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July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
Call success failure; call failure success; and forget anything that contradicts your nonsensical statements: that’s what Dean is doing here as usual:
In Midwest campaign stops and an interview, the former Vermont governor said developments both abroad and at home give credence to his assertion two weeks ago that the United States is “no safer” with the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.“If we are safer, how come we lost 10 more troops and raised the safety alert” to the orange level, Dean said Sunday night in Ankeny, Iowa.
There it is—antilogic from the mind of a goofball. Evidently Dean believes that “making us safer” means “peace immediately takes over the world and evil disappears.”
“All the other Democrats pounced on me and beat me up and said how ignorant I was about foreign affairs,” he said. “I think most people in America agree with me today and it’s only two weeks later.”
That’s the problem with believing false statements—you start acting on them and get yourself into big trouble. In fact, few people buy into this silly nonsense, and Dean is looking more and more like a nut.
“We’ve made progress” on strengthening defenses at home, he said. “The problem is, on the things that are enormously important to us we have apparently made no progress. That is the ultimate nightmare of the so-called dirty bomb or a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States.”
Interesting. Taking the power of a nation-state (Afghanistan) away from Al Qaeda is “no progress.” A fascinating analysis by Dr. Dean. Taking the power of another nation-state (Iraq) away from Hussein, a homicidal dictator who financed terrorists via “Martyrdom Bonuses” for years is “no progress.” What a unique point of view.
So how would Dr. Dean deal with these things?
As president, Dean said he would initiate bilateral negotiations with North Korea, purchase the entire uranium stockpile held by the former Soviet Union and shift more money into security programs such as cargo ship inspections. “Why aren’t these things being done now?” he said. “Why have we dillydallied for 15 months?”
He’d buy the “entire uranium stockpile held by the former Soviet Union!” Sure he would! That’s sitcom logic. What makes him think the Soviet Union would sell it? He’s saying the Soviet Union would unilaterally disarm itself of all its nukes! What silly, goofball nonsense. He’s lost in dreamland. He’s got his head so far up his own butt he ought to open his own fantasyland theme park.
And he’d “shift more money into security programs.” That’s right, because he opposes the use of force to deal with people who are trying to kill us. More fantasyland.
An interesting comment showed up here today from reader Khayer, who appears to be British (he put the word “British” in the URL field of the comments section, and notes a BBC report):
whether saddam was an evil man i do not know for
i only see what the media of my country shows me.
the thing that bothered me the most was that to get hold of one man our country and america killed
very very huge numbers of Iraqi’s. i saw some scenes of the war on a bbc footage and all i saw was fear in the eyes of the people, terror.
Khayer, Saddam was killing Iraqis at such a huge rate, that removing him has saved far more Iraqi lives than were lost in the war:
In the raw mathematics called body count, dropping Saddam’s fascist death machine saved 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqi lives the innocents his henchmen would have slain during 2003 while the United Nations fiddled and France burned with anti-American ressentiment.Iraqis freed of Saddam’s moment-by-moment terror know American GIs brought that blessing, belated as it is.
Like much of the major media, the BBC isn’t covering the whole story. For a great example, check this out.
Khayer, thanks for raising a good question. I hope this info provides some useful feedback.
the LA Times today couches a news report in terms that sound like they’re cheering for those who are killing Americans:
Coordinated Suicide Strikes Kill 13 in Iraq
Car bombers attack in the holy city of Karbala. The victims are six coalition soldiers and seven Iraqis. More than 170 are wounded....Although the number of daily attacks may be down by U.S. military count, Saturday’s incursion in relatively peaceful Karbala sounded a roar of defiance.
Not too subtle, is it? “By U.S. military count,” says the Times, as if hoping that the U.S. military count is false and the attacks are really greater. And that “roar of defiance”—that’s just standard cheering-them-on rhetoric. Whose side is the Times on?
This could change the minds of a lot of people who had hoped they could safely ignore terrorism.
The Premiere of Italy stated that terrorists had planned to fly a hijacked plane into the Vatican.
Leader: Terrorists Planned To Attack Vatican On Christmas
Security Tightened Around Vatican In Recent Weeks
ROME-Terrorists planned to attack the Vatican with a hijacked plane on Christmas Day, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said in a newspaper interview published Saturday.
Berlusconi told Milan's Libero newspaper of a "precise and verified news of an attack on Rome on Christmas Day."
"A hijacked plane into the Vatican," Berlusconi is quoted as saying. "An attack from the sky, is that clear? The threat of terrorism is very high in this instant. I passed Christmas Eve in Rome to deal with the situation. Now I feel calm. It will pass."
He added, "It isn't fatalism, but the knowledge of having our guard up. If they organized this, they will not pull it off."
This is going to wake up a lot of people who had been hoping they might be able to stay out of the way of or otherwise appease the terrorists-including Italy as a nation and Christians in other European countries.
When the news came out about the attempt by Al Quaida to hijack a French plane bound for Las Vegas, I noticed a particular incongruity. In 9-11 Al Qaida made a point of crashing planes full of fuel. A plane coming to Las Vegas from France would be about out of fuel.
So it seems possible that the French plane is the one that was bound for the Vatican.
Naturally, the major media hasn't printed giant headlines congratulating George Bush and the CIA on stopping that French Plane from being hijacked. I guess it's up to the us in the blogosphere.
Congratulations To George Bush
And To The CIA
On Stopping The Hijacking
Of The French Airliner!
are long-established:
[There is] one consequence of Hussein’s ouster that has passed largely unnoticed outside the region. For decades, many Palestinians who held fast to their hopes for an independent state relied on Iraq’s staunch support.
Saddam, of course, has been providing financial support to suicide bombers for years in the form of ‘martyrdom bonuses’ for their families.
And yet the left wants us to forget this and think that Hussein had no ties to terrorism! The ability of the left to forget so much of what it knows is remarkable.
“Of course Hussein had no ties to terrorism,” says the left. “What makes you think he would have supported terrorists?” Meanwhile he’s been financing Palestinian terrorists all the time. “Well, those suicide bombers have nothing to do with the United States,” the left continues. “They’d never harm the United States. They love the United… oh, wait a minute… actually, they blame the U.S. Hmmm….”
This is madness:
Be polite to Mr Saddam
BARMY BBC bosses have banned reporters from calling tyrant Saddam Hussein a former dictator.
Instead, staff must refer to the barbaric mass murderer as the deposed former President.
The astonishing edict was seized on by MPs last night as more proof of a Left-wing bias inside the BBC against the Iraqi war.
Labour MP Kevan Jones, of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said: This shows the crass naivety of the BBC. Such political correctness will be deeply hurtful to many of our servicemen serving in Iraq.
This goes way beyond political correctness. It’s nothing less than Orwellian Doublespeak.
In his novel 1984, George Orwell predicted a development in politics in which language itself would be redesigned to serve the intentions of those who would rule over others:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc [English Socialism – ed.] , but to make all other modes of thought impossible. ... This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words…
See? The BBC is eliminating the undesirable word “dictator” from the language they permit to be used on their airwaves—at least when it actually does refer to a dictator. They do it because calling a thing by its true name shows that their political position—opposition to the war in Iraq—is false!
Now we must refer to Orson Scott Card’s fantastic recent article. As you may know, Card is one of our pre-eminent science fiction writers, whose work includes Ender’s Game. Check this out:
...Our national media are covering this war as if we were “losing the peace”—even though we are not at peace and we are not losing. Why are they doing this? Because they are desperate to spin the world situation in such a way as to bring down President Bush. ...
We are being lied to and “spun,” and not in a trivial way. ... the national media, instead of holding the liars’ and haters’ feet to the fire (as they do when the liars and haters are Republicans or conservatives), are cooperating in building up a false image of a failing economy and a lost war, when the truth is more nearly the exact opposite.
Compare this to George Orwell’s description of how DoubleThink is accomplished, by refusing to call things by their true names. From the definition of the DoubleSpeak word “blackwhite:”
blackwhite- The ability to accept whatever the party tells you. Orwell described it as ”...loyal willingness to say black is white when party discipline demands this. It also means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know black is white, and forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
See? There it is. Per the media, we’re not at war, we’re losing the peace. We’re not succeeding in the war against terror—we’re losing. And Saddam Hussein, the mass murder, isn’t a tyrant—he isn’t a dictator—he’s a former President. It’s DoubleThink just as George Orwell defined it.
We must call things by their true names. Here is the definition of doublethink from the novel:
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.’”
“To forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again”—compare that to my recent post, “How to Be Liberal: Forget Half of Everything You Know.
Jose Padilla moved to the MIddle East and became a Muslim. He allegedly met with Osama bin Laden’s operations chief Abu Zubaydah, just 6 months after 9-11, and offered his services in an attempt to nuke the U.S. Because Padilla was technically an American citizen, he hoped to be better able to slip through U.S. airport security and carry out this plan.
He was arrested in May 2002 as he returned to the U.S. from Pakistan. Do we throw the book at this guy and designate him an enemy combatant? Only by an act of Congress, rules the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Because he’s a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, said the Court, he has to be treated as if he’s just a criminal, not an enemy combatant. Who cares if he was working with the people who are trying to nuke us? Treat him like a shoplifter. That’s the Court’s ruling.
How can the Court ignore the facts so blatantly? The Court reiterates the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which insisted on treating terrorists as criminals to be dealt with via the court system. This left the terrrorists free to carry out 9-11.
You can’t fight an army through the Court system, any more than you can send police to fight a war. There’s a reason we don’t send our police to fight our wars. It’s because their training is inappropriate to the situation. Police are trained to save lives and even to risk their own to protect the lives and property of others. When applied to criminals, this shows our greatness as a country. But use those techniques on the battlefield, and you get clobbered.
Using the Court system against terrorists—in this case a guy who appears to have been trying to nuke us—can hobble us. The Court system is too slow. Cases can drag on for years.
And requiring an Act of Congress to try a terrorist? Congress is purposely constructed to be slow to decide things. It takes forever to get Congress off the dime.
To conclude, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reiterated a key mistake of the Clinton administration, and has handed the terrorists a victory in this case.
Update: Eugene Volokh expects the decision to be reversed.
Let me give a couple of examples.
I was listening to Larry Elder the other day, and a woman was saying that Arnold Schwarzennegger has to be prosecuted for any harassment of women he may have done. Larry agreed that any such misdeeds, if they took place, were wrong, that there are laws against them, that it was up to the women involved to bring any such actions to the attention of the police, and that the statute of limitations on those actions, if they took place, has expired. Larry went on to say that at the current time, Arnold has a lot on his mind—we have a state to save. California is billions in debt and in great danger.
The caller couldn’t care less about that point—she didn’t acknowledge it or even give any sign that she’d heard Larry say it.
If you ignore that massive fact, her position is far more reasonable. So her response was to refuse to hear of it.
Example #2. The liberal argument against the war in Iraq is essentially, “It’s bad to start wars. We’ve never done this before and Bush is wrong to do so.” That makes plenty of sense as long as you forget what we learned on 9-11, namely, that there are terrorists out there who are well-organized and trying to get their hands on a nuke to nuke us. From listening to most of those who argue against the war, you’d never know 9-11 ever happened.
You have to forget half of what you know to buy into most of the positions of the extreme left.
Robert X. Cringely has a better way of voting.
His leading competitors for the Democratic nomination have all at least said something:
“Praise the Lord. ... This is a day of glory for the American military, American intelligence, and it’s a day of triumph and joy for anybody in the world who cares about freedom and human rights and peace.” Sen. Joe Lieberman , D-Conn.Is Dean tongue-tied? His silence suggests that he’s disappointed. His virulent opposition to the war is in danger of being exposed as little more than support for a brutal dictator and for America’s enemies.“Capturing Saddam Hussein and ensuring that this brutal dictator will never return to power is an important step toward stabilizing Iraq for the Iraqis. Let’s also be clear: Our problems in Iraq have not been caused by one man and this is a moment when the administration can and must launch a major effort to gain international support and win the peace.” Sen. John Kerry (news -web sites), D-Mass.
“I supported this effort in Iraq without regard for the political consequences because it was the right thing to do. I still feel that way now and today is a major step toward stabilizing Iraq and building a new democracy.” Rep. Dick Gephardt , D-Mo.
“I hope this will see a diminishing in the violence against American soldiers in Iraq.” Retired Gen. Wesley Clark .
“Praise the Lord. ... This is a day of glory for the American military, American intelligence, and it’s a day of triumph and joy for anybody in the world who cares about freedom and human rights and peace.” Sen. Joe Lieberman , D-Conn.
Lieberman’s definitely the coolest of them.
“I supported this effort in Iraq without regard for the political consequences because it was the right thing to do. I still feel that way now and today is a major step toward stabilizing Iraq and building a new democracy.” Rep. Dick Gephardt , D-Mo.
Gephardt also distingishes himself here.
“Capturing Saddam Hussein and ensuring that this brutal dictator will never return to power is an important step toward stabilizing Iraq for the Iraqis. Let’s also be clear: Our problems in Iraq have not been caused by one man and this is a moment when the administration can and must launch a major effort to gain international support and win the peace.” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
Kerry wants to turn U.S. security over to the U.N. Give me a break. What a joke.
“I hope this will see a diminishing in the violence against American soldiers in Iraq.” Retired Gen. Wesley Clark .
A lame attempt to spin the news for political gain. How pathetic.
And Dean? Where’s Dean’s comment?
Why isn’t the government accountable as to how to pay for the programs it enacts?
Federal and State governments are constantly voting to spend money without any requirement to account for how they’re going to get that money. The recent new $400 billion prescription drug entitlement is a huge example. Many people believe there’s no way to pay for it at all. And because it’s an entitlement, there’s no way to reduce it once it’s enacted. (There must be some way to cut these entitlements—but that’s a subject for another post). Much of the public is left scratching our heads, wondering what the heck our elected officials are thinking.
Another example cropped up today: Social Security checks could go south of border.
WASHINGTON – U.S. and Mexican officials are discussing an agreement that would allow millions of Mexicans to return home and still collect U.S. Social Security benefits.The controversial proposal that could transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security payments south of the border has riled some Republican lawmakers. They worry that it could reward scores of undocumented Mexican immigrants with a U.S. pension, draining the country’s Social Security trust fund at a time when its future solvency is in doubt.
...”Let’s be honest, there are millions of Mexican immigrants contributing to the Social Security system and the U.S. economy,” said Katherine Culliton, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It’s only fair they get back a benefit they deserve that will keep them from dying in poverty.”
Sure—they’re breaking our laws, entering this country illegally, and then they are forced by the laws of ours that they can’t figure out how to break, to contribute taxes. Let’s give ‘em some money!
“Talk about an incentive for illegal immigration,” said GOP Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. “How many more would break the law to come to this country if promised U.S. government paychecks for life?”
That’d be a great Constitutional Amendment: any government program has to be accompanied by documentation as to how it would be paid for.
The ads close to an election usually are over-the-top, out-of-control attack ads. So the Court’s decision may really lead to more civilized elections.
At the same time, there’s tremendous concern from many observers that the Court has expressly limited the free speech guaranteed to us by the Constitution.
I never, in my most screwed up dreams, imagined that SCOTUS would uphold the part of the legislation that bans third-party commercials sixty days before an election. This is a definite blow to the first amendment—and against political speech, no less—and the Supreme Court let it happen.
This the Court has astonishingly, in fact done:
“The court has given government an extensive role in the area [TV commercials and so forth] on grounds that there is a fundamental national interest in rooting out corruption or even the appearance of it. That concern justifies limitations on the freedom of speech, the court has said.”
How can the Court discover in the Constitution a limit on freedom of speech? It’s insane.
Also, Rush makes a very good point. Now that candidates are forbidden to get their message out using the previously-normal method of TV and radio ads, how are they going to do it? They’ll have to go begging to the media—the overwhelmingly liberal media—for articles and interviews. This will give the media even more of a stranglehold over what can be said.
You know they’re not going to be bashing Democrats on these network news shows…. So what’s happened now, the mainstream press, they’ll go get whoever guests they want and they can trash whoever they want. That person who has been trashed cannot respond on television, can’t buy a commercial, can’t get a commercial run, can’t do it.
Just last week Ann Coulter was talking about the Supreme Court’s “discovering” all kinds of rights in the Constitution that couldn’t possibly have been intended by the Framers.
This appears to be insanity on a massive scale.
He appears to be suggesting some sort of alternate form of citizenship:
“The bottom line is, as a country we have to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what our immigration policy is and then enforce it,” Ridge said at a town hall meeting at Miami-Dade Community College.
...
“I’m not saying make them citizens, because they violated the law to get here,” he said. “So you don’t reward that type of conduct by turning over a citizenship certificate. You determine how you can legalize their presence, then, as a country, you make a decision that from this day forward, from this day forward, this is the process of entry, and if you violate that process of entry we have the resources to cope with it.”
Sounds to me like a second-class citizenship status. I don’t think that’s the way to go here. Any kind of class-based society is out of keeping with our heritage as Americans.
I do give Tom credit for trying to think outside the box on the question of all these illegal immigrants.
This is some kind of a first for America:
Liberal Radio Group Says It Is Close to Acquiring 5 Stations
A Democratic investment group planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh says it is close to buying radio stations in five major cities.
Party-controlled media. Let’s think about that for a minute. The only difference between this and the state-controlled media of a dictatorship, is that the party controlling this media isn’t always in power.
If you work for one of these radio stations, you must have the opinions they order you to have. That’s the whole stated purpose of the network: to support the political views of the party. Free press? Ha! This press is specifically designed not to be free. This is the closest thing to state-controlled media in the history of this country.
There can be no free speech on these stations. This is media where it is explicit that if you express an opinion different from that of the party, you’ll get fired.
Radio isn’t a near-monopoly like broadcast TV and local newspapers. Every city has many radio stations. If the people wanted to hear more liberal pundits on the radio, they’d already be there. And the last thing people are going to want to listen to are hosts slavishly parroting opinions they’ve been told to have. My guess is these party-controlled radio stations are doomed.
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