Democrats Make Nice with Jesse Jackson Again

(Sigh) These folks never seem to learn. Apparently, a number of the Democrats trying to gain the (rather useless) Democrat nomination, are out making nice in front of Jesse Jackson’s so-called ” Rainbow/PUSH Coalition “.  One of the participants is Howard Dean, who just gets more stupid by the day, is now questioning that Iraqis were not better off under the loving care of Saddam.

Dean has progressed…. he’s not even a useful idiot, anymore… he’s simply useless.. a waste product of humanity.

Well, it appears that Tom Harkin tried to pull rank so as not to wait for the security line at the airport. Don’t these Democrat snobs ever learn?

Oil is flowing in Iraq as of today. Slowly at first. One hopes that the added money will help in their rebuilding efforts.Only this time, let’s makre sure it doesn’t end up only in the hands of a few in Baghdad. Isn’t it interesting that our own socialist left has been fighting against that day?

I must admit a certain level of shock upon reading a sympathetic column from Helen Thomas about Ronald Reagan.  Most times, of late she’s gone way round the bend into Partisan waters, hating anything of the right. I wonder, frankly, what drivers here sometimes.

An interesting write up from Dick Morris, more or less confirming my take on the future of the Times. He makes it clear that the Times made itself a willing roll-over for the Clinton White House. Jason Maoz seems to agree that the Times isn’t going to improve. Too bad they still can’t seem to come to the conclusion I did in a few weeks ago: Sulzberger himself is the biggest problem, and that situation doesn’t look to change very soon. Sulzberger has always held the conviction that journalism is about helping people and building what he thinks a better society. Just printing the news isn’t enough of a mission; he needs to twist it to his own politics.

The new weekly Bit, titled “Blogs, Homosexuals and Short Stuff” is up, just now.

Anyone who thinks the Soviets are gone… that the Russian people have really shaken off Communism…
you should read Bill Buckley’s column today:

Davis has tripled the car tax in California. Check this story…He stood a chance of fighting off this voter recall a few weeks ago. Does anyone at all think he’s going to stay in power now? Apparently not the Democrats out there. They’re already asking him to resign, says Bob Novak.

Mike Tyson got himself arrested again. It figures. At some point, someone’s going to wake up with that one, and simply toss his backside in the can, permanantly.

Welcome to Bithead’s Blog. A new thing for me.

The main site of course has been running forever.  But, I wanted a way to add a daily blog without the added space being taken up on my Roadrunner account. (Pain in the butt 5 meg limit!) So, here we are.

Fear not…I have no intention of not doing my weekly commentary at the main site. This will be in addition to the usual weekly Bit’s Bits.

First thing I’ve got to change is this template, so that I get a more consistant look between here and the main site. I’ll be working on that today as I learn more about this thing.  I’m learning it fast…

In case you haven’t heard this…Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd are out at the New York Times.

Apparently, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is listening to the feedback he’s getting, not only from his own people, but also from mainstream America, and not liking what he’s hearing about his paper. In recent weeks, I called for, and fully expected the head of Howell Raines.  What I did NOT expect, and perhaps should have, was that of Gerald Boyd, as well.

What you shouldn’t let yourself get sucked in by, is all this chatter about Jayson Blair being the cause of all these problems at the Times, and by extension, in the rest of the country’s press, as well. Blair seems to be buying into the idea it’s his fault. As word of the firings of the Raines and Boyd became Public, New York City’s Channel 2 interviewers asked Blair for comments. He responded with:

“I’m truly sorry for my actions and what they have done,” said Blair. “I feel like, you know, I was in a cycle of self-destruction, but I never intend, and I never intended to hurt anyone else. And the pain that I have caused my colleagues, I’m sorry. The pain for my family and friends and anybody else.”

As much as the news media in general, and the Times in particular, as well as Blair himself, have tried to portray all these events this as the Jayson Blair Soap opera, don’t you believe it. As I have said before, all this makes Blair a victim… a point apparently not lost on Blair… he almost selfishly attempts to take center stage for the whole affair… Being a victim, of course, is something that always seems to resonate with the left.  His victim- status- seeking not withstanding, however… these events can by no stretch of the wildest imagination be left at the feet of Jason Blair.  Blair was never the central issue, nor even the majority of the issue… Blair was merely the last straw, in a long string of leftist excesses that The Times and it’s companies have become infamous for.  As Sullivan said recently:

“Crusading stories were covered exhaustively in what became known as a Rainesian “flood-the-zone” trademark. Its newest columnists engaged in increasingly reckless left-wing screeds; its op-ed pages saw conservative voices purged; and dozens of staffers started to leave for other papers. Those who criticized the new direction were punished or pushed out.

In one particularly bizarre period, Raines decided to make a cause out of shaming the Augusta National Golf Club to admit women. This somewhat minor story was pursued on the front pages with a passion that bordered on crankdom. And when two columnists dared to write pieces defending Augusta, they found their columns spiked by Raines. He was later forced to reinstate them. But fear and loathing of Raines grew in the newsroom; while his own favorites took more and more liberties with the truth.”

As I’ve suggested before, these were not liberties, at least in terms of what the boss wanted… they were simply following the directions set by the leftist Raines. Blair, truth be told, is merely a convenient escape from the truth of the matter… something to blame all of this on. Blair, who seemingly will take the spotlight any way he can get it, is willing to play the game served up for him by his liberal masters.

One wonders if the re-appointment of Joseph Lelyveld, who retired a few years ago to make way for Raines, will do anything to regain the image of the paper. Given the connection alluded to in my recent columns between the Times and the press in the rest of the country, these questions extend to the remainder of the press as well.

As Brent Bozell says:

“Now that Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd have resigned, Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. has a crucial decision to make. He can either continue to use the Times to promote an arrogant, left-wing advocacy agenda or he can return to the news. “The New York Times’ return to respectability is dependent upon whether it presents the news in an accurate, evenhanded manner. ‘All the news that’s fit to print’ is meaningless if the reporting is skewed to promote a liberal agenda.

Mr. Sulzberger has an opportunity to start afresh with new editors, and we hope he takes full advantage of it.”

I’ll be watching, but, frankly, I’m not overly hopeful, here.  Raines was part of the problem, granted… as too was his crony, Boyd. I can see, even, an argument suggesting that Lelyveld is a solution to the problem.

However, unlike the defenders of the Times, (and for that matter, the Times itself) let’s be honest, here.  Sulzberger himself is the biggest problem, and that situation doesn’t look to change very soon. Sulzberger has always held the conviction that journalism is about helping people and building what they consider a better society.  If you think this isn’t the prevailing nonsense in the news world today, ask anyone coming out of journalism schools why THEY’RE doing what
they’re doing, and they’ll tell you ‘to make a difference’, not to “report the news”. Simply and fairly reporting the news, and perhaps offering an even-handed comment on it, is too dull an assignment, for those on this ‘great mission’.  Once again, the Times shows up as the largest example of this kind of bias inducement. This is not something that’s just cropped up since Raines took over the ummm… errr…… reins. (Yeah, I know… sorry)

To give you an idea how prevailing this bias is, try this one: Ever notice how it used to be ‘newsman’, and now it’s “journalist”?  The Times has been at the lead of that ill-advised rush away from “newsman’.  Why is this important? Time to refer to my trusty 1956 edition of Barnhart’s dictionary…. 

“Newsman” is listed as : “A man who gathers, reports, or edits news”; Journalist is listed as someone who keeps a journal, whereas a journal is listed as “The writings of what someone sees or thinks.” A subtle change, but enough of one to allow for partisanship without the overt appearance of it. Is it any wonder why the country moved to the left as we moved from “Newsman” to “Journalist”? All part of the ‘greater mission’.

This move by Sulzberger to reinstate Lelyveld, then, seems to me designed to maintain status quo particularly as regards this “mission” which is exactly what the Times, and for that matter, this nation’s news gathering orgs do NOT need.  After all, Raines originally replaced Lelyveld for one reason only; Raines was more of an adherent to that “mission” than Lelyveld. Oddly enough, Raines got himself and his paper into trouble for just that reason, though the left wil claim
otherwise, of course.  Lelyveld is a player here again, only because Sulzberger needs a fallback position in the fight toward the satisfaction of that “mission”.

On the bright side, though, this can be considered a positive event, given that it has called attention to a left leaning press syndrome the left has always denied is there. At least now, it’s going to be far harder for the left to longer deny its existence.  That said, nothing, I fear will make such a position impossible for the left. No lie is ever too far fetched for them to latch onto.

As for the Times itself, it is less of a liability to our country and our culture than it was, at the least. How MUCH less, remains to be seen. Personally, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the changes that are really needed there.

–Rochester, NY—

I wrote a few weeks ago about how CNN had lied to us. Since that time, two more similar points have come to light.

Former ANBC newsgeek Peter Coluins is now telling us that Peter Jennings, the Anchor edited stories to put a better spin on the outlook of the Sandanistas.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200305\NAT20030501c.html

After the revelations of CNN lying to us about another group of socialists, Saddam and Company, this should come as no shock, even assuming you knew nothing about Daniel Ortega. Just one more example of how the leftist dominated press has been lying to us. But, of course, there’s more. MUCH more.

You will recall that mentioned prominently in the piece of last week, was the New York Times.  The case against ex-Times employee Jayson Blair is heating up at this point, and all the facts aren’t in… this is written based on the facts we know so far.  I advise you to read up on this subject… I won’t waste your bandwidth repeating it here, except in very brief: Blair has been found to have been writing about things that didn’t happen and other associated charges, all raising questions about the validity of his stories.

I’d been watching this business with Blair, for several weeks. I’ve always suspected that Blair wasn’t the only problem, and that his situation was revealing of a systemic issue within the paper, but also of the so-called “mainstream” newsgathering in this country.

Now, I said last week that this would be a column on the left playing the race card. I said that because the Blair case certainly looked like it was developing into that.  As the facts have developed since last week, however, it’s become more than that.

Was race an issue? A US news online poll certainly seems to suggest it was; around 75% answered that Blair got away with it because he was a rising-star minority. More than this, Andrew Sullivan has Times executive editor, Howell Raines, saying to his staff at an internal meeting, the other day:

“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts [Blair] appeared to be a promising young minority reporter,” Mr. Raines said. “I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities.” “Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?” he added, a moment later. “Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”

Raines, of course is being only partially truthful, here. Reports and internal Times documents have surfaced that suggest MANY different managers tried to have Blair removed from writing for the Times. Blair remained. Why?

Of COURSE race was part of the issue.  And this incident does seem to be directly in line with the fears expressed by those who object to ‘affirmative action’.  But race was only a part of the issue, and I expect this statement of Raines is a play of the most cynical kind.  Raines knows that most of his core is liberal. So, the admission, coated with “But Ma, I did it to help that poor black man” will, Raines thinks, go down much easier. Yet, this while this admission will strike sympathy in the breasts of many liberals, the fact is it makes a victim of Mr. Blair.

Says Brent Bozell:

“But it’s clear that Blair’s meteoric rise – a young man who didn’t even graduate from the University of Maryland, from humble internships to the national desk in four years – was not following the average career trajectory of an American reporter. Many journalists work their whole lives dreaming of someday joining the New York Times. It’s time to ask whether Blair would have ever been promoted into the position where he caused maximum damage if race wasn’t a factor in his career.”

Blair as usual got a pass on all the transgressions for one reason only; He was black and was thus immune to the rules. Black Columnist Thomas Sowell seems to agree:

“Having gotten away with so much, Blair knew that the rules and standards that applied to others would not be applied to him because he represented “diversity.” He just pushed it a little farther than it would go.”

This whole incident seems to me emblematic for what happens when liberals have their say in issues of racial ‘diversity’. That said, though, there’s a deeper and more urgent issue, here. I doubt we can hang the credibility of the Times, or the current lack thereof, on Howell Raines alone. Nor can race be the sole issue here as the management of the Times seems to imply in their dissembling.  Granted, that race and the headlong rush of the left for what is laughably called “diversity”, before it’s even properly defined, is a large bit of the puzzle.

However, race is part of this Blair business, only insofar as the liberal’s mantra crosses racial issues. In short, racial diversity as a goal is a mere excuse for what was really afoot; Liberal bias. Yes, mistakes will happen. This sort of complete collapse however requires a systemic pattern. It is a bias that’s been festering for years before John Corry exposed it in his book “My Times”.  To get some
measurement of this bias, let’s look at Raines.  Back in 94, puked up this hairball:

“Reagan couldn’t tie his shoelaces if his life depended on it.”

Oh, yeah. Really unbiased, this one. While the rest of the press had real news to deal with, the Times gleefully ignored the real world, and focused all of its energy and righteous indignation instead, on induced Raines screeds against Augusta National Golf club and it’s policy regards women players.  Remember, now, this is the same Raines who back on 1998, when he was the editorial page editor, wrote and
posted a column, going after the Boston Globe’s editors… ironicly, the Globe being a Times owned paper… for saving the ass of then Globe columnist Mike Barnicle. He said at the time:

“Public respect for newspapering is wounded when rules that would be
enforced with doctrinal ferocity among the mass of journalists are lightened for a star who has great value to the paper. If you believe, as I do, that if you have to choose between a worthy but erring colleague and the newspaper itself, you choose for the paper.”

Clearly, Raines in this case held something higher than the paper on this round : liberal politics. Under his liberal leaning “leadership” what is the staff, in turn doing? Exactly what’s apparently expected of them: Tilting to the left. Consider the case of Times columnist Maureen Dowd, where she misquotes President Bush:

Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. “Al Qaeda is on the run,” President Bush said last week. “That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated… They’re not a problem anymore.”

Now, here’s the entire quote, including the words Dowd removed, and the Times allowed her to remove:

” Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our
country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half
of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In
either case, they’re not a problem anymore.”

Notice the difference? In what Dowd posted, it’s clear she’d like us to think that the President is of the impression that al Qaeda isn’t a problem anymore.  Of course he didn’t say, or mean that, but the Times didn’t tell us that.  The thread in each of these is the same… a liberal bias, within the Times, that was fed from the top.

I’m not surprised that I’ve been unable to dig up much of Jayson Blair’s output to his regular column in the op-ed pages. But can it be that Raines turned a blind eye to his transgressions because they liked his political stand on things, as they have always seemed to like Doud’s political leanings?

Consider the overtly leftist stand of the paper as regards the war in Iraq.  We were told repeatedly how the war would be a quagmire, and that it would isolate us in the Arab world. To show how wrong that ‘news’ was, let’s check the op-ed pages in the Arab News:

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=26165

“There is much in US policy to condemn; there are many aspects of Western society that offend and where necessary, Arab governments condemn. But anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism for their own sake are crude, ignorant and destructive. They create hate. They must end. Otherwise there will be more barbarities.”

Hmmm.  Since the leftists running the Times proven so wrong, perhaps we’ll hear soon about how Blair wrote all those anti-war screeds, too, huh?

Look, let’s give them some credit, since it’s due: I applaud the public examinations the Times has engaged in thusfar.  However, they do not go far enough, and so far, they expend too much effort on protecting the guilty… protecting the leadership of the Times, and I’m not just talking about Blair.  Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger
argued that Blair was the only one to blame, here, of course.

“The person who did this is Jayson Blair. Let’s not begin to demonize our executives—either the desk editors, or the executive editor or, dare I say, the publisher.”

In other words, Raines is saying that finding out who did what and exposing those faults is “scapegoating’, at least when Times Managers are focused on.

Think about this. Let’s say that a major oil company is found to be lying to the public. Would the media, the Times particularly be all over it?  Why is the management of the Times exempt from level of scrutiny, this level of acid, about it’s own transgressions? The answer of course is that any snake is immune to it’s own venom.

Let’s see… ABC, CBS CNN, and now the Times have all been caught tilting stories to the left. And this is just what they’ve been publicly caught at. Lord knows what they’ve NOT been caught at. But the Smart Americans have known all along.

And Liberals simply can’t understand why Fox News is doing so well.
(Chuckle!)

It must really be a pain to be a liberal these days… Every single issue the left has tried to spring on the rest of us, is exposed as flat out lies, or at least, a tretching of what little substance they manage to find. Consider a just few examples from the last few weeks:

Originaly, the left started hollering about the looting going on in Iraq, and remained gleefully ignorant of the reports that suggested such looting was limited to government offices and places associated with Saddam’s regime. Apparently unable to gather any sympathy for their aguments about looters in Baghdad, (particularly after seeing little wrong about looters in LA) they have latched onto what they think is an easir argument. The left started screaming that our
forces, under the supposed misdirection of George W Bush, had failed to protect the Iraqi museums. Supposedly, tens of thousands of items were looted.

Only one problem with the story: It’s a flat-out lie spread by Democrats desperate to put a chink in the armor of President George W. Bush.

Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is investigating the looting and is stationed at the museum, reports that museum officials had given him a list of 29 artifacts that were definitely missing. But even of those, four of them – ivory objects from the eighth century BC – had been traced. “Twenty-five pieces is not the
same as 170,000,” said Colonel Bogdanos, who in civilian life is an assistant Manhattan district attorney. The most vauable artifact was a Bowl, says a Chicago Tribune article. The rest of what was suppsoedly looted, was found, right where it was suposed to be. And in case you’ve not heard, our forces also happened to have found a Iraqi gunner’s nest…. inside the museum.

Well, heck, they were only off by 169,975 objects out of a set of 170,000… Between this glaring screwup, and the little reminder last week by some of the right, that we couldn’t even get the left to admit there was soemthing wrong with looting, during the LA riots…that it was merely a sign of the frustration the looters had with their government… and weren’t the Iraqis entiutled to be frustrated with the socialists that had been running things in Iraq… Well… I’ll wililng to bet that we don’t hear much more about looting from the American left, for a while.

Do Democrats really think this nonsense is going to get them back into power?

* Running for President

Then there’s the laughter surrounding the leaders in the Democrat race for the office of President. Did you see the ‘great debate’ the other night? Well, most people didn’t, and they didn’t miss much, if facts were what you were after. It WAS good comedy, though. It was on at around 2am here in Rochester, and I’m unaware of anyone doing it live, but I did manage to grab it on tape. I have to say…it was a
real hoot.

For one thing, I hope I was not alone when I noticed an interesting point: While all of the candidates were quite loud in their attacks on President Bush with regards to the economy, the only solution they managed to offer was to eliminate the tax cuts, which are the ONLY thing now that will actually HELP the economy. Nobody offered any solution OTHER than increased taxes. Nobody made any mention of what THEIR economic plan would be, past that one point. No, not one. What inspirations these Democrats are!

Oh, I suppose it should be mentioned also, that they mentioned their manic devition to socialist healthcare, though of course they’d never call it that. All of the plans offered as regards healthcare are expensive to well past the point of insanity and impossible to judge based on the fantasy numbers provided. But they do offer the Democrats the one thing they crave most: Government Control. It’s the reason they can’t leave healthcare alone… they want more control over our
lives, and dependant on them.

Do Democrats really think this nonsense is going to get them back into power?

* Judical nominees.

We have seen two appointments now where the democrats have been very loud about the appointment being fillibustered. This is unusual in itself, but even more so because this is the first time such a fillibuster has taken place, for appeals court justice appointees, of all things. Both of the candidates being stalled would pass by a majority vote if allowed. And such a vote is all that the Constitution requires. However, the DNC is desperate to oppose the president, the
Congressional majority AADN the will of the people, to say nothing of the Constitution itself, for their own political gain.

The good news for America and bad news for the socialist Democrats, is that the Republcians have found a way around this blockage.The parliamentary committee will rule that such blocks do not fall within the scope of fillibuster allowances. There will, of course, be loud Socialist Democrat objection to such a ruling. However, that ruling can stand by a simple majority vote, which the supporters of Estrada and Owens have. Which would start the appointment process again.

Which means the nominees get their jobs, because there are enogh votes to do so.

The Democrats of course seening that the Republican action would be legal, constitutional and ethical, and would end their obstruction, is now saying that such a ruling would cause them to start blocking every legislative action in congress.

Yes, indeed, The Democrats, are showing themselves to be what they have always been… the party of obstruction. I ask again…

Do Democrats really think this nonsense is going to get them back into power?

*Iraq.

Democrats, seeing that all the dire predictions they made about the war in Iraq and seeing the election cycle coming, find themselves in a pickle. The ones not running for office are in mourning, and amusingly so. The ones who are running for office, are also running for the cover of what they think are the American people’s short memories. It’s usually called a flip-flop. It’s also called hypocrisy.

It’s something of a bad joke that the strongest showing was from Joe Lieberman, last year’s loser in the VP race. At the moment, he’s the front runner. Nobody else comes close.

Another flip-flop is yet another candidate for the Democrat nomination, Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. He’s been a busy little boy making lots of whose loud opposition to the Iraq action made lots of points with the wacko left… saying among other things that Iraq was “the wrong war at the wrong time” and publicly doubting whether the Iraqi people were better off with Saddam gone. Dean has, with the onset of reality, changed his tune. During the ‘big debate” … just one week after being attacked by campaign officials for Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, his chief rival, who called him as unfit to be commander in chief, Mr. Dean dropped his fierce antiwar rhetoric and said he was “delighted to see Saddam Hussein gone.”

Kerry himself, of course is no exception. Kerry, you may recall, voted for the congressional war resolution but continually made leftist political hay by criticizing Mr. Bush for not gathering more international support. Once realiy set it, Kerry shifted his position. Otherwise known as a flip-flop. Kerry needed a toughened image on national security. So, he had his chief spokesman, Chris Lehane,
attack Mr. Dean for suggesting that the United States would not always be the strongest military power in the world. And of course Kerry is having his middle name canged to “Served in Vietnam.”

Then there’s Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who had in the past denounced Mr. Bush for failing “miserably” to find a diplomatic solution to avoid a war with Iraq, gives the president “great credit” for his leadership in winning the war. Well, turns out all the dire predictions didn’t come true, and lookie, lookie… Daschle, who faces re-election next year in a state where Mr. Bush is popular, calls the war necessary and justified…. basicly abandoning
his antiwar rhetoric. Says Daschle:

“I don’t think there’s any more justification required than what we’ve
already seen in terms of the purpose of the military operations.
Regime change was a legitimate goal, was accomplished, and I think
that’s laudable in and of its own right.”

Says RNC strategist Ed Gillespie”

“The dilemma they have is that there is an energetic and large
element in the Democratic Party that remains against the war. But the
vast majority of voters, including many Democrats, support and
appreciate the skill with which it was executed and the firmness of
the president in deciding what to do. Bush had the foresight to do
what is necessary in the war with Iraq, and now you have those who
want to challenge him belatedly and begrudgingly follow him to that
same conclusion,”

Jim Dyke, who is a spokesperson for the RNC agrees:

“Some of these guys are beginning to contradict their contradictions.
At some point, it becomes extremely difficult to discern exactly what
they stand for,” said Jim Dyke, chief spokesman for the Republican
National Committee.

* Bush is a President whom the military respects.

We’re seeing a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the left over President Bush’s trip out to the carrier Lincoln. It interests me that so many are having such problems with the concept of the president personally thanking his troups for a job well done. Robert “KKK” Byrd is the loudest, and we’ll deal with that, but he’s not alone in his idiocy. All the excuses to attack the President came out at once.

They tried, for example to tell us that the ship was turning circles waiting for the President, and that the Sailors were delayed in getting home by this action of the President. Of course, the truth came out… the ship was ahead of scedule and COULDN’T dock until the scheduled time because of union workers at the dock, and other arrangements. They tried cost factors as a complaint. So then someone
reminded them that that the jet and the chopper others would have taken, use the same fuel, and have fairly well the same costs per mile.

All the complaints of the Democrats on this did, was to show how irrelevant, petty, and opportunistic the Democrats really are.

The capper, though, was when they started making noise about using the Military for political purposes, at which point someone came up with this picture of Bubba on the TeddyR, on March the 12th, 1993. just before sending them to Bosnia. There have been other pictures and trips during the Clinton administration, too… the usually timid Tim Russert came up with one this morning, from about a year after this photo was taken. The resuilting contrast between the silence from the left, and the laughter of the rest of us on this double standard, is palpable. And isn’t it odd, how CNN,, CBS and ABC and most of the print media have said nothing about this?

And I wonder why we heard no complaints from Grand Wizard Byrd about the several Military photo-ops Bubba put together… to say nothing of the remainder of the list of idiots complaining about President Bush. For that matter, where are the usual suspects on Ueenet as regards this double standard?

How much did puting a 77 year old Democrat into pace as a payoff cost America? And of course, let’s remember the trip into space by John Glenn, which was clearly a payoff for defending Bubba from his crimes. I don’t recall any questions about what THAT cost, do you?

How many of these things need to be pointed up before liberals understand that we’ve caught on to all the doubletalk and just plain BS they’ve been feeding us? Do Democrats really think continuing this nonsense is going to get them back into power?

The real bottom line though is that the Democrats are ticked off for one reason, and one reason only; THey’re out of power, and aree desperate to get back INTO power. They’re ticked because they see clearly that the American people liked the idea of Bush’s landing there, and personally thanking the troops. In short, what Bush did, *worked*, and they’re trying to find some way to negate the fact that
it DID work…. and didn’t work for Bubba…. as it didn’t work for Mike Dukakas. The reason is simple; nobody accpted that the interest and trust of Bubbam dbnd Dikakas, in things military was genuine… everyone thought… no… everyone, including the far left rank and file… KNEW they were liars on the subject.

Not so with Mr. Bush. His trust of the military and they of him, is easily seen, and hard to argue with, and harder to campaign against. Anyone who saw both the Visit by Presidents Bush and Bubba, can see that there is a warmth and comradery between the Military and President Bush that simply wasn’t there with bubba…. which, given his history, who can blame them? And the poeple trust the opinion of
the Military, given that they’re the ones charged with defending us. They know what will best accomplish that. Their relative opinions of each is well known… which of course is why the Democrats tried to negate the votes of those in the Military in the 2000 election.

So, thus does the Democrat’s worst nightmare come true. Not only have the American seen the Democrats exposed as the liars, cheats and outright frauds that they are, they’ve reached a point where the majority won’t put up with it any longer. As the next election will clearly demonstrate.

And lest you think I’m stretching the matter; consider that internal memos floating around inside the DNC within the last month are suggsting the Democrats are planning on losing at least 4 seats in the Senate, and another 3 in the House. Which also suggests they know they haven’t a prayer for the White House.

And all of this without even touching the issue of Democrats playing the race card… which is interesting in itself. Barring major events, we’ll discuss that next time.

There are two levels of hate being sent from the left, these days at Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. They are both fairly easy to identify, and understand. These two levels and a mixture of them, are being send by two groups: The leftist followers, and the leftist leaders.

The first grouping, is by far the less sinister, but still problematic: The followers. There is an unspoken truth, that those who bring uncomfortable truths into our lives are often regarded with some degree of hate, by those unwilling to face those realities. So it is with Mister Blair, and with Mr. Bush, in these days of post-war Iraq.

They have reminded us that the price of peace, is having to defeat evil, by whatever means, including the force of arms, occasionally. The idea of the ability to live under peace, and all the benefits thereof, for extended periods is a recent luxury in the history of the world, a luxury which was brought on, not by simply being “peaceful” but by such as were willing to *fight* to defeat evil, thus bringing
about such extended peace.

There are some who are uncomfortable with that great truth and who have deluded themselves into the misbegotten idea that all one needs to have peace is to be ‘peaceful’… forgetting that we’re only half of the equation.. and that all a war needs is one antagonist. From these peace loving, supposedly open minded people, we see a lot of unreasoning vitriol… downright hate… being directed at those doing the correcting.

There is much in the leftist agenda, that is childlike… meaning both the good and the bad implications of this label…. Alas, that the good sides of that childlike aspect get lost in the reality! In this instance as in most others, the deluded leftists respond like any child who has been corrected sternly by reality… with an unreasoning “IdonWANNA…”. And, to extend the metaphor, the child will come up
with ANY argument possible just to hold up his end against the adult’s logic, particularly if the child doesn’t understand the parent’s logic in the least. Indeed, they tend not to understand even their own limited logic, (and therefore offer lame arguments for it, and then only when pressed) but rather tend to follow blindly whomever is speaking the loudest from their camp, who end up usually being from the second grouping.

This second grouping, and by far, the more sinister of the kinds of hate flowing toward Mr’s Bush and Blair, are the people who are about supporting the evil which we just fought. I’ve pointed out repeatedly, that what we’re up against is simply another branch of socialism. I consider it no shock, therefore, that there would be leftists here at home who would not want to see the downfall of the leader of the
socialist Baath party and his minions.

Now that such a corrupt leadership is gone, and the socialists here in the west are feeling rather naked, they tend to respond like any cornered animal would… napping and snarling, this is the most hate filled and vitriolic leftist. This feeling of embarrassment is further amplified as Castro executes some more dissidents, and as the hell that the socialists have made of North Korea comes to light…(and as
Mr Bush calls that errant dog to heel) …and as all the other disasters predicted by the left fail to materialize. The reaction of these hard-line socialists to this is understandable, but none the less is ironic; since this most hateful type most often constitutes what passes as the collective leadership of the “peace” movement.
(Note: “Collective” here, is not an idle choice of words).

It is this second group that the first grouping follows, often quite blindly. Sad, because there is much to be said for the child-like innocence that the first group offers… Innocence that the second group exploits for their own purposes. Consider that “Socialist World Workers Party, World Wide A.N.S.W.E.R., and so on, the groups that are behind so many of the anti-war protests of today, are being funded directly by places like North Korea, and you begin to see the depth of that exploitation.

The radio and TV talk shows, (at least the ones that still cater to leftists) and Usenet are both and each a microcosm of both of these kinds such hatreds; filled with such levels of leftist vitriol that it’s hard not be imagine a rabid dog in it’s death throes, snapping at anything and everything it can, even imagined targets, and hoping that few will be infected by him before he’s put out of our collective misery, so that the world’s occupants can continue to evolve.

But underneath all the vitriol being directed at Mr Bush and his supporters…which means 75% of Americans… one senses the uneasiness of both of our groups. There is a division in the left today, as the second grouping begins to come to grips with how it has been manipulated for decades by the first…. since the Vietnam era, and
before.

Consider a few examples of the more obvious splits:

*Degenova at Columbia and many others like him, forsaking the “Anti-War” moniker in favor of calling for open warfare, and the defeat of America. Turns out they’re pro-war after all. It’s, just that they’re on the other side, and seemingly always have been.

*NOW expressing outrage that Lacy Peterson’s Killer should be charged with a double murder because the second involves an unborn boy named “Conner”. After decades of supposedly fighting to protect women, this seems to fly in the face of their stated purpose, to guard their real purpose… promotion of abortion. Even within their own ranks, they’re split on handling that one…. the far leftists in NOW leadership are
clearly getting a message from the rank and file.

* Robbins, Sarandon, Mike Farrel, the Ditsy Chumps, to name but a few leftists collectively scream (falsely) about how their ‘free speech rights’ were violated, and that the right is out of line for questioning the patriotism and morality of such people. Well hold on, here. Aren’t these the same leftists who just went after Rick Santorum, and Trent Lott before him, for using THEIR free speech rights, in the process questioning their patriotism and their morality? And this double standard is nothing new…  For a number of years, now, the left’s attacks on the right have been categorical and personal. Conservatives have been labeled as reactionary, and liberals have been labeled as progressive. In this, the left has managed to covey the notion that conservatives, by the nature of their POV are moral inferiors. Ummmm this isn’t attacking our patriotism and morality? And isn’t this the same left who a short time ago was even questioning the very concepts of morality, and of patriotism?

The true purposes of the leftist leadership is being revealed in each of these cases…and the followers, if they are not recoiling in horror, are quietly questioning if *this* was what they really wanted. And given the polling numbers showing wild support for both our action in Iraq and for the President, and his policies, it would seem that a goodly chunk of them are being less than fully quiet in their questioning, and in their conclusions.

It’s to the point now, where America is united as it has not been since Reagan… indeed since FDR, truth be told. The vast majority of Americans, for the first time in over a decade, are quite sure that their country and the leadership thereof is doing the right thing as regards it’s own role in the world. As the successes of this path of action and thereby the support for it, continue to pile up, and the
evidence against the socialist mantra continues to accumulate, the left, is now finding itself increasingly irrelevant. That, in turn, drives those remaining in the camp of the left, to even more vitriol, more over-the-top attacks, more grandstand ploys, and more desperate (and easier to defeat) arguments. In short.. deeper into hate. And that hate, as hate always does, tends to feed on itself.

Both Mr Bush and Mr Blair have some tough times ahead as a result of all of this, I think. Their task: Keeping the left isolated and irrelevant; To keep the terminally hateful left from infecting the rest of us. Hate, after all, has a way of spreading as the history of every socialist country in history attests… Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Castro’s Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq. But both the President and the Prime Minister have shown themselves to be a rarity in these times…. true leaders, and up to the tasks before them.

To prove that point… and to defeat yet another liberal argument that we’ve forgotten the war on terrorism….one needs only look at reports just out today, that as a result of their actions, terrorism, as measured by the number of terrorist attacks, is down by 44% which puts it at it’s lowest since we started measuring such attacks back in 1969.

And that’s as hopeful a sign as the western world has had in many years!

But it will doubtless cause even more hate from the left. Ya know, after a while, you have to ask, just what it is the left wants? Are these results not desireable to them?

We are so often told by the news media and the left (Often a redundancy) that there is no left leaning bias within our fifth estate.  And certainly, they are honest, and do not spread mistruths for some advantage.  It’s gotten to the point where it’s become a large joke.

Well, the usual left-leaning suspects in the news world… CNN, the New York Times, and a few others, have all within the last few weeks, admitted to years of lying to us. Not just once… they admit readily they lied for decades, about conditions in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

Yep. You may not have heard this one. You can understand why they’d be reluctant to tell us…  Indeed the usual leftists have been verrrrry quiet about this one. But apparently CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan felt the need to unburden his soul, and has reported in an editorial in the TIMES that under his direction CNN purposely failed to report Iraqi atrocities. While Jordan claims he was protecting his staff, a lot of people, journalists particularly, have questions and concerns that CNN was trading their lies for access. Ok, either way that swings, there’s a number of major concerns.

Let’s ignore for just a second, the questions of Jordan’s motivation (and there are several) to get this point out; the biggest role these news orgs have is being a watchdog, supposedly. We keep getting told this when they’re trying to attack… errr.. report on someone who isn’t leftist/socialist.  Assuming they are being true to their charter, the only action journalists can take against oppression, injustice and hate is by exposing it thereby forcing a reaction from the rest of us.

In short, their job is to REPORT.  CNN didn’t.

If nothing else, CNN should have put up a disclaimer to tell viewers that the Iraqi government was controlling the actions of reporters, and thereby controlling the content of their reports to us. No, we were expected to take what they fed us as hard news…. that we were getting the real picture of what was what in Iraq. In short, CNN lied.

CNN, being the only really world news body, had a monopoly on the picture of Iraq being fed the world. And the world got ONLY what Saddam wanted us to see, without so much as a whimper of protest from a CNN that, were they being stonewalled in a non-socialist country, would have been raising world-wide hell.

As to what impact all this has had, nobody can really be sure.  One can only, in this situation, properly gauge all the implications by saying “what if”…

What impact on the U.N. debate of last winter might there have been, had CNN actually maintained that much touted watchdog role?  Can you imagine the reaction, both here and abroad, had CNN actually reported then, as they did after the fact, in Eason’s words, that several Iraqi officials had told CNN that “Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed”? Imagine the reaction of the much misunderstood Arab Street, had the news come out that Saddam’s son had planned to kill the King Of Jordan, as CNN now admits… Imagine the reaction of the American public, for that matter. Do you think the leftist arguments against our removing Saddam would have gained even as much traction as they managed to? And finally consider the difference in the UN debates on the issue.

In their failure to report the gross human-rights violations by Saddam, and all the other damning information that should have been reported, CNN has systematically ignored that watchdog role. One wonders what would cause them to so dramatically shift from the traditional watchdog policy to looking remarkably like Bill Clinton’s
“don’t ask, don’t tell”.

One also wonders if they were selling their silence for access, and what possible reason there could be for that; what purpose their silence could possibly have served. Certainly, it wasn’t helpful in getting the truth out to the people. The price for their controlled access was that they became a part of the Human-rights violation conspiracy that was Saddam’s government. Is this the same CNN that fought so hard against government officials they saw as less than desirable on this side of the ocean? Something simply doesn’t add up here. Perhaps a look at their other actions will give us a clue as to what was what.

In looking around the landscape on this topic, some things do leap right out.  Let’s remember, this is the same news org that paid 30,000 dollars US for video tapes… videotapes that depict al-Qaida poison gas experiments, terror training and bomb-making, and then lied about that, blaiming a ‘miscommunication’ for the discrepancy. The Tapes, initially, were a feather in the cap for CNN, who made several nights
of programming out of them. Fox news never covered those tapes. Their news exec, Kevin MacGee, explained it this way: “we don’t see much newsworthy in it,” said Kevin Magee, Fox’s vice president of programming. “You’ve got to be careful when you start paying for things”

CNN at that time, refused to identify its source for the tapes but to this day insists its money did not go to Osama bin Laden or his terrorist organization.  Fox’s Magee says, however… “We are at war. This is the enemy. Where did the money go? I’m not sure `trust us’ is good enough.”

No kidding, Kevin, particularly in light of Eason’s overlate admissions.

I’ve mentioned the Times and CNN, in particular because both these orgs were rather outspoken in their opposition to out invasion of Iraq.  One wonders, though, just why… why they were so adamant about our not deposing Saddam., given the horrible facts they now admit to us that they did know, and what they’re not admitting to us, like where those tapes came from.  Gee… do you suppose…. could it be that Saddam was a fellow leftist….. being a founding member of the Socialist Baath party? Was this opposition just one more lie to be told to maintain their position in Iraq?

And, perhaps an even more frightening question: What else has CNN not told us about it’s leftist/socialist friends around the world? Like the aforementioned Bill Clinton, as an example.

Even assuming their motivations were not, as I suspect they were, Geo-political… the only option left here is that CNN was running a straight propaganda service for Saddam and his merry band of thugs. This is balanced news?

CNN has an undeniable effect on the other news orgs around the world. How much did their not reporting such matters, influence the other news orgs into thinking nothing was wrong?  Or, perhaps more seriously; how many others were following where CNN led, and were as a result unwittingly lying to us, and to what effect?