Is It Liberal, Or Merely Anti-western?

Paul Berman in today’s New York Times admits he’s under-estimated Radical Islam… which of course is as we’ve pointed out here before, not quite the case.

…each new calamity for Iraq has, like manure, lent new fertility to the various extremist organizations. The entire sequence of events may suggest that America is uniquely destined to do the wrong thing. All too likely! But it may also suggest that America is not the fulcrum of the universe, and extremist ideologies have prospered because of their own ability to adapt and survive – their strength, in a word.

I notice a little gloomily that I may have underestimated the extremist ideologies in still another respect. Five years ago, anyone who took an interest in Middle Eastern affairs would easily have recalled that, over the course of a century, the intellectuals of the region have gone through any number of phases – liberal, Marxist, secularist, pious, traditionalist, nationalist, anti-imperialist and so forth, just like intellectuals everywhere else in the world.

Western intellectuals without any sort of Middle Eastern background would naturally have manifested an ardent solidarity with their Middle Eastern and Muslim counterparts who stand in the liberal vein – the Muslim free spirits of our own time, who argue in favor of human rights, rational thought (as opposed to dogma), tolerance and an open society.

But that was then. In today’s Middle East, the various radical Islamists, basking in their success, paint their liberal rivals and opponents as traitors to Muslim civilization, stooges of crusader or Zionist aggression. And, weirdly enough, all too many intellectuals in the Western countries have lately assented to those preposterous accusations, in a sanitized version suitable for Western consumption.

It interests me that this admission comes so late… for what this is really is an admission that intellectualism, per se’, is not going to overcome radical Islam, and in fact has willingly aided it’s progress against the west.

The reason for this is rather simple, in it’s structure, and breathtaking in it’s implication: In their efforts to tilt left, the leftists who are pleased to call themselves “Intellectuals”, have misidentified Radicalized Islam as being liberal in the western sense, when it was in fact merely anti-western, Including it’s intellectuals.

While it certainly shares the hate of the lefist intelectual for western values, particularly those as expressed by western conservatives… Radical Islam not liberal at all, in the sense the intellectuals think of it, merely anti-Western… including anti western intellectualism. The only thing, in fact, that they share is a hatred for traditional western values. Now they suddenly find that the groups they’;ve alligned themslves with so freely, are about killing THEM off as well, the American left is having second thoughts.

And that, he cannot bring himself to deal with. So, Berman also misidentifies the change of his original perception as ‘adaptability’, when in fact the only thing that’s changed is the American Liberal realizing that his wet dreams of solidarity with the Islamist have crashed against the rocks of reality.

This is not, as Berman is pleased to suggest, …”one more surprising turn of events, on top of all the other dreadful and gut-wrenching surprises”, but merely one more case that the western conservatives… particularly cultural conservatives, have been warning the left of all along.

If there’s anything that is surprising about this, it’s that the left still can’t bring themselves to admit it. If there’s one thing that is under-estimated, it’s the abject, willful idiocy of the American left.

BBCT: Memeorandum

Commentary worth noting at American Power Blog

Robert Pear in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON – New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

So what!

One, Peak finds no cause for the life expectancy difference.  Oh he makes lots of suggestions,but presents no conclusions.

Two, there is no reason to believe that different demographic groups would have the same life expectancy.  Pick any two demeographic groups.  Pick any comman metric.  There is scant reason to believe the metric will, or shold be, equal.

If life expectancy disparity is so freaking bad, why no mention of the seven year life expectancy disparity between males and females?

Read this story, and know what you’re reading is about bravery that cannot be ignored. Amazing, what these people do for each other.

More amazing that they do it for you and I.

Project Hero, is a worthy attempt on McQ’s part to remind us that we have heroes among us. Further, that these need to be honored as such. We at BitsBlog are proud to lend our voice to such a project.

“People will know you by the company you keep,” 

Kyle-Anne Shiver’s grandmother, American Thinker. 

James Carville, as attributed by  Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times:

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,”

Matthew Yglesias, Atlantic:

Did James Carville really compare Bill Richardson to Judas? Why, yes, it seems that he did! Maybe the Clinton camp’s inner circle has just totally lost touch with reality and they really think that sort of thing is appropriate. The mindset seems a little bizarre, though. When Richardson accepted the appointment as U.N. Ambassador from Bill Clinton was he supposed to take it for granted that that constituted an implicit promise to endorse Clinton’s wife’s presidential campaign years in the future? That he’d signed-on for lifetime service to the House of Clinton?

Is Yglesias just now becoming aware of Carvile’s nature?   Carville in reference to Paula Jones, via CNN: 

“If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,”

More Carville quotes.

If Bill Richardson is Judas, which Clinton, B.J. or Mrs,, is the Ragin Cajun analogizing to Jesus?   Evidently, the white trash from Arkansas are not content to think of themselves as mere royalty.  Do one or both Clintons think of themselves as god?   No wonder they think they are entitled to office.

I call upon Mrs. Clinton to repudiate Carville and then to fire him   At least the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a Christian.   What religion are the Clintons?

Well if you look at what Dave In Texas, Ace of Spades Hq, is reporting, both the Obama and Clinton camps are acting consistent with the belief that they are:

Scandal!!

The Obama campaign can’t shut up about it.

The Clinton campaign, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, can’t peep about it.

Mrs. Clinton can ill afford to draw attention to her habit of stealing personal records and BO needs to divert attention away from Jeriamiah Wright.

Steven Taylor this morning on what he calls the Perils of the IPhone:

“It’s turned me from a really annoying know-it-all into an incredibly annoying know-it-all, with the Internet to back me up,” said Sadum, a technology writer in Denver. “It’s not a social advantage.”

Sort of blogging as performance art, I guess.

Well, I’d suggest we call it the Internet effect. The real core isn’t the iPhone, per se, but rather the effect of having the world’s storehouse of knowledge on your desk or in your hip pocket.

There’s been a lot written, recently about how the political landscape has changed, and how much more polarized we’ve become. I submit to you that the internet, cable, and 24 hour news cycles have more to do with this polarization, than anything. We’re always connected. In the last 20 years, I’ve personally become an information junkie. I’m most certain I’m not alone; It seems to be a requirement for being a blogger, anymore.

When we were not being bombarded by so much information all the time, it was far easier to fall back into our own little cocoons, undisturbed in the understanding that our view of the world around us was the accurate one. Now, not so much; It’s takes a real effort to isolate ourselves from the info streams, and therefore support our illusions on what’s going on in the world. When people find that impossible, they get frantic. Facts intrude on their fantasies, and they get angry, and upset.

I submit that it is this that is causing the extremes of political polarization we’re seeing today.  I personally believe that this effect can do nothing but move us as a country farther away from the socialist push of the last 60 years. When given the information… the truth about the effects of socialism, people run away from it at top speed. Therefore the information age… of which we are on the leading edge right now, can only hasten our move away from the socialist left.

I cannot view that as anything but a good thing, though there will be a period of adjustment.

— and the whore you rode in on, WHEC-TV:

I-Team 10 has learned a Rochester woman plans to sue Monroe County after last month’s chain-reaction pile-up on Interstate 390.

The woman suffered a broken hip, fractured knee and other injuries after the car she was riding in was hit by several other cars. Thirty-six cars were involved in the crash.

Pure greed

Shall we stake out the 490 Motel? WH EC-TV:

Governor Paterson is expected to make his first visit to Rochester tomorrow for a 1 p.m. event at City Hall with Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi.

Mrs. Pelosi’s Fan Club? Gather:

If Senator John McCain is sworn in as President next year he owes it to the efforts of democrat in name only Speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi. She is the kind of politician I wish we democrats had on our side in the struggle to return the Republic to the rule of law, restore civil liberty and safeguard freedom of speech.

If we draw analogy to star wars, she not vice president Cheney is the dark sith lord manipulating the two sides toward war and destruction, But like young children in generic horror movies who attempt to warn the adults the nice lady next door is a monster, no one listens.

Mrs Pelosi wants genocide, Yid with a Lid:

Pandering to the George Soros, Daily Kos wing of the Democratic Party, yesterday Senator Clinton joined Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi in saying that she would start to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately NO MATTER WHAT THE FACTS ON THE GROUND OR WHAT THE MILITARY RECOMMENDS:

‘Rats week on security, Wall Street Journal

One out of five is not a majority. Democrats should keep that simple fact of political life in mind as they pursue the White House.

For a party whose presidential candidates pledge they’ll remove U.S. troops from Iraq immediately upon taking office — without regard to conditions on the ground or the consequences to America’s security — a late February Gallup Poll was bad news. The Obama/Clinton vow to pull out of Iraq immediately appears to be the position of less than one-fifth of the voters.

Midwest Flooding, AP:

FENTON, Mo. – Flooding from rainstorms blamed for at least 16 deaths threatened to worsen Friday, with many Midwestern rivers over their banks for more than a day already and the water level climbing.

The high cost of high fuel prices, WHEC-TV:

Whether you are preparing for Easter dinner at home or plan on eating out, grocery stores and restaurants are raising their prices. It’s not only because of the high cost of gasoline, but also diesel fuel. News 10NBC spoke with a local restaurant about how it’s trying to keep the cost down.

Food for thought for John “Dingbat” Dingell.

• Billy, I have to tell you, I’m not convinced we were weakened to the point of not being able to deal with the Soviets out of hand. I think it far more likely we hadn’t the will, because after so long of fighting the Nazis, the Communists seemed less of a problem. I think the issue was that misjudgment. A lot of that misjudgment, frankly came from FDR in my view, who made the country safe for socialism by introducing it here. I’m also less than convinced an Sov-Nazi alliance was out of the question, had we not beaten Hitler.Both he and Stalin each had a habit of making alliances as they saw advantage. Face it, man.. in the end their goals were similar, if not identical. Facism is leftism, as Goldberg notes, after all.  Didn’t mean they’d not be coming to blows eventually…And I agree they would eventually. Their egos were too large to have it come down any other way.In the end, though Patton had it best; We’re going to end up fighting a war with the Russians anyway, why not do it now, when you’ve got an army here to fight it WITH? I agree that it took the Chiefs two years to see things Patton’s way is the real tragic part of that whole story… The lives that would have been saved both then and since… And I mean that this way; Doing as Patton suggested then, would have proven once and for all the concept that dealing with evil where it’s found, saves lives in the end.

  In line with that, I find Ian’s line drawing interesting, if only for the point that what is considered “impossible’ often is not. And here’s the thing; As Ian says, you’re arguing the idea, they’re arguing practical.  It’s my observation of history that only when people of courage are leading, do those two… ideal and practical stop being incompatible. I think there to be a practical application for that line of thought in the Middle East today, but another day for expanding on that.

• Steven Taylor pretty adds some evidence to the passport thing I posted about earlier, and adds a lot of evidence that came up today, all of which falls directly into line with my original assessment. Yet another SITYS moment.

Enough. More tommrow.

This one sure didn’t take long, Jacob Gershman, Sun, New York: 

Concern is growing in Albany over the prospect that, even as Governor Paterson races to get on top of the budget crisis, the disclosures of his private sexual affairs have damaged – perhaps irreparably – his capacity to execute the state’s highest office.

Dogged by suspicions that his campaign expenditures and his extramarital relationships were improperly entangled, Mr. Paterson heads into his second week on the job no longer the fresh face who symbolized a return to civility, but a weakened politician.

Maybe Eliot Spitzer was looking for a Lieutenant Governor who would not question Spitzer’s ethics?

It is a well establshed that Mrs. Clinton feels entitled to simply take what she wants.   We are faced with these facts.

One, Mrs. Clinton wanted the information from Bacack Obama’s passport records.  Joe Conason, Slate:

Note, prompted acid comment in Europe about the Illinois senator’s failure to visit the continent since assuming the committee post, and even speculation that he had never traveled there except for a short stopover in London

Two, persons took that information.

(CNN) — On three occasions since January, Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file was looked at by three different contract workers, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack 

The contractors accessed information in the file in an unauthorized way, he said.

Two contractors were fired and one was disciplined by the contractor’s company, McCormack said.

Who would want such information.  There simply isn’t much information in a person’s passport files, NRO:

The only information on the passport that wouldn’t be in the public domain would be his Social Security number.

The only other information that would be in there would be his travel history, which wouldn’t be useful unless…

Three, this information was apparently used by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.   Clinton campaign National Security Director Lee Feinstein, as attributed by Lynn Sweet, Sun-Times, Chicago.

As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it’s legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?

The record is clear, Mrs Clinton first coveted, got and then used information from Obama private files.   Come clean Mrs. Clinton. 

Hat tiip and more: Jim Geraghty, NRO, here and here.

Addendum:

According to, Jeralyn, Talk Left, the passport files do not contain a list of countries visited.  Assuming Jeralyn’s list to be comprehensive means that the theft I noted in two above could not have been a vehicle for for Mrs. Clintoin’s greed.   However Mrs Clinton did covert information of where Obama travveled, she got it and used it.   It remains unclear from where and how Mrs. Clinton obtained her information.

Ok the video is incendiary.   However it does contain an important snippet.   

More trash talk from Michelle Obama, video:

[wp_youtube]72B3tUAqpo4[/wp_youtube]

MO: “As a black man, Barack can get shot going to the gas station.”

Points:

One, anybody can get shot gong to the gas station, and lately shocked as well.   You don’t have to be black to get shot.   In the case of the DC snippers, they shot whites.

Two, crime varies by neighborhood.   I very much doubt the Obamas live in crime infested neighborhood.   I doubt anybody has been shot in Obama’s neighbored at the gas station.

Three, in this country, crime tends to be intra racial.   That is, if Obama were to shot going to the gas station, likely it would be by a black man.

Four, a lot (most?) of black on black violence tends to drug related, turf wars.   Now, I am near certain MO is not suggesting BO is dealing street drugs.

Conclusion, there is scant evidence to suggest that BO assumes any elevated risk by just going to the gas station, aside from the hideous risk of paying too much at the pump.  Of course. like all candidates, BO does assume a risk just running for president.

Last, murder tends be intra-family.   Michelle Obama is statistically more apt to get murdered by her husband, than any particular random stranger.

Interesting note from World News Daily, yesterday afternoon.

JERUSALEM – (WND)- Sen. Barack Obama’s Chicago church reprinted a manifesto by Hamas that defended terrorism as legitimate resistance, refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist and compared the terror group’s official charter – which calls for the murder of Jews – to America’s Declaration of Independence.

The Hamas piece was published on the “Pastor’s Page” of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.

So, surprised?  No, me, neither.

From the Obama camp, Silence.

Must be a really slow news day.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The State Department says it is trying to determine whether three contract workers had a political motive for looking at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s passport file.

Two of the employees were fired for the security breach and the third was disciplined but is still working, the department said Thursday night. It would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined or the names of the two companies for which they worked. The department’s inspector general is investigating.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that for now it appears that nothing other than “imprudent curiosity” was involved in three separate breaches of the Illinois senator’s personal information, “but we are taking steps to reassure ourselves that that is, in fact, the case.”

It is not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age and place of birth that is required when a person fills out a passport application.

And so, time to make an entire planet out of an anthill. Chris Lawrence at OTB:

More paranoic quarters of the blogosphere have leapt to the conclusion that the lookups represent Republican dirty tricks.

However, given both that the GOP presumably has people in the bureaucracy with access to the records who aren’t low-level contractors doing data-entry work, the timing of the incidents following news events (rather than months or years ago, when any opposition researcher worth his or her salt would be scouting potential targets like Obama), and the fact that any professional dirt-digger would know that searches like these in government databases raise red flags automatically, I strongly suspect that Sean McCormack is right to attribute these actions to “imprudent curiosity” or, as Mark Kleiman suggests, lame independent efforts to find some dirty laundry that could be shopped to opposition candidates or the media.

Well, of course those two are going to be leading the charge of the lightly brained…. Cole, particularly.  There’s nothing to this that isn’t explain by youth, and the rock-star status that Obama has otherwise embraced.

Look, let’s ignore that and forget that we’re talking about Obama, and forget political implications for a moment. Let’s postulate we’re talking about a movie star of some sort… a rather popular one. What life-deprived 20 something, working in such an environment, wouldn’t get a kick out of handling such a document? That’s what’s going on here… a brush with stardom.  I suspect that’s why State never bothered informing Obama, who has much larger considerations, just now… and certainly, they wanted to avoid it becoming a political issue.

What evidence do we have that Obama was not a political target? Well, there’s the Washington Times’ Bill Gertz, for one.

Two State Department employees were fired recently and a third disciplined for improperly accessing electronic personal data on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Bush administration officials said today.

The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department’s consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, and read Mr. Obama’s passport application and other records, in violation of department privacy rules, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Note the phrase “And other records”. Translation; Other people’s records were also involved. So, Obama was not a specific target of anything. Meanwhile, Gertz reminds us:

A similar data breach took place in 1992 when State Department officials looked up data on presidential candidate Bill Clinton, in an attempt to find out information from the late 1960s, amid unfounded political campaign rumors that Mr. Clinton had sought to renounce his citizenship to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

That incident triggered a three-year investigation by a special prosecutor, who found that no laws were violated but officials exercised poor judgment. The 1992 search of Mr. Clinton’s passport records was part of an effort to speed up Freedom of Information Act requests.

Yeah, well, forgive me that I don’t get overly upset by all this, like Obama does

The Obama campaign denounced the accessing as “an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years.”
Spokesman Bill Burton said “our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”

This response is whacked, and well out of proportion, and just the kind of response you’d expect from a desperate paranoid.

Now, if Obama wanted to complain that his private data was in the hands of the government and in a position for such a breach, he might actually have something.  But of course that would be arguing against the all powerful government that Obama campaigns for. It’s all well and good for any Americans having a passport having their data combed. Put a name and a face on it, though, and Obama;s got a problem.  But he can’t blame it on that, because that would diminish governmental power. It’s much easier and profitable for him to label this a political attack from the Bush administration.

What a crock.

From the Salem Statesman Journal:

Jacob DeShazer of Salem took part in World War II’s legendary Doolittle Raid, endured more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war and later teamed up with his wife, Florence, to serve as a Methodist missionary in Japan for nearly 30 years.

DeShazer, 95, died Saturday night at the Lancaster Village assisted-living facility, said Ruth Kutrakun, the youngest of the couple’s five children.

“He passed away peacefully in his sleep at home,” she said.

Kutrakun characterized her father as a gentle and humble man with a lively sense of humor. His life was centered around faith, family and country, she said.

That leaves just 11 from that raid who are still alive, today.

The Ass of the Day is John Dingell, Fox News:

A Michigan congressman wants to put a 50-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline to try to cut back on Americans’ consumption.

Polls show that a majority of Americans support policies that would reduce greenhouse gases. But when it comes to paying for it, it’s a different story.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., wants to help cut consumption with a gas tax but some don’t agree with the idea, according to a new poll by the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Blog reax:

RCP:

That’s good news for those already paying $5.00 a gallon in Big Sur–as well as for those doubting the utility of a gas tax.

Even if Americans abandoned their cars, global emissions would fall by less than one percent.

G.F. Stop the ACLU:

So, it’s OK for the government to “gouge” Americans of their “hard-earned tax dollars” (notice the language – it’s not YOUR dollars, it’s TAX dollars). First off, this guy is an economic ignoramus. Second off, even IF the oil companies had been “price gouging” for their “windfall” profits (which is a lie), isn’t that better than the government putting to paper a policy that would purposely cripple the economy?

JammieWearingFool:

An Idea So Stupid Only a Democrat Could Come Up With It

Congress should be working to reduce the price of a fill-up and not to increase it.  I put in close to forty dollars worth of gasoline today and have utterly no desire to see some idiot push the cost up even higher yet.  If Dingells want to do something about global warming, let him ride a bicycle to work.  Till then, he should just shut-up.  Dingell has a profound case of the dumb ass.  Anybody who thinks they aren’t already paying enough for gasoline, feel free to vote for the ‘rats.

Addendum: (Bithead) Just in case you’ve forgotten, there’s a bit of irony here… John Dingell (Badly) represents constituents from the 15st district of Michigan, which is south and west of Detroit.  (Basically, the district runs from the Ohio border along US23, east to Lake Erie and the river, and as far north as Ann Arbor.) Lots of Auto workers (used to be) there. Dingell is part of the reason they’re not there anymore.

But to put the big nail in this turkey, let’s put some context around all this: according to CNN Money, today, Exxon total “profits” if you don’t count exploration costs, were $40BUSD, in 2007. Their taxes, however, were $100BUSD. Gee, you think this affects the at the pump price? And that’s not even counting the at the direct, at- the- pump taxes we’re already paying, often amount to nearly a buck a gallon, already. And this bozo wants to ADD to this? Perhaps it’s time Dingell got his pink slip, huh?