Monday, April 21, 2008

Tomorrow's Primary Election

Two Democrats are on tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary election ballot:

  • A rich, arrogant, elitist, socialist extremist "buppie", and
  • A very rich, arrogant, elitist, socialist extremist "yuppie".
Maybe the superdelegates can save the party and give the nomination to someone at least a little more rational, like maybe Al Gore.


I said before that neither of these two is worth even considering throwing a vote away for. It's still true. I'd really like to see both lose.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Stark Contrast

James Taranto again.

A Clear Difference
• “Bush Embraces Pope Benedict XVI”--headline, ABCNews.com, April 15
• “Carter Embraces Hamas Official”--headline, Associated Press, April 16
No comment is necessary, but the stark contrast between human beings and Jimmy Carter cries out for notice.

New Mexico Travel Alert

James Taranto cites an AP headline (with his own headline above it) and links to the story:

Stay Away From Santa Fe
US Issues New Mexico Travel Alert” --headline, Associated Press, April 14
Ironic.

Friday, April 11, 2008

San Francisco Democrat COWARDS

I know — I'm being redundant. But there have been two outstanding examples in the last couple of days.

Two days ago, the city government of San Francisco decided (like most cowards) that they couldn't stand to allow free speech to anyone who doesn't agree with their approved view. So they staged an “Olympic-sized fake-out”, changing the relay route to avoid the human rights protestors so they could have the pretense (though not the reality) of a legitimate Olympic torch relay. Pretense without reality — reminds me of a show trial. Even the ACLU objected: “Gavin Newsom runs San Francisco the way the premier of China runs his country - secrecy, lies, misinformation, lack of transparency and manipulating the populace. He did it so China can report they had a great torch run.” They even skipped the closing ceremony, and quickly shipped the torch off to Argentina. (Zombie got pictures and described the scene for us.)


Meanwhile, San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi demonstrates abject cowardice and incredible dishonesty in single-handedly killing the free trade agreement with Colombia — even after it was renegotiated to accommodate the Democrats' demands. “Democrats say it would have failed anyway”, but that’s utter BS. If it were true, there would be a vote and the protectionist Democrats would kill the agreement. Instead, the Democrats' leadership uses an underhanded trick, and break their own word, to prevent the agreement's ratification. To get this done, and pay off those who have bribed supported her, Pelosi has had to to trash her own Ways and Means Committee chairman, Charlie Rangel, “a free-trader who has been trying to strike a deal with the Administration but keeps getting rolled by Ms. Pelosi.”


These people make me ashamed to be a Democrat.


UPDATE ON PELOSI: The Washington Times quotes Pelosi as saying “We believe it is possible to bring the Colombia free-trade agreement to the floor under the proper circumstance. But first, we need to address the worsening economy in our country.” This is disingenuous, at best. Pelosi in her statement “reiterated that she is blocking the Colombia trade vote to obtain ‘leverage’ in negotiations”. But she and her friends have also claimed the blockage was because of attacks on trade unionists — so, naturally, they’re taking action against the government that has reduced those attacks by 80%! These present a choice between extortion and fraud.


The reality may be a little different. In place of (or in addition to) one or both of those reasons are likely to be one or more of the following:


1. The Democrats’ leadership is (a) adamantly opposed to free trade or (b) bought and paid for. The extent of this is captured by the Wall Street Journal in talking about Pelosi’s Bad Faith:

The Democratic Party's protectionist make-over was completed yesterday, when Nancy Pelosi decided to kill the Colombia free trade agreement. Her objections had nothing to do with the evidence and everything to do with politics, but this was an act of particular bad faith. It will damage the economic and security interests of the U.S. while trashing our best ally in Latin America.

The Colombia trade pact was signed in 2006 and renegotiated last year to accommodate Democratic demands for tougher labor and environmental standards. Even after more than 250 consultations with Democrats, and further concessions, including promises to spend more on domestic unemployment insurance, the deal remained stalled in Congress. Apparently the problem was that Democrats kept getting their way.

So on Monday, President Bush submitted the bill to Congress over liberal protests, which, under a bargain between Congress and the White House for trade promotion authority, mandated an up-or-down vote within 90 days.


2. Pelosi is doing Hugo Chavez’ bidding. The Latin American media have picked up on this aspect strongly, calling her historic move to block the free trade agreement the “Hugo Chavez Rule” and painting Pelosi herself as a Hugo Chavez lackey.


3. Pelosi is so fixated on damaging the Bush Administration for the Democrats’ political advantage that she is, at best, uncaring about damage to the United States. Indeed, the point man on Colombia for Pelosi and the Democrats was recently caught dealing with the Colombian FARC Marxist/Communist terrorists. That’s the guerilla group being funded by Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chavez. And that may not be all.


Pelosi’s actions are extremely damaging. They have implications far broader than this specific agreement:

For good measure, the double-cross dismantles the only process that allows any Administration to conduct good-faith negotiations with foreign nations. No one is going to take the U.S. at its word if Congress is going to change the rules when it has second thoughts and renege.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Albright's Admissions

Madeline Albright made a couple of stunning admissions in a speech at the University of Florida late last month. She claims the Iraq war is a bigger mistake than Viet Nam. But she also makes a pair of stunning admissions. She says

"The American forces are both the solution and the problem," she said. "They are like fly paper that attracts everybody who hates us."
This is an admission that "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" is a valid strategy. She also said

"I think one might say that Iran has actually won the war in Iraq."
This is one of the few admissions I can recall from the left side of the aisle that our principal adversary in Iraq for the last five years has been Iran. (You know — the one who has been providing the weapons and money and direction to the insurgents to kill our soldiers there.)

I think Madeline Albright is about to disappear. She has committed a cardinal sin — she has accidentally told the truth.

America's Remaining Racists

Racism doesn't look like Bull Connor these days. Now it is practiced in a much more genteel manner — and often by projection. An easy way to summarize some of this racism is through James Taranto's comments:

A racist dog whistle, then, is a speech that sounds innocuous to the normal human ear but that racist "dogs" are able to recognize as an appeal to them.

What does it tell us about Matt Stoller that he is able to detect whether the "racist dog whistle" has been blown? ...

But you can see where all this is going. If Obama is the Democratic nominee, the liberal message will be that a vote for McCain is a vote for racism.

This approach by people like Stoller is, itself, racist. It is of a piece with charging Geraldine Ferraro with racism for making a simple observation. (Let's face it, the views and proposals of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards are nearly indistinguishable. The differences among them are in personality and in identity politics. Hillary Clinton gets extra votes because of those guilty liberals who want to see a woman — any woman — in the White House. Barack Obama gets extra votes because of those blacks and guilty white liberals who want to see a black man — any black man — in the White House. John Edwards has no identity politics group to help him, loses votes to both the others, and has to drop out early because he is a white male.)

Taranto continues:

If McCain wins, liberal mythmakers will insist it is because America is a racist country, and their logic will be as airtight as Stoller's and Yglesias's. Whether for political reasons or out of their own moral vanity, those who claim they want "racial reconciliation" are all too eager to practice divisive, if stupid, politics.
I would say these people are racist liberal mythmakers, operation out of political reasons or their own racist moral vanity. Continuing:
This comes on the heels of suggestions from various commentators, including Time's Joe Klein, that the Democrats shove Obama and Hillary Clinton aside and nominate Gore for president — because, we guess, favoring a white guy isn't racist or sexist if you're a Democrat.

Recent events like these have demonstrated to me that racism is much more alive in America than I have wanted to believe. Racism in America is alive and well among the skinheads, in Black churches, and among the liberals in the Democratic Party.

Disconnected From Reality

"I think that those people [global warming skeptics] are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat." — Al Gore, in an interview with 60 Minutes, March 30 (cited in Best of the Web, March 28.



This is the guy many are coming to expect to be the Democrats' "knight in shining armor", the only man who can save the Democrats from themselves — and from nominating either a woman who wouldn't know the truth if it bit her on the biceps or a man whose mentors are anti-American racists. No wonder Howard Dean wants the race over! Then, he hopes, the press would stop getting pointed at damaging information.