YOU'D HAVE TO BE NUTS.....

It’s a tremendously simple political equation--the voting equivalent of falling off of a log. It goes like this:

There has not been a successful terrorist attack on our nation since September 11, 2001.

Democrats have consistently gone on record proclaiming their opposition to the programs that the President has put in place in order to protect this country from terrorism.

Therefore:

How can any logical person cast a vote, which would put those Democrats in a position where they can repeal those laws?

The two indisputable facts that lead to this equation’s solution are not debatable.

Furthermore, even if you are of the belief that our involvement in Iraq has made us less safe here at home and created more terrorists around the world (a notion which cannot really be accurately assessed by the way, at least not until the next terrorist census comes out), then that’s all the more reason to keep the Bush safeguards such as The Patriot Act and NSA wiretapping in place and the detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay open.

But if voters insist on punishing the President by taking control of Congress away from his party, even if it results in the eventual crippling of the executive branch to fight the War on Terror, they had better have a very good reason.


Again, the plethora of mistakes made in Iraq would be a good reason, but only if the opposition party had some sort of serious alternative plan. They don’t.

Recently Democrats and their allies in the left-wing media have accused President Bush and the GOP of attempting to scare people into supporting them by reminding people of the terrorist threat facing our country.

This is, of course, tantamount to pretending that no threat exists, a difficult argument to make based on what we know about the size and scope of the terrorists' most recent foiled attempt to blow up a number of American passenger planes last month.

It is also hypocritical. While Democrats accuse the president of fear-mongering out of one side of their mouths, they accuse him of not doing enough to keep us safe out of the other.

They scoff at the comparisons conservatives have made between the cut-and-run faction of the Democratic party, (which would assume almost all of the leadership positions in the House Of Representatives if Democrats pick up the 15 seats that they need), with the European leaders who sought to appease Hitler as well as those who balked at confronting the confederacy during the Civil War. Yet when asked why such a comparison is not accurate, their answer is not a historical lesson in the nuances of politics of the mid 1800’s or a defense of the actions taken by Neville Chamberlain, but rather a diatribe on how George W. Bush is trying to scare Americans in to voting for him.

The Democrats' new strategy suddenly appears a bit desperate, as if they were caught off guard when the GOP actually decided to start campaigning.

Even more striking however are the issues that the Democrats will be unable to use in their attempts to bludgeon the president.

The economy is chugging along and gas prices are falling.

The Democrats had to close the door on their “culture of corruption” issue as soon as Capitol Hill police opened the door to William Jefferson’s freezer. And it turns out that “Plamegate” was little more than a fairy-tale spun by Joe Wilson himself and kept alive by wishful thinking at the New York Times. Karl Rove is still waiting for his apology, by the way.

By contrast, Republicans have not made nearly enough of how the leadership of Congress will change if Democrats do manage to take over.

Most of the Democratic candidates running for the seats which the Dem’s hope to pick up are relative moderates. But the long-serving representatives, who will assume leadership positions and committee chairmanships in the event of a Democratic majority, are ideologically as far away from the American mainstream as can be.

Lifelong uber-liberal politicians such as Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi promise strict oversight on an administration they claim is running roughshod over the Constitution.

But in addition to endless investigations of the administration, which are most likely little more than retaliation for the GOP investigations of the Clintons, their legislative aim is a return to policies which most Americans rejected at the end of the Carter presidency such as higher taxes, increased regulation of business and a foreign policy which seeks to negotiate, equivocate and coexist rather than one which will do whatever it takes to eliminate threats to our nation.

This very group's vehement opposition to Ronald Reagan’s aggressive anti-Soviet policies of the 1980’s--policies which resulted in the end of the Cold War--should serve as a reminder of how wrong those on the far left are when it comes to the most important issues of our time.

Let’s recap. No terrorist attack since 9/11. Over 5,000 terrorists captured or killed since The War on Terror commenced.

Democrats want to take away the tools, which the Bush Administration has used to prevent attacks and to capture and kill a significant portion of those 5,000.

Most people don’t go into the voting booth and cast their ballot based on the potential make-up of the House and Senate. However, the Democrats want this round of elections to be a referendum on President Bush. It is only right, therefore, that we examine the successes of this administration in addition to its failures. That is the only way to decide whether a Congress that will dismantle his successful anti-terror policies serves the national interest.

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The Guy Who Should be in Charge

Newt Gingrich was always smarter than Bill Clinton when it came to policy, but there was a huge charisma deficit which lead to his downfall. I'm afraid that this deficit still exsists, but that makes his writing no less important.

As his old adversary defends his administration's incompetance in regards to terrorism Newt is the one looking ahead and trying to fix the mistakes in this new type of war rather than arguing over how to abandon it.



AT WAR

Bush and Lincoln
Echoes of the past in today's strategic mistakes.

BY NEWT GINGRICH
Thursday, September 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves."


--Abraham Lincoln
Annual message to Congress
Dec. 1, 1862
WASHINGTON--Five years have passed since the horrific attack on our American homeland, and, still, there is one serious, undeniable fact we have yet to confront: We are, today, not where we wanted to be and nowhere near where we need to be.

In April of 1861, in response to the firing on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve for 90 days. Lincoln had greatly underestimated the challenge of preserving the Union. No one imagined that what would become the Civil War would last four years and take the lives of 620,000 Americans.

By the summer of 1862, with thousands of Americans already dead or wounded and the hopes of a quick resolution to the war all but abandoned, three political factions had emerged. There were those who thought the war was too hard and would have accepted defeat by negotiating the end of the United States by allowing the South to secede. Second were those who urged staying the course by muddling through with a cautious military policy and a desire to be "moderate and reasonable" about Southern property rights, including slavery.

We see these first two factions today. The Kerry-Gore-Pelosi-Lamont bloc declares the war too hard, the world too dangerous. They try to find some explainable way to avoid reality while advocating return to "normalcy," and promoting a policy of weakness and withdrawal abroad.

Most government officials constitute the second wing, which argues the system is doing the best it can and that we have to "stay the course"--no matter how unproductive. But, after being exposed in the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, it will become increasingly difficult for this wing to keep explaining the continuing failures of the system.

Just consider the following: Osama bin Laden is still at large. Afghanistan is still insecure. Iraq is still violent. North Korea and Iran are still building nuclear weapons and missiles. Terrorist recruiting is still occurring in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and across the planet.





By late summer, 1862, Lincoln agonizingly concluded that a third faction had the right strategy for victory. This group's strategy demanded reorganizing everything as needed, intensifying the war, and bringing the full might of the industrial North to bear until the war was won.
The first and greatest lesson of the last five years parallels what Lincoln came to understand. The dangers are greater, the enemy is more determined, and victory will be substantially harder than we had expected in the early days after the initial attack. Despite how painful it would prove to be, Lincoln chose the road to victory. President Bush today finds himself in precisely the same dilemma Lincoln faced 144 years ago. With American survival at stake, he also must choose. His strategies are not wrong, but they are failing. And they are failing for three reasons.

(1) They do not define the scale of the emerging World War III, between the West and the forces of militant Islam, and so they do not outline how difficult the challenge is and how big the effort will have to be. (2) They do not define victory in this larger war as our goal, and so the energy, resources and intensity needed to win cannot be mobilized. (3) They do not establish clear metrics of achievement and then replace leaders, bureaucrats and bureaucracies as needed to achieve those goals.

To be sure, Mr. Bush understands that we cannot ignore our enemies; they are real. He knows that an enemy who believes in religiously sanctioned suicide-bombing is an enemy who, with a nuclear or biological weapon, is a mortal threat to our survival as a free country. The analysis Mr. Bush offers the nation--before the Joint Session on Sept. 20, 2001, in his 2002 State of the Union, in his 2005 Second Inaugural--is consistently correct. On each occasion, he outlines the threat, the moral nature of the conflict and the absolute requirement for victory.

Unfortunately, the great bureaucracies Mr. Bush presides over (but does not run) have either not read his speeches or do not believe in his analysis. The result has been a national security performance gap that we must confront if we are to succeed in winning this rising World War III.





We have to be honest about how big this problem is and then design new, bolder and more profound strategies to secure American national security in a very dangerous 21st century. Unless we, like Lincoln, think anew, we cannot set the nation on a course for victory. Here are some initial steps:
First, the president should address a Joint Session of Congress to explain to the country the urgency of the threat of losing millions of people in one or more cities if our enemies find a way to deliver weapons of mass murder to American soil. He should further communicate the scale of the anti-American coalition, the clarity of their desire to destroy America, and the requirement that we defeat them. He should then make clear to the world that a determined American people whose very civilization is at stake will undertake the measures needed to prevail over our enemies. While desiring the widest possible support, we will not compromise our self-defense in order to please our critics.

Then he should announce an aggressively honest review of what has not worked in the first five years of the war. Based upon the findings he should initiate a sweeping transformation of the White House's national security apparatus. The current hopelessly slow and inefficient interagency system should be replaced by a new metrics-based and ruthlessly disciplined integrated system of accountability, with clear timetables and clear responsibilities.

The president should insist upon creating new aggressive entrepreneurial national security systems that replace (rather than reform) the current failing bureaucracies. For example, the Agency for International Development has been a disaster in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The president should issue new regulations where possible and propose new legislation where necessary. The old systems cannot be allowed to continue to fail without consequence. Those within the bureaucracies who cannot follow the president's directives should be compelled to leave.

Following this initiative, the president should propose a dramatic and deep overhaul of homeland security grounded in metrics-based performance to create a system capable of meeting the seriousness of the threat. The leaders of the new national security and homeland security organizations should be asked what they need to win this emerging World War III, and then the budget should be developed. We need a war budget, but we currently have an OMB-driven, pseudo-war budget. The goal of victory, ultimately, will lead to a dramatically larger budget, which will lead to a serious national debate. We can win this argument, but we first have to make it.

Congress should immediately pass the legislation sent by the president yesterday to meet the requirements of the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision. More broadly, it should pass an act that recognizes that we are entering World War III and serves notice that the U.S. will use all its resources to defeat our enemies--not accommodate, understand or negotiate with them, but defeat them.

Because the threat of losing millions of Americans is real, Congress should hold blunt, no-holds-barred oversight hearings on what is and is not working. Laws should be changed to shift from bureaucratic to entrepreneurial implementation throughout the national security and homeland security elements of government.

Beyond our shores, we must commit to defeating the enemies of freedom in Iraq, starting with doubling the size of the Iraqi military and police forces. We should put Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia on notice that any help going to the enemies of the Iraqi people will be considered hostile acts by the U.S. In southern Lebanon, the U.S. should insist on disarming Hezbollah, emphasizing it as the first direct defeat of Syria and Iran--thus restoring American prestige in the region while undermining the influence of the Syrian and Iranian dictatorships.

Further, we should make clear our goal of replacing the repressive dictatorships in North Korea, Iran and Syria, whose aim is to do great harm to the American people and our allies. Our first steps should be the kind of sustained aggressive strategy of replacement which Ronald Reagan directed brilliantly in Poland, and ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet empire.

The result of this effort would be borders that are controlled, ports that are secure and an enemy that understands the cost of going up against the full might of the U.S. No enemy can stand against a determined American people. But first we must commit to victory. These steps are the first on a long and difficult road to victory, but are necessary to win the future.

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Vacation

I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks traversing the nation, visiting Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, Nevada and Arizona. In my absence I have assigned Beaker to watch over the blog. Please direct any comments or concerns to him and he will respond in a timely fashion.

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Oh, This is Very Cool

http://www.okcupid.com/politics


......You are a

Social Liberal
(65% permissive)


and an...

Economic Conservative
(78% permissive)


You are best described as a:


Libertarian

I'm right between The Donald and Adam Sandler

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A BIG WIN FOR THE GOOD GUYS

Okay Kids. What have we learned?

Well, we’re obviously doing something right. That’s the only conclusion any sane person can come to after the Islamic-fascist’s planned sequel to 9/11 was thwarted yesterday. (Kudos to President Bush for finally using the term “Islamic- fascists” to describe these murderers, by the way.)

We have learned that those who told us that our nation has not been made safer since 9/11 were dead wrong. Without the devices and safeguards put in place since that fateful day five years ago we would most likely have had another thousand dead Americans or so to mourn yesterday afternoon.

We have learned that the NSA wiretapping program is essential to figuring out what the terrorists are planning and how they are planning it. It works. Sorry Mr. Conyers, you wont be able to impeach the president on that issue, but you’re a big dummy so I’m sure you’ll continue trying.

By the way, a big thanks to The New York Times for not exposing the government’s information on this plot before these guys could be nabbed at Heathrow. We really appreciate it.

We now know that despite the mistakes that the Bush Administration has made in the war on terror, they are clearly not as incompetent as some would like us to believe. If you can’t admit that this administration has done a good job of preventing another terrorist attack in this country, then your drinking way too much Kool-Aid.

A rather pleasant surprise in this whole ordeal is how big of a help the government of Pakistan was in breaking up this deadly plot. It seems an amazing coincidence that the one guy in that country that doesn’t want to destroy America is also the president.

Based on discussions that I’ve had with people on both sides over the last 24 hours, as well as listening to political radio and television coverage of recent events and the negative vibes that I’m receiving from LAX, I am sensing a high level of support for what has come to be known as racial profiling.

I’ve concluded that this is a great idea that most common sense Americans would love to try out. As someone who could potentially fall into the category of an individual to be profiled, that being a male between the ages of 18 and 45 of Middle Eastern descent, I think it would be to everyone’s benefit to give Muhammad and me a bit more scrutiny at the airport and let Grandma Doris from Minnesota go through without being prodded by the guy with the wand.


Wearing a headdress? Search ‘Em.

Smell like rosewater? You’re getting searched.

Speak Arabic and have a crazy beard? Yup, a little more scrutiny is in order.

Potentially Middle Eastern looking guy carrying a Gatorade and a disposable camera?

Duh!

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all of these terrorists are Muslims.

While today was a great day for America and a huge victory in the war on terror, there are a few folks who one can’t help but feel sorry for.

First among those is Senator Joe Lieberman. If the Connecticut primary had been scheduled for a week later, he would have won.


Many Democrats have had awful short term memory problems since 9/11, but today’s events would probably have served as a reminder to all of them that the terrorist threat still exists and that Senator Lieberman has been one of the only Democrats who has been in support of the positive steps that the Bush Administration has taken to combat it, without politicizing those initiatives in order to pander to the Cindy Sheehan wing of the party which now controls its machinery.

I still believe that Lieberman will win the general election as an independent, but he doesn’t deserve the kind of treatment that he has received from the party which he has voted with 90% of the time. Come on all you Kos-Bloggers, put the poor guys web-site back on-line.

I also feel bad for Cynthia McKinney, who’s accusations of voter fraud will now go largely unnoticed, destroying her chances of returning to office and telling everyone about how the recent terror bust was manufactured by the Bush administration to raise the terror alert level and take everyone’s mind off of the fact that Bush hates black people.

Finally, I feel sorry for the Democratic party as a whole, as well as the liberals who have taken over that party since Bill Clinton left office. They were so close to convincing voters that they were better suited to lead congress, not because of their ideas and competence, but rather because they were not Republicans.

Now that convincing will take a lot more effort.

You see, every time American’s are reminded that terrorism is the most important issue of our time and that the threat from Islamic-fascism is real and still very much alive within this small world which we live in, many of them realize that the aggressive anti-terror policies of the Bush administration are not as awful as the administrations detractors claim.

When they actually see these policies work, swing voters understand and appreciate George W. Bush a bit more, warts and all. I hope that goes for Tony Blair in England as well.

The good guys won today, but we must remain diligent.


Be patient at the airports over the next few days and thank God that the people in those airplanes did not suffer the same fate which befell those in The World Trade Center, The Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania.

Also, regardless of your partisan leanings or what you may think about our government, don’t be too proud to give our nation’s leaders credit where credit is due.

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All Responsibility Still Lies with Hezbollah.

I began writing this article about an hour ago, but then I checked Real Clear and found that this guy had already done it for me.



August 03, 2006
Journalists Fail to Explain Qana
By David Warren
My reader may be wondering what happened to all the coverage from Qana. As usual, when the "liberal" media begin to realize they've been had, the story disappears. But it is never properly corrected. We get a few days of blazing headlines, and round-the-dial TV coverage of an "Israeli massacre", laden with innuendos, and then -- the fade-out. This will not do.
What happened at Qana was, almost certainly, what happened at Jenin in 2002, what happened on a beach in Gaza a few weeks ago, and what has happened on innumerable other occasions. The Israelis are instantaneously accused and convicted of a monstrous and perhaps intentional act of butchery, by people quite incurious about the facts. Their pathological hatred of "Zionism" is all the proof they need. These are people who seldom bother to shed even crocodile tears when Jews are blown to pieces by suicide bombers, or rockets are fired indiscriminately into their homes; but become tremendously excited when the news breaks that some Israeli retaliation may have gone wrong.
It took several months to clarify what had happened at Jenin -- a staged massacre. It will take several months before something like the true story emerges, from Qana. By which time no one will be listening. (The ideologues will continue citing the original lies, regardless.) And yet in both these cases -- Jenin and Qana -- indications of fakery were visible from the beginning.
The Israelis quickly released real-time aerial reconnaissance footage to show the Hezbollah firing rockets from between houses in Qana; then pulling the launchers immediately afterwards into civilian buildings. The Israeli military logged three air strikes around Qana in the course of the evening in question, including one next to the houses that were destroyed. So while it was possible the Israelis had dropped the bombs that killed 54 people -- coincidentally all women and children -- it was, at the worst, unintended "collateral damage" near a valid military target.
The Israelis had extensively leafleted Qana for more than a week before the air strikes, telling civilians to evacuate, and warning just what would happen. Over the same period, Hezbollah pumped 150 Katyusha rockets into northern Israel from in and around this village. Hezbollah are notorious for refusing to allow civilians to evacuate (as U.N. observers have attested), and even preventing their flight at gunpoint. The argument that people "could not get out because the Israelis had wrecked the infrastructure" is rubbish. Once invited by Hezbollah, journalists got into the village quickly, all the way from Beirut. It follows that Hezbollah bears not some, but all of the moral responsibility for civilian deaths at Qana.
But we are still assuming the Israeli air strikes collapsed the houses. That theory begins to crumble, itself, when you look at the times logged for the Israeli air strikes. The houses were first reported to have been destroyed more than seven hours after the air strike next to them (the other strikes were about half a kilometre away). And even if they collapsed by delayed effect, why were women and children allowed to spend the night in a building on the point of collapsing?
Now look at the media pictures. Immediately you see several fishy things. For one, bodies displayed to media are removed, successively, from a single neat hole in the ruins. There is no evidence of a rescue mission having been mounted, or of a continuing search for bodies elsewhere under the rubble. The battered bodies do not resemble those which are seen after most real explosions and building collapses: their wounds do not look recent. All the blood and gore seems to be on just one body.
Moreover, as bloggers such as "Eureferendum" have demonstrated, by juxtaposing press photos from various newspapers, the men showing off the bodies -- and identified in captions as "Lebanese rescue workers" -- are the same as had been present at previous alleged atrocities. They are obviously not rescue workers, but Hezbollah propaganda agents.
The way they are handling and displaying the bodies is entirely inconsistent with rescue work. For instance, they hold up a dead child's head for the cameras; they point to a pacifier still strung around his neck. But notice: the child's body is covered in plaster dust, but the pacifier is clean. Such evidence of staging is glaring, everywhere.
Obvious questions: Did all or any of the victims die at this site? Was the event staged to produce exactly the effect on "world opinion" that was achieved? And in a symbolic location, last used to a similar purpose in 1996?
I do not see how full-time journalists, specializing in the Middle East, can excuse themselves for not asking such questions immediately. I do not see why they cannot spot with their own eyes, what bloggers can spot in their photographs and reporting, thousands of miles away.
We know all about Hezbollah. It is for the journalists now to explain what they were doing, playing the clowns in an Hezbollah circus.
*
Update: Since this was written, I see the Lebanese Red Cross has reported the number of bodies at the site was 28, not the 54 or 57 that our press and TV took on faith from Hezbollah. And, persons presented as survivors adjusted the time of the incident to coincide better with the proximate air strike the Israelis logged. I have no idea what actually happened. But in the absence of a credible investigation, nobody else has, either; and the dramatic media presentation of the story "as told by Hezbollah" must be assigned to the annals of anti-Israeli propaganda, not journalism

The truth is that despite their early successes against Israel, Hezbollah cannot win this conflict if it continues much longer.



They must rely on world opinion to turn against Israel, even more than it was to begin with, in order to force a cease-fire, regroup and then start terrorizing Israel all over again.

By using human shields in order to guarantee that Israeli bombings always kill civilians, especially women and children, and then getting the media to report this news which makes Israel look bad, (they are always happy to do this by the way) they make it harder to justify Israel’s completely justifiable actions.

What most people fail to realize is that the world is full of Mel Gibson’s. Less talented, ugly Mel Gibson’s.

They are all over Europe and obviously everywhere in the Middle East.

While every educated individual with anything resembling a moral compass knows that Gibson’s views are ignorant and bigoted, what they don’t realize is that Gibson’s views are very similar to the views of a HUGE chunk of the world’s population and they’re not all Arabs.

They want to believe the worst about the Jews, just like many in our nation always want to believe the worst about the president, whoever he may be.

Just like any terrorist organization, you can’t trust Hezbollah to do the right thing or to tell the truth, so the responsibility lies with the media and the international community (UN, I’m looking in your direction) to be honest and not jump to conclusions due to their bias against Israel.

As Americans we should make no mistake as to who is to blame for this current situation. It’s Hezbollah, and we should take any attempt by the rest of the world to pin wrongdoing on Israel with a grain…..no…..a brick of salt.

Remember, these images are the best weapon that the terrorists have in their arsenal, and as we know they are not squemish about destroying innocent life in order to achieve the desired effect. Not only will they sacrifice their own lives, but they will take the lives of those misguided, yet peaceful individuals who are on their side in order to win the holy war and of course achieve their long term goal of killing every Jew and American on the face of the planet.

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DEAN DOES IT AGAIN

This week Howard Dean called for an end to the divisiveness that has tainted our political process.

Dean called President Bush "the most divisive president probably in our history."

"He's always talking about those people. It's always somebody else's fault. It's the gays' fault. It's the immigrants' fault. It's the liberals' fault. It's the Democrats' fault. It's Hollywood people," Dean said. "Americans are sick of that. Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down our country."

He then proceeded to compare Katherine Harris to Stalin.

This guy is unbelievable.

Dean is the worst politician in a century and even he must know that there is almost no one on earth who has had more nasty things to say about the president and the Republican party than himself.

But he's party chair. Just goes to show you how they like to play the game.

I'm surprised that he hasn't come right out and thrown his support to Ned Lamont, who is the new darling of the far left and is trying to nab the Democratic senate nomination in Connecticut from former VP candidate Joe Lieberman.

Lamont is strictly an anti-war candidate, who like Dean did for a couple of months in the '04 primary season before everyone realized that he was a head case, is leading the Democratic primary field.

Like their elevation of Dean to Party Chair, a Lamont victory should confirm to all Americans what so many of us already know.

The Democrats are the party of division.

They are about to take away the nomination of a senator who is respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. A man whose bipartisan credentials are second perhaps only to John McCain. A man who, had a few more votes gone Al Gore's way in Florida, may be preparing to be frontrunner in a presidential contest two years from now, and they are about to eat him alive simply because he has not towed the dishonest Democratic party line on George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

As the Dem's prepare to eat their own, they should be wary of what Dean says and does. Every time he speaks he gives the nation a terrific view of the Far-Left smear machine of which Dean is one of the primary operators.

For Dean to call the GOP and the president divisive is incredibly hypocritical. To say that President Bush is always talking about gays, immigrants, liberals and Hollywood is just a bold-faced lie.

When Bush speaks, in case Dean hasn’t noticed, it's usually on the topic of terrorism. If Dean and his friends can convince the American people that they have some understanding as to the significance of that threat. If he and his party can prove to someone that they care more about defending the country than they do about trying to impeach the president. If they can come up with some semblance of a plan to fight this vicious enemy, whom their impaired vision sees as being far less dangerous than the Commander in Chief.

If they can do all of these things then maybe, just maybe they have a shot at taking back congress.

Will they be willing and able to do these things? I highly doubt it. At least not with Howard Dean at the helm.

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Idiots In The News

At the G8 summit, Socialist Dictator Fidel Castro gives his best buddy Hugo Chavez tips on how to blame the fact that your country is dirt poor on America, while at the same time crushing dissent at home.
(Not pictured due to electoral defeat: Lopez Obrador)


"..and then I punched that cop right in the face. Ha ha ha!"


" Damn Girlfriend! I can't believe that anyone in this country still takes the two of us seriously."


"As residents of San Francisco and the ultra-liberal group A.N.S.W.E.R we feel that it is our duty to let the entire world know just how ignorant and morally bankrupt we are. Besides, there was no gay rights parade or rally to legalize pot, so we ended up here. Go Bad Guys!"


Keith Olberman, host of MSNBC's "Countdown" shows his audience what he does when he goes home and looks in the mirror.

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I wish I had written this.

Dennis Kucinich, Kofi Annan and The Pope should all read this article found on realclearpolitics.com.

Pacifists versus Peace
By Thomas Sowell

One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.

"Peace" movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called "peace" movements -- that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.

Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia -- not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East. The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places -- but who looks at track records?

Remember the Falkland Islands war, when Argentina sent troops into the Falklands to capture this little British colony in the South Atlantic?

Argentina had been claiming to be the rightful owner of those islands for more than a century. Why didn't it attack these little islands before? At no time did the British have enough troops there to defend them.

Before there were "peace" movements and the U.N., sending troops into those islands could easily have meant finding British troops or bombs in Buenos Aires. Now "world opinion" condemned the British just for sending armed forces into the South Atlantic to take back their islands.

Shamefully, our own government was one of those that opposed the British use of force. But fortunately British prime minister Margaret Thatcher ignored "world opinion" and took back the Falklands.

The most catastrophic result of "peace" movements was World War II. While Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth, "peace" movements in Britain were advocating that their own country disarm "as an example to others."

British Labor Party Members of Parliament voted consistently against military spending and British college students publicly pledged never to fight for their country. If "peace" movements brought peace, there would never have been World War II.

Not only did that war lead to tens of millions of deaths, it came dangerously close to a crushing victory for the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese empire in Asia. And we now know that the United States was on Hitler's timetable after that.

For the first two years of that war, the Western democracies lost virtually every battle, all over the world, because pre-war "peace" movements had left them with inadequate military equipment and much of it obsolete. The Nazis and the Japanese knew that. That is why they launched the war.

"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war.

O'Reilly said it best this evening when talking about Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Queda. And this is not a direct quote, but essentially what he said was that you can't have peace unless both sides want it. If Hezbollah threw all of their weapons into the sea today, there would be peace. Is Israel threw all of their weapons into the sea, there would be a holocaust.

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GRAY LADY GETS BITCH-SLAPPED BY BUSH

No not that gray lady!



That's the one!

Anywho, in honor of the release of "Superman Returns," I would like for us all to take a trip to "Bizzaro World."

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, "Bizzaro World" is an alternate dimension from the Superman comic books in which everything is the opposite of how it is in the real world.

In "Bizzaro World," the exit polls were correct and John Kerry was elected president after RFK Jr. swept into Ohio on election day and single handedly defeated hoards of evil robots, manufactured by the Diebold corporation and controlled by Kenneth Blackwell, who ordered them to hold African-American voters at gunpoint until they cast their vote for George W. Bush, or just gave up and went home.


After saving the day, Kennedy waved goodbye, got into his hybrid vehicle and in keeping with the Kennedy tradition, crashed into a hot dog cart.

It is a year-and-a-half into the Kerry presidency, and his approval ratings have fallen to an all time low after Kerry pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq opening the door for Iran to take over the entire region.

Once the U.S. was gone, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proceeded to turn Israel into a huge holocaust themed amusement park called Little Satan Capitalist Pig-Dog Land. (9/11 Flight Simulator and Teacup Ride opening fall 2007)

In addition to this, based on the recommendation of Secretary of State George Soros, Kerry has fired Saddam Hussein’s defense team and replaced them with Vice President John Edwards.

President Kerry is hopping mad and not just because his wife is still allowed out in public, but also due to the horrible treatment which he has endured from the media since he came into office.

Kerry doesn't mind cable news leader MSNBC. They seem pretty fair and are absolutely destroying the competition with a stellar lineup, the centerpiece of which is the number one show on all of cable news "The Olbermann Factor."

It's that Fox News Channel that Kerry can't stand. He has loathed the network ever since they ran a story a few days before the election which claimed that Kerry had never actually been in Vietnam at all, but was instead in Paris, smoking a fatty with Jane Fonda.

FOX deserved the humiliation which befell the network when it was discovered that they had run with the story even though it was based on information which had been scribbled in purple Crayon on a paper placemat from Shoney’s.

It was later discovered that the scribbler was FNC's own Sean Hannity and what's worse...he hadn’t even completed the maze on the back, leading Shoney Bear to his pudding.

After this, FOX had falsely reported that guards at the prison at Guantánamo Bay had flushed pages of the Koran down the toilet in order to intimidate and anger Muslim detainees.

Kerry had actually bought into that one and used it as an excuse to close down the prison, apologize to the detainees, return their jackets strapped with dynamite and send them back to Afghanistan.

And now FOX had gone too far.

The network had received information on a top secret, perfectly legal government program which was being undertaken with appropriate congressional oversight.

FNC had learned that The White House had been tracking the finances of the terrorists so they could stop the flow of money going to people who use that money to blow up children and behead civilians.

Kerry had asked FOX not to broadcast the story. He simply assumed that the networks desire to defeat America's enemies outweighed their compulsive/primal urge to destroy his presidency.

Guess again. FOX went ahead with the story anyway letting the terrorists know exactly what Kerry and the terror-warriors in the White House, who are sworn to protect the United States were up to, and rendering this incredibly beneficial and effective program obsolete.

After all The FOX News Channel knew that it was the Kerry administration, not those Islamo-fascist who enjoy setting things on fire when they don't like a comic strip, who were really the greatest threat to national security and "Bizzaro World" peace.

And besides, if the policy came out of the Kerry White House there must be something nefarious going down, right? Even if there was no evidence whatsoever of illegal activity, something will come out eventually. The same way that it eventually came out that Kerry's main political advisor, Rarl Kove had intentionally leaked the name of that CIA agent. Man, thank God he got indicted.

John Kerry was so angry that he was turning orange and he hadn't even used the tan-in-a-can spray since the campaign.

To the delight of his supporters Kerry publicly scolded the FOX News Channel, lambasting them for undermining the War on Terror.

Liberal activists and Kerry supporters didn't stop there.

"Air America" radio, which in "Bizzaro World" was thriving financially and laying the groundwork for the nation's emerging ultra-liberal majority, described what FOX had done as "treasonous" and called for the imprisonment of Rupert Murdoch and Shepard Smith.

"Daily Kos" and the other liberal bloggers called out conservatives who had been denying for years that FOX had a right-wing bias, but those hypocritical right-wing nut-jobs just pretended as if nothing had happened. Some even defended FNC's right to go ahead with the story, claiming that freedom of the press gave FOX the right....no the duty, to go ahead with the story and let the public know, even if it did give an advantage to those who indiscriminately kill Americans, and fly planes into buildings in the name of Allah.

Groups like Move-On.org and Code Pink organized marches all over the country to protest FOX and John Gibson was burned in effigy throughout the streets of San Francisco.

The New York Herald, the paper or record in "Bizarro" America expressed it outrage at FOX News on it's editorial page, saying that the program was essential to national security and that FNC should be ashamed of itself for putting it's own political agenda before the safety of the American people.

When word got out about what FOX had done, “Bizzaro” America decided that enough was enough. News watchers all over the nation called and demanded that their cable and satellite providers drop The FOX News Channel from their line-up.

With its credibility destroyed and it's anti-Kerry bias completely exposed, The FOX News Channel was forced to make a public apology and beg the nation's forgiveness for their irresponsible behavior.

Thus, President Kerry was given a bit more wiggle room to do what he needed to do in order to fight The War on Terror.

He then proceeded to change his mind and asked all former Gitmo prisoners to return to Guantánamo Bay and turn themselves in.

Ok folks back to reality!

Fortunately, we don't live in "Bizzaro World." John Kerry is not president and never will be and a sizable portion of the population still gets its news from The Fox News Channel, which despite constant criticism from the left, has yet to do anything nearly as atrocious, or show as clear a bias against a sitting commander-in-chief or any politician for that matter, as the New York Times did this week, and has since Bush was elected.

Bush was absolutely right to rip into the Times as he did, just as a President Kerry would be justified in his outrage if FOX had done something similar.

The New York Times needs to be held accountable for its behavior. I don't think that they need to be brought up on charges of treason, but cancelled subscriptions and a shakeup in the staff-room would be a good start.

Furthermore, if this level of irresponsibility and disregard for national security among the left-leaning media is to remain as prevalent as it is, then the Bush Administration must become more secretive with information regarding The War on Terror, and not the opposite as some have suggested.

Openness in government be damned. When the stakes are as high as they are, the government has every right to withhold certain information from the public and keep those who seek to expose that information quiet. It's known in legal circles as prior restraint and the Bush Administration should not be afraid to assert it if necessary.

Much has been made of late as to the idea that the Bush Administration has become intimidated by the antagonistic left-wing press. Hopefully, the shot across the bow of the New York Times which the president fired on Monday will serve as a clear message that the administration will no longer stand idly by while a large portion of the media undermines The War on Terror.

This may also serve to restore faith in Bush among his base, who have been waiting for him to give certain media types a good talking to for a long time. It may help those poll numbers keep ticking up as well.

In conclusion:

The New York Times - SLAP!

Whoever leaked the information about the program in the first place - SLAP! SLAP!

and just for good measure:

John Kerry - SLAP!

Stay out of "Bizzaro World" people.

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Rep. John Murtha D-PA (The "D" Stands For Defeatist)

If there was a doubt in anyone’s mind that Congressman John Murtha had become firmly entrenched with the likes of Cindy Sheehan and The New York Times, joining the ranks of those Americans who are actively rooting against the United States in Iraq, those doubts were vanquished on Friday when Murtha said that the American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran.

Now, any honest, clear thinking American can see the ridiculous nature of this statement, but Murtha's moral relativism should give Republicans hope for what has so far been an uphill battle to retain the House and the Senate this November.

Murtha has openly stated that he wants to be the Majority leader of the House if the Democratic Party is successful in taking the body over.

While the dissatisfaction with the GOP is evident in polling, the idea that the American people would give power to an individual as confused as Murtha, by indirectly voting for like minded Democratic candidates is far too ludicrous of a scenario for most of the those dissatisfied swing voters who will decide this election. They just have to be informed as to what Murtha and his partner, fellow "cut and run" advocate Nancy Pelosi are capable of and the positions which they hope to obtain.

Murtha is a politician in the mold of John Kerry. Not simply due to the fact that he is a huge jerk, but also because he has been propped up by the party as a "hawk" because of his past service in the military. Americans didn't fall for that FORMER SOLDIER + DEMOCRAT = LEADER WITH GOOD IDEAS equation in '04 and I don’t think that they will fall for it in '06.

"Hawk" is not the term that I would choose to define a guy like John Murtha. Nor would I use the term "dove." No, the birds I would use to describe this unfortunate choice of a spokesman for the Democratic Party would be either the ostrich, which only takes its head out of the sand in order to run away at top speeds at the first sign of danger, or the Dodo.

While I wish no physical harm to Murtha, I do wish that like the Dodo, people who share his irresponsible views in regards to the War on Terror and massively important geopolitical issues will soon become as prevalent in congress as the bird is on the planet Earth.

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Dennis Prager on How Global Warming has Burnt the Liberal Mind to a Crisp

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A great article by Dennis Prager, a conservative radio talk-show host who I consider to be one of the most intelligent and honest guys on the air. Do yourself a favor, find out where he is on your dial and learn something.





June 20, 2006
Why Liberals Fear Global Warming More Than Conservatives Do
By Dennis Prager

Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this?

After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are? Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?

The usual liberal responses -- to label a conservative position racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or the like -- obviously don't apply here. So, liberals would have to fall back on the one remaining all-purpose liberal explanation: "big business." They might therefore explain the conservative-liberal divide over global warming thus: Conservatives don't care about global warming because they prefer corporate profits to saving the planet.

But such an explanation could not explain the vast majority of conservatives who are not in any way tied into the corporate world (like this writer, who has no stocks and who, moreover, regards big business as amoral as leftists do).

No, the usual liberal dismissals of conservatives and their positions just don't explain this particularly illuminating difference between liberals and conservatives.

Here are six more likely explanations:

-- The Left is prone to hysteria. The belief that global warming will destroy the world is but one of many hysterical notions held on the Left. As noted in a previous column devoted to the Left and hysteria, many on the Left have been hysterical about the dangers of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance of phone numbers (incipient fascism); secondhand smoke (killing vast numbers of people); drilling in the remotest area of Alaska (major environmental despoliation); and opposition to same-sex marriage (imminent Christian theocracy).

-- The Left believes that if The New York Times and other liberal news sources report something, it is true. If the cover of Time magazine says, "Global Warming: Be Worried, Very Worried," liberals get worried, very worried, about global warming.

It is noteworthy that liberals, one of whose mottos is "question authority," so rarely question the authority of the mainstream media. Now, of course, conservatives, too, often believe mainstream media. But conservatives have other sources of news that enable them to achieve the liberal ideal of questioning authority. Whereas few liberals ever read non-liberal sources of information or listen to conservative talk radio, the great majority of conservatives are regularly exposed to liberal news, liberal editorials and liberal films, and they have also received many years of liberal education.

-- The Left believes in experts. Of course, every rational person, liberal or conservative, trusts the expertise of experts -- such as when experts in biology explain the workings of mitochondria, or when experts in astronomy describe the moons of Jupiter. But for liberals, "expert" has come to mean far more than greater knowledge in a given area. It now means two additional things: One is that non-experts should defer to experts not only on matters of knowledge, but on matters of policy, as well. The second is that experts possess greater wisdom about life, not merely greater knowledge in their area of expertise.

That is why liberals are far more likely to be impressed when a Nobel Prize winner in, let us say, physics signs an ad against war or against capital punishment. The liberal is bowled over by the title "Nobel laureate." The conservative is more likely to wonder why a Nobel laureate in physics has anything more meaningful to say about war than, let us say, a taxi driver.

-- People who don't confront the greatest evils will confront far lesser ones. Most humans know the world is morally disordered -- and socially conscious humans therefore try to fight what they deem to be most responsible for that disorder. The Right tends to fight human evil such as communism and Islamic totalitarianism. The Left avoids confronting such evils and concentrates its attention instead on socioeconomic inequality, environmental problems and capitalism. Global warming meets all three of these criteria of evil. By burning fossil fuels, rich countries pollute more, the environment is being despoiled and big business increases its profits.

-- The Left is far more likely to revere, even worship, nature. A threat to the environment is regarded by many on the Left as a threat to what is most sacred to them, and therefore deemed to be the greatest threat humanity faces. The cover of Vanity Fair's recent "Special Green Issue" declared: "A Graver Threat Than Terrorism: Global Warming." Conservatives, more concerned with human evil, hold the very opposite view: Islamic terror is a far graver threat than global warming.

-- Leftists tend to fear dying more. That is one reason they are more exercised about our waging war against evil than about the evils committed by those we fight. The number of Iraqis and others Saddam Hussein murdered troubles the Left considerably less than even the remote possibility than they may one day die of global warming (or secondhand smoke).

One day, our grandchildren may ask us what we did when Islamic fascism threatened the free world. Some of us will say we were preoccupied with fighting that threat wherever possible; others will be able to say they fought carbon dioxide emissions. One of us will look bad

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Two Impressive Governors Who Will Not Be Running For President

Two impressive Governors who will not be running for president:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110008485
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/293ppytu.asp

and one bad soldier:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2049982&page=1

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FRONTRUNNER McCAIN

The anointment by the media of a frontrunner in the presidential nominating process can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how well you play the role.

In recent years, we have seen some frontrunners go wire-to-wire, maintaining their frontrunner status almost the whole way. Bob Dole in ’96 and George W. Bush in 2000 grabbed the nomination enduring only minor bumps in New Hampshire. Vice Presidents George H.W. Bush in ’88 and Al Gore in ’00 maintained their frontrunner status pretty much all of the way through, Walter Mondale was the sacrificial lamb from the get-go in ’84 and Ronald Reagan was dominant in 1980.

In very few cases has the man who was proclaimed frontrunner by the media not gone on to receive this party’s nomination for the presidency.

Gary Hart was destroyed by Scandal in ’88, while Mario Cuomo decided against running in ’92. Howard Dean, was the Democratic frontrunner in ’04 until Democrats realized he had no chance of beating President Bush and wisely went with John Kerry instead.

Now, both of the major American political parties are faced with unique situations going into the 2008 elections.

The Democrats have had their frontrunner since the Florida recount ended in 2000. Hillary Clinton has always been the leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2008 and this only changed once or twice during John Kerry’s candidacy when it seemed as if he might actually pull off a win. Unless Bush was wildly unpopular going into the ’04 elections, Hillary was planning to wait it out, and that’s exactly what she ended up doing.

Chances are, when New Hampshire Democrats go to the polls in ’08, Hillary will have been the Democratic frontrunner for an insanely long period of time. She will lose her frontrunner statusonly if she is challenged by Al Gore who will siphon off far-left voters who are displeased with Hillary’s hawkish stance on the Iraq war, or if she comes down with Dean-Syndrome and the party decides that she simply can’t win a general election.

The GOP is in a position which is almost completely opposite that of its rivals. George W. Bush, for better of for worse has no heir-apparent. Vice President Cheney has shown no interest in running and even if he wanted to, his health problems would likely make him an unsavory choice for the American voter, regardless of his popularity.

Cheney’s absence leaves the door to the GOP nomination wide open and while it has taken quite a while in for the pundits and GOP strategists to come to the realization, the fact of the matter is that the name which has risen to the top in terms of being the most talked about and best known GOP candidate in the field is John McCain. Make no mistake: John McCain is the frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Accepting this fact is going to be a bittersweet pill for the GOP faithful to swallow. To say that Republicans have mixed feelings about McCain would be a huge understatement, but their qualms about his politics are somewhat countered by the knowledge that if he gets the nomination, chances are that he would win in a landslide.

McCain is wildly popular among independents. Even Democrats like him including John Kerry who practically begged McCain to be his running mate in ’04. As for conservative voters, even those with serious reservations about McCain will pull the lever for him if faced with the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

McCain’s challenge will be convincing conservative voters that he is an acceptable successor to Bush, and McCain is well on the way to achieving this goal.

While rank-and-file Republicans don’t like the way McCain crosses the aisle to work on compromise legislation with liberals like Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy, they saw McCain’s true loyalty on display in his staunch support of President Bush’s re-election in ’04. His impassioned speech at the GOP convention two years ago left no doubt as to where is allegiances were, even after the political bashing he took from Bush in the ’00 primaries, in which many of the attacks leveled against McCain were considered to be below the belt by political analysts and presumably by McCain himself.

On some issues, McCain is not well liked by GOP regulars. On issues such as campaign finance reform and more recently illegal immigration, McCain’s views have not simply been unpopular but have been contrary to long term GOP goals. Fortunately for McCain, his bill with Russ Feingold turned out to have no teeth and there is no chance that there will be any meaningful immigration reform anytime soon, so his tag-team endeavors with liberal Democrats will probably be secondary considerations among GOP primary voters.

A more likely chance of a deep party split lies in the power of the Evangelicals and Christian conservatives who make up the strongest faction of the president’s base. This part of the base will likely question McCain’s dedication to party principles that deal with God and explosive social issues, pointing to McCain’s admirable shots at Pat Robertson which helped destroy McCain’s 2000 campaign, as evidence that he isn’t one of them and therefore can not be a true GOP standard-bearer. However, for Republicans who are learning how to win at the margins in an electorate that is split down the middle, McCain has it where it counts, and is acceptable when faced with the unthinkable Democratic alternatives.

On the terror war, far-and-away the most important issue to Republicans across the board, McCain’s hawkish credentials are untouchable.While he has been critical of administration policy at every turn, he seems to share the current administration's reform policy in regards to the Middle East as well as President Bush’s belief in the power of democracy to change the region, and has maintained his strong support for the President’s decision to invade Iraq despite the public’s misgiving about the ongoing conflict.

McCain’s hellish experiences in Vietnam help bolster his credibility on foreign policy issues in ways that John Kerry can only dream of. His reputation as a straight-shooter as well as the fact that he’s a Republican will work in his favor, if The War on Terror is the central issue in the ’08 election cycle.

Not even the most hawkish Neo-Con would dare attack McCain for not being tough enough on terror.

The real make-or-break issue for GOP primary voters when soul searching on the McCain dilemma will be tax cuts.

McCain did not back any of the Bush tax cuts and in most cases involving Republicans, this would be considered an unforgivable sin. However, McCain’s unwavering, high-profile support of Bush in ’04 gives him a second chance and the ability to take one of two roads in his posturing on the all-important tax cut issue.

First, he can admit that he was wrong. It’s the strategy used by George H.W. Bush in his ’88 campaign to convince Reagan voters that he was truly the heir-apparent.

McCain can eat some crow, point to the indisputable evidence of economic growth spurred on by the three rounds of Bush tax cuts and simply say ‘I was wrong. It won’t happen again.’

This may not be enough for many GOP regulars who may have retained a bad taste in their mouths from Bush 41 going back on his “No new taxes" pledge.
They trusted the heir-apparent to a tax-cut heavy presidency once before and they got burned. Free-market Republicans are not anxious to repeat this experience and may therefore look for an aggressive tax-cut agenda from candidate McCain before agreeing to support him.

This would require more than a simple apology from McCain for his refusal to support pro-growth policies in the past. McCain would instead need to adopt a serious tax-reform agenda during the primaries which includes overhauling the IRS and some kind of flat or fair tax proposal which the base has been salivating over for years, and which the president has been forced to abandon due to his decision to pursue Social Security reform first in early 2005, and his subsequent plummet in the opinion polls.

Ironically, the problems that Bush and the GOP face are the main reason that McCain is so close to cementing frontrunner status if he hasn’t already.

As long as Bush and congressional Republicans are unpopular, the perceived need for the GOP to nominate a more moderate presidential candidate in order to maintain the White House in ’08 is more pronounced.

If Bush was around 65% in the polls and the GOP majority in Congress was not in doubt, the base would feel more confident in nominating an unapologetic conservative in the mold of George Allen or Bill Frist, and that such a candidate could beat an artificially-moderated Hillary in the general election.

But fortunately for McCain, as long as the GOP’s grip on power is perceived as being weak, his candidacy looks more and more appealing.

By the time that Bush and the GOP have worked their way back into the American people’s good graces, McCain will likely have already wrapped up the support he needs from the party machinery and be well on the way to sweeping the early primaries.

McCain has an additional advantage in that he is the most popular topic of conversation among pundits who are discussing the ’08 elections. They have concluded that Hillary is the Democrat’s pick and now they’re trying to figure out who it is that the GOP will coronate. What many of them don’t realize is that simply by talking about McCain, whether their feelings towards him are positive or negative, they are making him the frontrunner simply by mentioning his name more often than the other potential GOP candidates.

McCain has always had a way with the media. In fact, no politician in recent years, even Bill Clinton has been as well regarded among media elites on both sides of the political spectrum.

This will of course change if he receives his party’s nomination for the presidency, as members of the media have a biological instinct embedded in their DNA to tear apart the lives of anyone who receives their parties ultimate political blessing.

Regardless of his inevitable media dissection when the time comes, Democrats should be afraid. Very afraid. If McCain is the frontrunner, chances are very good that he will be the nominee, and if he is the nominee, he will beat almost any Democrat on the roster including Hillary and he will do this despite the fortunes of President Bush or congressional Republicans on that November Tuesday.

If he plays the role of the frontrunner correctly over the next year, there is a good chance that McCain will be elected president in ’08, and we will see what happens to a divided electorate, when presented with a likeable candidate with a tendency to transcend party lines.

I realize that we haven’t even gotten to the ’06 mid-terms yet and already annoying wonks such as myself think they have the race for the ‘08 presidency all figured out.

Obviously, a lot can happen in 2 ½ years and my theories may be disheartening to many conservative Republicans who don’t like to compromise as well as many liberal Democrats who still haven’t gotten used to losing elections. But I think just about everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has to admit that ’08 is shaping up to be one of the most interesting presidential election years in our nation’s history.

GOP frontrunner John McCain. How does that sound?

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Two More on Wilson's Deceptions

http://www.slate.com/id/2140058/
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/mccarthy/mccarthy200604170640.asp

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Joe Wilson: Undeserving Media Darling

Joe Wilson will speak at my school next week. Why he was invited or why the left adores this guy, I have no clue. He more than anyone represents the dishonesty and desire to undermine the war in Iraq that has become so prevalent on the left and in the Democratic party. For the most part the media has been complicit but the truth has a funny way of coming out. John Leo does a good job of disecting this situation on the Real Clear Politics blog.


Bush Was Right About Iraq's Quest For UraniumBy John Leo

In a surprising editorial, The Washington Post deviated from the conventional anti-Bush media position on two counts. It said President Bush was right to declassify parts of a National Intelligence Estimate to make clear why he thought Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. And the editorial said ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson was wrong to think he had debunked Bush on the nuclear charge because Wilson's statements after visiting Niger actually "supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium."

In the orthodox narrative line, Wilson is the truth-teller and the Bush the liar. But Wilson was not speaking truthfully when he said his wife, Victoria Plame, had nothing to do with the CIA sending him to Niger. And it obviously wasn't true, as Wilson claimed, that he had found nothing to support Bush's charge about Niger when he (Wilson) had been told that the Iraqis were poking around in that uranium-rich nation.

Testifying before the Senate intelligence committee, Wilson said that the former prime minister of Niger told him he had been asked to meet with Iraqis to talk about "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries. Everybody knew what that meant; Niger has nothing much to trade other than uranium.


Christopher Hitchens made the latter point last week in a muscular column subtitled "Sorry, everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger." The "Sorry, everyone" phrase indicates the strength of the reigning orthodoxy -- that Bush simply lied when he uttered the famous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Hitchens made these points: Saddam Hussein had already acquired a large amount of uranium from Niger once before, in 1981, so he knew where to go. Amid suspicions that Saddam was trying to revive his nuclear program, Iraqis made a 1999 visit to Niger. The head member of the visiting Iraqi team was Saddam's senior public envoy for nuclear matters. Hmmm.

Defenders of orthodoxy have a fair point to make here. They say that the alert French, who were in total control of Nigerian uranium, would never have allowed it. Maybe, but the alert French turned out to be the payoff-oriented French on a very large scale in the oil-for-bribes scandal.

Hitchens made another point. The forged documents claiming an Iraq-Niger connection were so crude that they could never have fooled the CIA or British intelligence for very long. Who would do this, and do it so badly? Nobody knows. But if the forgeries were meant to distract from other evidence that Bush was right, then they certainly worked. Look around in American journalism, and you will find great certitude that the forgeries destroyed Bush's claim.

That certitude can only be founded on the belief that Tony Blair, the U.S. Senate intelligence committee and the special investigative team of Parliament were all liars when they said there was substantial non-forged evidence backing Bush's claim. The investigative team was headed by the highly regarded Lord Butler, who served as a Cabinet minister under five prime ministers. It concluded that Bush's 16 words about Iraq's uranium shopping were "well-founded."

Actually, there is one other way to discount the Butler report: Either muffle or don't mention it in your news columns. The New York Times opted for muffling. A database search finds no mention of "well-founded" in the Times reporting, and only one barely scrutable paragraph about uranium in the Butler report, way down in the 11th paragraph of a story buried well inside the paper.

For you collectors of embarrassing journalism, here is paragraph 11: "It (the report) also defended British officials in the case of an apparently erroneous British report on Iraq's nuclear ambitions that made its way into President Bush's State of the Union speech last year claiming that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Niger. The Butler report confirmed that Iraqi officials had visited Niger in 1999, and the British government had several different sources insisting that the purpose was to buy uranium. But it added, 'the evidence was not conclusive that Iraq had actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium, and the British government did not claim this.'"

Note the Times' careful denial of something nobody had claimed -- that Iraq had recently bought, not sought, uranium in Africa.

In truth, Bush handled the issue badly. He dithered, couldn't find the words to explain himself, and weirdly withdrew the 16 words when the pressure came. And it is surely arguable that the uranium-in-Africa charge was too flimsy for the weight Bush gave it in his speech.
But as columnist Robert Novak once argued, the burgeoning "Bush lied" mantra was heavily dependent on the uranium claim. So the liar label was most firmly attached on an issue Bush was right about. Go figure.

John Leo is a contributing columnist for RealClearPolitics

The Valarie Plame non-scandal is over, but Joe Wilson will undoubtably continue to line his pockets with university money for years to come. What's even worse is that my Journalism class may be required to write a story on Wilson's speech. This may be a blessing in disguise however, especially if there is a question and answer session.

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I like the new hairstyle.

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THE LEFT'S GONE FOX HUNTING

Wow. The far-left here in the US sure has a lot of hate to dish out. First and foremost of course they hate the president. Murderer, War Criminal, Liar, etc….we all know the talking points. You got nutty professors like Jay Bennish, going on inappropriate diatribes in his geography class, comparing Bush to Hitler, and this “geography” “teacher” got what he deserved. Good riddance. All you school kids, start taking your tape recorders to class, you hear?

The far-left will never like President Bush and will never understand or want to fight The War on Terror. There’s nothing we can do about that, so let’s just move-on .

The far-left also has it out for Wal-Mart. Actually Wal-Mart is representative of a greater evil to those on the far-left, that being American corporations and the free-market system. Fortunately most people understand how beneficial companies like Wal-Mart are to the US economy and for those families on the lower end of the economic spectrum. Therefore the mediocre Wal-Mart bashing films and store boycotts are mostly participated in by college students who will see the error of their ways in a few years and leave their pointless pursuit to the next batch of undeveloped minds that graces the halls of academia.

Of all of the things that the far-left is required to disdain in order to get their credentials in the mail from George Soros, a special amount of vitriol is reserved for The Fox News Channel. Since the network debuted in 1996, there has been a growing chorus among college professors, movie stars and liberal journalists implying that the network slants their news to the right and that they are little more than a mouth-piece for the Bush administration.

The chorus has caught on and the foot soldiers in the far-left movement have been echoing the sentiments for quite a while in their typical low-brow way. Here’s an example.

On the night that convicted murderer and founding member of the “Cryps” gang Stanley “Tookie” Williams was executed, Fox, like all of the other cable news networks, had a correspondent outside of San Quentin to cover the execution as well as the anti-death penalty protests which accompanied it. While the Fox correspondent was doing his report, a group of death penalty protesters surrounded him and began shouting things into his microphone, and holding up signs behind him while he was trying to do his job. They wrote “Fox Lies” on little slips of paper and held them up next to the reporters head. They yelled similar slogans at the camera and at one point a huge mean-looking black guy stood right next to the reporter and began staring him down as if he was about to kick his fair and balanced ass. Of course this guy was just a mindless thug who had probably never even heard of Fox News until tonight, but his fellow protesters did nothing to stop his intimidating tactics and instead continued their juvenile behavior. Fortunately, like most Fox News reporters, the guy was a pro, and was not distracted. He kept on going as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening until “Tookie” was finally put down.

Of course this is most likely an isolated incident, but it is a very good example of the mindset and behavior patterns of those who despise Fox News and who believe that it is more of a propaganda tool rather than a legitimate news outlet.

Now, unlike the folks on the left-wing blogs, I am going to attempt to be “fair and balanced” here and say this; Fox News as a network does lean to the right. Their most popular news analysts are conservatives. Guys like O’Reilly and John Gibson make no attempt to hide their conservative leanings and they have huge audiences, because they’re smart guys and people enjoy watching them. However it is important to keep in mind that they do not report hard news. It is “news analysis.” Sean Hannity is not a reporter, he is a right-wing commentator, but no one ever claimed he was a reporter. It is important to know the difference. CNN has news analysts as well and most of them lean to the left. But more on that in a moment.

The people who do the hard news for FOX, usually are not criticized, by the anti-FOX folks, due to the fact that they don’t interject their opinion into the news. They aren’t supposed to and guys like Shepard Smith and Carl Cameron don’t do it. They may indeed be conservatives off the camera, but when the camera’s rolling they do their job, and keep their opinions to themselves.

In fact, Fox has many high profile reporters who are well know liberals. For example, Greta Van Susteren, who consistently has the second highest rated show on the network, after O’Reilly, was known for her Democratic leanings before FNC even existed. Tabloid journalist Geraldo Rivera was a huge Clinton supporter, and despite what you may think of his tactics or reporting skills, there is no doubt that he is indeed a high profile member of the Fox News family.

So why all the hatred? Here’s why. For years conservatives and many moderates in this country have been bitching about the monolithic liberalism, which has been espoused by the press since the 1960’s. Poll after poll has been taken regarding the political leanings of those in the journalistic community over the last 50 years and these studies have consistently shown that generally three-fourths of reporters espouse political views that are considered liberal. In addition to this, journalists have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic candidate for president over the GOP candidate, in every election since 1960. This is still the case and anyone who denies it is either fooling themselves or they themselves are so liberal that to them, anything that doesn’t echo the sentiments of the Village Voice is considered a right-wing paper.

Before FNC became popular, the only thing close to a right-leaning national news outlet that conservatives had was The Wall Street Journal. Their editorial page was consistently right-of-center and was the only escape for the 50% of the country, who couldn’t stomach the obvious left wing slant of papers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Boston Globe and USA Today.

It wasn’t just the op-ed section either. Anyone who was even remotely independent minded could see that the hard news coverage in these papers was slanted to the left in everything from the wording in articles to article placement.

This clear slant wasn’t just confined to newspapers either. The three major networks where most Americans still get their news today also leaned left. CBS replaced far-left leaning anchor Walter Cronkite, who still today makes his political leanings well-known to all four people who care to listen, with further left-leaning news anchor Dan Rather.

In cable news, Ted Turner, no neo-con himself, started CNN. The left loves to bag of FNC news analysts like O’Reilly, but how many of you remember Jesse Jackson’s short lived news analysis program. There are only two differences between the shows. The first are the host’s clear differences of opinion on important issues, and the second is the fact that O’Reilly’s show is the most popular show on cable news, while Jackson’s show failed miserably.

In addition to cable, the big three networks and all but one of the major national newspapers, the left also had control of the governments news sources. Liberal voices more than dominated on NPR, while Bill Moyer’s show was left-leaning standard bearer on PBS.

Add to this the BBC and there you have it. About 95% of all citizens in this country got their news from a source that overwhelmingly favored and wrote coverage favorable to the left-wing of American politics.

While those on the right could see this obvious lack of balance in the media coverage of the freest nation on earth, there was really nothing they could do about it except complain on talk-radio, the only media outlet that was dominated by conservatives. Even these shows however, had to break every hour for news updates from the networks that owned the stations which carried their shows, and usually these networks were one of the big three. Even talk-radio was infiltrated by the liberal media.

Things started to change in 1996 when Rupert Murdoch started FOX News. At first, the left paid little attention to the fledgling network. Cable news was dominated by CNN and to a lesser extent the uber-liberal MSNBC, and those channels were in no danger of being overthrown by the network which until now had been known primarily for The Simpson’s and Married with Children.

Then came the one-two media events of the Florida recount and 9/11. FNC, which had been gaining slowly for years, suddenly overtook CNN. When this happened the left went ballistic. They started an all out assault on FNC which included the constant bashing of FNC personalities as well as a poorly made, inaccurate piece of propaganda called Outfoxed

They set out on a mission to convince America that FNC was simply a tool of the right in their continuing efforts to brainwash people into voting for George W. Bush. Ted Turner started calling Rupert Murdoch names. Left wing blogs began giving examples of things said on FNC that espoused conservative viewpoints, usually given by news analysts, whose job it is to give said viewpoints. Editorial pages became even more liberal as if to try and counter O’Reilly, who despite his huge success doesn’t even come close to the circulation numbers for the New York Times or the viewer ship of The NBC Nightly News. The left was trying to make it seem as if somehow FNC was not a legitimate news outlet. That they were not playing by the rules. However their case was hurt by the fact that FNC remains one of the few news outlets which hasn’t gotten into huge trouble as of late for questionable news practices.

The New York Times was sent reeling when Jason Blair, a young affirmative–action hire, admitted to faking news stories. Dan Rather went forward and reported the bogus Bush National Guard story, which was based on fake documents. Newsweek claimed that soldiers at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down the toilet in order to tick off detainees. No truth to that either. CNN’s managing editor Eason Jordan claimed that US soldiers in Iraq were intentionally targeting journalists, but never gave any evidence to back it up. He was subsequently sacked.

Meanwhile, FNC has stayed out of trouble and is yet to be accused any of these underhanded practices. The only thing that FNC’s critics can really say is that O’Reilly and a few other news analysts are conservative. So what? These analysts admit to their political leanings. No one’s trying to pass Sean Hannity off as an unbiased reporter.

Despite FNC’s success, the media is still dominated by the left. Most mainstream media outlets still outwardly refuse to run any stories that make the president look good, like the recent release of audiotapes in which Saddam Hussein discussed how to hide WMD’s from the UN, or any stories that make the left look bad, like when Al Gore went to Saudi Arabia and verbally attacked the President. It doesn’t matter to the MSM if the president’s reasons for invading Iraq were justified, or if the former VP is engaging in behavior that borders on treason. They are going to report, only what they feel like reporting. If it doesn’t jibe with their political slant, then you’re not going to hear about it.
To be fair, it’s not really their fault. Like in those in Hollywood, most reporters don’t even know how to view a story from a conservative angle. They are incapable of it.

Things are changing however. As the old guard of liberal journalists like Helen Thomas, Dan Rather and Judy Woodruff begin to fade; a new breed of journalist is emerging and since conservative journalists, who were previously rejected by other outlets, can now go to FNC without fear of retribution for political views which may differ from the top brass, a wider less biased array of voices is starting to come to the forefront of American media.

With the success of FNC other outlets also seem to have discovered that most of the population does not share the average journalist’s political leanings. MSNBC has hired conservatives like Joe Scarborough and papers like the New York Times and LA Times have begun admitting their past bias and attempting to gain back the public’s trust by adding balance to their news coverage and firing left-wing bomb throwers like Robert Scheer from their editorial staff.

CNN has had to adjust as well, now that they are consistently in second place. They have balanced out their coverage a bit, but have also tried to gain traction among liberals with left leaning commentators like Jack Cafferty. Similarly, MSNBC’s thinking about bringing back Phil Donahue.

You see folks. FNC was never that far to the right. It’s just that all of the other news outlets were so far to the left that people forgot what unbiased news coverage was supposed to look like. Because many of the analysts on FNC do lean right, to a ultra-liberal it seems as if they are out of the mainstream, when the truth is just the opposite.

FNC’s hard news coverage is as unbiased if not more so than any other news outlet out there, so it would be better if the left just learned to live with it and took some notes on how to run a successful media outlet. Because when Air America dies out, which will probably be very soon, and the daily newspapers go the way of the dinosaur due to the internet, the playing field is going to be more level than it has ever been before, and while this is not the optimal scenario for liberals, it is for the majority of Americans, who don’t want their news slanted to the left or to the right. They just want their damn news.

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