Thanks Jimmuh

I've blogged before that Jimmy Carter was the catalyst that convinced me I couldn't be a Democrat, he continues to show why I made the right choice 30 years ago.


The following is off Powerline:

And Speaking of Free Speech...

One of its most principled defenders and most effective practitioners is Alan Dershowitz. Over the years, I have disagreed with Dershowitz about most things, but his unwavering commitment to free speech--even in an academic environment--and his tireless unraveling of the endlies calumnies thrown at the state of Israel are far more important than those disagreements. Currently, he is taking on the execrable Jimmy Carter, and it is, as you would expect, a mismatch. Dershowitz writes in the Boston Globe:

The next week Carter wrote a series of op-eds bemoaning the reception his book had received. He wrote that his "most troubling experience" had been "the rejection of [his] offers to speak" at "university campuses with high Jewish enrollment." The fact is that Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz had invited Carter to come to Brandeis to debate me, and Carter refused. The reason Carter gave was this: "There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."

As Carter knows, I've been to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, many times -- certainly more times than Carter has been there -- and I've written three books dealing with the subject of Middle Eastern history, politics, and the peace process. The real reason Carter won't debate me is that I would correct his factual errors. It's not that I know too little; it's that I know too much.

Carter's refusal to debate wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that he claims that he wrote the book precisely so as to start debate over the issue of the Israel-Palestine peace process. If that were really true, Carter would be thrilled to have the opportunity to debate. Authors should be accountable for their ideas and their facts. Books shouldn't be like chapel, delivered from on high and believed on faith.

***

Jimmy Carter isn't brave for beating up on Israel. He's a bully. And like all school-yard bullies, underneath the tough talk and bravado, there's a nagging insecurity and a fear that one day he'll have to answer for himself in a fair fight.

When Jimmy Carter's ready to speak at Brandeis, or anywhere else, I'll be there. If he refuses to debate, I will still be there -- ready and willing to answer falsity with truth in the court of public opinion.

No doubt it will never happen, but if it does, I want a front-row seat.

The left and MSM like to make old Jimmuh into some kind of a hero because he works on Habitat for Humanity. So does George Bush Sr and a WHOLE lot of other people left and right, but they don't get nearly as much credit. Carter ALSO makes completely idiotic deals with madmen in N Korea with absolutely no authority to do it, and writes a bunch of drivel claiming it is somehow "intellectual", refuses to defend it like an intellectual, then lies about it. Carter did way more damage to this country than Nixon ever did, he is certainly the worst President of my lifetime, but I continue to thank him for being bad enough to show me the error of my ways and allow me to wake up from the spell of the MSM and popular culture.

Sandy is a Great Guy

The MSM at least reports a bit here that Sandy Berger took classified documents out of an archive that he was not supposed to during the 9-11 investigation. There is of course no concern about this in the MSM, or curiosity as to "why"? No less an honorable and trustworthy authority than "I didn't have sex with that ..." Slick Willie has stated, laughing; "Oh that is just Sandy, he was always doing something like that". It is enough to warm the cockles of the heart. Just a folksy removal of classified documents, a little "storage" under a construction trailer.

There is no need for curiosity here on the part of the MSM, and of course there isn't any. There is no way that the Clinton administration could POSSIBLY be to blame for anything relative to 9-11, and of course they are all WAY too honorable people to try to do anything like steal some documents that pointed to something embarrassing on their part. It "just wouldn't be done". Only evil Republicans would consider something like that, and the fact that rotten bloggers are out their suggesting that this was anything other than innocent just shows how "corrupt" the conservatives are, and how much they want to create problems for honorable Democrats.

Meanwhile, we know that Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield have the worst of motives and the highest level of incompetence possible, and will stop at NOTHING in order to hide, cover, mislead and constantly LIE about their many and nefarious plans and misdeeds. When it comes to light that a scummy operative like "Scooter" who was CERTAINLY trying to "strong arm" poor Valerie Plame has somehow managed to get Richard Armitage to indicate that he was the ACTUAL source of the leak claiming it was "inadvertent", you know that there is something rotten afoot. Most likely Armitage has been paid off by Chaney / Halliburton to cover the tracks.

We see a number of "slight differences" in the press on these kinds of issues. The "real truth" is most likely somewhere in between, with each of our biases taking us to the side that we most align with as to where the truth is at. At least it is easy to see where the MSM is at, when something like Sandy arouses very close to zero suspicion, but old "Scooter" is just evil incarnate, until it is at least as proven as our legal system can do that the whole idea of him "outing" Plame was a pure fabrication by Wilson and the MSM. Then they simply pretend that the "new news" that proved their previous conjectures utterly false just never happened.

First Man

Reading has been a little lacking with the level of activity of late, but it started to pick up this past weekend and I suspect that it will be a major activity for the next 2=3 weeks. I just finished "First Man", the life of Neil Armstrong. It was an excellent somewhat scholarly book on the man that said "One small step for (a) man ... one giant leap for mankind". To those of us who lived through it, it is one of those times that you remember, and this is really THE one of national/world significance that is precisely remembered as good. (Kennedy being shot, Challenger disaster, 9-11, those go into the bad bucket)

Armstrong is a hero cut in the Lucky Lindy mode; not flashy, plain spoken, humble and appreciative of all the people that had a hand in the achievement of the the moon landing, very private and very unemotional. Much like the "strong silent type" American male of yore, you get the impression that he didn't "work to be calm and unemotional", he just was. Like all things, this provides upside and downside. In 1962, the Armstrongs lost their 2-year old daughter Karen to an inoperable brain tumor. It appears that Neil may have dealt with the pre and post death tradegy by throwing himself into his work, and it may even be that the event was the catalyst for him making the decision to be an astronaut.

The "mistakes" of the Armstrong flying career are clustered around the death, and it may well be that he was adversely affected (who could blame him?). He had an X-15 incident where the craft "skipped" on the atmosphere causing him to be hundreds of miles off course, and he narrowly made it back to the opposite end of the Edwards dry lake bed from where he was supposed to land. Supposedly he came over the last ridge under 100' above ground, but that may well be legend. Getting stuck on a "dry" lake bed that was wet with Chuck Yaeger in the back seat is more humorous than anything, and the "Nellis debacle" where Neil had a gear failure doing simulated X-15 landings in another plane certainly COULD have been serious, but turned out to be again more humorous than anything. If one is going to be adversely affected by a horrific life experience that destroys many who have to live through it, continuing to be a test pilot flying the highest performance craft of the day with only "incidents" to show as "failures" during the core of it it is the kind of makeup that one expects from the guy that did the first moon landing.

Armstrong was also the first astronaut to dock in space with Gemini VIII. I had never realized how close to disaster that flight came as a thruster on the Gemini became stuck and put the craft into a spin where the crew was on the edge of losing concousness at the point they were able to remedy the situation. Had they blacked out, there would have been the loss of a crew in space, and likely the moon landing would have been long delayed.

The book is highly detailed, early on with geneology that I wasn't particularly interested in, later with issues of simulation and crew dynamics that were more to my liking. I never saw a mountain until I was 20 years old, although I read a lot about them, heard people talk about them, and of course saw plenty of pictures. The experience is radically different. Much in the same way, it is clear that all the astronauts that went to the moon were changed by the experience of seeing the earth as a tiny blue marble in the blackness of space, and apparently even more so the onces that stood on the surface of that desolate world and saw their home hanging in the sky. For a number of years we had the wallpaper picture of "earthrise over the moon" in our family room in a previous home. It is an arresting scene, and I'm sure the effect of being there changes people for the rest of their lives.

For me it was a book well worth reading. It is so hard to believe that we are fast coming up on FORTY years since that landing, and except for the immediate missions in the very early 70's, we have never gone back. Space travel is one of those areas lik e "flying cars" where technology has fallen far short of what those of us alive in the 60's thought. Armstrong predicted that man would go to Mars in his lifetime, and to me, "2001 A Space Oddessy" looked almost "conservative", right down the the smart computer. I never imagined the Internet though. The future has a way of not being exactly what we expect.

Cool With Popular Culture

The home theatre system is finally starting to get a bit of use, and the other night we screened the '67 classic "Cool Hand Luke" with Paul Newman. The film is entertaining, well acted, and well filmed. As a younger person seeing it, I was less oriented to thinking of "message" than today.

The simple story for the very rare individual who as never seen it is that Luke (Paul Newman) is caught drunk, cutting the heads off parking meters for no apparent reason ends up on a "chain-gang" southern prison detail working on the roads. Luke can't accept "the system" or "rules". He is presented as "basically good", but the evil system wears him down.

Luke is "punished for being an atheist", he REALLY "wants to believe in God", but God just won't show himself and deal Luke a good hand. In as much as there is a hero, Luke is it, but not really. The message is pretty much that we have a choice to either "give into the corrupt system and be corrupted, but at least on the surface have a marginally better life, or "be true to ourselves", and be hounded, chewed up, and destroyed by "the system".

Interestingly, the "high point" of the movie is where Luke spurs the prison work crew to work like demons to complete the tarring of the road ahead of schedule so they have a few hours of daylight with "nothing to do". Ah yes, the pinnacle of human existence, idleness.

The bottom line message, like a lot of Hollywood is "futility", you "can't win". They do it well though, with a lot of emotional appeal, and it is all rolled out so easily. That is one of keys of the modern world. Music, movies, day to day TV, mass media news and modern education. You are told what to think at so many levels, and given a ton of little opportunities to be a "rebel". Get a tattoo, piercing, grow your hair any way you want, etc etc. The odd part is that there aren't any real sanctions anymore for any of it. **BUT** you are TOLD that there are ... Luke was killed after all, "Bush locks up dissenters", "our rights are under assault". Of course, none of it is true, but it SEEMS that way, it especially FEELS that way if we give into enough media control.

The Lonely Leader

Tony Blankley has an excellent little column entitled The Lonely President that points to even greater truths. His topic is how lonely the job of the American President is, and how especially lonely and difficult the current situation is for Bush. Criticism is always easy, solutions almost never are. Some quotes from the article:

For rarely has a president stood more alone at a moment of high crisis than does our president now as he makes his crucial policy decisions on the Iraq War. His political opponents stand triumphant, yet barren of useful guidance. Many -- if not most -- of his fellow party men and women in Washington are rapidly joining his opponents in a desperate effort to save their political skins in 2008. Commentators who urged the president on in 2002-03, having fallen out of love with their ideas, are quick to quibble with and defame the president.

James Baker, being called out of his business dealings by Congress to advise the president, has delivered a cynical document intended to build a political consensus for "honorable" surrender. Richard Haas (head of the Council on Foreign Relations) spoke approvingly of the Baker report on "Meet the Press," saying: " It's incredibly important ... that the principle lesson [of our intervention in Iraq] not be that the United States is unreliable or we lacked staying power ... to me it is essentially important for the future of this country that Iraq be seen, if you will, as Iraq's failure, not as America's failure."

That such transparent sophism from the leader of the American foreign policy establishment is dignified with the title of realism only further exemplifies the loneliness of the president in his quest for a workable solution to the current danger.

The person that recognizes how little they know is rare. The natural human tendency, independent of ability, temperament, or training is to think think ourselves wiser than those in leadership. Note that we typically don't want to step IN to any of those leadership posts, but we LOVE to point out what we see as flaws in leaders, especially those with whom we have an ideological difference. The harder the problem and the more real the danger, the greater the desire of people to avoid facing and dealing with the situation. We like to feel good. Facing and dealing with hard problems always makes us feel "bad", at least in the short run. Avoidance seems much nicer.

I've commented before on the fecklessness of something like half the people or more, whom at the time we went into Iraq supported the action with something like an 80% approval, which is now down to something below 30%, and in some polls nearing 20%. The veneer of an excuse is "we were lied to", but I happened to hear a part of the Robert Gates Senate confirmation hearings, where he CLEARLY stated that he and all the Senators there were privy to the information on the WMD as was every intelligence agency in the world. Given the information that everyone had at the time, there was no choice but to take the action taken. The Senate voted to confirm a NEW Secretary of Defense that said in his CURRENT judgment, he would DO IT AGAIN by a vote of 95-2, with the only 2 dissenters being Republicans. Teddy KENNEDY voted FOR him! (I know that the vote of a man that kills his secretary and is an embarrassment to drunkards everywhere is meaningless, but the effect after all his bluster on the topic is at least more testament to his complete lack of character)

From Moses to Lincoln, to Reagan, to Bush, leadership is always lonely. Having sex in the oval office with an employee is a lot less lonely. You have the employee with you, and at least 50%+ of the population will defend your right to sex at work and lying under oath, even though they don't share that right. Do what even lefty drunken murderer Senators know is the right thing, and find out that "right" is not identical to "easy", and and 50% or more of even the people that supported you will abandon you and often sanctimoniously claim that "leadership has failed", while not having a wisp of an idea of how to deal with the problem.

Leadership does fail, but the rank and file fails way more often, and usually with a whole lot less understanding of "why", and therefore progress in learning. The "nice" thing about the real world is that if often comes back to bite and show that the costs of "the easy way" are very much higher than it looks at the point where that fork in the road is taken. Those that follow the path that looks easy somehow aways see the world as having WAY more problems than those that face the truth and often take the harder road. At some point, it always becomes "random / hopeless / unfair / rigged against / impossible". After making enough choices that were effectively "cut and run" at one level or another, that really becomes the only choice available.

Sadly, not taking the easy choices never becomes easy. Like working out every day, at best it becomes a "habit". A habit that just means that when you follow the natural tendencies that always remain, you realize it, and with the grace of God and forgiveness, hopefully one can return to the path that is more difficult, but toward improvement of ones self and the step by step, the rest of the world.

A Force For Peace

James Baker's new ally for peace seems to think that the way to peace is to "wipe out Israel". Interestingly, he compares that with the USSR, which was not "wiped out" (in fact, the Russian Prime Minister is still happlily poisoning adversaries with pelonium the last I heard). The USSR imploded after it was challenged by Ronald Reagan. Israel shows very few signs of implosion, but one would suspect that when a nutcase holocaust denyer that has already indicated that he is bent on creating nukes to destroy says "wipe out", he doesn't mean "implode".

The MSM and apparently a whole bunch of the US wool bearing population think that this guy is going to "help us fix Iraq". I suppose "wipe out" and "fix" could be the same in some quarters.

Oh, Bold prediction. This was up on CNN at 11PM EST, don't expect it to get a lot of coverage. Such things could confuse the sheep ... is denying the holocaust and talking about wiping out Israel a good thing now?

ISG / Holocaust Denial?

The vaunted Iraq Study Group (ISG) thinks that the way to "peace" in Iraq is to bring Iran and Syria in to "help" the US, and to link peace in Iraq with Israel making concessions. The ISG is of course being hailed as "genius", while the MSM wonders if the idiot Bush will be able to take advice.

NPR reported tonight (so it MUST be true), and it is also reported here that one of our prospective "allies" in this diplomatic process is having a major conference sponsored by their President on the subject of "Did the Holocaust Actually Happen?"

I imagine that if the ISG finds Iran to be a credible ally, then this must be considered a credible question that needs to be looked into? Anyone that thinks that the way forward on improving a conflict is to link it with a 4,000 year old conflict would seem to prone to a whole lot of odd thinking, no doubt including holocaust denial. James Baker, your ride is waiting just on the other side of a comet, drink some poison and they will beam you up right away.

Does anyone actually believe that anyone in the MSM, left, Democrat party, Iran, Al Quaeda, Hamas or any other group in favor of "cut and run" has any other objective other than "get US troops out of Iraq NO MATTER WHAT"? When people believe that something is worth "any cost" it is a pretty good indication that the reasoning part of the brain has stopped completely.

North Dakota

This past week was spent traveling to and from North Dakota. The trip on the weekend had been planned for months, a trip to watch the Fighting Sioux play in the Ralph Englestad Arena in Grand Forks North Dakota. That trip came off with only two of us attending rather than three as had been planned due to the events of earlier in the week.

"The Ralph" as they call it was impressive beyond belief. The fact that the little counters where you put the mustard on your hot dog are made of marble was what really impressed me. It is of course full of Fighting Sioux symbols, including inlaid in marble in the floor. The "symbols" are a great example of the liberal doctrine of "consistency is not an issue". PETA has taken action against the Green Bay "Packers" because they feel that the Packer name HONORS the idea of killing animals and the job of meat "Packer". Of course with Indian names, the use of the name is DEROGATORY, and OFFENSIVE! There you have it, on one hand a team name is a point of honor, and on the other side, it is a point of offense. As a true liberal would say, "it is all in how you feel about it", and that is just fine. Individually, we can be "right" all the time even with conflicting internal views, but as a society, we better learn to just number our teams.

The early part of the week was filled with 22 hours of driving in a 42 hour period to attend the funeral of a friends father in Williston ND. The road was long, but once the decision was made to go, it seemed like the right way all the way through. It is just fine to use "emotional reasoning" to decide what funerals to go to, just not to tell everyone else what funerals they ought to go to, what their team ought to be named, or how high their taxes ought to be. "The Peace Garden State" isn't the most scenic in the union by my standards, but at least you can see a lot of many parts of it all at once, and there is certainly not much to get in the way of the wind.

So bogging continues to suffer even though the blogging environment is the best that it as ever been. Hopefully I will be able to make up for lost time soon.

The New World

For those of you wondering what has happened to me, the "small task" of doing "the last little bit" on our remodel project has been consuming a huge amount of time the last bit more than a week. Once the new cabinets had been installed in my office, the desire to get "everything right" took over and I've been feverishly moving books in as well as getting lighting, cabling, phones, etc up and running. I REALLY wanted to be using my new Viewsonic VX2025WM 20" monitor for this, but alas the pictures are amoung the many things copying over to my new 300GB drive on my main server box where that is connected from. It is a classic case of "one more thing".
The Family Room
The old family room was L shaped with a big old wood burning fireplace. A complete tear-out, wall moves, and reconstruct. Speakers that will mount on the wall are on order.
The Desk Where I Work
There is still some stuff stacked around, and although this was shot last night, the 19" Viewsonic tube was still hooked up to the server. The Techline units are a BIG change from the "before".
The Comfy Chair
This is the location where I do most of my reading when I get to read. So far in the 12 days since the desk and cabinets went in, I haven't spent any time there either. Part of the fault of that was Holiday travel, retrieval of Christmas wreaths for the Scout Troop, retrieval of son from college, doing a late winterization job on the boat that ought to have been done long ago as well as a good deal of "real job work" that always seems to impinge. So many excuses that I sound just like a liberal.
Firepit From Deck
When we started on the project we had no plans of doing a firepit, or re-doing my office for that matter. Adding a bedroom for my youngest son in the basement required the window be dug down which caused the old landscaping to have to change, which caused the thought process to go down the path of taking care of a landscaping problem that was bothering us at the end of the deck. Similarly, when adding a LAN line in my office required moving out a 20yr old Wal-Mart pressed wood desk that simply fell apart, the project became "extended".
Looking At Firepit from Yard
Looking back at the house from the yard completes the tour. At SOME POINT, I'd like to drag out the higher res camera, have everything perfectly clean and picked up, and THEN shoot the pictures. Maybe I'll get there by like 2010 ;-)

Relativism For the Holidays

This nice little "news article" on
Teaching Thanksgiving has been up on CNN since quite early in the week. The highlight is pretty much right at the top:

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

The left finds it important for Americans to honor and respect all other cultures but our own. It is imperative that we "understand their perspective", so Arabs killing Jews is "understandable", anyone hating the US is of course MORE than understandable, it is to be expected, and really just a sign of having a good grasp of reality. The gay lifestyle, any manner of criminal activity (with the exception of white collar crime of course!), and any religion including devil worship (again, except Christianity!) must be understood and respected.

How about the context of over 400 years of history and change being applied to the Pilgrims? Must that be "understood"? Nope! No understanding there, and while the media works hard to very much romanticize the gay life as "just as normal as any other", thus in sore need of marriage, the actual statistics on gay monogamy and health tell quite a different story. No need to be "authentic" there though, the message to be transmitted to the sheep is a different one.

Ah yes, the destruction of values and America. An important agenda that has to be begun early in the schools with the little children. We live in a country free enough to allow public dollars to tear down the very culture paying for the schools and teachers doing the deed. As they say, "only in America".

Notice Anything? 06 Congress

One of my major joys is watching the difference in behavior of the MSM, and indeed most of the general public depending on politics. It is amazing to see how suddenly there are NO QUESTIONS about the elections, no matter how close they were in some districts and senate races, the outcome is GOSPEL. Where is "Diebold"? Where are "the dangers of electronic voting"? Where is "disenfranchised"?

Of course, we know where it all is. From the viewpoint of the MSM, the voters got "the right answer" this time. It is only when the voters get the WRONG answer that they need to go looking for anything. This time "the people have spoken". In 2002 and 2004, which were actually historically the ODD elections, because the party with the Presidency PICKED UP seats, there was a lot of analysis of why the outcomes "didn't mean anything", "might not be valid", and we were "a very divided country". Notice that "we" aren't divided anymore? Certainly from the current view of the MSM, we finally got it right, and now as long as we do 100% what the Democrats want, we will be just fine.

While we are at it, did you notice any convervatives talking about "embarrassment", or "leaving the country"? No? Neither did I, there really hasn't been much in the way of anger or hand-wringing from even the most avowed righties. Isn't that a BIT different from the angry left for the past 6 years? One would think that anyone with their eyes open at all could see that if nothing else, there is a solid difference in temprament as to how conservatives deal with a political loss as opposed to liberals.

Which brings me to a few predictions.

1). Remember when Republicans were last in the minority in the Senate? There were a couple of popular terms back then; "obstructionism" and "not following the will of the people". I boldly declare that those terms will be coming back in the months to come.

2). Remember how courageous it used to be when Clinton brandished the veto pen? I'm betting that "courageous" won't be one of the words used to describe a Bush veto by the MSM.

3). Remember how horrible it was to have investigations of poor Bill Clinton? Why it was positively unfair for the congress to waste it's time investigating the President that was "duly elected by the American people". In fact, any sort of obstruction of Mr "will of the people" was a sign of how evil Republicans were for providing opposition to the wonderful Bill Clinton. Think their tune might be slightly different now?

Well, I'm actually cheating to even call this one a "prediction", NPR and many other liberal outlets are already nearly in heaven over the prospects of a Henry Waxman and others getting a whole bevy of investigations going as rapidly as possible. All of a sudden, the views on "investigations" have turned around precisely 180 degrees!

I can't leave predictions behind without calling up a prediction from last summer made in Why Everyone Believes I predicted that even though the MSM told us a year ago that there would be more and more severe hurricanes every year due to global warming, if there were not, the MSM would fail to tell their followers the sheep about it. Well, hurricane season is now over and even though they did their best to pump up a couple of tropical storms as "MAYBE Hurricanes", they never made it and we had ZERO hurricanes hit the US this year! Darn!

I can't pick where the stock market is going, I can't pick who is going to win major sports events over the next 5 years, but I CAN predict how the MSM is going to react to stories. If they were reporting events as events, that would be impossible. They are predictable becuase they are idealogues and report their BIAS rather than the news.

 It is their BIAS that is predictable! The MSM is always going to tell you that "someone else is misleading you" ... corporations, Republicans, Fox news, technologists, bloggers, "professionals", religion ... the list goes on and on. The MSM and the entertainment industry is still the most pervasive and powerful information organ out there. YES, there are a few alternatives today and that is very refreshing, but you have to LOOK FOR THEM. If your information seeking is on autopilot you will live in the MSM sheep pen! ESCAPE!

 There is a better life in the real world!

Pleasing the Terrorists

Last Tuesday was a great day for Democrats the MSM, and apparently Terrorists too. While the "Weekly World News" is certainly a right wing publication, you just can't expect to get some of this information from the MSM.

Terror Leaders: Vote Democrat

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.

These are the kinds of things that really don't require all that much thought. Do the terrorist groups like the US being on offense? Of course not, it really messes up operations to have your camps bombed, your communications monitored, and leaders that have funding your suicide bombers families in the past sentenced to hang. Much better to see the US working with known terrorist countries to try to save some small piece of face as the lone superpower sulks away in defeat.

One might think it would give some folks pause to be on the same side as the terrorists, but my guess is that they will be just has happy there as they were being on the same side with the USSR.

Diplomatic Solution

Jim Webb Diplomacy

One of the things that I enjoy the most about watching and listening to the MSM is how their biases are so deep, that they are completely unaware of them. Like "air, gravity, and the sun coming up", they just always see the world as "that way", and it never crosses their mind that there could be alternative thought.

Since Tuesday, the world for them has become suddenly sunny and bright. Prior to the election, even the day of the election, and certainly in 2000, 2002, and 2004, there had been a lot of concerns about electronic voting, suppression of the vote, the accuracy of counts, and a whole set of issues. Wednesday AM, all those concerns magically took wing and flew from the minds of the press as if they had never been there at all. "The people had spoken", there was no way that their could be a question of "irregularities" or any sort of impropriety in this election no matter how close the race. The right answer had clearly and finally been reached.

Unlike in previous elections, notably 1994, 2000, and 2004, when the people looking to take the new positions stood up and said "partnership, not partisanship", they were TOTALLY believeable, there was no need to raise any issue of previous statements by them or their campaign, or to ask specific questions about just what kind of compromise they might think would be a good answer to a tough question in this "partnership". When Bush said "I'm a uniter, not a divider", somehow the MSM just didn't see it as being very believeable. There were many questions that needed to be asked. I have no problem with that stance actually, I think the press SHOULD ask tough questions ... it is just that they ought to be asked to both sides. Politicians of BOTH stripes are very worthy of more than an ounce of skepticism.

The quoted article is a classic. A newly elected Senator, elected by a tiny margin over a Republican incumbent, brought down by saying "Macaca", a term that somebody decided "sounds like it might be monkey". The Republican conceeds not only without askng for a re-count, abut with no complaints of "intimidation, lines at the polls, etc"; he lets the system work like Nixon in '60. Of course the media not only has no questions at all about the outcome of a close election, it doesn't even see it as worthy to ask a SINGLE THING about why a sigle newly elected Senator thinks they set foreign policy, nor any specifics of just who it is that they are going to work this "diplomatic solution" with. It is just flat out "good", no need to ask a single thing.

I'll long remember the Time Magazine cover in '94 that showed a characature of Newt Gingerich made up as the Grinch with the caption "How Mean Is He?". Somehow I don't expect a similar cover with Nancy Pelosi on it? Nope, the press is completely unbiased.

Good Day for a Funeral

The news was pretty much all in before I got to sleep last night. The only good news was that Tim Pawlenty retained the Governors seat in MN. It may mean that those of us that work for a living can keep a tiny percentage of our paychecks.

I really did go to a funeral today, an uncle that lived a mile up the road from me in my youth. Eighty eight years old and went pretty fast when he went, lived in his home with his wife right up to the last few weeks. The end doesn't get all that much better, lots of family and freinds at a church where he faithfully attendeded. A good life, a fairly quick end, and hope for a better life in heaven. There are worse things than the right kind of a funeral.

Was the Republican loss "the right kind of a funeral". Sorry to say, I really don't see how a thinking person would draw that conclusion, but from the MSM and lefty reactions, it is clear that many mostly feeling people "feel different". The Democrats and MSM didn't run on anything but anger and wishful thinking, so the election didn't really decide anything other than "going 100% negative with no agenda can work".

The Democrats are basically the party of human nature, which is often the same as the party of doing what feels good, or wishful thinking. For a century, they were the party of slavery until Lincoln and the Republicans ended the scourge, but at the very high price of 600K lives. The Democrats sought new lower ground and became the party of Jim Crow for the next 100 years.

They followed that act with some overlap as the party of surrender to communism. Counting the USSR, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China, communism took something in the 50-100million lives at least. Could it have been stopped earlier? It is always hard to tell, but Reagan and the Republicans got it done yet again. Now we face global Islamic terrorism, and the Democrats have found their calling as the party of surrender to a new menace. Yesterday the odds of victory without the loss of millions of lives went down severely. Surgery for cancer is costly even early, it is usually far more expensive or terminal when we wait and "hope for the best".

Something like 80% of Americans were in favor of the war in Iraq when we went in. Osama and company felt that we were weak in Vietnam, Lebannon, and Somalia, and that we would be weak in Iraq. Some of us thought that we would be different after 9-11. More like the WWII generation. Yesterday we proved that Osama is right, we are going to cut and run, and we will pay the price now, the question is just how high it will be.

Some will say "we were lied to". That kind of thinking is beyond wishful and falls to the most human of natures that says "I won't accept responsibility for my own thoughts, decisions, and actions since it makes me feel better to blame someone else". The idea that Bush KNEW that we wouldn't be able to find WMD is simply beyond the pale. Every piece of evidence and rational conjecture that we have says that he acted on the best information he had, as did the CIA, the congress, and indeed the 80% of Americans that felt that we simply couldn't take the risk. The odds that any of our houses will be destroyed by fire are exceedingly low, yet we almost all carry fire insurance. The odds that Saddam harbored WMD were exceedingly high, and seeing him use them or allow others to use them was very beleiveable. WMD wasn't found in the quantity that we expected. Saying that we are CERTAIN that meant he didn't have WMD is like saying that it is certain that there are no fatal car crashes since we have never witnessed one. However, even if he didn't, the VAST majority of Americans, and virtually ALL of our leadership agreed that it was a risk that we could not accept. It is an abdication of responsibility now to suggest that we are not willing to pay the price for carrying through on what in a democracy is a shared responsibility, yet that is what has happened.

Being a Republican means that one is forced to look at reality, but also that we believe in higher good than human nature and therefore hope. It is human to fall short, and Republicans are just has human as anyone, we just try not to worship at the alter of man and praise vice as virtue. Americans voted on emotion. That is very understandable, but also often very expensive. Let us pray to God that undeserved mercy may be ours and the cost in lives is held lower than would be expected by a hand greater than our own.

Election Night

My wife and I are over at the home of a young couple babysitting for their 1 year old boy while they are out on a long awaitned birthday date. Usually I would be glued to the tube and likely will be later, but since this couple isn't a believer in TV, I'm restricted to "only te net", and it is a lot easier to only check a bit less frequently there.

One of the observations of this year is that the MSM seems very happy with "all negative" as long as it is a Democrat strategy. What was the message for the the Democrats this year? At the most innocuous that can be presented, it was "change", but we all know it wasn't really that. "Bush is bad, evil, incompetent, doesn't listen, lies ... etc". "The Republican Congress is corrupt, out of touch, Bush lapdogs, special interest lapdogs, etc".

What positive things did Democrats suggest? None. Then there is the "suppress the vote" move. There is no doubt that Democrats and the MSM had the Foley scandal in their back pocket for a long time, and brought it out when they did simply to suppress the Christian Conservative vote. It is an old trick, they did it in 2000 with the Bush DWI. They even "double dipped" with the Haggard gay sex scandal for good measure under the "nobody has any morals" kind of heading.

At least at this point, the exit polls are showing "corruption" as the top issue. Gee, I wonder if the roles were reversed and Republicans had managed to tag Democrats with that issue, would it be seen as valid by the MSM? Anyone remember how bogus "values" was seen as 2 short years ago?

If this election continues to go like it looks now, at least we will know that 100% negative with a focus on suppression of the base of the other side can work. I'm sure that the MSM will complain bitterly if Republicans ever do anything similar. Think of how much different this is than the "Contract With America". Of course the MSM didn't like that one either, even though it was a very specific agenda. I guess the bottom line is just that the MSM is never going to like Republicans, so one should stop expecting them to somehow give some consideration to being even handed.