There can be no doubt about the moral justice of yesterday's Baghdad tribunal judgment on Saddam Hussein. He was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, chiefly Kurds and Shias, and arguably for many more killed in the Iran-Iraq war.
Instead of a 'but' he uses a 'yet' ...
Yet it is quite another matter whether it is right or politically prudent to execute him, after the shambles of a trial that he has undergone.
Whether it's right isn't an issue: only a cloistered person secure in his rotting liberal land could question the right of a people hammered over the last thirty years to hang the man most responsible for the deaths of so many of their families, relatives and countrymen.
Washington was always determined that Saddam should die - but at the hands of his own people rather than those of Americans.
Which is as it should be -- the Iraqis suffered the most so they get the first opportunity to try the man. This is aproblem for Max.
George Bush's handling of this issue restores one's respect for Pontius Pilate. The president has achieved the almost impossible feat of generating some sympathy for Saddam, at least in Muslim societies.
Total nonsense: Pontius Pilate was about shifting blame. GWB handed responsibility, not blame, to the Iraqis and asked them to get it right. They did.
The Iraqi judicial system is incapable of conducting a plausible hearing. Instead it staged a farce: judges changed, defence lawyers murdered, interminable rambling orations from prosecutors and defendants. Bush should have got some old Soviets to advise the locals about how to run a proper show trial.
At which point Max (temporarily ignoring the origins of his own political philosophy for convenience) would have complained about a 'show trial', and would have, of course, blamed Bush.
Any surprise that the Iraqis, denied the most elemental forms of justice over the past forty years, wouldn't run a perfect trial with clockwork precision? Any surprise that a people unused to calm deliberation wouldn't get that completely right the first time? That the Iraqi judicial system persevered to a verdict and a sentence is the point.
The biggest American mistake was to capture Saddam in the first place. In the House of Commons in 1944, the foreign secretary was asked what instructions had been given to British troops on what to do if they encountered Hitler. Amid laughter, Anthony Eden said: "I am quite satisfied to leave the decision to the British soldier concerned."
There's one point where we can agree: a couple of grenades in the septic tank spider hole would have spared us a lot of nonsense. However, it would not have allowed the Iraqis the opportunity to establish a clear point of justice for their people -- that revenge isn't warranted, that justice can be done, and that the national conscience can be satisfied.
Among the allied leaders, only Stalin wanted Hitler alive, for the pleasure of hanging him. Everybody else was appalled by the prospective perils and complexities of trying and executing a head of state in partnership with the Russians. Hitler's suicide came as a relief.
We managed all the other Nazis without much problem at the Nuremberg trials. Hitler would have been a much bigger trial but there's no question the four-country tribunals would have tried and hanged him.
Almost everyone involved in the Nuremberg trials of his subordinates felt uncomfortably conscious that they were administering victors' justice. The proceedings proved valuable, however, in placing on record for all time some of the monstrous crimes of the Nazis.
Which Max would deny to the Iraqi people. It's useful to put Saddam's crimes into the public record, particularly at a time when useless idiots (e.g., Hans Blix) think that Iraq was 'better off' under Saddam.
Also, in 1946 the Nuremberg judges possessed a critical advantage. Even if the wartime allies did not represent absolute good - how could any such partnership that included the Soviets? - few people doubted their overwhelming moral superiority over the Nazis.
By contrast, the moral authority of the Iraq coalition led by the US has been blown to rags since 2003. President Bush's achievement has been to convert an almost impregnable American position in the world after 9/11 into a grievously damaged one today.
This is idiocy. Our 'almost impregnable position' on 9/12 was almost immediately denigrated by LeMonde. It was spat on by progressives around the world within weeks and months when we decided to fight back instead of questioning why they hated us. The left/progressive world wanted us to remain on our backs, and the very act of fighting back caused us to 'forfeit' our moral superiority.
It is believed by a few delusional people at the Lancet that more Iraqis have died since the US invasion than were killed by Saddam Hussein.
Max has drunk the Kool-Aid.
Most have fallen victim to fellow countrymen rather than to American fire. Yet this seems irrelevant, since Washington chose to assume responsibility for the country. The dead have perished on Bush's watch.
Max thus forgives the jihadis, the Ba'athists and the Sadrist thugs. They aren't responsible for the all the IEDs they planted, the ambushes, the sniper attacks, the murder of Iraqi police standing in line, the bombing of schools and the murder of children. It's Bush's fault, couldn't be anyone else of course. This is a despicable line of reasoning.
Yet we should at least consider the pragmatic argument for executing Saddam. Alive, he remains a focus for the Ba'athist fanatics who spearhead the Sunni insurgency. They cling to a fantasy that one day their old leader will regain power and restore Sunni primacy.
Max considers it to dismiss it ...
However angry many of us are with George Bush and Tony Blair, we must never succumb to an unworthy desire to see coalition policy fail merely because this would humiliate the US president and British prime minister.
Tell that to your fellow travellers Max. Think the MoveOn people are with you on that? Think Old Labour buys into that?
Only one question should matter now: what is the best course, not for our consciences or political satisfaction but for the Iraqi people?
Isn't that their decision? One country. Three countries. A tribal country. That's on them. We might fail to rescue them completely and lead them to a modest, semi-20th Century society. It's their decision, not ours.
Western actions have precipitated the descent of their country into chaos.
No -- Saddam did that. Look at Iraq in that thirty years and you'll see chaos, the controlled chaos that totalitarian rule brings. Nothing works. No one talks. Everyone is afraid. That's chaos and it's evil.
Whatever we do henceforward must be designed to promote the restoration of order, however remote such an outcome may seem.
Many Kurds and Shias want Saddam to die. This is not only because they seek vengeance for decades of atrocities, but also because they think his removal will improve their future prospects. If Iraqis held a national referendum on Saddam's fate, most would unhesitatingly commit him to the gallows.
Max will tell you shortly why that sensible thought is wrong, of course.
Bush's people in Washington say: "Our policy is to empower the Iraqi people to determine their own future. Allowing an Iraqi court to condemn Saddam, Iraqi executioners to kill him, is a significant step towards that objective."
Yet to many of us it is not that simple.
The 'us' in this are the Euros, and specifically the proper-thinking, progressive, quasi-socialist Euros, for whom nothing is simple except their own self-loathing.
Real power in Iraq today rests in the hands of the Americans or those of local factions on the ground. The so-called national government and its institutions are almost impotent, because they face such physical and political difficulties in exercising their functions.
It's a work in progress. Nothing gets built quickly.
The verdict on Saddam is just.
Nice of you to admit that.
Yet everything stinks about the process by which it has been reached. Sentence on the condemned tyrant will probably be carried out before the trial of his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as Chemical Ali. It is widely expected that the execution will be rushed so that Saddam cannot give evidence at Majeed's trial about collusion between Washington and the former tyranny, which could grievously embarrass the US.
Would anyone believe whatever Saddam 'testified' to? C'mon Max, you can't be that stoopid. Saddam, Ali, the whole rotten gang will lie and deny to the end of their days.
Once again it matters less whether this is true than that so many people around the world believe it to be so. It is dismaying to be obliged to acknowledge that Americans, British, Ba'athists, militiamen, national government representatives and insurgent suicide bombers in Iraq are all today perceived as coexisting on the same moral plane.
It's dismaying to you because you're the one who believes it to be so. We simple folk at Rantburg believe that the Americans and Brits are indeed on a different, far higher moral plane. We didn't go into Iraq for oil or profit, we went there to remove a threat and an evil. We stayed when it would have been easier -- far easier -- to pull out in those first few months after toppling Saddam because we believed we had a moral responsiblity to help re-build the country. That's our moral plane. What's yours?
Rationally, we know that Bush and Blair want virtuous things for the country: democracy and personal freedom. Yet so incompetent has been the fulfilment of their policies on the ground that the leaders of Britain and the US now possess no more credible mandate than that of Iraq's local mass murderers.
Again, who's making that judgment -- you? Perhaps if you and your fellow travellers quit blabbering and started helping with the heavy lifting you'd help with the mandate.
To justify hanging Saddam, Bush and Blair needed moral ascendancy, which they have forfeited.
He keeps saying this hoping that repetition will make it come true.
His execution will appear to be merely another dirty deed in the endless succession that have taken place in Iraq since 2003, backed by our bayonets.
Now the president will preside over a hanging that will be as much his handiwork as if he pulled the lever, with Blair performing the usual associated functions - attaching the hood, tightening the knot and otherwise making himself useful. In Texas this sort of thing is no big deal. But in Britain we have got out of the habit. Blair may need coaching.
And then he can teach the rest of you.
It seems remarkable that yesterday the two major political parties of a country that abolished capital punishment 40 years ago expressed satisfaction at the prospect of a hanging up the road, conducted by surrogates. How can Britain as a nation refuse to hang its own murderers, while being so eager to support the hanging of other people's?
And here we cut to the real heart of the matter for Max: squeamishness. He's convinced of his own moral superiority because he and his country have abolished the death penalty, and the very act of hanging Saddam causes him to imagine blood on his hands. It took a thousand words and an adult life filled with delusion to get here. Max is unhappy because the real world has forced itself into his comfortable life. Far better to think great thoughts and imagine the fight to be over a better NHS, over global warming, than to be confronted with having to respond to evil. Hanging Saddam forces Max to focus on that which he does not wish to see.
Only some Iraqi Sunnis will mourn Saddam, a monster of the 20th century as deserving of death as were the Nazis hanged at Nuremberg. But his execution will be widely perceived as devoid of legitimacy. British influence will as usual be negligible, yet we shall share responsibility.
This seems yet another ugly land-mark in an ugly saga in which Blair has made us all complicit. Here is another triumph for the man whom the Labour party conference last month cheered to the rafters.
Max Hastings is a fool, a deluded fool who doesn't deserve the freedom and comforts his society, and his ancestors, have given him.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/06/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Hastings was a fine military historian and correspondant at one time. His book on the Falklands War is a classic. Too bad he has gone over to the dark side.
#2
Surreal, utterly surreal. If this is what passes for moral reasoning in Europe, they are all doomed. Islam will eat their lunch for breakfast.
The biggest American mistake was to capture Saddam in the first place.
Leting him continue to run amok wreaking havok, death and mayhem would have been so much more appealing to this asshole's sensibilities.
It is dismaying to be obliged to acknowledge that Americans, British, Ba'athists, militiamen, national government representatives and insurgent suicide bombers in Iraq are all today perceived as coexisting on the same moral plane.
Only in your delusory morally relative world are terrorists and liberators on an equivalent plane.
Yet so incompetent has been the fulfilment of their policies on the ground that the leaders of Britain and the US now possess no more credible mandate than that of Iraq's local mass murderers.
Again, only in the world of people who are not on speaking terms with the truth.
His execution will appear to be merely another dirty deed in the endless succession that have taken place in Iraq since 2003, backed by our bayonets.
Therefore, there is nothing at all noble about liberating people from the rule of a murderous, genocidal tyrant. Executing that tyrant is a crime equal to any of his own. How is it possible for this moron to spew this sort of sewage without gagging himself?
Only some Iraqi Sunnis will mourn Saddam, a monster of the 20th century as deserving of death as were the Nazis hanged at Nuremberg. But his execution will be widely perceived as devoid of legitimacy.
Only for those who believe that Iraq would be better off still being ground beneath a Baathist boot heel.
Great inline commentary, Steve. Just reading this drivel elevated my blood pressure. With "great thinkers" like this at the helm, Europe might as well surrender to Islam right now. This wanker is able to sacrifice any good or moral thing on the altar of his hatred for America's success.
#4
Was listening to FOX's special documentary on the threat from Radical Islam - three points I found interesting [as a matter of program dialogue] were (1) the Radics/Spetzlamists make clear their hatred for JEWS, CHRISTIANS, HINDUS, + PAGANS, BUT NOT BUDDHISTS; (2) THEY PROCLAIM TO HATE
ALL THINGS WESTERN, + DON'T CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT
SSSSSHHHHHHHHH BLACK AFRICA, BUT DON'T HATE ASIA; and (3) as per their desired Global Muslim/
Islamist State, iff America is not per se destroyed IT IS TO BECOME A WEAK PROXY STATE UNDER ISLAMIC OR ISLAMIST DOMINATION. MY POINT IS > what makes BUDDHISM + ASIA NOT WORTHY OF BEING TARGETED BY RADICAL ISLAM???
#11
AC,
I was thinking the same thing - his book on the Falklands campaign is IMHO the gold standard on the subject. It is a shame that he's completely lost it like this.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/06/2006 8:58 Comments ||
Top||
#12
"Among the allied leaders, only Stalin wanted Hitler alive, for the pleasure of hanging him. Everybody else was appalled by the prospective perils and complexities of trying and executing a head of state in partnership with the Russians. Hitler's suicide came as a relief."
Actually, both the Americans and the Soviets were in favour of trials for the Nazi leadership. Churchill was in favour of the lot of them being shot on sight. And quite right too.
#13
That was becuase Churchill was a conservative stteped in history unlike the revolutionary Americans and Soviets who had the answer to all mankind's problems.
#14
"Almost everyone involved in the Nuremberg trials of his subordinates felt uncomfortably conscious that they were administering victors' justice."
I doubt that. Some of those tried were acquitted, some got 10 years, some got 20 years, and some got death. They were treated much fairer than their tens of millions of victims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Trials
THE Democrats may or may not capture the House or Senate tomorrow. But one thing appears certain: There will be a lot of close races where the results are uncertain late into the night (and perhaps even the next morning) and where the outcome may hinge on legal rulings about which ballots count and which dont. "Especially if you rubes vote incorrectly after we've told you a hundred times which candidate to choose!!"
After all, in the last few years, several statistical dead-heat elections have ended up in court. The mayoralty of San Diego and the governorship of Washington are just two of the more high-profile examples since Bush v. Gore in 2000 in which elections were decided by a few votes and whining and bitching about the result for years afterward controversy followed the winner into office.
The rub in these cases is that we could count and recount, we could examine every ballot four times over and wed get you guessed it four different results. Thats the nature of large numbers there is inherent measurement error. Wed like to think that there is a true answer out there, even if that answer is decided by a single vote. We so desire the certainty of thinking that there is an objective truth in elections and that a fair process will reveal it.
Continued on Page 49
#2
Interesting irony that the NYT mentions Bush/Gore and the Washington Gov's race in 2004. Neither race would have been a controversy were it not for the thousands of illegal alien votes, dead votes and felon votes that weren't thrown out. In Gregoire's case, investigators estimated that over 5000 votes were illegal or illegitimate. Get ready for another round of massive donk voter fraud tomorrow. Anyone who challenges or questions it will be tarred as a racist, a bigot, an extremist right-wing operative or a 'disenfranchiser'.
#3
After the circus in Florida the call for election reform should have centered IMO on a national standard voting process. One that used a mechanical counting device backed up by a paper trail. up until the last primary here we were still using the old lever machines. Easy to use. Reliable and unhackable. Tamper proof? Well I do suppose it could happen but enough observers are present when the tally is taken after the polls close the chances of rigging an election are slim to none. As to voter fraud. IDs should be required. It won't stop all fraud but should cut it down.
#4
DV, I agree and I would not be surprised, if it's close enough, to see the donks litigate in enough districts to prevent a Congress from being organized in January.
#5
My mom pointed out that there will be *voting* tomorrow, but possibly very little *electing*, as so many of the close races will be decided after extended recounts and even court time.
#6
I remember reading someone predicting that we won't have closure for months after the election. I'm sure that will be true unles enough of us get out and vote so that the vote is not close enough to litigate.
VOTE. Remind your friends (who vote Republican) to vote. Vote like your life depends on it.
#7
It's way past time that voter fraud be considered what it is, nothing less than full blown treason. It should be punished by death. After the entire democratic party gets executed for vote fraud, then maybe they'll create a real party.
#8
What does this mean in actuality? In terms of a two-candidate race in which each has attained around 50 percent of the vote, a 1 percent margin of error would be represented by 1.29 divided by the square root of the number of votes cast.
Huh? What!? Where the hell does this come from? It's not even close to statistical probability so far as I know? In statistical probabability, as I learned it, you take the total number of entries and divide by the number for each side to give you a result.
For example,
In a sample of 100, you have 53 for and 47 against. 53/100=53% for; 47/100=47% against. Obviously, the 53% for wins.
There's no adding 0.29 (and why 0.29?, why not 0.30 or 0.50 or whatever) and then dividing by the square root of the number of votes cast! None! That's an example of manipulating the numbers to give you a result you want.
This method won;t even give you a median statistical result (which is also easy to calculate). So, maybe he's trying to use a mean squares result - but that's also the wrong technique so far as I understand.
There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.
Unless someone can tell me where I'm wrong then this whole calculation is a basis for massive fraud.
#9
Reminded me of nothing so much as a question my father used to pose, If a third of four is 2 and a half of three is eight, how long are two hatchet handles and a little bit?
The US Presidential election is not decided by the popular vote! We use something called the Electoral College System which is a device to prevent majority one-party areas from exercising virtually dictatorial power over the rest of the nation (ie large population blue-state areas from deciding and controlling who gets to be President despite what the rest of the country says!).
But I guess you don't agree with the Founders on that particular apparatus anyway, right?
No, no. The tyranny of the majority is always the right way to go. Power to the people! Right, dude?
#11
The formula is correct, but the description is not.
For n sample data points randomly chosen from a normally distributed population, the margin of error at a 99% confidence level is approximately equal to 1.29 divided by the square root of n.
Key assumption: that the population is normally distributed, that it is a set of discrete points (probability distribution rather than a continuous probability density function) and that the sample is truly randomly drawn from the total underlying population.
The writer seems to have mistaken "99% confidence" for "1% margin of error". The formula actually says that the margin of error is going to be less than or equal to that formula, 99% of the time.
#12
Or, to put it another way, if our sample indicates that candidate A has 47% support, with a margin of error of 2% (99% confidence level), that means that the true level of support for A in the overall population will be somewhere in the range of 45-49%, 99% of the time.
The '99% of the time' is an odd thing to say about a one time event like an election -- the underlying statistics assumes we are drawing a simple random sample from the whole population and could do so again and again.
So the whole thing gets collapsed (somewhat misleadingly) into saying that we are 99% confident that A's overall support is in the 45-49% range. But what the numbers really mean is that in 99% of polls taken with these results in this population, A's true level of support will be between 45 and 49%.
Thanks for the correction! Your explanation I understand, but what was being said had me completely confused (I'm not a statistician, but have done some statistical work).
#14
You're welcome. I'm not a statistician either, but I have to use both normal and Bayesian statistics in my research. It takes a while to wrap ones mind around this stuff -- our brains are wired for quick overally pattern matching, not these abstractions.
Add in a writer who's pretty clearly math challenged and the resulting article is a mess.
#15
I believe what a confidence interval of ±2% says is that if we sample the population with the same size sample repeatedly, 99% of the samples will return a result that include the true value witin the confidence interval and that 1% of the samples will return a result that does not include the true value within its confidence interval.
#16
Yes, but that description while common is a bit misleading.
A confidence interval can never be specified without also associating a confidence level with that interval. It need not be 99% and usually isn't, in most analyses, since to achieve that level requires significant sample size and good reason to believe that the sample is truly randomly drawn.
It's the failure to specify parameters like that that, combined with other egregious omissions, that leads applied math people like my sig other to roll their eyes at reported poll results. ;-)
Firstly, I am NOT endorsing all the current Republican policies. I think that for the most part, Hastert has failed the Nation, has dragged the Republican Party over to Democrat-style spending and pork barrel politics -- and the he has abandoned the ideals which won the Republicans their majority 12 years go. That is why the Republican party is in such hot water in this election.
But the alternative is worse.
Never forget that we are in a war with Radical Islam that seeks nothing less than destruction of the USA and its ideals, and utter submission to Fundamentalist Islam and Sharia Law.
Now, with that in mind, ask yourself how well our troops will work with Chairman Alcee Hastings (impeached for Bribery!) controlling the Intelligence that supports them, and Socialist Waxman doing the budgeting, and that moral midget Murtha (un-indicted co-conspirator in ABSCAM!) determining what gets in and out of the defense committee, and Ultra-liberal anti-military Sheehan-chum Nanacy Pelosi steering the Congress that sets our policies. Imagine yourself having to defend the nation and put people's lives on the line, and imagine doing so depending for your "top cover", policy and fiscal support, upon people in Congress that hate you.
Honestly assess the situation, and consider which group leadership (R or D) is best for the security of the nation.
Now that you see the threat, you may wonder "What can I do?, my district is a safe one, so my campaigning doesn't make a difference at all either way".
Wrong. This year is different. You have No Excuses.
The GOP has a get out the vote at their GOP GOTV link (in plain-text below)
The 30 minute call program lets you reach out of your district, which may be hopeless or already locked-up, and call people where it counts. Missouri, for example, to keep Talent in and McCaskill out. Or any of the other "tossup" areas. Your 30 minutes can and will have a huge impact - remember the impact of large numbers. If you only generate one vote in your calls, that's enough, if we can get enough people calling.
And tonight is the last chance: throw 30 minutes of phone calls on tonight. Sign up NOW, don't wait! You're online if you're reading this so you do not have an excuse. And then do the calls this afternoon when you get home from work, or do it this evening while you're watching the Monday Night Football Game pre-show.
Come on folks is 30 minutes too high a price to ask compared to the price we all will pay for the next 2 years of retreat, defeat and impeachment?
The on Tuesday, Keep the Republican Congress in place, "hold your nose and vote"
As you volunteer, keep in mind the old saying "he may be a son of a bitch, but hes OUR son of a bitch".
One thing is for sure: if you get out there and make those calls, then those sons of bitches OWE YOU.
Take it personally, and collect on it.
If we can get the Republicans to stay in control of Congress, it will be mainly to the credit of the GOTV efforts. The way I'm thinking, they may end up wishing they hadn't after we keep chewing on them over the next 2 years.
All the people I have called on behalf of, in addition to the congresscritter I'm campaigning for, will hear the following and will get smacked with it until they do it:
=============
WIN THE WAR
Smack the president for fighting only half way. Tell him its time to lay the leather into it. Win this thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and quit gimping around with the enablers of terrorism, Iran and Syria and North Korea.
SECURE THE BORDER
No excuses, don't screw around, worry about immigration policy later. Fix the border, build the fence NOW, staff and fund the border-patrol NOW.
STOP THE PORK
No secret holds, no earmarks, no bloated omnibus budget bills. Submit your budget items with a name attached to them, out in the open, and let us see them at least 5 working days before you vote on them. Make a shopping list. Don't act like we have to buy the 7 million dollar bridge to nowhere in order to get rifles for our troops! Put the items out there INDIVIDUALLY, and put your name on it. Its our damn money, and if you can't put you name by the spending, then that's a clear indication that you are spending it on the wrong thing! Plus it gives the office of the president back the veto power he was intended to have.
CLEAN UP THE CORRUPTION
First, No revolving door to K-Street: Anyone that serves in Congress is BARRED PERMANENTLY from lobbying it. PERIOD. Next, if you fix the budgeting process, the corruption issues will clean themselves up. But in the meanwhile, make hard rules. If you are seen to have improperly interacted with a lobbyist, or get popped with $90,000 in your freezer, you are suspended. No votes needed, sorry - yer outta there until your are cleared. The state governor will appoint a temporary replacement until you resign or are exonerated.
=============
My candidate loves the work I'm doing, but he and the others are going to scream when it comes time to pay me and the other people who helped them get into office.
Too bad. And the funny thing is, I will be doing this regardless of who wins. Its just that if the Republicans win, I will have more pull because THEY OWE ME.
So sign up, at the GOP GOTV, and put your personal leash on the Republicans - get them into office, and amplify your voice.
Its simple, easy and you have no excuse since you are online reading this now. Take time sign up now, and take 30 minutes later to make some calls; Get the Republicans into control of the Congress, and get them in your debt at the same time. And collect that debt later, big time.
You have no excuses - and time is running out.
And no, I will not kick your ass if you don't sign up and call, heh. Nancy Pelois will administer the punishment to the whole nation instead.
#1
You got my partial list and there are additional things like tax policy, immigration, and on the senate, Judges - but the ones above are the most important for the house and thats the most important area.
What tribute do the Jolly Rodger band of Rantburger's have upon a Congress that owes its position to us?
After you make your 30 miinutes of calls tonight (putting on my best Drill Sgt Voice: And you will> make those calls trooper)...
What will you demand of the Republicans if they win?
How will you go about making your demands known - and hammering them until they give in?
What methods can you use to get to the Dems with the same things if the Dems win?
It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out - but hopefully the Republican Party that emerges will be more like '94 (minus the impeachment distractions) than the do-nothings of '04.
#2
1) Continue appointing ocionservative judges
2) Cut the non-military budget
3) Increase military spending
4) Sane immigation policies even if it means increasing quotas for Mexican immigration
5) Sedition and treason trials for those who speak out in favor of the enemy, including then pres
I gotta tell you if the right pulls this one out I am going after the media for their perfidy and treason.
#5
Interesting takes on this election form other blogs:
Any "Dems Win" result will be harped upon for what it clearly isn't: the great success of liberal ideas; instead, it's largely conservative distaste for elected Republicans that will drive them from office.
Politically speaking, victory would be a tar-baby.
The nation's tasks and image facing the Democrats will remain daunting; it will go from bully/cowboy to cut-n-run/coward, destroying what respect other might have remaining for the US. From disliked but feared, to a laughingstock is not a legacy the Demcrats will cherish, but its the one they will find themselves with. Either that or they turn back on their left/netroots.
absentee ballots are thus far tracking favorably for Republicans and that the get-out-the-vote program is proceeding as strongly as ever.
Like I said, interesting.
Make your voice known - and call others to get out there and VOTE!
And then be sure to call the GOP back, and tell them they OWE YOU and they better damn well pay up. There is no "next time" left for them.
There's always a 'next time' for me unless the Reps platform and policies become more unadulturatedly evil than the donks. Considering how far the donks have sunk into the filth, that won't be anytime soon, despite the Reps recent disappointing performance.
#10
Mojo, its not the muscles, its the training. You'd never see me, and more's the pity, because you'd miss seeing the "gotcha" grin on my face. The fact that I've live to be an OLD spook should tell you a few things. *grin*
FYI, the GOTV site is running a bit slow and running behind on its responses, hopefully from heavy demand by volunteers, not Desperate Dem hackers.
If you cannot get thru on the web, try calling your state Repub Party office - google for it. they can help. Maybe even in Mass.
Off to man the barricades, oops, I mean Phone Bank. We got a race to win here!
#11
CLEAN UP THE CORRUPTION
First, No revolving door to K-Street: Anyone that serves in Congress is BARRED PERMANENTLY from lobbying it. PERIOD. Next, if you fix the budgeting process, the corruption issues will clean themselves up. But in the meanwhile, make hard rules. If you are seen to have improperly interacted with a lobbyist, or get popped with $90,000 in your freezer, you are suspended. No votes needed, sorry - yer outta there until your are cleared. The state governor will appoint a temporary replacement until you resign or are exonerated.
Good, but not good enough. Use it to start with then escalate. ALL lobbyists must be banned. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Bupkus. Not a one of them. Buying influence must no longer be shielded by freedom of speech. It is destroying our country's political system.
If influence can be bought, it will be peddled by those who can be bought.
End of story. Our politicians are too damn obsessed with re-election to be immune to money held out by special interests. Soft money (PAC) should probably be prohibited as well. If a company wants legislation passed, it can go to its employees and the surrounding community to explain why enacting such a measure or law would be good for the locals. It can ask for (not demand) their vote and hope for the best.
No more going with suitcases full of cash to buy lawmakers. This is happening on both sides of the aisle and it is destroying America. If you want to know why voter turnout is so low and public opinion of politicians can only be expressed using negative numbers, this is one of the big reasons why.
See the comments below - this is a 2004 article. The intended article appears in the comments section.
Mid-october article; apparently those guys were accurate in their 2002 and 2004 projections. Still, don't forget to vote... in fact, vote early, vote often.
By JIM MCTAGUE
THE STATE OF THE UNION is cause for anxiety. Our military is stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq; the profligate Congress has turned a surplus into a record deficit; and the economy is threatened by trade imbalances, job losses, high oil prices and a health-care affordability crisis.
In light of this doleful litany, you'd expect voters to "Throw the bums out!" The bums in this case are the Republicans, who control not only the White House but both branches of the legislature. But the throwing-out will not materialize, in our view. While it's too soon to predict the presidential race, the GOP looks poised to strengthen its grip on Capitol Hill once all the votes are tallied after Nov. 2 and all the legal challenges are adjudicated.
Barron's predicts that the Republicans will pick up seven additional seats in the House and three more in the Senate, adding to the gains of the 2002 midterm election.
In the House, we foresee the Republicans with 234 members to the Democrats' 201, for a 53.8% majority, up from the current 227-205, or 52.5% majority. In the Senate, we believe the Republicans will end up with 54 members to the Democrats' 46, up from the current 51-49 advantage.
The predictions -- pointing to greater GOP gains than most observers expect -- reflect our view that the Republicans in key races generally have better grass-roots organizations than their rivals. The evidence: greater contributions from local residents as opposed to out-of-state interest groups. The Republicans are also helped by an economy that, while perceived less robust than before 2001, nonetheless is growing.
In sizing up the races, we looked at key polls, campaign-financing disclosures, economic indicators and insights from top political analysts -- a broad approach that served us well in forecasting the outcome of the 2000 and 2002 elections. In 2002, for instance, we were among the first and the few to correctly call a GOP win in the Senate. We predicted a 52-48 GOP advantage, when most other prognosticators saw Democrats winning control. We also correctly called a GOP surge in the House. We predicted a 225-seat majority, which was only two seats short of the actual result.
The GOP gains we forecast this time bode well for the stock market. For one thing, stocks have generally fared better when Republicans have held majorities in both the House and Senate. Such Republican rule historically has been accompanied by average gains of 16.9% a year in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, compared with 8.2% gains when Democrats have held sway, says Anthony Chan, senior economist with J.P. Morgan Fleming Asset Management. That reflects Republicans' historical role as fiscal conservatives, favoring lower taxes and less spending.
Furthermore, even with the predicted Republican gains, Washington will remain sufficiently gridlocked that neither party will be able to spend freely. And that's good news for deficit reduction, a key concern on Wall Street.
Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush's former economic adviser, says the GOP needs at least 55 seats in the Senate to accomplish much. Republican lobbyist and political guru Rick Hohlt argues that Bush, if re-elected, would need 60 Republicans in the Senate to assure passage of his second-term agenda. Hohlt points out that the GOP for all intents and purposes will have three-to-four fewer seats than advertised. That's because Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania often oppose their party's most sweeping proposals.
John Kerry, if elected, clearly would be even more stymied. But that might not be so bad for investors: A gridlocked Washington can't do much harm to the economy.
On our score card, a candidate's fund-raising prowess is given considerable weight, especially on the House side, where there is considerable historical evidence linking a big war chest with an Election Day victory. In fact, in most upsets of incumbents, the challenger usually is better financed. On the other hand, an incumbent with a cash advantage is rarely defeated on Election Day.
The correspondence between lucre and electability is not as pronounced in Senate races because both candidates typically are awash with cash. In part, there is more money because people from outside a state are making donations to advance their party's Senate candidate. To compensate for outside interference, we give an additional edge to the candidate who raises the most money from local zip codes. Local donations, we find, measure the strength of a candidate's grass-roots support and campaign organization.
Part II (methodology I guess) is available for suscribers only, but this should helps keep your spirit up.
#1
What sort of mutant article is this? It is talking about comparisons about what happens if Bush is reelected, vs if Kerry is elected. This article is pre-2004 national general election.
What is it doing with a November 2006 dateline, citing October developments.
#2
Arh, my bad! I followed a link from a recent entry in a french blog, and didn't notice the year, only the month (either he made a mistake himself, or this is supposed to be some kind of background material).
Damn, and I forwarded it to a couple of US correspondents too.
Ok, I screwed up, you can laugh at me.
JUBILANT DEMOCRATS SHOULD RECONSIDER their order for confetti and noisemakers. The Democrats, as widely reported, are expecting GOP-weary voters to flock to the polls in two weeks and hand them control of the House for the first time in 12 years -- and perhaps the Senate, as well. Even some Republicans privately confess that they are anticipating the election-day equivalent of Little Big Horn. Pardon our hubris, but we just don't see it.
Our analysis -- based on a race-by-race examination of campaign-finance data -- suggests that the GOP will hang on to both chambers, at least nominally. We expect the Republican majority in the House to fall by eight seats, to 224 of the chamber's 435. At the very worst, our analysis suggests, the party's loss could be as large as 14 seats, leaving a one-seat majority. But that is still a far cry from the 20-seat loss some are predicting. In the Senate, with 100 seats, we see the GOP winding up with 52, down three
We studied every single race -- all 435 House seats and 33 in the Senate -- and based our predictions about the outcome in almost every race on which candidate had the largest campaign war chest, a sign of superior grass-roots support. We ignore the polls. Thus, our conclusions about individual races often differ from the conventional wisdom. Pollsters, for instance, have upstate New York Republican Rep. Tom Reynolds trailing Democratic challenger Jack Davis, who owns a manufacturing plant. But Reynolds raised $3.3 million in campaign contributions versus $1.6 million for Davis, so we score him the winner.
Likewise, we disagree with pollsters of both parties who see Indiana Republican Rep. Chris Chocola getting whomped by Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly, a lawyer and business owner from South Bend. Chocola has raised $2.7 million, versus $1.1 million for Donnelly. Ditto in North Carolina, where we see Republican Rep. Charles Taylor beating Democrat Heath Shuler, a former NFL quarterback, because of better financing. Analysts from both parties predict a Shuler upset.
Is our method reliable? It certainly has been in the past. Using it in the 2002 and 2004 congressional races, we bucked conventional wisdom and correctly predicted GOP gains both years. Look at House races back to 1972 and you'll find the candidate with the most money has won about 93% of the time. And that's closer to 98% in more recent years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Polls can be far less reliable. Remember, they all but declared John Kerry president on Election Day 2004.
Our method isn't quite as accurate in Senate races: The cash advantage has spelled victory about 89% of the time since 1996. The reason appears to be that with more money spent on Senate races, you need a multi-million-dollar advantage to really dominate in advertising, and that's hard to come by.
But even 89% accuracy is high compared with other gauges. Tracking each candidate's funding is "exceptionally valuable because it tells you who has support," says William Morgan, executive director of the renowned Mid-West Political Science Association in Bloomington, Ind. The cognoscenti, he says, give the most money to the candidate they believe has a good chance of winning.
WE FOUND NO SHORTAGE of people to challenge us. They argue that money doesn't make a difference when the electorate is as worked up emotionally, as it is this year. John Aldrich, a professor of political science at Duke University who writes extensively about elections, says that a candidate really doesn't need the most money to win; he merely requires enough cash to get his message across. Aldrich believes Democrats will win this year with less money because they won't have to spend so much to persuade voters to switch horses.
"The support for the president, the Congress and incumbents is relatively low by historical standards," he says. In fact, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll says voter disgust with Congress is the lowest in the survey's 17-year history.
It's true that our formula isn't foolproof. In 1958, 1974 and 1994, the wave of anti-incumbent sentiment was so strong that money didn't trump voter outrage. We appreciate that voters in 2006 are hopping mad at the GOP because of the war and because of scandal. We just don't agree that the outrage has reached the level of those earlier times. The reason is that the economy in 2006 is healthier. And the economy is the only other factor that figures in our analysis.
In 1958, in sharp contrast to now, the country was in a deep recession. Though the Democrats controlled the House, voters blamed their pain on Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower, and it cost the GOP 48 seats. In 1974, a Watergate year, inflation and an Arab oil embargo pinched household budgets and helped fuel voter anger at Republicans. In 1994, though the economy was improving, unemployment was above 6% and personal income began to fall in the quarter prior to the election, souring the mood of the electorate. People blamed their pain on high taxes, which they associated with Democrats, and ushered in Newt Gingrich & Co.
Though the current economy is slowing, unemployment remains relatively low, at 4.6%, and disposable-income growth is positive. While GDP figures will be revised downward in coming weeks and unemployment figures could edge up, it may not matter. Those numbers are "interesting stuff for economists, but voters will continue to focus on pocketbook issues like the price of gas and the value of their 401(k)s," says GOP insider Rick Hohlt. Pump prices have been falling and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been on a tear, reaching 12,000 last week.
Hohlt and analyst John Morgan say Republicans will have unusually tough election-day challenges from Democrats in more than 50 races -- a high number. They recall no more than 20 highly competitive races in 2004. All but 10 of this year's contested seats are held by incumbents, and Hohlt and Morgan aren't predicting an outcome.
No gain, but no landslide either.
So, basically, I followed and posted the wrong link, I'm a retard.
Posted by: all my dissociative identities ||
11/06/2006 13:43 Comments ||
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#9
A5089,
No problem. Cheer up. Go have a glass or two of Merlot and some cheese; you're still one of RB's two favorite Frenchmen. Since RB's two favorite Frenchwomen are Melissa Theriau and Sabine Herold, you're in good company!
Posted by: mac ||
11/06/2006 16:21 Comments ||
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#10
Don't forget Leroidavid, our newest Frenchman, who popped his head in yesterday for the first time in a while. See, a5089? The number of your compatriots has increased by 100%! (Or 50% if you prefer to count the total number from your country)
My face time with John Kerry has been brief but choice. In 2003, I was at a campaign event in New Hampshire chatting with two old coots in plaid. The senator approached and stopped in front of us. The etiquette in primary season is that the candidate defers to the cranky Granite Stater's churlish indifference to status and initiates the conversation: "Hi, I'm John Kerry. Good to see ya. Cold enough for ya? How 'bout them Sox?" Etc. Instead, Mr. Kerry just stood there nose to nose, staring at us with an inscrutable semi-glare on his face. After an eternity, an aide stepped out from behind him and said, "The senator needs you to move."
"Well, why couldn't he have said that?" muttered one of the old coots. Why indeed?
Right now the Democratic Party needs the senator to move. Preferably to the South Sandwich Islands, until tomorrow evening, or better still, early 2009.
He won't, of course. A vain, thin-skinned, condescending blueblood with no sense of his own ridiculousness, Sen. Nuancy Boy is secure in little else except his belief in his indispensability. We've all heard the famous "joke" now: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." (Rimshot). Yet, tempting as it is to enjoy his we-support-our-dumb-troops moment as merely the umpteenth confirmation of the senator's unerring ability to Swift Boat himself, it belongs in a slightly different category of Kerry gaffe than, say, the time they went into Wendy's and Teresa didn't know what chili was.
Whatever he may or may not have intended (and "I was making a joke about how stupid Bush is but I'm the only condescending liberal in America too stupid to tell a Bush-is-stupid joke without blowing it" must rank as one of the all-time lame excuses), what he said fits what too many upscale Dems believe: that America's soldiers are only there because they're too poor and too ill-educated to know any better. That's what they mean when they say "we support our troops" -- they support them as victims, as children, as potential welfare recipients, but they don't support them as warriors and they don't support the mission.
So their "support" is objectively worthless. The indignant protest that "of course" "we support our troops" isn't support, it's a straddle, and one that emphasizes the Democrats' frivolousness in the post-September 11 world. A serious party would have seen the jihad as a profound foreign policy challenge they needed to address credibly. They could have found a Tony Blair -- a big mushy-leftie pantywaist on health and education and all the other sissy stuff, but a man at ease with the projection of military force in the national interest. But we saw in Connecticut what happens to Democrats who run as Blairites: you get bounced from the ticket. In the 2004 election, instead of coming to terms with it as a national security question, the Democrats looked at the War on Terror merely as a Bush wedge issue they needed to neutralize. And so they signed up with the weirdly incoherent narrative of John Kerry -- a celebrated anti-war activist suddenly "reporting for duty" as a war hero and claiming that, even though the war was a mistake and his comrades were murderers and rapists, his four months in the Mekong rank as the most epic chapter in the annals of the Republic.
It's worth contrasting the fawning media admiration for Mr. Kerry's truncated tour of duty with their total lack of interest in Bob Dole's years of service two presidential campaigns earlier. That convention night in Boston was one of the freakiest presentations in contemporary politics: a man being greeted as a combination of Alexander the Great and the Duke of Wellington for a few weeks' service in a war America lost. But Mr. Kerry is the flesh-and-blood embodiment of the Democratic straddle, of the we-oppose-the-war-but-support-our-troops line. That's why anti-war Dems, outspinning themselves, decided they could support a soldier who opposed a war. And as Mr. Kerry demonstrates effortlessly every time he opens his mouth, if you detach the heroism of a war from the morality of it, what's left but braggadocio? Or, as the senator intoned to me back in New Hampshire when I tried to ask what he would actually do about Iraq, Iran or anything else, "Sometimes truly courageous leadership means having the courage not to show any leadership." (I quote from memory.)
In fairness to Mr. Kerry, he didn't invent the Democrats' tortured relationship with the military. But ever since Eugene McCarthy ran against Lyndon Johnson and destroyed the most powerful Democrat of the last half-century, the Democratic Party has had a problematic relationship with the projection of power in the national interest. Jimmy Carter confined himself to one screwed-up helicopter mission in Iran; Bill Clinton bombed more countries in a little more than six months than the Zionist neocon warmonger George W. Bush has in six years but, unless you happened to be in that Sudanese aspirin factory, it was as desultory and uncommitted as his sex life and characterized by the same inability to reach (in Ken Starr's word) "completion." As for John Kerry, since he first slandered the American military three decades ago, he's been wrong on every foreign policy question and voted against every significant American weapons system.
To be sure, like Mr. Kerry in 2004 deciding that the murderers and rapists were now his brave "band of brothers," the left often discover a sudden enthusiasm for the previous war once a new one's come along. Since Iraq, they've been all in favor of Afghanistan, though back in the fall of 2001 they were convinced it was a quagmire, graveyard of empire, unwinnable, another Vietnam, etc. Oh, and they also discovered a belated enthusiasm for the first President Bush's shrewd conduct of the 1991 Gulf War, though at the time Mr. Kerry and most other Democrats voted against that one, too. In this tedious shell game, no matter how frantically the left shuffles the cups, you never find the one shriveled pea of The Military Intervention We're Willing To Support When it Matters.
To be sure, the progressives deserve credit for having refined their view of the military: not murderers and rapists, just impoverished suckers too stupid for anything other than soldiering. The left still doesn't understand that it's the soldier who guarantees every other profession -- the defeatist New York Times journalist, the anti-American college professor, the insurgent-video-of-the-day host at CNN, the hollow preening blowhard senator. Mr. Kerry's gaffe isn't about one maladroit Marie Antoinette of the Senate but a glimpse into the mindset of too many Americans.
#2
That's it then; the dems, a party of union hangers-on, unemployed blacks, mafia contract kick back operations, and ambulance chaser lawyers are too good for soldiers and sailers. Too pure, too superior, too educated, and especially, too nuanced. You just wouldn't understand.
#3
Bill Clinton bombed more countries in a little more than six months than the Zionist neocon warmonger George W. Bush has in six years but, unless you happened to be in that Sudanese aspirin factory, it was as desultory and uncommitted as his sex life and characterized by the same inability to reach (in Ken Starr's word) "completion."
Ouch!
Posted by: Mike ||
11/06/2006 8:27 Comments ||
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#4
"Sometimes truly courageous leadership means having the courage not to show any leadership." Pure gold YJCMTSU!
Jeebus, what a nose-in-the-air fruitcake. Can't even ask those lower than him to move, himself. Has to have his "staff" do it for him. What an arrogant pr!ck.
Posted by: BA ||
11/06/2006 13:35 Comments ||
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#6
national treasure, again thank you Mark!
The Straddlers: The left still doesn't understand that it's the soldier who guarantees every other profession -- the defeatist New York Times journalist, the anti-American college professor, the insurgent-video-of-the-day host at CNN, the hollow preening blowhard senator. Mr. Kerry's gaffe isn't about one maladroit Marie Antoinette of the Senate but a glimpse into the mindset of too many Americans.
#7
Heard another JFnK story on the radio here the other day. A few years back a cop pulls over a guy who turns out to be wanted on something outstanding and while the cop's in the process of arresting the guy, a Mercedes pulls up, the driver leans out and tells the cop to move the crusier so he can have the parking spot.
JFnK.
I don't doubt that it happened for a second.
#11
After an eternity, an aide stepped out from behind him and said, "The senator needs you to move."
"Well, why couldn't he have said that?" muttered one of the old coots. Why indeed?
Me, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, and any of our long line of friends and family would have stood up and told the Senator "Fucking make us, dumbshit." with blood in our eyes.
You don't try this kinda' shit with people raised on farms and factories and if you want to get us riled up, just try to lord it over us with some high-faluutin' condescending easterner bullshit.
I'm well-educated, but I wouldn;t have put up with this for one second.
The long fight for the rotating Latin American seat on the Security Council finally ended, as it was bound to, with Venezuela and Guatemala backing down in favor of a compromise candidate, Panama. Though Guatemala led by around 25 votes through most of the 47 ballots, it never approached the two-thirds General Assembly majority needed for a non- permanent Council seat.
Panama is a respectable choice. What made this election noteworthy was that the main issue - in fact the sole issue - was the United States. Venezuela's claim to a seat was based on President Hugo Chávez's posturing as a resolute enemy of President George W. Bush; Guatemala was forced to fight a defensive battle against the fact that it was Washington's preferred candidate.
Curiously, the longest-ever election process for a seat on the Security Council was also for the Latin American slot - a 155-round marathon in 1979 between Cuba and Colombia in which the United States was also the featured bad guy, and from which Mexico emerged the winner. The difference is that back then the Cold War was in full swing, and ideology determined what side you were on. Today, America's poor standing is based in considerable part on the Bush administration's proudly flaunted disdain for the opinion of the world, an attitude aptly represented in the person of John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
That said, the fact that Guatemala handily out-polled Venezuela in all but one round (a tie) showed that a solid majority of the world's nations recognize Chávez for the grandstander he is and are not fooled by his anti-American bluster. All he succeeded in doing in the end was to deny Guatemala, a small country, its turn in the international limelight. Panama and Venezuela have been on the Security Council four times each, Guatemala never. That's pretty dismal for a self-styled champion of the little guy.
#3
I thought Israel was the neighborhood bully. Listen to the Bob Dylan song, and you'll hear what I mean.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
11/06/2006 13:17 Comments ||
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#4
Mojo-
..IF the Venezulelan Flanker drivers get the same amount and quality of training over the next few years as our guys do...
...and IF they dedicate the same amount of maintenance to their birds as we do...
...and IF they design, develop, and train to use a command and control system like ours...
Then they will have a chance of dealing with our F-15s and -16s. Otherwise they will not survive their first encounter - assuming we allow their aircraft to even leave the ground. Capability and Ability are two very different things, just ask the commander of the Iraqi AF in 1991.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/06/2006 13:45 Comments ||
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#5
What is essential is preventing "MKI"izing of those Flankers (what India did).
India's flankers are modified with French, Israeli and Indian made avionics.
Pressure by the US can ensure that Hugo's pilots have to rely on the default Russian export grade equipment
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2006 15:51 Comments ||
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#6
And further pressure to prevent acquisition of force multipliers like Tankers and AWACs.
Posted by: john ||
11/06/2006 15:53 Comments ||
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If I were to ask you to name the most Baptist state, you would probably guess Georgia, Alabama, or somewhere else in the South. The correct answer is the Indian state of Nagaland. More than 90 percent of its two million inhabitants are Christians, and more than 80 percent are Baptists. And theres nothing nominal about their Christianity. Church attendance is very high in Nagaland.
What makes these numbers even more remarkable is that, as recently as 125 years ago, many Nagas were head-hunters! They were converted to Christianity through the work of courageous Baptist missionaries in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Hardly unique. I believe most of the Karen tribesmen in Burma are also Baptists.
Christianity not only transformed individuals, but Naga society, as well: Nagalands literacy rate is four times that of the rest of India; they have created effective health care programs; and their goal is to send 10,000 missionaries to India, Burma, and the rest of Asia.
It will come as no surprise that the Nagas relationship with the rest of India is tense. Ethnic and religious differences led to what has been called Indias dirty little war in which at least 200,000 Nagas were killed during the last half of the twentieth century. Indian troops burned entire villages, raped women in churches, and then burned the churches.
Even after a cease-fire, Indian troops continued to show disdain for the Nagas churches and religion, prompting the Christian Century to compare Indias treatment of Nagaland to Chinas treatment of Tibet.
Recently, the Nagas, like the rest of Indias 23 million Christians, have experienced discrimination, even violence, from Hindu nationalists. The former ruling party, the BJP, as part of its Hinduization program, enacted laws aimed at preventing conversions to Christianity; and its followers burned churches and even killed pastors and parishioners.
While the BJPs surprise defeat at the polls two years ago temporarily derailed the most aggressive aspects of Hinduization, Indias Christians are by no means secure. The BJP lost power because of economic conditions, not because of its treatment of religious minorities. And the Hindu majority is out of power only for a season.
Religious freedom is far too important to be so vulnerable to the whims of this or any other majority. Ending this vulnerability is one of the goals of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, which will be observed this Sunday, November 12.
In addition to the vital task of intercessory prayer, the sponsors hope to increase awareness of the persecuted Church worldwide and promote ongoing and appropriate action on behalf of the persecuted Church. That means using international pressure.
The need for awareness is urgent. While the Nagas situation is better than that of other persecuted Christians, if it can happen in a democracy like India, it can happen almost anywhere.
The Nagas are living proof of the Gospels power to transform lives and even whole societies. We need to do what we can so that they will add more chapters to an already-remarkable tale.
#6
More seriously, there are deeply committed Christian communities in India, in Africa and in other places where they face serious harrassment, official sanction and often deadly attacks. What the attackers don't realize is that the churches that are persecuted this way often grow stronger in faith .
European nations and many centrists and liberals at home would view a Republican defeat in Tuesday's congressional elections as a means for a shift in U.S. foreign policy toward a less adventurist and more multilateral direction. So are we prepared to see a more "benign" U.S. foreign policy in the runup to the more important presidential elections in November 2008?
Some suggest otherwise.
Iran is unlikely to be deterred in its nuclear program even in the event of tough sanctions.
And eventually, diplomacy, most likely, will not work. President George W. Bush has repeatedly said that he is working for a diplomatic solution but is also keeping all options on the table. More importantly, he says, "We will not allow a nuclear-armed Iran." Well, if Bush says this, you will have to take him at his word, as recent history has shown. And the Democrats, wouldn't they prevent Bush from resorting to a military option on Iran? Probably not. In a post 9/11 world, most Democrats are equally hawkish when it comes to issues like a nuclear-armed Iran, which they also view as an existential threat.
#1
To "suggest otherwise" is IMO to directly imply that the Dems don't truly believe in their own, oft harsh/obscene etal., criticisms of Dubya + GOP-Right. And iff the former is indeed truly or mostly correct, then why should any pro-Dem from mainstream America = Main Street, Anytown, AnyState, Anywhere USA vote for any Dem pol whom does not believe in his = hers own alleged Dem ideology/cause??? Wouldn't it make sense that the Dem base would instead suppor GOP-Rightist/Conservative "true believers" whom at worse make HONEST MISTAKES as matters of policies, than to routinely proclaim to "I'M FOR EVERYONE = ANY ONE = NO ONE", LEFT-BELOVED DIALECTICAL "SMART POLITICS"??? EVEN GOD = ALLAH MUST PREFER MORTAL MAN LEARN FROM NATURAL = NON-HUMAN CAUSED/ NON PRE-PLANNED DIALECTICISM, NOT ARTIFICIAL OR NON/UN-NATURAL!?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Max Hastings
OK now that I have your attention... 
If I were to ask you to name the most Baptist state, you would probably guess Georgia, Alabama, or somewhere else in the South. The correct answer is the Indian state of Nagaland. More than 90 percent of its two million inhabitants are Christians, and more than 80 percent are Baptists. And theres nothing nominal about their Christianity. Church attendance is very high in Nagaland.
Recently, the Nagas, like the rest of Indias 23 million Christians, have experienced discrimination, even violence, from Hindu nationalists. The former ruling party, the BJP, as part of its Hinduization program, enacted laws aimed at preventing conversions to Christianity; and its followers burned churches and even killed pastors and parishioners.
