A New Standard

From PoliPundit.com:

Every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee voted against Judge Alito, and virtually every Democrat is certain to do so on the Senate floor as well.

This is a new and unprecedented standard, and Republicans should return the favor if a Democrat becomes president.

From this day on, every Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee has an obligation to vote against any judge to the left of Attila the Hun. Indeed, every Republican senator has an obligation to so vote on any judicial nomination that comes to the floor.

If a future Democrat president wants to nominate a liberal, or even moderate SCOTUS Justice, he will only be able to do so with a Democrat Senate.

I agree completely!

Sen. Diane Feinstein claimed that the situation differs today from the Republicans' consistent recognition of a President's right to his judicial nominees, even voting overwhelmingly to confirm such out of the mainstream liberals as Ginsburg and Breyer. She claims that Democrats are justified in denying the President (and those who elected him) his rights, because "we are so much more polarized."

Duh! The Democrats have systematically engaged in wholly unprecedented tactics with regard to judicial nominees: threatening filibusters, putting holds on nominees, and smearing candidates with racism, sexism, favoring mafiosos, etc. How does this previously unheard of, uncivil, and beligerent act solve the problem of polarization? How does polarization provide the rationale for what can only be interpreted as a recklessly polarizing act?

When will Republicans learn that Democratic senators will continue to misbehave so long as they never pay any consequence ... so long as Republicans refuse to vote only along party lines with regard to judicial nominees. It's time for Republicans to act like Democrats! Make 'em pay!

Culture of Corruption

Hilary Clinton used the Democrats' "culture of corruption" smear against Republicans during her MLK speech. She also said that the Bush Administration will go down as the most corrupt in history. If she makes this a centerpiece of her campaign she'll go down in flames. The Progressive Review summarizes the legacy of the Clinton Administration in this list of records set by the Clintons.

47 individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring during the Clinton administration itself. There were in addition 61 indictments or misdemeanor charges. 14 persons were imprisoned. A key difference between the Clinton story and earlier ones was the number of criminals with whom he was associated before entering the White House.

If the Democrats really want to use the "culture of corruption" story line, they're going to take down their own leading candidate for 2008.

Update: Gateway Pundit links to The Progressive Review, too, and summarizes their statistics. Here are some interesting ones.

* Number of independent counsel investigations: 7
* Number of congressional witnesses pleading the 5th Amendment: 72
* Number of witnesses fleeing the country to avoid testifying: 17
* Number of foreign witnesses who have declined interviews by investigative bodies: 19

Kelo Applied

The infamous Kelo decision expanded eminent domain to cover anything that would serve the perceived public good of a community, including expanding its tax base. What is to keep tax exempt churches from being targetted by city councils?

See Heather Wilhelm on National Review Online:

Since the Supreme Court's controversial Kelo decision last summer, eminent domain has entered a new frontier. It’s not just grandma’s house we have to worry about. Now it’s God’s house, too. “I guess saving souls isn’t as important,” says Reverend Gildon, his voice wry, “as raking in money for politicians to spend.” The town of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, has plans to take Centennial Baptist — along with two other churches, several businesses, dozens of small homes, and a school — and replace them with a new “super center,” rumored to include a Home Depot. It’s the kind of stuff that makes tax collectors salivate. It’s also the kind of project that brakes for no one, especially post-Kelo. “I had no idea this could happen in America,” says Reverend Gildon, after spending Monday morning marching in the Sand Springs Martin Luther King Day parade.

Why Isn't This Offensive?

Why do blacks not take offense at Democrats minimizing the horror of slavery through the use of absurd analogies?

According to the New York Times, Hilary Clinton equated Senate Democrats to slaves and the Republican-controlled Congress to a plantation. This strikes me as extremely offensive on many levels.

Democrats are a minority only because they have not won elections. That's very different from pure bigotry and hatred targetted toward someone of a different color. It's absurd for the rich, white, privileged and powerful to portray themselves as victims. To equate the Democrats' legislative and electoral incompetence with the sufferings of slavery is to minimize the very real horrors of slavery. It is almost to fictionalize it.

Holocaust survivors are relentlessly vigilant about analogies that minimize the real evil of Hitler's final solution. Why do blacks not react the same way to such stupid statements as Hilary's? Why, instead of recognizing this for the insult it is, do they rush to her defense?

When Bill Clinton declared himself "the first black President" because he came from a broken home, why did they embrace him rather than see this as continuing a stereotype about black families?

Newsweek's Bubble Burst

Scrappleface has a great parody of the Newsweek cover, Bush Admits He's Trapped in Bubble.

Paying for PR: The Sequel -- Shame on NBC

To confirm my point about the hypocrisy of the MSM media, there's this story today.

Which is worse, for the Pentagon to pay an independent Iraqi press to run factually accurate stories, or for NBC to run yet again demonstrably and obviously false, terrorist propaganda for free? Which is the greater threat to an independent, credible press?

Paying for PR

I must be missing something really basic. I just don't see what all the fuss is about the Pentagon paying the Iraqi press to run positive stories about the war's progress in Iraq. And, I don't see why this is such a threat to freedom of the press there. The American media's furor over this seems entirely hypocritical.

1) It is admitted by everyone on all sides that the stories are factually correct. The Pentagon is not planting false stories; they are paying the Iraqi papers to run true ones. Contrast this with the American MSM's practice of running stories based on fabricated evidence, which they call "fake but accurate." They're too stupid to get paid. Instead they pay others for the privilege, even if it's in quid pro quo favors.

2) The Pentagon is not compelling the Iraqi press to run these stories. True tyranny occurs when the press is merely an extension of the government. The fact that they have to pay shows that the press is independent. Again, the MSM comes out looking stupid by comparison. The NYT and WaPo frequently just repeat Democratic talking points even in supposed news reporting instead of analysis and opinion. They're volunteering to do it, without getting paid. It seems to me that our so-called free press is less independent than the Iraqis. The MSM is often merely a too-willing extension of the DNC.

3) The Pentagon does not have an exclusive arrangement with the Iraqi press. Though they may be paying to run these stories, there's nothing that keeps the Iraqis from running counter stories as well. Freedom of the press is compromised when only propaganda is printed. Surely, there's more question about the propagandizing role of the American MSM than the Iraqi press.

4) Almost every organization in the U.S. -- whether business, nonprofit organization, labor union -- has a PR department whose primary role is to get stories planted in the papers, and these are very successful. The press often run so-called quotes from interviews that are no more than PR-planted statements.

5) We are at war. Propaganda is increasingly a part of war.

I simply do not see what President Bush and the Pentagon have to be so apologetic about.

Sho 'Nuf

As I posted earlier, it is evident that the new Democratic strategy is to claim credit for the unfolding of Bush's Iraq policy. Democrat mouthpiece at the Washington Post David Broder writes that there are "new signs of an Iraq policy" formulated by the Democrats.

It has taken a long time, but the Democrats finally have come close to defining a sensible common ground on the issue of Iraq. ... [The] outlines of such a position emerged last week in speeches by two respected Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden of Delaware and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Biden, the committee's senior Democrat, said in New York that it is time to scale back U.S. ambitions in Iraq and reduce troop commitment while shifting security responsibilities to the Iraqis. ... What must happen to make it possible, they agree, is a significant acceleration in the training of Iraqi security forces and in the civil reconstruction projects needed to give Iraqis a sense of hope—both of which will require a change in priorities and an improvement in operations by U.S. forces.

John Henke reacts.

So, after 2 years of debating Iraq policy, the Democrats have decided that training Iraqi security forces to take over and reducing US deployments as they do—"as Iraq stands up, we will stand down"—is the best course in Iraq? And this epiphany, David Broder writes, may have "pointed the administration and the country toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq."

What the...?!?!?! This has been the strategy all along. . . . This was the strategy Bush enunciated in August of 2003, September of 2003, May of 2004, and many other times. It was the strategy outlined in this May 2004 "Fact Sheet: The Transition to Iraqi Self-Government".

The Democrats have not come up with a new Iraq Policy. They've jumped onboard the Bush administration's existing policy, with the novel new suggestion that we stay the course...but try harder.

Henke has links to the original Bush statements on his blog.

Cindy Sheehan's Book Signing

You have to admire AP/Reuters creativity in making it look like Cindy Sheehan still has an audience. Compare photos of the actual response to her book signing with the one they ran (at bottom).

Show and Tell: A Photo Essay

Great pictures of Iraqi school shildren at Michael Yon's site.

The Opinionated Bastard

Donald Sensing's summary comes from this blog: The Opinionated Bastard: I scooped the New York Times

Dem Election Strategy

Donald Sensing has an analysis of Democrat strategy on his blog, OneHandClapping.

He begins with a summary of the original DoD strategy for the war in Iraq:

The war plan, for good or ill has never been to occupy the country. It’s always been the plan for the Iraqis to provide security in their own country. ...

Instead of installing a puppet government, we’ve spent 2.5 years building up an Iraqi one. ... In other words, instead of going into Iraq and trying to run the country … we’ve done the minimal amount of work to keep Iraq in a holding pattern until the Iraqis could run it.

[Quoting a DOD source:] We can confirm that the plan is, in fact, to reduce the size of Coalition Forces in country in 2006. It’s big news inasmuch as the Iraqis are increasing the size and strength of their footprint and, by the same token, we’re reducing ours.

Now, many Democrats previously acknowledged that this has been the plan all along. Joe Biden, for example, harangued Condoleeza Rice during her confirmation hearings about the lack of speed in training Iraqi troops. His questioning made no sense unless all agreed that this was the plan for ultimate withdrawal.

It has also been very clear from the beginning that specific milestones were to be achieved before withdrawal: appointing an interim government, drafting a constitution, holding elections for a permanent government. President Bush has been unwavering -- some would say stubborn -- in his commitment to these milestones. Now that these milestones are nearing achievement, some level of withdrawal can be contemplated.

Sensing continues:

So, knowing that the plan was to redeploy troops beginning next year, the Democrats decided to get in front of the wave: Demand the troops be sent home NOW and then when the Pentagon announces the plan to redeploy, take credit for it.

The two prongs of the attack serve two purposes. The “Bush lied us into war” wing satisfies the huge numbers of the party’s base suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. The “declare victory and go home” attack preserves, however weakly, the party’s appeal to traditionally patriotic Democratic voters, of which there are also huge numbers. Doubtless the Dem leadership sees the attacks as a two-fer.

The appeals to both wings are intended to garner huge dividends in November 2006.

With any president but George W. Bush, they’d be wrong. But GWB is the easiest president to blind side that I have seen in my life. The fact is, the Dem plan is working like a dream for them. GWB has been simply flattened by this one-two punch. For someone whose allies say can play rope-a-dope politically better than M. Ali could in the ring, he and his advisors have been amazingly inept in meeting this strategy.

Be prepared next year for the Democrats to take credit for and campaign on rescuing the country from the Iraq quagmire as US troop levels are reduced. And if the security situation in Iraq does not permit significant reductions, well, that will work fine, too. It’ll be back to the charges of mismangement of a manipulated war.

Journalists such as Nina Easton of the Boston Globe are already talking about how the Republicans are modifying their stance in response to pressure from the Democrats. This is revisionism.

Kennedy Inadvertently Bashes Colleagues Who Voted For the War

From The Political Teen, who has the video:

Russert: But Senator, what the Democrats stood for on the floor of the Senate in 2002, let me show you who said what I just read: John Kerry, your candidate for president. He was talking about a nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein. Hillary Clinton voted for the war. John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry. Democrats said the same things about Saddam Hussein. You yourself said quote “Saddam is dangerous, he’s got dangerous weapons.” It wasn’t just the Bush White House.

Kennedy: (with a stricken look): The fact is — and I voted against the war — because every military leader, highly decorated military leader, said it was foolish to have a military intervention. General Hoar, with the Marines, General Hoar who has more silver stars than you could possibly count, said that if we go into Baghdad, it will look like the last five minutes of Private Ryan. So, we know we had enough information to vote against it, I believe.

TigerHawk writes:

Hanging off Russert’s hook, Ted Kennedy made it clear that “we had enough information” to vote against the war ex-ante, effectively denouncing the very idea that pro-war Democrats can rely on the excuse that they “were misled.”

Kennedy can't have it both ways. Either the Senate did have enough information to vote against the war, or they did not because it was hidden from them. Which is it?

Very important post

Now here's a very important topic. Why do so many people hate Duke basketball?

Clinton and Iraq

Just Google it. Clinton and Irag, 1998.

Bush Lied!

I read this article by Norman Podhoretz in Commentary. It is now available on Opinion Journal. I've heard this is the article that finally provoked President Bush to go on the counter attack.

Peter F. Drucker, a Pioneer in Social and Management Theory, Is Dead at 95

Here's Peter Drucker's obituary at the NYT.

Personality Quiz

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Original Management Guru

I just read that Peter Drucker died yesterday at age 95. This is a great loss. Although his language in such classics as The Effective Executive is dated, his thoughts on management philosophy and social commentary continue to be influential. I was greatly helped by his advice always to "feed your strengths." This struck me as a very humble philosophy. It recognizes that we all have strengths and weaknesses and time is too short to spend a whole lot of time trying to perfect our weakness, a task that may be impossible anyway (if one is tone deaf, one is tone deaf). It is far better to admit our need for a team. The smart manager surrounds himself/herself with people whose strengths complement his/her weaknesses.

The Wall Street Journal is running an old editorial on Drucker, written originally to celebrate his 90th birthday. It's a good one.

Wilson

Joe Wilson is popping up everywhere again. It's very odd that his story still has traction even though almost every point in it has long been known to be false.

The full bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on prewar intelligence is available at globalsecurity.org at this link.

The account of Joe Wilson's mission begins on page 39. The 3rd paragraph says (brackets with open spaces indicate deleted classified material):

The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on the CIA’s behalf [ ] . The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region [ ] . Because the former ambassador did not uncover any information about DELETED during this visit to Niger, CPD did not distribute an intelligence report on the visit

The report also says,

The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.

So, let's be clear.

Wilson claimed the Vice President asked him to go to Niger. That's a lie! His wife did.

Wilson said that he wrote up a report for the Vice President. That's a lie! He gave an oral report to low-level CIA debriefers in his own home with his wife acting as hostess. No report about his trip was ever written up because it was considered so inconsequential.

Wilson claimed that during his trip he exposed certain documents as forgeries. That's a lie! These documents didn't show up till 8 months after his trip. He never saw them, and they were immediately recognized as forgeries by all concerned. They never figured in to anyone's intelligence estimates.

After at first embracing Wilson, Kerry ran away from him as fast as he could lest he be associated with such a blatant liar. Yet now because of propaganda value of the Libby indictment, the Democrats are scurrying to Wilson again.

There's a very interesting article over at RealClearPolitics by Clarice Feldman about the irregularities of the Joe Wilson mission. The insinuation that there was an anti-administration conspiracy within the CIA may be farfetched, but the questions she raises are all very valid.