The Command Post Op-Ed Page

Charlie Norwood (R-GA) Lays The Smack Down On Vicente Fox's Offer Of Mexican Labor

On September 5, 2005 The New York Times ran with a statement by Mexican President Vicente Fox that the US shares the blame for the border problem with Mexico. In that article Fox was quoted as saying:

"The reconstruction of that city and of that region is going to require a lot of labor," Mr. Fox said of New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama. "And if there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction."

I'd like to add that they're also good at coming to our country illegally, taking our jobs, costing taxpayers a fortune, running our education and health care systems into the ground through overpopulation, increased spending, bringing long eliminated diseases back into our country and closing our emergency rooms. In addition they're good at whining about how they don't have drivers licenses when they're here illegally, killing our cops, attacking peaceful protests and trashing citizens property.

Now Fox wants to send more labor here to get a chunk of all that money the federal government is spending in the disaster area so that it can be sent back to Mexico. Well you know what President Fox

SCREW YOU

I've said it and now Charlie Norwood, a Republican Congressman from Georgia, says it (though more eloquently) in his latest piece Vicente Fox – Hurricane Looter found on the Congressional website.

We will be rebuilding the Gulf Coast states for years to come. We will do so with both public and private monies, with cost estimates now running into the hundreds of billions.

Estimates are that at least half a million Americans from the affected areas have permanently lost their jobs, as their workplaces are totally destroyed.

It makes perfect sense that we ought to employ as many of those folks as possible in the rebuilding efforts, for their personal good and the good of the country.

Last week, the President approved a temporary waiver of Davis-Bacon labor rules for exactly that purpose – to allow many of these individuals to participate in federally-funded reconstruction projects as general labor helpers.

We need to follow that up with providing whatever vocational training is necessary to allow displaced workers to gain the skills necessary to fully participate in those reconstruction efforts.

We need a revival of the Civilian Conservation Corps from the 1930’s for this emergency, in which we offer every able-bodied displaced person an immediate training wage on top of whatever other federal benefits they may be receiving, and full-time participation should be mandatory.

We shouldn’t spend any time worrying about those who can work, yet refuse these opportunities.

But there’s already someone else with an eye on those construction jobs – Mexican President Vicente Fox.

“‘The reconstruction of that city and of that region is going to require a lot of labor,’ Mr. Fox said of New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama. ‘And if there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction.’” – The New York Times, September 5, 2005.

While we appreciate the disaster aid assistance Mexico is providing by sending a military convoy across our southern border, we cannot afford to pay them back with the jobs of our hurricane victims.

Rebuilding our Gulf Coast with labor from Mexico would divert a large part of the estimated $200 billion cost to rebuild – paid for by American taxpayers – out of our economy, and into “foreign remittances”, the monies sent back to Mexico from the U.S. by illegal immigrants.

These “remittances” have now surpassed oil revenues as the number one source of income for Mexico – drawn directly out of our economy.

We should not allow our national tragedy to become Mexico’s gain. The time for talk is over. The time for pleas for the Administration to simply enforce the law is over.

Every police and sheriff’s department in this nation should begin vigorously enforcing immigration law while in the course of their routine duties, and get those people out of our country during this national emergency. For every illegal worker removed, there’s a ready job for the hundreds of thousands of legal American residents who just lost theirs in this tragedy.

The CLEAR Act that we just reintroduced has an excellent chance of passing this session, and if it does, the federal government will be responsible for paying 100% of these local law enforcement costs for immigration law enforcement efforts.

Hardship has a way of bringing families together. If there is anything positive that can come from such an incomprehensible disaster as Hurricane Katrina, it could likely be in forcing us to come back together to help defend each other, instead of letting potential taxpayer-funded jobs for storm victims to be looted by illegal immigrant labor cheered on by Mexican Presidente Vicente Fox.

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

Tipped by: Lonewacko

My Growing Intolerance...Particularly Of The 'Tolerant'

I have to admit that they almost got me. Almost. But then I woke up.

For years we've been told that we should have tolerance for people who are different from us, whoever the collective “us” happens to be. For the most part I don't have a problem with that, assuming you're talking about people who may come from a different part of the country or from an entirely different country. Their social mores may be different or they may use figures of speech or terms that are unfamiliar to us. As one of my co-workers, a nice young woman from Louisiana said to us the other day, “There are phrases that we use back there that are considered offensive here in New England.” It's all a matter of the differences.

But there are some differences, some actions that I am not willing to tolerate.

One of those “things” is foul language in public. While not the biggest thing I am no longer willing to tolerate, it has quickly become one of the more annoying. Poor language skills is right up there next to it. There is no need for every other word to be an expletive. Some folks use the worst expletives like punctuation marks and generic adjectives. And let's not get me started on this ebonics crap. All it is is a way to trap black youth into poverty. To quote Bill Cosby:

“I can't even talk the way these people talk. 'Why you ain't, where you is?'...They're standing there on the street corner and they can't speak English...I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. It's all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and when you got in the house you switched to English. Everybody knows that at some point you switch to English, except for these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.”

Another one of those things is the wishy-washy sentiment “It isn't black and white. There are shades of gray.” That may be true if you're talking about paint. But if you're speaking about good and evil, then you're damn wrong. An evil deed is an evil deed, regardless of the motivation. To hear some people talk about it, 9/11 can only be understood if we put it into the right context and try to understand the root causes. I can tell you what the root causes for the attacks on that day – effin' evil people committing acts of evil upon innocents because they didn't like us. There were no shades of gray, no need to understand their motivation in order to perhaps be able to start a dialog with others of their kind. Baby, the only thing I need to know about them is that they have no scruples and are willing to kill anybody they see as an infidel (that means you and me), and the only dialog I want with them is to discuss how I'm going to stop them and, if need be, kill them before they commit more evil acts.

Another one of the things I will no longer tolerate is the fascism that masquerades as political correctness. It is yet another form of evil writ small, slowly trying to take away the language that can describe bad (and good, for that matter). Any time I hear politically correct speech I will endeavor to point it out and ridicule it for the 'feel good' tripe that it is.

Next, racism. 'Everyone' buys the BS that only white men are racists. That's not true. Some of the biggest racist I've come across aren't white, but black – Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan, just to name a few. The irony is that they don't just hate white people, they hate black people, too. Otherwise why would they seek to keep blacks in America victimized rather than allowing them to pursue the American Dream - to better themselves and to wish the same for their children? Why? Because if blacks do so, they lose power. Their victim ideology would be swept aside and they would become nothing but minor footnotes in history, something they won't allow to happen.

Please spare me the celebrities who think that just because they're celebrities that they are also politically astute or even have a clue about how everybody else in the world lives or what they need. These are the last people to whom we should be listening.

Multi-culturalism should die the death it so richly deserves. All it will bring is the downfall of Western civilization, a culture that is far better than the others, despite the claims of those who despise the West, including many who were born and raised here. Western civilization does not condone suicide bombers, the murder of innocents in order to further a political or religious agenda. It does not oppress women, despite the claims of radical feminists. It does not silence dissent, despite the claims of those saying they are being censored...on national TV. Multi-culturalism does nothing but perpetuate the same hatreds and prejudices that many came to America to get away from, escaping from the so-called cultures that are supposedly superior to ours. Superior to ours? No frickin' way.

I will not be tolerant of those working to destroy us, to kill us. Nor will I be tolerant of those supporting them, either openly or by doing nothing to stop them. I will heap scorn and derision upon those who obviously haven't a friggin' clue about what they're spouting off about, particularly when it comes to politics, war, or the human condition. I don't care who they are or who they know. All I know is that I am far less tolerant of willful ignorance, as I am of those who preach tolerance but are anything but tolerant. They are only tolerant if you agree with them. But should you disagree with them, then obviously it must be you who are intolerant. Damn right. I am intolerant of blowhards like that and the vitriol they spew.

So endeth the rant...

SaveOurState Demands Removal Of Seditious Monument

SaveOurState.org is calling for the removal of a monument in the city of Baldwin Park, CA at the Metrolink Rail Station by July 1, 2005. Why are they calling for it’s removal? Well see the pictures below.

I think any US citizen would find such a thing appalling. Somehow this taxpayer funded monument actually made it all the way to display on public property without anyone stepping forward and saying a thing.

If this monument is not removed then SaveOurState.org intends to form a protest. If you would like to lodge a complaint or let your displeasure be known, head over to SaveOurState for contact information.

I have covered SaveOurState in the past including 2 rally’s against Home Depot (overview and pics here and here). For all posts on Diggers Realm about SaveOurState click here.

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

It’s time to be transparent

Fellow Republicans, it’s time to be crystal clear in our transparency. We simply cannot endure the ethics whining about Congressman Delay, Governor Fletcher, and Kentucky Senate President David Williams.

How difficult is it to play the game without the APPEARANCE of impropriety? I’m not saying DeLay, Fletcher, and Williams are crooked. I AM saying their behavior hurts the party and we just don’t need that right now when Democrats, local and national, are doing everything they can to stop this national conservative swing. Clean up your acts fellas. Like Senator Santorum said today:

I think he has to come forward and lay out what he did and why he did it and let the people then judge for themselves

So come on lads…quit giving the Dems something to crow about.

Originally posted on Confessions of a Pilgrim

Asa Hutchinson Finally Resigns From Homeland Security

It is a joyous day indeed! Break out the party hats and cake! Recently we have seen Gary DeFilippo the DMV Commissioner for Connecticut resign, Tom Ridge, DHS Secretary resign and now we have the ridiculous Asa Hutchinson who was supposedly in charge of our borders anounce his resignation. It will take effect March 1, 2005 and it couldn't be soon enough.

Asa Hutchinson called for the halt of interior enforcement of illegal immigration. Here's a snippet from a post on Diggers Realm on September 13, 2004

The nation's border czar yesterday said it is "not realistic" to think that law-enforcement authorities can arrest or deport the millions of illegal aliens now in the United States and does not think the American public has the "will ... to uproot" those aliens.

Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson also said taxpayers "might be afraid" to learn how much it would take in manpower and resources to control the nation's borders and described as "probably accurate" a statement that no law-enforcement officials are looking for the vast majority of the 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens thought to be in the country.

... But Mr. Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, said although there is "strong support" nationwide for the enforcement of immigration laws and the public expects it to be accomplished, "they expect us to do it in a way consistent with our values."

This guy was a major Asshat and a detriment to our country. Allowing a bunch of people that willingly break our laws into our country and then telling your law enforcement officials not to apprehend them because you may hurt their feelings is asinine!

It is well known that the majority of Americans want illegal aliens out and our borders secured, yet Mr. Hutchinson thinks we'd have a problem if he told us the cost, manpower and time it would take to accomplish that goal. Can you get any more incompetent than that? His job was to secure our borders and control immigration of those people and substances we have not legally let in and he's saying it's too hard, will take too long and cost too much and therefore won't do anything about it.

With Ridge out of the picture and Hutchinson resigning we can only hope that the Presidents amnesty program doesn't make it through Congress and instead a real immigration reform is put in place. A reform that would protect our borders, make coming to America something worth doing legally and not cheapening our system by letting criminals and thugs regularly come through our border, break our laws and with no intentions of fitting in.

Fox News

Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson (search), in charge of border and transportation security issues, submitted his letter of resignation to the White House early Monday morning, said a DHS official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the resignation had not yet been announced.

Hutchinson is a former Arkansas congressman and former federal drug czar who is believed to be considering a run for Arkansas governor next year. His resignation is expected to be effective March 1.

...

"It was just a good time to change for me personally and for the department," Hutchinson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which first reported his plans.

Yes, a good time indeed! Maybe they've figured out the charlatan you truly are. Border Czar? How about Border doorstop.

Originally posted at Diggers Realm

The Winds of Change.NET Guide to Fighting Comment Spam

Six Apart, the folks behind the Movable Type software that runs this site, have just released a Guide for Fighting Comment spam on weblogs via comments, trackbacks, etc. As you might imagine, Jay Allen played a big role in compiling it. It’s worth any blogger’s time, especially those who run MT installations.

We use our own mix of techniques here at Winds of Change.NET. I’m going to go well beyond the Six Apart guide and give you some general principles for building your own blog’s defenses, then move on to what we’re up to so you can see some of these ideas in action. I’ll conclude by talking about the source of this problem, and what can be done.

• Some Principles of Blog Defence
• What Is Winds of Change.NET Doing?
• Facing The Enemy

Further thoughts and suggestions will be welcome in Winds of Chnage.NET’s comments section, of course, and our post will probably evolve over time.

You call that a Rant?

This is a Rant.

(One Commenter described it as “PJ O’Rourke turned up to 11 and armed with an acid-soaked chainsaw” - a masterpiece of understatement)

Is Bush going to flip-flop?

Arafat’s body isn’t even cold yet, and the Palestinians have come up with yet another gambit to create an independent state without making peace with their neighbor…

AP: Jailed Palestinian Wants to Succeed Arafat

Imprisoned uprising leader Marwan Barghouti has decided to run for president in upcoming Palestinian elections, a source close to the popular politician said Saturday.

Barghouti, widely seen as the strongest candidate to replace Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, will only bow out of the race if his ruling Fatah movement selects a different candidate in internal voting, the source said on condition of anonymity. That is unlikely as Fatah is not expected to hold a primary.

Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, said she was unaware of her husband’s plans.

Under Palestinian law, elections are to be held within two months to find a successor to Arafat, who died Thursday. Rauhi Fattouh, a virtual unknown, was sworn in as temporary president of the Palestinian Authority, the self-ruling power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He will serve as caretaker president until elections are held.

Barghouti is serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison after being convicted of involvement in terrorism. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters this week that Barghouti “will remain in prison for the rest of his life because he’s a murderer.”

The principles that President Bush laid out in the summer of 2002 as well as within the Roadmap clearly state the two basic initial responsibilities of the Palestinians:

1. Democratically elect leaders who are uncomprimised by terror.

2. Ending terrorism and incitement to terror.

By rallying behind Barghouti, an unapologetic organizer of murders of both Israelis and “collaborator” Palestinians, the Palestinians will demonstrate that they are not serious about peace or putting the love of terrorism behind them.

Just as Bush refused to accept Arafat’s Nobel Prize false front behind which Arafat continued to organize, fund, and reward the murder of innocents, Bush must not accept Barghouti as a “leader uncomprimised by terror” as well. Even if Jimmy Carter watches and approves every ballot cast in Barghouti’s name, it’s just proof that the Palestinians themselves are still in the thrall of Arafat’s decades of indoctrination of murder and hate.

Based solely on their both being in prison by “colonial” regimes for working towards self-rule, some call Barghouti the Palestinian Mandela. If Nelson Mandela has no argument against such a comparison, then it may be time to try Nelson Mandela for multiple counts of homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and war crimes.

By the way, the future of Arafat is Full Of Crap is now in your hands with a new poll.

President Bush Resurrects Amnesty Plans For Illegal Aliens

Angered and frustrated. That's how I feel about President Bush's continued pushing of giving rights to illegal aliens who have broken our laws and used our services costing taxpayers over $10 billion a year.

Washington Times

President Bush yesterday moved aggressively to resurrect his plan to relax rules against illegal immigration, a move bound to anger conservatives just days after they helped re-elect him.

The president met privately in the Oval Office with Sen. John McCain to discuss jump-starting a stalled White House initiative that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants who broke the law to enter the United States.

...

While the president was huddling with Mr. McCain, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was pushing the plan during a visit to Mexico City.

"The president remains committed to comprehensive immigration reform as a high priority in his second term," he told a meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Binational Commission. "We will work closely with our Congress to achieve this goal."

But key opponents in Congress said Mr. Bush's proposal isn't going anywhere.

"An amnesty by any other name is still an amnesty, regardless of what the White House wants to call it," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus.

"Their amnesty plan was dead on arrival when they sent it to the Congress in January, and if they send the same pig with lipstick back to Congress next January, it will suffer the same fate," he said.

As many of you know Tom Tancredo is my hero! I sincerely love the guy over this issue alone.

I don't understand why Bush is pushing this sh*t. In my opinion it is not just to stroke the Hispanic vote, it is to try and avoid the issue altogether.

John McCain said at the RNC "He has not wavered. He has not flinched from the hard choices. He will not yield."

Yeah, well how about facing up to this issue and making the hard choice huh George? How about enforcing the law and actually protecting our southern border?

You too McCain. I normally like you, but pushing this garbage continuously is ignorant.

Tipped by: In Search Of Utopia, who loves when right people bash Bush. The fact is I could give a crap about Bush, I'm an issues man. I care about the issues not King Georgie.

Other Commentary:

Say Anything
In The Bullpen

Originally Posted at Diggers Realm

Moral Values

Despite my vow to quit it with the political crap, if I don’t get this off my chest, I’m going to develop a brain aneurysm and start acting weird. And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?

A lot of folks have been stewing in their juices about the results of last Tuesday’s election. How could over half the country possibly have voted for this loser of a President? They all must be stupid, homophobic, intolerant, theocratic, zealots!

Well, I don’t doubt that there are a lot of S.H.I.T.Z. out there, but I am concerned with the big, sloppy brush that everyone seems to be using to paint the picture of the “average” Bush voter. Some of the things I’ve heard my fellow Democrats call people who had the gall to disagree with them would make Don Rickles go, “Hey, now, that’s just mean…”

Of all the people I know personally who voted for Bush, not one is a religious extremist. In fact, other than their association with me, they’re not even idiots! They voted for Bush because they were pro-military, or they thought he was the better candidate to prevent terrorism, or because they didn’t like Kerry. Most of them agree with us on all of the social issues people talk about when the term “moral values” pops up, including gay rights and abortion.

Sure, we lost in part because the Republicans got out the vote of their evangelical crowd, but mostly we lost because John Kerry sucked as a candidate. He was handed the election on a silver platter and managed to louse it up. That’s just the way it is. If he had had a clearer message and half of Bill Clinton’s personality, he would have wiped the floor with George Bush. Even still, he got more votes than any other liberal candidate for president in history and lost the election by a measly 135,000 votes in Ohio.

I can only speak for myself, but I am going to take the same energy that I would otherwise be using to excoriate those who don’t agree with me and employ it in motivating those who do. If I am successful (and have help), there is no doubt who will prevail next time.

By the same token, it’s hard to sit and listen to people call your patriotism into question (and worse) for three years, then watch as a President who has—as far as you’re concerned—absolutely no right to be re-elected on his merits get swept back into office amid an apparent wave of voters concerned with “moral values.” The bile and vitriol being spewed at liberals on a daily basis is enough to make anyone want to barf it right back.

Well don’t.

As I’ve told others, I’m not saying we have to be all saintly, but stooping to their level isn’t going to do any good, either. Let’s assume that we are absolutely, 100-percent right on the issues. What good does it do us if we get so nasty that we wind up with a voter saying: “Now, which one of you is the party promoting hate, again?”

I don’t mean to get all preachy, but I am Christian. It’s what we do. We follow Christ:

But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Keep the faith, brothers and sisters. And remember these words:

MY family values include gay families.
MY morality includes honesty and social justice.
MY faith demands that we keep government and religion separate.

One election does not an Armageddon make.

Jane Smiley's Raid

(I would like to make clear to any Democrats reading this, I am not attacking Democrats, I am attacking Jane Smiley).

The author Jane Smiley has taken to rewriting history over at Slate in order to smear Republicans. If there is one thing that chaps my hide it is when critics (whether they be from the left or the right) purposely distort the verifiable history of the oppositions actions/positions in order to denigrate them – particularly when in doing so they hide the deplorable actions of their own party. Consider this paragraph from Ms. Smiley’s screed about the election…

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states … When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election. The red news media of the day made a practice of inflammatory lying—declaring that the blue folks had shot and killed red folks whom everyone knew were walking around. The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1862—Quantrill’s raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled 265 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them in front of their wives and children. The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America.

… I do not know about bloodlust, but apparently ignorance has a long tradition that includes Ms. Smiley. Here she distorts (willfully or not) a massacre committed by Democrats – that was an example of the pro-slavery violence that lead Horace Greeley to start the Republican Party in the first place – into a phony example of Republican mendaciousness. I am assuming by “red forces” she means Republicans, and “blue forces” she means Democrats.

First, I am not sure what her point is about the “Indian land”. She says that the “red forces” “coveted” the land. Did the “blue forces” who were already living on the land not covet the Indian land? She seems to be implying that the “blue forces” bear no responsibility in the theft of Indian land; which seems a stretch for people who had already taken it. Maybe she meant to say that the “red forces” coveted the land that the “blue forces” had already stolen from the Indians.

Either way, both parties are equally complicit in this theft, and her phony appeal to Indian land rights is just a way of hurling the “racist” epithet at her opponents, when, in fact, it simply reveals her own racism. This does not show an increased perfidy of the “red forces” over the “blue forces”, this shows her willingness to laud people who steal Indian land as long as they are people whom she perceives as Democrats. You can see this contempt when she tries to pass off the 200 or so killed at Quantrill’s raid as, “The worst civilian massacre in American history.” Apparently Ms. Smiley does not see Native Americans as humans or she would realize the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Indian “civilians” were murdered in much the same way as the civilians of Lawrence. As some one who is more than a quarter Cherokee (my father grew up on a reservation), I would like to personally tell Ms. Smiley to take her phony sympathy for my ancestors and shove it up her “blue forces”.

But let us move on to the circumstances that lead to the establishment of the Republican Party. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act established that the settlers of the states of Kansas and Nebraska would be allowed to decide whether each state would allow slavery to be legal (the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had divided the country into slavery and non-slavery states, but neither Kansas or Nebraska had existed then). This started a flood of pro-slavery settlers crossing the borders into Kansas and Nebraska.

Concern over Kansas and Nebraska turning into new slavery states caused the abolitionists Horace Greeley, Salmon Chase and Charles Sumner to start a new party in 1854 for the express purpose of preventing Kansas and Nebraska turning into slave states. As Horace Greeley wrote announcing the Republican Party, “We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated ‘Whig,’ ‘Free Democrat’ or something else; though we think some simple name like ‘Republican’ would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery.”

This seems to be a point that many Democrats are ignorant of, or are just unwilling to admit, that the Republican Party’s whole purpose for existence was to oppose slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, and ultimately to oppose slavery throughout the union. It was not an accident that Lincoln, the first Republican president, ended slavery; it was the fruition of the entire goal of starting the Republican Party. So when Ms. Smiley says, “The red forces, known then as the slave-power,“ she is either lying or completely ignorant of the facts. The Republican Party was opposed to slavery from day one, and saw the opposition of slavery as its primary platform plank. It was born of abolition, abolition was its aim, and abolition it achieved.

Which leads us to Quantrill’s raid. In 1862 the Union Army had stationed a unit in Independence, Missouri. You may remember the Union Army, you know the army run by the Republican president Lincoln (i.e. the “red forces”). William C. Quantrill was a northerner who had been converted to the pro-slavery cause in 1857 and had been leading a band of guerilla fighters who captured escaped slaves and returned them to their owners. Quantrill attacked Independence and captured the Union forces. The Confederate army rewarded Quantrill by making him a captain.

You may remember the Confederate army, they were the pro-slavery southerners. The Democratic Party had fractured in 1860 over the civil war, and barely existed at this stage. What was left of the Democratic Party was largely the Copperhead Democrats; who tried to encourage a peace agreement with the Confederacy and openly accused the Republicans of pursuing the dreaded “Racial Equality”. The Copperheads collapsed in 1865 when their reputation was sullied by the ultimate success of the Civil War. The Democrats were then resurrected in the South to oppose reconstruction, and become the party of the former Confederacy. In other words, Quantrill was the “blue forces”; that would become the modern Democrats.

In 1863, Quantrill lead his group of now confederate soldiers to the city of Lawrence, Kansas where they murdered over 200 anti-slavery settlers – now known as “Quantrill’s Raid”. Quantrill’s Raid is the story of the pro-slavery future Democrat blue forces murdering the anti-slavery Republican red forces. And Ms. Smiley has twisted this whole history around and pretended that this massacre of anti-slavery Republicans by her party somehow explains the mindset of Bush supporters.

Knowing the history of the parties as I do, I always assume that Democrats believe that blacks are inferior non-humans who should be treated as property, but I am glad to hear, Ms. Smiley, that you have broken with your party’s tradition. However, if you wish to convince us that you are a reformed Democrat, you should probably stop bringing up examples of its murderous past in defending human rights abuses, such as the Civil War, the Confederacy and Quantrill’s raid.

Stay Free

The Gay Angle

There are a lot of things about Andrew Sullivan’s views these days that I don’t agree with, but he seems to have detected something about this election that I’m growing to believe is true, which is that Bush won reelection by harnessing the anti-gay vote. This is depressing beyond belief.

I cannot count the number of times that I’ve heard pro-war voters attempt to persuade gay people like myself to continue to support the President by placing the importance of success in Iraq and the global war on terror above our own equal rights battle. As unbearable a choice as it was, that’s exactly what I did. I remain more concerned with the progress of freedom and equality in Afghanistan than in Massachusetts, because the Afghan people have so much more ground to make up. I stood by my conviction that the war on terror is the single decisive issue facing the country, and cast a vote in which I set aside matters of domestic social policy.

How appalling then, that so many conservatives did not do the same.

From the FMA, to their gay-baiting campaign tactics, to the fatuous attack on John Kerry’s mentioning of Mary Cheney in the debate, to the leverage of 11 anti-gay state marriage amendments, Bush mobilized support from a segment of the population that almost nobody had considered. While I, like many other people, believed this election to be a referendum on the President’s foreign policy, others took it as an opportunity to launch a cultural carpet-bombing campaign against equal rights for gay Americans. I choose not to vote for John kerry because I did not want the country to lose its focus on the war on terrorism, but amazingly it has already done so.

Prez: Quit whining and go back to community college!

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who’s being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I’d say, Bob, I’ve got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here’s some help for you to go get an education. Here’s some help for you to go to a community college.

So, to all you fancy-pants university grads in the IT field who are losing your jobs to outsourcing, those who used to have the jobs of the 21st century, just get off your ass and go to community college. I hear McDonald’s is hiring.

Thank you, Mr. President. Do you want fries with that?

A Question

As I watched the morning talk shows I became angrier and angrier. As a Boomer I am ashamed. Ashamed that my generation whines, pisses and moans when faced with defending ourselves from the threat of worldwide terrorism.

We ask “What’s in for us?” How about not being flown into a skyscraper for starters, or having your children murdered?

“Why us, why not them?” we implore. The fatwa is on our heads. We can argue how many angels dance on the head of the blame pin to no avail, for the answer is still the same; America is the target.

We should be greatful that the Brits and Aussies signed on at great risk to themselves, that other nations joined in the peackeeping, not belittle them or betray the Iraqis again by handing them over to the tryants, thieves and miscreants at the UN.

We cry “It’s too costly.” What will the cost be if we retreat? The implied costs to our economy post 9/11 may have been as high a half a trillion dollars and a million jobs.

One attack.

We toss away billions of dollars on instant gratification without a thought. We are awash in personal debt, how many credit cards in your wallet, have a second or third mortgage? We will spend an estimated $2.6 B for halloween this month. — HALLOWEEN — people. Yet whine about firehouses for Iraq?! We have been making lousy choices with our personal income and tax dollars for decades.

Now you’re worried?

We did nothing about terrorism or terrorist attacks for almost a decade after the first WTC attack, failed to secure our borders and ports, placated North Korea, squandered a Russian realignment, fought the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time in the Balkans, reduced the size of our standing military for theoretical strategies, and ham-strung our intelligence services with lawyerly caveats.

Now you’re worried?

Are you kidding me?

Yes, the task ahead of us daunting and expensive, but failure will be even more so, if it is even an option. Turning away will not resolve this issue for our future is bound up with those who seek to destroy our way of life. We must defeat the radical element and provide the means for a better way of life for the generations to follow or we will reap terror for generations.

The war on terror requires a long view, much as the Cold War and the space progam did in their time. John Kerry may fancy himself the new JFK, but Kerry has nothing in common with John F. Kennedy other than a monogram. For like Senator and Presidential candidate Walter Mondale, who sought to cancel the Apollo program, John Kerry fails the “vision test”.

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
—John Kennedy speaking at Rice University, 1962

Subsititute “moon” for “war on terror,” are we up to the challenge or not?

Our fathers saved the world from tryanny, rebuilt Europe, defeated Communism and went to the moon.

What will be our legacy?

Anybody But These 2

My American friends may not take this very well, but… your candidates suck! Canadian politics is also renowned for its suckiness, but at least when we suck, we don’t take the whole world with us.

Watching the tail end of your Presidential debate was depressing beyond words.

I’m going to start with Iran, because, unbelievably after all this time, neither candidate addressed it - or even seems to know what to do about it.

Read The Rest…

Getman's Gulag Art

In 1946, an artist named Nikolai Getman was imprisoned in the Soviet Union’s infamous Gulag system of Siberian concentration camps. His “crime” was that he had been present in a cafe with several fellow artists, one of whom drew a caricature of Stalin on a cigarette paper. The Jamestown Foundation further notes that:

“Upon his release in 1954, Getman commenced a public career as a politically correct painter. Secretly, however, for more than four decades, Getman labored at creating a visual record of the Gulags [paintings displayed online here] which vividly depicts all aspects of the horrendous life (and death) which so many innocent millions experienced during that infamous era.

Getman’s collection is unique because it is the only visual record known to exist of this tragic phenomenon. Unlike Nazi Germany, which recorded and preserved in detail a visual history of the Holocaust, the Russians prefer not to remember what happened in the Gulags. Not a single person has been punished for the deaths of the millions who perished there. If film or other visual representations of the Soviet Gulags existed, they have been largely destroyed or suppressed. The Getman collection stands alone as a most important historical document.”

Additional links mine. These haunting, deeply evocative works of art are very much worth your time for 3 reasons. First and foremost, for their human dimension. Second, they offer us a reminder of where Russia is now in relation to its past. Last but certainly not least, they’re a searing reminder of what communism really was - despite the consistent denials and evasions from many significant figures in the Western Left, too many of whom seemed to prefer onanistic radical whines about life in the hell that was Amerikkka.

Some of them are still at it, and not just in Cuba. Last May, Winds of Change.NET had a long and interesting exchange about this pehnomenon with Armed Liberal, Michael Totten, Roger Simon, Francis Poretto and Caerdroia.

Vote for us... or else...

“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.” - Dick Cheney

Excuse me? I don’t think I heard that right, Mr. Vice President. I did not just hear you say, “Vote for me, or the country gets it!” Did I?

Sadly, that is the entire message of the Republican Party this election year: A vote for Kerry is a vote against America.

There is no talk of a future without the words “terror” or “war” in it. There is no talk of a past without the words “terror” or “war” in it. In the Republican vision of the world there is nothing outside the prison that a group of militant Islamists with box cutters put us into three years ago. The greatest power on the planet, and we’re reduced to lashing out at the darkness, afraid of our own shadow. And only George W. Bush cares enough about America to defend it.

In determining the fitness of any Administration for a second term, we should examine the merits of its first one. The Republican strategy is to make sure the voter does not look outside the box and examine those accomplisments. Logic and proportion must fall sloppy dead. The war on terror (and by extension the war in Iraq) are the most critical issues ever to have faced mankind. To question our tactics is un-patriotic. To think other issues might be just as important borders on treason.

“Sure we’ve been in power for four years. But this is war! We can’t be bothered with petty things like the economy and health care. We gave you a tax cut and unfunded Medicare benefits. What more do you want?”

I don’t know about anyone else, but what I want is for the person who’s had the job of President for four years to start telling me why he deserves another term without resorting to scare tactics and blackmail.

Dumb and Dumber

I was composing something uplifting and noble for D-Day. Then I heard a snippet of Kerry’s latest bull-bleep and I was off on a tear. This piece is long, so if you have the attention span of a gnat, vote for John Kerry and move along now.

Kerry calls extending military enlistments ‘backdoor draft’

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Democrat John Kerry on Thursday accused President Bush of creating a “backdoor draft” by requiring thousands of soldiers to remain in the military if their tours of duty extend to Afghanistan or Iraq.

One day after the Army delivered the news to active duty soldiers and reservists, the presidential candidate raised the specter of the nation inching closer to a draft as he criticized the Bush administration for stretching the military too thin, complicating the mission to create a stable Iraq.

Kerry said the Pentagon’s expansion of the “stop-loss” program — a device that prevents military personnel from leaving when their time is up — may have increased U.S. forces by 30,000 troops, “but this has happened on the backs of the men and women who’ve already fulfilled their obligation to the armed forces and to our country — and it runs counter to the traditions of an all-volunteer Army.”

The administration has “effectively used a stop-loss policy as a backdoor draft,” Kerry said during a speech on modernizing the military at the Truman Presidential Library.

The Army, struggling to find fresh units to continue the occupation of Iraq, announced Wednesday that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will be required to stay if their units are ordered to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Do you recall this? “An Approach to Sizing American Conventional Forces for the Post-Soviet Era: Four Illustrative Options,” authored Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Aspin’s Threat-based, Building-block Approach
In a recent paper entitled “An Approach to Sizing American Conventional Forces for the Post-Soviet Era: Four Illustrative Options,” Congressman Aspin provides a remarkably succinct and dismissive tour d’horizon of potential future worldwide military threats. After describing the collapse of the Red Army and citing the view of the Defense Intelligence Agency that the former Soviet Union “will have no capability to directly threaten the United States and NATO with large-scale military operations,” Aspin concludes that =D2residual ‘Soviet’ conventional forces will be incapable of external aggression for years to come” and could not restore that capability “without years of warning time for the United States and our European allies.”

Aspin then identifies a handful of other countries with relatively large military forces which could conceivably use those forces in ways that might provoke a U.S. military response: Iraq, Iran, and Syria in the Middle East; Libya in North Africa; North Korea and China in the Far East, and Cuba in this hemisphere. Using standard military measures to assess the armed forces of these seven countries, Aspin finds that except for China (whose large forces are “lightly armed and not very modernized”), the potential troublemakers generally have ground and air forces less than half as powerful as those of pre-Gulf War Iraq. Even the strongest, Syria and North Korea, are little more than half as powerful.

After noting that political constraints make aggression by any of these countries unlikely, Aspin develops a “Desert Storm-equivalent” U.S. force structure that could easily counter any aggression, should it occur. The Desert Storm-equivalent force comprises seven Army and one and one-third Marine ground force divisions; eight Air Force tactical air wings (plus 70 heavy bombers); and four aircraft carriers. (This includes one Army division and some ships that were not present in the Gulf but might have been helpful, in Aspin’s judgement; and it excludes some Air Force and Marine tactical aircraft, two aircraft carriers, and one Marine brigade that were present but not needed or useful, in his view.)

Having pinpointed unlikely but conceivable future threats and developed a slimmed-down U.S. force structure more than ample to meet those threats, Aspin re-expands future U.S. force and spending requirements in two ways. First, he uses relatively high estimates of the cost of each force component. Second, like Defense Department officials, Aspin sets out options for much larger forces that would allow the United States to conduct several major military operations (that is, wars and invasions) simultaneously.

Aspin’s lowest budget option—the $200 billion a year Option A—would provide forces capable of conducting another Gulf War and at the same time an operation like the U.S. assistance to the Kurds (“Operation Provide Comfort”).

Option B, estimated to cost $213 billion yearly, adds forces for U.S. support to South Korea in a war with North Korea.

Option C, at $234 billion annually, funds additional forces for a military action like the U.S. invasion of Panama (“Operation Just Cause”) and for force rotation in a protracted quarantine as an alternative to war in a Gulf-type crisis.

Option D—a $255 billion alternative to the President’s 1997 budget—would provide forces for a second “Provide Comfort” operation and strengthen U.S. military support to South Korea (or a comparable contingency elsewhere).

In sum, Aspin’s threat-based building blocks demonstrate that the President’s (Clinton) budget— which does not specify either threats or responses—would allow the United States simultaneously to conduct another Gulf War, help defend South Korea in a major war with North Korea, invade a small third world country, and protect two large indigenous populations from abuse by military dictators.

John T. Correll, Editor in Chief, Air Force Magazine wrote this editorial shortly after the election.

National defense was not an issue in the 1992 election. The voters weren’t interested, or so the pollsters said, and the defense programs laid out by the candidates got no more than superficial examination.

A popular misconception, touted by the Washington Post and others prominent in analyzing the campaign, was that Gov. Bill Clinton and President George Bush had fundamentally the same positions on defense. That is not true.

Mr. Clinton’s position was a virtual clone of “Option C,” the detailed plan written by Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in challenge to the Base Force plan of the Bush Administration. Mr. Clinton’s campaign statements followed Option C straight down the line, not only in concept but also in specific details of cost and force structure.

This points to a defense program that would be below the Base Force projection by about 200,000 troops, eight fighter wings, three army divisions, two aircraft carriers, and $60 billion over five years. That is not a trivial difference. The armed forces would shrink toward 1.4 million active duty troops, almost 40 percent below their peak strength in the 1980s. Capabilities would be closely measured to meet threats that are immediately apparent and not much more.

Despite the Pentagon’s objection, think tanks and military strategist’s opinion, they forged ahead with a massive draw down of US military force and readiness. You may note that they were totally unprepared for the expansion of terrorism, attacks within the US and the new global threat that 9/11 presented was not even on their radar.

The Base Force Meets Option C

Mr. Aspin says the Pentagon is wrong and that we can dispense with more troops, divisions, wings, and ships.

The most picturesque criticism, however, came from Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, Air Force Chief of Staff, who said that Mr. Aspin got his numbers wrong and that his Desert Storm Equivalent would be more accurately termed “Desert Drizzle.” The force structure options suggested by Mr. Aspin and his staff “are a recipe for military disaster,” General McPeak said.
[…]
Force mix. The Guard-Reserve issue is a political nuke. So far, most of the defense reductions have been made in the active-duty force, with Congress blocking attempts by the Pentagon to make corresponding reductions in the National Guard and Reserve.

In March, Secretary Cheney sent Congress a list of 830 Guard and Reserve units he proposes to reduce or inactivate. Most of the reductions would be in the Army Reserve component, which is at present larger than the active-duty Army.

Most of the alternative force proposals, including Option C, strike hardest at the active-duty force. In a remarkable position paper published in February, the National Guard Association declared that “the existing Total Force Policy and the emerging Base Force policy are competing strategies.”

Challenging the Pentagon head-on, the Guard Association says that the Army should have 10 active-duty divisions and ten National Guard division equivalents, rather than 12 active-duty divisions, six reserve divisions, and two cadre divisions as projected for the Base Force.
[…]
Estimates of the requirement. Mr. Aspin’s main claim is that his estimate of force requirements is better than the Pentagon’s, which he derides as “defense by subtraction,” calculated by obsolete “top-down” methodology, leading to “less of the same.”
[…]
His working paper postulates four options, but three of them are obvious throwaways. His keeper is Option C. “Compared to the Pentagon’s proposed Base Force,” Mr. Aspin says, “Force C would put proportionately more emphasis on naval power projection, Marine Corps expeditionary forces, and our National Guard and Reserve Forces.”

By the mid-90’s the JCS opined:

Despite its smaller size, our military must retain an appropriate mix of forces and capabilities to provide the versatility to handle today’s challenges and to provide a hedge against unanticipated threats. Combat forces must be balanced with capable supporting forces, active duty forces must be balanced with appropriate Reserve capabilities, and force structure must be balanced with infrastructure.

Bill Clinton approved, SecDef Cohen implemented and Kerry voted for force reductions, so how the hell does he blame the Bush administration for the force shortage?

Oh…that’s right, he counts you possessing little memory of the Clinton administration’s flawed military “planning” and failed global strategy.

This is not campaign hyperbole; it is outright trickery, distortion and lies, lies that may get millions of us killed.

Join the Tinfoil Hat Brigade

Jesus, Jim McDerrmott (D-Wash) is now openly speculating that the Saddam capture was some kind of pre-arranged PR stunt, coming as it did after things were going badly in Iraq.

He says there was "too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing." I haven't the faintest idea what he feels is so coincidental, but one must realize we are dealing with the sort of mind that is not equipped to handle the important events of our time, and recoils upon itself when faced with the truly significant. We got Saddam Hussein? Gee, isn't that a little conincidental? I mean, yesterday we wanted to catch him, and now we've got him? Good news follows bad? It's almost as if Dick Chaney arranged it that way. And you know how when you find something, it's always in the last place you look? Thats because Halliburton put it there.

Charles Krauthammer called this sort of madness "Bush Derangement Syndrome", believing that it is the stress brought on by intense hatred of Bush that simply breaks some people's minds. That was in reference to Howard Deans self-proclaimed suspicion that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Clearly, the disease is spreading. Soon, the sun won't be able to rise in the east without being rigged and hoisted by the Bush-Chaney oil junta and a cabal of Straussian gaffers.

Right-Wing Terror Apologists

This is a painful post to write, but it needs to be written. I find the U.N. beneath contempt, for reasons I'll explain in a minute - but some of the posts out there in the wake of the terrorist attack on the U.N.'s Baghdad HQ crossed a very important line.

This post by Emperor Misha I, and a few of the comments associated with it, are probably the most widely publicized. Regrettably, in the comments section of this Winds of Change.NET post, team member Trent Telenko wrote in one of his comments:

bq. "Too bad the Al-Qaeda didn't use a bigger bomb (August 20, 2003 02:56 AM)."

That's unacceptable. What we have here, is a failure to communicate. Not theirs - they communicated all too well. So perhaps it's mine. Brothers, listen. Carefully.

read the rest! »

The Ends Justify the Means

There. I said it. The Right has been dancing around it while the Left tries to trick them into saying it. So it's been said. The ends justify the means.

Of course, this is not a sweeping statement, but one with plenty of caveats. Shooting a kid to get his lollipop does not qualify. Does disposing an evil dictator justify stretching the truth? I think so. Because that's what happened here. Bush did not lie to go to war. He stretched the truth to remove an evil dictator from power.

So why is it so wrong to think the ends justify the means? Quoting Sun Tzu shows how learned and sophisticated you are. Quoting Machiavelli makes you evil. Why is that? Partially because 'the ends justify the means' takes the choice away from us. That does upset me. But leaders have been doing that for ages. Did every single colonist want to declare independence from England? Of course not. But they were sucked into it because some did. They were leaders. It's what leaders do. They lead. And sometimes that isn't popular.

And that's what Bush did. He knew that selling the country on a war against Iraq on human rights violations wouldn't get enough support. So he twisted the truth a little. And that's all he did. He didn't lie. He didn't concote an elaborate conspiracy to get his way. He took some questionable evidence and made it into a technicality. Technically it is still the truth. The British did say Saddam was trying to obtain uranium (and they still do, BTW) but we all know it was misleading. That was part of the means.

So what was the end? The removal of a truly evil dictator. The liberation of millions of people. The chance to bring democracy and stability to a region which has had neither. The removal of a security threat to the US and the world. Was it worth it? I think so.

I wish that it hadn't come to that. I wish the country would have recognized all of the ends and supported Bush and the war. But many wouldn't. So Bush stretched the truth a little. Which is my real disappointment. A real leader would have done what he thought was best, polls be damned. But even FDR couldn't do that.

Sometimes, nay most of the time, it is hard for your average citizen to see the big picture and that makes it hard to sell something to the public that is part of the big picture. Steven Den Beste sums it up best:

I think this was always on the overall plan for the war's campaign. Once Afghanistan was take care of and after Iraq had been taken, I think that it was always expected that the next step would be to apply political pressure to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria to get them to stop supporting terror groups.

Fighting terrorism is like fighting ants; there are too many of them, they're too small and too spread out. To fight ants, you don't fight the ants. You fight the queen. If you kill the queen, all the rest of the ants will die. Terrorists are small and spread out, but without money they're only a small threat at best. Terrorism is low-resource warfare but it isn't no-resource, and even organizations like al Qaeda need millions of dollars per year in order to operate. Most of that money has been coming from Saudi Arabia. If the support stops, al Qaeda will be even further impeded and its threat will be reduced even further. (And the same goes for other similar groups e.g. Hizbollah.)

So how do you sell that to the American public? If you can't, does that mean it shouldn't be done? Of course not. Is stretching the truth the best way to go about it? Not at all. But it is a way and a way to do it quickly, which is what we needed to do. Irregardless, the ends are a good thing. And we wouldn't have gotten them without the means.

Who's Fibbing?

The WHO puts out its latest SARS numbers daily at about 3 p.m. EDT. Today's are out here.

Worldwide there have been 417 deaths and 2643 recoveries for a death rate of 13.6% (deaths/(deaths+recoveries). Looking at the table, there are two countries that I don't believe. Communist China and the United States.

The Commies are reporting a death rate of 11.7%, the lowest among countries with large numbers of cases. In contrast, Canada, with day old numbers has a death rate of 19.1%. It is apparent that the Communist Chinese are either lying, or fortunate to be both the source of this disease as well as the most successful treater of this disease. Yeah, right!

The United States seems to have a problem communicating its numbers to the WHO. The current numbers are two days old. At one point in the last week they were five days old. The United States only reported recoveries in the last four days, before that they were unavailable. That was the case on the CDC page, too, so it wasn't a WHO problem.

One MD that blogs has told me that the CDC does not update its web site as promptly as it could. Apparently they don't report to the WHO as promptly, either. Now, I'm not necessarily a fan of the WHO but it makes a nice central data collection point. So, what's the problem?

The other issue with the United States is that there are no reported deaths. 56 cases, 24 have recovered, and no deaths. Statisticly, there should have been 3. OK, we're lucky. Three is small enough that we could vary to zero. Or, any deaths are being attributed to other causes. Heart attack, pneumonia, anything but SARS. I don't like the number ZERO when everyone else has a bigger number. It just smells a little.

So, the Commies are lying like rugs. Add at least one zero to the right side of all their numbers. And, I have no freakin' clue what's going on with the United States' numbers. I hope just sloppy bookkeeping.

SARS Report 5-1-2003

• World-wide death rate: 391/2954, 13.2%
• Canada: 20/107, 18.7%
• Communist China: 170/1521, 11.2% (187 new cases since yesterday)
• Hong Kong: 162/996, 16.3% (they sent some home they shouldn't)
• Singapore: 25/168, 14.9%
• U.S. 54 cases, 2 new since yesterday, 0 deaths, 23 recoveries

From WHO here

Now, let's see what Canada says here

As of April 30, 2003, Health Canada has received reports of 346 probable or suspect cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Canada. There have been 21 deaths in Canada. To date, transmission has been limited to specific transmission settings such as households, hospitals and specific community settings. The information contained in this update is based on the information available to Health Canada at this time.

The details of the cases to date are as follows:

* Ontario is reporting 143 probable and 119 suspect cases.
* British Columbia is reporting 4 probable and 67 suspect cases.
* New Brunswick is reporting 2 suspect cases.
* Saskatchewan is reporting 1 suspect case.
* Alberta is reporting 6 suspect cases.
* Prince Edward Island is reporting 4 suspect cases.

Total # of probables discharged or at home: 88
Total # of suspects discharged or at home: 167

These numbers are accurate as of 1:00 pm. Eastern Daylight Saving Time, April 30, 2003. For specific information on the provincial numbers, please contact the appropriate provincial health department.

The only change is one less probable in Ontario. Still the highest death rate among nations with large numbers of cases. That is, if you believe the Communist Chinese. I don't.

Protesting America 1944-45

I thought this was a joke, until I followed the link, via damianpenny:

QUOTE:
"The demonstration on May 25 is against the US invasion of Europe in 1944-1945, against the presence of US troops in Europe, and to demand the withdrawal of those troops. It is also directed against the American soldiers buried at Margraten: they fought as conquerors, to subject Europe to American values and American interests. They deserve no honour, and certainly no gratitude. They should be reburied in the US.

The demonstration is against the Europe of the Nation States - supported by the US - and for the formation of a continental state. It is against nationalism and liberalism, and against Atlanticism - which combines both these ideologies with uncritical admiration for American society. It is also directed against the slavish attitude of the national elites in western Europe, who kneel before the American flag, and unjustly honour the American dead."

From HERE

Exerpt:

QUOTE:
Note that all these points are similar, even identical, to the American justification for the invasion of Iraq. The neoconservatives who wanted a war primarily for 'regime change' used the example of Nazi Germany, and the post-war democratisation of Germany. For the neoconservatives, US forces are doing the same in Iraq as they did in Normandy in 1944, and they deserve the same gratitude from the population.

The United States claims to be the liberator of Iraq. General Garner denies that the troops are occupiers. The media and public opinion in the United States accept this as a fact, and think it is wrong to criticise the troops. Right-wing media and commentators say that those who oppose the war, support Saddam and his brutal regime. They claim that Iraq under US troops will now become a free society - meaning a market democracy allied to the US and NATO.

If you accept all these claims for Europe, it is hard to convincingly oppose them for Iraq. It is not logical to say "Oh, it was completely different in Europe in 1944". It was the same United States that invaded Iraq.

Canadian SARS

This just keeps getting better and better.

WHO lifted the Canadian travel ban based on there not being any new SARS cases in the last 20 days. Okey doaky. Let's go to the reported facts.

As of April 29, 2003, Health Canada has received reports of 346 probable or suspect cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Canada. There have been 21 deaths in Canada. To date, transmission has been limited to specific transmission settings such as households, hospitals and specific community settings. The information contained in this update is based on the information available to Health Canada at this time.

The details of the cases to date are as follows:

* Ontario is reporting 144 probable and 118 suspect cases.
* British Columbia is reporting 4 probable and 67 suspect cases.
* New Brunswick is reporting 2 suspect cases.
* Saskatchewan is reporting 1 suspect case.
* Alberta is reporting 6 suspect cases.
* Prince Edward Island is reporting 4 suspect cases.

Total # of probables discharged or at home: 87
Total # of suspects discharged or at home: 163

These numbers are accurate as of 1:00 pm. Eastern Daylight Saving Time, April 29, 2003. For specific information on the provincial numbers, please contact the appropriate provincial health department. LOOK HERE

---

As of April 28, 2003, Health Canada has received reports of 344 probable or suspect cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Canada. There have been 21 deaths in Canada. To date, transmission has been limited to specific transmission settings such as households, hospitals and specific community settings. The information contained in this update is based on the information available to Health Canada at this time.

The details of the cases to date are as follows:

* Ontario is reporting 142 probable and 122 suspect cases.
* British Columbia is reporting 4 probable and 63 suspect cases.
* New Brunswick is reporting 2 suspect cases.
* Saskatchewan is reporting 1 suspect case.
* Alberta is reporting 6 suspect cases.
* Prince Edward Island is reporting 4 suspect cases.

Total # of probables discharged: 75
Total # of probables recovering at home: 2
Total # of suspects discharged: 85
Total # of suspects recovering at home: 70 LOOK HERE

---

I make that a gain of 2 new cases 4/28-4/28, both in Ontario. The WHO says 4 in the same time frame, and is reporting two more in its latest report HERE.

So, my question is Who can Canadians trust for accurate information about SARS?

• Based on the WHO data, the world wide death rate is 372/2842 or 13.1%
• The Communist Chinese rate is 159/1491 or 10.7%
• The Canadian death rate is 20/107 or 18.7%
• The U.S. has 51 cases, no reported deaths, and did not make available the number of recoveries.

  Posted by chuck at 01:59 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Military Should Lead The Rebuilding Of Iraq

Rebuilding Iraq: No Job for a Coalition (washingtonpost.com)
I wasn't going to blog today but had to get a couple of things out or I'd bust.

I can already hear the military screaming over the idea of leading the rebuilding of Iraq. That's precisely why they should do it. First, as the woman who wrote this excellent article has noted, the Pentagon has run the only two successful post-WW2 reconstructions: Japan and Germany. Second, because it isn't their primary job they have an incentive to get it done -- and done well as they do everything -- and get out. That doesn't mean weeks or months, but a couple of years.

I recently heard that our military spent four years running Germany after WW2 and six years running Japan. That's a long time, but when they left the job was done. The UN and other organizations have an incentive to stay in place as long as possible whereas the Pentagon has other things to do. The UN has not ever successfully democratized a country. Not once. The military, which is itself not a particularly democratic institution, has done it twice and very well because they are adept at laying out goals and reaching them.

Let the screaming begin, but the U.S. military should own Iraq for the time being. It's the surest way to success.

The military has led the only two successful attempts at postwar democratization. In Japan and Germany, defense officials took full responsibility. Used to thinking strategically, they focused on overarching values and critical missions. The centralized defense structure allowed America's core values to remain consistent and penetrate every aspect of the mission. Yet, after setting and enforcing broad guidelines, they gave the Germans and Japanese great leeway in setting up their own governments. Perhaps most important, the military authorities did not want to remain. Unlike international organizations, whose entire job is to "help" other countries, the Pentagon has other work to do. It has every incentive to create a viable local government and then allow it the autonomy to function on its own.

Those who support multilateral reconstruction believe we can begin repairing rifts in the international system by diffusing responsibility for reconstruction. Yet under all proposed scenarios, America is going to run the reconstruction effort. Our detractors will still frame us as occupiers, while our attempts to placate international critics will sentence Iraq to a decade of uncertainty and limbo under international auspices.

Helping Iraq build a functioning democracy in which Iraqis can soon govern on their own is essential to our international legitimacy and crucial to the Iraqi people. The United Nations and other international organizations are staffed by many capable, intelligent, well-intentioned people. They should be encouraged to run humanitarian relief efforts in Iraq and should create a broad, multilateral coalition to control Iraq's oil revenue to expunge the accusation that this has been a war for oil. Yet in concert, they would fail to democratize Iraq and would prevent it from regaining its autonomy and sovereignty. The Pentagon has succeeded in the past, and it has the unified structure that will allow it to succeed again. Let it do the job.

Who Predicted A Short War? Clinton.

Time for a reminder. This just happens to be the first link I came across, but there are plenty.

From NPR, dated March 6:

If conflict does come, Clinton said, he thinks a war could be "over in a week" because of what he sees as the overwhelming capability of U.S. forces and the depletion of Iraq's military strength.

"I think it's important to disarm this man, I think he's a bad fella, but our military superiority is so great -- it's far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days," Clinton said. "And so now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad."

Just a moment in time

I listen to KPRC 950AM radio here in Houston, TX. On Fridays, Chris Baker and the studio crew run a goofy gamed called "Reverse Trivia." People call in with questions, the twisted crew (including the award-winning programming manager) try to guess the answer, and if they're wrong then the caller wins prizes. They try not to take the game too seriously, and a fun time is had by all.

Today's show was held at Minutemaid Park (formerly Enron Field). As 6:00 and the deadline for the end of the show approached, a caller asked a trivia question and...

No response. The questioned trailed off. Instead, the national anthem played.

You see, the exhibition game was just about to start, and it was time for the national anthem. The crew fell silent during the national anthem. You can't see it over the radio, but I'm sure Chris Baker even doffed his cowboy hat from his large bald head.

After listening to some of the shamefully loaded questions in the White House and Pentagon briefings and press conferences today, one of which accused the Pentagon of lying about casualty figures solely based on the ratio of wounded to killed, would those members of the press, faced with such a situation, stop playing "Armchair General" and have the respect and decency to do the same?

The "miss" in the missile

Dear Charles Rangel,

Tonight, you will not see video of dead women and children strewn around a shopping market, torn apart by a missile fired by callous aggressors bent on conquering Arabic land for oil and then tearing apart those Arabs in torture and rape-gangs. You will not see the ambulances and screaming family members demanding revenge and the deaths of their enemies.

Um... what? Wasn't there a missile strike in Baghdad that killed upwards of 50 people?

I'm not talking about Baghdad, where either a missile was knocked off course by anti-aircraft fire or a deliberate explosion was set for the media to show the world in a deliberate attempt to whip up anti-American sentiments already running high.

I'm talking about Kuwait City. Fired upon by the Iraqis. The same Iraqis that conquered Kuwait in 1990 for oil, a land owned by Arabs, whom they tortured and slaughtered with glee.

But why no scenes of carnage and death? You see, the Iraqis missed. There were no massive innocent civilian casualties. The missile they fired at Kuwait City landed in the water in front of the shopping mall they indiscriminately attacked, not the shopping mall itself.

Ponder that when you scream baby-killer, Representative Charles Rangel. Who's trying to kill babies and who's trying to end the rule of those that want to kill babies?

Even though the bal