#3
Mr Presidente if you could be a large jelly doughnut - would you eat you self? And secondly if Fidel Castro were a jelly doughnut would you eat him too? Thank you
#6
Well, scupper me sideways with a spoon. Ooo would have thought it. The Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation has got one of the most influential room temperature (sorry comrade Lenin) socialists *spit* on record and all they can do is assemble the associated sycophants to verbally masturbate over his alleged/imagined or longed-for good deeds. And of course the filthy capitalists will pay for these long-awaited retributions.
The swine...
Well, anyhoo, looks like Old Hugo is getting the full polish-job expected of any 'liberator of the people'.
/sarcasm
Screw 'em - I cannot *stand* the BBC, from their social engineering, through to their condescension of the 'non-Islington' set, to their complete over-representation of ethnic minorities (Greg Dyke said the BBC was 'hideously white'), their bootlicking fawning over the Labour Party, their undermining of our Armed Forces, their thieving of money via the 'licence fee', their stifling of free enterprise and their attitude of 'we know best'. They sicken me. Barstards.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
10/18/2005 20:04 Comments ||
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The report is entitled âThe Politics of Polarizationâ and was prepared by William Galston of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and Elaine Kamarck of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
First and foremost to understanding the current political environment is a review of votersâ self-identification by political philosophy: âIn 2004, the electorate was 21 percent liberal, 34 percent conservative and 45 percent moderate,â according to the report. âThis is practically a carbon copy of the average of the past thirty year â 20 percent liberal, 33 percent conservative and 47 percent moderate â with remarkably little variation from election to election.â
In other words, for every two liberals, there are three conservatives with almost half of the electorate being in the moderate middle. I think I see the problem here....
If the numbers have remained stationary for the past 30 years, why have Republicans won more elections than Democrats? Because the Dems have gone stark raving batshit crazy?
According to the authors, one of the main reasons is polarization. Democrats used to get the votes of a significant number of conservatives (30 percent in the 1976 presidential election). This is true. I remember voting for some Democrats many years ago - and my core beliefs haven't changed.
Today, the electorate is much more polarized with liberals voting Democratic and conservatives voting Republican. Since there are more self-described conservatives than liberals, this means that for a Democrat to win, he or she must win a larger share of the moderate vote (in excess of 60 percent according to the authors) than in the past. *snip*
So how do Democrats do better with political moderates and married women? The authors make a number of interesting recommendations.
First, âThe Democratic Party must be able to articulate a coherent foreign policy that is based on a belief in Americanâs role in the world⊠Democrats must emphasize the importance of the American military as a potential force for good in the world.â Strike #1; most of today's Dems (a) aren't coherent and (b) don't believe our military is good.
Specifically, they recommend that âDemocrats must seize the opportunity to offer compelling alternatives to current Republican policies concerning homeland defense and the ultimate nightmare of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.â You mean they need to lie like a rug.
On the social issues, the authors recommend that Democrats âshow tolerance and common sense on hot-button social issues." "show tolerance and common sense" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, wait - they're serious?
Specifically, they suggest that Democrats âcould continue to support the core of Roe v. Wade while dropping their intransigence on questions such as parental notification and partial birth abortion. They could oppose court-imposed gay marriage while favoring decent legal treatment for gay couples and insisting that this is a matter for the people of the several states -- not the U.S. Constitution or the judiciary -- to resolve.â GFL on that one, too. Strike #2 here.
Third, they recommend that Democrats adopt a more free trade position (âan economic policy that embraces global competitionâ) while at the same time providing a social safety net for people who lose their jobs in the process. That, of course, is the single most controversial of their recommendations because it goes contrary to the position of organized labor, a key part of the Democratic base. Oops, that would be strike #3. Though "base" (in at least one of its definitions) does describe the greedy, power-grabbing union thugs running the unions into the ground while ignoring the actual workers who pay the dues. Three strikes - yer out! (Just like today's Dems.)
Finally, they make a very interesting recommendation about the personal quality of candidates, particularly candidates for president. The authors note that ârecent Democratic candidates have failed to establish the bond of trust with the electorate that is so essential to modern elections. Ya think? What gave them away? Their snootiness? Their self-aggrandizing? Their lying? Their blaming everyone but themselves if something went wrong? Oh, yeah, that's right - all of the above.
Specifically, they note that Democratic candidates need to demonstrate, âstrength, certainty and conviction.â In sKerry's case, he needed a conviction. For treason. 30 years ago.
The authors posit that the last three losing Democratic Presidential candidates (Dukakis, Gore and Kerry) tended to talk primarily to highly educated upscale professionals who make up a significant part of the liberal base of the Democratic Party, rather than to less well educated working class voters who are also necessary for victory.
âIf Democratic candidates do not âspeak Americanâ as a native language, average Americans will find it hard to believe that these candidates really understand or care about them.â And therein lies the difference between rich-guy George Bush and the rich-guy Dems named above: Bush is just a regular guy, with money. The others are snooty self-centered "entitled" assholes, with money. Gee, I wonder why so many regular people don't want to vote for them? (Actually, I wonder why so many do.)
Galston and Kamarck may not have all the answers for the Democratic Party, but their report deserves serious discussion by both Democratic leaders and the rank and file. Which it ain't gonna get. Particularly from the Kool-Aid®-drinking Soros crowd.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/18/2005 12:06 ||
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#1
Hmm, no class envy, no race baiting, be polite? WTF? What really do the have to offer then??
#2
They could oppose court-imposed gay marriage while favoring decent legal treatment for gay couples and insisting that this is a matter for the people of the several states -- not the U.S. Constitution or the judiciary -- to resolve.
As this is the conservative position, this will never happen.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
10/18/2005 12:56 Comments ||
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#3
Okay, here's a test...name ONE Democratic candidate that even comes close to these points?
#7
SG, wasn't Bill Richardson involved in Clinton's China financial transactions?
Does he have a credible America first foreign policy?
The name that I've heard as a decent Demonrat is Phil Bredesen from Tenn. but I don't know anything about his party standing or foreign affairs proclivities.
#9
Richardson hired Lewinsky, resume unseen, (nor oral skills) when they wanted her out of the WH....nuff said
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/18/2005 19:12 Comments ||
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#10
The democrats will re-write themselves much like the republicans did, and follow much the same course, perhaps taking as long to recover.
After the crushing defeat by Frank Roosevelt, the republicans were devastated for many years. They didn't have an effective political party until Eisenhower, and their rise was proportional to the decay of the democrats. The last gasp of the radical right, before the moderate right, what are now called "conservatives", took over, was in 1964.
By 1968, the conservatives utterly dominated the republicans, and the radicals seized the democrats. With the set back of the fall of Nixon, otherwise it was all uphill for republicans and downhill for democrats since.
Electorally, the democrats may be near rock bottom, nationally. They will stay there, making only marginal gains, until more moderate democrats, willing to work with the republicans, ascend to leadership roles in their party.
By cooperating with the republicans, they will not only marginalize the radical left, but the radical right as well, and the country will have conservative-moderate government for many years.
Only during this time period will the democrats have the time and inclination to create a "learned philosophy". Not just knee-jerk nonsense, but something they can sell to the public, that the public wants to buy. They will have found the chinks in the republican armor, national problems that the republicans refuse to fix, and they will capitalize on them.
Finally, the radical leftists will have one last gasp, one last great failure, before they democrat moderates sweep them from power.
#11
AlanC - you are spot-on. Any electable Democrat would so alienate the loony left base that they'd never get the nomination. It'll be interesting to see how Hillary's fake "move to the middle" strategy works. It's already angering the Kos / DU / Move-on crowd that represents the mainstream of today's Dems. The conservatives can see right through it. It'll be interesting to see how it plays with the moderates. But it won't matter if the left torpedos her nomination.
#1
Of course, adept scholastics can find almost anything in any text. For example, enthusiasts find abortion and euthanasia writ large in the American Constitution.
Ever wonder how to piss off an Iraqi? It's relatively simple. Just ask one, no sooner than you have been introduced: "So you're an Iraqi? How absolutely fascinating. Do tell: Are you a Kurd or a Sunni or a Shiite?" This will work every time, just as it's always so polite and so useful to ask a brown-skinned American if he or she is Chicano or, you know ⊠Latina.
If you fall into conversation with an Iraqi, you will soon enough find out what you want to know. Kurds are not shy about mentioning their nationhood, and followers of the Shiite confession are not inclined to make a secret of the fact. So don't force the question. But you will have to know a lot of Iraqis before you meet one who cannot introduce you, usually with pride, to his or her Sunni cousin, or Kurdish auntie, or Shiite brother-in-law, as the case may be. And as for ethnicity and religion beyond our customary categories, you had better be prepared to meet Turkish and Assyrian Iraqis, as well as to bear in mind that in 1947 there were more Jews in Baghdad than in Jerusalem (many of the former of whom had been there longer), that many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are Christian from more than one denominationâIslamic fanatics murdered the head of their Anglican congregation just the other dayâand that the spiritual leader of the Shiites, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, is an ethnic Persian.
When it comes to Iraq, one of the most boring and philistine habits of our media is the insistence on using partitionist and segregationist language that most journalists would (I hope) scorn to employ if they were discussing a society they actually knew. It is the same mistake that disfigured the coverage of the Bosnian war, where every consumer of news was made to understand that there was fighting between Serbs, Croats, and "Muslims." There are two apples and one orange in that basket, as any fool should be able to see. Serbian and Croatian are national differences, which track very closely with the distinction between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic beliefs. Many Muslims are Bosnian, but not all Bosnians are Muslim. And in fact, the Bosnian forces in the late war were those which most repudiated any confessional definition. (And when did you ever hear the media saying that, "Today the Orthodox shelled Sarajevo," or, "Yesterday the Catholics bombarded Mostar"?)
In Iraq there are also two apples and one orange in the media-coverage basket (as well as many important fruits that, as I mentioned above, are never specified). To be a Sunni or a Shiite is to follow one or another Muslim obedience, but to be a Kurd is to be a member of a large non-Arab ethnicity as well as to be, in the vast majority of cases, a Sunni. Thus, by any measure of accuracy, the "Sunni" turnout in the weekend's referendum on the constitution was impressively large, very well-organized, and quite strongly in favor of a "yes" vote. Is that the way you remember it being reported? I thought not. Well, then, learn to think for yourself.
This same tribal habit of mindâtribal on our part, I mean, not on the part of the Iraqisâallows some people to make the lazy assumption that the liberation of Iraq has created these differences, or intensified them, rather than sought to compose and heal them. The Saddam Hussein regime was based on a minority of a minorityâa Mafia clique based in and around the city of Tikritâand it stayed in power not by being "secular" or multiethnic but by being sectarian and by playing the card of divide and rule. It treated all the inhabitants of the country as its personal property, and it made lifelong enemies among all communities and all confessional groups. The differences between these groups are now specified in a constitution, perhaps a bit more than I would like, but are at least specified in order that no group is to be left out, or classified as second-class.
Since Iraq has no choice but to be a plural and various country, these diversities can be handled in only one of three ways: by a fascistic dictatorship of one faction over all others, by civil war leading to partition, or by federal democracy. The first option has now, I think, been demolished for all time. The second two options need not be mutually exclusive or incompatible, since one is still possible and the other is still hard, and since a great deal of damage was done to intercommunal relations (to phrase it mildly) during the decades of the fascistic expedient, and since there are neighboring countries that have an interest in supporting their own religious or ethnic clienteles within Iraq. But these are long-standing material realities, and not in any way the product of the intervention. It would make as much sense to say that the murderous terrorism of the religious sectarians is the product of the intervention.
Ah, but that is exactly what the moral cretins do say about Zarqawi and his death squads. There may be an argument about the authenticity of the newly released Zawahiri/Zarqawi correspondence, and I myself make no pronouncement. But as it happens, we know from many open sources that there is a debate among the jihadists as to the wisdom and even the propriety of killing civilians without discrimination, or of slaughtering the Shiites as if they were all heretics or apostates. One of Zarqawi's mentors has even weighed in, on a Muslim website, questioning the excessive zeal of his disciple. So even the most stone-cold killers and dogmatists have to wonder, and to worry, about the balance of forces in Iraq. I take this as a sign of encouragement. Perhaps, since they, too, are human, they will have to worry about the enormous casualties they are taking, as well as inflicting.
There will soon be a comparative experiment to run. The Syrian Ba'athist dictatorship of Bashar Assad, which is also based on a tiny confessional minorityâthe Alawitesâis currently entering its moribund stage. Its despotism and corruption to one side, it has made the vast additional mistake of supporting death squads in Lebanon as well as in Iraq. When Syrian Baathism implodes, and when the many Arab and Kurdish Muslims it has oppressed take revenge, and when its killers prowl the streets of Beirut as well as Damascus and Aleppo in the hope of saving what they can, will we hear again that this chaos and misery would never have happened if it were not for American imperialism?
Actually, we are already hearing rehearsals of this stupidity. Discussing the possibility of cross-border tussles to deal with Syria's wretched, spiteful sabotage of the new Iraq, the New York Times kept tight hold of its only historical analogy and announcedâin a news story, not a sidebarâthat this was Cambodia all over again. And so it might just possibly be, if we were fighting the Vietcong in Iraq and if Assad were the cynical but neutralist Prince Sihanouk. As it is, our foes in Iraq are much more like the Khmer Rouge, and Assad's regime is more like the aggressive and corrupt minority rulers of South Vietnam, so the analogy is at the expense of those who repeat it parrot-fashion, and who mostly cannot tell Sunni from Shinola.
#1
The one aspect of Iraqi federalism that puzzles is "why stop with three divisions?" Iraq has 18 provinces, so why not 18 divisions, or even more? Granted, several would be almost singularly of one type of Iraqi, but many would be mixed.
In a way, it could be like Gerrymandering in reverse. That is, creating federal districts that intentionally overlap different groups, flexible boundaries that could accomplish electorally, representation difficult to achieve otherwise.
For example, a small federal district that would make minority Christians a majority in that one district, but also include Shiites if they were surrounded by Shiites. This would not only mean representation of small minorities, but alliance with at list some Shiites who share that district.
The more mixed territories, the less chance for polarization between groups. Ideally, over time, the federal government would encourage more homogeneous territories.
In the midst of temblor terror, injured, cold and hungry population, Pakistan has found time to plan and efficaciously carry out an assassination of an Indian politician holding high office in the government â while its own relief and rehab operations to save its people are characteristic of a hit-and-run tactic â one satisfied, 99 left high-and-dry.
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The Tuesday morning killing of the Jammu & Kashmir Education Minister Gulam Nabi Lone testifies to the fact that Pakistan is more intent on fomenting terror in India rather than providing succour to its people suffering from the after-effects of the violent quake and the vagaries of weather.
Every day since the quake ruptured the northwest part of the sub-continent Pak-sponsored violence has increased, as the Indian Army is busy in providing help to the stricken people. The most gruesome being the Hizbul Mujahideen killing of ten Hindus by slitting their throats in Rajouri on 10th of October.
The world is preoccupied with ferrying aid to Pakistan to pay heed to these killings. But, in the eyes of Indians and most importantly for the people of all Kashmir, Pakistan stands exposed for its double-speak.
As the recent weeks have indicated, even in the eyes of common Pakistanis there is not going to be any let up in these acts of murder and worse. This is driving the Pakistani people to the edge of anger, as their relatives, friends and countrymen are dying in droves from a cause that is entirely the fault of Pakistan government. For instance, Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir witnessed large-scale looting in the recent days, but Pakistan Army was too occupied with guiding the terrorists towards Indian soil. People are starving, dying of hypothermia, thirst, various diseases are threatening to wipe out entire communities â yet Pakistan is moving at a slow pace to bring panacea.
It has showcased the fact that the territory of Kashmir may well be on the minds of Pakistan leadership all the time, but its people are dispensable, simply collateral damage.
In spite of the violence being perpetrated on India, the government of India offered aid of every sort, even allowing Pakistan officials a direct and easy route through Indian territory to bring relief to PoK residents. Pakistan refused to carry out any joint relief operations with India. It played politics.
Pakistan has accepted a little, rejected a lot, of what India offered and today stands condemned not just in the eyes of the international community, but also in the eyes of its own people. The recent action of Pakistan government has indicated that for it, carrying out terror hits on India is more important than saving its own countrymen.
Posted by: john ||
10/18/2005 17:57 ||
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National Review Online interviews Kevin Seamus Hassom of the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. EFL'd; go read all of it.
NRO: What do you think is the biggest threat to religious liberty in the U.S. today?
Hasson: The biggest threat comes from people who think that religious truth is the enemy of human freedom â that the only good religion is a relativist one. When Andrew Sullivan says something called "fundamentalism" is the seedbed of terrorism, he's making this fundamental mistake. At a more amusing level, when school officials ban Valentine's cards (because after all, the holiday is named after St. Valentine), but tell schoolchildren they can still send each other "special person cards," that's the same basic error. In Lansing, Michigan, public-school bureaucrats worried that the Easter Bunny isn't secular enough, now offer "Breakfast with the Special Bunny."
Practically speaking, the threat comes from lawyers, judges, and political elites who think that nativity scenes and menorahs are like secondhand smoke â something that decent people shouldn't be exposed to in the public square.
This theory of our Constitution is not only wrong, it is inhuman. If we frame the battle for religious liberty correctly, both the courts and the vast majority of Americans â and not just Christian conservatives â will be on our side.
Aren't you going to ask me what the second biggest threat to religious liberty is?
NRO: Chill there; patience is a virtue.
Hey, I have a question! What's the second biggest threat to religious liberty in the U.S.?
Hasson: The second biggest threat is believers who let themselves be goaded into accepting the same false dichotomy between truth and freedom, only on the other side. They fall into the secularists' trap and think that in order to defend the truths of faith they have to oppose the whole idea of human freedom. Like the bureaucrats in a Cobb County, Georgia, jail who tried to prevent Catholic priests from ministering to prisoners because they were afraid some Protestant prisoners would decide to convert. A threatened Becket Fund lawsuit fixed that, but the episode still provided secularists with ammo for their argument that there should be no such things as official chaplains at all.
When people of faith go that route, and accept the secularist premise that truth is opposed to freedom, we surrender the high ground in the culture war.
My goal in [his new book] The Right to Be Wrong is to persuade all Americans that we can end the culture war honorably. There can be "pluralism without relativism": A vigorous commitment to religious liberty that is not based on the notion that all religions are somehow equally true, but in the truth that all human being have rights. It is moral truth, not moral relativism, that underwrites our freedom, including our religious freedom.
By the way, this is a big issue the Muslim world is wrestling with: Thoughtful Muslims are struggling to understand how they can have an Islamic society without the state imposing Islam coercively.
Some people say they need a Reformation that separates mosque and state. I've argued that what they really need is a Vatican II: They need to discover within the roots of their own tradition the human truth that undergirds religious liberty: Coercing conscience is wrong, because human beings are born with an innate thirst for transcendence, a demand to search for the true and the good, and the need to express that truth in public, not just private. And that can only be done with integrity when it's done freely. That development within Islam would go a long, long way towards guaranteeing the religious freedom of people in Islamic countries. Muslims and Christians can't agree on who God is, but we can agree on who we are. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
10/18/2005 12:28 ||
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#1
Whew! Takes on the UNICEF Smurf movie and concludes with -
Sometimes war is worth it. And, if you don't think so, look at the opening scenes of that Unicef video - Smurfs singing, dancing, gambolling merrily - and try to imagine living in a Smurf enclave in a province that wants to introduce Sharia.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/18/2005 8:15 Comments ||
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#2
Aside from the unsubtle slam on the US (who else has an air force at war?) there is also the interesting fact that by making the bad guys invisible, there was no need to get into their ethnicity or religion.
#3
I wouldn't want Baby Smurf to grow up in Saddam's Iraq. I don't mean just because we'd be the beleaguered minority of Smurfistan, to be gassed and shovelled into mass graves.
I know it sounds heartless, but in the case of Smurfs would that be such a bad thing?
#4
Perhaps a tad off-topic but, if your concerned about the "PC mafia", I encourage you to take the time to get aqauinted with S.1145 (The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005.
Well, actually, there is. Its called friday night drinking and the saturday football game. When much of the campus gets together and acts like idiots.
#1 party school....I'm so proud.
#8
The author of this article, Norman Levitt, is a World Class observer, etymologist, and analyst. That's he's hysterically funny, dry as the desert, and a wicked Grandmaster of the deadly lampoon places this piece on the must-read list of every thinking American. A vanishingly small elite group of anti-elitists, lol.
It's nothing short of a Masterpiece.
Lol, as with all of the writings I've encountered that I'd place into that category, I'll have to read it several times.
Sheesh, tipper, I didn't expect homework on a Tuesday. lol. Thx for the post - awesome find.
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.
