I was pleased to see him get a column at the NY Times and this is a pretty good debut:
Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.
Never mind Cheney's heart problems, never mind that the Republicans desperately needed to distance themselves from Bush in 2008, never mind that Cheney had a lower approval rating than used car salesmen; he would have been better than McCain for the GOP?
But he's got a good rationale:
As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. In debates with Barack Obama, he would have been as cuttingly effective as he was in his encounters with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in 2000 and 2004 respectively. And when he went down to a landslide loss, the conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain power.
Interesting argument. I am sort of to the point where I wish McCain had not gotten the nomination; just because I'd be able to be one of the the people saying "I told you so!"
For a large part of the in-fighting now going on in the Republican Party. Let's face it, if he had just dumped Dick Cheney from the ticket in 2004 and put somebody else in the #2 slot, that person would have been the heir apparent and gotten the nomination. He or she would have gotten crushed of course, but the tent would have held.
Heheh, sometimes I can't believe what a buffoon he is. He shows us this graph, showing Obama's Approve/Disapprove ratings among independents: And then this among Republicans:
And claims that the trends are quite different. But in fact if you look at the graphs closely they are actually quite similar. Concentrate on the red lines (showing Obama's disapproval ratings), without looking at the black lines, and you'll see very similar trends with more and more people disapproving of Obama every day. Is Andrew that deluded that he can't see it?
Thus, Johnson's guilt-by-association attack on Geller highlights the real problem we face in America: If the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement don't recognize and respond to our own citizens' concerns about immigration and multiculturalism, then those issues will be taken over by similarly disreputable groups.
I don't know the truth about Johnson v Geller; it certainly does appear that she's going to appear at a conference hosted by a German with lots of neo-Nazi associations; that is the "guilt by association" part. Geller's response is rather surprising:
And just for the record, nazis do not hang out with Jews, even pretty ones. Ever.
Later she links to this post which supposedly proves that the neo-Nazis are pro-Israel. How can they tell?
In reality, the fact that we were invited to speak indicates in itself that Pro-Köln is not a neo-Nazi group. We are known to be pro-Israel, and if I go I would speak in defense of Israel and against neo-Nazism, Holocaust denial, etc. Outside of Charles Johnson's fantasies, no one has ever actually seen a pro-Israel neo-Nazi.
Don't those two "rebuttals" amount to the same point; that they can't be neo-Nazis because they're willing to hang out with "us" (Jews and Israel supporters)? They do link to this post at PJ Media which claims that some neo-Nazis don't support the Free Cologne Movement because they look at the Islamists as their allies against the Jews.
I'm not going to link to the Little Green Footballs post that kicked this all off because I do think that Charles is making this personal.
Bill Parmley, former coordinator for Texas, quit after alleging Simcox botched the organization's financing. He also warned that some members of his Goliad, Texas, chapter, which recently was shut down, were "racists" and "wanted to go after Mexicans as a whole," not simply report undocumented immigrants to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Although Simcox denied Parmley's allegations and said the organization is financially sound, his recent pleas for donations hint at money troubles. A Minuteman Civil Defense Corps e-mail sent Friday and signed by Simcox stated that overhead for the October operation has doubled because volunteers started patrolling after Hurricane Katrina to fill in for roughly 240 U.S. Border Patrol agents dispatched to the Gulf Coast.
My buddy Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times has some more info on Simcox:
The minuteman honcho's ex-wives have also called into question Simcox's character. According to a 2005 article in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine Intelligence Report, Simcox's first ex-wife accused him of trying to sexually molest their 14-year-old daughter. His second ex-wife, accused Simcox in court of having a mental breakdown and of sometimes violent, erratic behavior.
"He once took a knife from the kitchen and threatened to kill himself," the second ex-wife, Kim Dunbar testified in court, according to IR. "When he was angry, he broke furniture, car windows, he banged his head against the wall repeatedly and punched things."
And the money thing comes up again:
Critics in and out of his movement have assailed MCDC's promises to build "Israeli-style" border fences on private land near the border. In 2007, Fountain Hills resident James Campbell sued MCDC in an attempt to get back $100,000 he had donated for the construction of just such a fence. Campbell, who had mortgaged his property to raise the $100K, accused Simcox and MCDC of diverting the money for other uses. According to a report last year in The Sierra Vista Herald, Campbell said that he "allowed the civil case to be dismissed because he did not want to continue to fund the litigation."
I am not entirely opposed to conservatives running opposition candidate against Republicans they feel are insufficiently right wing. Pat Toomey, for example, is a solid conservative and would do a great job with Arlen Specter's seat. But Simcox is not the answer for Arizona.
Check out this interesting paragraph in an article discussing whether the enhanced interrogation techniques were successful in stopping terrorist attacks on the United States:
For both sides, the political stakes are high, as proposals for a national commission to unravel the interrogation story appear to be gaining momentum. Mr. Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack, critics may blame his decision to rein in C.I.A. interrogators.
But if he succeeds in discrediting the techniques, maybe folks won't blame him. Yes, indeed the "political" stakes are high. Some (but not the Times) might point out that the non-political stakes are high as well.
Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.
Roose had transferred to the Virginia campus from Brown University in Providence, a famously liberal member of the Ivy League. His Liberty classmates knew about the switch, but he kept something more important hidden: He planned to write a book about his experience at the school founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell.
And surprise, surprise, he did not find the hotbed of intolerance that he expected:
He met students who use Bible class to score dates, apply to top law schools and fret about their futures, and who enjoy gossip, hip-hop and R-rated movies — albeit in a locked dorm room.
A roommate he depicts as aggressively anti-gay — all names are changed in the book — is an outcast on the hall, not a role model.
There are some oddball bits like this:
He visited a campus support group for chronic masturbators, where students were taught to curb impure thoughts.
But overall he's apparently gotten quite a bit out of the experience:
Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.
President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.
“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.
One of the things that has always bugged me about the liberal position on advanced interrogation techniques is that they want to have it both ways. Not only do they claim the moral high ground by declaring torture wrong, but they also maintain that you don't get anything valuable out of it. Well, now we know they're wrong on the second point.
“Some people at that summit in Belgium were not people we should have been associated with,” Johnson said, pointing out that since 2007 the terrorism-focused conservative bloggers have become supporters of Dutch politician Geert Wilders , who wants to outlaw Islam in his country. “Some of these people outright want to ban Islam from the United States, which I think is crazy, completely nuts. That’s not something we do in this country. These people will outright defend banning the Koran or deporting Muslims. That’s popular with the Geller/Spencer crowd.”
When they talk about Johnson today, the rest of the terrorism-focused bloggers alternate between anger and regret. He has smeared them, they say, and according to Dymphna he’s “destroyed a lot of networking that was beginning to emerge” between American and European critics of Islamic extremism. “He’s really gone off the deep end,” Geller said, pointing to Johnson’s more and more frequent criticisms of creationists, such as the attack on the anti-evolution, Glenn Beck-inspired event, which made the host angry enough to lash out at LGF on his show. “He’s a leftist blogger now.”
Obama Sucks Up to Teachers Unions, Drops Kids from Program
This stinks to high heaven. There seems to be no doubt the program was working:
What happened, according to a Department of Education study, is that after three years the voucher students scored 3.7 months higher on reading than students who remained in the D.C. schools. In addition, students who came into the D.C. voucher program when it first started had a 19 month advantage in reading after three years in private schools.
Well, you can imagine how embarrassing that result was to the public schools. So Obama's team gutted the program:
And now Secretary Duncan has applied a sly, political check-mate for the D.C. voucher plan.
With no living, breathing students profiting from the program to give it a face and stand and defend it the Congress has little political pressure to put new money into the program. The political pressure will be coming exclusively from the teacher’s unions who oppose the vouchers, just as they oppose No Child Left Behind and charter schools and every other effort at reforming public schools that continue to fail the nation’s most vulnerable young people, low income blacks and Hispanics.
Carnivalito from Sky Islands by Caldera. They don't get much more obscure than this four-album latin jazz band, but nobody who bought their albums regretted it. Almost all the band members went on to have long and reasonably successful careers in the music business
The guys who insist they aren't heroes, usually are:
The unassuming ship captain who escaped the clutches of Somali pirates made a triumphant return home Friday, insisting he's no hero, just an ordinary seaman. Richard Phillips said the U.S. Navy, which pulled off the daring high-seas rescue that ended his five-day captivity, deserves the credit.
"They're the superheroes," a relaxed, hale-looking Phillips said upon his arrival at Burlington International Airport. "They're the titans. They're impossible men doing an impossible job, and they did the impossible with me. ... They're at the point of the sword every day, doing an impossible job every day."
Obviously the SEALs are heroes as well, but let's remember this guy put his life on the line to save his crew:
Phillips, who had offered himself up as a hostage after pirates made an aborted attempt to seize the Maersk Alabama cargo ship April 8 off the coast of Somalia, survived the ordeal after Navy snipers on the USS Bainbridge killed the three pirates holding him with simultaneous shots under the cover of night.
Hey, credit where credit is due; I was pissed earlier in the week when I heard that 9-11 Truther Ernie Hancock might speak at the tea party on Wednesday. I have not heard what happened on that front, but let me point out that a bunch of 9-11 Truthers tried to sell their revisionist history at the local event and what happened?
In the first three months of the year, Hillary Clinton paid off $3.7 million in bills left over from her failed presidential campaign, according to a report her campaign filed Wednesday afternoon with the Federal Election Commission.
The report shows that Clinton has only one vendor left to pay off: pollster Mark Penn. Her campaign paid his firm $3 million in the first quarter, but still owes it $2.3 million.
But I did have to blink a bit at this claim:
Though Clinton had $2.6 million in the bank at the end of March, she couldn't use that to pay off the remainder of the Penn debt because her campaign operation still has overhead costs it needs to pay.
For instance, in the first quarter, the campaign paid $9,400 in salary to staffers in New York and Washington, plus $2,300 in phone services, $7,000 for website maintenance and $30,000 in travel costs.
That's about $50,000 in the first quarter. Let's be generous and multiply that by 4, even though the expenses for things like salary and travel have to be going down now at Hillary for President, right? So that's $200,000. It sure sounds like she has plenty to pay off Penn.
Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle” spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus/porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009. It’s the first time she had ever jumped into political organizing of any kind. She is not affiliated with any “corporate lobbyist” or think tank or national taxpayers’ organization. She’s a young conservative mom who blogs. Amazingly, she turned around the event in a few days all on her own by reaching out on the Internet, to her local talk station, and to anyone who would listen.
Good pushback against the lefty meme that this is some Fox News-sponsored enterprise.
They're trying to stir up outrage because Sarah Palin nominated Wayne Anthony Ross to be Attorney General of the State of Alaska. Somebody went through some old columns that Ross had written and found that he (gasp) defended a student who did a statue of a KKK member.
I saw this yesterday and was struck that despite the provocative title of the essay (KKK art project gets 'A' for courage), the people who were pushing it seemed unable to come up with any really objectionable pull quotes.
Come today, and Sam Stein, the designated smear merchant of the Huffington Post, has the complete article reproduced. And what do you know, there's a lot less to this story than the first breathless accounts indicated.
The art project in question was done as part of an assignment on "Nightmares and Monsters", not "people I admire." Ross notes there would have been no controversy if he'd done a statue of a fictional monster like Freddy Krueger:
But a KKK figure is a real monster. And the nightmare of racial prejudice is real also. And if we are ever to achieve equality of races in this country, we must be prepared to fight such monsters and end such nightmares, once and for all.
So whence come the cries that Ross is a racist? Well, apparently he was insufficiently sympathetic to those who protested the statue, one of whom threatened to take down the statue if the university administrators did not. Shockingly, Ross seemed to feel that there was something wrong with a person threatening university administrators with an illegal act if they did not bow to her demands.
And of course none of this is about Ross; it's all about Palin. The kooks are clutching at straws here.
As the time approached, my assistant Anne said, “They want to know who you want to follow.” Borrowing language from Anne’s generation, I said, “Duh?”
I know Tiger from our Stanford connection. I once sat with him at a Stanford-Duke basketball game. Stanford won on a buzzer-beater, and we stormed the court together. With that kind of bonding, whom else would I pull for? I had decided that if Tiger did not win, I would champion the cause of Phil Mickelson (met him at the White House and he’s a really nice guy); Stewart Cink (met him in Atlanta and he’s a really nice guy); or Anthony Kim (haven’t met him but I like his swagger).
In the last week alone, the Obama DOJ (a) attempted to shield Bush's illegal spying programs from judicial review by (yet again) invoking the very "state secrets" argument that Democrats spent years condemning and by inventing a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim that not even the Bush administration espoused, and (b) argued that individuals abducted outside of Afghanistan by the U.S. and then "rendered" to and imprisoned in Bagram have no rights of any kind -- not even to have a hearing to contest the accusations against them -- even if they are not Afghans and were captured far away from any "battlefield." These were merely the latest -- and among the most disturbing -- in a string of episodes in which the Obama administration has explicitly claimed to possess the very presidential powers that Bush critics spent years condemning as radical, lawless and authoritarian.
It may seem like they're being consistent in opposing wiretapping and invasions of privacy whether it's under Obama or Bush. But that's not really the issue. What the left is pushing for is diclosure of information on wiretapping during the Bush era, in the hopes that there will be something in there that will result in jail for top administration officials. That's really what Greenwald wants and what Obama (quite sensibly) is opposing.
Their new meme of the week is that Fox News came up with the idea. Not so.
Here’s the nasty little bigot Jane Hamsher saying that the Tea Party protests are nothing but a Fox News/big corporation operation. And here she is again saying the same thing. Notice how she scampers away like a scared rat when someone asks her if she has anything close to, you know, proof.
Steve Benen’s on the same kick and he quotes Oliver Willis who put on his deerstalker cap and came up with, you guessed it, exactly the same conclusion.
If Hamsher, Benen and Willis are against it, it must be good because those idiots are always wrong. And yes, I am 100% serious about that; Hamsher and Benen are the biggest dolts on the left imaginable.
The only thing I am warning people about is that there absolutely are infiltrators at this point, and thus you should be very suspicious of people who want to divert the talk to "the real problem" which is (fluoride in the drinking water/The Federal Reserve/The international banksters, the Council on Foreign relations).
Ever heard of the "diamond pattern"? CPUSA operatives used this tactic to control meetings (of labor unions, etc.) back in the day. Send four operatives to the meeting, stationing one at the front of the room, one at the rear, and one each on the left and right sides of the midpoint of the room. When one operative stands up to make his point, the other three are like, "Yeah, he's right!" This creates the appearance of support throughout the room, in order to bring bandwagon psychology into play.
Another common tactic is the provocateur ploy; try to whip up the more extreme elements of the crowd with calls to "Burn the books" as that one gal did at the Ohio tea party that I pointed out the other day.
I have nothing against the tea parties; they strike me as a good form of protest. But watch out for the guys who start talking about how the real problem is the international bankers and the Federal Reserve:
Just as the Sons of Liberty protested "Taxation without Representation", we will be protesting the private banking institutions such as the Federal Reserve and its "Inflation Tax" and the bankster gangsters and their unconstitutional bailout as allowed by the Legislative Branch.
The guy in question, who was helping organize the Pensacola Tea Party, turned out to have quite an interesting website:
Most disturbing: the website which hosts Mr. A*'s email address (www.meetthetruth.org) is an antiglobalist, antiwar conspiracy-theory group. Among its tamer claims is that the 9/11 attack was an inside job done by "Zionists." This is just the kind of association the media would love to jump on to discredit to the entire Tea Party movement.
The actual website itself is down right now; it's not one of the ones I recognize from dealing with the 9-11 Nutters.
I'm not saying don't participate in the tea parties, just saying that when somebody starts pushing the Federal Reserve crap or talking about fiat money, know that your dealing with an infiltrator from the Ron Paul brigades.
Update: And right on cue, guess who's on the speaker schedule at the Phoenix Tea Party?
Ernest Hancock It’s Not My Debt TI 3 6.59-7:02 pm
Ernie Hancock, local libertarian lunatic and 9-11 Truther. Ernie used to have a radio show. Want to guess on which station?
1480 on the AM dial in Phoenix
In other words, the old far-left Phoenix Nova M radio. Yeah, this guy belongs at the Tea Party like Hillary Clinton.
Update: Guess who else is going to be there? The local 9-11 Truthers.
The Tea Party will join us all together against the recent Bankster Bailouts. Join us around 5 pm - 7pm as we march on the State Capitol building to demand that our leaders do their jobs! We will have plenty of signs, banners, DVD's & balloons. Bring signs or whatever you'd like to show your disgust for taxation without representation. . . Don't forget your teabags!!! :)
And who sponsors the Phoenix 9-11 Truth group? Why, it's Ernie Hancock!
I hereby announce that I will unequivocally support the Republican candidate for President in 2012, no matter who he or she may be, and that I will support all Republican candidates in 2010. And that absolutely includes Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul; I'd rather have them than somebody who'd pal around with Al Frankenstein.
Let me point out here that it is no surprise that cranks from the right wing (and yes, we have them) are going to try to latch their cause onto a more popular movement like the tea party groups that have sprung up around the country. I disagree with LGF here; I saw no signs that the audience was eating up the idiotic spiel that starts about about 2:00 in. I would have liked to see people laughing him off when he started in with the cable boxes being a tool to brainwash us all.
The girl who posted the YouTube video also appears to be the gal calling for book-burning, so take that part with a grain of salt.
Spencer Bachus: Right On the Principle, Wrong on the Numbers
There aren't 17 socialists in the US House of Representatives. My guess is more like 71. The House "Progressive" Caucus is made up of the far-left weenies in the House, like Sheila Jackson Lee, Dennis Kucinich, etc. Guess who founded it? The only socialist in Congress who admitted he was a socialist; Bernie Sanders.
Update: Looks like a whole lot of us conservative bloggers are getting our marching orders from Soros. Rick Moran checks in with a broadside at Beck:
Now, if someone wants to make a case that this was a rational, reasoned response to our current crisis, I would first put you in a padded room and then give you some crayons to play with. Perhaps one of things that attracts many fringe righties to Beck is that often, he appears to be barely under control, as if powerful emotions have a hold of him and only with a mighty, conscious effort is he able to keep from erupting into spasms of emotive irrationality. This plays well especially on TV where Beck has been reduced to near tears several times when contemplating what America is becoming.
But what are we rationally minded conservative thinkers to do when shouted down by an ever-growing mob of Beck-ish doomsayers? Moran says that if we can’t beat the crazies, we might as well join them. Of course, he’s only joking, but he’s right in a sense. The real question is, then, what are we to do when we conservative thinkers are subjected to the kind of vicious vitriol normally reserved for the liberal nutroots and their cronies?
How is it that Charles Johnson and Christopher Orr both think Glenn Beck (whose Fox show I've never watched, BTW) represents the camel's nose in the tent, a dangerous intrusion of crackpottery into the Republican mainstream, while the genuine wingnuts still feel as ostracized and alienated as ever?
Charles Johnson and Christopher Orr probably both think that because, unlike RSM, they have actually watched Beck's shenanigans.
ASU: Thanks for the Speech, But No Honorary Degree
I don't particularly care either way but it does give me a reason to smirk a bit that Arizona State University is not awarding some honorary doctorate on Barack Obama despite his planned commencement speech this year.
It's a snub especially when you consider that ASU previously awarded an honorary doctorate to Douglas Wilder, the one-term (black) governor of Virginia, a pretty obvious comparable.
Go Devils!
Now, comes the obvious; somebody at ASU likes him or he would not have been invited in the first place, and Arizona has the potential to be a battleground state in 2012. So the negative is that Obama may be getting some votes and supporters among those graduating seniors and their friends and family.
Libs are trying to push this story: as some sort of cause celebre:
A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”
Killer lede and you can imagine the howls from the left about what an insensitive jerk Betty Brown (the legislator in question) is. But the clown hat belongs on the idiot lefties this time when you read the context:
Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
Okay, so now we're talking about people who have already (somehow) changed their names on their driver's licenses and on school registrations, and yet have a different legal name for voting purposes? Can you see why Betty Brown's question was not out of line or absurd? She was not telling them to change their names from out of the blue, she was telling them to change their names to what appears on their driver's licenses. A completely reasonable request.
Greg Sargent writes about how the lib bloggers are moaning about how they don't get any love when it comes time to pass out the ad dollars:
“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.”
Hamsher singled out Americans United for Change, which raises and spends big money on TV ad campaigns driving Obama’s agenda, as well as the constellation of groups associated with it, and the American Association of Retired Persons, also a big TV advertiser.
“Most want the easy way — having a big blogger promote their agenda,” adds Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos. “Then they turn around and spend $50K for a one-page ad in the New York Times or whatever.” Moulitsas adds that officials at such groups often do nothing to engage the sites’s audiences by, say, writing posts, instead wanting the bloggers to do everything for them.
I'm not entirely opposed to the concept, but it certainly raises troubling questions about editorial independence.
He’s right. This turn toward the extreme right on the part of Fox News is troubling, and will achieve nothing in the long run except further marginalization of the GOP—unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution.
Chafee has a storied name in Rhode Island politics – his father, John, represented the state in the Senate for 23 years. But Chafee disaffiliated from the Republican party in 2006 after facing loud opposition from conservative Republicans over his moderate-to-liberal voting record in the Senate. He won the primary, but lost to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in the general election
I wonder if his political opponents are aware of his flirtation with the 9-11 "Truthers"?
Well, Now We Know What Obama Will Do When That 3:00 AM Phone Call Comes
Roll over and go back to sleep. The New Republic is annoyed they actually bothered to wake him:
It's a small thing but did Robert Gibbs really need to wake Obama at 4:30 am with news of the North Korean missile launch? We knew the launch was coming and Obama had no imminent decision to make. Waking the president to tell him things so he can return to a troubled sleep that leaves him less sharp the next morning strikes me as a PR-oriented tradition we can do without.
The spot, which is actually an ancient monster storm that measures about three Earths across, lost 15 percent of its diameter between 1996 and 2006, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found.
It shrank by about 1 kilometer (about 0.6 miles) a day during that time period, said Xylar Asay-Davis, a postdoctoral researcher who was part of the study.
