#6
The biggest difference between prostitutes and reporters is that reporters will swallow anything.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
02/24/2008 9:29 Comments ||
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#7
If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#10
At least there is a kind of honesty about prostitution. It is a transaction and you generally know what you are getting for your money. I think calling reporters prostitutes is denigrating to prostitution. Often you get a pack of lies parading as truth.
#11
O'REILLY > JOHN MCCAIN versus NYT controversy > Female African-Amer Journalism Professor argued that comtempora Journalism Schools in US gener no longer emphasize PROPER RESEARCH + ETHICS IN JOURNALISM, BUT "SELLING NEWSPAPERS" + FOR-PROFIT PERSONAL REPUTATIONS, via CHEAP SENSATIONALISM-TABLOIDISM.
IOW, PROTECT YOUR LOCAL DINOSAUR MEDIAS + DON'T ADAPT TO ANY CHANGE.
Europe is in a bad way. And as studly as he market himself can be, Nicolas Sarkozy isnt likely to save it from itself. So Bruce Thornton argues as he shines a bright light on suicidal tendencies across the pond. Thornton, a professor of classics and the humanities at the California State University at Fresno argues in his new book Decline and Fall: Europes Slow-Motion Suicide.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Something else that might help is for the United States to stop enabling Europes delusions by giving Europeans a free security ride. The European dolce vita is subsidized by America, for Europe simply doesnt spend the money on defense necessary for the West to police the world and allow the global economy that makes Europe rich flourish in the first place. An American withdrawal from NATO might concentrate the E.U. mind wonderfully and induce Europe to shoulder its fair share of the security bill.
#2
They're parasites. At the very least they should have to face a little public humiliation. I've given up on Bush having the courage to tell them off. Maybe McCain won't be so sensitive to their 'feelings'.
#3
What's with teh Classics department at CSU Fresno? Isn't that where VDH teaches as well? Hard to believe that many people in raisin land want to speak Latin.
#4
And the 'educated' class forgot why the hell their ancestors left the pit so many generations ago and have been expending massive resources propping the whole mess up. They religiously resurrect some romantic notion about the old country or blood seeking ratification of their existence or 'intelligence' through the past that so many sought to escape.
Mr. Hitchens sets straight both the historical record and the irredentism of the Serbs.
By Christopher Hitchens
Someone with a good memory of the conversation once told me how Lord Carrington, then one of the "mediators" of the incipient post-Yugoslavia war, came to the conclusion that Slobodan Milosevic was a highly dangerous man. Well-disposed toward Serbia (as the British establishment has always been), Carrington told the late dictator that he understood Serb concerns about significant Serbian minorities in Bosnia and Croatia. But why did Milosevic also insist on exclusive control over Kosovo, where the Albanian population was approximately 90 percent? "That," replied Milosevic coldly, "is for historical reasons." It's a shame, in retrospect, that it took us so long to diagnose the pathology of Serbia's combination of arrogance and self-pity, in which what is theirs is theirs and what is anybody else's is negotiable.
We used to read this same atavistic proclamation by the hellish light of burning Sarajevo, and now we glimpse it again through the flames of the blazing U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, and by the glare of similar but less dramatic arsons set by Serbs in ski masks in northern Kosovo itself. But it needs to be understood that "Serbia" itself has lost nothing and has nothing to complain about. With the independence of Kosovo, the Yugoslav idea is finally and completely dead, but it was Serbian irredentism that killed the last vestige of that idea, and it is to that account that the whole cost ought to be charged.
Forget all the nonsense that you may have heard about Kosovo being "the Jerusalem" of Serbia. It may contain some beautiful and ancient Serbian and Serbian Orthodox cultural sites, but it is much more like Serbia's West Bank or Gaza, with a sweltering, penned-up, subject population who were for generations treated as if they were human refuse in the land of their own birth. Nobody who has spent any time in the territory, as I did during and after the eviction of the Serb militias, can believe for a single second that any Kosovar would ever again submit to rule from Belgrade. It's over.
But how did it begin? In fact, Kosovo has never been recognized internationally as part of Serbia. It was only ever recognized as part of Yugoslavia, and with the liquidation of that state Serbian claims upon its territory became null and void. A little history here is necessary.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/24/2008 00:11 ||
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#1
Hitchens is way off base. Kosovo was a Tito stronghold. What sickens me is Muslim intolerance of the presence of Christians and Jews in the Middle East, while they insist on creating Euro states for Ottoman spawn. I trust Serbs more than I trust Muslims.
I seem to recall a certain UN resolution that ended NATO's 1999 campaign. The document recognized Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
#3
Albanian's are mmajority in Kosovo (Sebia's historical heartland) due to:
1) Expropriations during Ottoman occupation when
thanks to the unfairness of shariah and Ottoman courts Muslims stole teh lands from the Christains
who had no choice but to migrate to mainland Serbia.
2) Genocide during the Nazi occupation.
3) The silent ethnic purification just after Tito's death where Serrbs where routinely arsoned or raped.
Anyone wonders that the Serbs at one point decided to push backa dn that they are unhappy wbout NATO rewarding centuries of constant agression?
#5
But then, I also favor the return of English lands on the continent illegally stolen by the Capets.
I were you I wuld claim all of France: in the Hundred Years War, the right was with England: the
Salic Law was artificially applied to the throne of France (1) by the French nobility who feared an
English king would hold them much tighter and
would pay less respect to their feudal privileges
than what they were used to. Tha Valois "ran" on
an agenda of preserving the feudal system.
(1) The Francs of France descended from the Ripuarian Francs not from the Salians and the
Ripurians had no rule against banning women from
the throne.
The Army captain, a West Point graduate, did a tour in a hot area of eastern Afghanistan from the Summer of 2003 through Spring 2004.
Prior to deployment the Captain -- then a Lieutenant -- took command of a rifle platoon at Fort Drum. When he took command, the platoon had 39 members, but -- in ones and twos -- 15 members of the platoon were re-assigned to other units. He knows of 10 of those 15 for sure who went to Iraq, and he suspects the other five did as well.
The platoon was sent to Afghanistan with 24 men. "We should have deployed with 39," he told me, "we should have gotten replacements. But we didn't. And that was pretty consistent across the battalion." He adds that maybe a half-dozen of the 15 were replaced by the Fall of 2003, months after they arrived in Afghanistan, but never all 15.
As for the weapons and humvees, there are two distinct periods in this, as he explains -- before deployment, and afterwards. At Fort Drum, in training, "we didn't have access to heavy weapons or the ammunition for the weapons, or humvees to train before we deployed."
What ammunition? 40 mm automatic grenade launcher ammunition for the MK-19, and ammunition for the .50 caliber M-2 machine gun ("50 cal.")
"We weren't able to train in the way we needed to train," he says. When the platoon got to Afghanistan they had three days to learn.
They also didn't have the humvees they were supposed to have both before deployment and once they were in Afghanistan, the Captain says. "We should have had 4 up-armored humvees," he said. "We were supposed to. But at most we had three operable humvees, and it was usually just two." In 2003 no one had up-armored humvees.
So what did they do? "To get the rest of the platoon to the fight," he says, "we would use Toyota Hilux pickup trucks or unarmored flatbed humvees." Sometimes with sandbags, sometimes without.
Also in Afghanistan they had issues getting parts for their MK-19s and their 50-cals. Getting parts or ammunition for their standard rifles was not a problem. "It was very difficult to get any parts in theater," he says, "because parts are prioritized to the theater where they were needed most -- so they were going to Iraq not Afghanistan."
"The purpose of going after the Taliban was not to get their weapons," he said, but on occasion they used Taliban weapons. Sometimes AK-47s, and they also mounted a Soviet-model DShK (or "Dishka") on one of their humvees instead of their 50 cal.
The Captain has spoken to Sen. Obama, he says, but this anecdote was relayed to Obama through an Obama staffer.
I find that Obama's anecdote checks out.
Some are quibbling about whether or not the "commander in chief" can be held responsible for how well our soldiers are being equipped, since Congress provides the funding for the military, but the Pentagon (and ultimately President Bush) are in charge of the funding mechanism.
I might suggest those on the blogosphere upset about this story would be better suited directing their ire at those responsible for this problem, which is certainly not new. That is, if they actually care about the men and women bravely serving our country at home and abroad.
We care indeed. Recall, good sir, that in 2003 - 04 we had various tussles with the Democrats in Congress about getting money appropriated. And at the time, the general consensus was indeed that Afghanistan was a secondary theater. This is what happens.
The next question is whether this was an isolated incident or generally the way things were done. Let's have an answer for that from people who were there.
#2
Those 10-15 may well have back up SpecOps &/or the Peshmerga. Ft. Drum = 10th Mountain and we were taking on Ansar al Islam in the mountains of Kurdistan at that time.
For most ordinary Americans, those not encumbered with an expensive education or infected by prolonged exposure to cosmopolitan heterodoxy, patriotism is a consequence of birth.
Their chests swell with pride every time they hear the national anthem at sporting events. They fill up with understandable emotion whenever they see a report on television about the tragic heroics of some soldier or Marine who gave his life in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Foreigners don't have to like America - and they've certainly exercised that freedom in the past few years. But most Americans can distinguish between the transience of policy failure and the permanence of the national ideal.
And surely even critics of the US could scarcely deny that there have been real causes for American pride in the past 25 years: the fall of the Berlin Wall; the victory in the first Gulf War in 1991; the nation's unity in grief and resolve after September 11. Heck, I suspect most Americans got a small buzz of patriotic pride this week when they heard that one of their multimillion-dollar missiles had shot a dead but dangerous satellite travelling at 17,000 miles per hour out of the sky so that it fell harmlessly to Earth.
But not, apparently, Michelle Obama, wife of the man who is now the putative Democratic candidate for US president, and at this point favourite to succeed to that job. In what might be the most revealing statement made by any political figure so far in this campaign season, Mrs Obama caused a stir this week. She said that the success of her husband Barack's campaign had marked the first time in her adult life that she had felt pride in her country.
This, even by the astonishingly self-absorbed standards of politicians and their families, is a remarkably narrow view of what makes a country great. And though she later half-heartedly tried to retract the remark it was a statement pregnant with meaning for the presidential election campaign.
Now, to be fair to Mrs Obama, she would surely have a point if she had said that it was a source of incomparable pride to her and all African-Americans that in a country with a long and baleful history of racial discrimination, one of their own was within serious range of becoming president. All but the most irredeemably racist Americans would surely agree with that.
But that was not what she said. She said this was the only time in her adult life that she had felt pride in America.
It was instructive for two reasons. First, it reinforced the growing sense of unease that even some Obama supporters have felt about the increasingly messianic nature of the candidate's campaign. There's always been a Second Coming quality about Mr Obama's rhetoric. The claim that his electoral successes in places like Nebraska and Wisconsin might transcend all that America has achieved in its history can only add to that worry.
Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation that America is. Mrs Obama is surely not alone in thinking not very much about what America has been or done in the past quarter century or more. In fact, it is a trope of the left wing of the Democratic party that America has been a pretty wretched sort of place.
There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France. They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a militaristic approach to foreign policy. Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations.
Though Mr Obama has done a good job, as all recent serious Democrats have done, of emphasising his belief in American virtues, his record and his programme suggest he is firmly in line with this wing of his party.
This, I think, not his inexperience in public office, is the principal threat to Mr Obama's campaign. His increasingly desperate opponent, Hillary Clinton, keeps hammering away that his message is all talk and no substance - and she was joined this week by Mr Obama's likely Republican opponent in the November general election, John McCain.
But if you listen to Mr Obama's speeches, it is not the lack of substance but the quality of it that ought to worry Americans. His victory speech after his latest primary win in Wisconsin this week was a case in point.
There was no shortage of proposals. He plans large increases in government spending on health and education. He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist. He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch.
While he speaks of the need for Americans to move beyond partisanship (We are not blue states or red states, but the United States is a campaign meme), when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party. If you think about it for a second, it's not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.
Though he talks with great eloquence about the future, he sounds for all the world like one of the long line of Democrats from George McGovern to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis, who became history by espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose that was well out of the mainstream of American politics.
America is certainly moving left in the post-George Bush era. The long period of conservative ascendancy is clearly over, buried by a Republican Party of recent years that has preached intolerance and practised incompetence. That a new era in American politics is beginning is not in doubt. But are Americans really ready to leap all the way across in one go to embrace a European-style Left?
#1
Interesting Church he goes to, Trinity United Church of Christ. Follows is entiteled "About US" from their web site:
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.
The Pastor as well as the membership of Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:
A congregation committed to ADORATION.
A congregation preaching SALVATION.
A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA. A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
#3
I think Obama's resume is exceedingly light and that will start to show when he goes against someone with a resume packed full of crunchy goodness.
Interesting how historically Senators have not become President's without a stop as Vice President first (at least during living memory). In the last fifty or so years we've prefered Governors yet we have three Senators right now.
#4
Yah. What he said. This is why Obama scares me, really. I mean, when Bill Clinton came along, I pretty much resigned myself to it. I even kind of rooted for Hillary to pass the healthcare thing, because I was poor at the time. When Bobdole came along, I was quite unenthusiastic about him, party hack, same way I feel about McCain. But Obama is a hardcore leftist who is going to do some serious dismantling when he gets into office. His supporters are going to be out for blood when they receive their patronage jobs, and any sort of fraud or bad faith is going to be acceptable in their book.
#6
I've always laughed and said it was Carter's total ineptness that led to the over-extension of the Soviets that allowed Reagan to win the cold war so Carter deserved a little credit.
Now I'm looking at the political landscape and seeing a possible Democratic sweep which would allow Obama to actually change things and really do some damage and I'm starting to worry about Bush's legacy. Yeah it will ignite another 12 years of Republican dominance but the price...
#7
I want him to succed just long enough to thoroughly sink Hildabeast, then flop in the general elections to Mc Cain. (Poor choice, but all we've got. the alternative Dems are worse by a light year.)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/24/2008 15:29 Comments ||
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#8
Hillary would have been easier to defeat in the general election.
#10
GUAM MCDONALD's OLDER MALE PATRON yesterday AM [Sunday] > believes HILLARY cannot and should not be POTUS ["no way"] becuz as a woman her gender will NOT be able to handle the dynamic pressures of national leadership = the Presidency. GUAM FEMALE PATRON > while glad to see a woman running for POTUS, believes America + Guam are still at high risk for [dangerous]terror strikes and that ergo A WOMAN SHOULD NOT BE POTUS IN TIME OF WAR/NATIONAL CRISES.
FOX NEWS PANEL > KRAUTHAMMER - SO-CALLED "OBAMA-MANIA" is representative of the CURR DESIRE IN MAINSTREAM AMER = COMMON CITIZENRY FOR ANY KIND OF CHANGE FROM WAR + BILL CLINTON-ERA PDENIABLE GOVT FRAUD-DECEPTIONS. OBAMA represents an ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT, ANTI-GOOD OLE BOY "NEW/FRESH FACE" = NEW IDEALISM in Amer politics and national affairs.
FOX BELTWAY BOYS [paraph] > the possibility exists that Barack Obama amy usher in a NEW BUT POTENS DANGEROUS/RISQUE' AMER-LED ANTI-AMER/US GLOBAL APPEASEMENT as based on OBAMA's OWN PAST RECORD IN SUPPOR OR AGZ VARI POL CAUSES [CARTER-ESQUE???].
Taken together, it apears that MAINSTREAM ANYTOWN AMER > "WANTS TO BELIEVE" AGAIN IN PEACE AND TRUTH/HONESTY-IN-GOVT. The same are roughly NOT against any US-centric/led OWG-NWO, BUT ARE AGAINST THE US MOVING TOWARDS OWG-NWO FOR CORRUPT, MALICIOUS, OR IMMORAL REASONS???
NEW IDEALISM/THE NEW GUY versus JIMMY CARTER II, and at a time when Amer is still engaged in a WW2-style, REGIONAL GLOBAL WAR TO THE DEATH + NATIONAL SURVIVAL agz Radical Islam, A WAR WID HIGH POTENTIAL FOR TRADITIONAL "GREAT POWER" MILPOL CONFRONTATION.
Post-PEARL HARBOR ATTACK = AMER HIROSHIMA(S), will FDR ask the Congress to DECLARE WAR, or instead SEND A "STRONGLY WORDED LETTER" PROTESTING THE ATTACK AND ON-GOING REGIONAL MIL CONQUESTS???
*FREEREPUBLIC > IRAN MAY NUKES [bombs] WITHIN MONTHS. WITHIN A YEAR? Read - ISRAEL MAY UNILATER ATTACK IRAN IN MONTHS OR LESS THAN A
YEAR.
*STARS-N-STRIPES > US MIL COMMANDERS BEMOAN LACK OF INTEREST IN TERROR THREAT BY AMERICANS.
Amers are more interested in the LIVES/PROBS OF HOLLYWOOD CELEBS - PARIS, LINDSAY, BRITNEY, etc. - THAN THE VALID + REALISTIC THREAT OF NEW TERROR ATTACK(S) AGZ AMERICA OR WINNING THE WOT, THAT AMER IS IN A REAL WAR FOR ITS VERY SURVIVAL AND WAY OF LIFE???
IFF A POTUS OBAMA DOES INDEED PROVE TO BE CARTER REDUX > DON'T BE SURPRISED IFF A NEW POTUS ELEX HAS TO BE HELD BEFORE 2010, NOT 2012, AS PER AMER HIROSHIMA. The ideal time frame for Radical Islam + HIROSHIMA is NOW thru 2010.
#11
Count me as one who is also terrified of an Obama presidency. I've become a "one-issue" voter since I don't believe healthcare or taxes are going to matter much if I'm not around to see them happen. I think we all know what will happen with our military and security policies if Obama gets elected.
I voted early this past Friday (Vote Aqui!) in Texas. I had a strategy going in, so there I stood - the Republican table on the right and the Democratic one on the left (just as it should be, heh) - trying to decide if I really wanted to do it. Finally walked up to the Democrat's table and signed-in. (Some good-natured banter with the poll volunteers - much laughing on their part).
I have never, ever voted for a Democrat before, but I did it, I voted for Hillary. Call it intuition, or a gut feeling, but I think McCain can beat her. Moreover, I think a primary win by her will so tick off a segment of the Obamatron Nation that they'll either stay home or pull the lever for McCain (or now maybe Nader where he can get on the ballot).
It's only been a couple of days, but I'm still a little shocked that I not only voted for a Dem, but I voted for THAT Dem. Whoodathunk. I think I'll go make some magaritas.
An excellent editorial - you should check their site for more
On February 16, last year's bipartisan legislation governing the collection of foreign intelligence and protecting from liability all persons who comply with federal directives to assist in such collection--the law otherwise known as the "Protect America Act of 2007"--expired, having exhausted its six-month, 15-day statutory lifespan. At which time the federal government's ability to pursue suspected terrorists and emerging threats was dealt a serious blow. You can thank House Democrats for the whole sorry mess.
The Democratic leadership denies this, of course, having adopted an Alfred E. Neuman "What, Me Worry?" approach to national security. The lack of a new statute "does not, in reality, threaten the safety of Americans," protests Senate majority leader Harry Reid. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 still applies. Says Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, "The FISA law--even if we do not change it--gives ample authority to this president to continue to monitor the conversations of those who endanger the United States." Says House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes: "We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution." Democratic national-security-adviser-in-waiting Richard Clarke writes that "FISA has and still works as the most valuable mechanism for monitoring our enemies."
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/24/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
"Are House Democrats serious about national security?"
No.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/24/2008 0:09 Comments ||
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#2
Q. "Are House Democrats serious about National Security?"
A. YES!!!
Q. Do House Democrats believe that the Federal Government should be allowed to completely ignore the US Constitution just so the nation can have the illusion that it is more secure?
A. NO!
Q. Do House Republicans believe that the Federal Government should be allowed to completely ignore the US Constitution just so the nation can have the illusion that it is more secure?
#9
If only such editorials could be expressed in YouTube videos, or clever five-second sound-bites, other folks might get a clue.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/24/2008 6:35 Comments ||
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#10
Q. "Are House Democrats serious about National Security?"
A. YES!!!
Hmmm....no. Cooperheads you be. Even they didn't attempt to directly interfere with the conduct of the war. Payback was a mother then. It's going to be again.
You don't interfere with the Commander in Chief in the execution of his sworn Constitution duty by playing politics. Timetables are not the prerogative of Congress. Interrogation of theater commanders in the execution of operations for political shows is not the business of Congress. Issuing proclamations that are in contradiction to law and treaty, let alone counter to actions accepted as executed by Saint Roosevelt, is not support but pure political theater. It is done for party and positioning over national security.
Congress has solely the powers of the purse, the approval of the appointment of commissioned officers, and makes the law as incorporated in Title X USC. Everything else belongs to the Executive for execution. Those were established by our English heritage and enshrined in the Constitution. The founding fathers knew that any military conflict required a single commander, that division of command historically lead to defeat. Which, of course, is what many in the Donk party actively seek, defeat.
#13
Liberal RedNeck
It is not just the Protect America Act. There are also the 2700 earmarks in the Defense Budget.
PBS (hardly a conservative mouthpiece) had a show on how earmarks are being used to force the DOD to buy equipment they don't want, equipment they rejected, and equipment that is actually dangerous to use.
The problem is the Dems see the Defense Budget as a gravy train to use as source of cash for contributers. They don't really think someone's life might depend on the equipment actually working.
The show focused on a ship the Navy was forced to spend $20 million for that they had rejected. They never used it an gave it to the U of Washington for $1 (i.e. a 19,999,999 loss). The U decided it was worth $1, and gave to the SF Police dept. where it now patrols SF Harbor.
Meanwhile we can't get .45 caliber pistols or 6.8mm assault rifles for our troops because there isn't enough money.
If they were serious, they would be trying to give our troops stuff they really need, instead of looting their budget.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/24/2008 14:04 Comments ||
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#14
There are already over 40 lawsuits files --
There's:
Verizon / MCI
This category includes a consolidated class action complaint on behalf of customers against various Verizon and MCI entities, alleging wholesale dragnet surveillance.
Hepting v. AT&T
EFF filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the NSA in its massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications
Here's Rep Smith from Texas on the floor of The House:
Any bill must include two critical provisions. First, Congress has the responsibility to enact long-term legislation that allows intelligence officials to conduct surveillance on foreign targets without a court order. A U.S. Army intelligence officer in Iraq should not have to contact a Federal judge in Washington to conduct surveillance on Iraqi insurgents.
Second, Congress must provide liability protection to U.S. telecommunication companies that responded to government requests for information following the terrorist attacks of September 11. Close to 40 frivolous lawsuits against the telephone companies already have been filed. These companies deserve our thanks, not a flurry of meritless lawsuits.
Terrorists have not placed an expiration date on their plots to destroy the American way of life. Congress should not put an expiration date on our intelligence community's ability to protect our Nation.
Friday was a rough day for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as she sought to dispel speculation that her closing debate remarks amounted to a concession amid the death of a police officer escorting her campaign all while Senator Barack Obama was stumping around South Texas, one of her strongholds in the state.
The Timess Michael Luo reports on others who are suffering from her campaigns troubles small vendors in the New York area worried that their fees will go unpaid.
At The Chicago Tribune, Jim Tankersley writes that Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio could be her last, best hope there. The Boston Globes Susan Milligan looks at Mrs. Clintons firewall of working-class voters in Ohio, who say they dont want to hear fancy words about changing Washington; they want to know exactly how the next president is going to bring jobs to their struggling communities and make sure their children have health care.
Gee, Presidents can do that?
Posted by: Fred ||
02/24/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Gee, Presidents can do that?
No, dictators, tyrants, and other authoritarians. Just witness Zimbabwe and Venezuela. However, the Prez can press for a three hundred dollar a taxpayer or six hundred dollar per family tax rebate which they can use to rent a friggin UHaul to get their asses out of political district that continues tax and business policies that feed Marxist ideologies but doesn't deliver real jobs or opportunities. Just like your ancestors who escaped form the o'country with what they can carry and made a future, take the initiative and get the hell out or sit there and sulk.
Pakistan's election has been portrayed by the Western media as a defeat for President Pervez Musharraf. The real losers were the Islamist parties.
The parties linked, or at least sympathetic, to the Taliban and al Qaeda saw their share of the votes slashed to about 3% from almost 11% in the last general election a few years ago. The largest coalition of the Islamist parties, the United Assembly for Action (MMA), lost control of the Northwest Frontier Province -- the only one of Pakistan's four provinces it governed. The winner in the province is the avowedly secularist National Awami Party.
Despite vast sums of money spent by the Islamic Republic in Tehran and wealthy Arabs from the Persian Gulf states, the MMA failed to achieve the "approaching victory" (fatah al-qarib) that Islamist candidates, both Shiite and Sunni, had boasted was coming.
The Islamist defeat in Pakistan confirms a trend that's been under way for years. Conventional wisdom had it that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the lack of progress in the Israel-Palestine conflict, would give radical Islamists a springboard from which to seize power through elections.
Analysts in the West used that prospect to argue against the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in the Middle East. They argued that Muslims were not ready for democracy, and that elections would only translate into victory for hard-line Islamists.
The facts tell a different story. So far, no Islamist party has managed to win a majority of the popular vote in any of the Muslim countries where reasonably clean elections are held. If anything, the Islamist share of the vote has been declining across the board.
Take Jordan. In last November's election, the Islamic Action Front's share of the votes fell to 5% from almost 15% in elections four years ago. The radical fundamentalist group, linked with the Islamic Brotherhood movement, managed to keep only six of its 17 seats in the National Assembly. Its independent allies won no seats.
In Malaysia, the Islamists have never gone beyond 11% of the popular vote. In Indonesia, the various Islamist groups have never collected more than 17%. The Islamists' share of the popular vote in Bangladesh declined from an all-time high of 11% in the 1980s to around 7% in the late 1990s.
In Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas won the 2006 general election with 44% of the votes, far short of the "crushing wave of support" it had promised. Even then, it was clear that at least some of those who ran on a Hamas ticket did not share its radical Islamist ideology. Despite years of misrule and corruption, Fatah, Hamas's secularist rival, won 42% of the popular vote.
In Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won two successive general elections, the latest in July 2007, with 44% of the popular vote. Even then, AKP leaders go out of their way to insist that the party "has nothing to do with religion."
"We are a modern, conservative, European-style party," AKP leader and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, likes to repeat at every opportunity. In last July's general election, the AKP lost 23 seats and, with it, its two-third majority in the Grand National Assembly.
AKP's success inspired Moroccan Islamists to create a similar outfit called Party of Justice and Development (PDJ). The PDJ sought support from AKP "experts" to prepare for last September's general election in Morocco. Yet when the votes were counted, the PDJ collected just over 10% of the popular vote, winning 46 of the 325 seats.
Islamists have done no better in Algeria. In the latest general election, held in May 2007, the two Islamist parties, Movement for a Peaceful Society and Algerian Awakening, won less than 12% of the popular vote.
Kuwait is another Arab country where reasonably fair elections have become part of the culture. In the general election in 2006, a well-funded and sophisticated Islamist bloc collected 27% of the votes and won 17 of the 50 seats in the National Assembly.
In Lebanon's last general election in 2005, the two Islamist parties, Hezbollah (Party of God) and Amal (Hope) collected 21% of the vote to win 28 of the 128 seats in the parliament. This despite massive financial and propaganda support from Iran, and pacts with a Christian political bloc led by the pro-Tehran former Gen. Michel Aoun.
Many observers do not regard Egypt's elections as free and fair enough to use as a basis for political analysis. Nevertheless, the latest general election, held in 2005, can be regarded as the most serious since the 1940s, if only because the Islamist opposition was allowed to field candidates and campaign publicly. In the event, however, Muslim Brotherhood candidates collected less than 20% of the popular vote.
Other Arab countries where elections are not yet up to acceptable standards include Oman and Bahrain. But even in those countries, Islamists have not done better than anywhere else in the region. In Tunisia and Libya, the Islamists are banned.
Afghanistan and Iraq have held a series of elections since the fall of the Taliban and the Baath. By all standards, these have been generally free and fair elections, and thus valid tests of the public mood. In Afghanistan, Islamist groups, including former members of the Taliban, have managed to win around 11% of the popular vote on the average.
The picture in Iraq is more complicated, because voters have been faced with bloc lists that hide the identity of political parties behind an ethnic and/or sectarian identity. Only the next general election in 2009 could reveal the true strength of the political parties, since it will not be contested based on bloc lists. Frequent opinion polls, however, show that support for avowedly Islamist parties, both Shiite and Sunni, would not exceed 25% of the popular vote.
Far from rejecting democracy as "alien," or using it to create totalitarian Islamist systems, a majority of Muslims have repeatedly shown that they like elections, and would love to join the global mainstream of democratization. President Bush is right to emphasize the importance of holding free and fair elections in all Muslim-majority countries.
Tyrants fear free and fair elections, a fact illustrated by the Khomeinist regime's efforts to fix the outcome of next month's poll in Iran by pre-selecting the candidates. Support for democratic movements in the Muslim world remains the only credible strategy for winning the war against terror.
Mr. Taheri is author of "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" (Editions Complexe, 2002).
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.
Europes not looking good.
Friday was a rough day for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as she sought to dispel speculation that her closing debate remarks amounted to a concession amid the death of a police officer escorting her campaign all while Senator Barack Obama was stumping around South Texas, one of her strongholds in the state. 
