The Random Thoughts of Doc J

Just a slide rule...

2006-11-15T17:46:00.000-08:00

Because I'm just that kind of guy!

Have we learned the lesson of history.

2006-07-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

Taken from RedState.

It's a quagmire.

It's an untennable mess.

It's a civil war.

We should have never gotten involved.

I'm speaking, of course, about Somalia.

For those who subscribe to the 3-Step Democrat Plan for "Victory" in Iraq® - which is, to recep:

Blame Bush

Somaila is in fact an object lesson of what happens to a country in which we have involved ourselves and then fail to "finish the job". Among the latest in a long string of nightmares:

Fighting surged in Mogadishu on Monday between Islamist militias and fighters loyal to the city's last warlords, pushing the death toll over two days to at least 60 and pounding a key hospital with artillery and gunfire.

Let us parse that sentence a bit.

Islamist militias - well, we've certainly seen their type before, no?

The city's last warlords - I suppose like this guy, though he is certainly not comming down for breakfast any time soon

Death toll over two days to at least 60 - sounds like the NY Times definition of a civil war to me

Pounding a key hospital with artillery and gunfire - oh, you mean to say these folks don't follow the Geneva Conventions? Shocked, am I.

My thesis is simple: if you want to know what Iraq will look like if we leave "before the job is done" - as in, before we've established a stable, functioning, reasonably secular representative government - just take a quick peak at Somalia.

Or, get used to Iraq becoming Talibanistan 2.0 - complete with large quantities of black gold, the sale of which can be used to fund their operations.

But what do we need to fear from that? After all, we all know Islam is a Religion of Peace™, right?

The Islamists want to impose sharia law across the country and oppose the deployment of foreign peacekeepers, which interim President Abdullahi Yusuf says is essential to get his government on its feet and pacify the Horn of Africa country.

Right.

What does it mean...

2006-04-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

... that March 2006 was among the least deadly months for US and Coalition troops in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom?

While April is not necesarily off to a great start (the 8 listed at icasualties includes 5 dead from a truck roll-over in Anbar), I'm left to wonder why the relatively low number of casualties in March (33) - by far the lowest since March 2005 (39) and not a great deal more than the all time low of 23 from way-back in February 2004 - isn't much of a news story.

I mean, don't you think it would be a major news story were March 2006 one of the deadliest of recent months?

So why is this not news?

Well, we all know the answers. Right?

...

So, casualties are down - substantially - in March and we get almost nothing from the MSM. A couple of folks are on the case, noting that March 2006 is well in-line with the overall trend (multiple h/t to Austin Bay), and could, among other things, point to the yet another corner being rounded.

And still, not a peep from the MSM. Strange.

Strange also that our casualties would be going down at a time when Iraq, if certain people are to be believed, is presently in a state of Civil War.

Could it be some people have been wrong about OIF all along?

Pity that reality often doesn't exactly jive with the All Is Lost™, Redeploy™, and Quagmire™ rhetoric we get from the Tough and Strong party, does it.

Can we cut to the chase?

2006-03-23T11:22:00.000-08:00

Had this elevated to the front-page at RedState - so I figured I'd put it here, too.

I have previously admitted that I cannot follow the whole FISA/Domestic Spying™ kerfuffle without my head exploding, but I've truly reached the boiling point. So, for those of you ready to impeach George Bush for "spying", I present two scenarios:

Scenario A: A known or suspected terrorist (meaning that said scumbag is on some watch-list somewhere that I assume is updated and reviewed periodically), while outside the borders of the United States places a phone call to another sentient being located somewhere inside the borders of the United States.

Scenario B: The reverse of Scenario A - A sentient being located inside the borders of the United States places a phone call to a known or suspected scumbag located outside the borders of the United States.

Everyone with me?

Good. Read on...

Here's what we know about these two Scenarios:

They are international calls.
They involve a sentient being located inside the United States
They further involve a known or suspected scumbag located outside the United States.

Still with me? Good. Moving on.

So, here it is. For the people who are ready to jump on the Feingold/Conyers Grand Impeachment Bandwagon, please answer me these questions:

Is it your interpretation of the FISA that, in either or both of the scenarios laid-out above the fold, the NSA should have to go play "Mother May I" with a judge somewhere before they get to listen-in on that conversation?
Regardless of your interpretation of the FISA, should the NSA have to go play "Mother May I" with a judge somewhere before they get to listen-in on that conversation?

For the record, my answers to these are "No - and if it does mean that the law needs to be changed, immediately" and "Shoot No". If my neighbor is having a phone conversation with a known or suspected terrorist overseas then I darn-well want someone else to be in on that conversation.

The Constitution is not a Suicide Pact.

Thanks for playing.

Behold! The "Loyal Opposition"

2005-10-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Cross posted at RedState.

The Iraq War came home yesterday to our tiny little corner of the globe when the news spread, and was finally confirmed, that a recent graduate of our local high school was KIA in Iraq this past week. This hero is the first casualty of open conflict in our town since Vietnam, and while it has not hit the public in noticeable fashion it is known to all who are active in affairs of my Town and beyond.

Below is the commentary from a charter member of the Loyal Opposition, relaying the news to people with whom I happen to share an address on a mailing list (names and other information redacted to protect the innocent and the damned, but otherwise verbatim):

Don't know how many of you are from (Town), but my grandsons have told me something hideous: this insane war , this pea-brained president has executed one more victim of his war-for-lies-and-greed: a (Town) boy.

mr. XXX (I don't know his rank) was one of those 6 American children bombed by the roadside bomb last week. He graduated from (Town) High (a small number of) years ago and lives on (Something) St. My grandson says he saw the military guys go into the home as I took him to . I hope that's not true, but if so, it's even more of a reason NOT to keep our children there any longer.

I haven't seen his death in any of the local papers, but it could be one reason (local Veteran's Agent - a Town employee) wrote that blistering attack on Bush that's in this week's (Local Newspaper).

I tried to send YYY a thank you note, but got this censoring note from Big Brother instead. Do any of you know who'se attached to that action? Not a word of profanity or obscenity in it. But it might be 'inappropriate' in someone's eyes, who was a slavish robot, a peasant before the king whom he worships. We're turning into medeival Europe.

Earlier this morning I sent this thank you note to our Veterans' Agent in (Town). for speaking out against this illegally seated president and his needless war that is killing thousands:

While part of me does NOT understand how Christians can stand for a war based on lies, when we are sacrificing our OWN children (much less the Iraqi thousands).....I must respect anyone who DOES speak out. And that's what you did in this week's (Local Newspaper).

As a mother of a Iraqi Invasion /Occupation vet, Lt. Col. ZZZ, I thank you. Many of our soldiers are beginning to speak out. The organization 'Iraq Veterans Against the War" is encouraging those kids who listened to the Pied Pipers of Death, the recruiters, and believed their lies, to speak out as well.

While the corrupt Bush administration snuck in a way of stealing your children's names and personal data in the "Leave No Child Behind" (as a victim of this war) law, parents are allowed to write their schools and notify them that their child's name is not to be given to the recruiters. Wonder how many know that. A well-kept secret by the mainstream media. And so, the peasants still go out to die for the king, who suffers nothing from a loss and gains untold riches from a victory. Medieval Europe had nothing on us, when superstition is gaining hold, as the federal 'leadership' outlawing stem cell research and encouraging creationism (aka 'intelligent design'). And with a deteriorating public school system, our children are seldom taught analytical skills, so they remain gullible to the lies told them by the Bush junta.. So sad.

(Signature)

Behold! The mindset of the Loyal Opposition.

I will leave it up to you, fair reader, to comment on the particulars: the outrageous condescension, the mind-numbing spewing of Talking Points™ and Known Facts™, the not-so subtle attempts to blame George Bush, personally, for the work of terrorists, the town employee (Veteran's Agent, of all things) using his paid office to electioneer on behalf of the Cindy Sheehan's of the world.

I will however offer the following in response: that Hell cannot be deep enough, dark enough, or painful enough for this woman and those of like mind - people who wrap themselves in the flags which drape the coffins of our hero dead; who desecrate and mock the sacrifice of those living and deceased who are involved with an enterprise for which they have volunteered to fight and die; who are willing to use heroes, even (as is the case with this woman) their own flesh and blood, to further a suicidal, Blame-America-First (whenever there is a Republican in the White House) agenda of surrender and shame.

This woman is no patriot - she is a coward and a traitor.

God help us for the 5th column in our midst.

FTR, and because I'm sure someone will ask, the Town does not censor incoming email. However, all email sent from this woman's domain is assumed to be SPAM and thus rejected at the server level.

A Matter of Leadership

2005-08-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

Note: This post was originally written as a diary entry at RedState and was promoted to the front page, where it stayed for about 5-days. Since it has dropped of the front page, I've decided to re-post it here. To see the original entry, complete with comments, feel free to go here.

I find myself over-and-over again – in person, in email, over the phone, on the web (though not as much here in the last couple of months) – having to defend my support for George Bush and the War in Iraq, specifically how Bush has handled and managed the war and it’s aftermath. I’ve taken this task a bit reluctantly at times and at others with gusto - but have always felt a bit awkward, regardless of my personal enthusiasm, at the prospect of having to defend the President of the United States time-and-again on the war over the last two years. I’ve done so mostly because I believe in the cause, in part because I’m a Bush loyalist, but also in no small part because I understand the costs of failure in this venture. Yet, that apprehension has always been there.

Over the last couple of days, amidst the backdrop of the pathetic spectacle of a grieving mother (and lunatic moonbat, who just happens to be surrounded by dozens of the Usual Suspects who must think it’s still 1969) requesting – nay, demanding – an second audience with the President of the United States over the death of her 24-year old “child”, I have found that my desire to continue to defend Mr. Bush has declined notably. It has not been a conscious decision on my part to “stand-down” some of my support – and, in fact, my support for the war has only grown since I wrote a rather pessimistic-sounding diary entry some time ago. So why the loss of “fire” to defend the CinC?

Finally, it dawned on me this morning – why am I defending the President when he does not seem interested in doing it himself?

And in this I have found the source of my apprehension – I’m spending more time defending George Bush than he (and is Administration) is spending defending himself. This is unfair to me, a supporter of the President and his policies, and demonstrates gross negligence of his responsibilities as the leader of our Nation and (indeed) the Free World. It is, I believe, the source of many of his troubles with sagging poll numbers, the loss of support for the war, and his failure to be credited with the rather superb state of the economy (as shown by all objective measures).

In short, if the President of the United State does not care to defend himself, why in Heaven’s Name should I do it for him?

First, let me briefly elaborate. I do not mean to suggest that Bush needs necessarily to go out every day and justify to the great unwashed why we 1) went into Iraq in the first place, 2) are still there today, and 3) need to stay until the nation is stabilized. In fact, re-arguing why we went into Iraq in the first place is rather unhelpful at this point – we’re there, deal with it. Rather, what I mean to suggest is that, while the Press-Democrat is busy playing-up all the negatives (the death-toll, the car bombings), the Administration seems to be relying almost entirely on talk-radio and bloggers to do the job of getting-out the good news and spreading the word on the progress being made in developing a civil society where only two years ago there was a hostile dictatorship.

The Administration has made little attempt, other than the President’s continued insistence that we “Stay the Coarse” (and on that subject, could someone please suggest to his speech-writers that he never, ever, use that phrase again?), to make the case why it’s important for us to be there, and no one - and I mean no one – in the Administration is making even a half-hearted attempt to get ahead of the lazy, partisan press and their never-ending stream of doom and woe.

That is the fault of the Man at the Top – George W. Bush.

As I say in the subject line of this piece, it’s a matter of Leadership.

Now, I’ve been accused from time to time of spending too much time listening to the MSM and (by extension) allowing that to cloud my thinking (just read the responsed to some of my comments - easy enough to do on your own). Well guess what boys and girls, that’s where most of America gets their news and the data upon which most of our fellow voters form their opinions. We can all wait around for the MSM to complete it’s process of self-immolation, but that’s not going to happen in time to pull us out of the Iraq nosedive. The MSM are the only reason 1) the World knows the name of the Moonbat Mourner and 2) why she is getting airtime and column-space everywhere from Cambridge, MA to Tehran. Bluntly, the Press-Democrat are not going to let this story die when it’s such an effective weapon against the biggest terrorist in the world, are they.

Still, Sheehan is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. She is a story because the Administration has done a God-awful horrible job of getting in front of the stories coming out of Iraq. “Quagmire: Iraq” is all we get from the MSM, 24/7/365, consistently for the last 2-years. And here’s a newsflash: that’s all were going to get until someone in the Administration - and it has to start with the Man at the Top - gets it through his head that they are losing control of the situation – perhaps on the ground (certainly many Americans, even those who support the war, believe we’ve lost control of Iraq), but certainly back on the home front.

There is no point at continued Monday-morning quarterbacking, and I’m certain there are thousands of us who could come up with a million intelligent and well thought-out things that we could have, should have, done differently over the last 2-years. What I believe we need to do is look for a way to move forward from here, a way that starts to re-focus the country on what we’re doing there, why we should stay there, and why we’re going to stay there – and is has to start with the President.

Clearly, there are those among us who cannot be persuaded – this strategy is not for them and I do not believe the President needs to waste his time on partisans and peacnics. Many of those protesting today are protesting simply because there is a war going on and there is a Republican in the White House – it’s not more complicated than that. Peel away the lovely-sounding “No blood for Oil!” and “Bring them home, NOW!” rhetoric and what you have (more often than not) is an America-loathing, Israel-loathing, leftist pacifist who opposes not just the War in Iraq, but the War in Afghanistan, the War on Terror, or any armed conflict involving the U.S. – so long as there is a Republican in the White House, of course. These people see a Zionist in every corner of the Government – they are not serious people and should not be treated as such.

Frankly, it would not hurt if someone in the Administration would point this out – and I’m sure there is someone (Hello? Karl Rove?) smart enough to figure out a way to do this tactfully.

Still, no war is unanimously supported – never has been, never will be. The focus should be on the broad middle of the country that supported the war in the beginning but have lost sight of the fact that progress is made in small bunches while setbacks seem to come in big chunks. Still, if the sum of the small bunches outweighs the occasional (even if daily) big chunk, that message will start to break through. (As an aside, if they are not, then it probably means that we need to re-think what we’re doing, eh?)

But if we think that the lazy, partisan Press-Democrat is going to dig that message out and willingly present it to the people so long as there is a Republican calling the shots, we’re deluding ourselves. Further, if we think that blogs and talk-radio is going to be enough to counter the daily grind from the MSM and the left-blogosphere, then we’re beyond delusional. Certainly, that strategy ain't working to well at the moment, is it?

No, the President of the United States needs to get back in control of this situation and personally demonstrate the leadership that is required to bring the American people back. This is leadership we have seen before from George Bush, we all know it’s there. We need straight talk. Highlight the progress without sugarcoating the costs. Give the lazy media a daily spoon-feeding of the news, good and bad, and dare them to continue to cover it as lopsidedly as they have.

Our opponents have no problem asking on a daily basis why we’re there – it’s time for the Administration to answer them, on a daily basis if necessary, to the point that it demonstrates to all fair-minded people that the other side has nothing to offer but complaint. Constant complaint, when left continually unanswered, becomes Known Fact™ – and we’ve all seen far too many of them in the last two years. Finally, people need to understand, is stark terms, what the costs of failure in this war are – and make no mistake, capitulating to the wishes of Dr. Dean, Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore and the rest of the “Get out NOW!” crowd is nothing if not an admission of abject failure. Yet, that is the path we’re running down presently and will continue to sprint down until the Man and the Top gets in front and turns us away.

It is not about “spin” - “spin” is precisely what we’ve been getting from the Press-Democrat and the DNC. The fact of the matter is that there is plenty of good news out there that is not being reported for a variety of reasons (be it Iraq, the economy, whatever) and therefore no need for “spin” on our side. What has been lacking is perspective and balance. It’s long past time for the Administration to get in-front of the public relations battle – assuming they’re fully in charge of the military aspects, as well.

Mr. President, your legacy will be Iraq - not Social Security reform, not the Supreme Court – Iraq. Those (and many other) issues are certainly important, but you will be forever defined, rightly or wrongly, by the War in Iraq. It is your legacy to win our lose. Win, and these other initiatives will instantly become a whole-bunch easier to get done. Lose, and there is a very real possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, that the Republic will be in grave danger as a result. The outcome is very much in the balance – and will remain so until you assert your leadership, spare us the canned speeches, lay-out the progress, assure us of the justness of our cause, and do it every, single, stinking day, if necessary.

Lead, Mr. President. A nation is waiting for you.

Update [0915 - 24082005]: It appears that I'm not the only person who has pondered this very point - see for example, here and here.

Federalism is dead - Film at 11

2005-03-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

It has been a hoot watching the Democrats and other socialists getting their frilly, pink panties in a bunch over the death of Federalism - after all, these are the same folks who danced gleefully when the SCOTUS rammed a schiv into the back of the 10th Amendment only a week-or-so ago with regard to the "juvenile" death penalty, right? Oh, and on the subject of federal court intervention into state affairs - can anyone say "Roe v. Wade"? Funny, I don't seem to recall the leftists being too upset over that little piece of federal activism - must have missed that.

Seriously, I (being both a process and social conservative) am distressed at the actions taken by Congress and GWB in the Schiavo case, but I'm equally distressed at the fact that my side seems to be getting our Constitutional teeth kicked-in by an out-of-control judiciary and a left-wing in the US that has very successfully turned everything into a (pun intended) federal case.

So, if Federalism is indeed dead (a loss that I would greatly mourn), should we unilaterally disarm and turn the future of our country over to an emboldened leftist fringe and leave ourselves entirely at the tender mercies of an out-of-control court system? If every issue is indeed going to become a "federal case", then isn't it best that our elected representatives, and not a cotillion of unelected, lifetime appointees, be the ones driving that bus?

Granted, it gives me no joy to think along these lines - but with the Senate GOP not demonstrating the stones required to even get Bush's qualified appellate nominees a simple up-or-down vote, I don't see the composition of the courts changing greatly in the near future.

I suppose what I'm saying is that the GOP abandoning their Federalist traditions scares me less, much less in fact, than leaving every issue in society in the hands of a leftist judiciary.

What a God-awful horrible choice.

For the record on the Schiavo case...

I am very sympathetic to the arguments made on behalf of Terry's parents. If an error is going to be made, I would much prefer to err on the side of caution and keep the feeding tube in place - I hardly consider provision of water and food to be an "extraordinary means" for survival.
Michael Schiavo looks like pond-scum - he is a wholly unlikable, unctuous piece of filth who has changed his story repeatedly (how come it took him 7-years to recall that Terry would never want to be kept alive this way?) and clearly does not seem to have the best interests of his estranged wife at heart.

That said, I have a hard time understanding how the original ruling of the Florida trial court (Judge Greer, is it?) was wrong on the law. For better or worse, the spouse is the "family" in the eyes of the court and the spouse in this case said that the patient's wishes would be for the tube to be removed. As I understand it, this was the only court that stated this as a "finding of fact" - a ruling that has now been sustained on appeal several times.

The solution seems to me to be - you don't like the law, change the law. It would appear that Gov. Jeb Bush and the FL legislature are doing just that, but I fail to see why this couldn't have all been done months if not years ago.

I will not speculate on the politics of this other than to say that I think it's a wash. The American electorate has the attention span of a flea on crack - there is every reason to believe that this will be long forgotten come November 2006 by all but the activists on both sides - and they already know who they're voting for.

The irrelevance of the loyal opposition

2005-02-24T03:03:00.000-08:00

A Deborah Orin column in today's New York Post argues that the Democrats are becoming increasingly irrelevant to political discourse in the United States. I would tend to agree, but do not believe the situation to be terminal.

That said, I feel that it's pretty easy to lapse into irrelevancy when you don't know what your core beliefs are, or what you even stand for, other than being "against".

The party that had no problem meddling in the affairs of any number of countries during 1993-2000 (Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Sudan - most of them half-assed bomb-hurling exercises) suddenly returns to their Vietnam-induced pacifist fever-swamps post-9/11 because a cowboy who doesn't take kindly to terrorism decides to get all ninth-century on Jihadistan.
So, which are they? Are they the interventionist, "democracy"-spreaders of the previous decade, or the "peace"-at-all-costs, pacifist, isolationists of today?

Merely 8-years ago, Social Security was a "crisis" that needed to be "fixed" (I can still hear the chants of "SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY FIRST!!!!" ringing in my ears). Today, everything is swell, and no changes whatever are required to this Depression-era behemoth. Again, which is it?

Zell Miller's quirky personality aside, his point that the Democrat Party is no-longer a national party is spot-on. The modern Democrat Party is little more than a cotillion of competing interest groups (radical feminists, homosexuals, ethnic pressure groups, urban liberals, academics, career unionists, dirt-poor recent - or illegal - immigrants), with very little in common with each other aside from their common distrust (hatred, loathing of) Republicans in general and Dubya in particular.

Now they have the personification of that hatred, Dr. Howard "I-hate-Republicans-and-everything-they-stand-for" Dean as their lead-spokesman for the next four years. YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHH!!!!!

I suppose we'll see how successful being the anti-party is for them over the next few years. It's been going swimmingly to date - for our side, that is.

Kim Calls GWB's Nuke Bluff

2005-02-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

Well, the regime of certified nut-job Kim Jong Il has now announced to the world - to the surprise of precisely no one - that they have nuclear weapons - something the Bush Administration has said is "unacceptable". The North Koreans have also announced that they are pulling out of the 6-nation talks the Bush Administration had clearly hoped would deter the Stalinist regime from acquiring nukes - so much for the value of multilateralism.

To sum, Kim has called Bush's bluff - probably figuring that there is little to nothing we can do about it.

So what, if anything, should we do about it?

At least one libertarian-leaning organization has been saying for months that we need to get back to the concept of "deterrence". But will deterrence work with against an isolated, collapsing Marxist regime that seems to have no problem starving it's own citizens to death?

We can talk all the live-long day about thanking the genius-trifecta of Bill Clinton, Jimmy (I never met a Marxist I didn't like) Carter and Madeline Not-so-bright for providing the DPRK with the nukes in the first place (but they promised they wouldn't make weapons, honest!), but that's not the issue here.

The issue is that we have about 48-thousand troops stationed in South Korea right now, seemingly as nothing more than a trip-wire (or speed bump) if Kim decides that his best route to a decent meal is through Seoul.

George Bush has already demonstrated why you shouldn't play Texas Hold 'em with a Texan - because when he thinks you're bluffing, the Texan goes "all-in". I'm not entirely sure that's an option here, however. We are already stretched painfully thin with our ongoing excursions in Southwest Asia, and the ROK - the people most threatened by a nuclear-weaponized neighbor to the north - seem to be rather nonplused by these events. Thus, there seems to be little justification for our moving militarily against Kim - especially when he could certainly reach Japan and possibly the mainland of the US (thanks again to Clinton) in a retaliatory death-agony strike that could result in the immediate deletion of possibly 1-million people.

That said, there is more than a little bit of our national prestige on the line. Having now said repeatedly that we would not allow North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons, can we now allow them to openly flout their acquisition of same with impunity? What sort of message does that send to the more dangerous and equally ambitious Iran?

Paraphrasing that great American poet Tone Loc, we got us a "Big Old Mess" on our hands here.

Was it worth it?

2005-02-01T09:49:00.000-08:00

It wasn't too long ago that our President acted in a more-or-less unilateral manner, without any authority from the United Nations and against the stated wishes of regional powers, to forcibly remove a dictator from power who was accused of acts of horrific violence against his people. At the time, many believed that the country posed no threat to the United States and that, while the tyrant in question was certainly a bad guy, we simply cannot go removing every "bad actor" from power.

The President was undeterred. He assembled a modest "Coalition of the Willing" and took action, removing the dictator's regime from power after a sustained military campaign that saw perhaps tens-of-thousands of civilian casualties.

The year was 1999.

The President was named Clinton.

The country we attacked was Serbia.

And the dictator was named Milosevic.

At the time, I don't remember many on the left complaining about the unilateral authority assumed by Bill Clinton to justify his invasion of Serbia and "liberation" (which I put in quotes for reasons that will be quite obvious presently) of Kosovo. We never found the "tens-of-thousands of mass graves", evidence of the ethnic cleansing Clinton used as the sole justification for Milosevic's removal - and yet I don't hear choruses of "CLINTON LIED!!!!!!!!!!" from the leftists, pacifists and peaceniks that seem to have been exported from the deep-blue precincts of Cambridge and Brookline. Maybe I just missed that at the time - but I was a graduate student at an Ivy League campus from 1996-2000, so I think I would have noticed.

Anyway, the Balkans War was supposed to be the model for modern warfare. It was virtually casualty-free (at least on our side - don't tell that to the residents of Belgrade, who endured 77-days of bombing prior to Slobo's surrender), quick (by Vietnam standards, I suppose) and inexpensive (yea, right!). That being the case, and since it's been over 5-years now, perhaps it would be helpful to know what's been going on since then, eh?

So, what's been happening since then, you ask? Well, the U.N. has been running the place, and the latest news should be, dare I say, UNsurprising to anyone who has been paying attention to that UNimpressive organization for the last decade-plus.

Long story short, Kosovo is on the verge of melting-down into ethnic chaos, again. These folks have been just about the only people I can find on the ground other than the official mouthpieces of KFOR - and their latest assessment of the situation is not pretty. You don't have to get past the first couple of sentences to see what I mean:

Time is running out in Kosovo. The status quo will not hold. As evidenced by the deadly rioting in March 2004, Kosovo Albanians are frustrated with their unresolved status, the economic situation, and the problems of dealing with the past. The Albanian majority expects the international community to begin delivering this year on its independence aspirations. Without such moves it may act unilaterally. In such circumstances, given the dismal record of Kosovo Albanians with regard to minorities, Kosovo's Serbs may call upon Serbia's armed forces to protect them, and the region could be plunged into new turmoil.

In case you had forgotten, according to the KFOR official website, KFOR is ...

... a NATO-led mission of 4 Multi-National Brigades, 34 nations and more than 17,000 peacekeepers in their effort to provide a safe and secure environment for all citizens living in Kosovo.

Sounds like they're doing a swell job, don't you think? In case you were wondering, here's a run-down of the current US contingent in KFOR:

38th Infantry Division
2-107th Cavalry
1-148th Infantry
139th Med Group
18th Field Hospital
35th MP Company
37th BCT
237th FSB
364th MPAD
629th MI
206th Engineers
734th EOD
443rd PSB
438th Chemical
313th Postal
1-137th AVN

or, approximately 4,200 troops. This, by the way, does not include the deployment of our troops in nearby Bosnia (which ended recently - December 2004, or 8-YEARS after Clinton promised us they would all be home, to be precise).

So, in light of all of the hemming-and-hawing over our recent adventures in Iraq, do you think our action in Kosovo was worth it?

I don't.

And do you think any of these revelations are going to tarnish the image of The War Hero in the eyes of the pinko-leftists who burn GWB in effigy on a daily basis?

I didn't think so.

"The State" as Pimp

2005-01-31T13:56:00.000-08:00

What in Heaven's name is going on in Germany?

A recent story from across the pond points to the logical answer to the question, "What would happen if socialists and secularists ever got their hands on Welfare Reform?"

That answer, if The Telegraph is to believed, is that the government would become a pimp.

Now, I hope that one need not be a right-wing moralizer to believe the idea of the government of an allegedly western, liberal, enlightened people forcing women into the sex trade to be a distasteful, if not disgraceful, thought. Right?

And yet, here we are. When the walls between morals and policy are eliminated, when we are no longer allowed to use morals - or even the traditional norms of decency - to judge behaviours, when no one's "career choice" is to be regarded in moral terms, we are left with the situation whereby we read that a 25-year old, unemployed IT-professional is being told BY THE STATE that she either must work in a brothel (where she will be paid to have sex, seemingly against her will, with strangers) or risk losing her unemployment benefits.

What a nightmare for this poor woman. Regardless of how we feel about the welfare state, particluarly in places like Germany - which has turned unemployment into careers for generations of people - I'm pretty sure we can all agree that no woman in a civilized society should be told that her best career option is to become a whore for a living - much less to be forced into it by her government.

I ask again: what in Heaven's name is going on in Germany? Any why do so many American leftists hold these morons out to represent the ideal of a society that we (in "Jesusland") should strive to emulate?

Anyone?

"Just the Facts" on the National Debt

2005-01-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

Can the days when Cats and Dogs start living together in harmony be far behind? We have allegedly conservative Republicans (right-wing crazies in the eyes of the MSM) spending like drunken sailors while liberal Democrats bemoan the growth of the deficit and national debt.

Frankly, I would love to see a substantial reduction in government spending (coupled with an equally substantial increase in defense spending - if we're going to fight and win the Global War on Terror, we'd better be prepared to pay for it). However, while some are getting their panties in a twist over the explosion of the national debt (my sister-in-law has on at least one occasion sent me a link to the latest "Debt Clock" as a reason - one of many, I assume - that she cannot support GWB), others are assembling facts that, in a systematic and dispassionate manner, demonstrate that the debt, while large and certainly something to be concerned about, is neither outrageous by historical standards (or in relation to most other western countries), nor is it growing in any appreciable manner.

Such a resource comes courtesy of The Skeptical Optimist. I invite y'all to go have a look - it's an interesting read - and it is, as advertised, "Just the Facts". I'd copy the graphics directly, but Mr. Conover put a great deal of work into this - and it would be unfair just to take his handiwork and move ahead. So, go see his site; you'll be glad you did (and a Hat Tip to our good friends at the Power Line for discovering this site).

Certainly, those on the left-side of the political spectrum will note that the modern icons of the right (Reagan and GWB) have all seen the debt increase during their tenures in the White House (with quite a bit of truth behind their statements, it must be said). However, I believe such a statement misses a key point that becomes obvious when one looks over the entire time history, which dates back to 1792.

Every time our nation was challenged or threatened, or whenever there was grave struggle that could reasonably be said to threaten our future, our nation was required to go into debt in order to mobilize the resources required to win. The first build-up of debt came during the Civil War. Lincoln felt it necessary to preserve the Union, even at the cost of a War Between the States. As we all know by now, wars are expensive - and they were just as expensive in the 1860's. After the Civil War, our debt dropped from a high approaching 30% of GDP to something approaching 10% - levels not to be seen after our entry into "The Great War", when our debt shot to nearly 40% of GDP (defeating the Kaiser is expensive work), only to drop back down during the Roaring 20's.

The Great Depression certainly looks like a debt-fiesta - but remember, debt in this manner is measured as a percentage of GDP. With 25% (or greater) unemployment, it suffices to say that it was not a banner period for our GDP - and then came World War II. The defeat of Nazism and Fascism required a deep commitment from our nation - and a subsequent explosion of our National Debt to over 120% of GDP. Certainly, FDR's New Deal programs were contributing to this debt explosion, but as the graph clearly indicates, with the end of the war so ended our debt growth.

The next time we would see a substantial growth in the National Debt, Ronald Reagan declared that The Soviet Union was the Evil Empire and needed not to be contained, but defeated. However, the defeat of Communism did not come on the cheap, either. Even with economic growth over 1982-1997 that was unprecedented at the time, our national debt grew from 38% of GDP to about 55% of GDP - only to bump again to about 65% of GDP with the simultaneous outbreak of the Gulf War and the 1990-1992 recession (debt up, GDP down). Our debt dropped to just under 60% of GDP by 2000 and seems to be inching up just a touch at present to a level that is lower than the debt of Japan, Italy and France, on par with Germany, and slightly higher than that of the UK.

Clearly, there is more of a correlation between the size (and scope) of the National Debt and the epic battles of our history than there is with the ideology of the President. Reagan and GWB have seen debt increases (I'm projecting a little for GWB, but no one I know thinks the debt will actually drop in the next couple of years). They also decided to take on the great challenges of their times (Reagan's was Communism, Bush 43's is Islamofascism). Compare and contrast that to some recent periods of debt stability or decline. During the 90's, the debt certainly came down. We also saw during this time the rise of Islamofascism and al Qaeda - a rise that continued unabated until September 11, 2001. During the 60's and 70's, we had a nice, stable debt level - we also fought to a draw in Korea and lost Vietnam.

Give me the debt increases, every time.

That said, I sincerely believe that GWB and the Republicans who control the entire federal government had best get spending under control. They probably have, at most, 2-years to do it. Otherwise, their own base (who was willing to give them a pass for the last 4-years largely because of 9/11) is likely to start to look elsewhere. All that is required is for some credible candidate to challenge the GOP from the right in 2008 on issues of government spending and immigration (Pat Buchanan, anyone?), suck-off say 7% of the conservative base that came out in record numbers in 2004, and we'll all be watching the inauguration of President Hillary Rodham Clinton in January 2009.

Heaven help us all if that happens.

A "F-U"

2005-01-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

That's "Follow-Up" (don't hyperventalate, anyone) to my earlier post where I took the United Pygmys, I mean Nations, to the woodshed for their comments about our alleged "stinginess".

I'm sure y'all read PowerLine - if you don't, you should. It's required reading at least twice per day. Anyway, they link to this particular piece at another weblog authored by our foreign service folks who are doing The Lord's work in the tsunami devastated areas of SE Asia.

This clip, as well as most of the posts at DiploMad, are very instructive regarding the ineffectiveness of the U.N. in practice.

I was thinking about this while listening to the news on my way to work this morning. U.N. "officials" (some assistant deputy, under-secretaries of something-or-other) were on the radio screaming about the need for a billion more dollars NOW, in order to head off an all-but inevitable human catastrophe. The question that statement begs is, "OK, so what precisely are you doing about it, mister U.N. klepto-crat?"

Not much, it seems.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised

2005-01-06T11:08:00.000-08:00

I find it funny hearing and reading the rhetoric coming out of the Democrats in Washington state (as opposed to the other Washington that rapes my bank account on a bi-weekly basis). If you're not aware of what's going on with the open and slow-motion theft of the Washington Governor's race by democrats supporting outgoing Attorney General (isn't that a rich irony?) Christine Gregorie, please peruse the SoundPolitics web site. Seriously, do it now - it's an education.

The hilarity comes from the knowledge that this is the same party whose US "Representatives" and Senators are TODAY (in about 2-hours, in fact) going to challenge the electoral vote tally in Congress over the vote certification in Ohio (Bush by 118,775 at last count), a largely procedural move that is probably nothing more than a bone to the Michael Moore-types.

Still, it is somewhat illustrative of the left's selective outrage over voting "irregularities", isn't it? When serious and legitimate questions are raised in WA regarding thousands of "votes" tallied (out of about 3-million) in a race decided by less than 150 votes, their answer is to "Shut up and sit down". Why? Because their side "won", of course. Never mind that the rules were changed (several times) in mid-stream - clearly in violation of the SCOTUS ruling in Bush-v-Gore.

In contrast, outrageous conspiracy theories are tossed about to question the result in Ohio, where over 110K votes (out of about 5-million, after a full state-wide recount, by the way) separate the two candidates, and the same leftists feel that we need to tie-up the Congress for the rest of the week - thereby attempting to cloud the legitimacy of the first majority elected President since 1988.

Not that selective outrage is anything new to the Democrat party. Note that they are in now way, shape or form interested in re-examining the vote tallies in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - states which were decided for Kerry on a narrower margin (percentage-wise) than Ohio was for Bush - and were MASSIVE voter fraud (10's of thousands more "votes" than voters in Philly alone, for example) likely swung the election in those states from Red to Blue.

But Congress won't be debating this, will they. Nor will you read it in the NY Times or see it on CNN, will you.

Typical.

Stingy, eh?

2005-01-03T13:21:00.000-08:00

At the risk of sounding very "I know you are, but what am I?" (in other words, juvenile), I find it outrageous (spoken with appropriate Tom Daschle-esque pique and righteous indignation) that some klepto-crat from the United Nations (of what, precisely?) would accuse us (that is U.S. citizens) of being stingy in our relief efforts.

Well, actually, he accused us (as in, all rich nations) of being stingy in our developmental aid to poor countries, and did not exactly single us (as in, the U.S.) out - but does anyone seriously doubt these are the sentiments of the average desk-jockey in the U.N. complex at Turtle Bay?

The awesome response of Americans to this awesome (in the true sense of the word) tragedy has already been well catalogued elsewhere - and in any case is growing faster than I could possibly keep up with here. It suffices to say that Americans donating through amazon.com have generated more relief aid than the entire nation on France. 'nuf said.

However, there are two points I wish to forward in this regard:

1) It is typical of the U.N. and they don't consider anything "legitimate" (military action, disaster relief, etc.) unless the authority (and therefore the money and power) flows from member-state governments through them. As an aside, how typical and perfectly fitting that the U.N. would unconsciously (or even knowingly) discount the nearly 1/4-billion dollar private relieve effort currently underway.

2) Perhaps our alleged "stinginess" with development aid is an acknowledgement on our part that a) such aid doesn't work very well at "developing" poor countries and, b) the U.N. has a God-awful record of disposing of such aid ("Oil-for-food", Sudan, Somalia or Rwanda, anyone?).

In fact, doesn't this affair truly point out the impotence and incompetence of the United Nations as a whole. I mean, while private organizations and a 4-nation coalition (U.S., Australia, India and Japan) are providing immediate relief to the victims of the horrible disaster in Southeast Asia, the best Kofi Annan and the U.N. can do is organize a "donor's conference" for aid to take place fully a week from now (January 11th), in Geneva of all places (And isn't it also so fitting and typical of the U.N. that such a conference will be held not in the region where the disaster they hope to relieve actually is, but in some euro-trash filled resort town where the rich, powerful and liberal can gaze from afar and poo-poo the efforts of those who are actually doing something to help the poor souls in need.).

To the extent that the United Nations serves some minor purpose in advancing our agenda abroad at little cost to the taxpayers of the United States, there is probably little harm in sticking around with this ill-tempered, churlish brood of jet-setting busy-bodies and do-gooders. The minute they start to become a hindrance to us again (vis-a-vie, the next Iraq), it may be time for us to pull the plug on the U.N. once and for all.

(revised - minor correction 20050106 1114)

Rumsfeld may need to leave - soon

2004-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Donald H Rumsfeld. For all that he has done in his many years of service to this nation - not the least of which is his prior service as a Naval aviator and flight instructor in his younger years - we should all be grateful to him. On his second tour as SecDef, Rumsfled has forced the Army into a long-overdue transformation from a service that was still preparing to battle Soviet tanks on the planes of Germany into a lean, swift lethal rapid response team. There is still much to be done, and the Army continues to lag years behind the other services in this transition, but not from lack of effort on Secretary Rumsfeld's part.

All that said, the time may fast be approaching when Don Rumsfeld may have to take that long, last walk into the sunset. Iraq, that troubled nation we "liberated" over a year ago, is a mess. Now, I am not some wide-eyed fool who believes that spreading democracy is easy. Frankly, I'm not fully on board with the whole concept (I would much rather have the 2000 GWB - "We don't do no stinking nation-building" - model, but that's not about to happen). However, I can be persuaded that in the post-9/11 world, it is essential that we change the dynamic of the situation on the ground in Southwest Asia.

Besides, we had a perfectly good warrant to go after Saddam Hussien. For all the Monday-morning quarterbacking about the lack of WMD stockpiles so far found in Iraq - a nation roughly the size of California, remember - a simple fact remains: everyone, and I mean everyone, KNEW, beyond any doubt, that Saddam was in possession of WMD at some time prior to the war. That said, the burden was never on us to prove that Saddam was in possession of WMD. Rather, the burden was on Saddam to prove that he disposed of the stuff. So, we had a perfectly good warrant to kick-in his door and search his pad for illegal stuff. That we eliminated the Hussain crime family and pinched the old-man on prior charges is a bonus. This was all done (for the most part) flawlessly - it was well planned and nearly perfectly executed.

However, everything that has happened since has been a mess. Though the Administration will not admit it in public, it is painfully obvious that there was no plan in place for the sort of terrorist uprising our troops are dealing with, and frankly the SecDef's schtick is starting to get a little tired. You can only be blunt so many times before it starts to sound like arrogance. I fear that we're at that juncture.

My feelings on this are rather well summed up in a brief email conversation I had with a local radio talk show host of some note. His name is Jay Severin, the afternoon drive-time host on WTKK in Boston. Jay has forgotten more about politics than I could ever hope to know - having run national campaigns, including for President, over a 25-year career as a political opperative. Those of you outside the Boston area can catch Jay periodically on the Imus in the Morning program on MSNBC (both of you watching it) and on your morning radio. Anyway, his feelings seem to dovetail with my own - for what that's worth.

Jon:
Exceptionally well stated, bud.
I am inclined to agree.
My experience teaches me that, once someone becomes too much of a target - whether or not it is fair or justified - he, by definition, becomes a drag on the admn/agenda.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Cheers,'
JS

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Arata [mailto:jonarata@verizon.net]
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 6:18 PM
To: Jay Severin
Subject: Does Rumsfeld have to go?

Jay,

I know you don’t like to engage in back-room speculation regarding the comings-and-goings of Administration officials, but I’m wondering if you believe (as I do) that there is going to come a time (probably right after the Jan 30 Iraqi “elections”) when Rumsfeld is either going to develop some sort of medical condition that would cause him to resign or (if he won’t leave voluntarily) Bush will have to throw him under the bus.

We’re already starting to see grumbling from nominal Republicans like McCain and Hagel, now we can add ex-Majority Leader/Cheerleader Trent Lott and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristoll to the mix. My sense is that if the perception among Iraq Folly supporters on the right begins to feel that Rummy is either too big a distraction to the “success” of the “mission” or is an outright hindrance, then Bush will have little choice than to let him go.

This is not to say that I don’t admire Rumsfeld and all he’s done – quite the opposite. But sooner rather than later, it may be time for him to leave before he starts to become the lodestone the Dem/Lamestream-Media/Academia cabal attempts to hang around Bush’s neck next.

Cheers,

Jon

Canton

51-48

2004-11-07T20:06:00.000-08:00

I’ve taken my time in trying to put together my thoughts on the election just ended because I wanted to have the ability to look back at it with some degree of perspective. Having just survived my 20th High School reunion this weekend, I feel I am not sufficiently removed from the actual event to make comment from a place free of the passions of that particular day. Also, I wanted to have the ability to comment on the state of the losing side based on their first reaction – feeling for most of the month leading up to the election that it would be my side that I would be commenting on.

I’m happy to see that the ‘loyal’ opposition has provided plenty of fodder. Still, I expect that my comments will be somewhat brief in light of the fact that I am still rather far from fully recovered from my weekend’s activities (principally from lack of sleep and the fair amount of driving – as I am a very light drinker even under such circumstances and did not deviate from my habits in any way). Also, many people have spoken and written far more eloquently that I could hope to, I doubt there is much I can add to the discussion, and so I hope not to waste much of my or anyone else’s time.

Naturally, I am thrilled with the outcome of the election on the national level and am even more excited by the reaction of the Democrats to the result. Do not allow anyone to fool you – this was a comprehensive victory by George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Securing just shy of 60 million votes and 51% of the vote in this environment is quite a feat, and I could not be prouder of the President and the Party for their performance. At all levels of government, and in all regions of the country (yes, even in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts), President Bush improved significantly on his Election 2000 performance and the Republican Party gained. In some areas, the gains were small and somewhat symbolic (we knocked off the incumbent Democrat Sheriff in Plymouth County, MA and kept all of our GOP legislative incumbents in a year that or state’s “Favorite Son” was at the top of the ticket – hey, in these parts, we have to take what we can get!). However, in most regions of the country, the gains were substantial. Many have spoken on the possible realignment of the political landscape in the US, and while I seem to think that talk is somewhat optimistic, it is somewhat encouraging to think that most of the remainder of my adult life could be spent under GOP majorities.

I will write separately on the behavior of the Democrats as a result of this election, but I will in this space offer the following advice for those on my side – zip your howling screamers! Let the Dems wade deeply into the fever swamp, they clearly do not get it. They have basically told everyone in Middle America (read: RED America) to drop dead. Their condescension is matched only by their closed-mindedness – let them wallow in their loathing of the majority of Americans.

We have too much work to do than to worry about those who think we are idiots simply because we don’t think socialism and secularism are good for the country.

That’s all for now – more later.

Oh, just one. YIPPEE!!!

The Complexion of the Election Changes with One Tape

2004-10-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

The transcript of a videotape, reportedly of terrorist dirtbag Osama bin Laden, could have been lifted directly from a Michael Moore movie - or a John Kerry for President television ad, for that matter. The tape, aired by the al Qaeda propaganda organ Al-Jazeera, is probably authentic - meaning that bin Laden has not yet arrived at his reserved spot in Hell, which is of course a pity.

In the 18-minute video, bin Laden lays out the bottom-line for his terrorist organization - that their principal concern is security. Therefore, they will not attack any country that does not attack either them or "Islam", whatever the hell that means. Clearly, bin Laden means to influence the coming Presidential election, though reasonable people can (and probably will) disagree over who the terrorist scum is supporting (and he does have a dog in this fight, I believe).

The fact that the best he can apparently muster 4-days before the election is a videotape (as opposed to a bomb) is something that I take guardedly as a positive sign.

I am not going to attempt to get into the head of this homicidal psycho. I will make no attempt to analyze what this religious fanatic is trying to say. All I'm concerned about right now is the politics of this. To wit ...

There are several reasons why this could reflect negatively on President Bush's re-election chances. First, bin Laden is still alive - that fact alone should be a negative. Second, in the video bin Laden directly challenges the President in language fresh from Farenheit-911, right down to the references to corrupt Arab governments (that pass from father-to-son, you know) and Bush's continuing to read to schoolchildren about "Pet Goats", or some such thing, in Florida on that fateful day in September 2001.

I hope the fat, obnoxious, Champaign-socialist, a-hole who claims to hail from Flint is very proud of himself for providing our sworn enemy his video talking-points. BTW, I hear his mockumentary is selling very well in Iran these days.

That said, there are two reasons why I think the airing of this video the Friday before our national election is a big loss for Kerry:

1) It ensures that terrorism will be the ONLY issue people are thinking about when they walk into the voting booth in 4 days (big plus to Bush as he commands a comfortable double-digit lead in the "who better to handle terrorism" question in every poll - 20-points in today's Battleground poll, for example)

2) There are people in Kerry’s base (the Michael Moore Kool-Aid drinkers and other assorted pinko, pacifist, blame-America-first "anti-war"-types) who will buy bin Laden's nonsense about ‘Don’t attack us and we won’t attack you’

If Kerry, who will eventually have to say something about this, comes out and says that we need to hunt down Osama and kill him, he loses the Michael Moore wing of his coalition. If he says something like “Well, maybe we need to take this seriously” then he loses everyone else.

Still, there are more than a few reasons why this hurts Bush (as outlined above), but does anyone doubt what his response will be? (Osama must die!) The fact that reasonable people can (and should) plausibly think of Kerry even considering the other alternative (the “can’t we all just get along” nonsense) should doom him with enough middle-of-the-roaders to make the election swing back to the President rather substantially.

John Forbes Gets "Al-Qaqaa" on his $600 shoes

2004-10-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

The MSM, in their desperate attempts to elect the Junior Senator from the People’s Republic, I mean Commonwealth, of Massachusetts to the Presidency, put out the story this past Monday that the Coalition (read: our troops) failed to secure some 380 tons of high-powered explosives (RDX, PETN) in the Al-Qaqaa munitions dump in Iraq – and that, of course, it was all the fault of George W. Bush. I suppose they think Bush himself should have been guarding the gate and that he fell asleep, or something of that nature.

Let’s ignore for the moment that the Coalition (read: our troops) have found and either have destroyed or presently will destroy some 400,000 tons of ammo, weapons and explosives in the former munitions-dump known as Iraq. The fact is that this stuff (PETN in particular) is nasty stuff. I’ve worked with it and seen it in action. One or two GRAINS of this stuff can launch a 2-kg slug some 20-meters in the air (forgive my slipping into euro-speak with the weights-and-measures, but I am an engineer after all). It is extremely powerful, dangerous stuff that we do not want in the hands of our enemies either in Iraq or anywhere else for that matter.

However, we simply do not yet know all of the facts surrounding the “disappearance” of this material. Frankly, we’re not even sure, as of mid-morning today, how much of this extremely dangerous material may have gone missing.

Then along comes Major Austin Pearson of the U.S. Army Ordinance Corps – late of the 101st Airborne in Iraq. Here, as summarized by Fox News, is what we know about Major Pearson’s side of the story…

A U.S. Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 200 tons of explosives from the Al-Qaqaa munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.

Major Austin Pearson appeared at a Pentagon news conference to say it was his mission to go the facility and clear explosives from the base. He said he did not discover that the International Atomic Energy Agency had reported 377 tons of explosives were missing until Tuesday night and he said he promptly contacted military officials.

Major Pearson’s mission, it turns out, was to remove potentially hazardous materials (not just plastic explosives) from Al-Qaqaa and bring them to a rear area (a Logistical Support Area - or LSA - as he continually referred to them) for destruction. One would think that if Major Person, under order to remove hazardous and dangerous materials, had come across hundreds of tons of extremely dangerous PETN or RDX, particularly materials marked with IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency, the people who leaked the story in the first place in an obvious attempt to effect the outcome of OUR election) seals, that Major Person and his unit would have removed them and taken them away from destruction. Is that too much of a stretch?

That said, is it therefore too much of a stretch to conclude that either the explosives (which a Pentagon spokesman apprearing with Maj. Pearson said could be more like THREE tons, not the 380 tons reported in Pravda on the Hudson) was gone before our troops ever got there - or that the Coalition (read: our troops) took care of the stuff and therefore it never went "missing"?

Major Pearson admits that he is not an explosives expert, but one has to wonder what basis is left for this story.

This has not stopped John Forbes from hammering away at this issue, though reports are that he’s removed all traces of Al-Qaqaa from his web site and has ordered ads attacking Bush on this point removed from the airwaves (they’re moving on to their old standby, Halliburton - which is also old news recycled for the stretch-run). However, this does reveal a great deal about the type of President Kerry would be.

Kerry has been (at times deservedly) critical of GWB for his seeming willingness to “cherry-pick” intelligence that fits what he wants to believe. But isn’t that exactly what we have here?

Kerry grabs a single New York Times story, one where his own campaign flacks admit that key facts are still unknown, and bases his entire stretch-run on slamming Bush over the allegations contained within. Now it turns out that the story may be made entirely of whole cloth and John Forbes is left with a big, stinking pile of Al-Qaqaa on his shoes. He looks weak, and increasingly desperate to be willing to grab something so flimsy when the states are so high. He flailing in the air, grasping at anything that could sustain him.

I'm left to wonder aloud what his campaign's internal polling is telling them.

One can only hope this episode is enough to convince the mass voting population of two things:
1) that you can no longer trust what you read or see in the MSM, and
2) that John Forbes Kerry cannot be elected President of the United States

I’m having a difficult time saying …

2004-10-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

President-elect Kerry.

In fact, it was even difficult for me to type it out; I couldn’t easily make my fingers press the appropriate keys without serious effort.

It sounds even worse when I hear it.

However, the fact of the matter is that I believe I (and the rest of us) had best get used to hearing it.

With one week to go before the first election of my lifetime that really matters, here’s where we stand (poll numbers courtesy of RealClearPolitics):

- George Bush is ahead in national polls by an average of a little over two points
- George Bush is ahead in the electoral vote count 234-228 with enough states “leaning” in his direction (FL, NM and WI) to put him at 276, 6 more than the magic 270 needed to win an electoral-vote majority
- Roughly 95% of George Bush’s base is certain they will vote for him, while only 85% of John Kerry’s base feels the same
- Bush has made strong inroads into the African-American, Jewish and Catholic voting blocks, as well as maintaining his strong support from the demographics that favored him in 2000
- A clear majority, or at minimum a very sizeable plurality, place foreign policy, national security and the war in Iraq as their #1 issue, and (all other things being equal) no Democrat can beat ANY Republican when foreign policy is the top concern of voters on Election Day.

Seems like pretty uniformly good news for our side (the Patriots who want to see George Bush re-elected), right? So why, you may ask, all the gloom-and-doom?

The reason is simple and twofold:
1) The national polls are worthless, and George Bush is not – with one week to go before Election Day – at or above 50% in enough states to command 270 electoral votes (not by a long shot)
2) The national media has only now started to turn out their heavy artillery in their final push to expel GWB from the White House – if you think you’ve seen “media bias” before, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Let’s take the second one first. Anyone who is paying attention now knows that the mainstream media (MSM, for short) were planning an election-eve surprise by dropping about 380-tons of missing Iraqi super-explosives (such as RDX – which Saddam was NOT supposed to have, by the way) right at George Bush’s feet. One problem, apparently the NY Times (Pravda on the Hudson) decided they couldn’t sit on this any longer and decided to scoop (who else?) “60 Minutes”, who was set to air this story the Sunday before the election (hey, the 11th-hour Bush DUI story worked like a charm in 2000, why not go to the well once more?).

The only other problem for Kerry and the MSM is that the story has now blown up in their faces. The explosives were already long-gone (thanks to our months or farting-around at the UN when we should have been rolling tanks into Baghdad) by the time the 101st Airborne could get to them. NBC embedded reports have documented this, complete with video.

Not that any of this is slowing the John Forbes Kerry demagoguery train one bit, mind you. The MSM has served up a juicy morsel for Kerry and he’s taking big bites of it. Kerry’s new attack is that this shows the “gross incompetence” of the administration. Fact just do not matter to him (“Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts!” George Banks (David Tomlinson) in Mary Poppins), not when there’s an attempt to lie about the (at worst partially) successful Iraq mission to date.

And you don’t think for a minute that the MSM will issue any corrections on their outrageous reporting, do you? Of course not! It is only going to get worse from here (John Forbes himself gave the game away when he stated today that this “affair” was “just the tip of the iceberg” – I expect we’ll see at least 3 additional stories like this over the next 6-days). The MSM’s coverage of the campaign to date is going to turn even those most skeptical about the pervasiveness of media bias into true believers.

The MSM have never before gone so deeply in the tank for one candidate over another and we simply have no way to counter it. The problem for our side is that people will be moved by these stories, no matter how untrue or badly skewed they are. It probably means not less than 3-points for Kerry in the final week of the campaign, virtually guaranteeing that Bush will not achieve the popular-vote majority he desperately desires and so richly deserves.

That brings us to the first point – which is that Bush does not have nearly enough of a lead to counter two virtually certain events:
1) That late-breaking undecided voters will break to the challenger (Kerry) – they always do, and
2) The Democrats have plans in place to commit voter-fraud on a scale never-before seen in any “free” election in history – and there is almost nothing that can be done to stop it.

The first of these points is self-evident. We have to assume that GWB has hit his high-water mark for this election. If he’s at 48% in a state now, that’s probably about as high as he’s going to get. With Nader becoming a non-factor in this race, 48% is simply not going to get it done.

This is especially true when we consider point 2; the systematic exercise of voter-fraud that the Democrats and their leftist allies (MoveOn.org, ACT, etc.) have been planning (and financing) for possibly every day since the Supreme Court ended the madness in Florida in December 2000. In states like Colorado (9 electoral votes), Florida (27), Ohio (20), Wisconsin (10), and at least 3 others, tens-of-thousands of people who are otherwise ineligible to legally vote on November 2nd (illegal aliens, people who cannot verify their address, people who have already voted) will walk into polling places (probably in big cities where vote fraud is a art form) and demand a “Provisional Ballot”. For any of you who don’t know, a “Provisional Ballot” is a vehicle by which any human can walk, crawl or slither into a poling place – without providing any proof that they are registered, or even eligible, to vote – and vote. It is a foregone conclusion that 90% of these votes will go to Kerry, and in states like those listed above, with the narrow margins expected, these “votes” could be enough to swing the election to the communist-sympathizer, traitor and self-described war criminal.

The Democrats have already given away the game here as well – obviously they feel with the MSM providing cover for them that they have no need to hide this outright theft of the election. Tad Devine, a senior advisor to the Kerry campaign, was recently quoted as saying (and I’m paraphrasing only a bit) that “if all the votes are counted, John Kerry will win. Period!” That was not campaign rhetoric. It was a tip-off as to the Democrat strategy for this election – simply put, they are going to litigate the provisional ballots, almost all of which will be fraudulent, until they find some judge and some court somewhere what will force them to be counted as if they were legitimate.

A simple strategy.

Audacious and criminal yes, but also very, very simple.

And do you thing our side will be able to do anything about it? If you think so, consider this: the prevailing belief among a strong majority of voters is that blacks in Florida were disenfranchised on a massive scale during the 2000 election. Where do we get this belief? Why, from the MSM and Democrat press releases, of course. That said, did you know that there has never been a single documented case of a single person (black, brown, yellow, purple or otherwise) who was actually disenfranchised in Florida in the 2000 election? Not a one - zero, zip, zilch, nada. Yet, the belief of widespread disenfranchisement persists to this day.

In 2000, it was confined to one state. Think we'll have any more success beating back the demagogues when it's on a national scale? I didn't think so.

So, the bottom line is that unless George Bush is ahead by not less than 5-6 points in national polls, and at or above 50% in the states where he needs to be in order to get to the magic 270, I’m afraid that we are looking at the prospect that in January we will be witnessing the inauguration of John Forbes Kerry, a certified traitor to his country, and a man so ludicrously disqualified for the Presidency that the very prospect of this scenario should give you goose bumps (I have them as I type).

That being the case, I suppose I should jot down a few thoughts about what I think 4-years of John Forbes Kerry as President would be like. Granted, I only get through the first year, but I think you'll get the point.

For starters, I expect that the GOP will retain a narrow majority in the House of Representatives (Thank God!) but probably lose the Senate through the judicious use of the very same voter fraud outlined above (you don’t believe the Democrats are only interested in stealing the White House, do you?). As such, you can expect the already weak-kneed GOP Senate delegation to lose whatever backbone they may have had previously and basically bend-over for any nominee (Judicial or Administrative) that Kerry sends to them. Kerry’s judicial nominees will make Clinton’s look like Clarence Thomas by comparison.

The GOP faithful will (rightfully) be disgusted with the performance of their senators and we could very well end up with a full-blown revolt on our hands unless someone steps up to take the lead (and Bill Frist sure ain’t the dude). Look for someone like Rick Santorum (PA), Jeff Sessions (AL) or John Kyl (AZ) to come-up big here.

Once the American MSM and world-wide orgasm of Kerry’s victory (or, more appropriately, Bush’s defeat) subsides into afterglow, the realities of the world will set in. Having defeated Bush without even having had to blow-up anything, we can expect that al Qaeda will only become more emboldened and that Iraq will quickly degenerate into more of a mess. Our few remaining allies (who didn’t take very kindly to Candidate Kerry referring to them as the “Coalition of the Bribed and the Bought”) will quickly bail out on Iraq, leaving our overextended and overworked soldiers, marines and airmen at the mercy of a rejuvenated terrorist movement. All of this will be reported in the MSM as being “stunning and dramatic progress” – toward what, they will never specify.

Terrorism will grow dramatically worse as President Kerry makes good on his promise to allow the enemies of the United States (such as the U.N.) veto power over the exercise of our foreign policy (the so-called “Global Test” – with a certified America-hater in Kofi Annan serving as the Head Proctor of the exam). The leftist fringe, to whom Kerry will owe his election, will demand that we be “honest brokers” in the Middle East – which will only happen if Kerry sells-out Israel. Israel in turn, feeling that her very existence is now in very real danger, will (not entirely unjustifiably) lash out at some of her more aggressive neighbors (Syria and Iran), and the entire region will be aflame in war probably by Labor Day 2005. We will likely see another major attack on our soil by then, which President Kerry and the MSM will dutifully lie at the feet of now ex-President George W. Bush.

Kerry, for whom hindsight passed for wisdom during the campaign and who's "plans" in the end really do amount to little more than a cotillion of complaints and loosely connected policy ideas, when faced with the challenge of having to actually do something for the first time in his 20-year political career, reverts to his senatorial instincts and dithers. The problems with terrorism only get worse from there.

Domestically, we can expect that Kerry will get his tax increases, which will predictably plunge the already fragile economy into recession, resulting in lay-offs, unemployment approaching 7% within a year, and federal deficits in the range of $700 billion – all of which will be once again blamed on George Bush.

The rest of Kerry’s agenda will likely be held up (thankfully) as long as the GOP holds the House, but some of the more obnoxious elements (the Medicaid expansion, the “re-importation” of prescription drugs from Canada, the “full funding” of the No-Child(and Teacher’s-Wallet, apparently)-Left-Behind-Act – all of which will be unmitigated disasters played-up as “stunning successes” in the MSM) will likely make it through a narrowly divided (222-213, I predict) House.

The military, falling well short of their recruiting and retention goals – to say nothing of Kerry’s “vision” of expanding the services by 2-Divisions (40,000 men) – will be the subject of endless deliberation in the Administration and Congress, until the Kerry-Edwards Administration proposes the very thing that they demagogued more than any thing else in the run-up to the 2004 election – a draft.

It is at this point that 2005-2006 in America starts to look like a reply of 1968-1969, and frankly I’d rather not think too much about that.

Note that it gives me no joy to put this to electronic paper – but I believe it is my mission in life to see things as they are, not as they ought to be.

You read it here first.

Heaven help us all.

The Biggest Choke in the History of Professional Sports

2004-10-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

If you have a pulse, you know by now (or will soon) that the Boston Red Sox have managed to do something that no other team in the history of professional baseball (and, to my knowledge, only two other teams in the history of ALL professional sports) have managed to do – which is come back from a 0-3 deficit to win a best-of-seven series – this series being the ALCS, meaning that the Sox get a chance to defeat either the Houston Astros or the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.

Sweeter still for Sox fans – they did it against their arch-enemy, the dreaded Evil Empire, the New York Yankees.

And because sports (like politics) is a zero-sum game, that means that the 2004 Yankees will bear the rather dubious distinction of being the first team in major league baseball history to blow a 3-0 lead in a best-of seven, erasing their 101-win regular season and American League East crown.

In the end, Game 7 was not even close. In fact, it was all-but over after the first inning.

Banned to the basement to “watch” the game on computer (the Mrs. controls the TV in the evening for all but special occasions), I could see after the 1st that this game was going to be over early. The Sox were staked to a 2-0 lead by virtue of a David Ortiz home run (why did the Yankees even bother pitching to this guy after Game 4???) and the “modern day Murderer’s Row” of Jeter, A-Rod and Sheffield went 3-up/3-down in the bottom of the first (a fly-out, a ground-out, and a strikeout – the losers’ trifecta).

Even from the vantage point of relying on ESPN’s running box score to monitor the games’ progress, it was clear that the Yankees were going to end up mailing this one in. A second inning grand-slam by Johnny Damon (he who looks like an extra from “Castaway” and had been about 1-for-150 in the ALCS to this point), on the first pitch offered by 2004 all-star Javier Vasquez (who was brought in because of the seeming ineffectiveness of Yankee starter Kevin Brown – he of punching-a-wall-and-breaking-his-non-pitching-hand-as-his-team-enters-the-stretch-run fame), sealed the deal. I stopped paying attention with 1-out in the top of the second inning. Apparently, I didn’t miss much.

So, why was this “The Greatest Choke” and not “The Greatest Comeback”? Well, let me first say that I mean to take nothing away from what the Red Sox accomplished, which is historic and unprecedented. I also mean to take nothing away from some of the truly heroic performances in this series, particularly that of Curt Schilling – who’s strong 7-innings with a blood-soaked stocking (literally a “Red Sock”) in Game 6 was more than anything else responsible for sweeping the Sox into legend.

All that said the bottom line is that the Yankees had two opportunities to close the deal in the ALCS and blew both of them in pathetic fashion. They were 3-outs away from sweeping the series and the former “Doctor Doom” (Mariano Rivera) blew the save. When given another opportunity in Game 5 to close out the Sox, Tom (“Flash”) Gordon – staked to a 2-run lead – couldn’t get a single out in the eighth inning AND gave up a home run to David Ortiz to lead off the inning (why again did they bother pitching to this guy???), leaving Rivera in the hopeless situation of a 4-3 lead, first-and-third, NO OUTS in the bottom of the eighth. Rivera was unable to keep the runner on third from scoring, and the Sox won both games in extra innings (12 and 14, respectively).

THAT’S why it’s the biggest choke in the history of professional sports. That and the fact that the highest paid offense in baseball history managed a pathetic 13-run output over 4-games, after scoring 19-runs in Game 3, alone.

In case anyone is wondering, being so close to Boston and all, my point of view is this: I LOVE baseball – but am not a fan of any team in particular. That said I sort-of like the Yankees, but I really do NOT like the Red Sox. Believe me, I want to like them – they are after all my adopted home-town team – but I cannot bring myself to. Perhaps it’s that I was brought up by a father who is a hard-wired Yankee fan from his youth – but I doubt it.

No. The fact is that this particular batch of Red Sox (with only Schilling as an exception, in my book) is a wholly unlikable bunch of people. Frankly, they look like a collection of felons, hobos, and crack addicts who don’t even know how to wear their uniforms properly (what is that crap on Manny Ramirez’ helmet, anyway?). Oh well, maybe now that they are going to the World Series, the Red Sox can afford to pay Johnny Damon enough to get a shave and a haircut. Only time will tell.

Part of this is also the average Red Sox fan. The preponderance of “YANKEES SUCK” bumper stickers (hey, if they can put it on their cars, I can put it in my blog), and assorted similar slogans (often involving Jeter, A-Rod and former-Yankee/current-Astro Roger Clemens) really bothers me. I think it shows a level of inferiority complex and other mental illnesses that I’m neither prepared nor equipped to deal with on a daily basis. They too are a very unlikable bunch – but now they have their big win. Let’s see what they do with it. The fact that when I look to the north I see that Boston is not aflame is something that I take as a hopeful sign.

Back to politics tomorrow – when I spell out why I dread the thought of John Forbes Kerry pulling off a similar comeback.

The Dissing of Allawi

2004-09-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

The contrast between an incumbent and a challenger could not possibly have been clearer than they were on Thursday, when Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi came to Washington to address a joint session of congress and participate in a press conference with President George Bush. President Bush and PM Allawi, a survivor of a vicious assassination attempt from Saddam Hussein's thugs, exuded confidence and determination and were forthright with their assessments of the current situation in Iraq (15 of the 18 provinces ready for elections presently, pockets of fiercely determined resistance, progress on all fronts slow but generally forward, etc.). For his part, the Iraqi PM was openly grateful to the American people for our past and continuing sacrifices, and presented a realistic, if somewhat optimistic, picture of Iraq for the near and longer terms.

In contrast, Democrat Presidential nominee Sen. John Forbes Kerry, who apparently couldn't take time out from campaigning to meet with the Iraqi leader he is likely to have to work with should he be elected in November, managed instead to make time to stand alongside a fire truck in Columbus, Ohio and claim that both President Bush and PM Allawi were living in a fantasy world. Mr. Kerry went so far as to claim that Mr. Allawi clearly had no idea what was going on inside his own country - a contry that Mr. Kerry has yet to see firsthand - and that Mr. Allawi, according to Mr. Kerry's mouthpiece, was little more than a puppet for the Bush Administration. I suppose the Kerry campaign's official position is that their talking-points are a better indicator of the on-the-ground situation in Iraq than the eyewintess accounts of the leader of that very country. This must be an example of what the Zionist neocons in the Bush Administration refer to as "chutzpah".

Ignoring for the moment that it appears Mr. Kerry and spokesman Joe Lockhart (the above mentioned mouthpiece) are taking their rhetorical cues from the terrorist insurgency, and that doing so represents a spectacular level of irresponsibility from someone who aspires to be the leader of the free world, I find it nonetheless interesting that Mr. Kerry, supposedly the darling of the international community, continues to practice his unique from of diplomacy. After all, it is somewhat intriguing that Mr. Kerry chooses to deride our allies (Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, Mr. Allawi's interim Iraqi government, and about 30 others) as the "Coalition of the bribed and the bought" while simultaneously displaying extreme deference to those who have done little, if anything at all, to stop the spread of Islamofascism across the globe (such as the UN, French, Chinese and Russians - though they now appear, after the Beslan Massacre, to be prepared to sign-on to The Bush Doctrine of pre-emption; better late than never, I suppose).

Mr. Kerry would, more likely than not, still have us arguing over whether or not the Taliban in Afghanistan could truly be held responsible for the actions of Usama bin Laden - the head of what is essentially a non-governmental organization, kind of like Greenpeace.
But such is the deference the junior Senator from Massachusetts gives to international powerhouses such as Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan. Yet, while Iraqis are dying every day for the grave sin of attempting to sign up for their National Guard and police force (bodies that Kerry faults the President for not getting up and running fast enough), Mr. Kerry chooses not to meet with the leader of a future democratic Iraq, but instead insults him with smarmy campaign rhetoric while sending his hatchet-man out to give al-Jazzera a soundbite for the jihadists.

One is compelled to conclude that Mr. Kerry has no strategy for the war on terror, only a contillion of defeatist rhetoric, pithy soundbites, and a string of sometimes contradictory policy proposals centering on appeasing our opponents and discouraging our friends. Those few policy
items he has chosen to share with the great unwashed aside from his wholesale rip-off of the President's post-war Iraq policy (but he can do it better!) that could possibly strengthen our defense and intelligence operations stand in stark contrast with his far-left Senate record and his own stated positions on these very matters only one election cycle ago. His linking, delinking, re-linking and finally re-delinking of Iraq from the larger War on Terror do not demonstrate nuance, but rather a dithering indecision that is worth only of a high-level U.N. bureaucrat.

Thus, after twisting in the breeze for 18-months attempting to concoct a coherent strategy, Mr. Kerry's ninth (and one would have to assume, for the time being at least, final) position on Iraq is one of claiming defeat and urging retreat. His "we must win" rhetoric to the contrary, there is little mention of "victory" from the Kerry campaign regarding Iraq, only "withdrawl". Mr. Kerry, his standing in public opinion polls slipping into Dukakis territory, evidently thinks his best hope for his own political victory is to sell out our allies by insisting that things in Iraq are hopeless - beyond repair - thus providing encouragement, aid and comfort to our enemies, endangering the lives of our troops and our allies.

However, this seems to be one of the few instances where Mr. Kerry has been consistent throughout his entire adult life. His history seems to indicate that he is more than happy to throw our troops and allies under the proverbail bus - be it in Iraq today or South Vietnam 3-decades ago - in order to curry favor with the pacifist, left-wing fringe both here and in Europe and advance his personal political prospects. Maybe this is just "Kerry being Kerry" - certainly that assessment would not surprise the members of John O'Neil's "SwiftVets" group, who have been saying essentially the same thing since May. Perhaps this further explains the Senator's attempts to base his entire campaign not on his 20-year record of slashing defense and intelligence budgets, supporting leftist jurists and utopian international treaties, and a limitless expansion of the welfare state (his official Senate record), and instead base his entire rationale for why he should be elected President on his 18-week tour in Vietnam some 35-years ago.

Still, it is somewhat sad that one of our two major political parties has chosen to nominate someone for the highest office in the land who is so clearly unable to support our friends, allies, or even or own best interests as to be grossly disqualified for the office he seeks.

That said, it would be an interesting experiment to see if this odd brand of diplomacy - essentially punishing our friends while rewarding our enemies - would actually work in practice. Thankfully, with each passing day, it appears less and less likely that Mr. Kerry will have the opportunity to actually conduct such an experiment.