Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
comments: americanbeacon@hotmail.com
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Friday, August 13, 2004
From a friend of mine to ABCNews.com's The Note. It's a long rant, but it's well worth the read.....
I’m an independent, I don’t align myself with any political party. I base my voting decisions on who I feel will do the best job, on who represents me and my personal philosophies the best. Or sometimes (all too often) it came down to a choice between the lesser of two evils. While I voted for Clinton twice (may any God that might exist have mercy on my soul) and for Gore in 2000, never again – never – will I vote for a Democrat. They have aligned themselves with the radical socialist left, and you have done everything in your power to help them. I can’t believe the rampant hypocrisy and partisanship you and your cohorts in the “mainstream” media show on a daily basis. I am constantly disgusted by your obvious bias and the way you belittle your viewers, treating them as if they were simpletons, one and all.
Where did you search for the millions of people like myself who are able to accept reality at face value, not as we would wish it? Under your desk? Ever hear of Ed Koch? Probably not, from your obvious level of journalistic integrity and objectivity. Here’s what he has to say on the issue: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/8/11/145903.shtml
In case you haven’t noticed or have forgotten (which seems quite likely in light of your behavior), we are at war. We did not start it, but if America is to continue as the greatest nation on earth, we damn well better finish it.
And here’s what I have to say to you in answer to your request to hear from an “elusive figure” such as myself:
You’ve spent a couple of years asking why we didn’t prevent 9/11, calling for an investigation, asking ‘how much did Bush know and when did he know it?’ You blamed him for something he failed to prevent after eight months in office, and yet to this day you give the Clinton administration a free pass, even though he had eight years—eight years, people—to do something about al Qaeda and didn’t do one goddamned thing.
You finally get your investigation, the results of which confirm most of what he’s been saying all along, but you don’t want to hear that any more than you wanted to hear about the fact that one of the Democrat commissioners, Jamie Gorelick, was responsible for the so-called “wall of separation” prohibiting information-sharing between the FBI and CIA, which nearly everyone now acknowledges was one of the biggest problems preventing any effective defense against terrorist networks. You do deign to acknowledge that problem, but the part you originally claimed to be most interested in—who was responsible—is suddenly not so interesting anymore the moment you realized you couldn’t reasonably blame him for it.
You insist that Condi and Bush must testify publicly to the commission (even though Condi had already testified once), but it doesn’t seem to bother you when Clinton gets to testify behind closed doors. You laud Richard Clarke’s and Joe Wilson’s credibility, but when it’s clearly shown that they’re liars you don’t seem to want to bring it up anymore. You hint at all sorts of sinister skullduggery on our part, but when Sandy Berger openly admits to stealing classified documents for God only knows what reason, you couldn’t care less.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda continues to plot and scheme, and we all know that these major attacks aren’t something that Osama and a few others cobble together over tea and crumpets on Wednesday afternoon and then perpetrate the following Friday lunch. The Bush administration goes to no little trouble to get what information they have out there in hopes that people will be more alert and perhaps be of some help in their own defense, and also in hopes that al Qaeda will know we’re awake to the threat and will possibly cancel out. And damned if you people don’t find some way to bitch about that.
You piss and moan about everything they’ve done to deal with the threat—and when you’re not complaining about how little they’re doing about it, you’re complaining that they’re either doing too much, doing the wrong things, or even worse, you try to claim that there isn’t a threat in the first place.
We go after al Qaeda and its sponsoring government in Afghanistan—and you complain about it. They identify an emerging threat in Saddam’s Iraq—and everybody but you Einsteins and those who still swallow your thin gruel whole knows he was a threat not only to us but to his neighbors in the Middle East; hell, he’d only been shooting at our pilots for ten years, which is apparently not enough to qualify as a threat for you security experts—and you take time out from the last several years’ worth of bitching about how awful the sanctions against him are (sanctions which were on the way to collapsing completely, by the way) to complain about the fact that they actually had the temerity to not just identify the threat, but do something about it.
You still insist that a Democrat, any Democrat, would do a better job of defending the country than President Bush has, but in the meantime there have been no—repeat, no, zip, zero, nada—successful attacks on US soil since 9/11, and we both know that isn’t because of the fine job Clinton did in scaring them off, or because John Kerry spent four months in Vietnam on his way to a career as a professional political nonentity. We free 50 million—that’s 50 with six zeros behind it for you economics-beat reporters—oppressed Muslims and you guys don’t notice anything but a handful of prisoners with panties on their heads and a bunch of illegal combatants in Gitmo getting fat and sloppy from their ‘inhuman’ bondage.
You care about the Geneva Conventions—irrelevant in this war because our opponents have certainly neither signed on to it nor abided by it—only when you think you might be able to use it to help pour another bucket of shame and contrition over American heads. You care about freedom and liberty and democracy only when you’re whining about “stifling of dissent” here at home—even in the middle of dissenting at the top of your lungs with no repercussions beyond the ridicule of the still-sane—and not about the fact that 90% of eligible Afghans are now registered to vote. You worry about civilian casualties in the war, but not so much that you can’t find a way to hint now and then that maybe three thousand office workers in the WTC might’ve had it coming in some small way because Reagan thought the Sandinistas sucked. You paint us as the enemy, when most Americans know we’ve got enemies aplenty without having to waste time fooling around with nut-job Art Bell-like conspiracy theories to find them here at home.
You show endless repeats of that panty-on-the-head video because it’s awful and Americans have a right to know the whole truth, but atrocities committed by our enemies are carefully hidden away. Hell, you won’t even show footage of 9/11 anymore because Americans might actually remember it and wonder who the hell’s side you’re on in the first place. You people don’t even have the stones to show videos of Islamist whackjob imams calling for our destruction at wholesale rates in mosques all over the world. But if Falwell offered Muslims the choice between conversion or violent death you’d be all over it with both feet—and you’d blame Bush for the fact that Falwell was nuts.
You complain about divisiveness and uncivil discourse, but Bush is a Nazi and all Republicans are extremist right-wing religious maniacs. You call Dick Cheney Bush’s “hitman” but Howard Dean is just a reasonable Democrat floating interesting ideas about terror alerts. Israelis are genocidal monsters for building a security fence to keep murderers from their midst, but the Palestinian killers they’re trying to thwart are ‘militants.’ Terrorists in Iraq trying to kill not only our servicemen and women but any civilians they can get within machete’s reach of are ‘gunmen’ or ‘extremists’—when a handful of you aren’t gushing outright about how they’re no different from George Washington. Who owned slaves, let’s never forget, the dirty terrorist.
Wonder how awful you people would think it was if any Al Jazeera reporters “destroyed their credibility and objectivity” by wearing little pins identifying them as jihad supporters in their lapels? I bet it wouldn’t bother you nearly as much as Fox News reporters’ wearing American flags in theirs seems to.
You bitch about how horrible and irresponsible SUVs are and drive them yourselves. You complain that Bush misled the entire world, and applaud the “importance” of a movie that is nothing but a steaming, stinking pile of innuendo-laden propaganda. Politicians who have money are “oligarchs,” unless they’re Democrats. Campaign finance reform is a wonderful thing, until it works against Democrats. American gun owners are talked about as if they were terrorists, and terrorists are talked about as if they were simply misunderstood children. And the only time you even use the word “terrorist” at all anymore is when they’re attacking the hotel in Baghdad where you all cower and file reports from.
You decry the importance of cheap oil to the world’s economy and complain about what a terrible thing higher gas prices were earlier this year—and it’s all Bush’s fault again, of course. You talk about how vital it is to have France’s support in the War o Terror when France said in no uncertain terms that they would never, ever support enforcing the UN’s own resolutions against Saddam. You talk about our “unilateralism” when we went to Iraq with the support of nearly 40 countries, and you lament the “rush to war” when we spent more than a year at the UN begging for them to make themselves useful for once.
You bitch about how awful corporate corruption is, and can’t be bothered with reporting on a UN oil-for-bribes scandal that makes the gang at Enron look like a bunch of half-assed pikers, like kids toilet-papering a suburban lawn on Halloween. You talk about how the Bush administration calls its opponents “unAmerican”—not bothering at all with the fact that we’ve never actually done it—but when your choice for future first lady does precisely that, you get pissed off because an actual journalist has the audacity to ask her for a clarification.
Al Gore tried his damnedest to steal the election in 2000 and failed, and you guys still claim that Bush not only tried to, but did. Gore failed because the Supreme Court finally stepped in to put a halt to Gore’s shenanigans, and you guys lament a supposed “activism” on the part of the Supremes that you’ve spent the last thirty years applauding. How dare anyone suggest that our serving military not be allowed to vote! Shame on you.
You complain that Bush has no ‘exit strategy’ in Iraq, no plan for ‘winning the peace’—as if any plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, as any first-year West Point cadet knows—but you don’t go after Kerry when he refuses to talk about his “secret plan” to get us out of there – a Nixonian subterfuge if there ever was one, and we all remember how much you guys liked him. You take the word of insane dictators on simple blind faith, but if Bush mentions that he took a dump this morning after two cups of coffee you’ll claim he’s lying and call for an investigation.
And in a move so blatantly biased that it defies the imagination, you – well, Peter Jennings – referred to Sen. Edwards as “Mr. Vice President” at the DNC with a smile on his face. It was no slip of the tongue, it was a blazingly clear example of the radical left thinking that they can make something a reality merely by wishing it so. Oh, with a little help from the media, of course.
You people are, frankly, full of shit. It’s damned if we do and damned if we don’t with you folks, and I’m beginning to wonder why we (the rational moderate independent types able to perceive the real world) even bother at all. No wonder nobody but yourselves and those pitiful few poor saps you still manage to fool pays much attention to you anymore. The only parts of the paper I pay attention to any longer are the Sports section and the crossword – and I haven’t watched a “news” program on ABC in years. It’s too bad it’s come to this, but it’s your own damned fault.
No more. To quote the shrew you laud so often, “shove it.”
8/13/2004 04:09:00 PM
Thursday, August 12, 2004
A Little Help?
Can anybody find out how many times Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke and John Dean appeared on network news show versus the number of appearances for Stephen Hayes, Ronald Kessler and John O'Neill? Just checking. (never heard of the last 3?....touche)
Or the number of book reviews and news analysis articles written about the 2 respective groups? Maybe Katie Couric and Bill Keller can get their crack journalistic teams on the case.
I'm sure it doesn't reflect a bias, even if unconscious. We should ask Bernard Goldberg.
8/12/2004 05:55:00 PM
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
I am having great difficulty in believing the New York Times is an objective news organization. Its relative lack of coverage to investigate whether charges that Sen. John Kerry embellished his war resume contrasts starkly with the heavy coverage of whether President George W. Bush fulfilled his armed services obligations. If they would find Kerry's military record, they could ascertain the veracity of either Kerry or the Swift Boat Vets but have chosen to let the matter pass.
A search on the newspaper's website for articles from January 1, 2003 to the present found 292,349 articles for the search "George W. Bush and National Guard and Alabama" and 18,313 for "John Kerry and Cambodia and Vietnam." It seems clear that they are an advocate for a particular candidate and not an unbiased observer of political news.
8/11/2004 03:39:00 PM
Monday, August 09, 2004
John Kerry must publicly disassociate himself from Howard Dean and admonish him to cease speaking for the Democratic ticket because it is now clear that Dean's conspiracy theories are doing harm to America's security. Dissent is one thing, but Dean's rants cross the line into disloyalty.
It is now revealed that unnamed intelligence officials divulged the name of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan in order to justify the recent terror alert in New York and Washington. As a result, Khan, whom Pakistani intelligence was still using in sting operations, is seriously degraded as a source of information. The need to substantiate the warning stemmed from instantaneous charges by Dean and other Democratic spokespeople that the administration's action was politically motivated.
Granted, the leak of Khan's name is a serious lapse and the perpetrator should be dealt with accordingly. However, it is the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion fomented by the likes of Dean that are forcing our government to spend too much time defending its actions rather than defending its citizens. Instead of having confidence that Americans will trust our government to do what is necessary for security, the government must now go to greater lengths, and risk compromising secrecy, in order to overcome the nihilistic doubt sown by the Dean wing of the Democratic party.
To prove that his party takes such serious issues seriously, Kerry should publicly denounce such destructive and divisive actions by his proxies. If he does not, then he is more like the returned veteran who undermined his country's resolve by fighting against his government than he is like the war hero who fought America's enemies. This is life and death, and it is too important to be toyed with politically.
8/09/2004 09:44:00 AM
Sunday, August 08, 2004
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." So wrote Shakespeare and so should the GOP do, politically at least. With trial lawyer John Edwards on the ticket, tort reform should rocket to the top of the GOP agenda. With estimates of the costs of frivolous lawsuits and unnecessary defensive medicine ranging upwards of $215 per person per year (nearly $1,000 for a family of four), the costs are very real and tangible. That the Democrats can both protect their tort patrons and call for more affordable health care is ludicrous.
Senate Majority Leader Frist and Speaker Hastert should schedule legislation before the election to rein in medical malpractice suits. This should be accompanied with a PR offensive, complete with a short mantra of specific cost estimates with which every American should be familiar once the GOP is done, to make sure Americans understand how lawyers profit from health care. If there is one profession that is regarded with more contempt than politicians it is lawyers so voters should be open to the truth about them. Make sure a vote happens, even if it is just for cloture, to force the Democrats on the record.
Bottom line: put Kerry and Edwards on the spot to choose between torts and affordable health care. Either the President wins major legislation or the Democratic ticket comes down in favor of lawyers over citizens. This should be an easy point-scorer, which is why the GOP's failure to use it is odd.
8/08/2004 06:41:00 PM
It is time to go negative. John Kerry's supposed "positive" convention, which meant that attacks on Bush were backhanded rather than direct, needs to be countered with a convention that starkly contrasts his vacuousness with George W. Bush's certitude. The conventional wisdom, that the campaign should be "positive" is wrong. Bush needs to go on the offensive and ensure Americans understand that Kerry cannot be trusted with the White House now when the stakes are so high.
A curious dynamic is overtaking the presidential election campaign. Despite being completely incapable of putting forward a coherent and explicit program of how he would wage the war on terror differently, John Kerry leads by a small margin in most polls. How is it that, when the most critical issue facing our nation is a demonic threat that seeks to end our very existence, a man who has no plan and a decades-long history of subverting efforts to bolster our intelligence and military can be in such a position?
I believe it to result from fatigue with fighting this war and a failure to communicate clearly what our overall strategy is and how we are proceeding. To endure the constant threat warnings, deaths in Iraq and economic costs, all of which Americans are willing to sustain, we need a sharper focus on what this war means. Our 1990's decade of apparent peace and calm, which simply masked the scheming and plotting of our enemies, makes it easy for Americans to associate President Bush with our stressful and trying times. For those who wish to return to normalcy, Senator Kerry's simplistic and insipid pabulum is a tonic.
President Bush needs to succinctly and repeatedly draw the contrasts between his conduct of the war on terror and Kerry's approach. How can the Senator, who pursued such a radical move that even his own party disowned him when he sought a $7 billion reduction in the intelligence budget AFTER the first World Trade Center attack, be trusted to fight a war in which all agree intelligence is the lynchpin? How can a man whose only consistency on Iraq is that he flip-flops by the day be trusted to stay the course? How can a man who says he wants to fight a more "sensitive" war on terror be trusted to have the vigor and toughness to make difficult decisions? How can a man who has voted against every major weapons program, and against the world's only ballistic missile defense system while North Korea and Iran chase nuclear capabilities to complement their existing missile capabilities, be trusted to spend what is needed to keep America safe and light years ahead of our rivals? How can a man who, in his own convention speech said "Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response," be trusted to PREVENT attacks against us, not just wait for them to occur?
The fact that Kerry can run so strongly despite being an empty suit devoid of any guiding principles is troublesome. It implies that Americans are either not sufficiently aware of the differences between the candidates or not informed enough to realize their meaning. It is up to the Bush campaign, through a vigorous, consistent and factual assault on Kerry's record, to undermine his undeserved credibility on the war on terror. $100 million in advertising has not done it yet and it needs to be done urgently. Go negative and do it now.
8/08/2004 06:16:00 PM
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