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August 31, 2004
Thanks, C-SPAN!
C-SPAN presented an antidote last night to this week's dreary Republican National Convention. They ran, uncut and in glorious black & white, Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech at the 1964 convention, held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.
I was just 10 and sitting on the sofa with my parents when I first saw this speech 40 years ago. It still holds up.
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice..."
The great Karl Hess wrote those words...and you sure don't hear that kind of terrific speechmaking anymore.
Posted by Wally Conger at 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Texas Platform for the GOP
Is it "GOP" or "GOD"? In Texas, it's the former. Rep. Ron Paul writes about their platform:
"First and foremost, the Texas GOP is serious about reducing the size and scope of government. The party platform calls for strict congressional adherence to the 10th amendment, and the abolition of all federal agencies not authorized under a strict interpretation of the Constitution."
"When it comes to 2nd amendment rights, the Texas GOP platform is uncompromising. It calls for outright abolition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. It also calls for repeal of all laws infringing upon 2nd amendment rights."
"Education? The Texas GOP platform calls for the abolition of the Department of Education. Taxes? Texas Republicans urge the repeal of the 16th amendment and the abolition of the IRS, an agency the platform says is 'Unacceptable to taxpayers.'"
Posted by George F. Smith at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Air Marshal Law (Or Lack Thereof)
Ho-hum. Another day, another example of government incompetence (in this case, in the "War on Terror"). CNN reports:
The government hired air marshals who had been involved in cases of misconduct and doesn't hold them to a high enough disciplinary standard, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general says.
"Many federal air marshals were granted access to classified information after displaying questionable judgment, irresponsibility and emotionally unstable behavior," Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin said in a report released Monday.
Read the whole thing. The numbers are quite staggering (as were some of the air marshals, who tested "positive for alcohol or illegal drugs while on the job").
And get a load of this whopper:
Federal airport screeners would have been fired or suspended without pay for similar offenses, the report said. "Since air marshals are weapon-carrying law enforcement officers, they can and should be held to a standard of conduct at least as high as that of screeners."
These, of course, are the same screeners who were hired without background checks and some of whom were later found to be stealing from passengers' luggage and allowed to remain on the job. Looks like the air marshals are being held to exactly the same standard of conduct as the screeners.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2004
The Axis of Treason
Check out Justin Raimondo's column today on the Israeli spy (spies?) in the Pentagon. I was going to write about this for STR but figured Justin would do a much better job of it than I could anyway. Here's a choice quote:
When the American people find out what is going on, God help the neocons, because they are going to need it. The arrest and trial of Israel's fifth column in the Pentagon is going to unleash a lot of anger, because it is going to make Americans understand the nature and extent of the treason that entrapped them in Iraq. The very word "neocon" will become a synonym for treason, like Quisling. Moreover, the complexity of this war that we found ourselves in, as the smoke from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon began to clear, will perhaps begin to dawn on us.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2004
Why I'm Never Flying Again...
...and definitely not wearing my gold sequined blazer with ruffled chartreuse shirt, matching herringbone trousers, and silver-buckled blue patent-leathers.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers66.html
I would be more embarrassed by my nationality than by that outfit if I was abroad in the world.
Posted by Patrick Yancey at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2004
The Natives Are Getting Restless
Bush's attempt to shut down 527 ads in the name of campaign finance reform is such a blatant attack on free speech (not to mention yet another flip-flop on the subject) that even the gang at Neocon Review can't stomach it. Here's Ramesh Ponnuru on the subject:
A brief history: 1) I'm against it, and you should vote for me over John McCain on this basis. 2) Some campaign-finance reforms amount to a restriction on free speech, and I'll veto them on that basis. 3) I'll sign the bill, let the judges sort it out. 4) The bill I just signed bans all those George Soros ads. 5) I'm going to sue to get those ads all banned. 6) I'm going to support legislation to ban those ads that I already banned, even though they used to be free speech. I think (5) and (6) are new this week.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
Abu Ghraib: The Prequel
"I think in retrospect had I known the videotape existed, and I'm confident had other state officials known the videotape existed, we would have pushed for harsher action, quicker action," then-Gov. Bush told the local Fox affiliate.
The videotape to which Bush was referring documented abuse of prisoners in Texas prisons. ABC News reports on a situation eerily similar to that at Abu Ghraib, and a Bush administration response to the situation eerily similar to its response to Abu Ghraib. (Link courtesy LewRockwell.com blog.)
Of course, this is all just an election-year plot by the liberal media to bring down our great defender of freedom and democracy, George W. Bush. Ask your favorite neocon if this isn't so.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2004
Remember the First Amendment?
The "conservative," "strict constructionist" president strikes again!
President Bush wants to work with Sen. John McCain to take legal action against "shadowy" outside groups that have been spending millions of dollars on ads criticizing the president and Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry, the White House said Thursday.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush called the GOP senator from Arizona on Thursday morning and said that, if legal action does not work, he wants to pursue legislative action against the groups.
So much for freedom of speech! Of course, Bush is happy that the Swift Boat Veterans ads are running, but he doesn't much care for the MoveOn.org and other Democrat ads out there (which, at least in terms of funding, dwarf the Republican ads). Kerry will be happy to go along with this because the Swift Boat ads are hurting him. Both candidates like shutting down any and all speech that they can't control.
I'm so glad those soldiers in Iraq are fighting for our freedom to criticize the war (as the war backers incessantly remind us).
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
A Billboard Worth Reading
From CNN/Reuters:
A giant clock ticking the cost of the war in Iraq lit up in Times Square Wednesday, making its debut by flashing $134.5 billion.
The amount on the clock will grow at a rate of $177 million a day, $7.4 million an hour and $122,820 per minute, said the advocacy group Project Billboard which put it up.
Naturally, the "party of fiscal responsibilty" will immediately argue that this is the price we must pay for freedom and dismiss the billboard as nothing but a partisan attack. That it is, being funded by a group headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. That doesn't change the facts that the billboard is proclaiming, however.
Now if we could just get billboards to show the minute-by-minute cost of welfare, Medicare, farm subsidies, the CIA, the FBI, Social Security, the Department of Education, HUD, and so on, ad nauseam, we'd really be getting somewhere.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2004
Some Mullings on Mullings
A couple of items from today's Mullings, by Rich Galen, GOP stalwart:
First, commenting on why governors are often elected president but senators seldom are, Galen notes:
One of the reasons Governors are elected President with such frequency is they have the skill set to manage complex systems - such as, in 2004, the world.
Oh, so the president of the United States is supposed to "manage . . . the world," eh? Funny, but I thought his job description was to execute the laws of the U.S., not run the world. You mean to tell me that the world's great champion of democracy governs the entire world based on the votes of only those in the U.S. who bother with the charade of voting? In 2004, unfortunately, Galen is right, but he doesn't recognize what a bad thing it is to be right in this instance.
Second, Galen "mulls" that Maureen Dowd wrote, in reference to John Kerry's failure to address the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, "The Skipper would do well to get a swifter boat."
If Kerry is the Skipper, does that mean John Edwards is Gilligan?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2004
survival is a choice
I recently received an invitation to the "Get Motivated!" seminar coming to my town, which includes a grab bag of speakers: Zig Ziglar, Rudy Giuliani, Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Carter, an NFL coach, etc. Anybody who needs to attend one of these things to get motivated has some problems. These things are like a traveling freak show, only they star famous people instead of bearded ladies.
One of the speakers is Jessica Lynch, whose speech is called "Survival Is a Choice." Here's what the flyer says about it: "Private Jessica Lynch astonished the world when she survived the unthinkable and was rescued from Iraqi capture. You will be amazed as she shares the key strategies that she used to survive and thrive in the most brutal of circumstances.
- How to win against all odds
- Developing the disciplines of a survivor
- How to eliminate fear and amplify confidence
- Resolving crisis: 3 tactics that get results
- How you can solve impossible problems"
Jessica Lynch is how old, 19, 20? What does she know about the world? She was a private first class and a clerk in a supply company who was injured in an accident when her company was ambushed. As I recall, she lost consciousness, was captured, and woke up in a hospital bed where her nurse sang to her. She received humane care from Iraqi doctors and nurses. It was not " the most brutal of circumstances." How did this teach her to "win against the odds" or "develop the disciplines of a survivor"? What kind of survival "choice" did she have to make? The Iraqis tried to turn her over to American troops, but they shot up her ambulance as it approached, thus making her "rescue" necessary.
And why was it "unthinkable" that she survived capture by Iraqis? Do those dark-skinned terrorist heathens cannibalize their captives or something? Compare her treatment to the treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison.
Posted by Rob at 10:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
the smallest state in the world
I read the following about Vatican City in National Geographic's "50 Places of a Lifetime" publication: "Official name: State of Vatican City. Size: Smallest state in the world. The Vatican issues its own stamps and circulates its own currency--the Vatican lira--which is legal tender throughout Italy.....In 1929 the treaty signed by the pope and Benito Mussolini pronounced the Vatican a sovereign state."
And here's what Vicenzo Saudelli, a native Roman, had to say about the place: "The thing that most impresses me about the Vatican is the wealth of the art there--not just the paintings and sculptures, but also the collections of jewels and precious metals--and, equally, the power that collected it....There is so much art that at the same time that I find myself admiring its quantity and quality, I find myself feeling somewhat angry that so much wealth was collected in one place in the name of God, when so many people in history have gone hungry."
Posted by Rob at 09:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What's Good for Washington is Good for Tehran
Preemptive strike fans, here is what your favorite policy has wrought:
Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.
"We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly," Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.
There you have it: Bush proclaims the right of the U.S. to attack any country which might someday be a threat to us, and everyone else takes up the refrain. Aren't you preemptive strike fans proud of yourselves?
It's a great thing that we have troops in Iraq, too, and that neither Bush nor Kerry has any intention of bringing them home. Right?
"The US military presence (in Iraq) will not become an element of strength (for Washington) at our expense. The opposite is true, because their forces would turn into a hostage" in Iranian hands in the event of an attack, he said.
How could anyone doubt the wisdom of our imperial leaders?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2004
Re: Ranting on Rush
Mike, Rush has been totally irrational and incomprehensible since 9/11, and perhaps he's even worse now that he's off his unprescribed meds, which seemed to pacify him.
All the conservative talk hosts have become cheerleaders of Bushevik fascism. They will sometimes criticize Bush for not being hard enough on "terrorists" and immigrants, but that's about it. And they all buy into the delusion that Kerry is a peacenik. I wish! Then at least there'd be a tiny chance that some aspects of US imperialism and police statism would slow down with a Kerry presidency. (I still wouldn't vote for him, of course.)
Remember in the 1990s when about 80% of the time these guys had something insightful to say? Or at least refreshing when compared to the Clintonian media? "The president can't go to war without a declaration! He's spending like a madman, just to buy votes! He's trying to lie America into a police state!"
These observations go double for Bush, though you won't hear Rush seditiously criticizing the Commander in Chief of the Free World. And how dare the "liberals" criticize the president and politicize the war? Even if they disagree, we're supposed to be united behind out Caeser!
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)
Iraq Gets U.S.-Style Election Process
Reports Agence France Presse:
A single list of candidates for Iraq's interim legislature was elected by default after a rival list was withdrawn for failing to adhere to present criteria, an official source said.
Of course, none of this proves that the process was rigged to ensure that Uncle Sam's buddies control the country--right?
Fomer Governing Council spokesman Hamid Kifaey told AFP the elected list had been worked on for nearly three months by the main parties already represented in the interim government.
"We only worked on our list for 24 hours, we had no chance," he said.
Furthermore,
Presiding judge Ahmed al-Arargji had ordered delegates to alter both lists of candidates because neither contained the correct number of women.
We have to meet those quotas, you know!
In the end, neither list met the estrogen quota, but--surprise, surprise--only one was forced out of the running. If you're on the side of the ruling power, the laws don't apply to you.
"It's impossible to build Iraq in this way ... representatives of (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi and other officials want a parliament that just roots for them and not for the Iraqi people," [Nagi al-Salihi, head of a group called Free Iraqi Civilians and Officers,] told reporters.
Amen, brother.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
Planet of the Apes Explained
In two excellent columns, Gary North convincingly argues how a Just War with the objective of limiting the carnage to the combatants is closer to the teachings of Christianity than Total War and dropping atomic bombs on cities. For me, it also resolved the conundrum of the movie "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," where the apes' antagonists - a community of underground dwelling mutated humans - worshiped a nuclear missile. Granted, I was around seven years old when I saw this classic from 1970. But my newly minted brain could not fathom how a group of people could become confused enough to worship a bomb. Kudos to Mr. North and screenwriter Paul Dehn for spelling it out for me. I do agree with the maxim "better late than never."
Posted by Robert Jackson at 01:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2004
Another Rant on Rush
Why? Because I can--and because it bugs me that I used to think this guy was a (at least semi-)serious conservative.
On Tuesday's show, a female caller from Punta Gorda, Florida, expressed her gratitude for the president's apperance in the area after the hurricane. After saying that she "was like, 'Praise God, I am so glad he's coming,'" when she heard Bush was on his way, the conversation continued as follows:
RUSH: But have you heard anybody say who was there that President Bush impeded or got in the way of or delayed the recovery effort by showing up?
CALLER: No way. I think because of his attention that we've gotten a recovery effort so organized in such a short period of time because of his interest and because of Jeb Bush's interest, and the fact that they're brothers. Our governor was able to call his brother, the president. We have got more people down there helping us right now, you know, getting the lines back up. I mean every single power line is down, every one of them. You know, there's no water. There's nothing. And we have got the most organized recovery effort going right now, and I believe that that's because President Bush loves us, cares about us, and cared enough to come down --
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: -- and see it firsthand. I mean, he didn't sit in his office and wait for someone to say, "Oh, you know, you need to go down there."
RUSH: Wait. You didn't have any doubt that he would show up, did you? I mean this is something he couldn't miss.
CALLER: No --
Now we all know that every time Bill Clinton showed up at a disaster site, Rush would excoriate him (and rightly so) for feigning to care about the victims and using the disaster for political purposes; but when it's Bush, Rush agrees with the caller that he really cares about the people he's visiting--people he doesn't know from Adam (Clymer).
In fact, Rush picked up his old punching bag and started beating him around again:
RUSH: The interesting thing to me, the interesting thing to me is that Kerry didn't go, I thought he would go. As I said if it were Clinton, Clinton would have been out there on the beach acting like Moses trying to stop the hurricane from coming ashore. That's where Clinton would have been. Bush waits, lets the governor handle this the first couple days then goes down there.
And this is the guy whose bumper quote says, "With Rush, principle still matters." Riiiiiight.
By the way, Rush also says the war in Iraq is actually a war against Iran, with Iraq as a proxy much as Grenada, Nicaragua, et al., were mere proxies for the Soviet Union.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)
Hurricane Charley Is the Least of Their Worries
It didn't take long. The vultures are already circling about the carcass of storm-ravaged Florida.
"Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist filed lawsuits Tuesday against two hotels he said engaged in price gouging and other unfair practices as people fled Hurricane Charley," reports CNN.
Oh, heaven forfend that a business should charge the price the market will bear for a product in short supply! Better to force businesses to keep their prices at pre-disaster levels and thus end up with an even worse shortage than otherwise would occur. (See this article for a more thorough explanation of why "price gouging" is a good thing.)
You have to love this paragraph from the CNN report:
"Further penalties can come from the state's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, which provides for civil penalties of $10,000 per violation or $15,000 for violations against a senior citizen or handicapped person."
So tell me: Why is charging a senior citizen or handicapped person an "exorbitant" price 50 percent worse than charging the same price to a young or able-bodied person? Answer: Seniors and handicapped people have powerful lobbies.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2004
Abu Ghraib Claims Another Victim
When news of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison broke, Army Spc. Joseph Darby's family said they were proud the soldier revealed photos documenting the mistreatment. But they never expected their own friends and neighbors would turn on them for what they considered a brave disclosure.
In a note to his commander, Darby, 24, described the incidents and photographs he had seen, depicting the abuse by people in his own unit, the 372nd Military Police Company.
"We did not receive the response I thought we would. People were, they were mean, saying he was a walking dead man, he was walking around with a bull's-eye on his head. It was scary," Bernadette Darby, Joseph Darby's wife, said today on ABC News' Good Morning America.
This is what you get when a people has been trained to believe that their government's actions are always good and that anyone their government decides is deserving of punishment is therefore deserving of punishment. It is clearly a sign of a barbarian mentality.
Read the whole story here (and note that Darby is "still in protective military custody at an undisclosed location").
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:12 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2004
A Perfect Sentence
(by Nicholas Strakon): "...or maybe not. Leo Morris, an editorial writer for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, is a hemi-demi-semi-libertarian, and not too long ago he penned some urgings in favor of a state-tax amnesty (an amnesty from late-payment penalties, that is). They prompted a letter from a reader, published August 3, taking Morris to task for his liberality. The letter reads in part: "If tax cheats [sic] pay now with an amnesty, it proves they could have paid earlier. So they were deliberately not paying."
I detect a wee non sequitur there, of course, but that's not the important part. For a little later comes this perfect sentence -- perfect from the heuristic standpoint, I mean: "Not paying your taxes is stealing from the government which, ultimately, is you and me."
See how that elegantly concise formulation works? When you fail to surrender, at gunpoint, some of your honestly earned money to the gang calling itself "government," =you're= stealing from =them!= At the same time, one of the most grievous aspects of that "theft" is that you're really stealing from you and me, because under the democraziac ideology, somehow =we= are the government.
Hmmm. Perfectly heuristic it is, in succinctly demonstrating the totalitarian premises that are mother's milk to us now, but upon reflection I'm afraid it's less than perfectly logical. If it's really you and I, instead of that distant robber gang, who are the government, how in the world can we steal from ourselves? What if you kept all of what you earned and I kept all of what I earned? Where would the theft reside in that? Maybe there's some other guy, standing behind a door somewhere, who's =not= a part of the government; if we could just figure out who he is, maybe we could gang up on him and rob him, while warning him against theft.
This whole democracy deal turns out to be more complicated than I thought."
Reposted by permission from The Last Ditch at www.thornwalker.com/ditch © 2004 WTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.
Posted by Rob at 03:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 14, 2004
Bad Company
I stopped by EmpireWatch.org, today, and this is what the publisher had to say about victims of Hurricane Charley:
"Good! a Little taste of what it's like living in occupied by Iraq. Florida as well! Fitting punishment for a racist and corrupt state. Too bad Charley didn't snatch Jeb away and off to Oz!"
and:
"....ameriKKKa must be destroyed and that millions of ameriKKKans deserve death. Ohh... Probably at least 70% One positive FACT is that most revolutionaries are NOT fat like your average, fearful. bigoted ameriKKKan. They will be able to kill off the evil better than the evil will be able to defend itself."
Even an extremist like me considers that "over the top." The publisher shares the same barbaric attitude of the State and people he claims to deplore. This idea of collective punishment (think Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is the perverted creation of an all-powerful government and its jingoistic supporters.
About a week ago I discovered this site had republished one of my STR columns without my permission. I contacted the publisher letting him know it wasn’t a big problem but to please have the courtesy in the future to first ask permission. Now, however, I’m asking him to remove my article, entirely.
Posted by Roger Young at 08:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2004
Puppets Become Real Men
"Several Iraqi officials working within the interim government have resigned in protest of the US-led assault on Najaf and Kut," reports the banned-from-Baghdad Aljazeera. (Link courtesy Antiwar.com.)
"Sixteen of Najaf's 30-member provincial council resigned in protest at the US-led assault on the Najaf as fighting between the al-Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr and US occupation forces entered its eighth day.
"'We have decided to resign due to what has befallen Najaf and all of Iraq from the hasty US invasion and bombardment of Najaf,' the council said in a statement to the press."
Whoa! What's this? Iraqis with principles? Either that, or they're afraid of what will happen to them for collaborating with the hated Americans.
Get a load of this quote from the resigning deputy governor: "I resign from my post denouncing all the US terrorist operations that they are doing against this holy city" (emphasis mine).
With comments like that, I think these guys are marked men no matter what they do. They've probably weighed the situation and decided they are better off throwing in their lot with their fellow Iraqis than with the Americans, who seem to be incompetent enough not to be able to exact revenge on them.
If only we had politicians here who put their own country and people ahead of their political ambitions . . .
Posted by Mike Tennant at 02:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2004
From Conservative to Liberal in Three Paragraphs
Rush Limbaugh, commenting on John Kerry's troubles with his flip-flops on Iraq, began reading this column from Steve Chapman. At first he announced that Chapman was a liberal in the Kerry camp. Then he started reading.
John Kerry is a man of great personal courage, which served him well as a naval officer in the Vietnam War. But the man who takes the inaugural oath next January won't be asked to lead a bayonet charge. A more vital quality in a president is moral courage. And trying to detect evidence of that attribute in Kerry is like expecting Mikhail Baryshnikov to show up at the county fair.
"I'm not so sure he is a liberal now," quoth the Doctor of Democracy. He came to this conclusion because, of course, only a conservative would criticize Kerry for a lack of "moral courage." Then he continued reading.
The latest proof that Kerry's backbone is made of goose down was his statement that even if he had known what he knows now about Iraq's imaginary weapons of mass destruction
"Oh, he's starting to sound like a liberal now," added El Rushbo.
and mythical partnership with Al Qaeda
"Yeah, he's definitely a liberal."
he still would have voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," he said.
The Iraq war is shaping up to be the greatest American foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. It has killed nearly 1,000 American soldiers and wounded more than 6,000, while tying down 140,000 troops whose numbers are inadequate for the challenge. Its price tag has reached $150 billion, with more costs to come.
Now Rush had definite proof that Chapman is a liberal. Only a left-winger would dare to criticize Bush's war to this extent. Conveniently, he skipped over the next sentence with some comment that it was just more antiwar stuff:
The war and occupation have alienated our friends, inflamed anti-Americanism in the Arab world and diverted us from the war on Al Qaeda.
In the Republican/Democrat world of Limbaugh and his ilk, there are only good conservatives who support the war and bad liberals who oppose it. If Rush had bothered to look at Chapman's archives, he would have discovered that Chapman is anything but a liberal. If anything, he qualifies as a libertarian or perhaps a very conservative conservative. He used to be carried on TownHall.com, for example, which bills itself as a "conservative news and information" site. (One wonders if he wasn't dropped from the site after February 3, 2003, because of his constant criticism of the Bush administration with regard to both domestic and foreign policy.) However, looking at Chapman's full range of columns wouldn't do. The syllogism is: (a) Only liberals oppose the war; (b) Chapman opposes the war; therefore, (c) Chapman is a liberal. It's very convenient but, unfortunately for the neocons, not true in the least.
(Update: Here's the link to the transcript of Rush's comments. Scroll down slightly more than halfway to read it. I didn't have Limbaugh's exact words in my original entry, but the essence was there.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
August 06, 2004
The Very First WMD
Fifty-nine years ago today, the very first WMD was employed--against an innocent civilian population. The same government that nuked two Japanese cities, killing around 200,000 people, today claims the right to determine who shall be permitted to possess WMD.
Ralph Raico has an excellent piece on the subject today at LewRockwell.com. (It's actually an excerpt from a chapter he wrote for a book.) My choice for best quote from this article comes from Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's chief of staff:
"[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
Tell that to all those "conservatives" who stick up for Truman.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2004
Life Is Too Fleeting to Waste on Politics
DOUG THOMPSON, CAPITOL HILL BLUE - Since returning to the Blue Ridge Mountains earlier this year, we’ve found the intoxication of country living too much to resist. . .
Long past time for a change. Long overdue. The urban life no longer appeals. The hustle and bustle of politics bores. So do those who lie and die by the political sword.
Politics is a one-dimensional world, dominated by extremists. Extremists live to hate. Increasingly, those who follow these zealots are shallow lemmings who lack both the will and the capacity to think for themselves. Anger drives them and they are controlled not by love of country but adherence to party dogma. . .
Life in the country tempers anger. One cannot stop and gaze at the beauty of fog hanging on a mountaintop on a crisp August morning and feel anger. Anger doesn’t work here. It has no place. . .
I haven't had anything to do with the day-to-day management of Capitol Hill Blue for some time. Terry Hampton and Bill McTavish take care of the site and both are accomplished journalists. Now I cut the final umbilical cord. . .
Life is too fleeting to waste by getting mad or expending energy on hate. I owe what little time I have left on this earth to the woman I love and the peaceful quality of life we have found here in the mountains. . .
And, along the way, I find that I really don’t care what George W. Bush has done, what John Kerry has charged and who said what on Meet the Press.
Posted by Rob at 02:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2004
The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush
Here's one of those articles to send to your conservative, Bush-loving friends and neighbors. It's written by a conservative in a very sober, matter-of-fact style, and is called "The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush." Here's the concluding paragraph, which (as it states) summarizes the whole article very nicely:
To sum up: Anything beyond the limited powers expressly delegated by the people under the Constitution to their government for certain limited purposes creates the danger of tyranny. We stand there now. For an American conservative, better one lost election than the continued empowerment of cynical men who abuse conservatism through an exercise of power unrestrained by principle through the compromise of conservative beliefs. George W. Bush claims to be conservative. But based upon the unwholesome intrusion into domestic life and personal liberty of his administration and the local governments who imitate it, George W. Bush is no conservative, no friend of limited, constitutional government—and no friend of freedom. The Republic would be better served by his defeat in November.
(Link courtesy LewRockwell.com.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 02, 2004
Man Arrested for Writing "Suicide Bomb" While on Airplane
A Japanese man flying to Ohio was arrested after he was seen writing down the words "suicide bomb," but he was released without charge after explaining that it was an impromptu English exercise.
The 60-year-old man told investigators he came across the words in a newspaper and wanted to look up their meaning, police spokeswoman Alice Casanova said.
And if that isn't ridiculous enough for you, check out this helpful advice:
Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Andrea McCauley said travelers need to be mindful of how they behave on airplanes because potential security threats are treated very seriously.
"We caution people not to write about bombs because if they're going on vacation, their travel plans will be disrupted," she said.
Yes, folks, the mere presence of words is cause for arrest here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)
Fighting Terror by Attacking. . .South America?
Days after 9/11, a senior Pentagon official lamented the lack of good targets in Afghanistan and proposed instead U.S. military attacks in South America or Southeast Asia as "a surprise to the terrorists," according to a footnote in the recent 9/11 Commission Report. The unsigned top-secret memo, which the panel's report said appears to have been written by Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith, is one of several Pentagon documents uncovered by the commission which advance unorthodox ideas for the war on terror. The memo suggested "hitting targets outside the Middle East in the initial offensive" or a "non-Al Qaeda target like Iraq," the panel's report states. U.S. attacks in Latin America and Southeast Asia were portrayed as a way to catch the terrorists off guard when they were expecting an assault on Afghanistan.
Notice that Feith called Iraq a "non-Al Qaeda target," in sharp contrast to the pronouncements of the administration leading up to, and following, the war. Still, the fact that Feith remains a member in good standing of the administration (after this and many other debacles) is reason enough to toss the bums out in November. Unfortunately, the only likely alternative isn't much better.
(Link courtesy Antiwar.com.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)