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In this previous post, I noted that Liberals like to attack the successful, and reward the unsuccessful. I discussed the ideological grounds on which Liberals do this.
More recently, Evan Sayet has brilliantly discussed the root causes among Liberals for this behavior.
The fiasco of the firing of Don Imus this week provides the latest example of Liberals attacking the successful - even the most successful among their own supporters.
From the LA Times:
Democratic politicians lose a mouthpiece with Imus
His show gave many of them a way to reach a national audience of white males - a critical voting bloc.
...with Imus' career in tatters, the fate of the controversial shock jock is stirring quiet but heartfelt concern in an unlikely quarter: among Democratic politicians.
That's because, over the years, Democrats [...] came to count on Imus for the kind of sympathetic treatment that Republicans got from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
Equally important, Imus gave Democrats a pipeline to a crucial voting bloc that was perennially hard for them to reach: politically independent white men.
With Imus' show canceled indefinitely because of his remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, some Democratic strategists are worried about how to fill the void. For a national radio audience of white men, Democrats see few if any alternatives.
Hillary went out of her way to slam Imus as hard as she could, saying, last Tuesday:
I've never wanted to go on his show and I certainly don't ever intend to go on his show, and I felt that way before his latest outrageous, hateful, hurtful comments.
In doing so she helped to harm her own party.
Conversely, prominent Conservative Ann Coulter went out of her way to defend Imus.
The left is so devoted to attacking anything that is successful, that it strikes at the most successful things in its own party. Lieberman was turned away by his own party and had to run (and win) as an Independent. Cindy Sheehan slams leading Libs, such as Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and John Edwards. And now Imus, who per the LA Times was the closest thing the Dems had to Rush Limbaugh, has been taken off the air, because the Dems wouldn't stand up for him.
The results show the error of the Libs' approach. Those who promote the unsuccessful, and attack the successful, are harming all of us, and that includes - themselves.
In February of 2006, it started to become apparent that the free world had the opportunity to put financial pressure on the Hamas government, and I posted that I expected the free world to use this opportunity:
As I have posted here on several occasions, the terrorists depend on our goodwill towards men, for their very existence. They depend on our willingness to risk our own lives rather than to incur collateral damage to the civilians who surround and support the terrorists. If not for our historically unusual solicitude for the civilians who support the terrorists, we would have devastated those terrorists with little military expense long ago.
Today this dependence of the terrorists on the free world they are dedicated to destroy, has become actual financial dependence, in the case of Hamastan.
It is not human nature to let up on someone who's trying to kill you when you have the upper hand. I do not expect the free world to let up on Hamastan now that the terrorists of Hamas are in need of our financial help.
Over a year later, my prediction continues to be confirmed by events:
EU Says No to Aiding Palestinian Unity Government
Already facing many other hardships, the Palestinian people now face a shortfall in aid
New Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad has failed to convince the European Union to agree to resume aid to the Palestinian Authority despite what he called a "very acute financial crisis".
Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Fayyad, a respected independent and a former senior World Bank official, warned that the Palestinian coffers only had about a quarter of the funds required for 2007, a shortfall of around a billion euros ($1.3 billion).
"These are very difficult times for the Palestinian people," he told reporters at a joint press conference with EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. The Finance Minister added that if the international community did not come to the aid of the Palestinians, the outcome would be "devastating".
Fayyad warns that lack of aid is devastating for the Palestinians
Palestinian and European diplomats said the meeting itself was a sign that the EU was willing to give the new finance ministry a chance.
The EU was the biggest aid donor to the Palestinian government until the Hamas militants came to power in March 2006. The Quartet of Middle East mediators -- the European Union, United States, United Nations and Russia -- then suspended direct aid to the Palestinian authority.
EU bypasses unity government
Since then, the EU has redirected its funding, which reached 700 million euros in 2006, through a special mechanism to help the neediest people while bypassing the government to avoid contact with Hamas -- which is considers a terrorist organization.
At the Brussels press conference, Ferrero-Waldner said this temporary mechanism would continue but offered Fayyad technical assistance to get his finance ministry in order.
She also repeated the international demands that the Palestinian government renounce violence, formally recognize Israel's right to exist and abide by former agreements.
The pressure appears to be working. There are reports of infighting within Hamas. Also, a Saudi columnist has recently published two articles arguing that "The Right of Return is an Illusion." From Memri:
In the first article, published March 5, 2007 and titled "On the Impossible [Idea] of the Right of Return," Al-Sweidan wrote: "...The slogan 'right of return'... which is brandished by Palestinian organizations, is perceived as one of the greatest difficulties and as the main obstacle to renewing and advancing the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians based on the Road Map and a two-state solution.
"It is patently obvious that uprooting the descendents of the refugees from their current homes in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other countries, and returning them to Israel, to the West Bank, and to Gaza is a utopian ideal and [a recipe for] anarchy. More than that - it is an idea that cannot be implemented, not only because it will upset the demographic [balance] in a dangerous and destructive manner, and will have [far-reaching] political, economic and social ramifications in such a small and constrained geographical area, but [mainly] because the return [of the refugees] stands in blatant contradiction to Israel's right as a sovereign [state], while the Palestinian Authority lacks the infrastructure to absorb such a large number of immigrants as long as the peace process... is not at its peak..."
Hamas must be forced to recognize the right of Israel to exist.
From a comment posted by Olah Chadasha, of the Greetings from the French Hill weblog:
If, as Al Gore claims, humans and their big evil industrial outputs are the cause of global warming, how is it that there was an ICE AGE before humans existed?!? Did the industrial revolution start a bit earlier than history recorded? Furthermore, how was it that the earth warmed enough to end the Ice Age again BEFORE humans were driving their evil SUVs?!?
Can some-one, ahhem I’m talking to you Mr. Gore, please explained to me how that happened? If humans, with their evil fossil fuels, Humvees, and evil corporations are the main culprits of global warming then an Ice Age and then Ice Age Melting could NEVER have happened. According to his and the UN (Useless Neanderthals) claims, the earth’s temperature’s rise could not happen on its own. So, what happened? Did Haliburton build a time machine, travel back in time, and cause an Ice Age and then melted it a few million years later?
Answers… anybody?
Many MSM articles reporting on the rally led by al-Sadr in Iraq appear to have left out a key detail - one printed by the NY Times.
Like the reports on this subject from AP and Reuters, the headline and the article's text state that the purpose of the rally was calling for U.S. withdrawal. However, the NY Times includes a key detail in the first paragraph, one oddly omitted by the AP and Reuters. A purpose of the rally was a call for "Death to America."
Huge Protest in Iraq Demands U.S. Withdraw
BAGHDAD, April 9 - Tens of thousands of protesters loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric, took to the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Monday in an extraordinarily disciplined rally to demand an end to the American military presence in Iraq, burning American flags and chanting "Death to America!"
Residents said that the angry, boisterous demonstration was the largest in Najaf, the heart of Shiite religious power, since the American-led invasion in 2003. It took place on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and it was an obvious effort by Mr. Sadr to show the extent of his influence here in Iraq, even though he did not appear at the rally. Mr. Sadr went underground after the American military began a new security push in Baghdad on Feb. 14, and his whereabouts are unknown.
Mr. Sadr used the protest to try to reassert his image as a nationalist rebel who appeals to both anti-American Shiites and Sunni Arabs. He established that reputation in 2004, when he publicly supported Sunni insurgents in Falluja who were battling United States marines, and quickly gained popularity among Sunnis across Iraq and the region. But his nationalist credentials have been tarnished in the last year, as Sunni Arabs have accused Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, of torturing and killing Sunnis.
A stated goal of the rally was "Death to America." But MSM doesn't want to say that, since the response to that on the part of readers would be support for the U.S. to continue efforts to crush al-Sadr - efforts which have already been so successful that al-Sadr couldn't dare to appear at his own rally. MSM doesn't want to say that a stated goal of the rally was "Death to America," since then it would be evident that al-Sadr wants to attack us, his followers want to attack us, and the U.S. is doing the right thing by opposing al-Sadr and working to bring stability to Iraq, rather than leaving it to fall into the hands of al-Sadr and others who seek to do harm to us.
So credit is due to the Times for printing this key piece of information.
GWB made an important observation on the rally:
"I note today that Sadr called for massive protests. I'm not sure that we've seen that, those numbers materialize and the numbers that he was seeking...
"But Iraq, four years on, is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions, and that was something they could not do under Saddam. And while we have much more progress ahead of us -- the United States, the coalition and Iraqis have much more to do -- this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein," he said.
Newsweek puts the hammer on global warming concerns:
What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature-a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.
A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now. Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate. There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way, according to scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which released the second part of this year's report earlier this month). Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing.
In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There's even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth's surface.
Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. Interpretations of these studies rarely consider that the impact of carbon on temperature goes down-not up-the more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Even if emissions were the sole cause of the recent temperature rise-a dubious proposition-future increases wouldn't be as steep as the climb in emissions.
The Washingon Post says Pelosi's behavior in Syria was a "counterproductive," "foolish" attempt to "substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president."
USA Today says:
...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crossed a line this week by visiting Syria, where she met with President Bashar Assad. She violated a long-held understanding that the United States should speak with one official voice abroad - even if the country is deeply divided on foreign policy back home.
...It's not up to the speaker to unfreeze relations with Assad.
And a Wall Street Journal article says she broke the law:
The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States." Some background on this statute helps to understand why Ms. Pelosi may be in serious trouble.
...the offense is greater when the usurpation of the president's constitutional authority is done by a member of the legislature--all the more so by a Speaker of the House--because it violates not just statutory law but constitutes a usurpation of the powers of a separate branch and a breach of the oath of office Ms. Pelosi took to support the Constitution.
Pelosi has been trying to impose her foreign policy strategy on the Presidency since the moment she became speaker, most notably with regard to Iraq. Per the Washington Post (same link as above):
The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq.
Republicans should make sure to bring this to Pelosi's attention the very next time she tries to discuss such issues. Pelosi's foolish behavior ( the Washington Post called it a "pratfall" ) should be thrown in her face such that she never can say a word about foreign policy again.
Just yesterday I posted that Nancy Pelosi's ignorant actions in Syria were "dangerous to her career." Today I've already been proven right, as the Washington Post delivers a devastating indictment:
...As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.
That's what gamers and digg.com readers call being "pwned."
And it's important to recognize that the Washington Post has done a great service to the country, in having the courage to take this position. We've come to expect MSM to support the Dems at every opportunity. But actions like this by the Washington Post are the kind of thing that can reverse the failing fortunes of MSM - by showing that MSM wants what's good for the United States. More articles like this, finding ways to show appreciation of and support for the U.S., could dramatically change the financial situation for MSM.
From Jonah Goldberg, in the LA Times:
Renowned metallurgist Rosie O'Donnell proclaimed on TV on Thursday that Sept. 11, 2001, was a more significant date than most of us realized. It was, in her words, "the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel."
This, of course, came as news to steelworkers, blacksmiths, firefighters, manufacturers of samurai swords and other fools who hadn't realised that steel is forged in magic furnaces using dragon breath and pixie dust.
...in last week's rant, O'Donnell focused on World Trade Center Building 7, which has become the grassy knoll for 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Asked if the government was responsible for its collapse, she coyly replied that she didn't know. All she knows is that it's "impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved" and that, for the "first time in history, steel was melted by fire." Wink, wink. For the record, fire can melt steel, and buildings also collapse when heat weakens steel.
Nancy Pelosi's ignorance is dangerous to her career, her party, and now, also to women residents of Syria:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was seen roaming the streets of Damascus flaunting a Hijab. The Hijab worn by women across the Muslim world has come to symbolize either one of three things: 1) a symbol that men control women by forcing piety, or 2) a return to religiosity because of oppressive rulers, or 3) a fashion statement. If you ask any expert on the Middle East, you would get any one of three answers. The ones who usually claim it is a fashion statement are the political rulers who usually oppress people in general. A Hijab is NOT a confirmation of the rights of women in the Middle East but rather a symbol of their suppression.
As a Muslim, I fully understand respect of our religion by visiting US officials and I applaud that respect. Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women's rights in the Middle East. Pelosi just reversed the work of the Syrian civil society and those who aspire for women's freedom in the Muslim countries many years back with her visual statement. Her lack of experience of the Middle East is showing.
Assad could not have been happier because Syrian women, seeing a US official confirming what their husbands, the Imams in the Mosques tell them, and the society at large imposes on them through peer pressure will see in her wearing a Hijab as a confirmation of the societal pressures they are constantly under. No one will ever know how many women took the Hijab on after seeing Pelosi wearing it. The damage Speaker Pelosi is causing with her visit to Syria will be felt for many years to come.
As I discussed in this previous post, one of the things that hampers MSM so much is that its expertise is in acquiring and reporting information, rather than in analyzing what that information means. I'm reminded of this by a Reuter's article today, which shows severe internal contradictions:
President George W. Bush's administration has crippled al Qaeda's ability to carry out major attacks on U.S. soil but at a political and economic cost that could leave the country more vulnerable in years to come, experts say.
Even as al Qaeda tries to rebuild operations in Pakistan, experts including current and former intelligence officials believe the group would have a hard time staging another September 11 because of U.S. success at killing or capturing senior members whose skills and experience have not been replaced.
"If the question is why al Qaeda hasn't carried out another 9/11 attack, the answer I think is that if they could have, they would have," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
...Look at al Qaeda's plans," said Michael Scheuer, who once led the CIA team devoted to finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "They're very simply defined in two phrases: spread out America's forces and bleed the United States to bankruptcy. I'd argue America has been under attack successfully every day since 9/11 from that perspective.
"If you're looking at it from the cave, or wherever al Qaeda is hiding at the moment, you have to be pretty happy with the way the world is moving," he said.
So per this analysis from Reuters, the al Qaeda members hiding in a cave, due to the success of the U.S. in killing and capturing so many of their senior members, are pretty happy about the way the world is moving, due to what it has cost the U.S. to accomplish their destruction.
As I noted in that previous post (same link):
The Strengths of MSM
MSM excels at gathering information. They can often get it even when many of the people involved don't want to reveal it. This is a totally different skill set from analyzing that information. There is no reason to expect anyone to be good at both. MSM is so unskilled at information analysis, that it even applies the same pre-packaged analysis, to almost every story. According to MSM, almost every story means that GWB is bad, the Iraq war is bad, America is bad, capitalism is bad, and whoever the Democrats are running should be elected. Stories that can't be made to fit this analysis -- for example, the current Air America scandal, the Swift Boat vets of the 2004 Presidential campaign, or the U.N. report that Hussein had busted up giant factories capable of building WMD's and shipped them out of Iraq before and during the war -- are either ignored altogether, or printed once on a back page, and never discussed again.
The Strengths of the Blogosphere
Analysis, however -- figuring out what things mean -- what they were caused by, what they will cause, and how to apply that understanding to make new decisions -- is precisely what the blogosphere excels at. Go to any of the biggest blogs, and you will note that the majority of posts cite facts from MSM and elsewhere, and provide new analysis.
That post was from August of 2005, and now in April of 2007, it still rings true: "According to MSM, almost every story means that GWB is bad, the Iraq war is bad, America is bad, capitalism is bad, and whoever the Democrats are running should be elected."
THE LATEST GOOGLE SEARCH is for a snake loose in Google HQ.
"What you have heard is in fact true and not an April Fools' Day joke," a Google spokesman wrote in an e-mail to technology news site CNET News.com.
..."Should you see the snake, please do not attempt to touch it or pick it up. Call security immediately."
Prof. Elliot McGucken organized the Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival which took place Saturday at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. Panelists and speakers discussed entrepreneurship in media such as blogs, videogames, film, etc., in terms of the hero's journey as discussed by Joseph Campbell. Per McGucken:
Entrepreneurship is the force that continually rights the world by rewarding those who serve--those who battle the bureaucracy with a better way. Entrepreneurship is an epic story wherein the world is continually "begun anew," as the humble risk-taker--the reluctant hero--the fount of lasting cultural and monetary wealth--happens upon an innovation, invention, or epiphany, and takes a risk in rendering it real for others.
It was an excellent event. Panelists and speakers included David Whatley, who demonstrated some amazing world-building software his team is using to create the upcoming Hero's Journey MMORPG; videogame writers Flint Dille and John Zuur; Andrew Breitbart, co-founder of the Drudge Report, and founder of Breitbart.com; screenwriting guru Skip Press; film producers Jonathan and Deborah Flora; William Fay, Executive producer of the film 300; and others, including -- me. Prof. McGucken asked me to join a panel to discuss blogging.
Here are my introductory remarks (from my prepared notes):
Hi, I'm Vik Rubenfeld, of the Big Picture weblog, at BigPicWeblog.com. I'm a Pajamas Media blogger. Pajamas Media is one of the biggest stories in the blogosphere over the past year or so. Pajamas is like a Drudge Report of the blogosphere, bringing together links to many of the best blog articles each day; it's also a place where many leading bloggers and pundits post original articles.
This is a key time in world history, and it takes all of us who are interested in this, to contribute to figuring out what's going on, and what to do about it. It used to be that to make a contribution to the public debate, you had to be elected or appointed to some substantial position. The blogosphere changed all that.
Even at this time, mainstream media pooh-poohs the blogosphere. I'll read you 3 sentences from an AP story that ran this past week:
Blogs are Web sites that tend to be narrow in focus and directed at a niche audience. Most operate without editors and give instant reaction to the news. Their freewheeling, open nature makes them popular but also ripe for unverified statements.
When I post something that even has an implication that someone might disagree with, I hear about it, from commenters. So there is a lot of fact-checking in the blogosphere. On the other hand, you've all probably heard about the phony photo that AP ran. They had to withdraw it. Patterico.com busts the LA TIMES every day on errors and omissions.
So I think the strength of blogosphere is precisely that it does not have editors. Bloggers are free of the restrictions on what can be said within a giant mainstream media institution.
I'll give you an example. This is from something I posted yesterday. You're probably going to hear a lot today about the film 300. Many commentators are greeting this film as a possible signal of the end of moral ambiguity. The heroes in the film are fighting for something that is an absolute moral good. So I jumped off from that:
An end of moral ambiguity could have a massive impact on global geopolitics. To take one example, it's time for Israel to thrill the world by saying, loud and clear, that Israel stands for freedom, democracy, achievement, science, and equality of the sexes, and that those who do not recognize its right to exist, have neither freedom, nor democracy, nor achievements, nor science, nor equality of the sexes. That alone would electrify - and change - the world.
You may agree with me; you may disagree with me; the point is that I was able to say it and have it be heard and discussed. It was linked by Pajamas, and as of this morning, it had been seen by 400 people.
So blogging gives us all a voice and a chance to be heard. And all of us together - do add up - to something heroic.
Thank you.
My remarks got big applause. It was a pleasure to appear at this event.
"Death sought for 'Chemical Ali':"
"Chemical Ali" is the cousin of late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
Iraqi prosecutors have asked for death sentences against five defendants in the so-called Anfal trial for the 1980s crackdown on Iraq's Kurdish population.
They include the alleged mastermind of the campaign - Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas attacks.
