah. Similar people as think that "Axis of Evil" rhetoric is counterproductive thought "Evil Empire" rhetoric was bad, too. In fact, in some cases it's the same identical people, having learned nothing from history and forgotten nothing, either. Plus la change
He said that despite the prevailing belief at the time in détente, and even despite strong opposition from within his own administration, family and inner circle, Reagan steadfastly held onto his belief that an arms buildup was an effective strategy to show the Soviets that they could not compete with the United States. . .
According to Steven F. Hayward, an AEI fellow and a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco, the lessons of Reagan's determination can shed light on the present day debate over how to defeat al Qaida and Islamic terrorist threats.
"Reagan proved that the simplicity of Ockham's Razor is best applied to foreign policy," said Hayward. Ockham's Razor, a basic principle of scientific research, is translated from the Latin as "The simplest explanation that fits the facts."
He added that Reagan's political and intellectual courage to stick to his guns in the face of overwhelming opposition is comparable to President George W. Bush's strong stance on Iraq and the war on terror in the face of European opposition and domestic criticism of his foreign policy.
"It is a straight line between 'evil empire' and 'axis of evil' and the reaction of our allies has been remarkably similar," Hayward said.
Yah. What he said. But here:
"For politically correct reasons we refuse to analyze our opponents," he said.
For example, Gingrich said that 14 of the 15 people involved in the Sept. 11 terror plot were from Saudi Arabia, but that the United States government has done nothing to address the issue with Saudi Arabia, and that Americans refuse to, "think about what this may mean."
Newt is wrong. Americans have thought and are thinking about what that means. It's the usual suspects - State Department, Academics, media commentators, and many politicians on both sides of the isle - who refuse to think about what this may mean. Or at least they act like they've buried their head in the sands on this one (I think that those called "Hawks" have thought about what this means, and have designed their strategy in such a way as to knock down Iraq so as to be able to make the House of Saud superfluous - killing two nemeses with one blow. That is why the House of Saud, with no love for the House of Hussein, is so adamantly opposed to "regime change").
But the American people? We have thought about what this means, and attitudes towards Saud Arabia have taken a major shift as a result. What is true is there has been a concerted effort to get us to stop thinking about it (usually under the banner of "we shouldn't alienate our allies, why would we want to make more enemies" and rot like that; most Americans have concluded that we're not "making" an enemy where none exists - just recognizing a reality that some would prefer we not recognize; just as so many had an interest during the detente era in trying to head off a recognition of what the Soviet Union was like).
The "Golden Age" of Islam is a myth, writes Robert Locke.
There's certainly something to that. All the genuflection towards Islam is done at the expense of accurate history. Far from treating non-Moslems well in a tolerant society, Islam reduced them to the status of second-class citizens at best (Dhiminitude), as sanctioned by the Koran. This was the period not of peaceful co-existence, but of continually "bloody borders" on all fronts - in Iberia, Africa, Anatolia (Asia Minor), the Caucasus, the Indus valley; this period was one of unending raids and invasions. Enslavement of those who were not "people of the book" was commonplace. These are just the things sanctioned by the Koran. As with all religions, there were those who claimed to march in the banner of Islam but betrayed its tenets.
For example, one of the pieces of conventional wisdom that forms the basis of this argument is "the Crusades", and how Moslems (portrayed in the theatre of multicultural history as the victims of unprovoked aggression) acted in comparison to how the Crusaders acted. Selah ed-Din's benign behavior is contrasted with that of the Crusader capture of Jerusalem and with Richard the Lion-Hearted's execution of prisoners at Acre. But this ignores the devastation Islamic warriors wrought in Anatolia in the period following the battle of Manzikurt, which resulted in the brutal and bloody sack of many cities. It also ignores, for example, the massacre of Armenian refugees outside Edessa, conducted by the soldiers of Islam. It likewise ignores the complex nature of Selah ed-Din's own character - his hands are not as clean, and he was not as pure, as often presented, as a study of the actual history of the period shows.
But all this can be pushed a bit far the other way, too. It's true that Islam was not the noble, tolerant society that many try to portray it as having been, so as to co-opt it for modern-day political causes. But it's also true that by the standards of the period Islam was relatively enlightened, and there is a reason why the Christian chroniclers of the Crusading period romanticize Saladin as much as modern MultiCultists do - there was much to admire in him, and in Islamic society of the period, relative to that of Western Europe (but, on the other hand, Islam was not more advanced and humane than the civilization of Constantinople).
The thing is, Islamic civilization didn't progress much from these days, while Western Europe did (and Byzantium was destroyed, by a combination of Western European and Islamic assaults); so we look at Moslems enslaving Christians and Animists in Sudan, for example, and see them as relatively backward, but really things haven't changed on that frontier for at least fifteen hundred years. Yes, there are periods of peaceful cohabitation, but alternating with periods of aggression and exploitation. There are within Islam's frontiers some relatively benign governments (Jordan, maybe. Though benign in a tough-minded kind of way) and some not-so-keen ones. This is not a change or regression from some golden period. It has ever been thus. The only difference is that the rest of the world has moved beyond that.
Is this a harsh evaluation? Even unfair in some respects (probably a bit - it's a short synopsis, not a book length treatment). But the ruthless sack of the city of Amorium in the early 9th century by the Caliph, the execution of many of its inhabitants and enslavement of the rest, is as much a part of the middle ages "golden age" of Islam as the scholarship sponsored in the Caliph's Court.
Europe Apparently Believes the UN Resolution is a win for Saddam and a loss for Bush:
Matters become more complicated when we see that there are many, including some leading figures in Europe, who would rather trust Saddam than Bush. There are many more who, in this age of political correctness, insist on the moral equivalence of the Ba'athist regime in Baghdad with the American "Imperialism."
Since Europe pushed for the Resolution, and Europe (France) thinks its a victory for them, then what does that say about who they're ally in this is and who they are treating as an enemy to be defeated?
Amir Tahiri writes:
What if Saddam's cooperation is only 50 percent? Would the resolution become redundant, opening the path for military action? Certainly not. You can imagine the chorus of the French, Russian, Chinese and others in the council insisting that Saddam be given one more "last chance." In fact, at least 18 of the previous resolutions dealing with Iraq include clear "last chance" clauses. Saddam has been living with a series of last chances since 1991.
I fully expect that this is exactly what will happen.
Here we are, constantly told how "hurt" Europe feels in our growing attitude (recognition of) towards their behavior, as if they aren't our allies. They insist, loudly, that the man they sign commercial deals with is no more liked in Europe than America - they just want it to be handled multilaterally. They view the use of the UN as a victory for them. . .but also a victory for Saddam and a defeat for Bush. Something they wanted, badly. Then they wonder why we ask ourselves "are these guys allies? Or enemies?"
Yah, CNN, the New York Times, Bob Scheer's LA Times, the Washington Post, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Katie Kuric, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, MSNBC (especially Donahue and Chris Matthews) even TV shows like The West Wing are all part of a Vast Right-Wing Media Conspiracy to screw over the Democrats. Money from wealthy foundations go to fund PBS to keep guys like Moyers on the air to help foster the Right-Wing media bias. Ed Driscoll is so wrong. Even the major Universities are all in bed with the Republicans, helping them spread their Right-Wing views (they do it, as Vidal might say, because they get research grant money from wealthy interests in exchange for their co-optation into the Crypto-Fascist Opinion Network).
How do they manage that? Well, by being agent-provocateurs. Double agents. Look at what Howell Raines has done to the New York Times! All those columnists and all those front-page "news analysis" pieces that present a version of Liberal and Democratic opinion that is so laughable that it discredits the cause it purports to serve. The sloppy inaccuracies supposedly aimed to skew things to "help" the Liberal cause but get punctured when the truth comes out. It's all part of the Conspiracy to keep the Democrats down, man.
But it goes farther than that. Look at elected "Democrat" officials, who are really molls for the Republicans. Rich guys like Ted Kennedy (remember, back as far as the '50s, when Kennedy's were friendly with Nixon. Yes, that Nixon. Tricky Dick. and with Herbert Hoover) who discredit arguments against vouchers by sending their own kids to private schools. Guys like Al Gore and Jesse Jackson who do likewise. All playing their part in the Conspiracy, discrediting Democrats.
There's a reason, man, why the Democrats keep a guy like Terry McAulliffe in charge of the DNC, in spite of the fact that his corrupt business history completely undercut Democrat's efforts to strike a blow against Capitalism. Likewise with Al Gore's prominence - and his family's history with Occidental Oil and the riches they derived from their dealings with Armand Hammer (Soviet spy), which made it hard for his charges of Bush's oil connections to hit home. And why do you think the House Democrats elected Nancy Pelosi as Minority Whip when everyone knows that it's only going to make it harder for the Democrats to shake the Republican's propaganda of the Democratic Party being too Liberal for America and Harold Ford would have been better at reaching out to independent voters?
They're part of the conspiracy, too. See, it all fits together, man! It's a vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Or maybe it's that the people have a conservative bias that somehow gets through all the static of Liberal leaning media bias? No, can't be that. . . .
One of the More exasperatingly untenable but tenacious arguments put forward by the so-called "anti-war" movement is that al-Queda and Saddam could not possibly be in league because his regime is secular while they are religiously motivated. Set aside the fact that this ignores the "strange bedfellows" alliances of convenience that are all too common in history, as well as Saddam's deliberate embrace of Islamic radicalism over the last decade (coincidental to the rise of al-Queda over the same period). These people often argue that al-Queda would love to see Saddam toppled, but set aside the fact that they are never able to point to any evidence of that. Sure, we have evidence a plenty of al-Queda's hostility to the House of Saud, in the statements they've made, and other Arab governments (especially those that participated in the first Gulf War coalition). But they never point to any statements calling for Saddam's regime to be toppled, the way they call for other Arab regimes (the ones that cooperate with America and the West) to be toppled. Likewise set aside the fact that both Saddam and al-Queda discovered that invoking the plight of the Palestinians would be useful to them rather late and nearly simultaneously. Set aside the fact that even though Saddam complains of a shortage of critical medical supplies, Baghdad seems to be the destination of choice for al-Queda leaders seeking medical care.
But set all that aside and look just at the demands made by al-Queda and how they have invariably been consistent with the goals of Saddam, and Saddam's interests (U.S. out of Arabia, toppling of the governments in the region, end of sanctions on Iraq and other assaults on Iraq's "dignity", etc).
The latest tape, whether it came from bin Ladin or not, it is definately from al-Queda. This tape continues this pattern of al-Queda making demands that are strangely similar to Saddam's:
the new tape -- on which bin Laden praises the recent terror attacks and threatens more if the United States goes to war against Iraq
If al-Queda hates Saddam as much as they hate the House of Saud, say, then how come al-Queda's demands and threats are consistently aligned with Saddam, if they are supposed to be hostile to him?
Now that Pelosi is Minority Leader, the Democrats have a major advantage on at least one level.
The party of equality is always very ready to cry foul when someone engages in the usual hardball political battling against one of theirs - "beating up on a woman". Remember what happened in the New York Senate race. They'll play that card quickly, in cases where no one would raise any objection at the tactics used against a Gephardt (D) or Armey (R).
Underhanded and dirty? Well, its a tactic and if it works, it works. Politics is often about going for the other side's balls (which is why this tactic will be used against Republicans) if it gives one a political advantage. There's certainly no rule against it. Republicans will just have to learn how to deal with it. And the electorate will have to learn to roll their eyes and say "puh-leeze" when they pull the "beating up on a woman" card, like we do with so many of the other spurious tactics used by both sides to gain a non-substantive debating edge.
Hiding My Failures by posting mia culpas for them late in the day. I've been saying that I think Harold Ford would end up getting the Whip job. Seems that I was wrong (scroll way, way down; it says Steny Hoyer is going to become Minority Whip).
Now, Hoyer is a ok guy. But. . .
I guess I said I thought Ford would become Whip because I knew he wouldn't win the Minority Leader post, but he's a good dude who, IMO, represents a positive future for the Democrats and they would have done better by themselves to put him in a significant leadership post - such as Whip. Hoyer is a fine enough guy. But I'm not sure anyone can look at him and say he represents a positive future for the Democrats. He's a good old school dealer.
Now, yes, I was wrong. Ford won't become Minority Whip. But at least I didn't pull a major boner, like claiming he'll use the failure of the Democrats to elect him Minority Leader and their choice of someone he (rightly) sees as representing a wrong direction for the Party as an excuse to switch. That ain't gonna happen - if only because Ford doesn't envy the idea of being called a "Tom" and having oreo cookies handed out at his appearances. But there's more to it than that. Ford's a Democrat, a moderate Democrat, and a very good Representative. One thing he's not is a nacient Republican.
Sure, it would be nice if the nations of the world, as represented on the Security Council, had concluded that Saddam is a repugnant and vile dictator who must be kept from further brutalizing his subjects and his neighbors. But that's not what happened. We bought the votes of most of the Security Council members, and they were for sale precisely because these countries are incapable of looking beyond their own narrow self-interests — not because they transcended them. Cameroon cares far more about trade concessions from the U.S. than it does about who sits on the throne in Baghdad. Does any U.N.-loving liberal really believe that Cameroon went along because our cause is just — because the glorious spirit of human cooperation and global harmony filled the air at the U.N.? Well, then, read a frickin' newspaper.
And I don't mean to pick on Cameroon. By pleading for U.N. approval, the no-blood-for-oil crowd increased the international trade in both blood and oil. In order to get the votes of Russia and China we had to give those countries a free pass at killing their Muslim Chechen and Uighur populations, respectively. We also had to promise the continuity of France's oil contracts, and of Russia's too. Whether these countries think we're right about toppling or containing Saddam is something of a mystery; what we do know is that they don't think our case is compelling enough to trump their own narrow self-interests. If it were, we wouldn't have had to spend the last couple of months haggling over what happens to Iraq's debt to Russia or France's oil contracts. Right? I mean, if the U.N. were half the thing it ought to be, our U.N. partners would have dropped those concerns the way Cincinnatus laid down his plow. And if the United States is as wrong and selfish as the anti-war crowd says, then the rest of the Security Council are just a bunch of whores willing to do the wrong thing if we pay them enough.
-Jonah Goldberg. He's also spot on about why the UN's champions don't seem to let the fact that dictatorships and kleptocracies are among those we're defering to:
Maybe this is because there are almost no white and certainly no first-world dictators anymore, and black, Asian, and Arab tyrants simply don't count in the eyes of the multicultural Left. In fact, I would bet that if you polled the average fair-trading, organically grown, earth-friendly, living-wage-paying coffeehouse in Seattle, or the typical opened-toed-shoe-wearing protester at an anti-globalization march, asking "Who comes to your mind when you hear the word 'dictator'?" you'd get more George Bushes than Mugabes, Assads, and Jong-Ils combined.
Which, on the basis of available evidence, is certainly a fair point. Also, since in a previous exchange I had, a comparison was made (not by me, mind) with how elected officials accountable to the citizens act and how the UN acts, this point should be stressed, too:
People from all across the political spectrum often make the argument that members of our own Congress are inclined to make back-room deals that serve the narrow interests of their parties and themselves. The Naderites consistently harp on how citizens are locked out of the process. "Republicrats," according to this view, split the spoils and leave the rest of us holding the bag. Obviously, these arguments aren't completely worthless, but they are usually overblown, since our politicians have to deal with fair elections and an aggressive free press. . .
. . .The representatives of the Arab nations — not one of them a democracy with a free press — do not represent the interests of their people. They represent the interests of the corrupt governments who sent them there. So in this sense, the U.N. is not an arena for democratic debate. . .
All too true, and not something that reasoning people would brush under the carpet and elide over in evaluating whether deference to these "multilateral institutions" is a positive thing or a corrupting thing.
South Korea is in governmental confusion over the U.S. decision to suspend gifts of oil to North Korea.
Well, if, when they make up their mind, they decide that giving oil to the North should continue, then they can pay for it. That sounds like a fair compromise. Now, I know that's not the way things work in the world. The way things are supposed to work, so many people believe at least, is that we consult with our allies, they decide what should be done, we pay for it. The idea that if we think giving oil to North Korea as part of a deal the North Koreans aren't honoring is no longer a good idea, but if Japan and South Korea decide that oil gifts to North Korea should continue, that they should go ahead and pay for it would never cross anyone's mind.
Now, I know they haven't come to that conclusion, yet (they're still "consulting"). But the point remains. If they disagree - and apparently they do but they're not sure how to go about convincing us of their position - then the reasonable thing for them to do would be to say "ok, you don't want to pay to give oil to North Korea anymore. We understand. We think it's in our interests that oil gifts continue, though, so we're going to take over paying for the program."
Like I said, yah, I know, I know. Not how this world works. We pay, they get credit for being the generous countries, and we get the scorn. That's the deal. Learn to love it.
The Wall Street Journal doesn't think Thune should have thrown in the towel in South Dakota:
If nothing else, a recount would have put on the public record the dubious details of how he lost, if that's the word for what happened. Under state law the close margin entitled him to a recount, and these have been common in South Dakota's closely fought elections. Democrats Tom Daschle and George McGovern both used them to secure victories to Congress.
I have noticed that while Republicans such as Thune and Ashcroft try to avoid wrenching recounts and rather graciously conceed, Democrats have not done the same.
Canadian Scientists raise doubts about the merits of the Kyoto Treaty:
A group of leading Canadian scientists joined the clash over the Kyoto Accord Wednesday, urging the federal government to delay its ratification.
The eight researchers say they have identified key flaws in the science supporting the Kyoto protocol and offered new evidence that disputes the Canadian government's position on climate change.
Among the "myths" researchers say are spread by Kyoto proponents: that humanity is the primary cause of global climate change, that computer models reveal catastrophic warming in the future and that climate change is occurring at an unprecedented rate.
The "Imperialism!" Argument, as James Holmes writes in the Boston Globe, is weak and hollow:
witness the use of ''imperialism'' to describe everything from whacking Saddam Hussein to opening a fast-food joint in Paris.
Any word that elastic has no real content. . .
What the opponents of war with Iraq really object to is American power and the willingness to use that power abroad - not to imperialism in any meaningful sense.
That won't stop us from hearing a whole bunch of invocations of the concept of "imperialism", no doubt. Truth and accuracy can't stand in the way of a good polemic.
The Message the Democrats Send to Voters George Will writes that:
Actually, the party's message, frequently communicated with ruinous clarity for five decades, is condescension toward the American people.
When a supporter gushed to Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that all thinking people supported him, Stevenson replied, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." Michael Barone, the most astute student of modern politics, considers it inconceivable that FDR would have thought, let alone said, such a thing.
Yah, I remember from Uni Stevenson was still an icon to the cognocenti, who would quote that line approvingly.
On the other hand, I remember my mother telling me about Paul Soglin's first race for Mayor in Madison (this was back when he was a hippy; he later became Mayor again as a pro-growth Democrat) - his opponent, the sitting Mayor (IIRC a Republican), who's name slips my mind said "all the decent people of Madison will vote for me" (against Soglin). Of course, he lost too.
Will goes on:
After Britain's Labor Party was demolished by Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 general election, an undaunted Laborite vowed, "No compromise with the electorate." That can be the rallying cry of Pelosi Democrats.
Took Labour a long time to recover from that. They eventually did, but it took them awhile to get over it, and it involved making some shifts (some cosmetic, some real) under Tony Blair - shifts that far from all Labour MPs are happy with to this day. But they won two elections after being decisively rejected for so long.
All This Talk AboutPelosi has overshadowed the (not unexpected) rise of DeLay. DeLay could easily become the next Gingrich in the news media - he would, if it wasn't for the fact that the Republicans are led by Bush, not the House Majority Leader.
DeLay is a big, fat target, even if he has his merits.
Our Frenchallies. German, too. Given the "hurt feelings" some, like the letter writers Steven Den Beste has been responding to, have been expressing, while apparently seeing no problem in the near continuous and ad hominem criticism of America in their own countries.
A Good Platform For Either Party, but the Republicans would be wise to sieze the opportunity they have. If they don't, perhaps (after thirty or fourty years) the Democrats will.
Iraq Unconditionally Accepts UN Resolution! Same as two months ago! Yay! It's all over! The multilateral anti-war crowd was right! Iraq will cooperate with inspectors!
Fisking Blankely: Tony Blankley wrote a column describing what the Democrats should expect now that they're in the minority. It needs a Fisking.
In the early 1990s, when I was Newt Gingrich's press secretary before the Republicans took over the House, I once complained to the chief congressional correspondent of the New York Times that they never covered our legislative proposals. He explained that because our legislation would never get out of committee, let alone get passed on the floor of the House, it wasn't news.
Oh, so that was their excuse, eh?
Our political activity might get coverage, he offered.
I didn't like that definition of news then, and I still don't. If the major media wouldn't cover the opposition's legislative proposals between elections, how could the public make a rational choice at the elections?
Watch the New York Times guy you talked to agree with you. . .now that it's the Democrats who are in the minority.
But there is a hard wisdom in his tough advice. The House Democrats should keep that in mind this week as they plan for the next two years.
What universe have you been living in the last three decades that makes you assume that the news media will be consistent and treat the House Democrats the same way they treated you? Are you crazy?
Skipping ahead a bit
Thus, while the majority party gets fairly detailed coverage of its legislation, the media tends to portray to the public only a cartoon version of the minority's bills and leaders. Due to the media's liberal bias, this principle of news coverage plays harder against a Republican minority party. But it still applies broadly to a Democratic minority party.
Here's how it's going to go: they'll give detailed coverage of bills when they think it helps the Democrats, and the cartoon version they'll publish, when they go that route, will leave out aspects that the public wouldn't like. This will be quite the reverse of what they did to the Republicans - the cartoon version harping on negative aspects (and creating them when they weren't there).
With this in mind, I think it is likely to be a long and regrettable two years for the House Democrats under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi.
Yah. I can feel the concern you have for the Democrats all the way out here in flyover country.
the overwhelming media characterization of Nancy Pelosi has been: liberal. Both she and her party are already highly defensive of this title.
Mrs. Pelosi's feeble response has been: "When people describe me as a liberal I always say, "Well, I guess you could describe an Italian-American grandmother that way." She could hardly duck the liberal appellation.
I wonder what Armed Liberal thinks of folks on "his side" who try to hide what they are. Lots of people think "whatever it takes to get ahead", but I donno. . .
Perhaps the most bizarre effort to deflect her extreme liberalism can be heard from her liberal supporters. Last Friday afternoon, within hours of each other, Congressman John Conyers (the left-wing black caucus veteran) and Eleanor Clift (my liberal colleague on "The McLaughlin Group") both said Mrs. Pelosi wasn't a liberal because she was on the Intelligence Committee.
Pelosi holds the Ron "Red" Dellums Chair on the Intelligence Committe. Of course, he wasn't a Liberal, either. He was a hard-line Leftist. Perhaps when Clift and Conyers say she's not a Liberal, they mean she's not a Liberal in the same sense Dellums wasn't Liberal and Bonior & McDermott aren't Liberal. Of course they're not.
But it's interesting. I wonder if a Republican Congressman (say, Henry Hyde) and a Conservative commentator (say, Ann Coulter) both on the same day said something that just presumed that no Liberal could possibly serve on the Intelligence committee ("X is on the Intelligence Committee, and thus X cannot be Liberal") what the reaction would be. I guess this is Amonic Politics at work.
That seemed like a non sequitur to me, but apparently, true liberals think that a true liberal couldn't possibly be interested in Intelligence and the national defense (or perhaps they think a true liberal couldn't be trusted with state secrets).
Are Conyers and Clift questioning the patriotism of Liberals? *Porphy dons his best Tom Daschle impersonization* That's Outrageous. Outrageous!
If that is what liberals think of themselves, they shouldn't be surprised if about 70 percent of the public share those suspicions.
They need to start listening to AL and stop feeding the dark side of what Liberalism has become since the New Left transformed the Democratic Party. They need to recapture the spirit of Truman and Kennedy (not Ted, John. And not the distorted, propaganda-image of Kennedy created by the likes of Oliver Stone, but the tough-on-defense and pro-tax-cut JFK of reality, who was also strong on Civil Rights without being PC. No one back then would assert that because one was on an Intelligence Committee one could not, by definition, be a Liberal).
Those were the days.
And you knew where you were then.
Watching shows like 'Gentle Ben'.
Mr., we could use a man like Sherrif Lobo again.
Disco Duck and Fleetwood Mac
coming out of my Eight Track.
Michael Jackson still was black.
Those were the days. . .
King of the EUnuchs: just in case readers happened to miss this post, which I made "after hours" last night. I also posted this in Ranting Screeds After Hours.
Student Unrest in Sudan, in opposition to the regime, seems to mirror what is going on in Iran (different precipitating causes, but similar basis).
You know, so many of the usual suspects told us that the "War on Terror" would strengthen these regimes, causing the people to unite behind them in opposition to "U.S. bullying". That hasn't happened. If any thing, these regimes continue to get weaker.
Oh, Bastion of Justice and Human Rights, constantly condecending on the American justice system. We have this from the political arm of the Guardian (that is, the Labour Party). I commented briefly on the goings on yesterday. But the Torygraph hits home:
There can surely never have been such a comprehensive attack on the liberties and safeguards of the British legal system as that outlined yesterday.
The curtailment of trial by jury, the admission of hearsay evidence, the abolition of the protection against double jeopardy, the proposal that previous convictions might be revealed to juries before they consider their verdict; the combined effect of these measures must be radically to rebalance the scales of justice in favour of the state and against the defendant. . .
The irony is that all this is being proposed by a government that constantly trumpets its commitment to human rights.
No doubt we'll continue to read more lectures in the pages of the Guardian on the one hand while on the other they push Labour's radical agenda for England's judicial system on the other.
The Lady of Brussels, her arm clad in the thickest red tape, held aloft the Euro, from a pool of regulations, signifying by bureaucratic fiat that I, Pedro Solbes, was to carry the Euro. That is why I am your king!
Listen, strange bureaucrats lolling around Brussels distributing appointments is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from farcical bureaucratic appointment!
I mean, if I went around saying I was High Commissioner for Speech Regulation just because some bureaucratic cabal handed me a Big Book of Forbidden Speech, they'd
