#1
This does raise a very good question: the US is itching to reduce troop levels in Iraq, pretty much across the political and even military spectrum. I suspect that we have a lot more forces there, now, mostly in case there are hostilities with Iran.
However, if that is the case, then it is just as valid to shift significant numbers of American troops to Afghanistan. Less as a fighting force, than as a large scale occupation of the opium growing area, making it pretty impossible to grow poppies and starving the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and drug gangs.
Properly, the idea would include a major agricultural shift, to produce some other crops, then introducing most likely a voracious insect that only like to eat poppies. Much like the boll weevil in the American South.
From that point, the extra US forces could head home, because much to the surprise of the Afghans, even though they would of course then plant poppies, their poppies would be gobbled up before they could produce resin.
#1
Just how stupid is the Ayatollah of Canterbury?
[A]n approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts"I think that's a bit of a danger.
There you have it, the entire basis of western civilization, equality under the law, thrown out the window in the name of multicultural dhimmitude.
#2
I have always, in the past, called myself 'CofE' - I suspect I'm not alone in revising that in the light not only of Williams' outrageous perpetual moronism, but the warm reception he received from the synod today. I think the CofE left me...
By Matthew d'Ancona Forty years after Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech, the Archbishop of Canterbury has delivered its liberal mirror image: let us call it "rivers of blather". The lecture that Dr Rowan Williams gave in London on Thursday night, and specifically his remarks on sharia law, showed that even the mildest-mannered intellectual can become a bulldog in the social china shop, spraying daft ideas around with a recklessness that disgraced his office.
The jurisprudential kernel of the lecture was as follows: that we should be wary of the "inflexible or over-restrictive applications of traditional law", that "a universalist Enlightenment system has to weigh the possible consequences of ghettoising and effectively disenfranchising a minority, at real cost to overall social cohesion and creativity", and that there is therefore a case for "plural jurisdiction".
What splendid theater the Democratic Party presidential nominating process is shaping up to be. And they are just getting started. The real fun would be a convention deadlock denouement a few months from now, the prospect of which is already quickening the pulses of scores of Democratic lawyers who have been waiting more than seven years for an encore of their 2000 presidential-election performances.
#1
Hillary will make a try at getting the Florida and Michigan delegates. Sounds like a lawyer trick at trying to get the nomination--parsing words and such. What is the meaning of the word "IS?"
LYNCHBURG, Va. -- Campaigning for his wife yesterday, former President Bill Clinton threatened to remain in the state of Virginia indefinitely if its voters did not choose Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary.
"OK, now here's the deal. If ya'll don't vote for Hillary, I ain't leavin'," the former president said as he loudly downed a pulled pork barbeque sandwich, hush puppies, slaw and a jumbo iced tea in under 45 seconds.
"I'm not kidding," he said. "I love this place; I can stay here a long, long time. LOTS to do here. Golf. Fish. Sit beside your wives at church. Buddy, I would LOVE it. I live in New York now, man, you know how how long it's been since I hung my underwear out on the clothesline to dry? Oh, yeah, I hang 'em high, too, so the whole neighborhood can get a good look."
Clinton made his comments the day after Sen. Barack Obama swept Sen. Hillary Clinton in primaries in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and the Virgin Islands. Sen. Clinton replaced her campaign manager after the losses, which came shortly after she loaned her campaign $5 million when it became clear that she had been unable to raise as much money as Sen. Obama in the fourth quarter of 2007.
"It's clearly a desperate strategy," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabbatical said of Bill Clinton's threat. "But they've tried just about everything to beat Obama, and nothing's worked. At this point, what else have they got? The prospect of a white trash ex-president sitting in his boxers on a lawn chair in his front yard sipping cheap beer and hooting at your daughters before scores of national and international media representatives, that's a pretty powerful incentive, I think."
At another campaign stop later in the day, Bill Clinton showed up in a sleeveless undershirt, gym shorts and flip flops, carrying a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and said he was shopping for a house.
"I'm fixin' to get me one uh them biguns up in a fancy neighborhood," Clinton said just before belching loudly. "It's gotta have a giant front yard, though. I need somewhere to put all the spare parts to my 1969 Camaro."
Exit polls conducted over the weekend show a surge of support for Hillary Clinton starting on Sunday, the day after Obama's sweep.
"Given Saturday's election results, you'd expect to see a bump for Obama," William and Mary political scientist Bill Mary said. "Clearly something local has happened to shift the momentum toward Sen. Clinton. I can't say for sure it had anything to do with her husband spray painting 'I love chicks' on the statue of Stonewall Jackson in Manassas, but I suspect that didn't hurt his argument any."
#1
This guy is demeaning the Executive Office as if it were a game. I am ASHAMED to have voted for him. I'll take Obama at this point, rather than another run of the Clintons.
#3
I left you a message on another thread...Mansoor Dadullah was just killed in a raid in Pakistan ...I posted the article...but the thing I think went off into the ether.
"When I was a younger man and had a life," stated Clinton, "I owned an El Camino pickup in the '70s. It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back. You don't want to know why, but I did."
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/11/2008 18:46 Comments ||
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#9
"'It's clearly a desperate strategy,' University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabbatical said of Bill Clinton's threat."
It's a satire. Larry's name is Sabato.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/11/2008 18:48 Comments ||
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#10
The subliminal message 'Billy Boy' is sending to Virginia is; If you don't vote for Hillary but she wins later on with the Super Delegates, then the 'Two Fer One' team will have a looonnng memory of their friends, and what that entails!!
Frank Rich
WHAT if a presidential candidate held what she billed as the largest, most interactive town hall in political history on national television, and no one noticed?
The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clintons elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
INO, and as based only on my observs of her televised + "town hall" speeched + oral responses, IFF SHE WANTS TO FIRE SOMEBODY IT SHOULD BE HER SPEECH WRITERS-TESTERS. She's coming off as weak andor unenthusiastic about her own agendas as compared to OSAMA's speeches.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/11/2008 0:33 Comments ||
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#3
Looks like B.O.
has got the "Big Mo"
That's Momentum
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/11/2008 6:09 Comments ||
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#4
After a forty year indoctrination program in the mantra of entitlement, it finally appears that some of the ranks are not about to 'shut up and sit in the back of the bus' anymore. Sow meet reap.
Hillary - Selected, Not Elected.
(oh, that feels so good)
John McCain's emergence as the probable Republican presidential nominee is reshaping the Democratic contest, prompting Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to cast themselves as best-suited to defeat him, and focusing their debate on issues they figure will play specifically to his strengths and weaknesses.
In virtually identical language to separate crowds Saturday in Maine, Clinton and Obama urged Democrats to think carefully about which of them is more likely to vanquish McCain in the fall. They drew opposite conclusions, of course. But they left no doubt that McCain is forcing them to recalibrate their pitches to primary voters.
The two reminded Democrats about McCain again Saturday night in separate speeches to a party fundraising dinner in Richmond, Va. Obama, fresh off a three-state sweep of Nebraska, Washington state and Louisiana, said McCain decided to "embrace the failed policies of George Bush's Washington."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
STARS-N-STRIPES OP-EDS > ARRIANA HUFFINGTON - BEST CANDIDATE IS THE ONE WHICH INSPIRES CITIZENS; + ANN COULTER - SEEMS LIKE NO REPUBLICAN WILL BE ON THE FALL BALLOT.
#2
What America really needs. Which party hates its candidate less. Obama is truly loved by the most whacked out sector of people on the planet after the muzz. They really think he's a savior. Since he's not, there's a place to go to see how that story ends....
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/11/2008 0:40 Comments ||
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#3
Both Obama and Hillary are very scarey in their far left agenda. Both have programs that will break the bank and the rest of us too. Obama is more charismatic than the Hildebeast. I don't trust either to protect the country and keep up the pressure on AQ and the muzzies. Neither are friends to our military. I thought Hillary might be easier to beat in November as she has a lot of baggage (Bill, her lovely personality, and her Marxist beliefs). Polls are not very credible but the polls indicate McCain would have a more difficult time against Osbama than Billary.
#4
FOX NEWS > WAYNE ROGERS [actor] > argued that HILLARYCARE = NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE threat to garnish everyone's paychecks to pay for same smacked NOT ONLY OF SOCIALISM + GOVTISM IN AMERICA BUT TOTALITARIANISM!?
By Jacob Heilbrunn
As the Bush administration winds down, neoconservatism has become the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history. The neoconservatives have become the subject of numerous myths, mostly spread by their numerous detractors. They're seen as dangerous heretics by livid liberals as well as by traditional conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Patrick Buchanan.
I can stomache criticism from Buckley, but Buchanan's a Paleoconservative whose vanity was more important to him than the Republican Party. I hope he and the other 17 members of the Reform Party are having a good time and that they'll stay out of Republican business, thankyew.
So "neocon" has become a handy term of condemnation, routinely deployed to try to silence liberal hawks such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut or right-wing interventionists such as former deputy secretary of defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and the former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, who's been nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness." That moniker aside, the neocons insist that there's nothing sinister about them; they simply believed that after 9/11, the United States should use its power to spread democracy throughout the Arab world, just as it had done in Eastern Europe and Central America during the Cold War. Their critics aren't so sure -- and the misconceptions grow.
The neocons are chastened liberals who turned right. This is the self-mythologizing version that the neocons themselves like to spread. Don't believe a word of it. They weren't ever really liberals. The one thing the movement's founders carried away from the sectarian ideological wars of the 1930s in New York was a prophetic temperament. Back then, Irving Kristol and a host of other future neocons were Trotskyist intellectuals who loathed their rivals, the vulgar Stalinists. Kristol and his comrades believed in creating a worker's paradise that would reject the totalitarianism of Stalin's Soviet Union in favor of a true Marxist utopia.
After World War II convinced them that the United States wasn't an imperialist power but one fighting for freedom, Kristol and his fellow travelers briefly embraced liberalism in the late 1940s. But as the convulsions of the 1960s reenergized the radical left, the future neocons kept moving right. All along, they retained the penchant for abusive invective and zest for combat that they had first honed as Trotskyists, wielding magazine articles and op-eds as weapons to discredit their foes and champion their ideas.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Churchill sais that if at twenty you weren't from the left you had no heart and oif at thirty you hadn't turned right you had no brains.
Well a neocon is someone who got a brian and has not lost his heart while so doing. That is why the left hates them so much because they threaten to deprive the left from its base and so doing from their power and much lucrative positions.
#2
From a book review of Heilbrunn's book at Amazon.com The neocons have become at once the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history. Critics on left and right describe them as a tight-knit cabal that ensnared the Bush administration in an unwinnable foreign war.
Who are the neoconservatives? How did an obscure band of policy intellectuals, left for dead in the 1990s, suddenly rise to influence the Bush administration and revolutionize American foreign policy?
Jacob Heilbrunn wittily and pungently depicts the government officials, pundits, and think-tank denizens who make up this controversial movement, bringing them to life against a background rich in historical detail and political insight. Setting the movement in the larger context of the decades-long battle between liberals and conservatives, first over communism, now over the war on terrorism, he shows that they have always been intellectual mavericks, with a fiery prophetic temperament (and a rhetoric to match) that sets them apart from both liberals and traditional conservatives.
Neoconservatism grew out of a split in the 1930s between Stalinists and followers of Trotsky. These obscure ideological battles between warring Marxist factions were transported to the larger canvas of the Cold War, as over time the neocons moved steadily to the right, abandoning the Democratic party after 1972 when it shunned intervention abroad, and completing their journey in 1980 when they embraced Ronald Reagan and the Republican party. There they supplied the ideological glue that held the Reagan coalition together, combining the agenda of family values with a crusading foreign policy.
Out of favor with the first President Bush, and reduced to gadflies in the Clinton years, they suddenly found themselves in George W. Bushs administration in a position of unprecendented influence. For the first time in their long history, they had their hands on the levers of power. Prompted by 9/11, they used that power to advance what they believed to be Americas strategic interest in spreading democracy throughout the Arab world.
So in other words, he's trying to sell his book, which is on sale at Amazon for 50% off.
I might have considered myself a neocon, but I ain't no relation to Stalin or Trotsky.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/11/2008 6:23 Comments ||
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#3
Heilbrunn is being disingenuous in the extreme here.
Notice he fails utterly to mention Leo Strauss, whose works on the JudeoChristian and Western tradition of individual liberty and the threat to it, especially his small book On Tyranny, were deeply influential among what became the neoconservative movement.
I only had the privilege of meeting Strauss once. He came to visit an old friend and colleague Jacob Klein and to speak to the students at my small undergraduate college. A man of deep learning, great thoughtfulness and clear vision about the need to oppose tyranny wherever it sought to steam roller over the consciences and liberty of men and women.
Strauss and those whom he provoked to thought and action had no time for the far left any more than for the far right -- and he had personal experience of both.
#4
"In fact, the neocons' worldview melds both of the major strands of traditional U.S. foreign policy thinking -- realism and idealism -- in a highly opportunistic fashion. This is why liberal hawks such as author Paul Berman, Washington Post columnist Peter Beinart and the editors of the New Republic signed on to the neocon crusade at the outset of the Iraq war, while the true realists, such as former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, blanched in horror. "
You guys is missing the point. This isnt aimed at you. Its aimed at guys like me, its part of the not quite ended struggle for the soul of the dem party and the center left more broadly. A struggle that LOOKS over, but Heilbrunn is too smart to let a badly wounded enemy get away. Its a repitition of crucial meme for the Kossacks, neo-realists, et al - the liberal hawks wuz fooled by the neocons, dont EVER listen to them ever again on ANYTHING. Not on Iran, not on Israel, not on China or Russia, not on democracy promotion anywhere, not on WOT tactics, not on ANYTHING.
#5
"Meanwhile, the CIA (which the neocons loathe) has outflanked them on Iran by declaring that it isn't building nuclear weapons."
Personally I think the CIA has only made itself look foolish (again) by the Iran NIE. Even the French dont take it seriously.
"And one of the most prominent surviving neocons, the NSC's Abrams, has proved unable to stop Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians"
Well again this gets to "whos a neocon" Robert Kagan at least, has not opposed the renewed peace process, AFAIK. And of course the liberal hawks (now best represented by the WaPo editorial page, TNR having been turned into yet another 'realist' haven) havent. There is of course a difference between disagreeing with specific moves by Condi and opposing the peace process.
#6
You and Senator Joe Lieberman, liberalhawk. But last I heard, 25% of the active military are Democrats, and soon enough they'll regain control of the reconstituted Democratic Party -- I'd say within half a generation. In the meantime, the liberal hawks are going to be stuck voting for Republicans, because if we don't win the war it won't matter if education is improved in the inner city.
/this prediction worth exactly what you just paid for it, I'm afraid.
#7
Not so much me of course, or even Sen Leiberman. More the rival pundits - Beinart, Berman, Hitchens, and a bunch of others - the people who would contest Zbiggy et al for control of for policy in an Obama admin.
Pelosi: Iraq 'is a failure' -- surge was bust. . .
Al-Queda in Iraq 'in total collapse' say seized letters. . .
You almost feel sorry for Pelosi. Almost.
Actually, the two headlines are totally consistent. FRom Nancy Pelosi's perspective, the surge is a disaster. Her side is losing. She's just not on the same side as the rest of us.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/11/2008 06:25 ||
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Nope! Not even close to feeling sorry for her. Can't feel sorry for anyone that almost appears to be hoping the surge will be a failure and that the enemy will have a resurgence so that quagmire, doom and gloom, and failure can be claimed. As Edwards said there are two countries (maybe three)...the donk country, the trunk country, and the country of the people.
(AP) - The survey was conducted last month for the U.S.-based Terror Free Tomorrow organization. According to the poll results only 24 percent of Pakistanis approved of bin Laden when the survey was conducted last month, compared with 46 percent during a similar survey in August.
Backing for al-Qaida, whose senior leaders are believed to be hiding along the Pakistani-Afghan border, fell to 18 percent from 33 percent.
Support for the Taliban, whose Pakistani offshoots have seized control of much of the lawless border area and have been engaged in a growing war against security forces, dropped by half to 19 percent from 38 percent, the results said.
Terror Free Tomorrow is a bipartisan group seeking to reduce support for international terrorism. Its advisory board includes likely Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman who helped lead a study of White House Iraq policy last year. The groups president, Ken Ballen, says the advisory board plays no role in individual polls.
The survey, based on interviews with 1,157 people across Pakistan from Jan. 19-29, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
To put that in some perspective, that means OBL has gone from being less popular than George Bush, to being less popular than the Democratic-led Congress. (Correction, my mistake: OBL had higher numbers than Bush, but spent the last few months in freefall, now at Congressional depths AQ overall has dropped from sub-Bush to sub-Congress.* In any case, Paks clearly are not happy with OBL and AQs conduct of the Global Jihad on Infidelism).
#5
"W" I'm sure, would love to go out in a 'Big Bang' with Bin Laden's head on that symbolic silver platter. However the next 11 months will be tense as the pressure on Pakistan increases to redeem "W's" 'Wanted: Dead Or Alive' declaration, before the Dems take charge, and route a new course (ie: priorities) in America!
Imagine the outrage of the Bush administration's critics had the Iraq Study Group gone easy on President Bush because an alternative might result in the election of a Democrat to the White House. Such a scenario has just come to pass in Israel, where the Winograd Commission's report has rhetorically cushioned Prime Minister Olmert for his misconduct of the 2006 war with Hezbollah.
If we think that the prime minister will advance the peace process, it is a serious consideration. The peace process, if successful, will save so many lives as to give it considerable weight. It is not right to look only at one side [of the issues]. Thus spake Prof. Yehezkel Dror, a member of Israels Winograd Commission, in an interview widely reported in the Israeli media last Wednesday.
Continued on Page 49
Dogs are dying in Miami and are very ill in Fort Myers, Florida. Everyone knows where Miami is; Fort Myers is located at the opposite tip of the Florida peninsula, on the Gulf of Mexico. But the two municipalities are sharing a sad distinction: Dogs in shelters are dying of a sudden, overwhelming and as-yet-unknown disease.
Things started this time last week at the Miami-Dade Animal Shelter. the shelter is located in Medley, which is an industrial area northwest of Miami. last week, dogs started getting very sick -- and dying quickly and horribly. The descriptions of the dead dogs reminded me immediately of the deaths of GIs during the 1918 pandemic. Lungs and abdomens filled with blood and fluid; dogs lying in pools of their own blood.
Dr. Sara Pizano, director of animal services at the county-run shelter, told two television stations -- the CBS and ABC affiliates -- that she suspects a new and emerging pathogen. "It's not a normal infectious disease for a shelter," said Pizano, "it's well beyond that so we think we're looking at a new emerging disease..."
. . . I think progressives who wish to restore the passions of the progressive era make a mistake when they think this can be done without severe drawbacks. I'm not saying that today's progressives will become eugenicists (again) simply by trying to recreate the parts of progressivism they still admire. I'm saying that once you unleash popular movements driven by cults of personality and obsession with the rightness of their expert-priests, it's impossible to guarantee they will be forces of for unmitigated good. It's like saying, "We can recreate the wagon trains of the 19th century, but this time there won't be any horse manure."
The fundamental insight of conservatism is that there's always horse manure.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/11/2008 10:27 ||
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#1
Hmmm...cults of personality...obsession with the rightness of their expert-priests...it sounds rather like the global warming movement.
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.
Forty years after Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech, the Archbishop of Canterbury has delivered its liberal mirror image: let us call it "rivers of blather". The lecture that Dr Rowan Williams gave in London on Thursday night, and specifically his remarks on sharia law, showed that even the mildest-mannered intellectual can become a bulldog in the social china shop, spraying daft ideas around with a recklessness that disgraced his office.
By P. David Hornik
