Listening to the ever growing number of leftists decry George W. Bush and his cronies as fascists has led me wonder what the leftists consider ‘fascist’. Unfortunately it appears to be anyone who happens to disagree with them. Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to Bush, the UN, ‘international law’, and Iraq.

Paul Berman illustrates this disconnection between the leftists and the realities of fascism in an article published in the Winter 2004 edition of Dissent Magazine.

In the closing paragraphs of his article he tries so hard to open the eyes of his friend to the foolishness of his declarations that Bush is a fascist, but fails:

My friend said, “I’m for the UN and international law, and I think you’ve become a traitor to the left. A neocon!”

I said, “I’m for overthrowing tyrants, and since when did overthrowing fascism become treason to the left?”

“But isn’t George Bush himself a fascist, more or less? I mean-admit it!”

My own eyes widened. “You haven’t the foggiest idea what fascism is,” I said. “I always figured that a keen awareness of extreme oppression was the deepest trait of a left-wing heart. Mass graves, three hundred thousand missing Iraqis, a population crushed by thirty-five years of Ba’athist boots stomping on their faces-that is what fascism means! And you think that a few corrupt insider contracts with Bush’s cronies at Halliburton and a bit of retrograde Bible-thumping and Bush’s ridiculous tax cuts and his bonanzas for the super-rich are indistinguishable from that?-indistinguishable from fascism? From a politics of slaughter? Leftism is supposed to be a reality principle. Leftism is supposed to embody an ability to take in the big picture. The traitor to the left is you, my friend . . .”

But this made not the slightest sense to him, and there was nothing left to do but to hit each other over the head with our respective drinks.

This shines a light on the problems that many among the left suffer – the inability to understand what is and isn’t so, overusing and misusing words to define opponents that does nothing but demean themselves and cheapen the definitions of what evil really is. They muddy the waters, try to blur the line between right and wrong, good and evil. They have become so obsessed with one person in the government that they’ve come unhinged, willing to say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise consider doing. They become the very thing they claim to be against. They betray their own beliefs.

And they’re blind to it.

Of course, it’s just my opinion. I could be wrong…..

…but in this case, not likely.

(A tip of the hat to Duck Season)

Joe Lieberman got another boost of “Joe-mentum” Thursday from a crucial endorsement:

By Jason Nodler - TCP New Mexico Correspondent

The only political coverage I could watch on TV [Tuesday] night was Nightline. Having spent the last ten years in Houston running an underground theater company and having succeeded sufficiently that it might now be called simply a theater company (not quite so underground as it once was), I decided to move to Albuquerque, New Mexico — partly because of that great Neil Young song and partly, as idealized by that song, because I didn’t know anyone here. I still don’t. That’s the good news. The bad news is I don’t have cable yet, so I watched [Tuesday] night’s results on the internet and on Nightline. Kerry and Dean were both on the program. Having supported Kerry, then Dean (“I can’t believe what Kerry’s saying about him! I’ll never vote for Kerry!”), then wavering between Kerry and Edwards, I am now squarely in the camp of the undecided. Will Saletan’s got a good article on Slate (“Death of a Salesman”) that makes the case that Kerry’s being sold by everyone but himself and that when it comes time for him to personally make the sale he falls flat. Now I didn’t see his speech last night, but on Nightline at least that criticism seemed pretty right on — he spoke in the broad cliches of the front-runner and aimed his attacks at easy targets like ‘special’ and ‘powerful’ interests (can’t anyone on either side do this?), hitting them softly and carefully enough that, had his attacks been darts, they would have fallen out of the board before they could be counted toward his score. The old knock on him lives: publically, at least, he continues to lack passion. He has the issues on his side though and, if the public is much smarter than he or any of the other candidates (on either side) apparently gives it credit for, that should be enough to put him over the top.

I get so sad watching Dean now. He is absolutely the best candidate with the best message and he’s absolutely lost touch with both his message and, it seems, also his interest in it. And when I speak of Dean’s passion I’m not talking about the forced enthusiasm he displayed for his wounded campaign in the famous Iowa speech, but the passion he used to reserve for the core Democratic issues to which the other campaigns only paid lip service. Both Kerry and Dean have suffered from the careful, defensive campaigns that frontrunners inevitably run (“Power corrupts,” as they say. At the least, it deflates.). It never fails and it never fails to disappoint. Dean’s old “anger” is exactly what’s lacking in Kerry, Clark, Edwards and the new and decidedly unimproved Dean. They all talk about taking back America now (I’m sure this slogan’s been around forever, but it was on every single piece of Jerry Brown’s paraphenalia when I ran his Houston campaign and I can’t help but smile when this year’s models use it.), but while each of them makes the intellectual case for the importance of “taking back this country” not one of them displays a personal stake in it. Since Dean, anyway. And if these guys can’t get passionate about the argument for regime change at home, they can hardly expect anyone else to.

This was the Gore problem. Deeply held beliefs badly married with careful campaign strategies. The public wants passion we’re told, so they all start imitating Dean (old Dean). Then Edwards strikes a chord with his “positive” campaigning (which, let’s face it, was the act of a desperate campaign trying to carve out something, anything, to set itself apart from the pack) and now the public wants gentility, so they all imitate Edwards. It’s not specific to Democrats — the “reformer with results” thing was Bush dancing McCain — but it is specific to politics and it’s grossly disappointing. This is why Dean was so refreshing. McCain, too. Dean even had the benefit of being on the right side of the issues. But apparently, as close as Dean got, you can’t be right and win. Not yet anyway. The public (and the establishment, another unfortunate necessity to a successful major party bid), whatever it wants, apparently does not want someone with the strength of his convictions. Or at least they don’t want someone with the gall to display that strength in public. They want humility bordering impotence. They want someone “safe.” They don’t want to “take back this country” and they don’t even know what that means. Don’t believe that line about ‘someone they can have a beer with’ either. They want someone who drinks O’Doul’s, never raises his voice and only breaks a sweat when jogging.

I saw Clark [in New Mexico] today. He wasn’t bad. Of course, he wasn’t good either. He was fine. His campaign aides probably told him he was “just right.” (Jerry Brown got off a great line in one of the 92 debates. Drawing on his Jesuit background he referenced the Bible to say, “You are neither hot nor cold so I vomited you out of my mouth. That’s what I say about moderates.”) As it is with Kerry, Clark’s biographical video upstaged his actual stump speech easily, reminding me again how politics kills any sincere spirit that might have once resided in a candidate. Clark is so much better than he has been even once on the trail. The evidence litters his personal and professional history, but is woefully absent in this campaign. He had some good moments today though. He doesn’t come off half as creepy in person as he does on television, which is a tremendous relief. I hadn’t heard the speech he gave today, so I don’t know if it’s new or old but it was strong enough. He started by listing five or so values he’d picked up in the military. A few were faith, family and inclusion (employed to make the case for affirmative action — one of his better arguments). And then he devoted time to each one, explaining how he (and the party) embodies these values better than Bush and the GOP. One good line was about how his faith teaches to take care of people less fortunate than one’s self. He called that “living your faith” and said that that was one of the main reasons he was proud to be a Democrat. His best stuff was on family values. He talked about how you couldn’t have a family without a job because you couldn’t afford one and followed by characterizing job creation as a family value. He applied the same template to decently crafted arguments for attention to health care, education, the environment, etc. When he let himself roll it was effective, when he didn’t it reminded me why his campaign’s been sagging.

With the TV creepiness out of the way — in public Clark actually does blink on occasion and he apparently doesn’t feel compelled to haul out the fakey, wax figure smile that haunts his television appearances — his main problem was that he still insisted on talking down to his audience. He’s the same in debates and interviews. His painfully measured rhythms, his unnatural pauses and his slow to the point of sing-songy delivery (I swear this is not Southern — it’s specific to him) combine to inspire nothing so much in the listener as restlessness and agitation. There were times his speech — and, dare I say, his passion? — got the better of him and he seemed to forget to speak to us like “ordinary people” (read: benign but dumb or perhaps differently abled children) and instead spoke to us like intellectual equals. Those were his best moments and they both (yes, there were only two) elicited standing ovations.

The thing is, Clark is right on the issues. And Kerry is right and Dean is right and Edwards is right and Gephardt was right and so was Gore. And I believe they believe what they’re saying. But, with the very rare exception, the only one that’s made me want to fight for what they (and I) believe in is Dean. And he hasn’t done it in what feels like a very long while. Every one of these candidates should be locked in a room for a week with nothing to do but watch Gore’s Move On speeches. They have been the best speeches, and the best delivered speeches, of the season. Of course, Gore couldn’t give those speeches when he was a candidate. He had the same problem all these other guys have now. If someone can manage to not only “speak truth to power,” but to speak it truthfully, they will win. And they will deserve to win.

I agree with those who say there is nothing more important to the future of this country than denying a second term to George Bush. Regardless of what the public says it wants though (and let’s face it — they don’t have the first idea what they want until the media tells them), this important mission will be better accomplished by true believers expressing true beliefs than by over-coached tightrope walkers.

Jason Nodler is a New Mexico playwright who ran Jerry Brown’s Houston office in 1992.

[File under humor]

Can I get a HELL YEAH? A fellow New Yorker, Ronnie James Dio is my choice for President of the United States. He is the only one who can take us into the next four years with confidence and righteousness. He has worked in several cabinets, doing time with Ritchie Blackmore and Ozzy Osbourne before striking out on his own to win the hearts and minds of American voters.

Dio on Homeland Security: So, fortune shine your light on me and my clothes Cause we need some security. What he means is that he doesn’t want to have to wear radioactive suits, so he is going to be big on securing the U.S. against terror attacks.

Dio on Crime: Cry out to legions of the brave, time again to save us from the jackals of the street. RJD would send the National Guard out wipe out street crime. Every day, in every state.

Dio on the War on Terror: Ride the tiger/You can see his stripes but you know he’s clean/Oh don’t you see what I mean/Gotta get away/Holy Diver. Basically, you go all religious jihad on us, we’ll go vendetta jihad on your ass.

Dio on legalizing marijuana: And now you can fly/So take your magic carpet ride. Enough said.

Dio on Gay Rights: I was feelin’ rather good/Should’ve touched some wood. Yea, he’s on your side, guys.

As it says on Dio’s election blog:

In fantasy tales, peasants had to worry about dragons coming to take their children away, hoping that their feudal lords would protect them from the marauding dragons with their strength or magic. But those times are long gone, and today’s leaders have lost all their magic. Fortunately, the only thing that regular people need to protect themselves today is the vote — and you’ve got it!

His name is Dio and he dances on the sand. Ronnie James Dio.

Get out the vote.

If the numbers hold up, it looks like Kerry could have another impressive victory in New Hampshire. With 71% of Districts reporting CNN has called the race. Kerry appears to have won by around 15% of the vote. So the question now is who still has a chance and who doesn’t.

Kerry
Okay … so its obvious Kerry is now beyond a shadow of a doubt the “front runner”. But there is still much to be decided.

Dean
The only thing more certain than Kerry’s frontrunner status is Dean lack of status. Dean needed a win in New Hampshire, not just because he lost Iowa, but also because he isn’t really polling well in the states that are to vote in next week’s primaries. Even before tonight he was polling fifth in both South Carolina and Oklahoma, fourth in Arizona. No fresh poll data is available for the other states participating … but I wouldn’t expect much there either. The question mark left for Dean is who will he endorse. Important: Dean technically still has a delegate lead, although that should change very fast as the primaries move on. This is possible because not all delegates are tied to the primary elections. For instance, New Hampshire has 27 total delegates but only 22 tied to tonight’s primary. How these other delegates are assigned is extraordinarily complicated but you can read more here. So even if Dean loses he migth still play an important roll in Boston

Edwards
While Edwards only received about 13% of the New Hampshire vote, he’s still in good position for the long run. He has a respectable 5 point lead in South Carolina with 18% still undecided. He’s running 2nd in Okalahoma, only 5 points behind Clark who will probably maintain that lead due to the state’s proximity to Arkansas. Edwards is also polling pretty well in Arizona. While he may not have the energy to win the nomination, he can certainly rack up enough delegates to be a factor in the nomination.

Clark
While Clark is certainly weakened by his performance in New Hampshire, he’s not dead yet. He’s doing well in South Carolina, Okalahoma and Arizona. He might just be able to hang in long enough to benefit from some infighting between Kerry and Edwards. Yeah, I know they’re both brandishing their happy faces at the moment, but once Dean is beaten (if he isn’t already) they will have to turn on each other. Unless, of course, a backroom deal is struck to secure a Kerry-Edwards ticket.

Lieberman
There isn’t much to say here except … oh, poor Joe. Probably one of the most fair minded of all the candidates, he unfortunately lacks the ability to get voters excited about taking on Bush. Perhaps he lacks the temperament as well. Lieberman can play an important roll on the stump however, if he picks up the banner for either Kerry or Edwards. He would brings an air of establishment support to either. By dropping out sooner and supporting Edwards he might even earn himself a cabinet position, were Edwards to win. But I wouldn’t expect Joe to do anything but what he thinks is right for the party or the country.

Sharpton and Kuncinich
Well … nevermind.

All this being said, I have a feeling that most everyone will hang on until next week at least. Now that delegates are assigned porportionately, any candidate could rack up a hand full of delegates that he could then hang on to until the convention. Doing so keeps them in the process even if not as a viable candidate. If the race turns out to be close going into the convention, those delegates could then be traded for something of value (whatever that means).

The Detroit Free Press’s TV best bets touches (sort of) upon an underreported aspect of this election season: the wrenching weekly conflict for those of us who are both American politics junkies and American Idol junkies!

Who do we watch: Simon, Paula & Randy, or Howard, Wesley & the Johns? This battle royale happened when Iowa voted, it happens again tonight, and it promises to become a weekly, every-Tuesday ritual until the nomination is decided.

The West Coast is safe — New Hampshire’s result will probably be known by 8:00 PM PST, when Idol airs — but back east, Simon will be dissing various “worst singers ever” during prime vote-counting hours. It’s bad in the Central and Mountain time zones, too; my house in Arizona will probably be segregated again into two separate TV-watching “zones.”

Leftist Censorship now Comes With a Free Aggravated Assault

From Little Tiny Lies.

All the idiots who defend Al Franken have a big problem to cope with today. Bigger than the abysmal stupidity they have to cope with in the first place.

Al just flipped out and attacked a heckler at a Dean rally. A LaRouchie was yelling during the festivities. The shrimpy, bespectacled, hobbitlike hack comic jumped him and knocked him to the ground. Al later said he did it out of respect for free speech.

Let’s see. What was the LaRouchie doing when Al went postal on him? Let’s say it together…SPEAKING. So I guess to Al, “freedom” means “the right to be sat on by a third-tier comedy writer.”

Censorship is almost exclusively the tool of the left now. When was the last time anyone on the right even tried to silence someone? John Mitchell couldn’t even make his own wife shut up. But the left does it all the time. They try to get Rush taken off the air. They pass Orwellian, authoritarian rules on college campuses, essentially forbidding anyone to say anything negative about anything the left likes. They throw eggs at Arnold while he campaigns for governor. They barge onstage while President Reagan tries to accept awards. Now they’ve progressed to outright beatings.

I haven’t seen the guy Al took down, but it’s safe to assume he wasn’t a Navy SEAL or a martial arts instructor. I wish some day he’d pull a stunt like that on someone like Ollie North or J.C. Watts. They’d take Al’s little shrimpy body home in three shopping bags and a damp sponge.

Remember, conservatives: free speech isn’t for us. It’s not even for the LaRouchies. It’s for Al and guys who want to photograph crucifixes soaking in urine. So if you want to heckle at a Dean rally, make sure you bring your own bucket of urine to stand in. Then you’re golden. So to speak.

Just when you think idiotarianism has hit its limit, someone steps up and proves you wrong.

First, the good news. In the wake of her remarks that she could imagine herself becoming a suicide bomber, the British Liberal Democratic Party still has enough sense that they’ve asked MP Jenny Tonge to step down as their spokeswoman for children. (Hat Tip: reader Elaine)

Spokeswoman for children. Such times we live in.

When even the often-addled Lib Dems understand the problem, you’d think the issue would be pretty cut and dried. Yet my article’s humourous jabs at both Ms. Tonge and her party’s electoral prospects inspired not one but 2 idiotarian responses. Ross Judson’s reply post reads like a conservative’s parody of bleeding-heart liberals, full of ‘understanding’ for the suicide bombers and refusal to judge. Alas, it’s no parody. The other respondent, Andy, actually believes that it’s perfectly legitimate to blow up grandmothers in the streets - and says so directly.

I wish I was making that up. As you can see, I’m not.

I’ll restrict this post to Ross’ views, however, because I believe we may have enough common ground to make discussion useful. It will also enable me to lay the foundations of an important argument, and show the linkages between a distressingly common worldview and the scandalous moral vacuum of a Ms. Tonge. Andy, in contrast, will be saved for tomorrow’s Idiotarian Watch. By his own words shall ye know him.

Read the Rest…

In the upcoming election, national security and the war on terrorism will be the front and center issue for many voters. It is for this voter. Were it not for President Bush’s leadership in confronting terrorism head on, risking his Presidency to do so, I would stay home this November. Bush’s wild spending and refusal to reign in the cost of the federal government is irresponsible and goes against just about every ideal that conservatives stand for.

However, I will cast my vote for President Bush this November, because they country cannot afford for any of the Democratic nominees, save for Joe Lieberman, to become President.

Oliver Willis weakly attempts to make the case that Democrats are more serious about fighting Al Qaeda than President Bush. He precedes making that statement by listing a bunch of quotes from the wannabes on the Democratic side. John Edwards and John Kerry have very tough words for Saudi Arabia, but how is it that during their tenures as Senators they have never felt to address this issue?

Wesley Clark and Howard Dean in short are repeating the meme that Iraq has become a “distraction” from the war on terror and that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror. Edwards and Kerry have made similar comments and it is proof positive as to why none of these men should be given the responsibility of leading our nation.

The position that Iraq is a “distraction” from the war on terror is ridiculous. Every day we are reading of Al Qaeda members being captured, as well as Taliban leaders. Two-thirds of Al Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed. Where is the distraction? The recent orange alert was not proof of this either. The alert showed our intelligence community gathering good information and we’re taking steps to prevent any attacks.

As for Oliver’s assertion that Democrats are more serious than GWB in fighting terrorism, the only reference we have for that to determine its’ validity is to look at the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton. Clinton far more hawkish than either Howard Dean or John Kerry. Yet, his record with regard to fighting terrorism is a disgrace. From 1993 to 2000, there were 5 major terrorist attacks against UN institutions. The World Trade Center bombing, the Khobar Towers, the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the USS Cole. Aside from criminal conviction the the WTC bombing, we did nothing to fight back. President Clinton ordered a few missile strikes and we bombed an aspiring factory in the Sudan. But other than that, nothing.

Many Democrats have attempted to say that the GOP was to blame because they hamstrung the President in his attempts to pass more terrorism related legislation. However, a recent article by Richard Shultz in the Weekly Standard offers a devastating look at how the Clinton adminstration really handled terrorism. Paul Begala has said that Clinton was ‘obsessed’ with Al Qaeda.

Maybe he was. On paper. President Clinton planned quite a bit, but he didn’t pull the trigger:

These examples, among others, depict an increasingly aggressive, lethal, and preemptive counterterrorist policy. But not one of these operations—all authorized by President Clinton—was ever executed. General Schoomaker’s explanation is devastating. “The presidential directives that were issued,” he said, “and the subsequent findings and authorities, in my view, were done to check off boxes. The president signed things that everybody involved knew full well were never going to happen. You’re checking off boxes, and have all this activity going on, but the fact is that there’s very low probability of it ever coming to fruition. . . .”

To be fair, Shultz also pins quite a bit of the blame on the Pentagon as well, but it starts at the top.

The question is, how would John Kerry and Howard Dean be any better? What concrete proposals and ideas have they offered? The answer is, nothing. They’ve paved their way to the Presidential election by doing nothing but complaining about President Bush. Pretty soon, they are going to have to answer the question: What are you going to do about the war on terrorism?

The answer thus far, has made it clear to me that President Bush deserves a second term. It goes beyond people like me, who are more conservative to begin with. Ed Koch, a lifelong Democrat has already said he will cast his vote for President Bush in November:

I am a lifelong Democrat. I was elected to New York’s City Council, Congress and three terms as mayor of New York City on the Democratic Party line. I believe in the values of the Democratic Party as articulated by Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and by Senators Hubert Humphrey, Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Our philosophy is: “If you need a helping hand, we will provide it.” The Republican Party’s philosophy, on the other hand, can be summed up as: “If I made it on my own, you will have to do the same.”

Nevertheless, I intend to vote in 2004 to reelect President Bush. I will do so despite the fact that I do not agree with him on any major domestic issue, from tax policy to the recently enacted prescription drug law. These issues, however, pale in importance beside the menace of international terrorism, which threatens our very survival as a nation. President Bush has earned my vote because he has shown the resolve and courage necessary to wage the war against terrorism.

The Democratic presidential contenders, unfortunately, inspire no such confidence. With the exception of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has no chance of winning, the Democrats have decided that in order to get their party’s nomination, they must pander to its radical left wing. As a result, the Democratic candidates, even those who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, have attacked the Bush administration for its successful effort to remove a regime that was a sponsor of terrorism and a threat to world peace.

As one famous blogger often says: Indeed.

Sometimes you just have to wonder if the Israeli government is really this obtuse…

HA‘ARETZ: Kerry: Israel can’t provide goods in talks with Palestinians

Israeli officials who analyzed Kerry’s comments said they were, at worst, a misunderstanding. They believe he meant that Israel does not have a partner for talks on the Palestinian side, since the Palestinians are unable to provide the goods.

No, it’s quite possible that the flip-flopping Kerry, his positions as stable as a fried egg sliding on a Pam-covered teflon pan, means exactly what he said this time around.

The Massachusetts senator called for strengthening the Palestinian Authority so that it will be stronger than Hamas.

Would someone who thought that there wasn’t an honest broker among the Palestinian Authority suggest such a thing? Strengthen that which is not trustworthy, and then send Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to deal with them?

I think not.

Instead of forcing the ambassador to Sweden into retirement, maybe he needs to be promoted to head the Foreign Ministry and start telling it like it is?

From John Kerry’s own website, we see that he’s living in a dreamland:

Prime Minister Qureia must take serious, demonstrable steps to stop the bombings against Israelis and to rein in militant Palestinian groups bent on destroying the peace process. In Kerry’s view, it is critical that our European and Arab allies support this effort aggressively. If Prime Minister Qureia is committed to this course of action, the United States and its allies should provide technical assistance and training to the Palestinian security forces to strengthen their capacity to root out terrorist groups

Puppet-Minister Queria’s already stated, no ifs ands or buts, that he will not use security forces against terrorist groups. His goal instead is to negotiate and use political solutions with them. The only end-result of beefing up Palestinian “security forces” will be is to save the terrorists the effort from smuggling the arms in under Rafah or across the Jordan River in UNICEF crates.

Making the Palestinian Authority (and its offshots, such as Fateh and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade) stronger is about as dumb as making the Taliban strong again so it can fight Al-Qaeda.

There’s no need for Bush to send a mission to Mars. Kerry’s so out of touch, his brain is already there.

UPDATE:
HA‘ARETZ: Kerry: I believe Ariel Sharon willing to make peace

“I believe Ariel Sharon is willing to make peace, I really believe it,” leading Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry said to a crowd in Salem, New Hampshire on Monday, in his last public appearance ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

Yes, but after this latest flip-flop, who will believe Kerry?

Oh… wait… he’s looking for the votes of Democrats. Where it’s cold. In the middle of winter.

Those suckers’ll believe anything for a cup of hot cocoa and a few free lift tickets.

This post originated here on the nikita demosthenes blog.

Here is the e-mail to me from Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post:

- - - - - - -

Hey Nikita, thanks for replying. Basically, what I’m trying to figure out
is what kind of an impact, if any, blogs are having on national issues and
the political scene? i.e., do blogs matter. I’m hearing two theories on
the subject. One is that people who blog mostly read other blogs that
generally agree with their views, so no minds are being changed. The other
is that bloggers have a sort of power-in-numbers effect, so that if a whole
group is blogging about one issue enough, it can be brought to the
forefront and reach mainstream culture. like the trent lott thing. Would
love to know your thoughts. I’m shy by nature myself (though the nature
of the occupation has forced me to overcome it a little), so I understand.

Thanks, Ellen

- - - - - - -

And here’s my response to Ms. McCarthy:

- - - - - - -

Ms. McCarthy:

Thanks for the e-mail. Obviously, I can only tell you about what I’ve observed about bloggers (and my own attitudes) - but different bloggers may have very different responses to your questions.

1. First you ask whether blogs matter. My response is an emphatic yes. There are several reasons why they matter.

a. Sometimes people are uncertain if their views are held by them alone. Blogs help people gain confidence in their views if there are blogs out there with similar views. And blogs will help them refine and re-examine their views in ways that may not have occurred to them otherwise.

b. More important, it seems to me that with the “24-hour news cycle” blogs are increasingly driving the ever-hungry beast of constant TV and radio news. As you know, the whole Monica Lewinsky story first broke on The Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com/) (a news site that is kind of the precursor to today’s blogs). Obviously, the Clinton-Lewinsky story mattered (no matter which way you came down on it). Blogs fulfill this role often. (Remember Howard Dean’s recent lukewarm disavowal of a Bush conspiracy theory about knowing about 9-11 in advance? That theory probably started in the blogosphere.)

Bottom line, blogs create a lot of buzz around stories - and that often cause the stories to be repeated in the mainstream press. This is good because, unlike in the past, the “gatekeepers” in the mainstream press can’t just ignore a story and be totally confident that it will “just go away.” (Like Newsweek tried with the Clinton-Lewinsky story.)

Blogs not only create “buzz,” but also make it difficult for people with certain political views in the mainstream press to “sit” on a story that they don’t want to see reported. For example, as you may know, NBC news held the Lisa Meyers interview of Juanita Broaddrick - and refused to run the tape of such interview - until AFTER the impeachment vote in the Senate on President Clinton. Blogs should help prevent mainstream news organizations from “sitting on” an important story like this in the future. This is important because the mainstream press’ decision to report or not report a story can have huge ramifications. Consider whether the U.S. Senate would have voted differently if Juanita Broaddrick’s interview (in which she convincingly recounted how then Attorney General Bill Clinton had raped her) had aired BEFORE the Senate vote. That single “don’t run the story” decision may have saved Bill Clinton from conviction in the Senate (which conviction would have put Al Gore in the White House - and perhaps helped him win the 2000 election as the incumbent). The question then is: why should some executive at NBC have such a huge role in deciding the course of national events? I think most people would agree that such an unelected NBC executive should not have such a huge role. This decision-making - and power - should be distributed (and diluted) among many voices and many decision-makers. To paraphrase how the Supreme Court (once) thought about the subject: the remedy for a bad idea (or bad decision-making) is more speech, not less.

2. Regarding your “two theories” (your first theory is that bloggers only read like-minded blogs and your second theory is that there is strength in numbers): these, of course, are not mutually-exclusive theories. Both have some truth to them - but both have important ways in which they’re not true too.

a. As to the “bloggers just read like-minded bloggers” theory - this is partially true. But I should hasten to add that this is just human nature - and is reflected in every other sphere of life. Making this point is like saying “people around the water-cooler just listen to like-minded people around the water-cooler.” While this may also be partially true, it doesn’t mean nothing valuable is ever said at the water-cooler. Listening to like-minded speakers (or bloggers) is a legitimate way to help hone one’s own arguments about a given subject. But I, and most bloggers I know, also read competing views. As you know, there are many “in your face” blogs out there - which will only reinforce existing views, and rarely change minds. But there are also many thoughtful blogs out there which, I think, do persuade and add to the national debate in every positive sense. See, e.g.:

http://centristcoalition.com/blog/

The bloggers at the Centrist Coalition are - um - centrists. Their blog sometimes criticizes the left, sometimes the right, and often they come up with novel ideas on their own. There are many blogs like this.

So, in short, the answer to your first theory is that it’s partially true. But the “bloggers just read like-minded bloggers” is a mentally-lazy criticism that too many people in the mainstream press lean on. If you are an advocate of free speech - and if you advocate more speech and/or more “voices” in public debate - you almost by definition have to be pro-blog. People often read like-minded blogs just like people often read like-minded newspapers: but both blogs and newspapers are important places that add to the debate of local and national public policy issues.

b. Your second theory is that blogs have power in the “strength in numbers” sense. This is true in at least two ways.

First, the number of bloggers out there increases the number of people who can report on and/or analyze a story. Glenn Reynolds of the heavily-read Instapundit blog (http://www.instapundit.com/) often comments on this as the “hive-mind” aspect of the blogosphere.

Second, as you suggest, the sheer number of blogs that talk about a story can force it into the mainstream press. This is true in the sense of sheer numbers but also in the “boot-strap” sense. That is, if a heavily read blog like, say, Instapundit or Andrew Sullivan or Eschaton (see http://www.instapundit.com/; http://www.andrewsullivan.com/; and http://atrios.blogspot.com/) reports a story, it tends to have a ripple-effect in the blogosphere. An Eschaton or Instapundit story, for example, will be copied, reported, commented on, criticized, or debunked, in probably thousands of blogs over the day or two after the original post. So, not only do blogs tend to bring issues and stories out into the light-of-day for discussion - they also tend to serve as a kind of self-editor where thousands of voices support, dispute, or refine any particular view or argument.

To summarize, I think blogs serve a useful function in precisely the same way that free speech serves a useful function. Both blogs - and free speech generally - help assure that new (and old) ideas are examined critically. This helps to soundly debunk bad ideas - and it helps assure that good ideas “rise to the top” and get heard by more and more people.

I hope the above was helpful.

If you visit my blog…

http://nikita_demosthenes.blogspot.com/

… there are number of blogs in my “blogroll” - the list going down the left margin of my page. These are mainly broken down by geography - but I separate out a few high-quality blogs for special treatment at the top of my blogroll. Also, at the bottom of my blogroll, I list a number of liberal-leaning blogs that I read regularly - although I usually (but not always) disagree with them.

One issue about which the righty and lefty blogosphere usually agree is the need for actual paper receipts - showing how you voted (with copies for the voter and the elections judges) - to accompany the new electronic voting machines. If they can do it at my local Safeway or restaurant (i.e., generate an instant written credit card receipt - for both me and the retailer), they can certainly do it at the voting booth. This would provide a written record for the elections office (and the voter) against which to check the electronic results. Without this, there could be manipulation of electronic results and no one would know. Both the lefty and righty blogosphere correctly feel that this is wrong, that it’s a disaster waiting to happen, and that this is horribly underreported by the press.

Lastly, please note that I post stories at my own blog (http://nikita_demosthenes.blogspot.com/) but also at an excellent, heavily-read group blog, The Command Post:

http://www.command-post.org/

The Command Post does an excellent job of acting like a “hive-mind” (as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit would say) to report and debate the latest news on Iraq, the 2004 elections, and the Global War on Terror.

Thanks for your e-mail. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Best wishes,

-nikita demosthenes
http://nikita_demosthenes.blogspot.com/
nikita_demosthenes@hotmail.com

P.S. I have posted your questions and my responses on the nikita demosthenes blog (http://nikita_demosthenes.blogspot.com/) and at The Command Post blog (on the Op-Ed page): see http://www.command-post.org/ and then http://www.command-post.org/oped/index.html

- - - - - - -

Is there something else I should have told her? Let me know. Thanks.

[From the Chicago Report]

Kerry’s victory last week was the equivalent of a late inning comeback in the playoffs (something Chicagoans aren’t familiar with). It could also be a considered a second half rally, a pass in the home stretch or upset. In fact, any number of sports analogies will do. Of course these analogies speak to the spectacular fashion in which victory is decided. But there is also a greater analogy between the ways in which the two opposite phenomena are covered in the press. Every four years political reporters begin sounding like sports reporters. They speculate for hours about game plans and strategies about an event, the outcome of which it is impossible to know. They read polls like stat sheets and endorsements like rosters. They even talk “inside baseball”.

This phenomenon is usually criticized as “horse race” journalism. The journalists, it is argued, do not report on the “issues” facing the country, not education and health care. They don’t think, they merely speculate about things they cannot possibly know. In this context it is the “inside” story that becomes premium. The reporter who conducts an interview or can quote a campaign coordinator “off the record” gets the popular byline for twenty-four hours. This is substance free politics.

These critics maybe right in certain respects, we do spend an awful lot of time talking about something that won’t occur for sometime and will have unpredictable effects on our world. In the mean time, there are people already dying in Iraq. There are people already being bureaucratized into absurdity. There are people … well you know the rest. The point is that they have a point.

At the same time the guilty finger is pointed in all the wrong directions, either stupid reporters or greedy corporate fiends and their bigoted advertisers. They fail to see even deeper into the relationship between politics and sports in our national psyche. Why is it that we feel the need to sit around talking about the upcoming Super Bowl ad nauseum? Why did I sit at Wrigley field for five hours last mother’s day, skin burning from 35 mph wind gust and bones frozen by temperatures unseasonable anywhere else, all the while knowing that the game would most likely be called? Because when our team takes the field it is more than just a bunch of athletes in clean jerseys. When they play it isn’t just spirited frolicking. As fans, a part (however insignificant it may be) of our identities is out there on the diamond. Our connection with a sports team is the channeling of little league triumphs and failures, of lost youth of lost parents … and so on and on. The attachment is psychologically powerful, right or wrong, and most of the time not come about rationally … it couldn’t be. It often goes back to a very brief but eminently important moment in our childhood. Mine came courtesy of WGN.

Continue reading…

by Armed Liberal, Winds of Change.NET

So here’s the question for the day:

Are we at war?

It’s important to me, since I’m spending a bunch of time digging into the Democratic field and trying to see if I can support one of them, and if so, who.

Today, I had two ‘blips’ that made me pose this question. A column in the LA Times Opinion section, by one of their military correspondents, and something in our Technorati listing (note the new UI, and that it seems to work consistently now!).

Phaedrus (cool pseudonym, BTW) writes:

Truth is, there isn’t enough real risk to even be asking the question. Truth is, the Bushies are deliberately exaggerating the risk as a means of manipulating the people. They’re psychological terrorists their own damn selves. If right wingers would stop acting like incredibly cowardly wimps, we could get back to trying to act like a democratic nation. I don’t have much hope.

Read the Rest…

Many readers have supported us with donations, which we appreciate. But the best way to support The Post is with traffic. So with the final push in New Hampshire to get out the vote, we ask that you help us “Get Out The Link.”

Support Command Post this Monday by sending the www.command-post.org URL to everyone in your contact list who you think might enjoy the site. We’re not picky: we just want to introduce people to The Command Post, and think the day before the primary is a great day to do so.

So “Get Out The Link” on Monday the 25th, and thanks for reading The Post!

[The following satire was written by Iraq vet Lt. Citizen Smash and is reprinted here with permission of the author]

THE US-LED INVASION of the Fourth Planet was intensified Saturday night, as a second front was opened on the Meridiani Planum.

The new operation, code-named “Opportunity,” was designed to divide the Martian resistance by space-dropping a mechanized unit some 6,600 miles away from the original beachhead at Gusev Crater. According to US officials, the second landing has encountered “minimal resistance.”

French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin immediately issued a statement signaling “profound concern,” for the Martian population, and expressing hope that the invasion could be “brought to an end as swiftly as possible.”

The initial operation, codenamed “Spirit,” had become bogged down Wednesday when the invasion force lost contact with the US command center in Pasadena, California – sparking comparisons to Vietnam and criticism that the invasion had become a “quagmire.”

As of Saturday, however, contact had been re-established, and efforts were underway to recommence offensive operations.

An earlier, British-led effort code-named “Beagle 2” ended in disaster late last December, when the invasion force lost contact with headquarters and was presumed to be captured or destroyed.

President George W. Bush announced the unilateral operation to “liberate” the Red Planet earlier this month, declaring that Martian leader Marvin was secretly developing an Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator in defiance of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1541. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a speech before the UN General Assembly last December, asserted that Marvin intended to use the weapon to destroy Earth because it was “blocking his view of Venus.”

To date, no banned weapons have been found on Mars.

Campaigning in New Hampshire, former Vermont governor Howard Dean issued a statement commending the valiant efforts of “our brave fighting men and women,” but also declared that the invasion of Mars “has not made America safer.”

Back on January 20th, I posted on my blog about a rather unusual endorsement of a Democratic presidential candidate by one of the most conservative newspapers in America.

Joe Lieberman picked up the endorsement of the Union Leader (Manchester, NH), a bastion of conservative thought for many decades. This left Democratic Party liberals aghast. But in an editorial in today’s New Hampshire Sunday News (the Sunday edition of the Union Leader), explains why the newspaper endorsed Joe:

These people have either no understanding of this newspaper’s long history of supporting solid citizens from different political parties or they don’t want Sen. Lieberman to win, or both.

[…]

We look at the person as well as his or her party’s principles. Which is why Joe Lieberman is our choice. We don’t agree with him on a lot of issues but we find his courage, conviction and intellectual depth most admirable and we have been told the same by those who work with him on both sides of the aisle.

While this may seem contradictory to what many liberals may think of the Union Leader, the one thing the newspaper has always supported in any election is a good candidate. Even though it’s a foregone conclusion that the newspaper will endorse George W. Bush for the November presidential election, they, like me, would rather see an election where the two major opposing candidates are likely to be a good president, meaning a close race, rather than a blowout where one of the candidates is so far out of touch with the electorate that they don’t stand a chance. It is my opinion that the first kind of match up leads to a better president than the second, regardless of who wins.

It appears from the the liberal Dems’ reactions that they believe otherwise.

The Drexel University student paper is The Triangle … and here’s their latest Op/Ed: Media Needs to Report Without A Political Bias. In part, Mr. James Mack Jr., opines:

In the season of Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, and eventually the presidential election in November, we, the public, need to be assured that our choices for our candidate are our own and not the choice of what the media decides to feed us with their bias. There is a small problem, though. The media is clearly biased. To a small extent, it is right-wing biased. But the largest and most incontrovertible bias out there is the left-leaning reporting by four out of the five major news networks in the country.

Hmmm … might be a future for this writer at The Command Post …

From National Review and Andrew Sullivan (scroll down):

- - - - - - -

Impromptus

By Jay Nordlinger, Managing Editor
National Review
January 22, 2004, 8:49 a.m.

Davos Journal, Part I

Friends, I’m writing you from the village of Davos, in Switzerland, where the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum is being held. I will report for the next few days, mixing items of some moment with items of a light nature. (How does that differ from the normal Impromptus, huh?)

- - - - - - -

As for Jack Straw, he makes a striking impression. The session begins at 10:45, but Tony Blair’s minister is not there. David Ignatius announces that he’s expected at 11:05. Straw actually arrives at 10:55. The moderator points out that the minister is ahead of schedule, whereupon Straw quips, “Do you want me to go?” So many of the British seem to have quickness and charm in their blood. One does not have to be an Anglophile to recognize this simple fact of life.

When it’s time to make his prepared remarks, Straw says, “As an adherent to the British parliamentary tradition, I find it physiologically difficult to sit and speak at the same time” — but he does so anyway. What he does is deliver a powerful defense of the Coalition invasion and occupation of Iraq. He gives a defiantly upbeat report on the situation now: the Iraqi police is being firmed up; 70 million revised (i.e., de-Saddamized) textbooks have been distributed; vaccines have been made available; electricity and water are improving; etc., etc.

Straw notes that Iraq has established a currency and a central bank with remarkable speed, but that the press has not taken notice — a well-placed shot. He tells his listeners that they have no idea of the “extravagances” in which Saddam and his “ruling clique” indulged — the palaces boggle the mind. The plunder of the Iraqi people wounds the heart.

Also, Iraqis, during the long Baathist tyranny, were kept in deplorable ignorance. But now they have satellite dishes, which were banned under Saddam, and about 200 newspapers, and unfettered access to the Internet — also banned under Saddam. (Banned in Castro’s Cuba, too, by the way. That is not a datum you’re apt to learn in our media.)

The foreign secretary reminds his audience that Saddam Hussein had violated no fewer than 17 U.N. agreements, and that the U.N. had 173 pages’ worth of WMD concerns. He says — as before, I will paraphrase — “I respect the views of those who disagreed with our action in Iraq. But I would ask them to look back and consider what the situation would be if we had allowed Saddam to continue to defy the U.N. I submit that if we had sat on our hands and not acted, the world today would be a much more dangerous place.”

Someone asks whether Iraq will have to be split apart, given the inharmonious peoples. He responds that the territorial integrity of Iraq must be “absolute,” and points out that we are in a country — Switzerland — that is “highly federated” but “still unified.” He also cites Belgium, with its different regions and tongues — “so these models exist.”

Secretary Straw is sort of needled about Iraq contracts flowing to U.S. companies. He says something arresting, from a foreign official: Again, paraphrasing, “The U.S. taxpayer has put an astonishing amount of money in Iraq, through Congress — and that’s democracy, by the way. It’s only natural that they should want some of the money to come back to American firms. But plenty of subcontracts are going to other Coalition partners. I applaud the astounding generosity of the American people, and I would remind you that the ultimate benefit, of course, accrues to the people of Iraq.”

You can live for many days — or years or decades — and not hear such an evaluation of the American people from any foreign leader.

Olivier Roy interjects that it has been demonstrated that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and no link to al Qaeda — therefore, the only reason to have gone into Iraq was to build a stable democracy, and that the Coalition is doing badly.

Straw does not sit on his hands. He again refers to those 173 pages, in which was mentioned “the strong presumption” — the U.N.’s words — that the regime harbored 10,000 liters of anthrax. “Were we to do nothing?” asks Straw. “Nothing?” It is probably the most dramatic moment of the session.

The secretary adds that he has never claimed a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda — although Saddam had his hands in terror generally (e.g., in the Intifada). (I myself always like to point out that Saddam, after all, gave refuge to Abu Abbas — the Achille Lauro mastermind — and Abu Nidal, an Arab Carlos the Jackal, whom Saddam, in all likelihood, wound up killing, for reasons that make for interesting speculation.)

Straw robustly defends our democracy-building efforts in Iraq, then goes on to sing an ode to democracy at large. He comes from a party, he says, “that lost four elections on the trot” (a wonderful Britishism for “in a row”). “We won the last two. That’s called democracy, and sometimes the side you favor doesn’t win.”

He also explains that he doesn’t especially mind religious parties, which dot Europe (even if they do not tend to be especially religious — think the Christian Democrats, in any country). When an Islamic party in Turkey won power, there was “shock, horror,” but everyone now agrees that that government is “a delight to do business with.”

A questioner notes that all of the experts on an earlier panel — all of them, to a man — averred that the Iraq campaign had made the War on Terror harder. Straw snorts this claim out of school, pointing out that, at a minimum, the Coalition has removed Afghanistan and Iraq from the terror business, and can that be counted as nothing?

Another questioner alleges that Britain et al. are “cooking the books” in Iraq — placing their thumbs heavily on any electoral scale. Straw himself describes this as a charge of “a stitch-up job,” then knocks it down, in no uncertain terms. He again avows his special love of democracy: “I have been democratically elected to public office. Who else in this room can say the same? Let me see hands, please. One? Fine. But I don’t care to take lectures on democracy and democratic legitimacy. Elective office in a democracy has been my life.” What’s more, “‘legitimacy’ is an easy word to mouth, but those who question our methods in Iraq should be asked, ‘What would you do that would be an improvement on what we’re doing?’”

That is a question that tends to shut mouths.

A Turkish participant expresses concern that the Kurds are feeling their oats (so to speak), and cites at least one Kurd who has made loud independence noises. Straw (in paraphrase): “People will take positions, ‘twas ever thus. But when Saddam Hussein was in power, people could not take positions, lest they be killed. True, we’ve found fewer WMD than expected, but we’ve found more mass graves. And now, people don’t get shot for expressing their opinion.”

Another participant chides Secretary Straw for putting the judiciary last in his list of recent Iraqi accomplishments. Obviously, says this man, the government of the U.K. can’t care terribly much about the rule of law. Straw, barely patient, responds that he put the judiciary last because it’s most important, not least, “and I say this as a lawyer.”

So that’s that.

I have gone on about this performance simply because it’s not the kind I am accustomed to witnessing. Certainly we don’t often see such things at international conferences, including the Davos Forum. Straw was commanding, unflinching, persuasive, affable, willing, and factual. He was informed to the gills. He proved a superb explainer/defender of all that we are doing, and have done, and will do in Iraq. I dare say that no American official has performed as well — certainly not Straw’s counterpart, Colin Powell. How much good it would do, around the world and at home, for Powell to make such efforts, with such conviction and knowledge! My suspicion is that most people would come around to the Coalition point of view — or at least not be hostile to it — if it were explained sufficiently well. This has been a failure of the post-9/11 period. But Jack Straw, trust me, is up to the job.

I doubt that we will ever, dear Impromptus-ites, find a foreign minister of a socialist government more congenial. Ever.

The same goes for his PM, actually.

- - - - - - -

Heh. Quite right. Indeed, why do we in the U.S. (and especially in the Democratic Party) seem so willing to let appointed officials from other countries and the U.N. - unelected by the public - lecture us about legitimacy?

I want to let folks in on a little secret: my wife is the most important voter in New Hampshire. She must be since every serious Democratic candidate has called my house looking for her (Okay, so it was a campaign worker, but you get the idea). She’s been invited to dinners and meetings and forums and rallies and even a hockey game… the list goes on and on. And she’s not even a Democrat! When we relocated from Massachusetts to New Hampshire we dutifully made our way to City Hall and registered to vote. Both of us were registered Republicans in Massachusetts, but when the time came to check off a box here in the Granite State she chose “unenrolled”.

I didn’t give her a hard time about it- she told me she registered Republican before because it was Massachusetts and “somebody had to do it.” Now that we were in New Hampshire she wanted to avoid all the calls from party hacks and organizers and have a little peace when the election season rolled around.

Poor, naive, deluded woman that I love.

The phone started ringing about a month ago, beginning with soft-voiced school girls from the Dean campaign who seemed incapable of understanding that the woman had a job, and how could an independent thinker like my wife be married to a knuckle-dragging troglodyte of a Republican like me anyhow. Those were the first calls. Others were more conventional, but they were all looking for my wife. Except Kucinich- he never called. Ingrate.

Interestingly enough, a couple of the campaigns were actually willing to chat with me. Me! A GWB fan, through and through. We won’t mention any names, but they both got Big Mo from Iowa last Monday. What came out of those conversations was a firm understanding that everything is very much in play up here in the Granite State. Nobody is conceding anything to anyone.

Which makes the debate beginning as I post this all the more interesting.

CNN.com - Polls: Kerry leads rivals in New Hampshire - Jan. 22, 2004
I'll repeat: Bush is my man, but I'm loving seeing Dean die a slow or quick death [UPDATE: I phrased it this way because I don't know what kind of death it is yet. Dean has a lot of money and a huge ego. He could be around for a while as either a Democrat or independent]. I'm a Republican, but an American first and I want us to have a good President regardless of the general election. Dean isn't it. Not by a long shot.

President Bush has my vote in November, but I'm pulling for Kerry until the Democrats have a nominee.

Sen. John Kerry moved atop the Democratic pack in New Hampshire five days before the state's presidential primary, with a five-point edge over his closest rival, Howard Dean, in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup tracking poll out Thursday.

Kerry, a senator from neighboring Massachusetts, got a boost from his victory in the Iowa caucuses Monday night, and several other polls also showed him at the top of the pack Thursday.

Kerry had the support of 30 percent of likely New Hampshire voters in the three-day poll, conducted Monday through Wednesday. Dean, the former Vermont governor, followed with 25 percent, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark was at 18 percent.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who placed second in Monday's Iowa caucuses, won the support of 11 percent of likely voters, while Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut trailed with 8 percent. Rep. Dennis Kucinich weighed in at 4 percent, and civil rights activist Al Sharpton had the support of less than one percent of those surveyed.

Edwards, a trial lawyer, would be near the bottom of my list of preferences, though ahead of Dean, Kucinich and Sharpton. Tort reform is desperately needed and having a trial lawyer in the White House would doom it -- not that it has much chance now due to Democratic filibusters.

Laconia, NH - The campaigning by the Democratic presidential hopefuls has ramped up in New Hampshire and will approach ‘frantic’ by Saturday. While the front runners put a lot of effort into Iowa, two candidates focused their attentions on New Hampshire – Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman. It may be time well spent, particularly in light of Howard Dean’s meltdown.

One difference between Iowa and New Hampshire that will change the dynamics of the campaign is spelled out in an editorial in the Laconia, NH Citizen:

Caucuses are caucuses, but primaries are about people.

[…]

The differences between New Hampshire and Iowa go beyond those of topography. The party faithful gather in caucuses in Iowa. In New Hampshire, nominees are chosen by registered voters — unenrolled, as well enrolled. New Hampshire is where the people speak.

[…]

Watch the Independent voters — the people who are registered, but not declared as either Republicans or Democrats. Many of them will vote in the Democratic primary this year, knowing they can quickly resume their Independent status.

The absence of a contest in the Republican primary will likely [lead] more Independent voters picking up Democratic ballots than would otherwise be the case. They’re the voters on whom the organizations of John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards and Wesley Clark have to focus during the next seven days.

We Granite Staters have always been contrary and independent folk. Here the candidates have to press the flesh. Fancy TV, radio, and newspaper ads won’t cut it, and the smarter candidates know it.

Now let’s see what the line up for next Tuesday looks like:

Though John Kerry is coming out of Iowa with a win, it may not be enough to sway Granite State voters. Because of our proximity to Massachusetts, we have a somewhat better understanding of its junior senator. One thing we expect from our congressional delegation is to be represented – that they actually show up for work and vote on legislation. Kerry’s record is dismal – he’s made only 59% of the votes in the Senate, and that percentage will drop as he spends even more time out campaigning, leaving his constituents high and dry. That’s something that won’t sit well with folks here in New Hampshire – our Congresscritters actually show up and vote and everything!

John Edwards is still something of a cypher despite his good showing in Iowa. He is well spoken and knows how to talk to a crowd without sounding condescending. He’s a good ol’ boy, in the best sense of the word. He has humble beginnings, as does Wesley Clark. It works for him. We’ll see if it’s enough.

Howard Dean is in trouble. Yet another neighbor to New Hampshire, we’ve seen the results of his policies and programs in Vermont. Some have been pretty good. Others have been dismal. Despite his strong start, his campaign is flagging. Some of that is because people are now seeing the real Howard Dean and they aren’t liking what they see. A lot of us in New Hampshire have known what others are just now finding out – what you see isn’t necessarily what you’re getting.

Wes Clark is picking up steam, leading me to believe that he has a pretty good shot at blowing by Dean on Tuesday. He might even be able to humble John Kerry, or at least make him nervous.

Joe Lieberman is trying hard to show that he’s the one everyone should support, a centrist with strong principles who doesn’t change his views because of opinion polls. The problem is that he’s too nice a guy, a little too low key for this campaign. He’d probably make a pretty decent president, but he hasn’t caught on with the voters here in New Hampshire even though some think he has a better chance to beat George W. Bush in November than any of the other candidates. It looks doubtful he’ll get the chance. (Does my bias show?)

What can I say about Dennis Kucinich? Not much. There’s little support for Kucinich in New Hampshire, and what support there is seems to be from those even farther out on the fringe than some of the usual suspects in the Democratic party. A phrase coined by Don Imus comes to mind whenever I think of Kucinich - “jug-eared little Martian.” It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that’s what quite a few New Hampshire voters think as well.

Al Sharpton is another candidate who has managed to stay below the radar so far. While not as far out as Dennis Kucinich, he shows roughly the same poll numbers. Say ‘Goodbye’, Al.

****

This weekend I’ll be running yet another unscientific and not-unbiased Paugus Diner Poll^© and will post the results Sunday afternoon. Maybe we’ll have an even better idea of what New Hampshire voters think about the candidates.

From the Chicago Report
Why is it that we all feel the need to comment on the President’s address? It seems to me that it is purely a ritualistic matter. The President never really says anything specific or substantial. He never says the “state of the union is weak”. Sure the union hasn’t really been weak since the Civil War but do we really expect that the President would admit it if it was … especially in an election year. The importance of the address lies not in what the President says but in the very fact that he is saying it. The founders of this great nation thought it imperative that the executive be accountable to the people’s representatives. The constitution says “He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient”. I think that the important idea is that there is communication between the branches of government, that he shall come before congress. Sometimes it is more important to understand the ritual itself than any particular policy it promotes. Just a thought.

Kerry wins, Edwards gains ground and everyone is talking about Dean.

Let's clear one thing up first. Don't listen to cries of Deanophiles. The media did not make Dean lose. The media did not conjure up the Angry Young Man image (Angry Middle-Aged Man?). It's not the media's fault that every time I would see a photo of Dean, this Billy Joel song popped in my head:

There's a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,
He's always at home with his back to the wall.
And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost,
And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

Dean created his own image. The press only played on it. And the more the press played on it, the more animated Dean became and the more groupie-like his fans became.

Normally, it takes an AYM a couple of years to go through all the stages we saw Dean run through last night. From passionate to righteous to mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, right into full blown meltdown. All in a matter of hours.

With only the first step in a long, long journey to November taken, Dean has already veered from his path and is going to have to struggle to catch up to Edwards and Kerry. The race is on and Dean has stumbled at the gate. Insert more cliches and metaphors here.

The grass roots/internet movement that has been the hallmark of Dean's campaign turned out last night to be a man-behind-the-curtain scenario. It looked much bigger, stronger and fearsome than it really was. Perhaps his supporters in Iowa were more vocal. Perhaps they knew how to play the press better than the camps of the other candidates. Whatever the reason, Dean's posse came off bigger than life in the weeks leading up to Iowa. And when push came to shove, it turned out not to be about image or a tour bus full of orange hats or a blog. It was about electability.

Sure, Dean has been great for the media. He's a cartoon character with a million expressions. He's the cult of personality all shoved into one package. He's People Powered Howard and he's going to prove that the little guy does make a difference. He shoots lasers with his eyes and speaks in tongues. All that is well and good - it gives one the impression of power and leadership, it plays great on tv and it creates a lasting image - but it doesn't get you the votes. In the end, the people of Iowa decided they wanted to elect a president, not a personality. And most Iowans are probably breathing a sigh of relief today.

Dean's very public meltdown last night will be the subject of jokes, cartoons and a million articles and blog posts today. But don't be fooled by that Linda Blair imitation he did last night. If Dean does not get the Democratic nomination, it will be because of a combination of things; the pandering to the far left, the arrogant visit to the MLK ceremony yesterday, the "we're not any safer" mantra and, in a way, the cult status he has garnered. He is a victim of his own hype right now; the fandom that his followers have created has become a smoke and mirror act and in an odd twist, Dean himself has fallen for the trick.

The whole People Powered Howard thing reminds me very much of the movie Tommy. You remember that song at the end?

Right behind you I see the millions.
On you I see the glory.
From you I get opinions.
From you I get the story.
Listening to you I get the music.
Gazing at you I get the heat.
Following you I climb the mountain.
I get excitement at your feet!

That's replaced the "Angry Young Man" lyrics in my head. Dean's followers have created the fan frenzy and Dean is having a little problem living up that god-like image they've given him. I wonder how many of them cringed when Dean did his voice-changing, red-faced, wild-eyed, evangelical minister impression last night? All he needed was a folding chair and a wrestling wring and he'd be Hulk Hogan, putting on a show for the kids.

So how much of Dean is carnival barker and how much is the real deal? Will his followers climb that mountain with him or will they stay a few feet away and watch him warily? Will he tone down his act and stop shooting daggers out of his eyes? Will the People Powered Howard tour bus drive him to success or forget to put on the brakes and crash and burn at the bottom of the mountain?

All these questions and more may or may not be answered in New Hampshire, the next installment of the continuing saga of On the Road With Howard Dean. Brought to you by the makers of Zoloft(c) - for a kinder, gentler you.

Emailed just now by Taegan D. Goddard, from his Political Wire.

------------------------------

In an initial look at the results in Iowa, it appears that at least three major factors contributed to Howard Dean's plunge from assumed front-runner to disappointed third place finisher.

Dean's "outsider campaign" had trouble assimilating insiders. His plunge
coincided almost perfectly with endorsements from Al Gore, the ultimate insider, and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), the most coveted endorsement in the state.

Negative ads by Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt worked perfectly in that nearly destroyed each other.

The capture of Saddam Hussein made the pro-war votes by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John Edwards more palatable to many Democratic voters. In addition, Dean's first reaction to the news raised many eyebrows.

Well, I hate to say it, but I was right. It appears that Dean doesn’t have quite the appeal that everyone thought. Of course the results of the Iowa caucuses do not bear directly on the New Hampshire results, but indirectly they are huge. The Iowa numbers will take a circuitous path this week, through the national punditocracy and into the concerned minds of New Hampshire voters. I know that I am on the record saying Iowa doesn’t matter and it shouldn’t, but Dean made it important and lost. So in anticipation of the ceaseless opining you are sure to hear this week, let’s look at the buzz words you can expect.

Bounce

Kerry and Edwards are sure to get a bounce from this coup and I must say they deserve it. However right I may have been about Dean, I was wrong about Edwards. A month ago I wondered if Edwards shouldn’t start shopping for VP commitments from Dean or Clark. Now it could potentially be the reverse ... although it’s unlikely. If I had to bet Edwards will be VP for either Kerry or Dean; both need help getting through the South.

High-roller

No matter what happens to Kerry from here on out, he gets my respect as the chutzpah candidate of Primary 2004 (Sorry Joe … maybe you’ll get it back). Any man who mortgages his home to fund a campaign that appears to be going nowhere, and then wins, deserves a few grunts of respect. I’d buy him a beer if I could. Kerry has gone from has been to front runner in a week. His New Hampshire poll numbers have been trending upwards all week, from 11% on January 12th to 19% just yesterday. Even if he gets a mere 5% bounce it will at least be a three way dead heat in New Hampshire next week.

Disappointment

Dean will certainly try to spin his way into a marginal victory. “If you had told us a year ago that we would come in third in Iowa …yada, yada, yada”. Dean’s post caucus speech was something to behold, a lesson in not learning lessons. Dean approached the delicate moment with his token pomp and anger. If you come in a close second this might be appropriate when you are 20% behind the winner, you might want to reconsider your approach. Again this is just Iowa. I repeat THIS IS JUST IOWA. But the South was going to be hard enough for Dean to win with a weak Edwards and Iowa and New Hampshire wins under his belt. Now with a devastating disappointment and a stronger Edwards, his southern support, tentative as it was, is sure to evaporate. Furthermore, his main constituency, the anti-war crowd, went for Kerry. This is probably the biggest slap in the face to Dean who had touted himself as the only true anti-war Democrat.

New Hampshire

The nation’s most important primary just became even bigger. Kerry’s big upset in Iowa against one “front-runner” precipitates an even more exciting showdown next week against both. Clark shrewdly skipped Iowa and has had New Hampshire all to himself this week, so he’s got a sort of head start. But the national news this week will be all about Kerry.

Endorsements

Not that it really matters but if this week’s losers fold, they are sure to make endorsements. I expect that Sharpton will endorse Kerry and possibly Gephardt as well. Kucinich will probably endorse Dean; this is probably not going to help much.

Campaign Cash

Who’s got it? Dean has the bigger war chest but Kerry won’t have much difficulty getting more. The key will be whether Kerry’s fundraising machine can adjust quickly to his new status as “front-runner”. If not they may not keep the honor. Dean has about $12.5 million in cash while Kerry has only $8 million. Dean will be willing to spend big because he has to win New Hampshire in order to revitalize his base. Edwards and Clark aren’t broke, but have less cash on hand than Dean and Kerry. Edwards will probably “pass go” due to his Iowa efforts. Keep in mind that Bush has at least $73 million. (These cash numbers are from the FEC website so they might be a little outdated.)

Electability

Dean already had an electability problem. Despite the fact that Iowa is not really a vote, it still confirms most Democrats’ fear. Look for Dean to move to the center … despite his declaration that the center is not in Democratic party’s future.

It will be an exciting week regardless. Now I have to go spend time with my wife instead of my computer. Thanks for tuning in.

[This originally appeared at DanielDrezner.com and is reprinted here with permission of the author]

The latest Des Moines Register poll has the following results: Kerry, 26%; Edwards, 23%; Dean, 20%; Gephardt, 18%.

The latest Zogby tracking poll: Kerry, 24%; Dean, 23%; Gephardt, 19%; Edwards, 18%.

So what's going to happen tomorrow night? Roger L. Simon dared me to make a prediction. I've had really bad luck at making predictions -- so with that said, here goes:

The short prediction: Kerry wins in Iowa, but Edwards gets the biggest boost.

The long prediction: The media story is that polls don't matter because of the way the caucus structure is organized. What really matters is turnout and organisation. This hurts Edwards, who is presumed to have the weakest infrastructure, and helps Dean, who's decentralized organization awed everyone a few months ago.

What's striking to me is that Kerry and Edwards are surging, and that they also have the lowest unfavorable ratings. In part this is because Dean and Gephardt are still bashing each other (As I'm typing this, I'm watching Gephardt on Meet the Press, and he's still bashing Dean).

The polls both show Kerry ahead and trending in the right direction -- though Tom Schaller makes some excellent arguments at DailyKos for why the poll numbers might be underestimating Dean's strength. As for ground strength, Michael Crowley makes the case that Kerry's operation on the ground is pretty strong.

The media seem to feel that Edwards will suffer because his organization on the ground is weaker than the other three candidates, so he'll get fewer delegates and lose the perceptions contest.

However, because the race is so close, interest and turnout should be extremely high. This brings in people who are outside of any campaign's organizational apparatus, who are likely to be more moderate, and who will react to the candidate that seems to be the most likeable -- which I'm thinking will help Edwards.

The Boston Globe thinks this will matter a great deal in second rounds of the caucus:

Inside the Iowa caucuses tomorrow night, John Edwards may end up attracting a disproportionate share of those voters who are forced to pick a second choice under the quirky election rules, political specialists and likely caucusgoers said....

The lack of negative associations could help mitigate the deficit in organizational support Edwards has in some precincts, said James McCormick, chairman of the political science department at Iowa State University.

McCormick said because second-choice voters will not think of Edwards as the enemy of their first choice, they might instead focus on his image as an optimistic alternative who could win in the South.

"He ultimately comes across as a moderate among angry, hollering other candidates," McCormick said. "He's a fresh face, which also gives him an advantage."

Now, what's actually pretty interesting about that article is that beyond the expert quote, there's no evidence to support the article's thesis. Indeed, this is really the key section:

Under caucus rules, voters in each precinct first stand in a group for their candidate of choice. But any candidate who does not reach 15 percent in a given precinct is deemed "not viable," and his supporters will then pick another.

The four candidates leading in polls are expected to be viable in urban precincts, so only supporters of minor candidates, such as Dennis J. Kucinich, will be in play.

Because support for each candidate is not evenly distributed, some of the major candidates may not reach 15 percent in the many small rural precincts, where as few as a dozen voters may turn out. In those smaller precincts,
supporters for Edwards hope his positive campaign and rural upbringing could help him dominate in the second-choice voting, because he will not be associated with attacks on those voters' initial choice. (emphasis added)

Why run a story on such weak foundations? It's one example of why I think Edwards will be the big winner coming out of Iowa -- he fits in best with the media's professional and personal proclivities.

Professionally, the media wants close races and new faces. An Edwards surge provides both.

Personally, reporters don't appear to really like Dean or Kerry all that much. In contrast, they do seem to like Edwards (see this Time dispatch for an example). I heard Brit Hume say on Fox News Sunday that "John Edwards is engaging, likeable, appealing." Brit Hume doesn't like anything, for God's sake. If any of the Democrats has the Clintonian charisma, it's Edwards.

If Kerry wins, he's going to get a bump, no doubt -- and New Hampshire becomes an interesting question. But if Edwards performs better than either Gephardt or Dean at the caucus, reporters are going to lock in on him as the story of the week. Whether he can sustain it is an entirely different question.

My apologies to Kerry and Edwards for sealing their doom.

________________________________________________

Daniel Drezner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is a monthly contributor to The New Republic Online, and keeps a daily weblog at danieldrezner.com"

[These two David Hogberg columns originally appeared and Cornfield Commentary and are reprinted here with permission of the author]

WHY IS KERRY SURGING?

This phenomenon is probably the most difficult to explain. Senator John Kerry until very recently had run a dreadful campaign, going from front runner early last year to plunging in the polls in his must win state of New Hampshire. Any article written about his campaign even two weeks ago probably would have begun, “It is time to write the obituary of the presidential aspiration of John Kerry.” In fact, a recent article in National Review did pretty much just that. Now, however, in today's Des Moines Register poll, he has pulled ahead.

My guess is that two factors are contributing to Kerry’s sudden rise. My sources tell me that Kerry has dramatically improved his campaigning style. (I haven’t seen Kerry speak at any Iowa events lately, so this info is second hand.) In the past he came off as the stiff, boring technocrat. Funny how Massachusetts seems to produce a lot of those types of politicians, at least the ones that don’t drive off bridges. From what I hear, Kerry’s style is now warmer and more approachable. Since a candidate can meet a lot of caucus-goers in the last month before the caucus, an improvement in campaign style can boost one’s position in the polls. Although, Slate would disagree with me, so I have to admit I’m on shaky ground with this point.

Second, in the last two weeks the Kerry campaign has been running what is the early nominee for best campaign commercial of 2004. The campaign features a woman, Elizabeth Hendrix, that is in her mid to late 40s, somewhat overweight, with a soft yet firm voice—i.e., an Iowa woman. She speaks sincerely, telling us that her husband died of cancer a few years ago and she is now raising four boys on $28,000 a year. She goes on to say it makes sense to roll back tax cuts, but not to raise them on the middle class. You need to see this campaign to realize how effective it is (If you have Windows MediaPlayer, go here). For the bleeding hearts that populate the Democratic Party, this ad only makes them bleed more.

The ad is hitting Dean is a weak spot, and it makes Kerry seem very compassionate. The big question, of course, is will it be enough to salvage what has been a dismal campaign thus far?

WHY IS EDWARDS SURGING?

After months of dawdling in the single digits Senator John Edwards suddenly finds himself in second place in the Des Moines Register poll. Again, I think there are two factors at work here.

The first, much to my chagrin, is the Des Moines Register editorial page’s endorsement of Edwards. For those of you unfamiliar with the Register editorial page, think New York Times, only a lot dumber. (For more on this, take a look at the Rob and Rekha show.) Thus, the editorial page does have some influence over the Democrats in this state. The editorial itself was an exercise in vacuity best summarized as “Dean can’t beat Bush.” Fortunately for Edwards, most Democrats probably didn’t read the editorial, but only heard about it. This probably has compelled a lot of caucus-goers to go to an Edwards event.

That leads to the second reason: When the caucus-goers attend an Edwards’ event, they encounter what is easily the most charming of the candidates in the race. I saw him when he came through Mt. Pleasant (where I work) and Burlington (where I live) last Thursday. He gets up in front of a crowd and gets it energized in a very positive, upbeat way. After hearing him speak I thought, “He’s Senator Tony Robbins!” If Edwards wasn’t in politics, he could easily make a handsome living as a motivational speaker. On a side note, it’s no mystery how he made a fortune as a trial lawyer, given how persuasive he must have seemed to a jury. Anyway, for those Iowans looking for a more positive alternative to some of the other candidates, Edwards is a breath of fresh air.

The problem for Edwards, as Shawn Macomber recently put it, is he thinks it’s 1992. There may be too much negativity among Democrats this year for someone like Edwards to prevail.

_________________________________________________

David Hogberg lives in Iowa and writes at Cornfield Commentary and is a contributor at The American Spectator. He will be providing an Iowa-based glimpse at the caucus for TCP.

OK ... this was forwarded to me by the author, and I'm posting it because I figure it will be a point of some discussion for the site. Note: I didn't write it, and I'm not saying I agree with it ... I'm just postin' it.

~ Alan

-----------------------------------

OPINION: THOUGHTS ON THE COMING "DISCOVERY" OF BIN LADEN --The Best Propaganda Money can Buy

Unless preparations are made for its eventuality, the announcement of Bin Laden's capture will be the death-knell for the 2004 Democratic campaign. And, like the the "heroic rescue" of Jessica Lynch or the toppling of Hussein's statue by "jubilant throngs" of Iraqis, it needn't even be real:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scheer20may20,1,2187120.column
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1762/3907255.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm

So Democrats must have a pre-emptive strategy in place; the most obvious being, early in the game, to accuse the White House of sitting on Bin Laden for political gain.

A better one is to launch an independent investigation to find Bin Laden first and announce the discovery before Rove's political operatives; this would be a huge coup.

In case you haven't been paying attention, this election year, Republicans are playing a deadly game of attrition -- death by a thousand tiny cuts, so to speak: extreme gerrymanding in Texas, the recall of a governor in California, the installation of inauditable, easily "preprogrammed" DRE e-vote machines in as many counties as wil allow them to be stuffed down their throats, relentless and bloody character assassinations in a bought-and-paid-for Murdoch-dominated media empire, absentee ballots counted by an untouchable firm in Kuwait, stacked courts ready to deliver decisions for which 2000's Gore vs. Bush set the precedent.

The odds look dire for Democrats (and, by extension, the majority of Americans, though they are as yet blissfully unaware of the slender thread from which all our liberties hang).

But, in case you haven't connected the dots, this time the GOP is playing for keeps.

Once the fix is in, there will be no turning back: by an invisible, carefully planned coup, the neoconservatives will have transformed America into an autocracy, and any remaining political opposition will be window dressing.

And so, I challenge you: this is a battle we perhaps cannot win, but, at all costs, MUST NOT LOSE.

The consequences of surrender will be incalculable: one by one, like dominos, institutions we cherish will fall -- environmental laws, social security, independent media, healthy advocacy groups, assistance for the unemployed, impoverished and disenfranchised -- and, foremost, the right to choose our leaders.

We will be left with one remaining liberty: the right to choose which products to buy to keep the militaristic money machine well-oiled, and its minders well-heeled.

This year, unless YOU act -- BOLDLY, DECISIVELY, PERSISTENTLY AND INCESSANTLY -- the dream our forefathers nurtured to life will die.

Don't let the dream die.

Stand up and fight for America.

Stand up and fight for the vote.

This will be your last chance.

sincerely,
Eric A. Smith
Tokyo

About the author:

Eric A. Smith is a freelance journalist, editor and IT instructor living in Tokyo, Japan. An activist for over 25 years, he has worked with such diverse publications as the RTP Beacon, Common Ground and Adbusters magazine.

Smith is currently volunteering to assist Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org, Attorney Phillip Berg in 9-11 widow Ellen Mariani's RICO suit against Bush, et al, and is a charter member of the Open Voting Consortium.

Smith earned his BA at the University of North Carolina in 1992, and holds MCP, field service technician, A+ and Network+ certifications from Microsoft, COMPTIA and the Control Data Institute.

He can be reached for comment at snowdog@juno.ocn.ne.jp

[A guest editorial by TCP reader Kabar]

I have spent the past seventeen years working for the Space Shuttle Program. I began my career picking up the pieces of Challenger. A year ago Friday I helped launch Columbia on her last mission, and then I began picking up those pieces and reconstructing the events that led to her and her crew being strewn across east Texas. There were 88 shuttle missions between these two events. I worked in the Launch Control Center at the Kennedy Space Center for 48 of those. Michele of 'The Command Post' learning this, thought that I may have an opinion regarding the President's Lunar Mars Initiative. I do. They follow.

The President today gave NASA and its contractors a mandate to straighten-out our trajectories and to actually go somewhere. According to his plan, we are to cease going from point A to point A, continually retracing our paths around the globe, ballistically chasing our tails, just the same as we did it in 1963. In 1963 we were learning things about living and working in space, and we were proving hardware and theories of orbital mechanics in order to go somewhere - the moon. In 1963 we were neophytes trying to learn to swim by, with old-fashioned American bravado, throwing ourselves into a brand new sea. In 2004, we have so mastered the art of swimming in the shallow, Low Earth Orbit (LEO), wading pool part of that sea, that 99% of the American public had no idea that Columbia/STS-107 was in space until she failed to make it home. The American public had no idea that there are sharks in that 'wading pool'.

Space travel, even into LEO, is extraordinarily dangerous. Going to LEO does have its benefits. We now have a partial International Space Station (ISS) up there which has taught us how to assemble large and complex machines in the extremely harsh environment that exists 240 statute miles above our earth. Oh yeah, we get some science from it too. But the learning how to build such a thing is the real value of the ISS.

President Bush's plan will enable us to build upon what we have learned in LEO over the past 40 years. It will also serve to eliminate a very embarrassing aspect of my professional life… Talking to my parents about my day at work. My parents are both retired 'Space People', veterans of Gemini through Shuttle. And when they ask me, "What did you do at work today?" the typical reaction to my telling them what I did is, "Yeah. I remember doing that back in '91." Such a reaction is not what I signed-up for when I joined this country's manned space flight program. I grew up wanting to do nothing else but explore space. How could I help myself? My parents managed to go from zero experience with an American in space to having a couple of guys walking on the moon in nine years. "If they could do that in so short a period of time, and if the advancement of science continues at such a rate, I'll be sending people to Alpha Centauri by the time I am 30 years old" I told myself. So I signed-on.

I am now 50% past 30 years old, and the last shuttle mission I helped to launch retraced exactly the 28.45-degree inclination path that John Glenn blazed 40 years ago. Swimming laps in the shallow end, and a shark got us. The sharks knew where we waded, and we forgot that they were there. We always wade there! No sharks. No problem. Sharks love and feed on the complacent.

STS-107 gave us good scientific gain; more than most of the recent shuttle ISS assembly missions. And her crew certainly did not die in vain. They were valiant explorers; people dedicated to furthering our knowledge; heroes in the truest sense of the word, and one was a personal friend. I do not belittle their mission in any way. I miss them all.

It would sure be nice to get back to the "Going where no man has gone before" kind of missions which the NASA my parents worked for was chartered. President Bush today gave me my wish. It is now up to Congress to allocate the funds. I'll wait with baited and not-held breath.

NASA is allocated less than 1% of the budget of this country. Imagine what we could do with two.

Why should we go to the moon and Mars? Why should we spend the enormous amounts of money that such an endeavor will require? My only answer to those questions is this: "Can we afford not to?" As I write, there is exactly one US dollar and 1 Russian ruble in space. The ISS crews use them to bribe their crewmates for privacy or movie selections or other things. They are stuck on the wall of one of the pressure vessel segments of the ISS. All of the other billions of dollars that the ISS program 'costs' are in the pockets of people wholly unrelated to the space program. (Read the post by Falcon).

What is the cost of not expanding our horizons? Perhaps this is best asked as, "What is the cost of becoming centrist and stagnant?" The end result of inaction is a myopic view. "What I see is mine, and you stay off!" The real cost of sitting on our own little piece of this planet and saying, "Mine! Mine! Mine! And, oh by the way, I want yours for mine" is extinction at best, and reversion to barbarism at worst. We need a higher platform from which to view the world. Not 'Our World', "The World". We need new and unknown vistas. We need a place to stand that is so high that we can look back on ourselves and view humanity as a microcosm and identify all of the extraordinarily silly and destructive stuff that we do, and STOP IT!!!

Let us go forth and see what we can see. Let us see if we are alone. Let us gain new understanding of and insight into the world. And let us use this new knowledge as a knife to cut off the geopolitical and selfish and petty blinders that we humans have been wearing for tens of thousands of years.

And let me someday soon go over to my parent's house for dinner and amaze and excite them with what I did at work that day.

I end with a quote from Eliot that I have adopted as my personal motto:

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at the place where we started
And know the place for the first time."

Kabar been in the Space Shuttle Program at Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers for 17 years

[The following editorial was written by David Hogberg and is reprinted here with permission of the author]

Suddenly, Howard Dean is slipping in the Iowa polls. Last week he had a nice lead over Dick Gephardt. Today, polls from Research 2000 and Zogby show him either with a one point lead or in second place.

One standard explanation is the gaffe factor, that Dean’s many misstatements have made a lot of Democrats nervous. Undoubtedly, that is a big part of the reason. Here’s another: Dean is bit of a charlatan, and potential caucus-goers are getting wise to it.

On Tuesday, January 6th, I followed the Dean campaign around to what would easily be called events for the upper-middle class. The first took place at the Summerset Inn and Winery in Indianola, the second took place at the middle class house of Jim Bennau, and the third at the very upscale house of Ned Chiodo. Chiodo, not incidentally, is a former Democratic State Representative and now a lobbyist with clients such as Aventis, McDonald’s, and Wells Fargo. At these events, Dean is usually wears his suit jacket. His manner is low key. He delivers his talks with none of his famed animation.

Contrast that with the way he presented himself at the American Legion the following morning. Among a heavy union crowd, Dean has the suit jacket off and the shirt sleeves rolled up. His speech is fiery: angry tone, elevated voice, finger stabbing the air, with his face reddening off and on.

Interesting, isn’t it, that among a crowd that in well educated, Dean is soft-spoken, almost as though he wants to gently persuade the people present. But with a union crowd—i.e., lots of folks with nothing more than a high school education—Dean acts as though he can easily play upon their emotions. But a lot of union members in attendance seemed as though they weren’t letting Dean manipulate them.

While there was a lot of enthusiastic applause during Dean’s speech at American Legion event, I soon noticed that a lot of folks were not clapping with each applause line. Rather, they sat there with almost pensive looks on their faces. Curious, I began interviewing those in attendance right after Dean was finished. Sitting next to me was Fred, a retired member of the plumbers and pipefitters union. He was undecided, but leaning heavily toward Gephardt. He told me that there “were a lot of undecideds in the unions.”

Next I ran into Don, who had Dean stickers on his sweater. Surely a Dean supporter, I thought. But no, he was a county chair, so he was not expressly supporting anyone. When asked if he was leaning toward anyone, he said either Gephardt or Dean. He was a former UAW and Musician’s union member. When asked if Dean had done anything to win him over that morning, he replied, “I’m not sure.”

Indeed, of the Dean supporters I talked to, most were not union members. Typical was Roberta, who worked in management at a steel plant. Why did she support Dean? “Because he opposed the Iraq war,” she said. She also liked the fact that Dean was pro-choice and thought he had the right opinion on the gay issue.

I suspect that this reflects what is going on with the polls. At first, the Dean hype—his internet fundraising, his sudden leap to the frontrunner due to his opposition to the war—attracted a lot of upper-middle class Democrats. The hype translated into support among people in Iowa who were likely caucus-goers. But now that a lot of Iowa caucus-goers, especially the union folks, are getting to meet Dean, his support is dropping. The problem is Dean has made the mistake of equating “uneducated” with “stupid.” While most don’t have college degrees, union members can be quite cagey and skeptical. I suspect they aren’t overly sold on a Northeasterner giving them a sermon.

Back in December I bet that Gephardt would likely win. Had you asked even a few days ago who was going to win in Iowa, I would have said Dean. Today, it’s anybody’s guess. I’ll make a prediction on Monday, but not one with much confidence.

David Hogberg lives in Iowa and writes at Cornfield Commentary and is a contributor at The American Spectator. He will be providing an Iowa-based glimpse at the caucus for TCP.

This essay was originally published at Tech Central Station and is reprinted with permission

By James D. Miller

Citizen Nader, as much as Republicans such as I appreciated your 2000 Presidential run, it wasn't enough because America needs you to run again in 2004. Indeed, the justifications for your competing in the next presidential election are even stronger than they were for the last.

Howard Dean, the likely Democratic nominee, represents your supporters' greatest threat: an unprincipled politician who has emotionally captured the far left. True, to maximize his chance of winning the Democratic nomination Dean is currently playing radical to placate his party's activists. But remember, when governing Vermont Dean played at being a fiscally responsible centrist. Obviously, poser Dean is willing to do whatever it takes to win, and to win the general election Dean will need to run right.

This, Citizen Nader, is why you must run. A strong leftwing candidate would deter Dean from moving too far right in the general election because Dean would have to compete with you for the leftwing vote. If Dean stays left, you will probably get few votes, but will still have had a big impact. If Dean ignores your threat and moves right during the general election, you can capture his leftwing base and show to all Democrats the risk of abandoning the loony far left.

As Andrew Sullivan has written, Hillary Clinton is transforming herself into a hawk to better position herself for 2008. The only way you can stop Hillary's rightward drift, Citizen Nader, is to prove in 2004 that Democrats who run right lose the left. If you run and do well, Hillary will devote the next few years to winning over your supporters. If you don't seek the Presidency, Hillary will spend her time trying to win over Middle Americans, the types who drive SUVs and believe in the U.S. unilaterally fighting terrorism.

Furthermore, Hillary's decision not to run in 2004 provides evidence of why you should. She knows Democrats will have a hard time beating Bush, especially given how much the President's tax cuts have helped our economy. Therefore, the 2004 election is unlikely to be close enough for your entry to make a difference; thus, in 2004, unlike in 2000, the left won't be able to accuse you of being responsible for Republicans winning. Furthermore, since the last presidential election was so predictably close, many people voted for Gore when their hearts really belonged to you. If on election eve Dean seems likely to lose big, members of the far left won't feel obligated to cast a strategic vote for the Democratic candidate.

Dean's thoughtless tongue, however, provides you, Citizen Nader, with the most compelling reason to run. Admittedly, if you seek the Presidency in 2004 you likely won't do better than third in the popular vote. But Dean has been making some strange and politically hurtful comments lately, such as appealing to Confederate flag flyers and hinting that President Bush implicitly consented to the 9/11 attacks. Just possibly, the verbally undisciplined Dean might self-destruct after he wins the Democratic nomination, perhaps giving you a shot at achieving second place and thereby making your "movement" a serious and permanent rival to the Democrats.

Some press reports indicate that you are strongly considering running in 2004. No doubt many journalists will urge you not to run. You can't trust the liberal mainstream press on this issue; however, for they desperately want the eventual Democratic nominee to win, even if he wins on a platform a Republican would be proud of.

James D. Miller, Assistant Professor of Economics, Smith College, writes The Game Theorist column for TCS and is the author of Game Theory at Work.

Copyright © 2004 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com

Thank God it's Still the First Trimester of the Campaign

From Little Tiny Lies.

Zogby now says John Kerry's slimy tricks hard campaigning has worked, and Dean now trails him in Iowa. Tragic. I hope it isn't true. I was about to launch my "Republicans for Dean" site. I was really looking forward to seeing this guy debate Dub.

Dean: Americans don't need a President who's weak on security!

Dub: Roll the video of federal agents driving a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with Arabic markings past the sleeping guards at Vermont's only nuclear plant.

Dean: We don't need a President who is insensitive about race.

Dub: Roll the video of Dean's mom wearing her Chanel Imperial Wizard outfit.

Dean: We don't need a draft dodger in the White House.

Dub: Roll the video of Dean skiing after getting 4-F'd with a phony back ailment.

[Video rolls - we see Howard skiing down the slopes, waving a peace sign, wearing a shirt that says "Charlie Don't Ski."]

Dean: We don't need a snob in the White House.

Dub: Roll the video of young Howard forcing the servants to do his homework.

[Video rolls - we see a confused servant working on algebra while, in the background, Young Howard tap-dances up and down a set of stairs with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.]

Bojangles: Yo' back sho' don't seem to hurt yo' tap-dancin' none, Massa Howard.

Dean: Like I said, vote for Bush.

It's amazing how liberals have turned on Dean. They're like shark pups, eating each other in the womb. Every day, we see a new negative story in the mainstream liberal establishment press. Is it because reporters are out there doing legwork, like they're supposed to? Of course not. Journalists are the laziest creatures in the universe. Reporters sit in their offices and let publicists feed them, and right now, flaks for all the Democrat candidates other than Dean are pumping them as full as pâté geese.

Supposedly, Kerry is behind a lot of it. Hey, I would be, too, if I had a multimillion-dollar mortgage riding on the race. Everyone who gets elected President ends up rich--independently so, not the way guys who marry ketchup heirs are rich--and Kerry knows that. It'll take longer to recoup that money as a mere Senator. Of course, he can always go home and earn the money lying on his back.

I don’t know why my reaction to a female homicide bomber should be any different than my reaction to a male bomber, but it is.

22 years old.

The bomber was identified as Hamas member Reem Al-Reyashi, 22, of Gaza. Family members said she had a 3-year-old boy and 1-year-old girl.
Smiling at times in a videotape that showed her cradling a rifle, Al-Reyashi said she had dreamed since she was 13 of "becoming a martyr" and dying for her people.
"It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists," said Reyashi, wearing combat fatigues with a Hamas sash across her chest.
"God gave me two children and I loved them so much. Only God knew how much I loved them," she said.

What kind of society raises a person to believe in such a way of life? Please, don’t tell me about oppression, don’t tell me about poverty. Plenty of people around the world perceive themselves as being oppressed and impoverished, but they aren’t going around murdering people because of it.

It’s a certain society that breeds this kind of thinking. Years of brainwashing and the use of religion as an instrument of propaganda teaches children to believe that murder is noble, that suicide is to be rewarded, that their god will love them for what they have done.

"God gave me two children and I loved them so much. Only God knew how much I loved them," she said.

Repeat that out loud a couple of times. Remember that those words came out of the mouth of someone who killed herself in order to murder four innocent people. From the mouth of a woman who left two small children without a mother.

And the saddest part is this: The children will grow up to view their mother as a martyr and her deed as heroic. And someday, they will strap a grenade-filled belt on themselves and do the same.

In Reem Al-Reyashi’s defense, she never had a chance. She did what she was brainwashed to do. She did what her elders before her, what her neighbors and relatives and teachers told her was good and righteous. And that’s why there is no chance for peace. This violence will never end, not as long as Hamas and Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Yasser Arafat's and Fatah movement are allowed to reign free in the Middle East. Not as long as Americans keep supporting the Palestinian terrorists by burning American flags and standing in front of bulldozers. Not as long as Yasser Arafat is allowed to breathe. Not as long as the money to pay for all of these explosives is funneled in from other countries.

When does Israel get to defend herself without being taken to task for it? When does she get to retaliate without being condemned? The most likely answer is never. How sad.

______________________________________________
ed note: When I wrote the sentence In Reem Al-Reyashi’s defense, she never had a chance, I was trying to emphasize the fact that the hatred is handed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom. I know that this woman had a choice and I feel no sympathy for her or her family at all. But I do believe that her choice was certainly colored by her upbringing.

Margaret Cho At MoveOn Hatefest: Hitler Was Better Leader Than Bush.

This is the current state of political discourse from the Left. Via GOPUSA.com:

* * *

But the most incendiary attacks against Bush and the Republican National Committee came from comedian Margaret Cho.

"Despite all of this stupid bullsh** that the Republican National Committee, or whatever the fu** they call them, that they were saying that they're all angry about how two of these ads were comparing Bush to Hitler? I mean, out of thousands of submissions, they find two. They're like fu**ing looking for Hitler in a haystack," Cho told the audience, according to the Drudge Report.

But Cho said Bush should not be compared to Hitler because he is not as good a leader as the instigator of the Holocaust was.

"I mean, George Bush is not Hitler," Cho stated. "He would be if he fu**ing applied himself. I mean he just isn't."

She continued by saying that this last year has proven how "stupid Republicans are."

* * *

From the new issue of City Journal:

What Makes a Terrorist? By James Q. Wilson

Until the nineteenth century, religion was usually the only acceptable justification of terror. It is not hard to understand why: religion gives its true believers an account of the good life and a way of recognizing evil; if you believe that evil in the form of wrong beliefs and mistaken customs weakens or corrupts a life ordained by God, you are under a profound obligation to combat that evil. If you enjoy the companionship of like-minded believers, combating that evil can require that you commit violent, even suicidal, acts.

Read the whole thing, of course.

Other goodies from City Journal:

George F. Will: Can We Make Iraq Democratic?

Kay S. Hymowitz: The New Peaceniks

[The following article was written by Dariush Shirazi and is reprinted here with permission of the author]

His eyes struggle to open though they are flooded by darkness. Where am I? Terror and pain consume the boy as his 4 year old chest struggles for each breath of air. Layers of crumbled earth and stone wrap the young boy so tightly that his twisted body can only muster a few tears and a whimper so faint that it is impossible to hear. He is confused, scared and cold. What has happened? He struggles for each breath, unaware that he isn't alone under the fallen city, unaware that thousands of others are still breathing, still crying, and still waiting... But, waiting for what?

Another disaster had hit Iran, a country plagued by decades of sadness, despair and dwindling hope. In this moment of Iranian tragedy, the people of the world answered almost immediately and in a most remarkably apolitical manner. Some countries sent tents; others sent food, medical supplies, and water. The United States offered support in the form of tents, medical supplies, medical personnel, food, and a wealth of additional amenities and support. Interestingly, the US and Israel, two countries hated and labeled by the Mullahs as "Satans", made some of the most noble offerings. Their offers transcended politics for the sake of humanity, answering the cry of one human with the hand of another. But, as the world mobilized rescue teams and prepared other offerings to the Iranian people, the murderous regime of clerics in Tehran had already begun to strategize about ways in which they could use this disaster to their own advantage. How would they protect themselves against possible uprisings against their regime? How would they manage this crisis for the sake of their longevity, while neglecting to consider the time-sensitive nature of this disaster and the thousands still alive and buried under the rubble of Bam? Would they accept aid from the United States? Yes, they decided they would have to accept some aid from the "Great Satan".

The clerics decided it would be in the regime's strategic best interest to accept this offer. Turning away American aid would not only politicize a humanitarian issue, but could also result in increased internal anger and hatred toward the regime by Iranians who are on the verge of overthrowing the unelected clerics. Not to mention that turning down American aid would perhaps result in condemnation from other world governments, who, blinded by the golden oil that flows into their countries on a daily basis, would rather continue aiding and abetting these killers, while the Iranian people suffer. Israel, who almost immediately had rescue teams ready for deployment, and could have had their advanced teams in Bam within hours was refused by the clerical regime, not to mention professional American search and rescue teams based in Los Angeles who were also denied entry. While Bam residents were struggling to hold onto their lives, the Islamic regime was playing the deadliest game of politics by turning away the most important offers of aid... aid that could have saved thousands.

Earthquakes in this part of the world are by no means anomalies, as there are small tremors in Iran almost daily. In light of Iran's earthquake history, one would think that only a small percentage of the billions upon billions of dollars that continue to flow from the hands of various European nations into the hands of the clerical regime would be sufficient to fund a vast search and rescue infrastructure that could respond to an earthquake disaster within an hour or two of such an incident. One would think that the European foreign ministers who visited Tehran in October of last year, would at least have had some respect for the Iranian people, and could have requested that at least some of the billions of dollars, which Europeans regularly pay to the mullahs in exchange for automobile fuel, would be used to reinforce and strengthen the Iranian infrastructure. Of course, one would only think these things if and only if they were anyone but the Mullahs in Iran and the various world leaders who are employing every last ditch effort to keep their ally from being overthrown by an overwhelmingly popular democratic Iranian movement. Don't be misled, the money is put to use. This blood money is invested by the regime into each and every mechanism of suppression one could possibly imagine. The reaction time of the regime's outsourced vigilantes and mercenaries to Iranian uprisings is never more than a few minutes to an hour, though the response of the regime to thousands upon thousands of suffering Iranians was nonexistent.

Why, in 1979, did the regime support a racketeering scheme that entailed seizing large chunks of land in Bam that would be used to build poorly designed and badly constructed houses and shops, subsequently issuing fatwas (religious opinions) that canceled government orders that banned such development in the earthquake-prone city? Why did the clerical regime wait several hours and in many cases days before allowing offerings of aid to reach the victims? Why did such "leaders" who profess to speak the word of God prevent highly trained Israeli and American search and rescue teams from saving the lives of countless Iranians? Why did the regime order that tens of thousands of Iranians from various cities who had gathered tents and other amenities for their compatriots in Bam be turned away? Why do many world governments continue to shut their eyes to all the suffering and continue supplying indirect aid to this tyranny?

This was not simply a disaster caused by a tragic earthquake. This was genocide.

As the days passed, some Iranians were pulled alive from the ruins, not by the rescue teams who had been denied entry, but by the few family members who had survived. They suffered together. The little ones held on the longest, not knowing where they were, what had happened, or why. Soon, the suffocating dust and pressure from all around became too much to withstand. One by one the lights under Bam went out. Now even the youngest of Iranians have experienced the wrath of a regime that has murdered, tortured and raped hundreds of thousands of innocents.

In the name of all who have suffered, died and currently endure in the struggle for freedom, now is the time to rise and be most vigilant. From Tehran, to Paris, to Los Angeles and back, let our voices be heard and let there be little mercy shown to the tyrants who have only known the path of death and destruction. Demand that your government answer the cries of the Iranian people immediately. Not by supporting the so-called "reformers" who are nothing more than a regime-sponsored facade, meant to create the perception of bipolarity and the existence of some option other than regime-change. Demand that the clerical regime hold a free-referendum so that the Iranian people may freely choose the fate of the butchers. The war on terror goes on and will never be won until such regimes are no more.

Victory is near!

If you support the Iranian people in their struggle to be free and demand that the regime in Iran be investigated for crimes against humanity as well as genocide in Bam, then please sign the this petition.

Dariush Shirazi is a pseudonym of an Iranian-American university student and Los Angeles-based freelance journalist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ed. note: This related news was found at Activistchat.com, where Dariush Shirazi can often be found joining in discussion on the message boards:

Plan for the peaceful removal of the Islamic Regime:
This Sunday, January 18, 2004

A Plan for the peaceful removal of the Islamic Regime of Iran will be announced during a live program broadcast on many Iranian satellite TV and Radio stations. The program starts at 10 AM PST from NITV studios in Los Angeles and will last for 6 hours, including a fundraising segment to support the plan. Other media who have confirmed the live broadcast of this program include Pars TV, Radio Sedaye Iran, Radio Yaran, Radio Sedaye Emrooz, Rangarang TV, Apadana TV, and Lahzeh TV.

This program can also be seen live via the Internet at www.IranRadioTV.com who will provide a FREE link on that day.

One of the questions I’ve been pondering since the unofficial start of Election 2004 sometime last summer is whether or not Bush will stick with Dick Cheney as his VP candidate. Ideally the incumbent wants a VP candidate that not only brings balance to the ticket but also has potential as a presidential candidate after the President’s term expires. If this were Bush’s criteria, Cheney would be the wrong choice.

Full Article

What's Next? Dead Roses?

From Little Tiny Lies.

The left is mildly aroused over Paul O'Neill's vicious attack on President Bush. They're not HIGHLY aroused, because every time they get really excited about an apparent Bush scandal, it turns out to be a plastic turkey kerfuffle, they get humiliated, and to put it politely, the swelling quickly goes down.

Still, they like the O'Neill story. They kind of liked O'Neill anyway, because he flew around with that no-talent, one-name idiot, Bono, who wants us all to forgive third-world debt, but who doesn't seem too eager to donate his own millions.

It's a peculiar thing about the left. They love demanding higher taxes and bigger handouts, but you never see them donating money to the government on their own initiative. Warren Beatty said he thought 70% was a pretty reasonable tax rate. He's free to pay 70% right now; the government would be happy to take it. But Warren isn't offering.

I think he and Bono should do a modern-day version of The Millionaire. They'd be sitting around in their posh study, and suddenly the phone would ring, and it would be Lesotho, asking forgiveness for an enormous loan. Off would go Warren's and Bono's driver, with a big check in a pretty envelope.

Don't hold your breath, Lesotho. Go out and get a paper route.

Anyway, back to O'Neill.

I think everyone needs to try to imagine what it's like to be the Secretary of the Treasury and get FIRED. Okay? You've moved all your stuff into the office, you've gone to your college reunion and flashed a big bleached smile at all the losers...maybe you've even gone to your high school reunion and used the new job as an entre to boff a few of the hotties of your fevered youth. You've had business cards printed up, you've got new, government-issue stationery, you're flying around the world with a short, greasy, balding rocker who makes the kids think you're really hip...and then one day you open USA Today and find out you're unemployed, not because you chose to quit and go on tour, but because your boss thinks you're an idiot.

Your boss, the alleged 40-watt bulb who was supposed to be grateful to bask in the reflected glow of your genius, thinks you're too stupid even for government work. So you're out.

Now, what happens when you dump a girl? Does she run off to all her friends and say, "Wow, what a wonderful guy. I guess I wasn't worthy"? No. Here's what she says:

1. You are a loser.
2. She was going to dump you anyway.
3. You have a small penis.
4. She faked all her orgasms.
5. She's pretty sure you're gay.

Then she drives to your house late at night and breaks the radio antenna off your car.

Do I even have to tell you this? I have an ex whose idea of maturity and grace was to skip the state and try to force me to pay for her bar study loan. This was after she tried to cancel my hotel reservation for the bar exam. And I was REALLY NICE when I let her go. I was even nice to her when I located her and put the loan people in touch. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I tendered the olive branch, with sincerity. Now when she reluctantly communicates with me, she acts like I have SARS.

That's the state of mind O'Neill is in right now. He's so mad at Bush he gave his ghostwriter 19,000 documents to use to screw him. Do you know how many boxes that is? If I were representing a client and opposing counsel asked me to bring him 19,000 documents, I'd advise the client to forfeit. I'm not throwing my back out over one case.

O'Neill is probably so mad he has already gone through his photo album and cut Bush out of all the pictures. And he's probably very upset that the book has no chapter called "Bush has a Small Penis."

Let's look at O'Neill's claims.

1. Bush didn't ask many questions at cabinet meetings. He was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf men." Well, hell, forget impeachment. Let's go ahead and STRING HIM UP. I know there's something in the Constitution somewhere that says a President has to ask a certain number of questions at a cabinet meeting. If not, there damn sure ought to be. He needs to ask questions. Never mind that he's the most organized President in history and has been briefed up the ass every day since before he took office. Score one for Paul, if only because Bush hurt his feelings.

2. Bush planned to depose Hussein even before 911. Hello? So did Bill Clinton. Regime change was our official policy under Slick Willie. Some of O'Neill's "smoking pop gun" documents on this issue date back to 1998. I say impeach them BOTH. Oh, wait. We already impeached Clinton, and it didn't take. I guess the impeachment bounced off the protective layer of mucus. Never mind.

3. O'Neill never saw anything he would consider evidence of WMD. Since it would help Bush if he DID consider what he saw evidence of WMD, and since he hates Bush, and since he, O'Neill, is the one who gets to decide whether what he sees is evidence of WMD, you kind of have to admit the possibility that there might be a microscopic particle of bias here. If you were a suspicious person.

It's nice to know that O'Neill is a weapons inspector, a covert operative, an intelligence expert, and part of the Department of Defense. Up until now, I had the crazy idea that his job had something to do with the TREASURY. I guess this means we can go to Donald Rumsfeld when we want to raise hell about not being able to get Susan B. Anthony proof sets.

O'Neill's claim is couched in language that makes it clear exactly what we're dealing with: a very subjective opinion. If Saddam Hussein showed up on O'Neill's doorstep with a hydrogen bomb under each arm, O'Neill would invite him in and compliment him on his interesting new luggage.

Is that it? Is the show over? Nice job, Paul. Nice job, leftist handlers. NEXT.

Hey, February 2nd isn't far off. Maybe the left can catch Bush posing with a plastic groundhog.

Careful, my liberal friends. It might just be Helen Thomas.

...but Anti-Muslim speech is forbidden.

By CERDIP

You can read the full story of this cartoon here.

I'm a little late on this, but having expected President Bush to make an announcement in October and then December, I thought it best to wait for confirmation.

Friday, the president's press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters:

The president directed his administration to do a comprehensive review of our space policy, including our priorities and the future of the program, and the president will have more to say on it next week.

There is a great deal of speculation, both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere, about what President Bush will actually announce. I hope that it will be to send Americans to Mars, sooner rather than later.

I am a certifiable space nut. When I was young I used to get up early enough to watch the Mercury & Gemini launches. Living in California meant that launch time was usually 4:00 am. I went to Edwards Air Force Base to watch the shuttle prototype Enterprise's first free flight. I even dragged my family, three year-old in tow, to watch a shuttle launch in Florida. I have always wanted to go to Mars.

Perhaps the best reason to go to Mars is to fulfill the basic human psychological need to explore. Humans have historically been nomadic and driven to explore new territory, from hunter gatherers to the settlers of the New World. Exploration inspires us, providing adventure. fresh ideas and new territory.

Mars can fulfill this need. If you doubt that it can you need only examine the excitement generated by Spirit, NASA's new robotic Martian rover. The reaction to the successful landing of the Spirit rover on Mars demonstrates the public's fascination with Mars.

USA Today refers to Spirit as, "The hottest action hero of 2004 is 4 feet tall, looks like a golf cart and stars in a feel-good Mars mania blockbuster that is gripping the nation."

Spirit's every move leads nightly newscasts, and it isn't even roving yet.

NASA's web site received 1.45 billion hits in the five days following Spirit's landing. NASA officials believe Spirit will be the biggest online event ever for the U.S. government.

With Spirit's landing on Mars, space appeal overcame sex appeal on the Web. In Google's ranking of the search queries that increased the most from Dec. 29 to Jan. 5, NASA was No. 1, followed by the briefly married Britney Spears. Mars photos were No. 3.

Even the Postal Service sells Marvin the Martian ties.

Hollywood has long loved Mars. The 1953 adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, about invading Martians, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1990 Total Recall were big hits.

Our fascination with Mars isn't new. Humans have fantasized about Martians since Giovanni Schiaparelli thought he saw canals on Mars.

All this excitement over the landing of a remote controlled robot onto a rock strewn landscape that looks like Afghanistan. The reaction to Spirit demonstrates that the public will be thrilled and inspired by sending humans to Mars.

There are other, more rational reasons to go to Mars.

Science: Like America's effort to reach the moon, sending humans to Mars will cause a boom in scientific discoveries. Like the Apollo program it will inspire young people to become scientists.

Technology: Sending humans to Mars will produce new technology and products, in addition to the thousands of spinoffs which have already resulted from the technology developed for space flight. These spinoffs include all kinds of things, from improved brake linings to virtual reality.

Economics: A program to send humans to Mars will also generate economic activity. It is estimated that every dollar the U.S. spends on the space program generates $7 in the form of corporate and personal income taxes from increased jobs and economic growth.

Human Survival Insurance: Mars has the resources that can support life. It has water in the form of ice, carbon and nitrogen. Mars can be the testing ground proving whether humanity can become a multi-planet species.

Ronald Reagan said that Americans "have every right to dream great dreams." Sending humans to Mars is a great dream. Sending humans to Mars is in the national interest in the same way it was in the national interest to build the transcontinental railroad or the Panama Canal.

Finally, to paraphrase George Leigh Mallory, we should go to Mars because it is there and we can.

Why is This Still an Issue?

From Little Tiny Lies.

Weapons of mass destruction have apparently been found AGAIN in Iraq, and despite the left's whining about WMD being the sole justification for going to war, no one seems to care. I say "again" because last year we found a mobile lab designed for the production of bioweapons. No one cared then; the press completely ignored it. And nothing has changed; even blogdom is ignoring the latest find.

In case you haven't heard the latest, Danish troops just dug up some mortar rounds which are apparently loaded with blister gas. The analysis isn't done, but it looks like there isn't much doubt. And this is an illegal weapon Hussein is known to have used against the Iranians.

Are liberals knocking on the doors of their conservative neighbors so they can offer their apologies? Hell, no. For that matter, conservatives don't seem excited, either. Because the whole WMD nonsense was just an excuse for the left to attack a President who, to them, symbolizes this country's terrifying, unstoppable swing away from the extremist left. These are the same idiots who abused Bush for picking up the wrong turkey; that ought to tell you everything you need to know.

I still remember when they found the weapons lab. It was very obviously a weapons lab, but some "expert" who wasn't firing on all cylinders made the mistake--which he later corrected--of acknowledging that it was conceivable that it could have been used for something else. The liberal establishment press jumped all over that and decided it was not a lab. These are people who might recognize a meth lab if they saw it, but they're hardly qualified to decide--sight unseen--what is and is not a weapons lab.

By the same logic, if I found an AK-47 in your house, you could tie a handkerchief to the barrel and claim it was a flagpole. If I found a hand grenade, you could claim it was a paperweight. If I found your wife, you could make her get down on all fours and claim she was a coffee table. But bullshit is bullshit. This was a weapons lab. If they had been found under Clinton, the lab would be "a massive weapons-producing complex," your AK-47 would be "an arsenal," and your wife would be "a soft target."

What are the odds that the Danes found the only weapons of mass destruction in a country the size of California, after the UN gave Saddam months to hide his weapons, and given that the country is still full of lunatic loyalists who want their old cushy jobs back? What are the odds that it never occurred to Hussein to move weapons to Syria while the UN sat in the corner abusing itself for months?

No liberal will ever acknowledge those questions, let alone try to answer them. Because obviously, the overwhelming likelihood is that there are more weapons where the mortars came from.

Personally, I hope we don't find another one until the week before the Presidential election.

....I intend to vote in 2004 to reelect President Bush. I will do so despite the fact that I do not agree with him on any major domestic issue, from tax policy to the recently enacted prescription drug law. These issues, however, pale in importance beside the menace of international terrorism, which threatens our very survival as a nation. President Bush has earned my vote because he has shown the resolve and courage necessary to wage the war against terrorism.

The Democratic presidential contenders, unfortunately, inspire no such confidence. With the exception of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has no chance of winning, the Democrats have decided that in order to get their party's nomination, they must pander to its radical left wing. As a result, the Democratic candidates, even those who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, have attacked the Bush administration for its successful effort to remove a regime that was a sponsor of terrorism and a threat to world peace

.

This, from a Democrat. Ed Koch, former mayor of New York, pens an editorial that sums up the reasons why I, too, and voting for Bush in 2004.

As the 2004 Presidential election approaches, I will write more OpEds on why I have chosen to endorse George W. Bush for president.

These issues, however, pale in importance beside the menace of international terrorism, which threatens our very survival as a nation.

That's the main reason. If you read the whole Koch editorial, you'll figure out the rest.

We all know the color codes by heart now. And maybe, like us, you're just a little tired of those stale, boring boxes staring you in the face every time you check what the day's level is.

The editors of The Command Post think a new warning system will make us think differently about these alerts. Maybe if they were done in smiley faces instead of colored rectangles, we would feel more confident about staying vigilant.

And that's where you come in. TCP would like to redesign the boring Adivsory System the government puts out. Let's face it - if it's government issued, it's bland. But why settle for bland when there are a million would-be graphic artists and Photoshop addicts out there just dying to redesign the various levels of threat conditions.

Winning entries will be displayed prominently on the front page of TCP where the usual boring alert sits now (over there - top right).

Examples of altered threat level chart, here, here, here

Here are the rules:

1. You must submit a design that incorporates all five levels. Original here
2. [Updated] There should be five separate images, each no wider than 150px.
3. You must use the threat phrases (elevated, high, etc.) that Homeland Security uses.
4. All entries with offensive images will be disqualified.
5. The Command Post reserves the right to use the winning image freely, in whatever way it deems appropriate.
6. All entries should be submitted no later than midnight, January 16th (EST).
7. All entries, in addition to the winner, may be used by TCP at any time.
8. Prize to be announced.
9. Send all entries to contest@command-post.org

Entries open to one and all, so spread the word. Good luck!

Update to rules: Multiple entries are allowed, but please send each entry separately.

Also, please include your name and URL (if you have one) with the entry.

This article was written by Chuck Simmins and appears here with permission of the author.

Immigration is important to me. I am the result of immigration. Hard working men and women who gave up their lives in foreign lands and came to the United States to make a better life for themselves and their descendants. Nearly all my ancestors arrived before the country regulated immigration. As the line goes "They were poor men, with dirty faces...". They followed Gunny Highway's dictum, and adapted, overcame, and improvised. They became Americans, and America became great through their efforts.

What bothers me about the illegal immigration issue is the apparent racist nature of the debate. It is estimated that Mexicans make up the largest single group in that population. Once upon a time, it was the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, the Poles. In the 200 plus year history of our great nation, many groups have comprised the majority of immigrants at any given time. For the vast majority of that time, immigration was unrestricted, or rarely limited. Yet race or ethnic origin was still a means for the bigoted to discriminate against immigrants.

The President has proposed a plan that would, in part, allow illegals who have a job to remain in the country. And the answer from the nativist right is "Deport them!"

Why should people who show that they are willing to work, and who have a job, be sent back to a country where they don't? Is this about who they are rather than what they do? Tell me how the anti-immigration arguments differ from those of the Know Nothings, or the Klan in the 1890's? Immigrants speak a different language. They live in the same neighborhoods. They celebrate different holidays, eat different foods, smell different, act different. For 150 years it's been : No Irish Need Apply. No Chinks. No Wops. No Polacks. And every single time the ethnic group most hated and reviled and looked down upon has assimilated. It takes generations, and we have to have that view of history and of our nation.

The nativists raise the issue of terrorism. Since 9/11, all the attacks on American soil that are termed terrorism were conducted by American citizens or legal immigrants (though Johnny Malvo was illegal, his mentor was not). The El Al shooting guy was legal. The ALF / ELF folks are all citizens, so far as we know. The FBI believes the anthrax attacks were domestic. The Texas folks just convicted of WMD type charges were citizens. I'm stating fact, and suggesting that a chain of facts may prove a theory. My theory is that we should first be looking for acts that have actually happened repeatedly before looking for acts that might or could happen.

Could uncontrolled immigration allow terrorists into the country? Of course. Has it been found to have occurred? Not yet demonstrated.

The nativists are failing to come up with a practical means of satisfying their demands to deport all the illegals. Honest employers already incur a financial burden complying with the INS regulations. Are we then to be asked to prove our citizenship as a matter of routine at banks, hospitals, schools as well? How do we do that without a national ID card, or a Federal system of verifying identities?

Nine million illegals, more or less, 3-5% of the population. Can you imagine rounding up that many people? Locating them, identifying them, proving that they are not legal or a citizen, and then finding a country that would take them back. Mexico has no reason to allow 6 million people back into its country. Will we build camps along the borders, like the Palestinians live in now? Shouldn't that God awful mess be a cautionary tale about uprooting people. That all started with 650,000 Palestinians.

Most people know by name about 250 people. Imagine the police coming and taking 8 of them away. Not all illegals pick lettuce. It might be your doctor, your maid, the owner of your gas station, or you. The government does make mistakes, all the time, and there is nothing that says that a pogrom-like roundup won't grab a few citizens.

You do realize that it's possible to have a Hispanic name, speak Spanish fluently, and still be a bonafide citizen of the United States?

I'm all in favor of enforcing the immigration laws. But no one has demonstrated a practical method of removing the current group of illegals. I say "Fait accompli!" Find a way to legalize them, get them all into the legal economy. The nativists are proposing, for the first time in our history, to take working people and send them back to where they came from. This country was built by immigrants who were willing to work for low wages and at backbreaking menial jobs. So now that the Micks, the Chinks, the Wops and the Polacks have made it in, we close the borders?

It's funny how the very people who regularly tout the benefits of the American Way of Life, capitalism, free enterprise, the virtues of libertarianism, the innate goodness of the United States turn around and say the equivalent of "Oh, but that won't work for Mexicans."? Where are your principles? If freedom and economic growth are good for you and I, why not everyone? Hey, maybe I'm waving the black flag here, but my tiny brand of libertarianism says let people choose for themselves, not have their future imposed on them by government.

A half million people vote with their feet every year by coming to the United States. Just like Michael DeLaney did in 1845, and folks named Kroger, Meyers, Simmins, Ferris, and yes, Stockstaad, too. We are the future that those people wanted when they came to the United States. How can we honestly deny those choices and that freedom to those who are coming here today? Where are your principles?

Chuck Simmins writes daily opinion pieces at his website. He also maintains a site dedicated to his father's World War II Unit.

This article was written by Dan Spencer and is reprinted with permission of the author.

In a move that will surely be both hailed and condemned as a political masterstroke, yesterday President Bush took on another controversial and, so far unsolvable problem, immigration reform.

I agree with the Captain, at Captain’s Quarters, that President Bush should get credit for a bold move.

The President asked Congress to pass new immigration laws consistent with several key concepts. The President's key concepts include:

A new temporary worker program that will match willing foreign workers with willing American employers, when no willing Americans can be found to fill the jobs.

The program will offer legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States, and to those in foreign countries who seek to participate in the program and have been offered employment here.

All who participate in the temporary worker program must have a job, or, if not living in the United States, a job offer.

The legal status granted by this program will last three years and will be renewable.

Participants who do not remain employed, who do not follow the rules of the program, or who break the law will not be eligible for continued participation and will be required to return to their home.

Employers who extend job offers must first make every reasonable effort to find an American worker for the job at hand.

Employers must not hire undocumented aliens or temporary workers whose legal status has expired.

Employers must report to the government the temporary workers they hire, and who leave their employ.

There must be strong workplace enforcement with tough penalties for anyone, for any employer violating these laws.

Undocumented workers now here will be required to pay a one-time fee to register for the temporary worker program.

All participants will be issued a temporary worker card that will allow them to travel back and forth between their home and the United States without fear of being denied re-entry into our country.

The program should include financial incentives to encourage the permanent return of the temporary workers to their home countries after their period of work in the United States has expired.

Those temporary workers who Decide make to pursue American citizenship will have to apply in the normal way.

The President’s proposal go too far. President Bush is absolutely right that the issue must be addressed. Most of the key concepts set forth by the president will make a great improvement. Allowing the “undocumented workers,” who are here illegally is wrong.

As the President acknowledged in yesterday’s announcement:

Granting amnesty encourages the violation of our laws, and perpetuates illegal immigration.

This is why the existing “undocumented workers” should not be allowed to participate. Participation of “undocumented workers” in the new temporary worker program will only be seen by those who want to work in the U.S. as an amnesty. The message we would send is get into the U.S. any way you can, eventually the U.S. will make us legal.

History has proven that amnesty is a mistake. As I posted here, The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made nearly 4 million illegals eligible for legal residency. That policy was an obvious failure because now there are between 8 and 12 "undocumented workers" In the U.S. If amnesty is now given to these millions, then we should only expect that fifteen years from now we will have to consider amnesty for 20 or 30 million more.

Don’t get me wrong. I truly appreciate that we are a nation of immigrants and I recognize that much of the nation’s success is owed to immigrants. My point is that immigration and our borders must be controlled. Welcome whomever and however many immigrants Congress decides. Just don’t reward those here illegally.

Congress should adopt temporary worker program that does most of what the President suggested. The new program must not provide for legal status for those here illegally. The new program should be used as an incentive. It should only apply to those who are not presently here illegally. It could even apply to current undocumented workers who return to their home country and then apply to participate.

Dan Spencer is a California Yankee whose writings can be found here. You can also read Dan's previous Command Post OpEd, on a "secret" court case, here.

This article was written by Dariush Shirazi and is reprinted with permission from the author.

They wait, stranded on an island, sustained only by hope. They are the
descendants of great poets and leaders many of whom painted the canvas of
human history with such achievements as the first Charter of Human Rights,
advances in fields such as Astronomy, Mathematics, Medicine and many others.

They are a beautiful people who turn words into wishes, wishes into dreams,
dreams of freedom, and visions of a new day in a land that once laid host to men such as Cyrus The Great, Omar Khayam, Rumi, and many others. Iran, a
small segment of what was once Persia, has always been home to those who
throughout history have fought the type of religious fanaticism we see being
preached today and used as a tool of mass repression and murder.

The fanatics who hold the Iranian people hostage today, were brought to power in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, not only by American and British Administrations that had turned their backs on the Shah and wanted to replace him with an Islamic regime that could balance the ever-increasing communist threats in the region, nor by Europeans who were drooling over the prospect of future oil wealth at the expense of the Iranian people, but they were also brought to power by the parents of today's Iranian youth, who had hoped that Khomeini's “modernized Islam” was their key to a brighter future. They were mistaken.

After more than one-hundred thousand executions, rapes, stonings, mass
imprisonments, and 25 years of resistance, the Iranian people are more
determined that ever in their struggle to bring about the freedoms, liberalization and progress that has always existed in their hearts but has failed to manifest itself under the current regime.

When looking at the dynamic in the region and in Iran itself, one first must
acknowledge the major distinction between the Iranian people and the regime
of ruling Clerics. The difference is like night and day. The people of Iran are the carriers of a bloodline that has known beauty so unimaginable that it brings tears to your eyes to witness their current enslavement. In their true hearts and souls, they are not adamant believers in Islamic tradition, but rather they are rooted in a culture and a past that extends far beyond the invasion of Islam by the Arabs some 1400 years ago. They are a people who respect and love all cultures, peoples and religions. Their true religion is Zoroastrianism, an ancient monotheistic religion whose three tenets are “good words”, “good thoughts” and “good deeds”, and much of the artwork which today is referred to as Islamic Art are actually Persian masterpieces that were partially absorbed after much of Persia fell to the Arabs. However, what good is it to become entrapped by the days of old, or to delve too deeply into a discussion about Persians and Arabs, Zoroastrianism and Islam, when what is important is to look objectively at the current scenario and decide where we stand as human beings and as
Americans.

President Bush's statement Nov. 6, that “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty”, is an admission of past failures in policy that have given rise to many tyrannical dictatorships.

It is inadequate to believe that America's mission to promote freedom, progress and stability throughout the world, and the subsequent fall of tyrannical regimes, can be achieved solely by appeasement and negotiation. Appeasement, negotiation, and in many cases turning our backs on human
suffering, which have nourished and sustained such barbaric regimes, has been the policy of Europe for decades as well as certain American administrations, and would continue to be the case if the Bush administration were to hand over the reigns to the United Nations, a body which many had hoped would neutralize America's ability to use the one and only method of success in the current mission we face. Our success and the triumph of freedom and human rights cannot be won merely by the European carrot, but demands the use, in some cases, of the American stick. We have witnessed the fall of the Taliban's brutal regime and most recently the establishment of an Afghan constitution. Saddam Hussein's brutal regime is now out of commission and we watch and assist the Iraqi people in making their country more free and progressive. Not to mention, the Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi has agreed to dismantle Libya's Nuclear Weapons program.

Last week, President Bush stated that "The Iranian government must listen to
the voices of those who long for freedom, must turn over all Al-Qaeda that are in their custody and must abandon their nuclear weapons program.” The most important of these demands is the first, which entails that a free referendum be held so that the Iranian people may be allowed to remove the current, illegitimate clerical regime.

The Iranian people's hearts are racing as they plan and plot against the regime around the clock and wait for the moment when they can come to the streets and seize their long-awaited freedom. A free Iran will help facilitate not only the fall of remaining tyrants in the region, but will also be the driving force of progress and evolution throughout the Middle East, with it's highly educated young population, responsible utilization of vast natural resources, and a peaceful regime that is neither a threat to American security nor the stability of the world. An Iranian nation that is by the people and for the people, will be nothing less than one of the greatest partners in the journey ahead.

Whether you are pro-Bush or anti-Bush, you must support the Iranian people.
The war on terror cannot be won simply by removing tyrants, but only through
an approach that both removes such criminals as well as eliminates the fire that drives their tyrannical tongues.

So as they sit, wait and wish for the long-anticipated liberation from their captors, we must do our duty to hear their cries, understand their wishes, and stand upright in defense of liberty, justice and humanity. Not only for the sake of the Iranian people, but for the sake of us all.

On Thursday, January 8th at 9pm, PBS “Frontline” will air a special documentary entitled “Forbidden Iran” in which Canadian reporter Jane Kokan
escapes the constant surveillance of the Iranian authorities to record exclusive interviews detailing the systematic torture and execution of students opposed to the current regime. Kokan continues where Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian photojournalist who was murdered by the regime last summer, left off.

I leave you with the words of American Scholar Michael Ledeen, who in his
most recent article entitled “Aftershocks” urges us to “..ask our leaders
what in the world we are waiting for, and why we insist on believing that a
regime so demonstrably evil deserves to have good relations with the United
States, and why a people so demonstrably on our side, and so demonstrably
worthy of freedom, does not deserve our full support.”

Dariush Shirazi, a Los Angeles based freelance journalist, will be joining in discussion at the ActivistChat.com message board on a regular basis to discuss current situation, and articles.

As long as we're castigating people for Nazi comparisons, I'll rake Ralph Peters over the coals for his column in the NY Post: HOWARD THE COWARD

I hope the ADL gets ahold of this, because Peters does the cause of conservatism no favor by dragging the names Goebbels, brownshirts and Hitler back from the dead in these excerpts:

But Howard Dean and his Deanie-weenies do all they can to restrict the free speech of others. I can predict with certainty that Dean's Internet Gestapo will pounce on this column, twisting the facts and vilifying the writer, just as they do when anyone challenges Howard the Coward.

Note the effort at inoculation? "Of course, THEY will twist my words." No, no need to twist your words, Ralph. You can do that just fine yourself. I've read several bloggers who post about Dean and have yet to witness a real instance of a Dean "Gestapo." That's a mighty heavy term to apply to people who are posting messages on the Internet. Have any of them showed up at your house, Ralph, offering to drive you to a station for questioning? Then I suggest you shut up about the "gestapo."

As for restricting free speech, are they really doing that, Ralph? Have any Dean supporters frozen you out of publication? Put a patch on your clothes and demanded that no one print your articles? Get real. It's very difficult to restrict free speech in America. Especially on the Internet. They might disagree with you, and attempt to drown you out, but they can't take down your words. And if your words have traction, they won't be able to stop your truth. But you don't have Truth, Ralph. You have cheap rhetoric, a common tactic of the Democratic Underground moonbats, the tinfoil crowd. Why do you go there?

Dean wants to muzzle his Democratic competitors, too. He believes the Democratic National Committee should shut them up. His followers try to intimidate other presidential aspirants by surrounding the cars delivering them to their rallies and chanting to drown out their speech. Of course, Dean denies any foreknowledge or blame.

These are the techniques employed by Hitler's Brownshirts. Had Goebbels enjoyed access to the internet, he would have used the same swarm tactics as Dean's Flannelshirts.

Hmm. Now, we're up to "Brownshirts." Are these new tactics, Ralph. Have they never appeared in a U.S. political campaign before? I recall people doing this sort of things at presidential speeches all the time, since the time of Ronald Reagan. Again, this is mighty heavy guilt by association for a free election in the most powerful democracy in the world.

Dean was already practicing the Big Lie. Montreal was just a stop on his journey from Munich to Berlin. He was already looking around for his Leni Riefenstahl.

See it. Subtle. Dean's supporters are brownshirts, and Dean is "looking for his Leni." I'm sure Dean Esmay will find that annoying. But Peters doesn't have to come right out and say Dean=Hitler. You throw around enough Nazi terminology and analogies in the same sentence, and you never have to be crystal clear. It's what people do when comparing Bush to Hitler, and it doesn't fit any better on the other foot. As if the Hitler comparison weren't enough, Peters goes on to compare Dean to a passel of Russian communist leaders:

Dean began his campaign as an uncompromising Lenin. Now that his Bolsheviks have been organized, he's trying to pose as Gorbachev for the masses. But for anyone who pays attention to what this power-hungry huckster says and does, he comes off as a down-market Brezhnev.

Get that? First they're Brownshirts, now they're Bolsheviks. Are they going to shoot the royal family, Ralph? Get real. Dean has enough flaws and failings to lose the election without having to tar the opposition with two of the worst evils of modern history.

Shame on you, Ralph Peters. You're doing Bush and the Republicans no favors by engaging in this sort of hyperbole.

With a nod to J.D. Lasica, who lamented the lack of such outrage about Peters' column.

Link to Peters' column found at Betsy's Page

Jimmy Carter on the Lord of the Rings movies (it's "fictional but not false"):

* * *

"When I saw the audience in the movie theater cheer when Orcs were killed, I shuddered," Mr. Carter said, visibly pained. "The message of 'Lord of the Rings' is just plain bad.

* * *

For more Lord of the Rings humor, see:

The classic: "Frodo Baggins Charged With War Crimes:"

* * *

Frodo Baggins of Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, The Shire, Middle Earth, has been called before the International Criminal Court to answer charges of war crimes brought by Sauron the Dark Lord and Saruman the White in a joint filing.

* * *

[Sauron, the Dark Lord, alleged that when] ...the armies of the Western Alliance marched up to the Black Gate, they were guilty of making illegal aggressive war against a sovereign nation. Our legal team plans to bring separate suits against Aragorn son of Arathorn, the Elfstone King Elessar of Gondor. Also King Eomer of the Riddermark and Elrond Halfelven of Rivendell. But we chose to pursue the suit against Baggins first, since his was the most damaging and egregious crime."

* * *

...and the all-Tolkien, all-the-time, satire site, Molly J. Ringwraith.

Who needs a palantir when you have a blog? Ok, ok - the Tolkien-geeky references will end for now - not.

Mordor's native Ringwraiths defend their homeland against the war of aggression waged by cowboy war criminals Frodo Baggins, Gandalf the White, Aragorn Elessar, and their coalition of the duped

Ahem. Which Ringwraith are you?

Wow. I'm the Witch-King of Angmar...

Which Ringwraith are You?
By Lisa

For those craving more Tolkien-geeky goodness, Andrea Harris opines on The Return of the King here.

Via Townhall, NZPundit, Cold Fury, and Molly J. Ringwraith aka Rainy Seattle Summer.

Or is that "Apu-logizes"?

From Little Tiny Lies.

Hillary Clinton is under fire for introducing a quotation by Mahatma Gandhi--the inventor of white rice--by saying he used to "run a gas station down in St. Louis." I don't know if she saw Howard Dean stealing her Queen of Tone Deafness crown and got jealous or what, but she really said that. Evidently, the amazingly weak joke was a poke at gentlemen from the Near East who run convenience stores. And they're not all that uncommon. We've all seen those little hand-lettered signs on the door: "No shoes, no dot, no service."

Hillary retracted the comment today, saying, "I apologize for making an insensitive remark suggesting that Mahatma Gandhi operated a gas station. I meant to say that he was a f___ing Jew bastard who wore diapers while working the counter at a Kwik-E-Mart. If my handlers come up with anything even more clueless and offensive that I can say later, I will notify the Jew-dominated press."

Howard Dean's mother was not available for comment, as she was busy having slaves apply a giant Confederate flag decal to the rear window of her pickup.

RNC chairman Ed Gillespie's response: "I'm confused. I thought WE were the party of racism. Clearly, Senator Clinton is attempting to triangulate and destroy our monopoly on intolerance. Oh, Strom. Where are you when we need you?"

RNC operatives suggested digging up late Senator Strom Thurmond, rigging him up with a harness, and having his body animated by a staff of puppeteers. Gillespie nixed the idea, noting that the GOP had already done that, beginning in 1990, and that they had only admitted he was dead because his head kept falling off the stick during filibusters.

Spokesman: "We Just Hope Bush Doesn't Jump off the Empire State Building"

From Little Tiny Lies.

Don't be disturbed by the title of this entry. No, I'm not crazy. No more so than usual. I'm making an obscure reference to a musical.

Howard Dean seems determined to find out exactly which have been George Bush's biggest political mistakes and then proudly trumpet the fact that he has done the same things, only much worse. We already knew he criticized the Bush administration for holding secret energy meetings, when he himself had caught hell for doing the same thing in Vermont. He criticized Bush for being secretive in general, after trying to seal his own gubernatorial records and admitting he did it to prevent embarrassing stuff from coming out during this race. He said his strategy was going to be to attack Bush on national security, where Bush was "weak." Then we found out about Vermont's nuclear reactor (no, the state doesn't run on a magical, non-hurtful, non-Eurocentric fuel source* funded by Ben & Jerry's). Out of ALL the nuclear reactors in the U.S.--ALL of them--Vermont's has the worst security. In a security test, mock terrorists wandered right in. And whose fault was it? The mock governor's.

Dean even dodged the draft better than Bush. Better than Clinton, for that matter. Clinton had to make a false promise to join ROTC in order to get out. Dean merely cited a bogus back condition and then went off to spend his time skiing and working construction.

Now we learn that Dean is even a better snob than Bush. Not surprising, for a doctor. As we all know, physicians belong to a race of gods even more powerful and infallible than cops. And why shouldn't they feel good about themselves? Their booboos only kill a few hundred thousand Americans a year.

It turns out Dean's family is loaded, and Dean was raised in Manhattan--hmm, doesn't sound like part of Vermont--in a ritzy Park Avenue apartment. And Baby Howard had a live-in nurse. Too bad he doesn't have one now, to slap his hand when he reaches for the microphone.

Check out this jewel of a quote from his mom, from The New York Times, via Newsmax:

"Howard didn't have the least bit of a glamorous upbringing," Ma Dean told the New York Times last week. "When I was growing up, we didn't even treat the servants like servants."

Neither did Strom Thurmond.

But to get back on topic, the Times also says the Deans belonged to the Maidstone Club in East Hampton, New York. The whites-only Maidstone Club. Where pampered preppies roamed around with double Scotches in their hands, spewing racist remarks. Dean himself admits that.

Let's see...I believe the Bushes (G.H.W. and Barbara) belonged to a total of NO racist country clubs. Correct me if I'm wrong; I believe we would have heard about it from our pals on the left.

Dean excuses the behavior because the perpetrators were of a different generation. Howard, that might wash if we were talking about the Depression. This was the latter half of the twentieth century, dumbass. And Bush II's parents are probably older than yours.

By the way, when are Dean's flaks going to get wise and off his mother? If Clinton's mom had routinely torpedoed her son the way Mrs. Dean does, we would have found her lying on the ground in a muddy national park, with clean shoes, a bullet in her head, and a pistol in the wrong hand. And the inevitable lowball glass which is a traditional accessory of the true Northeastern WASP.

I loved what she said about the draft-dodging story. "Yeah, that looks bad." I agree, Mom. Now tell us he wet the bed, tortured animals, and set fires, and we'll be good to go.

Again, I have to ask. How much is Karl Rove paying this guy? He's a gift straight from heaven. He is possibly even more politically clueless than Hillary Clinton, and Democrats still LOVE him. Couldn't they have gone with someone who was better than Bush at SOMETHING?

I have a new slogan for his campaign: "Physician, wound thyself."

More news as it develops. Although it's hard to see how it could get any better than it already is.

*"Phission Phood"

It is not our technology, impressive as our equipment may be. It is not our spending, even if we are willing to spend more in total and per capita than any other free country in the world.

It is because of our brave volunteer soldiers who are willing to put their lives in danger for the rest of us.

When 1st Sgt. David Henry heard Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Cooke had been killed outside the wire in Iraq, he wasn’t surprised.

Cooke was that kind of sergeant major, Henry said. He was a leader who went where his soldiers went and took the risks they took even though he didn’t have to.

“He didn’t have to be out there with soldiers manning checkpoints, checking on soldiers during cordon searches,” said Henry, 1st Squadron, 1st U.S. Cavalry Regiment rear detachment noncommissioned officer in charge at Büdingen. “But that’s what he liked to do.”

May God be with you Sergeant Major. And many thanks to all our brave soldiers for putting their lives on the line to make the world a safer place.

A tip of the helm to Sir Dave for bringing this story to my attention.

[This Editorial/Investigative piece was written by Dan Spencer and reprinted with permission of the author]

Media Group Seeks to Join Secret Case

The public docket for the court in which the case originated is devoid of any mention of the case; the published court calendar for the appellate court was obliterated to omit the names of litigants; the appellate court's computer records were altered to remove from public view any information about the case; the appellate court closes its courtroom to the public and the press to hear arguments in the case; and the litigants are not allowed to talk about it.

That is the way the government and the federal courts have dealt with Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel. The Supreme Court is now considering whether the lower courts were justified in sealing the entire record and docket without making findings supporting the sealing.

Yesterday a coalition of 23 media organizations and public interest groups organized by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a motion to intervene in the “Secret Case” pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Reporters Committee press release is available here.

The “Secret Case,” M. K. B. v. Warden, et al., came to our attention when it was disclosed that the Supreme Court was considering a case with no public record. I was able to post more facts about the “Secret Case” here.

A little more information became available when a copy of the heavily censored petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the appeal was made available.

Last November, the Reporters Committee filed a filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Supreme Court to open the sealed records of the habeas corpus case of Mohamed K. Bellahouel, the “Secret Case.” The Reporters Committee's brief is available here.

The Reporters Committee, and its coalition now seek to become a party in the case. The coalition includes news organizations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gannett, Knight Ridder, Hearst, ABC News, and CNN. Acording to the Reporters press release, the group seek to become parties in the case in order to represent the interests of the public and news media in ensuring that proceedings are conducted openly, in compliance with the First Amendment.

According to the coalition’s motion, if the Supreme Court allows them to join the case, the group will seek three things:

Access to redacted materials (not including Classified material);

Written findings justifying the need for secrecy in future proceedings in this case.

An order requiring similar findings for the filings and record in the proceedings in the lower courts that heard this case.

These are all good things most of us would like to see.

The most disturbing aspect of this case is that not only that all of the lower courts’ proceedings have been held in secret, but that the lower courts concealed even the very existence of the case.

Only due to a court clerk’s error did the media learn of the existence of the case. In “Secrecy Within,” published in the Miami Daily Business Review on March 12, 2003, Dan Christensen wrote:

A published court calendar for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was obliterated to omit the names of litigants in a sealed civil case brought by an Algerian man the Miami Daily Business Review has learned was among 1,200 young Arab and Muslim men secretly detained in the post-Sept. 11 nationwide dragnet.

Later, the appellate court's computer records were altered to remove from public view any information about the case, No. 02-11060.

In between, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit closed its courtroom March 5 to the public and the press to hear arguments in the sealed case.

Court records that were briefly public said the case is styled Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel v. Monica S. Wetzel.

As temporary as it was, that is all that constituted the public record of this case this before it got to the Supreme Court.

While it is not unusual for court records to be sealed, it is unheard of that even the existence of a case is kept secret. It even of greater concern that none of the usual procedure for sealing court records were used. Instead, the lower courts tried to act entirely in secret. Why? What are the government and the courts trying to hide?

I hope the there will be some explanation when the government files a response to Bellahouel’s appeal. The Supreme Court has asked the government to respond to the appeal. That response was due Friday, but according to the Associated Press, because the court was closed for the holiday, the government brief may be filed Monday.

There is no guarantee that government’s response will provide any additional information. The government may seek to have its entire response classified. The government could, like Bellahouel, file one set of documents for the court, under seal, and another set of redacted documents for members of the press and public.

As Warren Richey writing in the Christian Science Monitor, predicts:

However the Justice Department responds, the case poses a Catch-22 for government lawyers, given their insistence that disclosure of even relatively minor bits of information - indeed just confirmation that a case exists at all - could harm US national security.

Analysts say it is not clear whether the request for a brief from the solicitor general is an indication of concern within the more liberal wing of the court about excessive government secrecy or an attempt by more conservative justices to obtain solid grounds to deny review.

What Is Known About This Case

The folling information is from my earlier posts on this case and is based primarily on the reporting of Dan Christensen in the Miami Daily Business Review.

Bellahouel, who lives north of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in Deerfield Beach with his American wife, was a veterinarian in Algeria. He came to the United States in November 1996 to study biology at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He ran out of money and didn't re-enroll at FAU after the fall term of 1997.

In the summer of 2001, he was waiting tables at the Kef Room, a Middle Eastern restaurant near Boca Raton in Delray Beach where several al-Qaida hijackers dined in the weeks before the 2001 terrorist attacks. In an affidavit presented to the federal immigration court, an FBI terrorism investigation official said it was "likely" that Bellahouel served Sept. 11 hijack leaders Mohamed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi.

According to the affidavit, an employee at a nearby movie theater fingered Bellahouel as the man she saw go into the theater with hijacker Ahmed Alnami. Bellahouel has denied any connection to the hijackers.

Bellahouel was picked up on Oct. 15, 2001. Government charging documents state that Bellahouel failed to comply with the conditions of the student visa he received when he entered the United States in November 1996.

A month later, an immigration court judge, relying on the FBI affidavit, denied Bellahouel bond. Before the FBI ultimately agreed to Bellahouel's release the following March, Bellahouel was transported to Alexandria, Va., to testify before a federal grand jury. The substance of Bellahouel's testimony, if any, is not known.

For five months beginning in October 2001, Bellahouel was held in federal detention without bond. While still in custody, Bellahouel asked the courts to release him and open his case to the public.

The release issue became moot in March of last year when Bellahouel was released on bond pending the completion of his immigration case. U.S. immigration authorities still seek to deport him.

Even at the Supreme Court, however, the public file for Case No. 03M1 does not include the petitioner's name or the names of the lower courts that kept the case secret. The style lists Bellahouel's initials -- M.K.B. v. Warden et al.

Bellahouel's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that the 11th Circuit panel issued a "sealed and unpublished judgment" in his case on March 31 of this year.

“Although the secret court of appeals' decision ordered the district court to docket the case publicly [words deleted], it affirmed the district court's refusal to unseal any of the filings in the case, and every entry in the case remains sealed," the petition says. "The court of appeals itself refuses to disclose that it has decided the appeal. Indeed, the final order of the court of appeals is sealed, not publicly docketed."

The petition says that the district court and the 11th Circuit judges decided on their own to seal the case, because neither the government nor Bellahouel requested it.

I have no sympathy for Bellahouel, if he is in fact in the U.S illegally. I am extremely concerned, however, about the degree and manner in which the government and the courts have kept the very existence of the case from us.

****

You can read follow-ups to this article at Dan's website, California Yankee. There are two subsequent posts by Dan so far, both of which will be reprinted in their entirety on TCP tomorrow.
The Times Discovers the Secret and Secret Arguments for Secret Case
---Ed.

NOTE: This was originally posted on the Iraq page by Nikita Demosthenes.

-----------------------

That paragon of religiosity, Howard Dean, tells us that his favorite book of the New Testament is ... the Book of Job.

One problem, Mr. evangelical wannabe, Job is in the Old Testament.

From the New York Times on January 4, 2004:

* * *

Asked his favorite New Testament book, Dr. Dean named Job, adding: "But I don't like the way it ends." "Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different," he said. "I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later."

Job, the Old Testament story of a righteous man who suffers hardships as a test of his faith, ends with the Lord restoring his fortunes and the protagonist living to be "an old man, and full of days." Some scholars have posited that the original ending may have been more dour.

* * *

Ok. Can we just end the charade? Am I the first one willing to say this wannabe emperor - Dean - has no clothes? Howard Dean is obviously not a religious man. Indeed, he obviously looks down his nose at religious people - especially southerners. He thinks religious people are rubes and dolts.

Howard Dean's new discovery of religion - and his own religiosity - insults the intelligence of every person in America, both religious and non-religious. Should we trust a person who is willing to say anything - be anything - even if it's completely, obviously false - just to be President? I don't think so. The fact that he's wrong on pretty much every policy issue to boot - both foreign and domestic - doesn't help either.

So, knock yourself out, Pastor Dean. Keep telling us about your favorite books of the Bible. After you lose the election, you'll have lots of time on your hands to actually crack the cover of the Book.

NOTE: This was originally posted on the Iraq page by Nikita Demosthenes.

------------

It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation. In fact, it took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida!

It took less time to find Saddam's sons in Iraq than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Teddy Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick.

You asked this question on Oct. 31, 2001:

Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word "quagmire" has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad.

Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?

Here's your answer, courtesy of President Bush:

I congratulate the people of Afghanistan on the adoption of their new constitution. This document lays the foundation for democratic institutions and provides a framework for national elections in 2004. A democratic Afghanistan will serve the interests and just aspirations of all of the Afghan people and help ensure that terror finds no further refuge in that proud land. This new constitution marks a historic step forward, and we will continue to assist the Afghan people as they build a free and prosperous future.

Hope this helps, Johnny. All the best.

(Cross-posted at Late Final.)

Spokesman: "We Just Hope Bush Doesn't Jump off the Empire State Building"

This originally appeared at Little Tiny Lies.

Don't be disturbed by the title of this entry. No, I'm not crazy. No more so than usual. I'm making an obscure reference to a musical.

Howard Dean seems determined to find out exactly which have been George Bush's biggest political mistakes and then proudly trumpet the fact that he has done the same things, only much worse. We already knew he criticized the Bush administration for holding secret energy meetings, when he himself had caught hell for doing the same thing in Vermont. He criticized Bush for being secretive in general, after trying to seal his own gubernatorial records and admitting he did it to prevent embarrassing stuff from coming out during this race. He said his strategy was going to be to attack Bush on national security, where Bush was "weak." Then we found out about Vermont's nuclear reactor (no, the state doesn't run on a magical, non-hurtful, non-Eurocentric fuel source* funded by Ben & Jerry's). Out of ALL the nuclear reactors in the U.S.--ALL of them--Vermont's has the worst security. In a security test, mock terrorists wandered right in. And whose fault was it? The mock governor's.

Dean even dodged the draft better than Bush. Better than Clinton, for that matter. Clinton had to make a false promise to join ROTC in order to get out. Dean merely cited a bogus back condition and then went off to spend his time skiing and working construction.

Now we learn that Dean is even a better snob than Bush. Not surprising, for a doctor. As we all know, physicians belong to a race of gods even more powerful and infallible than cops. And why shouldn't they feel good about themselves? Their booboos only kill a few hundred thousand Americans a year.

It turns out Dean's family is loaded, and Dean was raised in Manhattan--hmm, doesn't sound like part of Vermont--in a ritzy Park Avenue apartment. And Baby Howard had a live-in nurse. Too bad he doesn't have one now, to slap his hand when he reaches for the microphone.

Check out this jewel of a quote from his mom, from The New York Times, via Newsmax:

"Howard didn't have the least bit of a glamorous upbringing," Ma Dean told the New York Times last week. "When I was growing up, we didn't even treat the servants like servants."

Neither did Strom Thurmond.

But to get back on topic, the Times also says the Deans belonged to the Maidstone Club in East Hampton, New York. The whites-only Maidstone Club. Where pampered preppies roamed around with double Scotches in their hands, spewing racist remarks. Dean himself admits that.

Let's see...I believe the Bushes (G.W.H. and Barbara) belonged to a total of NO racist country clubs. Correct me if I'm wrong; I believe we would have heard about it from our pals on the left.

Dean excuses the behavior because the perpetrators were of a different generation. Howard, that might wash if we were talking about the Depression. This was the latter half of the twentieth century, dumbass. And Bush II's parents are probably older than yours.

By the way, when are Dean's flaks going to get wise and off his mother? If Clinton's mom had routinely torpedoed her son the way Mrs. Dean does, we would have found her lying on the ground in a muddy national park, with clean shoes, a bullet in her head, and a pistol in the wrong hand. And the inevitable lowball glass which is a traditional accessory of the true Northeastern WASP.

I loved what she said about the draft-dodging story. "Yeah, that looks bad." I agree, Mom. Now tell us he wet the bed, tortured animals, and set fires, and we'll be good to go.

Again, I have to ask. How much is Karl Rove paying this guy? He's a gift straight from heaven. He is possibly even more politically clueless than Hillary Clinton, and Democrats still LOVE him. Couldn't they have gone with someone who was better than Bush at SOMETHING?

I have a new slogan for his campaign: "Physician, wound thyself."

More news as it develops. Although it's hard to see how it could get any better than it already is.

*"Phission Phood"

The Associated Press shows how to cook the numbers to get a story with this doozy today:
"Most U.S. Iraq Deaths Are Reservists": :

Overall, since the start of hostilities last March, 14 percent of all U.S. military deaths have been members of the Army Guard or Reserve. The Army says it has had 68 reservists killed so far, compared with nine reservists among the Marines, two in the Navy and one in the Air Force.

I'm away from my AP Stylebook at the moment, but I'm pretty sure 14 percent doesn't meet the definition of "most."

And that's not the only boneheaded part of the story. The writer mentions 10 of the 39 deaths in December as reservists, and then makes a "trend" case:

It's too early to know whether December's proportional increase in deaths among citizen soldiers was the start of a trend, but some analysts say the jump is both politically and militarily troublesome, even if it proves temporary.

It's too early because the total number of deaths in December was absurdly low to be talking about "proportional increases." THERE WERE ONLY 39 DEATHS TO BEGIN WITH! Not to mention that, for a "trend" to occur, there has to be more than one instance. Definitionally speaking, it's OBVIOUS that it's too early to tell if it's a trend because IT'S THE ONLY INSTANCE OF ITS KIND!

Not to mention the fact that 14 percent of 89 deaths - the total for November - is 12.9 deaths, AT LEAST TWO MORE DEATHS THAN THE NUMBER FOR DECEMBER!

In November there were 89 Deaths - "the deadliest month of the war" according to the AP writer. So there was a drop in the total number BY MORE THAN HALF(!) and yet the focus of the story is the increase in the PERCENTAGE of reservist deaths!?!?

I'm sorry. I thought this was AP, not Reuters.

Found at COINTELPRO Tool via Instapundit

Cross-posted with slight modification at my blog

Is the sky falling or not? It depends on which side of the farm you're standing on.

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean on Friday cited the higher terror alert and the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in arguing that he was right to say Saddam Hussein's capture didn't make America safer.

"They got all excited, but here we are," Dean told a town-hall meeting. "We've lost 10 more troops and F-16s are escorting foreign passenger jets into our air space because we're now more worried than we were before."

With that, Dean becomes another in a long line of pundits, politicians and armchair quarterbacks claiming that the recent British Airways and Air France cancellations, delays and escorts are a strike against Bush, his administration and the War on Terror.

"I can assure you it's not Saddam who's threatening to bomb airplanes," Dean said. "It's al-Qaida. We've not paid attention to al-Qaida. We've spent $160 billion, lost over 400 servicemen, and wounded and permanently maimed over 2,000 people because we picked the wrong target."

And that's where Dean and the like get it all wrong.

The recent threats and the code orange alert have nothing at all to do with Saddam. That much is true. But that doesn't mean that we aren't paying attention to al Qaida. Dean is mixing it up in the hopes of striking a chord with his potential voters, but that's predicated on his voters not being able to separate apples and oranges just like Dean himself.

Is the world, the U.S specifically, any safer since we've captured Saddam? Yes, it is, simply for the fact that there is one less tyrant in charge of a country standing in the way of a peaceful world. And with each name Saddam coughs up, the world becomes even safer.

But that's neither here nor there today. Today, Dean wonders what's up with the orange alert. He wonders why there are so many scares at airports, why flights are being escorted into the country, why we are worried.

Dean is failing to follow through on his thoughts. For if he did, surely he would realize that the reason so many flights were cancelled this week, the reason we are on orange alert, is because they know something. Our intelligence is working. They've got flight numbers, names and aliases. They have times and places. If our country was as unsafe as Dean suggests it is, then whatever was going to take place with Air France Flight 68 would have taken place. Maybe Vegas would be gone. Maybe a British Airways plane would be embedded in the side of the Capitol Building by now.

There's a reason those things did not happen and it's the same reason why there has been no terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001: We are winning the War on Terror.

There's no way to know exactly how many potential acts of terrorism have been thwarted since 9/11. They don't tell us everything. To get an idea, just go back and figure out how many bin Laden threats there have been since that day. Go back and listen to Saddam's speeches where he threatens the U.S. with suffering, death and destruction.

And here we are, celebrating another year, alive and well and relatively safe. Saddam is locked up, bin Laden hasn't been heard from and we are obviously scrutinizing each and every plane that flies in and out of this country.

While Dean wrings his hand in worry over "escorting foreign passenger jets into our air space" he forgets one important thing; those flights are coming from other countries. We do our part here. It is not Bush's fault if France won't do theirs.

Are we safer? In a way, yes. In other ways, we never have been, nor will we ever be, completely safe. That's just the way the world is. Whether it's Bush or Dean or Al Sharpton in the White House, there will always be that threat of terror; as far as I know World Peace still hasn't occurred.

Some people look at Iraq and see a necessary - albeit ugly -warl some people see only Bush standing over oil wells. Some of us see fighter jets escorting an Air France flight into D.C. and we think that we've stopped another potential attack, people are doing their jobs and doing them well. Others, like Dean just see the sky falling.

Of course, a falling sky would be a boon for Dean. Planes crash, car bombs go off, cities collapse and Dean can stand up on his soap box and say I told you so, now elect me! A safe, clear sky can only mean that the current president is not only doing his job, but he's doing it well. And that makes Chicken Little nervous.

Written by Omar on December 31, 2003. Reprinted with permission of author.

Happy New Year...
Good bye 2003, good bye my most beautiful year. I'll grieve your end and sing your legend as long as I live.
You made my greatest dream come true.
I know that the coming years will bring all the good to my country, simply because we have put our feet on the right path.
The will of the good have achieved victory, and that is enough for me to be optimistic, but those will not be as special as you were
2003; the year of freedom.
Before you I was mute, and here goes my tongue praying for the best,
Before you I was hand-cuffed, and here are my hands free to write,
Before you my mind was tied to one thought and here I find wide horizons and greater thoughts,
Before you I was isolated, and here I join the wide universe.
I will never forget you; you broke the chains for my people, and rid us from the big jail.
Many of my people never realized that we were in a prison, as we were born inside its walls and we knew no other world than our jail. But, we were looking through the tiny windows that were hard for the jailor to close, and we saw that our jail was not the best-as our jailor claimed- and we saw that our jailor was not the gift of god-as he tried to convince us-, but we were afraid of his prowess , and owe to the one who says
the opposite.
Before you 2003, I never learnt to love. It was forbidden for me, and I used to repeat a few words that I learnt in secret to my girl:

"What is man without freedom, Mariana?
Tell me, how am I supposed to love you if I was not free?
How do I give you my heart if it doesn't belong to me? "*

Good bye 2003, you made me feel safe, you who cast away my worst nightmare.

"In our village, we used to be scared of day just as night
The light no longer promises safety
Fear to us is a five time a day prayer"
Now it's hope that has become our five times a day prayer.

Good bye 2003, my eyes saw the greatest scene through you, and I lived my happiest moment in you (the tyrant falls)
Is there anything greater than that?
Good bye 2003, in you I listened to the most beautiful words "ladies and gentle men, we got him"
Good bye 2003, the legend of my people was written through out your days with blood and tears.
Good bye 2003, you were the best.
My friends, celebrate the New Year, but don't forget to add a new name to your invitation list,
We would love to join, and we will have the honor and pride to do so.
We came holding our slogan "it won't be our duty to anticipate the coming disaster, but to struggle for a better world"**
Give us a little space on your ship, we still stumble, but we shall never fall again. We have our star that will guide us.
Believe me my friends. We want to be on your side.
Our hearts are bigger now; they will not only carry our sorrow, but those of the entire world as well.
Your help have taught us a valuable lesson :( we're all sinners, I'm in jail as long as there's a man in jail, and I'm hungry as long as there's a hungry man on earth)***
We've got to create another world, a new land; where there's less pain and sorrow, and that will not be hard to do if the brave gathered for it.
I wish that my people as well as the oppressed people every where come to appreciate the gift of freedom, as when they do so they will be ready to fight for it and then, they will have it and no one could take it away from them.
As for the free people who helped us and are ready to help the others; I wish you peace and all the best as you certainly deserve it.

"I want to run out and link hands with others in the struggle,
clench my fists and strike Fate in the face.
I want to drown deep in my blood
that I may share with the human race its burden
and carry it onward, giving birth to life
My death
shall be a victory.
My death
shall be a victory."****

* Lorca
**Karl Popper
*** Nagogi Wa Thiongo
**** Al-Saayab
-By Mohammed.

Omar is an Iraqi who maintains a weblog, Iraq the Model. Filled with beautiful writing about the future of Iraq as well as current news, it is a must-read for anyone who wants an inside view of the current news in Iraq.

Terror threats, heightened security, police snipers, bomb sniffers and fear. How do New Yorkers respond on New Year's Eve?

[Click for larger size. Photo Credit: AFP/Stan Honda]

With Orange Alert hats and American flags. Nothing like starting off the New Year by figuratively giving the finger to terrorism.

I still think people are insane for standing out in the cold for hours with millions of other drunk, smelly people. But with recent events considered, I'd have to say they are brave as well.