A Worthy Read

John Hawkins has a decent interview up with John Bolton.

I commented the other day about this resolution about Turkey, and genocide, by suggesting that there was no way that the Democrats could be this stupid by accident, and that therefore it had to be intentional.  Neal Boortz this morning addresses this one:

The resolution making its way through Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives is really starting to make some waves. What resolution? That would be the one condemning the Ottoman Empire for the massacre of Armenians almost 100 years ago. The Ottoman Empire of then would be the Turkey of now … and the Turks are less than thrilled with this resolution.

So .. why the big rush to get this resolution passed right NOW? Aren’t there more important things for the congress to attend to? Have they passed all of the budgets they are required to pass? Oops … don’t think so! But maybe there is a reason that Pelosi and the MoveOn Democrats are pushing this issue right now. Maybe they’re trying to make Turkey so damned mad at us that they’ll withdraw permission for our military to use their airbases and airspace in the war against Islamic fascism. Maybe, as Thomas Sowell puts it, this is pure and simple Sabotage.

This never crossed my mind … but it seems it occurred to Jed Babbin.  Is Pelosi backing this Armenian resolution thing as a way to derail our war effort in Iraq? Would she resort to something this underhanded? Why HELL YES she would!

It’s the only logical reason for the push , frankly, to get this passed.  This kind of thing was more or less my concern when we started arguing, back before the midterm elections, about the effects of “balanced government”.  I was told, by my detractors at the time, that a Congress so hobbled would not be able to do any major damage.  And it’s right enough, that this is not a major bill, it’s a nonbinding resolution.  Yet, who can argue that this nonbinding resolution’s passage will not be damaging to United States foreign policy, and therefore the world?

At the bottom line, what we have here is the Democrats still struggling mightily to aid in the defeat of the United States, and it’s allies. last I knew, that was called “treason”.

What is particularly annoying to me, is that Queen Nancy and company haven’t bothered to give us the real reason, in their own words, for this push.  I guess it could be called a stealth attack, accurately.  But I suppose if you are working for the defeat of the United States, I you wouldn’t come out and say it , would you?

Steve Verdon over at OTB this morning links a Michael Canon piece at Cato:

Cannon argues that the number is overstated for the following reasons,

1. 20% of the uninsured are eligible for government health programs.
2. 75% of the uninsured can afford insurance (the implication that they just decide not to buy it).

I have to say that even though Cannon and I share political views here I’m not inclined to merely take his word for it. Still even if he is “half right” it implies that about 40% of the uninsured either are not really uninsured or that they choose to be uninsured.

Verdon goes on to try and split the difference and say that still amounts to 35 million uninsured.

Frankly, I don’t buy that one, either.  Every example the democrats have given us, within this SCHIP nonsense, including the Frosts, have proven to be covered under the current plan.  Under no conditions, have the proponents of expanding SCHIP given us a good reason, and a practical example, of why this gross example of government largess requires expansion.

All of which leaves aside the somewhat more fundamental question of the morality of stealing from me and mine to pay for such largess.

And by the way, while we’re on that subject, I see Bruce McQuain has noted the Democrats trotting out another family. Bruce notes… and correctly, that this family too, is already covered under the current program. After running the numbers, he says;

Sounds like a family for which the program was originally designed. And lo and behold they’ve already used it. Under the present law their child would remain covered.

Question: How do to the Wilkersons argue for the expansion of the program that the Democrats are trying ram through that could include families 400% over the poverty level and “children” who are 25?

They don’t.

So other than emotional appeal and an attempt to pretend the Wilkersons are the sort of family the fight is about when it is not, why are we seeing the Wilkersons at all?

The answer is simple…. they’ve nothing else to toss at the problem. 

Geraldo Rivera, we’ve commented on, many times, here. Suffice it to say he’s not the most popular person, here.  Similarly, Bill O’Reilly.  As for the combination, I’ve always considered that there wasn’t a half a human between them.  And frankly, either one of them could have been fired and at least one should have, and it wouldn’t have raised my eyebrows at all.  Preferably, both.

By the way leftie hangers on to this blog.. take note….yes, I’ve leveled a blast at Fox news. Another preconceived notion falls.

Ayway, as a result of all that, it wasn’t a surprise for me, to see that Michelle Malkin has left O’Riley’s show “The Factor”.  Matter of fact, I was rather pleased by that departure, considering that she was never really fit there, anyway.  Without question in my mind, she deserves to be on the national stage, and on a national channel someplace.  And by the way, let’s acknowledge that the only reason that she was on that show was often issue was was because she was boasting O’Riley’s sagging ratings, and those ratings needed the boost.  People tuned into that show to watch Michelle when she was on, who would never bother tuning in the master bloviator. I was one such. But I’ve always thought she could do better in terms of a venue.

Of course any such move, is going to start the left wing echo chamber in full gossip mode.  Michelle addresses that one this morning:

 The left-o-sphere picked it up from there (interesting how all of these same blogs ignored the spitting threat in the first place), now spreading wild rumors that I’ve been fired, concocting imaginary scenarios of tearful resignations, tinfoil-rattling in hopes that there’s some other conspiratorial reason behind my decision, falsely asserting that it was somehow related to my coverage of the S-CHIP debate, etc., etc., etc.

The funniest comment by far comes from far Left zealots who couldn’t possibly believe that I would walk away from more airtime since I am, of course, such a media whore.

Two words: Stop projecting.

Frankly, I’m not in the least worried about Michelle’s future.  But I do have to wonder about the future of a network that would keep a slimeball like Rivera on staff, particularly after what offenses of his have made it to the public record.

Linked at Memeorandum 

Addendum:  (David L)

Can’t let this one pass without comment.   Michelle’s departure removes what little reason there was to watch the Factor.    About the only down side is that it will mean less juicy O’Malkin Factor clips on Hot Air.   Alas.

ISAF COMMANDER CONDEMNS SPIN BOLDAK SUICIDE BOMBING

Posted: 15 Oct 2007 05:46 AM CDT

ISAF COMMANDER CONDEMNS SPIN BOLDAK SUICIDE BOMBING

TRIAL DATE SET FOR OFFICER CHARGED WITH AIDING ENEMY

Posted: 15 Oct 2007 05:43 AM CDT

TRIAL DATE SET FOR OFFICER CHARGED WITH AIDING ENEMY

AIRBORNE PARATROOPERS CAPTURE #2 HIGH VALUE INDIVIDUAL

Posted: 15 Oct 2007 05:40 AM CDT

AIRBORNE PARATROOPERS CAPTURE #2 HIGH VALUE INDIVIDUAL

Cool.

Haven’t had one of these in a while. I must be losing my touch.

By way of Memorandum, I see a New York Times article from Richard Perez-Pena:

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will give away their work to media outlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.

Yeah, well, about that…. Brit Hume, tonight:

But a closer look at the group suggests it is not a politically neutral operation prepared to let the chips fall where they may. The Pro Publica organization was created by Herbert and Marion Sandler — former owners of one of the country’s largest mortgage and banking companies. The Sandlers made about $2.5 billion when they sold it. They are major Democratic political donors, who gave all their campaign contributions to Democrats in 2006. They have also been longtime critics of President Bush.

So in reality, what we’re really talking about here is another Moveon .org, and Media Matters.  We’re talking, in reality, about another George Soros.  Which, in itself, as far as I’m concerned, an indictment against those organizations charging that they have been less than fully effective.

Allow me also to point out, that the groups claim that the lack of investigative journalism is why America’s trust in the mainstream media has been dwindling the past 40 years, is pure horse squeeze. The fact of the matter is that that trust in the mainstream media has disappeared in inverse proportion to the amount of predictably leftist slant exhibited by the media. Read again the paragraph from Mr. Hume.  Does it look to you like you’re going to be altering the leftist hills of their content, which was the primary reason for the failure of the mainstream media in this country?  If they really think that left wing attacks under the guise of ‘investigative reporting’ is going to solve that issue, then ultimately they are blinder than the media themselves ever were.

What is required, is an unbiased view, which is precisely why Mr. Hume and his network, sits atop the file just now.

I am angry, tonight. Very angry indeed.

October 15, 2007 — WASHINGTON -(NY Post) U.S. intelligence officials got mired for nearly 10 hours seeking approval to use wiretaps against al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping Queens soldier Alex Jimenez in Iraq earlier this year, The Post has learned.
…

In the early hours of May 12, seven U.S. soldiers – including Spc. Jimenez – were on lookout near a patrol base in the al Qaeda-controlled area of Iraq called the “Triangle of Death.”
Sometime before dawn, heavily armed al Qaeda gunmen quietly cut through the tangles of concertina wire surrounding the outpost of two Humvees and made a massive and coordinated surprise attack.

Four of the soldiers were killed on the spot and three others were taken hostage.

A search to rescue the men was quickly launched. But it soon ground to a halt as lawyers – obeying strict U.S. laws about surveillance – cobbled together the legal grounds for wiretapping the suspected kidnappers.

Starting at 10 a.m. on May 15, according to a timeline provided to Congress by the director of national intelligence, lawyers for the National Security Agency met and determined that special approval from the attorney general would be required first.

For an excruciating nine hours and 38 minutes, searchers in Iraq waited as U.S. lawyers discussed legal issues and hammered out the “probable cause” necessary for the attorney general to grant such “emergency” permission.

Finally, approval was granted and, at 7:38 that night, surveillance began.

“The intelligence community was forced to abandon our soldiers because of the law,” a senior congressional staffer with access to the classified case told The Post.

And why did these people get abandoned?  Here’s a quote I posted yesterday, which will explain the whole thing:

We have a thing in this damn country called a Constitution and it supposed to be followed.

I’d like to issue a challenge to the creature calling himself Chuck Adkins, the author of the quote above, to address himself to the families of those soldiers as to why he thinks his myopic reading of the constitution, is of greater import than the lives of those who were lost… while defending these United States, and it’s interests, while we danced around the question of how many lawyers can dance on the head of a wiretap law.

“This is terrible. If they would have acted sooner, maybe they would have found something out and been able to find my son,” said Jimenez’s mother, Maria Duran. “Oh my God. I just keep asking myself, where is my son? What could have happened to him?”

Go ahead, Chuck… have you got an answer for this woman? We’d like to hear it. Look in the face of the solider, and explain it to him, and to us.
BBCT: Memorandum and to Michelle 

Bit posted Lefty Fight Night earlier today. Well we already have the sequel. Matt Dudge is repoting the pending return of Don Imus. This is Dudge’s golden tidbit:

Imus is said to be particularly incensed by Senator Hillary Clinton’s “shameless exploitation” of the Rutgers situation.

More, Allah Pundit, Hot Air.

Addendum I:(Bit)

I will remind our readers that both myself and Captain Ed wrote on this topic last August.

Drudge doesn’t have a scoop, here.

Addendum II:  (David L)

‘Rat fraticide is always a nice topic.   Speacking of which, Jawa Report has nasty video clip here.

I get email, all the time asking me why I don’t like Ron Paul, and extolling his supposed virtues. I get the impression that they’re the product of an orginized effort on someone’s part, because they look like they were cut and pasted from one of those insult machines we see on the web from time to time. I got a few from the last comments I made about Ron Paul about a week back, which admittedly were not exactly warm and freindly, even by my standards.

 So along comes Boortz this morning, who apparently is under attack by these same people, who answers them fairly well: (Hit this and scroll up a little)

When Ron Paul starts to realize and speak to the threat we face from Islamic fascism, then I’ll start talking about Ron Paul. When Ron Paul sees the value in finding these Islamic goons overseas where they are and killing them here, rather than waiting until they get here, I’ll start talking about Ron Paul.

Well, yes, that would be a prerequisite to his being taken seriously for the office he seeks.   And that is for anyone seeking any office, not just Paul, and not just the presidency. Without such recognition of the threat we’re up against, it seems to me he is totally unqualified for that position, or for that matter, for the position he currently holds. 

Now, granted, there are certainly other pressing matters in this guy’s mental makeup that concern me, as well, and would also disqualifiy him…. (Like, the guy’s a flat out full goose bozo flake, as an example) ….but if we’re to be setting limits down on who is qualified and who is not, one must at least have the qualification of the understanding Boortz is speaking of, here.

Just for the record, that disqualifies all those currently running for the Democrat party nomnation, right out of the starting gate.

One of the best indications that there is problem in a particular subgroup in this country is when they start fighting amongst themselves.  That situation has long since started developing on the left.  Today’s evidence:

In this corner, the champion of the flyweight division, Matt  Yglesias

And in this corner, Mikey Kaus.

The oddest part about all of this is observing in the comments where the white house gets the blame for the whole thing.  Bush derangement syndrome, apparently, knows no boundaries.

Earlier this morning I made mention of the spin of the Washington Post.  Now we come to the New York Times and for that we shouldn’t have to go further than Donald Luskin:

  Deborah Solomon’s weekly short interviews in the New York Times Magazine are the most irritating possible example of the snotty, smarmy, smug and holier-than-thou attitude that pervades the entire enterprise that is the Times. Now “public editor” Clark Hoyt has exposed her for the fraud she is.

Though presented in a way that suggests a verbatim transcript, the order of the interview is sometimes altered, and the wording of questions is changed.. And, Solomon told me, “Very early on, I might have inserted a question retroactively, so the interview would flow better,” a practice she said she no longer uses. “Questions For” came under fire recently when a reporter for New York Press, a free alternative weekly, interviewed two high-profile journalists — Amy Dickinson, the advice columnist who followed Ann Landers at The Chicago Tribune, and Ira Glass, creator of the public radio program “This American Life” — who said their published interviews with Solomon contained questions she never asked.

…The Times Magazine published an angry letter from NBC’s Tim Russert, who said that the portrayal of his interview with her was “misleading, callous and hurtful.”

There’s a lot more, of course, so go RTWT.  but how much more proof do we need that the press is biased, and broken? This is supposed to be the paper of record, and yet she’s pulling stuff that J-school 101 student know better than to do. and this is not to pick and Deborah Solomon so much; I’m sure there are a lot of other New York Times employees who could be labeled as the next Jayson Blair.

Paul Krugman, New York Times, has an column up on anthropogenic global warming.    As usual, Krugman is less than rational.  But heck, it is the Times, the sane need not apply.

In Washington Monthly, Kevin Drumm, takes up Krugman’s cause:

As Krugman notes, the extent to which conservatives have turned opposition to global warming science into a personal jihad against Al Gore is breathtaking.

So few words.  So many mistakes.    Climate change is a fact, just as are tides and sunsets.   Rational people do not take political positions on geophysical  events.   The Earth is what four billion years old,  and there is no indiacation that the climate has ever been stable.

What Gore, and Krugman, are pontificating about is antropogenic global warming.   That is climate change caused by man.    That the climate is changing  is just a fact.   The ideas that one, mankind is driving climate change, and two, can somehow control the World’s climate is absurd.

In the case of Gore, the belief is not even a scientific one but rather a religious one.   Would a rational person who believed that carbon footprints are driving climate change fly around in a private jet, or personally consume massive amounts of energy?

Gore is  not a scienctist.  Rather Gore is a former politician turned filmmaker, and not even a good one at that.

Heck, I am fighting anthropogenic global warming.   I use far less energy than does Gore.   Color me green.

From the WaPo, this morning:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But rather than explore that situation, including what led to that crippling, what actions took place two so cripple the organization, the Washington post immediately starts spinning the thing:

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

There is a lot of good news in the link article, so long as you can make it through the spin. I would urge you to make the attempt.  But I take those first two paragraphs as an indication of what I’ve been talking about with the New York Times and the Washington Post… a seemingly inexhaustible effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  This is no isolated incident.  Though most stories aren’t quite as blatant as this, they do it every time.

BBCT: Memeorandum

The Democrats and their supporters really don’t know which way to run anymore.  What they’ve been trying lately, has been working, so they’re going to try and break out the classics.  Witness Frank Rich over at the Democrat party house organ, otherwise known as the world as the New York Times:

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo.

Yeah… well… an inherent part of this conversation, which never seems to get brought into the conversation by these morons, is what exactly constitutes to her chair.  Curt over at Flopping Aces, who also notes the story, says in part:

These are the same kind of liberals who believe putting panties on one head is “torture”, and Mr. Rich also obviously believes sleep deprivation is “torture” because he can cite cases where the Germans used that technique also.  Well whoopdidoo…..Do these liberals really believe that a hard core al-Qaeda agent is just going to sit down and tell us everything because we were super nice to them?  Gave them some cookies and warm milk?  It appears they do.

Well, yes, even that of a toned care whether are not be of cottage and tells us what we need to know to save American lives.  I would consider that the larger of the two possibilities.  All that said, Kurt then goes on to show us some of the torture methods that al-Qaida is known to use on our people.  Yes, Virginia, there are pictures.

A quip I made a short time ago is worth repeating here:

Don’t bother trying to tell me about how if we use torture, they will. I defy the reader to tell me in what war in this nation’s entire history the Geneva conventions were actually followed by the people we were fighting against. You cannot. They never were.

So what this really boils down to, is a question that Paul Simon once asked; “Whose side are you on?”

In truth, I think the question about the New York Times and its position on whether or not it wants America and the remainder of the free world to win against al-Qaida, has long since been answered in the negative.  This article from Mr. Rich, thereby, is simply one more in a long line of bits of evidence proving this.

And of course on the left side of the Blogs, we see some moron calling himself Chuck Adkins… assuming that’s the idiot’s real name… comes up with the classic leftie argument:

We have a thing in this damn country called a Constitution and it supposed to be followed.

So we’re bound by the U.S. constitution in Iraq?  Further, these are not criminal proceedings, these are acts of war we’re talking about against us.  Too bad you haven’t figured the difference yet, Chuckles. Seems a question of whether not you want America to win here, has also been answered.

Gee… You look like a nice horsey, Chuckles.  Can I see the front half now?

BBCT: Memorandum