Iran and Blaming America First

In light of Iran's capture of British soldiers from Iraqi waters, Pat Dollard reminds us MSNBC's view of Iran:

In this year’s State of the Union address, President Bush warned Iran to stop killing American troops in Iraq or face the consequences. At the conclusion of his speech, Anti-American MSNBC commentators Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews turned to each other and said “Can you believe he’s dragging Iran into this?”. [emphasis added]

Between the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and the 1996 Khobar Towers attacks, it should be obvious that Islamist Iran is an aggressor. To US liberals in recent decades, however, the US is guilty until proven otherwise. Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously illustrated this with many examples that were current when she spoke about this in 1984:

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

But then, they always blame America first.

Michael Barone continues on this topic with these observations:

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The “we” can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it’s their fault. They always blame America — or the parts of America they don’t like — first.

Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?).

This matches the common liberal scenario/psychological complex which goes as follows: "We (our group/tribe/country) are guilty. But we (a subgroup/faction) are not really guilty. It is those others (the 'affluent educated class', Reagan, Bush, Republicans) who are guilty. We (the good liberals) are embarrassed to be associated with them and we should apologize to the rest of the world." I have discussed the embarrassment/urge-to-apologize issue before here, here, and here.

Nations: children who won't grow up?

Is foreign policy just like kindergarten? The liberal/left seems to think so. This was discussed here as an explanation of Sen. Clinton's foreign policy pronouncements. Interestingly, a 1923 Sunday New York Times Magazine article explicitly uses the same unruly-child-in-need-of-a-parent analogy to explain foreign policy, at least as seen by the article's author:

WHO'LL BE HEAD OF THE FAMILY?

February 25, 1923, Sunday

By ANNE O'HARE McCORMICK

Section: The New York Times Magazine, Page SM1, 2866 words

THE task of saving the world lies heavy on the heads of statesmen of all nations. They realize that the greatest political opportunity in the outline of history is within the grasp of some bold hand. But whose? And how? In what Parliament hides the harmonizing genius, the Pied Piper who will entrance all the spoiled and snarling children of the world out of their own discordant houses into some peaceful family of nations?

...

Great Britain has never blinked the fact [sic.] that some marriage of convenience, or necessity, would eventually force us all, unwilling and frightened stepchildren, into some kind of family of nations. She has never doubted who would be the head of that family. Experienced in heading a good-sized family of her own, and, with all her mistakes, the most successful stepmother of nations in human history, she had reason to believe that no one in the world seriously question her claims or her qualifications. [emphasis added]

This world-as-family analogy would be merely an amusing rhetorical device except that, 80+ years later, as we have seen, and despite some disastrous consequences, it is still the way that liberals think of foreign policy. Indeed, for 15 years after Ms. McCormick wrote this article, liberal world leaders treated Mussolini and Hitler as children to be placated rather than as serious enemies.

The liberal belief in the concept of an international "head of family" is also unchanged. Now, despite its decades of failures, the United Nations is assigned that role. As Ms. McCormick noted, Great Britain had previously had that role.

Liberals also apply the the child-in-need-of-parent concept to domestic politics, as discussed within this post.

A possible relationship between liberalism and childhood pain was noted here. The connection between the family analogy and foreign policy may have been taken too far by Democratic presidents who, however seriously, make a show of asking their children for foreign policy advice.

What if the minumum wage were $500/hour?

Donald J. Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, explains the minimum wage among economic oddities here.

In ideology, size matters

Russell Roberts notes a curious similarity between Sen. Gore and Mao. Quoting from James Taranto's summary:

Mao More Than Ever
Blogger Russell Roberts has a fascinating juxtaposition, starting with the following, from an Associated Press report on Al Gore's congressional testimony:

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90 percent by 2050 to avoid a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants--a major source of industrial carbon dioxide--that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.

He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information.

Sound familiar? Probably not, but check out this Wikipedia description of Red China's "Great Leap Forward":

In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel furnaces. Mao was shown an example of a backyard furnace in Hefei, Anhui in September 1958 by provincial first secretary Zeng Xisheng. The unit was claimed to be manufacturing high quality steel (though in fact the finished steel had probably been manufactured elsewhere). Mao encouraged the establishment of small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban neighbourhood. . . .

Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools and even hospitals. As could have been predicted by anyone with any experience of steel production or basic knowledge of metallurgy, the output consisted of low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth.

As Roberts notes, "Giving up the economies of scale we currently use for energy production is going to be very expensive."

In a free enterprise solution, small-scale power producers would be allowed to compete with large-scale producers, with both subject to similar environmental rules, and the consumer decides who wins. In liberalism, either the Gore or Mao variety, the winner is to be decided instead by ideology.

Moderate Muslim Group Speaks Out

CAIR, the pseudo-civil-rights organization, is suing on behalf of the six imans ejected from a US Air flight for their bizarre behavior. A chilling possibility is that the suit may be extended to sue the individual passengers who reported the behavior. However, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy is offering to raise money to defend the passengers.

Those foreign "moderates"

One of the repeating left/liberal ideas in foreign policy is that a leader of an enemy is actually a "moderate" and we should not push him too hard because his country would then fall to the more extreme contingent. We heard this about the USSR under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev. We have heard this occasionally about the leadership of Iran, although not about Iran's current president who does not even pretend to pose as a moderate. A terrorist like Arafat and his successor, Abbas, have both succeeded in convincing liberals that they are "moderates." This left/liberal idea is not new. In 1933, the New York Times was playing Hitler as a moderate who might lose control to the extremists: A July 23, 1933 article by Anne O'Hare McCormick was entitled "HITLER THREATENED BY EXTREME NAZIS; OUTBREAKS FEARED" [caps in original]. The NY Times to the contrary notwithstanding, history shows that Hitler was not threatened by extreme Nazis. Rather, Hitler was an extreme Nazi.

"FRANKFURT'S BANKS STILL RUN BY JEWS" says New York Times headline, 1933

Another installment in our should-you-trust-the-MSM series: Hitler was not so bad says the 1933 New York Times. Thus, in a story printed on June 20, 1933, the Times wrote of German Jews: "Many Under Ban Look on Hitler as Less of an Evil Than Threatened Bolshevism." The NY Times reporter calls the physical attacks on Jews "only a dark detail." The Times says that Hitler's proposal to remove Jews from all bank directorates has been "already scrapped."

This story was written by the same reporter who earlier claimed that "Mussolini [was] eager to maintain peace."

Muzzled by the White House?

You may remember news headlines about the White House "silencing" or "muzzling" NASA scientist James Hansen.  His congressional testimony sheds some light on the issue

• He did manage to give 1,400 press interviews during his "silencing."
• He also clarified the nature of the silencing: "It was an oral threat made to a public affairs person in New York and relayed to me." In other words, all those newspaper headlines were based merely on Hansen's interpretation of a second hand description of a phone call!
• Dr. Hansen received a $250,000 grant from Sen Kerry's wife. (This is not particularly interesting except that global warming enthusiasts are always quick to allege that influence from impure funding sources is what motivates climate change skeptics.)

The Buddha of the Kremlin

How would you describe Joseph Stalin? tyrant? mass murderer? If so, the New York Times would likely not have hired you. On Nov. 20, 1927, their reporter, Ms. McCormick who had just returned from a trip to the USSR, called him the "buddha of the Kremlin." She praised him as "calm" and "steady."

This is the same reporter who, six years later, would praise Mussolini's devotion to the "cause of world peace."

NY Times: MUSSOLINI EAGER TO MAINTAIN PEACE

The news media assure us that Iraq is a disaster and that the UN represents the scientific consensus on global warming. The news media's accuracy is easy to assess in retrospect and it isn't good. Consider this New York Times headline from Jun 5, 1933:

MUSSOLINI EAGER TO MAINTAIN PEACE [caps in original]

Yes, this NY Times story, written by Anne O'Hare McCormick, claimed that the great fascist was "eager" for peace. The story ($$) continues:

Mussolini, the conciliator, is no longer the flaming captain who headed the young armies of blackshirts in the march on Rome. Rather, he is the sober statesman, striving to calm and reassure panicky nations which are as jumpy as a man with a toothache. ....

No one who meets him today can doubt his conversion to the cause of world peace.

If you believe that the news media are unbiased and have layers of editors and fact checkers, then you should believe that 1930s fascists were dedicated to the cause of world peace.

Quick Press Bias Links

The L.A. Times, seemingly on purpose, misstates the facts in the firing of US Attorney Carol Lam to make it seem like the firing was retribution for targeting a Republican house member. Additional misrepresentations on the attorney firing issue are detailed here. Contrast this with how the "unbiased" media treated Pres. Clinton's firing of the attorney who was investigating the whitewater scandal.

American deaths in Iraq have declined since the surge begin.  The NY Times bizarrely finds a way to spin this as a negative.

Childhood pain and liberalism

It is often observed that Democrats are more depressed/pessimistic than Republicans. Part of this could be due to childhood experiences. Consider Sen. Obama who wrote about his childhood:

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt, a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect,

Barack Obama's family situation must have been quite painful, at least if we believe the (UK) Daily Mail's research into Sen. Obama's father:

At 18, [Barack's father, Obama Sr.] married a girl called Kezia. But Obama Snr was more interested in politics and economics than his family and his political leanings had been brought to the notice of leaders of the Kenyan Independence movement. .... At the age of 23 he headed for university in Hawaii, leaving behind the pregnant Kezia and their baby son.

Relatives say he was already a slick womaniser and, once in Honolulu, he promptly persuaded a fellow student called Ann - a naive 18-year-old white girl - to marry him. Barack Jnr was born in August, 1961.

Two years later, Obama Snr was on the move again. He was accepted at Harvard, and left his little boy and wife behind when he moved to the exclusive east coast university....

...Ann divorced her husband after she discovered his bigamous double life. She remarried and moved to Indonesia with young Barack and her new husband, an oil company manager.

Obama Snr was forced to return to Kenya, where he fathered two more children by Kezia. He was eventually hired as a top civil servant in the fledgling government of Jomo Kenyatta - and married yet again.

Now prosperous with a flashy car and good salary, his third wife was an American-born teacher called Ruth, whom he had met at Harvard while still legally married to both Kezia and Ann, and who followed him to Africa.

A relative of Mr Obama says: "We told him[Barack] how his father would still go to Kezia and it was during these visits that she became pregnant with two more children. He also had two children with Ruth."

It is alleged that Ruth finally left him after he repeatedly flew into whisky-fuelled rages, beating her brutally.

Friends say drinking blighted his life - he lost both his legs while driving under the influence and also lost his job.

However, this was no bar to his womanising: he sired a son, his eighth child, by yet another woman and continued to come home drunk.

He was about to marry her when he finally died in yet another drunken crash when Obama was 21.

Alexander Hamilton was also abandoned by his father. Between the ages of 10 and 14, young Alexander was not only abandoned by his father but also his mother died, his cousin, who cared for Hamilton after his parents left, committed suicide. Also during these same years, Alexander's aunt, uncle, and grandmother died. [Src: Ron Chernow's book, p.26]. A conservative might think that abandonment by a father would lead a person to distrust authority. However, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Hamilton adopted a political belief in giving central governments more power and authority.

In contrast, while we know relatively little about the childhood of Hamilton's opponent, Thomas Jefferson, what we do know points to a relatively uneventful childhood in a stable family with none of the pain and instability that either Mr. Obama or Mr. Hamilton endured. Mr. Jefferson was early America's leading advocate of small and decentralized government.

Paranoia strikes deep

The Washington Post reports:

"Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere," [Mayor] Nagin said at a dinner sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for newspapers that target black readers. "They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community." [emphasis added]

Sometimes the left tells us that Pres Bush is dumb. At other times, he is supposed to be at the center of a vast political intrigue that involves control of the weather for the purpose of harming minorities. Whether it is 9-11, hurricane Katrina, or the JFK assassination, the left believes in huge secretive conspiracies.

Civilization to collapse says global warming alarmist

The apocalypse is coming:

"If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilisation due to climate change becomes inevitable." --from The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, [emphasis added]

Tim Flannery is a field zoologist. That is closer to being a hard scientist that sociology.

Democrats listen to the children

In 1980 during the presidential candidates debate, Pres. Jimmy Carter infamously explained that he had asked his daughter for advice on nuclear weapons policy. Two decades later, Pres. Clinton, in front of stunned middle east leaders, asked his daughter for her opinion on peace plans. Earlier this year, the Vermont legislature asked 6th grade students for their opinion on global warming. Well, they do say the children are our future.

Abandoning superstition

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Ca) is apparently the highest ranking atheist in the American government. One might hope that such a person who had abandoned ancient superstitions would be a model of the new enlightened scientific man. Rep. Stark, however, does not seem to be such a model. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reviewed his behavior:

Stark, 71, added to his legend of buffoonery last week when he called Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., "a little wimp" and a "little fruitcake" -- and suggested the two should step outside. Capitol police were called to the hearing.

It was reminiscent of the 2001 debate when Stark made a reference to the children of Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., all being "born out of wedlock." It was not only insulting, it was -- as Watts pointedly told Stark in a face-to-face confrontation -- not true.

And there was the time he accused Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., of being a "whore for the insurance industry." Stark once brought up President Bush's personal battles with alcohol during a debate on federal funding of faith- based programs.

Yes, this is the same Pete Stark who in 1990 suggested former Health and Human Services Director Louis Sullivan, an African American, was a "disgrace to his race."

Today's global warming scare from AP

The AP has a frightening story on the effects of global warming:

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.....

"Things are happening and happening faster than we expected," said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report.

So, you might ask, what are Ms. Lankao's qualifications for writing about how fast the climate is changing? Google her and you find that she is a sociologist.

Democrats: "Do as I say, not as I do"

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) smokes. After the Democrats have spent decades waging a war against tobacco, there are few public places for him to smoke now. At the Capital Hill Club, where Republican legislators hang out, smoking is illegal under D.C. law. So, Rep. Boehner has to travel to the National Democratic Club which, unlike the Republican's club, has exemption to get around the District's new smoking ban.

Who cares about genocide?

Which country has an ongoing genocide "10 times greater than Darfur's and more than twice as large as Rwanda's"? That would be Zimbabwe according to a well-researched article by James Kirchick in The New Republic online. That the usual politically-correct sources have expressed little concern over this is possibly due to the socialist/communist pretensions of Zimbabwe's president Mugabe.

For the love of disaster

With the global warming disaster scenario so much in the news, it seems useful to review past popular disaster scenarios. Michael Fumento reviews a past king of disaster predictions, Paul Ehrlich. History has proven Mr. Ehrlich wrong again and again. Yet his popularity and fame only grow. In 1996, Mr. Fumento wrote:

Ehrlich, a butterfly specialist, began his spectacular doomsaying career back in 1968 with his best-selling book "The Population Bomb." Among his predictions then and since:

• "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death." (1968)
• "Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
• "I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (1969)
• "Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)

Yet today: 1) Food production is well ahead of population growth and obesity now kills 300,000 Americans a year, 2) the air in New York and L.A. is cleaner than it has been in decades, 3) with two years until 2000, England's odds are looking mighty good, and 4) there are no key minerals facing depletion. Almost all of them, along with raw materials in general, are far cheaper now relative either to the Consumer Price Index or wages.

But have Ehrlich's preposterous predictions hurt his reputation? Far from it - they've made him both celebrated and rich.

In one year - 1990 - he published a sequel to "Bomb" called "The Population Explosion," received the MacArthur Foundation's famous "genius award" with a $345,000 check, and split a Swedish Royal Academy of Science prize worth $120,000.

Just a few months ago, the New York Times published an Op-Ed by Thomas Homer-Dixon who, despite everything, claims that maybe Ehrlich will somehow turn out to be right after all. From Malthus to Ehrlich to Gore, whether the cause is pollution or population or divine retribution, many people seem to have a need to believe in the coming apocalypse.

Peace activists turn violent

On Monday, three peace protesters were arrested for third-degree assault. This is not unusual. Last month, a peace protester was arrested for assault against suspected Republicans. In 2002, a march of 1500 peace protesters in Belgium turned violent and 29 were arrested. In 1968, 200 were arrested in a violent peace protest in London. Historically, if peace protesters favor peace, it is only as an end not as a means.

UPDATE: James Taranto has two more current examples (scroll to "They love to hate hate") of peace protesters getting violent.

My enemy's enemy is my friend?

Newsweek profiles Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of the bestselling book Infidel, who is now living in exile. Christopher Hitchens finds that Newsweek has turned the facts upside down:

Accompanying the article is a typically superficial Newsweek Q sidebar, which is almost unbelievably headed: "A Bombthrower's Life." The subject of this absurd headline is a woman [Ayaan Hirsi Ali] who has been threatened with horrific violence, by Muslims varying from moderate to extreme, ever since she was a little girl. She has more recently had to see a Dutch friend butchered in the street, been told that she is next, and now has to live with bodyguards in Washington, D.C. She has never used or advocated violence. Yet to whom does Newsweek refer as the "Bombthrower"? It's always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it's the victim of violence who is "really" inciting it. [emphasis added]

The behavior of Ms. Ali's critics, as described by Mr. Hitchens, fits a familiar pattern in which America's enemies, or maybe more precisely Geo. Bush's enemies, are imagined to have all manner of good qualities that all could see if only America, or Pres. Bush, or, in this case, Ms. Ali, would stop misbehaving.

In mosques in London's Islamic community, there are lectures on the proper way to beat your wife. They preach death to gays. Liberals would find all of this repulsive if they were not busy defending it against the perceived criticisms of Ms. Ali or Mr. Bush. Instead, Newsweek describes that London muslim community with lovingly PC terms like "thriving," "modern," and "diverse."

UPDATE: Bret Stephens has much more on the strange socialist-islamist alliance.

Is bin Laden just like one of us?

Similar to the New York Times piece discussed below, Sunday's Washington Post has an Op-Ed by Alberto Mora and Thomas Pickering bemoaning the lack of terrorists rights and its effect on our "reputation":

Our country's detention policy has undermined its reputation around the world.... [emphasis added]

Why would reputation be important? They see it this way:

The United States cannot expect other nations to afford its citizens the basic guarantees provided by habeas corpus unless it provides those guarantees to others.

This pleasant theory, though, does not pass a reality check. In the past 70 years, American POWs have been held by North Vietnam, North Korea, Saddan's Iraq, and Japan, none of which followed international standards. All tortured US POWs with real torture, not the panties-on-the-head "torture" that so concerns liberals now. Our "reputation" was irrelevant. More recently al Qaeda has captured Americans. Can anyone honestly imagine al Qaeda deciding to extend legal rights to prisoners before videotaping their beheading? Of course not because al Qaeda is philosophically opposed to all Western ideas of civil rights.

In Mora and Pickering's world, however, the enemies of America shares the same goals and dreams as liberals and decide how to treat prisoners after considering America's "reputation" for civil rights. This is like Sen. Murray imaging that bin Laden shares her passion for daycare centers. (More examples here.) This liberal view may not be rational but it is one that many hold consistently.

Fretting over America's image

A New York Times editorial proposes a terrorist bill of rights. Some of the well-qualified lawyer-bloggers have, in my opinion, long ago shown the legal arguments and 'facts' claimed by the NYT to be specious. Below, I excerpt the emotional arguments. The NYT seems to think what others think of us is very important, as if the world was one big high school:

[Habeas corpus] is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States’ credibility. ....

[The Military Commissions Act that] Mr. Bush triumphantly announced ... was a defeat for America’s image around the world. ....

The United States should apologize.... [emphasis added]

As noted previously, French law provides for extensive rights to detain suspected terrorists. Will the NYT ever fret about France's need to restore its "image" or "credibility"?

More importantly, will the NYT ever call for bin Laden to "apologize"?

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of "image" over substance: "I don't fall down"

Channel 4 (UK) to show documentary skeptical of UN's "global warming" spin

On Thursday, Channel 4 (UK) will show a global warming documentary. This summary includes some quotes from the scientists that they interviewed:

I've often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue, that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system, Well I am one scientist, and there are many, that simply think that is not true. -- John Christy, Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center, NSSTC University of Alabama.

As for what does cause climate change, if the human influence is not so large:

Solar activity over the last hundred years, over the last several hundred years, correlates very nicely, on a decadal basis, with temperature. --Ian Clark, Professor of Isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology at the Dept of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Separately, Russia has been developing more accurate methods to measure solar activity and Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, believes that solar activity accounts for most of the observed climate changes both here on Earth and on Mars. This result seems to be in line with a Danish study noted here.

Previous posts on this subject are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

UPDATE: A list of 76 scientists willing to go on the record as skeptical of global warming is here.

UPDATE: Another physics professor, Bjarne Andresen of University of Copenhagen, has expressed doubts about the UN interpretation about the usefulness of the "global warming" concepts and warming's affects on the climate. His study will be published in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics.

The Cambodia-Iraq parallel

Democrats and the news media seem to have a strong desire to repeat in Iraq the disaster 30-years ago of abandoning Cambodia. Scott Johnson reviews the parallels.

This contrasts strongly with the understanding of history that some Iraqis have, as explained in an interview that Stars and Stripes conducted with Col. MacFarland:

Now, “If you talk to these sheiks, they’ll tell you that they’re in no hurry to see the Americans leave al-Anbar,” he said.

“One thing Sheikh Sattar keeps saying is he wants al-Anbar to be like Germany and Japan and South Korea were after their respective wars, with a long-term American presence helping ... put them back together,” MacFarland said. “The negative example he cites is Vietnam. He says, yeah, so, Vietnam beat the Americans, and what did it get them? You know, 30 years later, they’re still living in poverty.”

Hat tip alphabetcity.

ADDENDUM: Another parallel to Iraq is the US Civil War. As noted here and at Gateway Pundit, the Democrats ("Copperhead Democrats") blamed the Civil War on the North and wanted to settle even if it meant letting the South keep their slaves.

UPDATE: A Commentary article is now online which includes a passage written in 1994 by well-known former-Kissinger-critic William Schawcross discussing press-bias in the 1970s that seems so similar to today's coverage of Iraq:

[T]hose of us who opposed the American
war in Indochina should be extremely hum-
ble in the face of the appalling aftermath: a
form of genocide in Cambodia and horrific
tyranny in both Vietnam and Laos. Looking
back on my own coverage for the [London]
Sunday Times of the South Vietnamese war
effort of 1970-75, I think I concentrated too
easily on the corruption and incompetence
of the South Vietnamese and their American
allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman
Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe
that a victory by the Communists would pro-
vide a better future.

Scott Johnson has more.

Democrats oppose democracy

Secret ballots have long been recognized as essential to functioning democracy. However, the Democrat-controlled House just voted 241-185 to strip workers of the right to secret ballot elections before a union is recognized. This would remove a right that has been in place since 1935.

Previously on this topic: The skeptics of democracy

UPDATE: More details on the House bill are here.

The Canadian view of global warming

Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Defense Minister, believes that the answer to global warming lies in UFO technology:

I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet....

We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough

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The Joys of Demonization

If the MSM gets a story wrong, what should it do? Blame Matt Drudge. Michael S Malone of ABC News writes about Alan Greenspan's latest comments:

Indeed, the story was so unthrilling that it appears only AP covered it - and, contrary to its current reputation, actually managed to write a balanced and objective story. And, as you might expect, it produced little more than a shrug from the financial markets.



But that's when Drudge stepped in. For no obvious reason, he decided to link to the two day old AP story. He then attached one of his classic scare headlines: "Greenspan warns of likely U.S. recession." Personally, I love stuff like that - it harkens back to the good old days of newspapering and the vastly underrated age of yellow journalism - and if the viewer chose to read the term 'imminent' into Drudge's words, and then link through to the AP story . . .well, bully for Matt. That's his job, and he does it better than anybody.

ABC News got that completely wrong: "Greenspan warns of likely U.S. recession" was not written by Drudge but rather was the AP headline for the story used by several MSM outlets, as can be seen here and here. Drudge merely copied the AP headline. Matt Drudge must make such a fun target that ABC News' "fact-checkers" took a holiday.

Further, despite ABC's claims, the AP story was not "balanced and objective."

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The need to believe

There has been a lot of propaganda about vitamin supplements and, more recently, Anti-oxidants preventing aging. A new study says otherwise:

CHICAGO (AP) -- Antioxidant vitamins, including A, E and C, don't help you live longer, according to an analysis of dozens of studies of these popular supplements.



The new review showing no long-life benefit from those vitamins, plus beta carotene and selenium, adds to growing evidence questioning the value of these supplements.

It might even be worse than that:

When they eliminated the lower-quality studies and looked only at the most trustworthy ones, they actually found a higher risk of death for people taking vitamins: 4 percent for those taking vitamin E, 7 percent for beta carotene and 16 percent for vitamin A. [Emphasis added]

This is consistent with a long line of studies that say vitamin supplements, as opposed to real foods, generally (calcium supplements would be an exception) have no value. There are many people who will simply dismiss such results. There is one example of where the human mind can have a need to believe, in this case, a need to believe that it has some control of its own future, that, through "virtue" (taking vitamins), it will live longer.

The Urge to Apologize

From the NYT, Louis Farrakhan discusses Pres. Bush:

“If you don’t want to impeach him,” Mr. Farrakhan said, “censure him, say to the world something went wrong with our leadership and we repent after our wrongdoing.” [emphasis added]

US liberals and the left, ranging from Bill Clinton to John Kerry to the Dixie Chicks, have the urge to go abroad and apologize. By contrast, how often to Republicans do anything similar? No matter how despicable, for example, Bill Clinton may have seemed to conservatives, I don't remember any conservatives going abroad to denounce him? They didn't go to China to apologize for Clinton's bombing of the Chinese embassy. They didn't go to Russia to apologize for Clinton picking the side of Russia's enemies in the Balkans. They didn't go to Africa to apologize for the bombing of the aspirin factory.

Democrats seem to take (alleged) government irresponsibility personally as if it was something for which their foreign friends would blame them individually. By contrast, Republicans have no such expectation and seem, instead, to be surprised if the government does something right.

RELATED: The issue of appearances was brought up by Democrat fundraiser David Geffen:

Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world

Here again, his issue is not that America was doing right or wrong, the issue that concerns Republicans, but rather that "the world" was "disappointed," as if foreign relations was a popularity contest.

The Oscar for best politics goes to

Al Gore for his global warming agitprop. While global warming advocates want major reductions in consumer energy use, Al Gore is showing no leadership in this area. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research looked into Al Gore's energy usage:

Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”

Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

The problems with Gore's version of science are addressed more substantively by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels who, for instance, addresses the sea rise issue:

The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.

Where’s the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.

Dr. Michaels has a Ph.D. in Ecological Climatology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979) and is Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Virgina. He was a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was an author of the 2003 climate science "Paper of the Year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers. This makes is hard for his detractors to call him out of the mainstream but they do anyway.

UPDATE: Gore responds to the house electricity issue here, claiming that he tries to consume "green" energy and, among other things, he uses "solar panels and uses compact fluorescent bulbs." It would seem that solar panels and fluorescents must not be very effective if, despite their use, his electric bills are so high.

RELATED: Michelle Malkin has a post on strikingly similar story of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do in animal rights: PETA activist Pamela Anderson says she had no idea that the sheepskin boots that she made famous were actually made of sheep's skin.

UPDATE: From James Taranto:

Of course we don't begrudge Gore his life of luxury--only his sanctimonious insistence that the rest of us sacrifice our comforts to the dubious god of global warming.

It is interesting to contrast Al Gore's energy consumption with Pres. Bush's relatively eco-friendly Crawford ranch.

UPDATE: For hypocrisy similar to Sen. Gore's, see this report:With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming.

The European model is not always what liberals hope it to be

There has always been a strain of American thought that glorified the Old World: Liberal supreme court justices have used foreign laws as the basis for their decisions and Democrats have on occasion praised the European model for fighting terror as a law enforcement issue. However, as Bret Stephens points out, the French model for "law enforcement" includes powers for the government that Democrats would oppose even when fighting a war:

Warrantless wiretaps? Not a problem under French law, as long as the Interior Ministry approves. Court-issued search warrants based on probable cause? Not needed to conduct a search. Hearsay evidence? Admissible in court. Habeas corpus? Suspects can be held and questioned by authorities for up to 96 hours without judicial supervision or the notification of third parties. Profiling? French officials commonly boast of having a "spy in every mosque." A wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies? France's domestic and foreign intelligence bureaus work hand-in-glove. Bail? Authorities can detain suspects in "investigative" detentions for up to a year. [France's investigative minister] Mr. Bruguiere once held 138 suspects on terrorism-related charges. The courts eventually cleared 51 of the suspects--some of whom had spent four years in preventive detention--at their 1998 trial.

FLASHBACK: As an earlier example of Democrats sympathizing with Europeans when they shouldn't, consider a New York Times editorial from February 26, 1916 accused the some Democrats of siding with Germany against Pres. Wilson during the lead up to World War I:

By their Constitution, the American people created the Congress as a branch of the Government of the United States, not as an instrument to serve the purposes of Germany.

Yet, among the abhorrent forces now at work in Congress to obstruct the President in his policies, to prevent the expression of the country's will, and to bring dishonor upon the nation, that alien influence is too conspicuous for concealment.

It is a monstrous anomaly, a hideous solecism, that the American Congress should be the field of a contest in which a foreign government can display such power, or any power at all, over our national decisions.

The skeptics of democracy

Mr. David Geffen, Hollywood mogul and, currently, an Obama supporter, is concerned that Sen. Clinton might win the primaries. Mr. Geffen concludes:

I think that America was better served when the candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms.

Such scepticism of popular choice has a long history in American politics. Alexander Hamilton was the first leader of this group. His biographer, Ron Chernow, quotes Mr. Hamilton (p.233):

"Give all the power to the many and they will oppress the few. Give all the power to oppress the few, they will oppress the many." The system needed an impartial arbiter to transcend class warfare and regional interests, and here Hamilton [used] the word monarch: "This check is a monarch.... There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current."

Conservatives, as represented by Hamilton's foe, Thomas Jefferson support democracy but not because it is perfect: they also share a scepticism of "popular currents." However, Jeffersonians have a much greater scepticism of any "monarch" or other authority which claims to "transcend" class or region. The Jeffersonian idea was wittily and famously expressed by Winston Churchill in 1947:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

In the US, Democrats would like the president to take the role of transcendent "monarch" or, maybe more precisely, the role of ideal parent. The idea of the voters being children of the president, was explicitly addressed during a debate of presidential candidates in 1992, as recounted by Dr. Edwin Feulner:

During one of the 1992 presidential debates ... a young man with a ponytail stood up to ask a question of the candidates. He said, "We are your children, we have our needs. What will you do to take care of us-to take care of our needs?" All three candidates predictably fell all over themselves explaining what they would do for this young man.

Dr. Feulner continues by quoting a typical Jeffersonian reaction to this concept:

My friend and Heritage Foundation colleague Bill Bennett commented about this episode: "Wouldn't it have been refreshing," he said, "wouldn't it have been great if any one of them had said, 'Just a minute. Get a life. I'm not your father. This is America. This is a do-it-yourself society. I'm only running for the head of the government... satisfy your own needs. See a minister, see a priest, see your wife. Take care of yourself, man; get a hold of yourself."'

I believe that BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) can be explained by the fact that Pres. Bush, by going to war in Iraq, violates the Democratic concept of ideal parent. His presence in White House is as much an abomination to Democrats as, say, Andre Serrano's "Piss Christ" is to Christians.

In foreign policy, Democrats place the United Nations in the role of Ideal Parent, expecting it to be above class or region and provide the sound judgment that the world needs. Republicans, by contrast, see nothing ideal or parental about the UN: they see it, rather, as a group of thugs, thieves, and tyrants that may occasionally be useful but should never be respected.

MORE DETAIL: The "young man with a ponytail," mentioned by Dr. Feulner, spoke at the October 15th of 1992 presidential debate between Perot, Clinton and Bush 41 in Richmond, Virginia. His question was:

The focus of my work is domestic mediation, is meeting the needs of the children that I work with by way of their parents and not the wants of their parents, and I ask the three of you, how can we as symbolically the children of the future president expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs?

Group guilt

Consider a recent murder in New Orleans:

A recent murder encapsulated the difficulties. After a 17-year-old was beaten up, his mother gave him a gun and told him to get revenge, and he killed the boy he fought with.

When police went to his home to investigate, they found the mother with cocaine and a family photo on display of the son with a gun in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.

"For us to correct this, we have to look at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is our education system," Police Superintendent Warren Riley said in an interview.

In this case, talking about "root" cause certainly seems like an excuse to avoid assigning individual guilt.

Via BoTW.

Group vs. Individual

The FAA bans handguns from private space flights, in orbit or otherwise.  The FAA, however, has changed the reason why.  Their previous explanation claimed that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms was a "collective right" not an individual right.  The new explanation says that the FAA has the right to ban guns from spaceflights, as it does from planes, as a reasonable exception to the 2nd amendment.

The trend here is that the left thinks of group rights while the right wants to protect the rights of individuals.  For example, affirmative action, strongly supported by the left, is intended to provide group justice regardless of the injustice that it does to many individuals.  The claim that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect governments ("collective rights") against individuals is perverse: History shows that the Bill of Rights was passed out of concern that the newly created federal government might have too much power, not too little.

Foreign Policy and Selective Ethics

Paul Campos condemns Glenn Reynolds for suggesting covert action, including assassination, against Iran's nuclear program.  Glenn Reynolds responds by pointing to Democrats who have advocated similar policies during the Clinton years and concludes:

It's not only important to have the right opinions -- it's important to have them at the right time.

The difference is that Democrats assume when, say, Bill Clinton attempted to assassinate bin Laden, that Bill Clinton had a good reason. They extend no such assumption to Republicans. In either, they will phrase their argument as if it involved basic inviolable principles of ethics or morality or law.



The liberal view of free speech is similarly situational.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker looks at the legal issues that Prof. Campos raises in his attack on Prof. Reynolds.

RELATED: Those who advocate "peace" yet become violent seemingly display a similar hypocrisy.

The FAA and those 10-hour plane waits

The well-publicized 8 or 10 hour long waits in an airplane are explained by the WSJ:

The FAA's air-traffic-control system can penalize flights that go back to a gate, even for a temporary bathroom break. Air-traffic controllers generally take flights first-come, first-serve, unless the airline can badger officials into giving a flight higher priority, or trade places in line with another of its own flights.

Indeed, last month a JetBlue flight ended up on the ground for eight hours at JFK because it returned to the gate and then was required to file a new flight plan, the FAA says.

The bigger the bureaucracy, the stranger the rules.

Sen. Obama on economic policy

Is the world perfectible? Democrats seem to believe so. For example, Sen. Obama declared:

Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America.

The past 40 years of the US "war on poverty" not only didn't end poverty but seems, in many ways, to have made it worse. Marxism also did not work. Poverty stubbornly remained in the USSR and China. Homelessness remained in the USSR even when all housing was owned by the government. None of that seems to affect the liberal belief that the next government program will be the solution. What is Sen. Obama's suggestion?

Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills, and afford child care so their kids have a safe place to go when they work. Let's do this.

Of course, job training is important. It is important for the young to learn key job skills such as (a) show up on time, (b) when interacting with customers, be nice to them, and, most importantly, (c) just because the boss asks you to do something, it does not mean that he is 'dissing' you. Most Americans learned these skills, without government subsidy, in their first entry-level jobs. Curiously, Democrats have just taken pride in their attempt to eliminate entry-level jobs (i.e. the minimum wage increase). In a perfectible world, of course, such trade-offs do not happen and do not need to be considered.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome, circa 1997

The New York Daily News exposes a 10-year cover-up. The 1997 shooting spree by Kamal, a Palestinian, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building was jihad. At the request of the Palestinian Authority, the media had played the story as if it was caused by the shooter's depression over a business failure.

But three days after the shootings, Kamal's family got a copy of a letter that was found on his body, they said. The letter said he planned the violence as a political statement, his daughter said.

"When we wanted to clarify that to the media, nobody listened to us," she said. "His goal was patriotic. He wanted to take revenge from the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis." ....

"He wrote that after he raised his children and made sure that his family was all right he decided to avenge in the highest building in America to make sure they get his message," said [Kamal's daughter] Linda, who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. [emphasis added]

via LGF.

Some economic ideas die hard

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result indicates, they say, insanity. Oil-rich Venezuela has implemented price controls. The results appear to be the same as previous attempts:

Shortages of basic foods have been sporadic since the government strengthened price controls in 2003 after a debilitating strike by oil workers. But in recent weeks, the scarcity of items like meat and chicken have led to a panicked reaction by federal authorities as they try to understand how such shortages could develop in a seemingly flourishing economy....



With shoppers limited to just two large packages of sugar, a black market in sugar has developed among street vendors in parts of Caracas.

It is not within the power of governments to repeal the law of supply and demand. Yet, they try over and over again.

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Singing "we are the world"

The leftists in Venezuela think it "illogical" that Al Qaeda would want to attack them:

ARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuela's defense minister said Thursday that the nation would reinforce security measures after a branch of al Qaeda called for attacks on suppliers of oil to the United States.....



Luis Cabrera, a military adviser to the president, earlier had questioned the authenticity of the threat in comments published by local media.



He said it was illogical that "al Qaeda, which is against North American imperialism, would go against a state that is fighting, though in a different way, against that hegemony."

As James Taranto notes, this confusion is longstanding. After Pres. Bush referred to islamist terrorists as "extremists" in his speech at the UN, Venezuela 's President Chavez replied as if So. American socialists and Islamists were all allies:

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

Al Qaeda, of course, will consider Venezuela an enemy until Venezuelans convert to Islam and impose Shari'a law, Chavez does have the advantage that South America is not currently on Al Qaeda's priority list but that is all. He, however, imagines that he and bin Laden are allies. agit-prop filmmaker Michael Moore also shares a similar delusion as shown in his comment on the 9/11 attack:

Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California--these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

George McGovern also has a similar reaction, as explained by James Taranto:

[R]emember George McGovern's analysis of a few years ago:

President Bush has said repeatedly that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom. I don't believe that. The world's people have always admired our freedom. What they don't like is the arrogance and indifference to world opinion inherent in so much of our international policy. Plenty of my fellow citizens don't like that either. I'm not alone....

Note how McGovern equates "terrorists" with "the world's people," then moves on quickly to "plenty of my fellow citizens" and finally to himself. It seems he is simply unable to imagine someone seeing the world through anything but a McGovernite prism.

This is similar to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa) who believed that bin Laden was a strong advocate of daycare centers.



It is a conceit of the left/liberals that the whole world (or almost the whole world) believes the same things they do.

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Character assassination by forged blog comment

Comments on blogs are often deleted because of offensive content or language. Some blogs delete comments from those who simply disagree however politely and reasonably. Well, blog ownership does have its privileges. However, it is something else entirely for a blog owner or administrator to use his access to forge a comment and attribute it to someone else. That appears to have happened in a very offensive way in this case.



If you visit the "Liberal Avenger" blog, it seems that it would be wise not to post comments there.

UPDATE: Another eerily similar example is here.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

The selective right of free speech

Using mostly student fees, College of William Mary held a "Sex Workers Art Show." College president Gene Nichol issued a statement:

"I don't like this kind of show and I don't like having it here," he said. "But it's not the practice and province of universities to censor or cancel performances because they are controversial."

This is the same Pres. Nichol who had no problem censoring the display of a cross in a university chapel.



Previously on this topic:

The Right of Free Speech, Selectively Applied

Tolerating free speech, IV

Tolerating free speech, III

More on tolerating free speech

Those who cannot tolerate free speech

Rep. Murtha's Foreign Policy

Movecongress.org shows their true intentions:

Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president's foreign and national security policy[emphasis added]

Naturally, after this was exposed, movecongress.org deleted the part about "undermining."

Previously in this series:
More on how Democrats treat allies
Attacking your allies
Who is being "confrontational"?
Despising your allies

More on how Democrats treat allies

How do you treat a friend? Sen. Dodd explained his approach on March 12, 1975:

"The greatest gift our country can give the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." -- Rep. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.)

Congressional Record

March 12, 1975

As James Taranto points out, the results of Sen. Dodd's "greatest gift" was not good. In the words of Dith Pran:

On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took power in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. They forced all city dwellers into the countryside and to labor camps. During their rule, it is estimated that 2 million Cambodians died by starvation, torture or execution. 2 million Cambodians represented approximately 30% of the Cambodian population during that time.

Dith Pran, by the way, is the Cambodian refugee whose war time story was portrayed in the movie, The Killing Fields.

Sen. Dodd is currently recommending a similar "gift" to Iraq.

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Attacking your allies

Among the Democratic talking points is that Pres. Bush did not have a large enough coalition and that Democrats, with their superior skills, would have encouraged more mor countries to join us. At the same, Democrats have have insulted our allies. The latest is from Sen Obama who has been picking a fight with Australia:

I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops on the ground now, and my understanding is Mr Howard [Australia's PM] has deployed 1,400, so if he is (ready) to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric.

Among other things, this tirade indicates that Mr. Obama is not aware that Australia has a small population to begin with.



The Democrat's hostility to US allies was noted earlier in a post entitled "despising your allies."

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And, the Grammy for best politics is:

Jimmy Carter! Ex. Pres. Carter won a grammy award in the spoken-word category for the audio-book version of his bestseller “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.” Separately, the Dixie Chicks won 5 Grammys this year.



Who won last year's spoken-word Grammy? Sen. Barack Obama for the audio-book version of his book “Dreams From My Father.”

RELATED: The George Polk Awards for 2006, which honor journalism in the tradition of George W. Polk, also seem to be political. It is even questionable that Geo. Polk was who he claimed to be.

What is looks like when a foreign policy succeeds

The city of Katowice, Poland, is considering erecting a statue to former Pres. Reagan in a square that may be renamed "Ronald Reagan Freedom Square." City hall spokesman Waldemar Bojarun said that he had "enormous respect" for Reagan. The AFP writes

Reagan, who dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire," is widely credited by Poles with having driven communism to the wall.

Separately, there are plans to erect a statue in memory of Reagan in the center of the Polish capital, Warsaw.



Democrats widely believe that the end of the Cold War was caused by Gorbachev who planned on having his Soviet Union undergo a simultaneous military, economic, and political collapse leading to the USSR's disintegration into numerous separate countries. Apparently, the Poles don't buy into that interpretation of history.

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Science vs. Politicians

A group of Danish scientists suggests that global warming is caused by the Sun.  Their findings, published this week in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, are likely to cause consternation among politicians who would prefer that scientists not interfere with their belief systems.

The theory in brief is that: (a) increased solar magnetic activity helps shield the Earth from cosmic rays; (b) With fewer cosmic rays reaching the Earth's atmosphere, fewer molecules are ionized; (c) With fewer ions, then fewer water clusters nucleate; (d) With fewer water clusters, then fewer clouds form; (e) With less cloud cover, more of the Sun's light reaches Earth causing more warming.  The lead scientist on this project, Henrik Svensmark, says the current warm temperatures could be because we currently "have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years."

Both Jupiter and Mars show indications that they are experiencing global warming, an issue that cannot be explained by excessive use of SUVs but could be explained by the Sun.

UPDATE Feb 13 '07: A House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing on "warming of the planet" scheduled for tomorrow was postponed due snow/ice/freezing rain storm.

Democratic party press releases found not to be the same thing as unbiased reports.

As we all know, MSM editors require that news stories be subjected to many layers of careful fact checkers before they are released. On the other hand, maybe they just accept Democratic party press releases at face value and publish them as the Washington Post and AP were caught doing this week in a story about Iraq pre-war intelligence. See here and here. To its credit, the Washington Post issued a clear correction. The AP, as is typical, silently rewrote some paragraphs in the story.

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When facts become inconvenient, discard them

It is currently an article of faith in the "unbiased" media, such as the Washington Post, that Saddam and Al Qaeda had nothing to do with each other. It wasn't always so. In 2000 and before, the connection was considered obvious, as made clear in this ABC News video from 2000:

The "facts," of course, haven't really changed. What has changed is that any connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda or other terrorists is now seen as helpful the Bush administration. Therefore, the formerly accepted facts must now be false.

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Who is being "confrontational"?

Iran appears to be providing weapons, training, and maybe personnel, to attack us in Iraq. They provide money and supplies to Hezbollah in its fight with Israel (who they see as our proxy). Iran is working on nuclear technology with the seeming goal of 'wiping Israel off the map.' In the Washington Post, Paul R. Pillar expresses his concern, not with Iran, of course, but rather with Pres. Bush:

[T]he Bush administration ... is taking confrontational step.

Iran declared war on the US in 1979 with the hostage taking and continued chants of "Death to America." They continued since then with their support of terrorism, including the Khobar Towers bombing, and continues now in Iraq. So, after a quarter century of Iran's warfare against the US, what concerns Mr. Pillar is that Pres. Bush might be too "confrontational"?

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The rules apply only to other people

Speaker Pelosi has just called for "prompt action" on legislation about global warming. Of course, this is not interfering with her demand for an unpredendently large DoD airplane to fly her where she wants to go. It also won't interfere with the government chauferred SUV (15 mpg) that "carbon-criminal" Pelosi rides in for free.



Did I mention that her vehicle is exempt even federal gasoline taxes? Democrats frequently call for tax increases (Pelosi voted for five increases gas tax in the past six years), yet don't think that they should have to pay those taxes. This is reminiscent of Pres. Clinton's nominees for US Attorney General, the nation's highest law enforcement officer, who themselves hadn't bothered to pay the income taxes that they owed.

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The UN's about-face?

While political activists are noisily trying to silence scientists (see below), the new UN report has quietly done some interesting backtracking, says the WSJ:

Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.

.... We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted.

At present, the UN report is only in draft form, so any of the above can change before publication.

The silencing of dissent

The governor of Oregon wants to fire the state's climatologist, George Taylor, because Taylor asserts that “[m]ost of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations” as opposed to the governor's preferred theory. Mr. Taylor is a faculty member at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences where he manages the Oregon Climate Service, the state repository of weather and climate information, and supervises a staff of ten.



Separately, Delaware's State Climatologist, David R. Legates, is under fire because he believes that some claims about warming and climate shifts are "overblown." What particularly galls left-wing groups, such as Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists, is that some of Legates research is funded by private industry. Dr. David R. Legates is an associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. He is also the Associate State Climatologist and Associate Director of the NASA-sponsored Delaware Space Grant Consortium. He has a B.S. degree in Mathematics and Geography, a M.S. degree in Geography-Climatology and a Ph.D. degree in Climatology all from the University of Delaware.

The Imperial Speakership

Speaker Pelosi has complained that the aircraft provided to her by the military, and as previously used by Speaker Hastert, is not big enough for her needs.



Another issue is whether the Pentagon should supply planes for purely partisan purposes. Rep. Pelosi wanted one to take her to a Democratic weekend retreat in Williamsburg but the Pentagon declined.

Strength through pacifism?

Heather Robinson listened to Sen. Clinton speak to the AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee):

[Sen. Clinton] continued, “I also want to send a message to the rest of the world if [force] becomes necessary that we have exhausted all measures…because we will need friends to stand by us as we stand with Israel as we approach this long war.”

Okay, maybe there’s something to this last part. Then again, look how well the world remembers, respects, and stands by America for our efforts to exhaust all other measures (to the tune of 19 UN resolutions and an embargo for which we were excoriated) to contain Saddam Hussein, prior to the time force became necessary.

So Sen. Clinton's idea is that one makes friends and allies by showing weakness. Ms. Robinson is of course right that this doesn't work in the real world. It is however something that liberals, ex-Pres. Jimmy Carter comes to mind, believe in very strongly.

Even more curious, liberals don't seem to practice this one themselves. How many of dictators that Jimmy Carter thinks he is best-friends with would be the last one to use force, waiting until they have "exhausted all other measures"? In domestic policy, liberals are often championing murderer-rights and trying to reduce punishments. Murderers, such as crips gang co-founder and liberal cause celeb Stanley Tookie Williams, certainly didn't earn the friendship of liberals by being the last to use force.

Quick links to recent press fakery and press bias stories

The New York Times wrote a completely false story about abortion rights in El Salvador. The story claimed that Carmen Climaco had been convicted of having an abortion and sentenced to 30 years. This story was written in collaboration with an abortion advocacy group, IPAS, that used the article for fund-raising. However, the truth was that Ms. Climaco was convicted not of abortion but of infanticide on a born live baby. Several NYT editors continued the cover-up for weeks as later revealed by NYT Public Editor Calame. More here.

A fake NYT story on Saddam's last words is exposed here.

The group think of our "independent journalists" is documented here.

The Washington Post falsely claimed that Iraq Study Group member Clifford D. May was "won over" to the negotiate with Iran and Syria policy suggestion. When the error was pointed out, the newspaper refused to correct it and wouldn't publish Mr May's letter of correction.

The AP misrepresents the flying imam controversy.

The New York Daily News misrepresents a new law on postal mail inspection.

The AP misrepresented the history of the Kyoto treaty to blame Bush.

Another Lebanon fauxtography scandal is exposed.

Pamela Hess of the UPI points out one of the media's key bias problems when covering foreign policy.

KC Johnson reviews the Paula Zahn show (CNN) to demonstrate how uninformed some of the MSM talking head "experts" really are. Sometimes, it is hard to draw the line between bias and simple ignorance.

Across the pond, Gene Miller has noticed that the London Guardian just republished the NY Times story on Carmen Climaco in its original and uncorrected form. They did this even after the NY Times acknowledged the errors.

It appears that the AP and the NY Times were again caught presenting Palestinian propaganda as fact. More here and here.

The Washington Post appears to have been caught misrepresenting the basic facts of the Plame affair.

The German newspaper FAZ got its facts quite wrong on the Jamil Hussein story.

UPDATE 2/24/07: Confederate Yankee has done some research on AP's favorite source, Capt. Jamil Hussein:

Jamil Hussein doesn't exist. He never did, as [Iraqi Ministry spokesman] Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf confirmed.

AP's source is another name entirely, and what's more, AP knows I have the right name, which is why they're clamming up now, instead of issuing heated denials as they have in the past.

Despising your allies

James Taranto spots a parallel between Democrats today and 1974. Sen. Clinton wants to make progress by "threatening" to de-fund the democratically-elected government of Iraq:

"I want to make it very clear that we need to threaten the Iraqi government, that we're going to take money away from their troops, not our troops who still lack body armor and armored vehicles; that we're going to send a clear message -- that we are finished with their empty promises and with this president's blank check."--Hillary Clinton, speech to the Democratic National Committee, Feb. 2007

This is eerily similar to the Democrats approach to "helping" Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970's:

"Last year, some believed that cutting back our military assistance to the South Vietnamese Government would induce negotiations for a political settlement. Instead, the opposite has happened. North Vietnam is refusing negotiations and is increasing its military pressure."--Gerald Ford, "Special Message to the Congress Requesting Supplemental Assistance for the Republic of Vietnam and Cambodia," Jan. 28, 1975

The policy of defunding our allies did not work well: Between the killing fields in Cambodia and the ethnic cleansing (see "boat people") in communist Vietnam, there was a staggering death toll. Applying the same policy to Iraq, where Al Qaeda and Iran are fighting democracy, could be even more devastating.There are other parallels. Jimmy Carter helped remove our ally, the Shah of Iran, from power so that his dictatorship could be replaced with the Islamists who today want nuclear weapons.

UPDATE: The Sanity Squad offers another explanation for Democrats who hope that the enemy wins. at least with respect to Iraq:

“What I can’t understand is why the Democrats are so desperate to surrender in Iraq.”



“To them its not about surrender. It’s about penance. Surrender in Iraq allows them to be victims.”

ADDENDUM: A topic related to despising one's allies is adopting the enemy's ideas as your own. For example, Sen. Kerry's propaganda has an amazing similarity to Al Zawahiri's. The similarity was spotted by Rush Limbaugh ($$).

The politics of inconsistency

"They're going to need a surge of forces," said Sen. Biden.



The Washington Times has identified a dozen Democrat senators, including Senators Kerry and Reid, who have flip-flopped on the issue of a troop surge in Iraq. When these senators supported a surge, it seemed to be pure politics: it allowed them to seem strong while criticizing Pres. Bush. They seem to be displaying no principles or insights other than loyalty to party. James Taranto has tracked some of this as they shift from supporting to opposing surges, sometimes in the same speech. (Curiously, MediaMatters seems to think that this absolves the flip-floppers in some way.)



This contrasts with, say, the speech by Sen. Clinton, noted below, where she seems to follow the "principled" liberal approach to foreign policy.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum provides an example of carefully crafted inconsistent impression left by Sen. Edwards on his approach to the Iran issue. UPDATE II: James Taranto has a still more critical look at Sen. Edwards' inconsistencies.