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The election of Sarkozy in France, who has declared France to be a friend of America, has made one of Dems' chief criticisms of GWB - that he's alienated U.S. allies - almost unusable at this time. Reports from places like Time magazine show that the surge may be working in Iraq. The Dems' bill to pull the rug out from under our troops in Iraq and prevent them from pursuing their goal of a stable, free democracy there, has been defeated.
Dems have got to be worried that all their strategy of running against GWB, rather than for anything, will be nullified by events before the 2008 election. This may explain why today we are seeing what looks like a new strategy, as both Hillary and Obama put forth something they're in favor of accomplishing, rather than merely criticizing GWB. This is a good thing, and their proposals need to be considered on their merits.
Why is it that the only new policy goals the Dems can come up with, attempt to move the U.S. away from capitalism and toward a socialist, centrally-controlled economy, in the style of the failed communist soviet union? Nothing less than this seems to be Hillary's goal:
Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.
First of all, why does she want to "replace" our society with something else? We have the greatest society, the greatest freedom, the greatest economy, the world has ever seen. Why does she want to throw it out and replace it with something she dreamed up herself?
"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."
Per her own words, she wants restrictions on free markets that will make it impossible for people to pursue their goals and ambitions 'on their own.'
Hillary titled a book, "It Takes a Village, " i.e. to raise a child. I think what she also has in mind is, that it takes a village to hold a free man down.
Obama proposed universal health care, and proposed massive tax increases to do it:
IOWA CITY, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday offered a sweeping health care plan that would provide every citizen a means for coverage and calls on government, businesses and consumers to share the costs of the program.
Obama said his plan could save the average consumer $2,500 a year and bring health care to all. Campaign aides estimated the cost of the program at $50 billion to $65 billion a year, financed largely by eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy that are scheduled to expire. President Bush wants to make those cuts permanent.
It's not going to save the average consumer $2,500 a year when the average consumer is going to be paying more in higher taxes, both directly to the government, and indirectly in higher prices on everything, in order to get this supposedly "free" health care. And of course, universal health care really means that the average American, who has a job, and takes care of making sure he or she has health care, will have to pay more to buy health care for people who don't.
Here's what I found most alarming about this week's Pew Poll. You may have already heard about it - it's the one that says:
About a quarter (26%) of younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombing can at least rarely be justified, 17 percentage points higher than the proportion of Muslims ages 30 and older (9%) who share that view.
"17 percentage points higher than" in this case could also be expressed as "almost three times as likely as."
Let's repeat: younger Muslims are almost three times as likely as older Muslims to say that suicide bombing can at least rarely be justified.
They're also almost twice as likely (7% vs. 4%) to have a favorable view of Al Qaeda - yes, Al Qaeda, the group that killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11.
This is the same pattern we see in Europe - where older Muslims appear to assimilate - but their children become radical. For example, here's a finding from a British poll from January of 2007:
36% of 16 to 24-year-olds believe if a Muslim converts to another religion they should be punished by death, compared with 19% of over-55s.
This prompted Ros Atkins at BBC News to ask:
Why are young Muslims more radical?
What's radicalizing younger Muslims? It appears likely that it is the Koran. It doesn't matter how assimilated the parents are. If they tell their children that the Koran is the word of Allah, the children are going to read it and find out that according to the Koran, Allah says they're supposed to fight and kill non-Muslims until the whole world is Islamic. This brings to mind something said by Muslim Wafa Sultan, named in 2006 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine:
Dr. Wafa Sultan: I have lost hope for Islam and I think it is the duty of all free speakers to help in the effort to enlighten the Muslims.
...Islam should not be considered a religion, but a political ideology that applies its policy violently.
...Sometimes when I talk to American friends, I get so upset that they don't know anything. A friend [...] said, Islam is a religion of peace. The President of the United States said, Islam is a religion of peace. Do you read anything about Islam? Do you know anything about Islam? When I heard that I just wanted to close my eyes.
...Islam shouldn't be classified as a religion because as a Muslim you have to believe in Islam as a religion and as a state.
...As long as you are allowing the Koran to be read in your schools, you are in grave danger.
The results of the Pew Poll appear to indicate that Dr. Sultan is correct about this.
From Ramirez
In April, Rosie O'Donnell famously claimed on the View that 9-11 was "the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel."The vast majority of MSM reporters are no doubt aware that, as Jonah Goldberg put it in an LA Times op-ed piece, "fire has always been used to melt steel." (Certainly they became aware of the flaws in Rosie's view last month.)
In May, Rasmussen Reports stated that:
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
How is it possible that so many Dems could believe such a thing? A large part of the answer is the fact that mainstream media, which the public relies on for its information, doesn't publish stories and interviews debunking it. MSM hardly examines the question at all. This gives many people the impression that there is little evidence to contradict the view expressed by people such as Rosie O'Donnell.
Why doesn't MSM debunk such views frequently and publicly, to disabuse the public of such nonsensical beliefs, which are so false, and so bad for the country?
Is it because MSM is so biased toward the Liberal view, that they willingly cooperate in gross misconceptions in the public mind, that are prejudicial to Conservatives?
Is it because MSM is so devoted to controversy as a means of selling papers, that they willingly contribute to gross misconceptions on the part of the public, as a means to stoking public controversy and discord?
Whatever the reason, it's a dereliction of duty, and a violation of the public trust.
At a time when MSM revenue is dropping precipitously - a time when less than half of Americans view MSM as "mostly fair" - more MSM organizations need to realize that they can stand out from the crowd, and build readership and revenue, just by rooting for America, by helping make America strong, united and powerful, and by debunking foolish myths such as the one spread by Rosie.
Gene Simmons, the KISS rock star, has a reality show called "Gene Simmons' Family Jewels." Last night's episode showed his daughter, Sophie, preparing for a school paper on the military. Gene took her to Camp Pendleton so she could see the real thing close up. They took a ride in what looked like an amphibious tank and did a few hours of basic-training type exercises.
Later on in the show, he and Sophie visited a veteran's hospital. Gene told veterans he spoke to that without them, there would be no freedom in America, because they protect us. He went back to the base with a rock band and performed for the soldiers. And at different times during the episode he said (quoting from memory): "I've been all over the world, but America's the place I call home," and "I love America." The last word of the show was spoken by Gene, with heartfelt admiration and affection: "America."
It's been so long since I saw those sentiments expressed on TV that I'd forgotten it could happen. Gene and his family have done a great thing by putting this episode together. The series, which has multiple airings of each show, was seen by an average of 1.3 million viewers for just the first airing of each episode, in its first season.
Found: "what could be the richest shipwreck treasure in history."
When Hamas rockets Israel, the UK Telegraph reports it in a just-the-facts fashion:
Nine people killed by rocket attack on Haifa
That's just news, according to the Telegraph. The Telegraph isn't opposing the attacks, just reporting them. (Which in itself is shocking enough, given that the stories report that the targets were a kindergarten and other civilian locations.)
But when Israel attacks Hamas, all of a sudden the Telegraph condemns it:
The article even reports that Israel targeted Hamas soldiers, rather than civilians:
The three strikes were aimed at Hamas targets: a compound used by its bodyguards, a car carrying senior commanders and a trailer used by the Islamic group. A senior Hamas official is said to be among the dead.
The Telegraph's hypocrisy is outweighed by the evil it commits by condemning Israel for killing the soldiers who are rocketing Israeli civilians - and by not condemning Hamas for intentionally rocketing a kindergarten.
From the LA Times:
Democrats prescribe bigger health levy
SACRAMENTO - Escalating the already tense fight about what financial burden businesses should bear, the Democrats who control the Legislature proposed Tuesday that most California employers be required to spend the equivalent of at least 7.5% of their payrolls on healthcare - nearly twice the amount Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed.
The mandate on employers would raise more than $5 billion and - along with federal taxpayer money and worker contributions - allow California to extend insurance to about 69% of the 4.9 million people who lack it at any given moment. Among states, only Hawaii has a significant employer mandate. But the Democratic proposals in California would go further by including dependent coverage and more part-time workers.
That's the government seeking to grab 7.5% of each company's payroll - a huge amount of money - and force those companies to spend it on healthcare for people who haven't taken responsibility for their own healthcare. That's socialism, and the massive error of it is that it puts decision-making in in the hands of state bureaucracies:
Like the governor's plan, the two Democratic proposals require businesses to spend a set amount of their payroll on healthcare or pay into a state-run fund that would negotiate insurance for workers.
The state is not a skilled negotiator of lower prices. The state is inept at using negotiating power to achieve better service, and generally achieves worse service. If they want to run an optional program, fine, but to seize, by force of law, 7.5% of every business' payroll, is socialistic.
When the government uses the taxation power of the state to target specific kinds of tax-payers to seize money for specific purposes -- purposes which are opposed by those very taxpayers -- that is confiscatory, violent, and socialistic.
We fought a revolution on the principal of "no taxation without representation." If the businesses being taxed oppose the tax, in what sense are they being represented by the government that is seeking to tax them?
Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Assn., called the Democrats' mandate "devastating"...
This current socialized medicine proposal is happening because Schwarzennegger started the ball rolling on it:
The Democratic proposals further heightened opposition from much of the state's business lobby, which already has come out against Schwarzenegger's proposal for employers to spend at least 4% of their payroll on healthcare.
Schwarzennegger's 2005 ballot initiatives were brilliant. But four of them were too much for the public to absorb at one time. If he'd just put forward one or two of them, they might have passed. But when none of them passed, Schwarzennegger appears to have decided that he'd rather attempt to be a successful Liberal than risk being a failed Conservative. He appears to have abandoned his principals.
The Republicans in the California congress are doing the right thing:
Republicans have shown no sign of supporting changes of the scope Schwarzenegger and the Democrats want. If anything, their public rhetoric has become less amenable: Dick Ackerman of Irvine, the Senate GOP leader, issued a statement last week that called the proposals a "dangerous experiment with the healthcare system for more than 30 million Californians and the state's competitive and job-creating economy."
This example of the state trying to coercively seize money from businesses is an example of how redistricting thwarts democracy. From a Jill Stewart article quoted in this previous post from 2005:
Most voters think that when they vote, they do so within a community of interest, based largely on geography, known as a voting district. How quaint. That was true once. But now, the California legislature uses computer programs to painstakingly divide voters, block by block. They no longer divide us based on communities of interest, but based on party registration.
Republicans and Democrats are carefully separated from one another and stuck in bizarrely shaped voting districts controlled by just one party. During the spring primary, the party that controls the rigged district carefully spoon-feeds its corralled voters a pre-selected candidate awash in campaign funds. Usually this well-funded party hack beats any normal person who hoped to represent that party come November.Then, in the November election, because the fake and often strangely shaped voting district is stacked, the party hack who won the spring primary can't lose. Voters are spoon-fed a hack, and with rare exception, it's mathematically impossible for the hack to lose.
Think of The Matrix. You are being spoon-fed in order to support a creepy apparatus that wants to control your world. You don't even know it.
The result? Safe seats, that never change from one party to another:
Safe seats stole away our democracy in California while we slept. Safe seats, are why none of California's 53 Congressional seats changed party hands last Nov. 2, and why none of 100 legislative seats changed party hands. Safe seats are why these freeze-frame outcomes were predicted months before the actual elections.
This literal dividing of Americans by party has no doubt contributed to today's current politically divisive culture.
From Jonathan Goldberg, in today's LA Times:
Just how crazy are the Dems?
MOST FAIR-MINDED readers will no doubt take me at my word when I say that a majority of Democrats in this country are out of their gourds.
But, on the off chance that a few cynics won't take my word for it, I offer you data. Rasmussen Reports, the public opinion outfit, recently asked voters whether President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The findings? Well, here's how the research firm put it: "Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know and 26% are not sure."
So, 1 in 3 Democrats believe that Bush was in on it somehow, and a majority of Democrats either believe that Bush knew about the attacks in advance or can't quite make up their minds.
...why try to explain that it's implausible that Bush was evil enough to let this happen - and clever enough to get away with it - yet incapable either morally or intellectually of doing it again? After all, if he's such a villainous super-genius to have paved the way for 9/11 without getting caught, why stop there? Democrats constantly insinuate that Bush plays politics with terror warnings on the assumption that the higher the terror level, the more support Bush has. Well, a couple of more 9/11s and Dick Cheney will finally be able to get that shiny Bill of Rights shredder he always wanted.
And, if Bush - who Democrats insist is a moron - is clever enough to greenlight one 9/11, why is Iraq such a blunder? Surely a James Bond villain like Bush would just plant some WMD?
No, the right response to the Rosie O'Donnell wing of the Democratic Party is "It's just make-believe." But if they really believe it, then liberals must stop calling themselves the "reality-based" party and stop objecting to the suggestion that they have a problem with being called anti-American. Because when 61% of Democrats polled consider it plausible or certain that the U.S. government would let this happen, well, "blame America first" doesn't really begin to cover it, does it?
Goldberg concludes that that the poll may be in part "wrong or misleading":
So maybe it's not 1 in 3 Democrats suffering from paranoid delusions. Maybe it's only 1 in 5 , or 1 in 10. In other words, the problem isn't as profound as the poll makes it sound. But that doesn't mean the Democratic Party doesn't have a serious problem.
From Reuters:
Iraq a "terrorist Disneyland" if U.S. goes: expert
LONDON (Reuters) - A U.S. troop pullout from Iraq would leave the country as a potent launchpad for international terrorism and Washington would be forced to go back in within a couple of years, a leading al Qaeda expert said on Tuesday.
Rohan Gunaratna told a security conference at Lloyd's of London insurance market that Iraq, like Afghanistan in the 1990s, would become a "terrorist Disneyland" where al Qaeda could build up its strength unchallenged.
If U.S., British and other coalition troops withdrew from Iraq in the next year, he said, "certainly the scale of attacks that would be mounted inside Iraq, and using Iraq as a launching pad to strike other Western countries -- countries in Europe, North America - would become such that after two or three years, the U.S. forces will have to go back to Iraq."
The Singapore-based academic and writer said the epicenter of international terrorism had already switched from Afghanistan to Iraq." In many ways, the terrorist threat has now shifted 1,500 miles closer to Europe."
The flypaper strategy worked. Here's how it was described in 2003 by U.S. Army Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq:
This is what I would call a terrorist magnet, where America, being present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity... But this is exactly where we want to fight them. ...This will prevent the American people from having to go through their attacks back in the United States.
Terrorists have been drawn into Iraq where we have been consistently capturing and killing their leadership.
Yet the Dems want to run away, and abandon Iraq to become a "terrorist Disneylad" for terrorists to use in launching attacks against America.
From Appeal For Courage, via Instapundit.
Posting will be light for several days while I catch up on work after an out-of-town trip.
One of the perpetual refrains from the Dems is that GWB hasn't built good relationships with other nations. This statement from Sarkozy, on the occasion of his election, undercuts that criticism:
Sarkozy added that he wanted to tell his "American friends that they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us."
Sarkozy presented himself to the public in part as a candidate who would address the terrible problems France has with radical Islamists who continue to burn cars nightly:
The former interior minister with a tough line on immigration campaigned on a pledge to change France to face the realities of the 21st century and get the country back to work -- a platform viewed with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.
French newspapers of the left and right agreed Monday that Sarkozy -- often attacked as a divisive figure -- had won a clear mandate for reform.
"With the strong legitimacy his indisputable electoral performance gives him, the new president of the Republic can now begin his great transformation, but taking care, of course, to reconcile the French," wrote the right-wing Le Figaro.
...Youth gangs burned 360 cars in the high-immigration suburbs of Paris and other cities, where the former interior minister's tough stance on crime made him a hate figure for many.
But police said the number of car-burnings -- a grim ritual in many suburbs -- was similar to an average New Year's Eve and did not amount to "large-scale urban violence".
"Youths," of course, is a euphemism for radical Islamists, as has been noted by many, including the Washington Times:
The rioters who have burned out neighborhoods in cities across France for a fortnight are overwhelmingly of North African and Arab ancestry, overwhelmingly young, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly cut off culturally and economically from the larger French society -- and overwhelmingly Muslim.
This shows how terribly serious France's situation is: the police have been reduced to accepting a "grim ritual" of nightly car burnings, as a normal part of life in France. They don't even consider 360 car burnings in one night to be "large-scale urban violence."
So not only has France's new leader declared friendship with the U.S. - in electing Sarkozy, France is following GWB's lead in recognizing the danger of radical Islam, and in standing up to fight it. It's a triumph, not only for France, but for GWB's leadership. As Giuliani recently put it:
...President Bush's response to terrorism will ensure his legacy is that of "a great president."
"He will be, I believe, a president who will be viewed by history for this one decision as being a great president," the former New York mayor told about 100 Cedar Rapids-area Republicans during a quick campaign stop in eastern Iowa. "He decided in a flash to put our country on offense against terrorism."
To the Dems, building ties with other nations means doing whatever they want us to do, surrendering our ability to govern our own nation, to the whims of other nations, as per Kerry's famous "global test."
But the election in France has shown that GWB has succeeded in building ties to other nations, through a different method: courage and leadership. In electing Sarkozy, France has been inspired by the course GWB has taken.
From a former member of a terrorist cell in England:
I know how these young men are inspired to wreak death and destruction because I have first-hand experience of being in one such cell. I have since seen the error of my ways.
...In 1995, at college in east London, I was part of the secret cell structure of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist organisation banned in most Muslim countries and rejected by most mosques in Britain. Yet the group had a free rein on university and college campuses, where it advocated that British Muslims were a community whose allegiance lay not with Queen and country, but to a coming caliph in the Middle East.
This caliph would instruct us to act as agents of the caliphate in Britain, and open a "home front" by assisting the expansionist state. We believed that all Arab governments were not sufficiently "Islamic" and were liable to removal; entire populations would submit to the army of the caliph, or face extinction.
I was part of a generation of young British Muslim teenagers who were raised in mono-cultural ghettoes, disconnected from mainstream Britain and receptive to the message of separatism preached by Arab political asylum seekers. I was indoctrinated in my cell meetings as I studied the books written by Islamist ideologues such as Taqiuddin al-Nabhani and Syed Qutb, angry men struggling in a post-colonial Middle East to find meaning in a new world.
...Terrorism begins with a less extreme shade of Islamism, and in many cases Saudi-inspired Wahhabism - unless we understand the root causes of the theology of terror, we will not be able to defeat it.
I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way - my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all human life.
Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst.
As long as it remains legal for extremists in Britain to plan and finance Islamist attempts to mobilise the Muslim masses in the Middle East, and prepare an army for "jihad as foreign policy", there will always be a segment of this movement that will take jihad to its logical conclusion and act immediately, without leadership.
Read the whole thing.
From longtime Carter friend and supporter, Alan Dershowitz:
Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?
...I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.
Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard's decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." Carter's personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot....I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the twenty-first century has become complicit in evil.
The extent of Carter's financial support from, and even dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter's friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects."...It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.
