Saturday, January 13, 2007

ORWELLIAN CONGRESS AND THE MINIMUM WAGE BILL

(AP) - Fending off charges of favoritism, House Democrats say a just-passed minimum wage bill will be changed to cover all U.S. territories - including American Samoa - before it reaches President Bush's desk. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters she has instructed the House Education and Labor Committee to help get the bill changed to "make sure that all of the territories have to comply with the U.S. law on minimum wage."

Her remark Friday followed accusations from Republicans a day earlier that American Samoa, which is not now covered by the $5.15 an hour federal minimum wage, was not included in the law raising the federal pay floor to $7.25 an hour because StarKist has a large cannery in the island chain. StarKist is owned by Del Monte Foods Co., which has its headquarters in San Francisco, Pelosi's district. [...]

Spokesmen for both Pelosi and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the author of the minimum wage bill, said it excluded American Samoa at the request of nonvoting Delegate Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat who represents the Pacific island territories in the House. Raising the federal minimum wage would devastate the local tuna industry, Faleomavaega said in a statement last week, noting that American Samoa's economy is "more than 80 percent" dependent on two U.S. tuna processors, Chicken of the Sea and StarKist. Faleomavaega said the Labor Department reviews Samoa's minimum wages every two years.
Hold on! Stop the music! This Delegate from American Samoa says a minimum wage hike would devastate the tuna industry. So why then are we told that a minimum wage hike won't hurt small business owners in the 50 states?

Maybe the American economy isn't dependent on the corner general store, but the people that work there are dependent on the store for their jobs. Yet, when this is brought up every time we have a minimum wage debate, the Dems wave it off as a fairy tale. They can't have it both ways.

CONGRESS SHOULD STOP PAYMENT OF JIZYAH TO PLO

Hugh Fitzgerald talks about why US Congress needs to stop paying money to the "palestinians". And he's right. By doing so, in fact, they could help pave the way to stopping funding of Islamists in Europe and other places as well.

EUROPE, POST MODERNISM AND APPEASEMENT


THE AMERICAN THINKER:
Prior to the Six Day War in 1967, it was France which was Israel's primary military supplier, not the United States. In the War of Independence in 1948-49, it was arms smuggled from Czechoslovakia that enabled the Zionists to fight on. Most European nations, including some Soviet satellites, supported the partition resolution in the General Assembly in November 1947.

European nations supported Israel at the UN through the late 1960s and in some cases well beyond then. Clearly, some of this support in the post World War 2 period-was a reflection of European guilt over the murder of six million Jews in their midst from 1939 to 1945.

As Raul Hilberg has written, most Europeans and most European nations fell into one of two categories during the Holocaust: perpetrators, or bystanders. Few nations distinguished themselves (Denmark, Bulgaria, and maybe Italy, were better than average). Today 40 years later, that residue of sympathy for the plucky underdog nation of Israel has disappeared.
The article is an amazingly thorough description of how Europe became a pawn of the jihadoterrorists - RTWT.

But I think the article misses one key point: Europe abandoned Israel for many reasons - most of them listed in this thoughtful piece, but RB's article left out the key fact: Europe abandoned Israel right after Munich - itself an attack on the heels of many other Arafat led jihado-terror attacks against Europe. Like the Abu Nidal attack on Rome's airport. (BTW: he retired to Saddam's Baghdad!)




Europe's abandonment of Israel was a concerted act of cowardly appeasement in the face of concerted and well-planned acts of terror directed at them for that very reason: Arafat and the USSR knew the Europeans were manipulable cowards who would cave in. Remember: Arafat and his comrades were backed and trained by the USSR who continuously supported actively Arafat and his comrades. (Putin is playing a similar role with Iran and Syria.)




It is the cowardice of Europe - born in the ashes of WW1 when post modernism was born - which led them to appease Arafat rather than fight him. IOW: Post modernism is the key to understanding the cowardly paralysis within the West. A moral paralysis which pre-dates Israel, the Cold War and WW2. Remember: all of Europe appeased Hitler; then the continental nations of Europe eventually and really rather quickly surrendered to Hitler.

Appeasement is the preferred policy of post modernists because they believe that there is nothing in the West - the Judeo-Christian West - worth defending, let alone worth dying for.

As post modernists, they are moral and cultural relativists who see all international conflicts as conflicts between functionally, structurally and morally equivalent cultures. The only reason the West has had an edge over other cultures for the last two millennium - according to post modernists - is that we were more ruthless and had better armies and navies.

The post modernists believe that the West got rich by stealing from the poor Third World. Post modernists assert that the West perpetrated most of the genocide throughout history - a false claim, but one which animates their self-hared. And of course, the post modernists blame the "inhuman" industrialized West for polluting the entire Earth and causing global climate change which will - in their minds - destroy all life on Earth very VERY soon! And the post modernists assert that anyone who disagrees with these conclusions is an unsophisticated rube.




All this is BS. The prosperity of the West is due our liberty and industrialization. If the Third World wants more prosperity, then they need more liberty and industry. Third World poverty can never be eradicated by transferring money to them.

When USA tried to eliminate poverty by redistributing our wealth via welfare payments to the poor IT WAS CALLED THE "GREAT SOCIETY", AND IT FAILED MISERABLY.

It is stupid to repeat the mistakes of the past.

More welfare for Africa and the Third World will accomplish NOTHING.



Post modernism's faith in cultural relativism is why they overvalue the UN: since they do NOT believe in universal values, they believe that international intervention can only be politically and morally justified when there is international (cross-cultural) consensus. Pseudo-universality is a product of consensus-building to post modernists, because there are really no transcendent universal values for all humans everywhere. So post modernism and cultural relativism are the reasons why the UN and the West stood by and did nothing as genocide took place in Cambodia and Rwanda and so many other places - mostly in the Third World. [Aside: Contrary to post modern/Leftist BS, most of the genocide in human history has been within the Third World, and most of it occurred as post modernists refused to intervene. And most of the genocide within the West was perpetrated by Leftists!]

Another big mistake of the "sophisticated" European post modernists was their appeasement of Nazism. Appeasing Hitler did not work. Just as we had to confront and defeat Nazism and Communism, so to must we confront and defeat jihadism. We must defeat them utterly - until they surrender unconditionally. This will take a few - if not several decades. In a sense, it's a was that has already been fought for 1000 years. If we appease the enemy now in Iraq, or in the Philippines, or Thailand, or Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon - or anywhere else - then we will soon be fighting them all over Africa, Asia and Europe the way the French were fighting them during the Paris Intifada last summer.

And European intifadas are just the beginning. The colonizing Muslims will continue to agitate for sharia enclaves, and then they will try to take over the democratic institutions of Europe, (like al Sadr and Iran have - more or less - in for the last six months in Iraq.)

If Europe cannot support Israel in her fight - on that particular front in the GWOT/WW4 - then will she at least defend herself on her own turf? Or will she cave in as she did to Nazism?

I think that Europe will cave in... unless we FIRST defeat post modernism. To defeat the jihadist enemy abroad we must first defeat their Fifth Column of post modernists at home.

HERNDON, VIRGINIA SEEKS TO MONITOR IMMIGRATION STATUS


Centers for day laborers see significant numbers of immigrants every day as these laborers congregate there. According to this item in the January 13, 2007 Washington Post, Herndon, Virginia — which runs a taxpayer-funded center — is seeking a firm not only to manage the center but also to check the status of workers:
The Herndon Town Council has voted to solicit proposals from employment firms interested in operating the town's center for day laborers. The council, which has promised to crack down on illegal immigration, is looking for a firm that will require workers to present documentation proving that they are in the country legally. Project Hope & Harmony, which operates the Herndon Official Workers Center with Reston Interfaith, does not require extensive documentation....
See additional information about Project Hope and Harmony here and here. According to Mukit Hossain, founder of Project Hope and Harmony in his May 14, 2006 letter to the Washington Post, humanitarian concerns trump checking on immigration status:
...We felt it was a moral imperative to help those who badly needed help and to solve a community problem with the help of members of that community. Sadly, opponents of the site say that it serves illegal immigrants...The site has done its intended job....But apparently it doesn't matter how well the site works...

Some say the laborers would be better served by returning home and perhaps trying to come back as legal immigrants. Some say they don't want the "illegals" to be put on a path to legalization. But the more I hear these opinions, the more I see them for what they really are: bigotry.
READ THE REST.

THE HUMAN REMAINS FOUND AT GROUND ZERO AND RUDY '08


FOX:
Forensic anthropologists on Thursday recovered 39 bones found in a road being dug up at the World Trade Center site in the three-month-old renewed search for remains of Sept. 11 victims. The recovery — made in a Brooklyn facility where anthropologists are hand-searching debris — was the largest in a day since Oct. 19, when utility workers came across about 80 bones in a long-abandoned manhole.

City officials are digging up the road, which had carried construction trucks in and out of the site since it was rebuilt in the spring of 2002. They also plan to search the land where a destroyed church sat, as well as hundreds of manholes surrounding the site, for remains that could be underground.

The original nine-month cleanup yielded more than 20,000 pieces of remains of the nearly 3,000 victims of the terrorist attack. Since September 2005, more than 1,000 more have been found in a vacant skyscraper across from the site and in the service road on the western edge. None has been matched with any victims.
(MORE HERE.)

QUESTION: DOES RUDY BEAR SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS, OR FOR THE ILLNESSES EXPOSED RESCUE-WORKERS ARE NOW SUFFERING FROM?

I DUNNO THE ANSWER. BUT THESE TWO ISSUES MIGHT EFFECT HIS CAMPAIGN, AND IT WOULD GOOD IF HE DEALT WITH THE POTENTIAL CHARGES THAT MIGHT SPRING FROM THEM NOW.

[NOTE (from the NYPOST article): "some 6,000 plaintiffs who claim they suffer from a variety of respiratory diseases, illnesses and cancers brought on by foul WTC air and dust. "

In many ways, Rudy is an ideal candidate for the GENERAL election: he's a social moderate who is a fiscal hawk and a hawk on WW4. But he has baggage. I oppose him because of his stands on the 2nd Amendment and on abortion. But I would vote for him over any Dem dove. And I think his 2004 convention speech was fantastic! Stay tuned...

THE GOP'S PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL

VIKINGPUNDIT:
It’s always been my belief that the Democrats have a built-in advantage because they’re the party who are going to tax “the other guy” and give you all kinds of free stuff.

When the Republicans fail to live up to their pledge of fiscal responsibility, they blur the distinction between the parties… and lose.
How true. The Cut & Run Reds will only tax the other guy for the benefit of "the common good." This is their platform in a nutshell. It is socialism with a nanny's face. It has always failed because it reduces liberty and liberty is the engine of prosperity. You can NOT redistribute your way to prosperity.

When the GOP fails to reduce spending and taxes, it fails to offer an alternative. And that's why conservative people stay home - instead of voting, and that's why the Cut & Run Reds win. And then - INEVITABLY - our taxes go up, and we appease the enemies abroad. And both are disasterous.

CENSURE PELOSI - updated and bumped


For passing a bill which directly and uniquely benefits one her biggest constituents, Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi should be censured - AT THE VERY LEAST.


It seems to me that by passing the MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE the way she did - which excludes Del Monte in Samoa - she did more for Del Monte than Jack Abramoff ever did for an tribe anywhere. (MORE HERE and HERE.)

CENSURE PELOSI!

*******UPDATE: IT'S EVEN WORSE:

Del Monte isn't merely a huge "constituent" they are part owned by Pelosi's husband: Paul Pelosi is a MAJOR INVESTOR IN AND OWNER OF DEL MONTE - [UPDATE] through his holdings in HJ HEINZ. (Scroll down and read the comments!)!

PELOSI IS A CORRUPT PIECE OF CRAP. SHE SHOULD RESIGN, OR BE CENSURED.

MAYBE SHE SHOULD BE INDICTED.

GLOBAL COOLING ALERT: CALIFORNIA!

IT'S FREEZING COLD IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

I GUESS THEY SHOULD START DRIVING BIGGER CARS OUT THERE SO IT WARMS UP!

When government schools are no good ....

There is a huge demand for private education in Australia in a desperate attempt to escape Left-run non-education in State-government schools. Around 40% of Australian teenagers are now sent to private schools. But huge demand forces up prices -- as it always does. Australia's most famous conservative government -- the Menzies (Federal) administration -- long ago instituted a semi-voucher system by giving grants to private schools -- thus going over the heads of the State governments. Federal grants to private schools are however still much less per head than what State governments spend on their schools:
"Some of Sydney's most prestigious private schools are charging parents as much as $4000 in non-refundable fees to enrol their children, on top of tuition fees that can cost more than $20,000. Annual fees for senior students this year will be as high as $21,117 at Cranbrook, $20,967 at Kambala, $20,913 at King's and $20,826 at Sydney Grammar. At Cranbrook School, a non-refundable enrolment fee of $4615 is payable on acceptance of a place. Parents must also pay a non-refundable fee of $300 to make an enrolment application. The school generates about $1 million each year from enrolment fees and more than $23 million in tuition fees. Under its funding arrangements for private schools, the Federal Government no longer takes into account the amount of non-refundable fee income a school generates.

Lyndsay Connors, who heads the NSW Public Education Council, said schools were no longer penalised for the extra income. "This kind of impost by private schools on parents would normally be their own business," she said. "But in this country, these schools are not only provided with public funding, but with ever-increasing amounts of it. The least they could be required to do is let all of us shareholders know what all this public and private money is being spent on. What exactly are we subsidising?"
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Friday, January 12, 2007

THE ESCALATION LIE IS A BLAST FROM THE VIETNAM PAST

THE DEM LEFTIE DOVES - AKA THE CUT & RUN REDS - ARE AT IT AGAIN: they're calling the Bush Surge an ESCALATION. This is part of their continuing and concerted propaganda effort to conflate Iraq with Vietnam.

And it DOVETAILS nicely into their knee-jerk moral equivalence: calling it an ESCALATION equates our retaliation and counter-measures with the enemy's barbarous attacks. As if was all tit-for-tat and a mere cycle of violence.

The ALLIED invasion on D-Day was not called an escalation. And FDR was never charged with exacerbating violence by fighting back, nor derided as a chickenhawk for insisting we fight back until we achieve victory. FDR escaped these charges because in WW2 the USA was allied with the USSR.

Which leads me to share with you all a brilliant suggestion made by feloow TAB blogger Punditarian: All Bush has to do to unite the Democrats and the MSM and the EU behind our efforts to support the nascent democracy in Iraq, is ask Maliki to change the name of Iraq to the DPR of Iraq and then change the name of his party from Dawn to the Socialist Worker's Party of Iraq.

Updated and Bumped: "NEW DIRECTION FROM THE DEMOCRATS? WELL, WHERE ARE WE GOING?"


The stock market is at a new all-time high and America's 401K's are back. A new direction from there means what?

Unemployment is at 25 year lows. A new direction from there means what?

Oil prices are plummeting.
A new direction from there means what?

Tax rates are at 20 year lows. A new direction from there means what?

Federal tax revenues are at all-time highs.
A new direction from there means what?

The Federal deficit is down almost 50%, just as predicted over last year.
A new direction from there means what?

Home valuations are up 200% over the past 3.5 years. A new direction from there means what?

Inflation is in check, hovering at 20 year lows.
A new direction from there means what?

Not a single terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11/01. A new direction from there means what?

Osama bin Laden is living under a rock in a dark cave, having not surfacedin years, if he's alive at all, while 95% of Al Queda's top dogs are eitherdead or in custody, cooperating with US Intel. A new direction from there means what?

Several major terrorist attacks already thwarted by US and British Intel,including the recent planned attack involving 10 Jumbo Jets being explodedin mid-air over major US cities in order to celebrate the anniversary of the9/11/01 attacks.
A new direction from there means what?

Just as President Bush foretold us on a number of occasions, Iraq was to bemade "ground zero" for the war on terrorism -- and just as President Bushsaid they would, terrorist cells from all over the region are arriving fromthe shadows of their hiding places and flooding into Iraq in order to gettheir faces blown off by US Marines rather than boarding planes and headingto the United States to wage war on us here.
A new direction from there means what?
THE DEMOCRATS WANT US TO CHANGE DIRECTION?!?!? It makes no sense. Go read the rest.

A STRATEGY BETTER THAN A SURGE: ASSASSINATE AL SADR


WHY IS THIS MAN STILL ALIVE!?

WE SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM IN THE BATTLE FOR NAJAF (IN AUGUST OF 2004!).

OR EVEN BEFORE THAT: WHEN HE ASSASSINATED ABDEL MAJID AL-KHOEI.

BETTER LATE, THAN NEVER.

AND IT'S GETTING DAMN LATE!

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - PART 26: GREEK LEFTISTS AND JIHADISTS


Suspected leftist guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the US embassy in Athens on Friday, causing minor damage, in the boldest attack staged by left-wing militants in years. The blast shattered windows and woke up nearby residents in the central Athens area at 5:58 AM (0358 GMT) but no one was hurt, police said.

The grenade was launched just across the street from the heavily guarded embassy building, which is surrounded by a 3-metre-high steel fence, and authorities were dealing with the attack as a serious act of violence.
Apparently aimed at the US seal on the building's facade, the attack was the worst assault on the mission, often the target of Greek protests and demonstrations, in a decade. ...

Once Greece's biggest security threat, the group was dismantled two years before the Athens 2004 Olympics. It had staged hundreds of bombings, shootings and rocket attacks, and killed US and other foreign diplomats in Greece.

In November last year, Greek riot police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators marching to the embassy, chanting slogans including "Bush the butcher, out of Iraq" and "The USA is the real terrorist".

All the scum of the earth hate the USA: Jihadists, Lefists ... er um... have I left anyone out!? Basically they're folks who want to drag humanity back into a world of less liberty and less prosperity and re-enact the failed policies of previous centuries. Idiots. Especially these Greek lefties/anarchists. And these jerks, too.


UPDATE:
Birds of a Feather - part 26b, (via LGF):
Lebanese flag and portrait of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara are displayed on the tents as Lebanese men relax smoking water-pipes in the tent camp erected by Hezbollah and their allies during the 43rd day of an open-ended protest to try and force the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora in central Beirut, Friday, Jan. 12, 2007.
(AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)
AND ANOTHER THING: TAB has been using the BIRDS OF A FEATHER meme for over a year, (long before LGF!), but you're welcome to use it too, Charles!

HEY IRAN, YO MAMMA DO ME LIKE THAT!

My friend Epaminondas, from the excellent blog Villagers With Torches, postulates that, perhaps, George Bush has something up his sleeve vis a vis Iran:
Is something up?

Before the speech, additional naval forces head to the gulf. Centcom gets an admiral as chief. Bush warns the Iranians and Syrians. We raid a building in Irbil and take away equipment and 6 Iranians, and the Iranian foreign minister goes whacko over it, two weeks after arresting 6 more Iranians in the house of Az Al Hakim, some of whom turn out to have diplomatic immunity, but found there with some unsavory items, leading to uncomfortable conclusions.

Bush announces the departure of Patriot missile batteries...to where, and why? Israel, KSA, and others in the gulf HAVE Patriots to shoot down ballistic missile attacks? Does Iraq? And there is only ONE source from which we need to protect against ballistic missile barrages.

Someone leaks an IDF plan to nuke Iranian underground nuke facilities to the Times of London, WHY?

Are we about to begin a strategy to provoke Iran?
Continue reading "Is something up?" »

UPDATE: Just a reminder:

Reliapundit was the first person to posit a connection between Fallon's CENTCOM appointment and Iran.

THIS POST ON JANUARY 4th - MORE THAN A WEEK AGO.

Before Ralph Peters, Before The American Thinker article linked to above, which links to TAB!


Are Lies and Misrepresentations Protected by the First Amendment?

They probably are -- but that does not mean that the propaganda concerned can be forced into the classroom. Teachers in an Andover (Massachusetts) High School seemed to think otherwise, however:
"The School Committee will review its policies on inviting speakers to the schools in the wake of last week's visit by the controversial pro-Palestinian group Wheels of Justice. While Principal Peter Anderson said there were no problem incidents during the day, when speakers spoke in classrooms, Anderson halted a nighttime presentation to the community after repeated outbursts during a question-and-answer session.....

While Wheels of Justice had been banned from speaking at the school last October, Anderson reversed this decision when teachers' union president Tom Meyers and five other social studies teachers threatened a First Amendment lawsuit. A presentation on the First Amendment by four attorneys was held Jan. 3. Speakers from Project David, a Boston-based group that says on its Web site that it "promotes Arab-Israeli understanding," were scheduled to offer another perspective to students, and then to the public, on Wednesday, after Townsman deadline.....

Last Friday evening, three speakers, Joe Carr, Hassan Fouda and Mazin Qumsiyeh, stood before 150 or more attendees in the packed Andover High School library..... Qumsiyeh said he's lived through the occupation of Israel, and claimed that approximately half of the Iraqi and Palestinian populations continue to live in similar conditions. He pointed to a slide of a green hillside where he said he'd picnicked as a child. "But look at it today," Qumsiyeh said, motioning towards a barren rubble....

Several people walked out when Qumsiyeh said there were hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed by Israelis in the 1940s. Anderson reminded the audience they weren't there to debate. "If you don't want to listen, leave," he said....

During the question-and-answer period, many of the audience's outspoken members said they considered Wheels of Justice to be an extremist, anti-Semitic organization....
It's an interesting precedent, however. Maybe all Left-dominated schools could be forced to broadcast Rush Limbaugh's show in their classrooms. In that case I fancy that the First Amendment would immediately be interpreted to mean the opposite of the meaning placed on it above.

UPDATE: American Pundit has some good points about the complacent Leftist editorial above too. (Crossposted from Tongue Tied)

Thursday, January 11, 2007

THE BUSH SURGE: TOO LITTLE TOO LATE; OR JUST IN TIME? AND IS THERE A DEADLINE?

GLENN LINKED TO FRED THOMPSON's comments on The Bush Surge:
I was struck by a couple of things he said that indicated not just a change in tactics but a whole new attitude with regard to what's necessary. He’s taking the gloves off. . . . I'll bet that a lot of folks who support the president on this are asking themselves "what if we'd taken care of business this way two years ago?"
Indeed.
Now, I'm probably hawkier than the next guy - and I sure have always said we should have mined Iraq's borders and gotten kinetic with Assad and Ahmadinejad right after major combat operations were over. And I have posted frequently that I feel that both FDR and Truman would've take their gloves off MUCH sooner.

BUT there are a few MAJOR REASONS why Bush has waited until now to crank it up a notch: We were waiting until AFTER the first popularly elected democratic constitutional government of Iraq got a little settled in before we went ballistic. We wanted to give them a chance to do more on their own - in their own way, first. The Maliki government took many months to form and it's less than a year old. They tried assuaging al Sadr and the Sunni tribes. But they failed.

Now the time has come to essentially give this Iraqi administration their last chance. If they fail to uphold their end of the bargain - and better control public safety by the end of 2007 - and include more Sunnis and fewer radical/iranianized Shias, then the Maliki administration will collapse, and Iraqis will have to form another administration. Then - because the Dem Leftie doves (and the MSM they dominate) are trying to exploit America's distaste for war and nation-building - it'll be pretty obvious that the Iraqis will only be getting one more year of aid from the USA. This will incentivize Iran to promote more instability in Iraq - and that's why it's so so so SO sad that the Dems - who might very well win the White House in 2008 - are not on board. Like Zapatero, they incentivize the enemy.

If the next Iraqi administration fails to control public safety after that stage, then I'd say that our next best national security move is to preemptively attack Iran: A weak and destabilized Iraq under the thumb of a near-nuclear Iran very risky. Under the thumb of a NUCLEAR Iran is UNACCEPTABLE. That's why I still believe that we will preemptively attack Iran not later than between November, 10 2008 and January 10, 2009

NEW ORLEANS RESIDENTS MARCH ON CITY HALL

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Thousands marched on City Hall on Thursday, seeking an end to the violence that has claimed nine lives in this struggling city since New Year's Day.

"A city that could not be drowned in the waters of a storm will not be drowned in the blood of its citizens," said the Rev. John C. Raphael Sr., one of several speakers from participating neighborhood groups.

Police estimated the crowd at 5,000 people. Several marchers held signs reading "Silence is Violence," referring to police complaints that witnesses to some killings are not coming forward.

"Seeing a crime, seeing criminal activity and not saying something is a crime. Tell somebody, even if they tell someone who can speak on your behalf. Get the word out," said Amy Brown, 35, who said she is rebuilding a home in the Central City neighborhood, home to some of the worst violence.Mayor

Mayor Ray Nagin, the object of many marchers' jeers and protest signs, watched from behind a podium but did not take part in the rally at the behest of organizers. "We want to open a dialogue, but this was not the time. It would have been too big a shift from listening to the people to suddenly have a politician talking," said Baty Landis, a Tulane University professor and music club owner who helped organize the march.

At a brief news conference later, Nagin said the event marked "an incredibly powerful day." ... "We pledge to you that we will get better and we're going to start today," he said, adding that the city would not recover until residents felt safe. The mayor did not take questions.

Okay, I'm thoroughly confused. I thought all the ills suffered by the city of New Orleans and its residents were the fault of George W. Bush and the federal government. Why on earth are these people marching on City Hall?

SENATORS AND WOULD-BE PRESIDENTS KERRY, BIDEN, AND DODD


What a crew: KERRY. DODD. BIDEN.

What're they doing together?


THIS:
Among Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's interlocutors as she testified before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs today was a spate of senators with announced or suspected ambitions for the presidency, all eager to show toughness and resolve on the war.


WHAT DO THESE THREE SENATORS HAVE IN COMMON? (multiple choice):

(A) They are each on the Foreign Relations Committee
(B) They are pompous, vain morons who think they should be president
(C) They are demagoguing the Iraq War and putting their personal ambition ahead of national security
(D) Two are proven liars and the other idiot announced his candidacy on the Imus Show.
(E) All of the above
Notice how bored Biden looks? I get the feeling that Joe gets bored by any conversation in which he is not doing ALL the talking. AND DODD? Dodd looks like he's practicing his speech in his head. And John Francois Kerry? He looks just like he did during that Christmas in Cambodia!

UNLIKE LIEBERMAN, THESE THREE POLITICIANS SHAMELESSLY PANDER TO THEIR LEFT-WING BASE. They are worse than useless; they are a danger to our national security.

PROOF THAT THE MSM-BUREAUCRACY COMPLEX HAS SUBVERTED OUR DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT'S NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

For most people, something's a scandal only if the newspapers make it one. On the matter below they have averted their eyes. Except The NY Sun (excerpt below); it's the only paper to have mentioned the matter -- although the blogosphere has known of it for years:
"That was quite a scoop yesterday by our Josh Gerstein in respect of how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in its investigations of leaks of our national secrets, has been stonewalled by none other than agencies of America's own government. The disclosures on which Mr. Gerstein reports came in response to litigation Mr. Gerstein filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

He obtained FBI documents indicating that our intelligence agencies have been "uncooperative" in investigating leaks. The FBI documents refer to unreturned phone calls, cancelled meetings that weren't rescheduled, and the concern that lawyers from the agency whose information was leaked would "stonewall." And it looks like cases were dropped rather than force government officials and agencies to cooperate with the investigation and produce evidence.....

All this underscores the likelihood that we have had agencies of the American government breaking the law to defeat a military campaign into which the American Congress, by an overwhelming vote, sent our GIs. These implications were sensed immediately by the blogosphere, where Powerlineblog.com lit up on Mr. Gerstein's story at the crack of dawn, and on the airwaves, where Rush Limbaugh devoted part of his broadcast to Mr. Gerstein's story.

Said Mr. Limbaugh, "It's become more and more obvious that there is a symbiotic relationship between these agencies - we're talking about State, we're talking about the Pentagon, CIA - there's a symbiotic relationship between these agencies and the drive-by media now, and they're not going to let an election get in their way . They've got their own agendas. . If they have to destroy the policies of a particular administration, they'll do it via leaks, and then when these criminal leaks are investigated, they don't participate."
Relipaundit adds: An MSM/bureaucratic complex - which is dominated by "realists" and Leftists (who want the USA to be chastised and humbled and brought under transnational organizations like the UN) - is not unique to the USA; Brace Bawer detailed in his book how it is a much worse problem in Europe. And this problem - the lack of political diversity, and the resultant existence of political networks within institutions naively regarded as apolitical - also encompasses the Humanities departments at most major universities. This lack of political diversity has made all of these institutions a virtual Fifth Column. They have been a Fifth Column here in the USA since at least WW2. Nixon knew that State was a rogue bureaucracy, but never got the chance to remake it - they and the CIA and the FBI saw to that!

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

PRICE OF OIL PLUNGES: I BLAME BUSH!

DRUDGE/BREITBART/AP:
Oil plunged below $52 a barrel Thursday to its lowest price since May extending a sharp decline that has been led by dampened heating oil demand, but which could save consumers money on a more widely used fuel: gasoline. Crude oil has tumbled by 15 percent so far this year in a huge sell-off that was kicked off by investment funds last year, and then stoked by a historically warm U.S. winter that has left supplies of heating fuel barely touched.

First Bush got the price to rise in order to make his oil Halliburtonenron buddies rich; now he's making it go down to prevent us from switching to alternative energy. I guess he's doing this by using his global-warming machine. THAT BUSH IS AN EVIL GENIUS.

ISRAELI POLLS SHOW BIBI AND LIKUD WOULD WIN A STUNNING VICTORY


HAARETZ:
A Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted this week shows that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party continues its loss of popularity, would lose close to two thirds of its seats if elections were held today.

The survey also shows that Likud would win 29 Knesset seats and Kadima would drop to just 12, a reversal of the results of the March 2006 general elections.
WOW. I think Bibi deserves another chance. He's a good hawk. I trusted Sharon - but I think Olmert effed up by being too soft on Hizballah and Assad. (Maybe Bibi would lead a coalition of Likud and Kadima - minus Olmert; it would better than the current Kadima led coalition with the socialists of Labor.)

TZIPI LIVNI WOULD ONLY WORSEN ISRAEL'S SITUATION


Evelyn Gordon talks about why Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni, if she were to take over as premier, would only make things worse:
According to the polls, Tzipi Livni might well be Israel's next prime minister. Public disgust with the government in which she serves as foreign minister has somehow bypassed her; with an approval rating of over 50 percent, she is Israel's most popular politician. Yet this popularity is mystifying - because Livni's record gives every reason to believe that she would be as dismal a premier as her current boss.

As The Jerusalem Post correctly noted in a recent editorial, the very fact that she is conducting an independent foreign policy, diametrically opposed to that of the government in which she serves, is problematic: Israel cannot effectively make its case to the world when senior ministers publicly espouse contradictory positions. But the content of her policies, as outlined in recent speeches and interviews, is even more problematic.

On Syria, for instance, Livni told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee last month that Israel must conduct a "sustained evaluation" of Syria's intentions, and until then, "there is no point in making any declarations for or against" negotiating with Damascus. She thereby publicly undercut the prime minister, who opposes talks with Syria on the grounds that it has demonstrated no real readiness for peace. What was truly astonishing, however, was that her ministry's political research center had already prepared just such an evaluation, which she herself submitted to the committee - and its conclusions were identical to Ehud Olmert's. [...] BUT IF her handling of Syria is problematic, Livni's proposals on the Palestinian front are downright disastrous.

According to a report in Haaretz, which Livni has not denied, her plan is as follows: Israel should reach an agreement with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas under which Israel would withdraw from the entire West Bank east of the fence (about 90 percent of the territory), allowing a Palestinian state with temporary borders to be established there and in Gaza. Abbas would then run for election on this plan; should he win, Israel would gradually implement the withdrawal in exchange for Palestinian action on terrorism.

Unfortunately, this proposal has two glaring flaws. One is Livni's naive belief that withdrawal, once promised, can be conditioned on Palestinian counterterrorism efforts. The reality, as the Oslo process proved, is that Israel will face overwhelming international pressure to keep its promise even if Abbas does nothing on terrorism. In the two and a half years following the 1993 Oslo Accord, Palestinian terrorists killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding decade. Yet international pressure nevertheless forced Israel to execute four withdrawals over the next six years - each in exchange for the same pledge to fight terror that the Palestinians had so blatantly violated after previous withdrawals.

Given that Abbas has so far demonstrated zero willingness to fight terror, Livni's proposal would thus almost certainly result in Israel being forced to withdraw to the fence without any abatement in Palestinian terrorism. That, inter alia, would expose Israel's largest cities to the same rocket bombardments now afflicting Sderot.
It certainly surprises me why anyone here in Israel would overlook that and approve of Livni without doing any fact-checking. But you see, that's exactly why she too must be strongly criticized, and no one should support her. I would assume that because she's a woman, some people think that this implies that she'd be better for the job. The answer is no. Update: here's Caroline Glick's column on Livni from last October.

UPDATE #2 (Reliapundit): Some polls show that Likud - led by former PM Netanyahu, (who allowed the Likud to dwindle down to a devout remnant) - would sweep back into power.

WEAPONS OF HEZBOLLAH KIDNAPPERS FOUND

The IDF has found a weapons cache belonging to the Hezbollah terrorists who kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev:
An IDF force operating on the northern border has found rockets and other items that were apparently left behind by the Hizbullah terrorists who kidnapped two IDF soldiers six months ago.

Tomorrow, Friday, will mark six months since IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser of Nahariya, 31, and Eldad Regev of Kiryat Motzkin, 26, were abducted by Hizbullah terrorists on Israel's northern border. Family members and friends plan to arrive at the site tomorrow to commemorate the sad half-year anniversary. Though the area is currently closed for security reasons because of the find, the organizers expect to be able to gather there as planned.
Very important: remember the two soldiers if justice is to be done.

Attack on Political Freedom in England

To the British Left, having views critical of immigration means that you must be hounded out of your job:
"Anti-racism campaigners are to protest at the English National Ballet after a dancer admitted being a member of the British National Party. Principal dancer Simone Clarke was revealed to be a member of the party by the Guardian newspaper last month. She has since defended her beliefs, and says the BNP is "the only party to take a stand" on issues like immigration.

Campaign group Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is calling for the 36-year-old ballerina to be sacked. It is planning to protest outside a performance of Giselle, in which Clarke takes the lead role, at the London Coliseum later this week...

The BNP currently holds more than 50 council seats in the UK. On its website, it portrays itself as the only party "prepared to defend our traditional principles against the politically correct agenda" of Tony Blair and David Cameron.
Update: A good comment from a reader:
"The Left has officially become what they profess to hate: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the British National Party?""
Update 2

The English National Ballet is sending out the following reply to people who have emailed them about Simone Clarke. The "but" in the last sentence sounds ominous:
"English National Ballet does not comment on political affiliations of any of its employees nor any other aspects of their personal lives. English National Ballet is an equal opportunities employer and prides itself in the ethnic diversity of all its employees. I can confirm that Simone will continue to dance as usual throughout our Christmas Season and our Spring Tour, but casting is always subject to change."
Above post crossposted from Tongue Tied. Previous TAB post on this ballerina HERE.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

FIRST PEICE OF MISSING INDONESIAN JET DISCOVERED.


BBC:
A section of a missing Indonesian plane has been discovered by a fisherman just off the west coast of Sulwesi island, search officials have said. A piece of the Adam Air Boeing 737's tailfin was discovered in the Makassar Strait. ... A search and rescue official said the serial number on the tail section matched that of the missing plane. ... the plane vanished with no emergency distress call.
NOW... WILL THEY FIND ENOUGH OF IT TO DETERMINE THE CAUSE? OR TO RULE OUT TERROR?

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - PART 25: THE RETURN OF THE SANDINISTAS


BBC :
Daniel Ortega has been inaugurated as Nicaraguan president, two months after his convincing election victory. the one-time revolutionary, who fought for almost two decades to return to power, was sworn in during a ceremony in the capital, Managua.

The Sandinista leader won November's presidential election pledging to fight hunger, poverty and corruption. Many of the leftist Latin American leaders who have swept to power in recent years attended the ceremony, including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correa.

Cuba's Fidel Castro, too ill to personally attend the swearing in, sent a message of "utmost support" to Mr Ortega. Mr Chavez arrived in Nicaragua shortly after being sworn in for his third term in office, pledging "socialism or death" in his inauguration speech.
Socialism by definition means less personal liberty and less free markets, and less liberty ALWAYS means less prosperity. Which is why it's the road to serfdom. Without a doubt, Chavez and Morales and Correa and Ortega will do to their countries what Fidel and Mugabe and Kim did to their own. Pity.

BUSH, IRAQ, SYRIA AND IRAN: IS A SURGE ALONE ENOUGH?


HERE'S WHAT BUSH SAID:
Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity – and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria.

These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.

We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.
NOW... IF THESE NEW MEASURES (INCLUDING SENDING ONE ADDITIONAL CARRIER GROUP TO THE REGION) FAIL TO STOP IRAN AND SYRIA (BY NOVEMBER - THE TIME WHEN IRAQ IS SUPPOSED TO DEFEND THEMSELVES IN BAGHDAD AND DETER ALL SECTARIAN STRIFE), THEN WHAT WILL WE DO ABOUT IT? WILL WE WALK AWAY AND CEDE MESOPOTAMIA TO THE MULLAHS??

I BELIEVE THAT THIS TALK AND THESE PROPOSED ACTIONS ARE NOT ENOUGH. WE NEED TO CRANK UP THE KINETIC PRESSURE ON SYRIA AND IRAN.

UPDATE: BUSH IS DOING MORE (hat tip Jonah):
US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized five members of staff. The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials. The US military had no immediate comment on the raid, which comes amid high tension between Iran and the US.

The Bush administration accuses Iran of helping fuel violence in Iraq, as well as trying to develop nuclear weapons. ... the raid could signal a ratcheting-up of pressure on the Iranians, in line with the rhetorical thrust of his speech.
This is KINETIC. This is much more than what the ISG suggested. This is good. Complete round-up here at MEMEORANDUM.

UPDATE #2: Iraqi PM Maliki is cranking up to: finally targeting the Shia militias.

TEDDY JO KENNEDY WANTS THE USA TO ABANDON IRAQ THE WAY HE ABANDONED MARY JO KOPECHNE









TEDDY JO KENNEDY WANTS THE USA TO ABANDON IRAQ THE WAY HE ABANDONED MARY JO KOPECHNE. Teddy cut and ran from that car on Chappaquiddick, didn't he!? You bet he did. And then got off scott free.

YUP: It's an old story from Teddy Jo - a freakin' broken record: He called Iraq Bush's Vietnam in 2004, and again this week. And he did this while calling for a withdrawal on a timetable - just as he did in the 1970's.
It's the one, true connection between Vietnam and Iraq: in both cases, the Left demands we retreat - DEMANDS WE FORSAKE VICTORY - and abandon our allies.

Just as the abandonment of South Vietnam led to a disaster for SE Asia and the USA (to 1MILLION Boat People, Pol Pot - and 3 MILLION Cambodians murdered by Leftism, the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR, and the abandonment of the Shah), so to would our abandonment of Iraq lead to a disaster for Iraq and the Middle East.

CUT AND RUN REDS: wrong then, wrong now.

Abandoning the helpless at their time of greatest need is second nature to murdering Leftist scum like Kennedy. Iraqis, South Vietnamese, Mary Jo, fetuses. It matters not.

WHY DO THEY DO IT? Partly it's because the Left always seem to favor what they feel is the easy way out; they want to let somebody else do the tough work. And partly it's because they want the "American Empire" brought to it's knees and be chastened and humbled before the "international community." Once America is on it's knees, they think they'll be able to re-make the USA into a pacifist, socialist utopia - like the USSR, only with less man-made greenhouse gases and no smoking! Heh.

UPDATE: Mark Levin nails Teddy Jo and the Left and their complicity with post-WW2 genocide in SE Asia and Africa.

ADDRESSING THE ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM

In an earlier post, Reliapundit criticized the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives for pushing legislation to require 100% inspection of all shipping containers destined for American ports (and for legislation to raise the minimum wage).

His post has attracted, in the comments, some impassioned attacks from leftists who accuse him of hating the poor, and of wanting to see New York destoyed by ship-borne Al Qaeda bomb, and the "East Coast elites were bombed to hell where we can pay for our sins." (They also supported a higher minimum wage.)

Let's take another look at the idea of inspecting every cargo brought into an American port.

First of all, let me note that it is in the first place odd for leftists to worry about another Al Qaeda mass murder attack, since leftists are usually quick to deny that terrorism is much of a threat, and to assert that the risk of terrorism has been wildly exaggerated by the Bush Administration.

As Reliapundit correctly pointed out, requiring that every container be inspected would create a drastic bottleneck in world trade, and would effectively slow down or even temporarily shut down the US economy, as well as the economies of many nations that depend on trade with the US in order to feed themselves.

It would also attempt to solve the worldwide problem of terrorism with an isolationist remedy, shoring up a fortress America without addressing the root cause of terrorism.

It's also odd that leftists would advocate creating such a barrier around America, since they usually promote open borders and granting quasi-citizenship rights to illegal aliens. They do, however, tend to support protectionist tarriffs. Tarriffs are very useful for destroying economies, the way the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff did, and destroying economies is the first step in the leftist program for taking over economies and countries. In general, leftists have only been able to come to power in ravaged economies. In the case of Chile, for example, the Allende regime deliberately sabotaged the Chilean economy so that it could more cheaply expropriate private industries.

Creating a force-field barrier around the United States would not solve the problem of terrorism, and the problem of terrorism can not be solved by having police investigators try to determine who is responsible for the latest episode of terrorist mass-murder so that taxpayer-supported leftist ideologues in the ACLU and National Lawyers' Guild can turn the subjsequent trials into showpieces of anti-American agit-prop.

The struggle against terrorism is a war.

It is a world war.

Some of the active fronts in the the world war against terrorism include the Philippines, the Indonesian archipelago (especially Sulawesi, Java, Bali, and Timor), Thailand, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Canada, the United States, and Australia. (I may have left out a few).

The United States can not be free of terrorism by isolationism.

The United States must lead the freedom-loving, peace-loving, and life-loving peoples of the world in their struggle against the war declared on the rest of the world by the jihadist terrorists.

The root cause of terrorism is the jihadist ideology. That ideology will not be defeated by inspecting every container addressed to an American port.

Moreover, the Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives know that the Senate would never pass such a foolish measure. Thus, they reveal that their support of such a supposedly draconian security program is just a fig-leaf to provide cover for their plans to surrender to the terrorist enemy as soon as they can.

A serious measure that would in fact lead to enhanced security for Americans, and at the same time make it easier for Americans to travel, such as passenger screening based on the known profiles of terrorist murderers, the Democrats would never support.

The leftist commenters are very proud of their working-class backgrounds and their "altruism." They say they are willing to sacrifice the American economy, because they care about the people.

Those poor people who would become unemployed and starving habitues of the breadlines and soup kitchens would be very comforted by these compassionate thoughts from the leftists who had destroyed the economy upon which their prior jobs depended.

As our erudite and astute co-blogger JR has repeatedly shown, leftists are however not compassionate, but haters.

Rather than impose a phony security program that would only weaken the economy without addressing the root cause of terrorism, the legislative leaders of the United States should support a program to take the war to the enemy and defeat him in his lair. The United States must lead the freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples of the world in a struggle that must be at the same time military, economic, and ideological. We have made much military progress against the enemy because of our professional and results-oriented armed forces.

But we are lagging in the softer fronts of this world war.

Luckily for us, our armed forces are made of up patriotic and freedom-loving Americans.

Unfortunately, that can not be said for those parts of our society that must wage the ideological and philosophical war against the ideology of jihadism.

In World War II, the courageous efforts of the 16 million Americans in uniform were matched by the enthusiastic participation of Hollywood, the Press, and the Universities. These institutions provided the necessary philosophical and ideological effort to undermine the ideologies of German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Japanese Militarism.

But Hollywood only supported that war because America had the good fortune to be temporarily allied with Hollywood's hero, "Uncle" Joseph Stalin.

In the war against jihadist terrorism, we can not count on Hollywood, the Press, or the Universities -- or those civilian branches of our government, like the State Department and the C.I.A. that have been heavily influenced by the soft bolshevism of American so-called "liberalism."

Jihadism has proven itself to be curiously attractive to those who believe in the leftist world view, and not only because their first instinct is to blame America and hate America for every problem in the world. Leftism actually shares a lot with jihadism.

Leftism is at its most basic level the practical expression of the belief that all of human life, and all human lives, should be directed by a supposedly benevolent State. You could also call it Statism. From Plato's Republic, to St. Thomas More's Utopia, to the phalansteries of Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, to the revolutionary socialism of Babeuf and Blanqui, the scientific socialism of Marx & Engels, the national socialism of Hitler, the fascism of Mussolini, the communism of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Ho, and to the pathetically impoverished nightmare states of Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, and Robert Mugabe --- the story is always the same: expropriation of private property, elimination of all economic freedom, and the inevitable results of tyranny, oppression, war, poverty, and environmental degradation. Socialism has never worked, and the more thoroughly socialist a program is instituted, the worse are the results that follow.

Jihadism also promises one people, one world, one State, and one ruler. It provides an unambiguous authority and an anti-capitalist ideology which are very much in harmony with the totalitarian programs of the left.

I have given one example, in an earlier post, of the keen emotional energy and joy that leftists experience when they contemplate taking away the private property that other people have created and earned. The prospect of controlling other people, and forcing other people to conform to what they are certain is the only right way to be is of course another very powerful underlying emotional drive in leftist movements.

EVIDENCE THAT IRAN IS TRAINING AL QAEDA OPERATIVES

David Bedein at The Bulletin has an article about how US army has discovered that Iran is training al Qaeda operatives:
The Middle East News Line revealed last week that U.S. military has found evidence that Iran helped train and equip al-Qaida's network in Iraq.

Officials said the U.S. military has been analyzing Iranian intelligence memorandums and other reports that detail Tehran's support of al-Qaida in Iraq. They said the captured Iranian documents marked the strongest confirmation of long-standing assessments that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was aiding both Sunni and Shiite insurgents in the effort to undermine Iraq and expel the U.S.-led coalition.

"The documents have been determined as authentic and provide the most detailed evidence of Iran's strategy in Iraq," an official said. "In short, Iran has been helping everybody, with the possible exception of the Saddam people, against us."
Another reason to knock down the Iranian dictatorship of Ahmadinejad already.

WHY I THINK NEWT GINGRICH DOES NOT MAKE A SUITABLE CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

It may be almost two years until the next presidential election in the US, but that's exactly why it'd be a good idea for now to point out just why one certain Republican does not make a good candidate, even if he has made some impressive arguments of recent. Specifically, I'm referring to Newt Gingrich, who in 1998 met with the PLO's now deceased dictator, Yasir Arafat, and, as I recall, shook hands with him. Here's the 1998 report from CNN:
Despite the potential for a cool encounter, the 90-minute meeting went well, Palestinian officials told CNN. Both Gingrich and Arafat shook hands as they emerged from the Palestinian leader's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Gingrich said he believed Mideast peace was in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Did you see that? Not only did Gingrich shake hands with a cold-blooded terrorist, he also turned to moral equations. Then, at the end of this item:
He stressed that he was "trying to be helpful" which was why he was meeting with Arafat.
I'm very sorry to say, but, by meeting with a terrorist and willingly shaking his hand, Gingrich did nothing more than get his blood on his own. And that act he did there back then, almost a decade ago, could not only be used as a weapon against him by the Democrats, but could also damage his potential as a presidential candidate overall.

Let's not forget that he also botched the 1998 elections for Congress when he made it seem as though he was more obsessed with attacking Clinton for his own misdeeds with Monica you-know-who than with a good menu of other issues that the public at the time was also interested in.

So there you have my reasons for opposing his candidacy, if he decides to run, as he may have said he would several months ago. The American public, I'm sure, would appreciate it if the Republicans could take a more convincing position by shunning terrorist leaders that previous administrations failed to do, and outlawing current ones.

In fairness to Gingrich, what he could do now is to admit that Arafat was a cannibal, and to acknowledge what the State Dept. has finally been willing to admit after all these years, that Arafat murdered American officials back in the early 1970s. But that still doesn't meant that he's qualified to run for president.

HUGO CHAVEZ: PRESIDENT FOR LIFE?

In a move that I think it is safe to say all of us here at the Astute Bloggers anticipated, Hugo Chavez has called for unlimited Presidential terms in Venezuela:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was sworn in on Wednesday for a new six-year term that he vowed to use to press a radical socialist revolution including nationalizations that have roiled financial markets.

Emboldened by his landslide re-election win, the typically combative anti-U.S. leader has gone on the attack, deciding to strip a private opposition TV channel of its license and take over some major companies owned by foreign investors. "Fatherland, socialism or death -- I take the oath," Chavez said.

The man who calls Cuban President Fidel Castro his mentor changed tradition by draping the presidential sash from his left shoulder instead of his right in what he says is a symbol of his socialist credentials.

...he wants to amend the constitution to let presidents seek an indefinite number of consecutive terms.

Chavez, president since 1999, made the comments when he was sworn in for a new six-year term on Wednesday. The constitution currently allows two consecutive terms, which would make this his last. Chavez said: "We are writing the proposed reform on indefinite presidential re-election. If the majority of the people reject it, I will be the first to applaud that. The important thing is that the people will make the decision."

OFFICIAL NEWS NOW: EHUD OLMERT WILL BE PROBED FOR CORRUPTION

At long last, Ehud Olmert is about to receive something that's been coming to him for some time now: an investigation into his corrupt activities:
Channel 10 reported Tuesday evening that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz plans to instruct Israel Police to launch an investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over three affairs to which he is allegedly connected. According to the report, the decision to open a criminal investigation was made during the investigation of alleged criminal conduct in the selling of Bank Leumi's majority shares.

Reports said that the prime minister, along with additional parties, allegedly committed criminal bribery offenses during the sale of the bank's shares in 2005. The allegations claim that Olmert, who was Minister of Finance at the time, apparently broke the law for two of his friends -- Daniel Abrams and Frank Louie -- with whom he conducted, directly and indirectly, a relationship which allegedly involved bribe. State Comptroller Justice Micha Lindenstrauss investigated the case and transferred his findings to Mazuz.
This is coming at a time when Ehud Olmert is visiting the still under Communist rule China. In other words, when he comes back, he's going to have to face a lot of much-deserved embarrassment.

Here's a few previous posts of mine that deal with his records of corrupt activities. And, here's a report from the Jerusalem Post, that tells about his very weak attempts to claim innocence. Sorry, Olmert, but I think you'd be better off admitting that you did something dishonest. I mean, a little honesty can't hurt, can it?

SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET: A FLAWED FIGURE

There is a neocon eulogy of the recently deceased Prof. Seymour Martin Lipset here. Despite the usual adjuration de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I feel that I should say a few words to set the record straight. Lipset was a very popular sociologist and political scientist but that which is popularly believed often turns out to be wrong in the long run and I believe that the positive view of Lipset's contribution is formed by his Leftist origins rather than by the lasting value of his ideas. He started out as a Trotskyite, as did the neocons.

I should perhaps declare a personal interest before going on. Despite the effusions about Lipset's good character, my own encounter with him was unimpressive, to say the least. He agreed to mark my Ph.D. dissertation and then not only failed to do so after many reminders but also failed to return his copy of the dissertation when requested to do so. This created such delays that my Ph.D. was not awarded until 1974, even though the dissertation was handed in in 1970. And why did he behave so badly? I guess it wouldn't be because the dissertation reported research results which undermined ideas that he was identified with, would it? Rather than use new data to develop his views -- as a real scientist would -- he resorted to the old Leftist strategy of denial, just as other Leftists for decades denied the evils of the Soviet State.

The central findings of the large and international program of resarch that I undertook to test a popular Lipset idea -- that working-class people are "authoritaraian" -- were finally published in Sociology and Social Research in 1983. Lipset had used selected public opinion poll data to test his ideas but I used much more closely targeted psychometric methods. I found that there was some tendency for the workers to be conservative on some social issues but NO evidence of them being "authoritarian". See here

Lipset's idea that America was saved from its "bad side" by great men is a typical example of selective Leftist attention to group differences. Leftists will trumpet how blacks have been damaged by slavery or how homosexuals need to be protected from discrimination but acknowledging that another group -- Americans of British and Northern European origin -- have particular strengths and virtues is absolutely taboo.

One only has to look at one of the "great" men that Lipset believed "saved" America -- Frankin Delano Roosevelt, the Fascist sympathizer who turned a normal cyclic depression into the Great Depression by his attacks on business and then delivered whole nations into the hands of the Soviets at Yalta. For some of the less-publicized facts about FDR see here and here and here. The truth of the matter is that America's prosperity and pre-eminence is the product of many millions of decent and hard-working individuals. To be even more precise, the success of America comes from the respect for the individual and for the rule of law which America's immigrants from Britain and Northern Europe brought with them and which they enshrined in America's way of life and institutions. But it is "racist" to say that, of course.

And Lipset's saying that "The United States is the only Protestant sectarian country in the world" is also absurd. "Sectarian" implies severe intolerance and discrimination towards people holding to other belief systems. In fact, America would have to be one of the countries with greatest freedom of religion. It is even safe to be a real conservative in America -- though not in American universities, of course.

I could go on to say more about Lipset's twisted ideas but I have no taste for cleaning out Augean stables.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)