29 July 2005

Rice sells out to the State Department

I have to say that this report about Condi Rice leaning on Israel to give arms and ammunition to the Palestinian Authority and “exercise restraint in responding to terror” is extremely disheartening. IMHO everyone, except the terrorists, would be better off if Israel responded to terror the same way any other nation would. Otherwise we are enablying terrorists and rewarding them for their violence.

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27 July 2005

Selling out to the extreme middle of the roadsters

[source]

The subhead on this article

Senator [Clinton] Accused of Siding With Centrists

Just think about that for a moment. Amid the endless calls to “bipartisanship” and “moderation”, we now have accusatory headlines about siding with centrists? Are we in full melt down mode now?

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Fighting the last election

[source]

the dilemma Democratic politicians face trying to satisfy energized activists on the left — many of whom are hungering for party leaders to advance a more full-throated agenda and more aggressively confront President Bush — while also cultivating the moderate Democrats and independents whose support is crucial to winning elections.

Interesting dilemma, but Sandy P. asks the key question that doesn’t seem to occur to Old Media:

Why are they confronting W?

He can’t run again, unless they know something we don’t.

My guess would be because the Progressives don’t believe in anything except “Bush is the Font of All Evil”.

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26 July 2005

Oh, Canada!

[source, source]

The funny part:

Carolyn Parrish, the former Liberal MP who stomped on a doll bearing the likeness of U.S. President George W. Bush and was kicked out of caucus for her anti-American statements, is negotiating with senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and the party to return to the Liberal fold.

The pathetic part:

True to form, Ms. Parrish couldn’t resist a little demonstration of her outspokenness in yesterday’s interview, criticizing Canada’s new Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, for his recent comments. She called him “dangerous” and a “testosterone-filled general,” and added that “somebody should put a clamp on his mouth.”

Ms. Parrish, a self-described “peacenik,” said she was particularly offended by Gen. Hillier’s aggressive comments this month that the job of Canadian soldiers is “to be able to kill people.”

He had been speaking to reporters about the Canadian troop deployment to Kandahar, where the troops will target terrorist “murderers and scumbags.”

“They talk about me being outspoken,” she said. “I’m speaking on my own behalf. This man is purporting to speak on behalf of the government, and I think he’s dangerous.

“I’m totally offended by him. .…. We are also not a country that is going to easily throw away 100 years of peacekeeping reputation and noble reputation in the world by a testosterone-filled general, and I think somebody should put a clamp on his mouth.”

She has complained to Defence Minister Bill Graham about the general’s comments.

Where to begin? Does Canada’s “100 years of peacekeeping reputation” include our participation in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, Gulf War I and the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan? Like many on her side of the aisle, Parrish displays, again, her nearly complete historical illiteracy. Which, of course, makes her a perfect match for a party headed by a PM who thinks we stormed the beaches of Norway on D-Day and a former Defence Minister who can’t quite grasp the difference between Vimy Ridge and Vichy France.

That’s the same thing that always strikes me, that moonbats like this can make such easily refuted statements. Of course, if they had some grasp on reality they’d not be moonbats, would they?

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25 July 2005

And the beating continues

[source, source]

Among prominent liberal groups, only abortion rights advocates and far-left groups such as MoveOn.org are now opposed to [SCOTUS nominee John] Roberts outright. Others — including some of the most influential environmental, civil rights, and consumer advocacy groups — are critical of him but say they will reserve judgment for now. [emphasis added]

I do believe I see a “far-left” in that paragraph. I had thought that only groups to the left of Pol Pot got that label in Old Media, but there it is, applied to MOVE-ON. In the Boston Globe no less, which is normally liberal even for a major American newspaper. Is there a pattern here?

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HRC moves on

[source, source]

Senator Hillary Clinton has confided to associates that she intends to vote FOR Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. […]

With her support of Roberts, Clinton ignores pressure from the reactionary-activist wing of the Democrat party.

“She is simply doing what is right for the country, not MOVEON.ORG,” the Clinton insider explained.

The interesting bit here is the off-hand dismissal of MOVE-ON and the implicit statement that what MOVE-ON wants is not good for the country. That’s what you do to fringe groups like the Buchanites, not major fund raisers.

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22 July 2005

Playing Kyoto hot potato

[source, source]

A team of officials responsible for a key part of the Kyoto implementation plan has been decimated by resignations, raising questions about whether insiders believe the plan can work …

“The key people that we dealt with are almost all gone,” said John Bennett of the Sierra Club. “They had the expertise and the calculations and had negotiated with industry for a couple of years. They have to all be replaced.”

Natural Resources officials won’t speak on the record, but some privately mock Environment Canada’s Kyoto plan as little more than a fiction filled with soft numbers and wishful thinking

Given the usual imperviousness of the Left and the Greens to actual facts, the situation for the Kyoto Protocol must be stunningly dire.

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21 July 2005

Ooooh, that's gotta hurt!

[source]

[AUSTRALIAN] PRIME MIN. HOWARD: Could I start by saying the prime minister and I were having a discussion when we heard about it [bombing in London]. My first reaction was to get some more information. And I really don’t want to add to what the prime minister has said. It’s a matter for the police and a matter for the British authorities to talk in detail about what has happened here.

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it’s given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia’s involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn’t have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq — a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations — when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Now I don’t know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can’t put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I’ve cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

[UK] PRIME MIN. BLAIR: And I agree 100 percent with that. (Laughter.)

As wonderfully satisfying as that verbal trouncing is, is there any possibility that a single journalist will understand it or learn anything from it? I expect the same stupid questions next time, and the time after, and the time after…

P.S. Why can’t on of President Bush’s handlers set him up to say something like this? It’s not like he’d have to wait long for the opportunity.

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18 July 2005

Oooh, that's gotta hurt

[source, source]

[Irshad Manji] recalls asking Mohamed al-Hindi, political leader of Islamic Jihad, where the Koran glorifies martyrdom; he insisted it was there, but even after looking up books and phoning colleagues, he couldn’t find one reference. “His translator suggested I better go if I wanted to leave alive,” she recalls. “I asked why he had even given an interview, and the translator said, ‘Oh, he assumed you would be just another dumb westerner’.”

I think we can see who are the ignorant and parochial people in this little story.

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You can't make this stuff up

[source, source, source]

Making the rounds of the district’s 12 schools I found competition everywhere.

In a 10th-grade English class, I found kids writing essays on citizenship for a local bar association’s contest. Moving on to a middle school, I saw seventh-grade science students drawing posters for a county humane society contest in hopes of winning stuffed animals. That afternoon, I watched third-graders hop around a gym as part of a national charity’s pledge drive. The kids who hopped the longest won crayons and coloring books.

When I counted up the number of competitive activities in classrooms — more than 200 in one school year — I knew it was time to put on the brakes. It wasn’t easy, but with the school board’s support and principals’ cooperation, we reclaimed the instructional program. Competitive activities were still allowed, but they were held after school for students who wanted to sign up.

As noted, this is not a parody. The article is filled with claims about the evils of competion, not one of which seems to bear any relationship to reality. For instance, that competition “Does not motivate students to do their best”. Clearly this person has never talked to student athletes, who claim quite distinctly that they can’t get good times except in a competitive race.

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It's treason to me

[source]

Never say we aren’t willing to help an editorial subject in distress, and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm clearly needs some friendly advice.

Last month the state legislature buried the Democratic Governor’s top legislative priority, a grandiose proposal to raise taxes on insurance companies, banks and thousands of small businesses that private studies said would have cost up to 20,000 jobs. Ms. Granholm’s plan was widely criticized, including in these columns in March and in an op-ed article on the opposite page last Thursday by state legislator Rick Baxter, a Republican, and Hillsdale College Professor Gary Wolfram.

Ms. Granholm was not pleased, going so far as to denounce the op-ed as “treasonous for the state of Michigan.” The authors’ high crime? Exposing Michigan as a high tax state and criticizing Ms. Granholm for wanting to raise taxes. Her choice of words was no inadvertent slip of the tongue, by the way—a Howard Dean-like temporary loss of sanity. The Governor has used the “t” word repeatedly and has even suggested that Mr. Baxter “should be removed from office.”

At least Granholm wasn’t questiong Baxter’s patriotism, but only his loyalty to the person and policies of Governor Granholm. After all, we can’t have members of the Duma legislature engaged in counter-revolutionary activities.

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14 July 2005

BBC does what it does best

[source, source]

But for all the warped values which led to such changes, the edits merely affected the BBC’s own words. What the corporation did to the Prime Minister’s words in the House of Commons on Monday, however, was simply shocking. Mr Blair told MPs this: “It seems probable that the attack was carried out by Islamist extremist terrorists…” The BBC’s report of Mr Blair’s statement is a wilful distortion: “Those responsible…, probably Islamic extremists, would be hunted down.” The Prime Minister referred to them specifically as terrorists. But the BBC deliberately left out that most important word.

And it did not even report Mr Blair’s conclusion: “Together, we will ensure that though terrorists can kill, they will never destroy the way of life we share and which we value, and which we will defend with the strength of belief and conviction so that it is to us and not to the terrorists, that victory will belong.”

I should be outraged, but I’m not even surprised at this. The British chattering classes have been enamored of the caliphascists for years, if not decades. The real question is, is there in fact a point to which the BBC can sink that is so low that the British people won’t put up with it? I’m not hopeful on that score.

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One man's religious text is another man's hate speech?

[source, source]

A delegation of Muslim leaders and senior scholars met [UK] Home Office Minister Paul Goggins this week to seek clarification on the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill. […]

Recent confusion regarding freedoms to deliver khutbahs and to recite and quote from the Qur’an and ahadith had raised concerns in the community that dawah and propagatory practices may be curtailed under the new legislation.

The Minister assured the Muslim community that there was nothing in the bill that would prevent scholars from delivering their sermons or from reciting from the Qu’ran and ahadith.

[…]

The minister said, it would be difficult to exempt scriptures because there is likelihood that extreme groups like the BNP may use verses of the Qur’an to incite hatred against the Muslim community. Therefore, the very purpose of the Act would be defeated.

If Islam is truly a religion of peace,why would Islamic leaders / scholars in the UK be concerned that the Qur’an might be banned under a law prohibiting inciting religious hatred? Note that even the UK ministers agree with that assessment that quoting from the Qur’an can be incitement to religous hatred. If, of course, the quoting is done by non-Muslims.

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13 July 2005

Old Media credibility watch

[source, source]

From today’s Corrections:

Live 8 Critic’s Notebook - In the Critic’s Notebook by Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn that ran in Section A on July 3, the term “ultraconservative” was added by a copy editor to describe Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. Hilburn, before interviewing O’Reilly about the social activism of U2’s Bono, had told the commentator he would not label him in a subjective way. The adjective that was inserted did not reflect that agreement or the critic’s views.

Oh yes, how much I yearn to have my own copy editor to insert biased language in to my posts and make me look like an idiot and a liar.

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Defining valid targets

Backspin notes one of several articles (two recent) that provide a timeline of caliphascist attacks, while completely ommitting any reference to attacks in Israel. I suppose it’s not relevant because wasn’t aimed at the ordinary working class or Republican voters.

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We have our facts, we don't need any lessons from reality

[source]

“A government memo published in the Sunday Times last weekend warned that a loose group of ‘extremist recruiters’ sympathetic to the al Qaeda network was targeting susceptible young Muslims, especially those with technical and professional qualifications in engineering and computers. Most did not have police records, it said.

On Tuesday, Iqbal Sacranie, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the BBC he had received the latest news from the police with ‘anguish, shock and horror.’”

The Post report tries to cover for the inane “Iraq is at fault” caucus by noting that:

“Still, the profile of the suspects suggested by investigators fit long-standing warnings by security experts that the greatest potential threat to Britain could come from second-generation Muslims, born here but alienated from British society and perhaps from their own families, and inflamed by Britain’s participation in the Iraq war.” [emphasis added]

There is no evidence offered for this astonishing assertion that the Iraq war has anything to do with the massacre. Zero! And none is needed for the true-believers in the MSM. Is this “reporting?” Or cheerleading for an alternative reality where writers feel free to ascribe to murderers their motives?

[…] I can find no mention of Iraq anywhere in the English press.

But there it is, in the Washington Post “inflamed by Britain’s participation in the Iraq war” without a shred of evidence to support it, but propped up by an ideology that refuses to consider any theory except those that condemn Bush.

Because blaming Bush means not having to do anything about the problem.

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12 July 2005

An indication of some dim awareness of the real world in Old Media?

[source]

Reader zscore reports: “I note with amusement that SBS had scheduled the BBC’s “The Power of Nightmares” to start this week, which argues that the terrorist threat to Britain is mythical. It was shown in Britain earlier this year, and sounds like an extreme case of moonbattery.

“Suddenly SBS has pulled the series, and replaced it with WWII documentaries broadcast only a few weeks ago. I wonder why.”

Probably just one of those mixups where the intern lost the tapes because she was distracted by the rug burns.

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11 July 2005

You can't expect me to keep track of every single little word

[source, source]

LONDON - In a July 9 story about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comments on overcoming global terrorism, The Associated Press erroneously reported that he spoke of easing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Blair did not specifically mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his interview with the British Broadcasting Corp.

But the AP writer saw no problem with “helping” Blair out with what he really meant.

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08 July 2005

G8 responds to terror by rewarding it

[source, source]

Blair said the Palestinian aid package would total $3 billion “in the years to come.” The British leader said the assistance was designed “so that two states, Israel and Palestine, two peoples and two religions can live side by side in peace.”

I have to agree that it seems in very poor taste to hand $3B over to a terrorist organization the day after the bombings in London. How soon can we expect an Al Qaeda state to be given $3B to “live in peace” without the aid being conditional on actually trying to be peaceful?

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Getting back to basics

[source, source]

The college affiliate of the National Education Association yesterday unanimously rejected a proposal to expand its policy on academic and professional freedom to protect “intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas” in the nation’s classrooms.

Randy Jackson, a delegate to the NEA convention now under way, appeared before the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) summer meeting to defend his proposal, which was attacked roundly as part of a conservative agenda.

You’d have to think that the progressives are losing when they’re being forced, over and over, to come right out and state that they are opposed to intellectual freedom and personal liberty. They used to be able to spin around that.

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07 July 2005

Why am I an editor if I can't make up quotes?

[source]

The Op-Ed page in some copies of Wednesday’s newspaper carried an incorrect version of the below article about military recruitment. The article also briefly appeared on NYTimes.com before it was removed. The writer, an Army reserve officer, did not say, “Imagine my surprise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday,” nor did he characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a “surprise tour of Iraq.” That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not. The Times regrets the error.

As noted by Mark in Mexico and Daily Pundit, one needs to think for just a minute about what kind of editorial process could fail in this way, i.e. editors flat out making up quotes and putting them in other people’s articles? Rather than trying to cut them back out, perhaps the Times should consider asking their editors to not insert fake quotes. That’s Maureen Dowd’s job.

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06 July 2005

A European law worth importing

[source]

The European Parliament in Strasbourg has thrown out, by 648 to 14 votes, a draft law for EU-wide software patents. The patent scheme was being pushed by Microsoft and a number of other dominant companies.

The difference between a basher and an honest critic is acknowledging when one’s target gets something right. Not only did the EU Parliment get this right, but they did it overwhelmingly. Speaking as a practioner of the art, software patents are almost pure evil. There must be worse intellectual propery law concepts, but I can’t think of any offhand.

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Their problem is that they look at evidence, not ideology

[source, source]

[Ward] Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, said the initial review will probably go against him because the committee is stacked with faculty from the hard sciences, which has different standards for evidence and interpretation than social sciences.

I have to hand it to Churchill for coming out with something accurate and relevant for once.

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05 July 2005

Taking oblivious to a new level

[source, source],

a delicious episode near the fall of the Hussein statue. As [US Marine] Kuhlman was saving the day by replacing an American flag over the falling monument with a vintage Iraqi flag, Iraqis greeted the Marines as liberators, complete with offerings of flowers.

The only sour note of the day came from the so-called “human shields,” leftists who had gone to Iraq supposedly to protect the people from the U.S. military and leave them safe in the arms of Saddam Hussein’s secret police. They stormed out of their shelters and began cursing the Marines as “baby killers.”

A group of “surly” Iraqi men approached [Marine Gunnery Sgt.] Coughlin and offered to beat the liberal protesters to death for their insults. In the ultimate act of irony, he explained to the gathered Iraqis that democracy would mean having to let such people blather from now on as he physically imposed himself between the leftist activists and their supposed beneficiaries.

Apparently Coughlin was smart enough to not waste his time with explanations to people too stupid to understand.

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04 July 2005

Happy July Fourth!


Green Rage 4 takes to the sky in celebration of July Fourth. It is a PML Amraam 4 kit on an H180-S motor

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01 July 2005

I didn't get in to public broadcasting to be watched!

[source]

we noticed this quote from a New York Times story on an effort to monitor political bias on public radio and television:

“Is it being done to somehow force public broadcasting into some kind of retreat?” asked Ms. Rehm, who has been host of “The Diane Rehm Show,” a news and interview program, on public radio for 25 years. “Is it done to frighten people to somehow alert them to the fact that they are being watched?”

Diane, it’s even worse than you imagine. We’ve appeared on PBS a few times, and you can imagine our horror when we realized we were literally being watched.

So not only is it wrong to criticize liberals, but conservatives shouldn’t even be watching them.

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Study, don't ask

[source]

Too much competition? File a lawsuit. Five or more Massachusetts school districts plan to sue to stop the Advanced Math and Science Academy from enrolling students outside its immediate area. The new charter school has attracted applicants from 49 towns.

“Our biggest question is what is the deficit in Shrewsbury that requires a charter school in Marlborough to educate our children?” (Superintendent Anthony) Bent said.

Why not ask the parents who are willing to deal with a long commute to get their children in the academy?

Those are just parents! What would they know about their kids and education? Surely they’re just enrolling because of right-wing propaganda on Free Republic.

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We find that information just gets in the way of winning the debate

[source]

Some University of Oregon professors are thinking of leaving if a controversial “diversity” plan goes into effect. Mathematics Associate Professor Alexander Kleshchev, a Russian immigrant, told the Daily Emerald the plan reminds him of the Soviet Union.

“Look, I am personally not going to be interrogated about my thoughts, and I am not going to go to reeducation camps either,” said Kleshchev, alluding to the Five Year Diversity Plan’s requirement that faculty participate in a summer diversity seminar.

“I’ve had enough of that in my previous life in the Soviet Union, and I just will not have this again. I tried freedom now; I liked it, and I am not about to give it up,” Kleshchev said.

A Five Year Plan! Are these people that ignorant of history, or do they actually like the allusion that’s so obvious to Prof. Kleschchev? I suspect the latter, as indicated by this:

The plan, now being massaged, calls for making “cultural competence” a factor in hiring and promotion, but doesn’t define the term. […]

John Shuford, the interim associate director for the Center on Diversity and Community (CoDaC) said that cultural competency was not defined for two reasons: It would not be appropriate for the drafters of the blueprint to impose a definition because that might have led to adverse responses by some. Secondly, the working definition would have become the focal point of debate, preventing a deeper discussion of the ideas presented.

I.e., the implementation of this policy shouldn’t be derailed by discussing its desireability or utility or even meaning because some people might not like the policy if they knew what it was. I also note that Shuford thinks it quite possible to have a “deeper discussion of the ideas presented” without actually, you know, presenting them. Could you encapsulate the intellectual failure of modern academia any better?

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