Filed under: Uncategorized
IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers
and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks
on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that
six hours after that,there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks hadcontinued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20
million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union
suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help
put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during
the war against terrorism.It also raises several questions. Has the American reaction to the
attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief
that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time
simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history
provide any insight?[...]
The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who
would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is
not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can
certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite
different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United
States.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Bell completely misses the point of the War on Terror. He quite accurately assess the situation in stating that, “desire is not the same thing as capacity…” but he misses the connection. Let us examine this further.
The Islamists that want us dead truly do desire our extinction. They don’t simply hate us–the people. They don’t hate John because he’s John or Teressa because she’s Teressa. They hate America because it is America: free, equal, (mostly) Judao-Christian oriented, the land of prosperity and opportunity. This is what they hate. Their desire is not to kill a few people, but to destroy the way of life we call American.
But this is more than simply desiring something. I desire a large house, a nice car and the financial freedom to do whatever the hell I want. While surely I work hard to achieve these things, there are certain things that are off the table in my “desire” to achieve these things: I would not steal. I would not murder. I would not bring any harm to others. I would not cheat or do anything to compromise my family, myself or my values. For the Islamist fundamentalist, this restraint does not exist. In the case of those who wish us to be destroyed, for our way of life to eternally parish, they will stop at nothing. Not only would they murder and destroy as a last resort, they would do this as a primary resort. Their mindset is this: achieve our goal at any cost and with any means necessary.
This brings us to capacity. Bell believes the fundamentalists lack the capacity to do real or significant harm. There are a few problems with this view. Firstly, the extent of harm done cannot be measured simply in how many deaths have been accrued. Instead, there are certain other indicators, both measurable and immeasurable, that must be considered. Did the attack do damage to financial institutions? (Think Twin Towers) Did the attack strike a blow against the morale of the enemy? (Say, by striking the heart of the American Armed Forces in hitting the Pentagon.) What symbolism can be drawn from the attacks. (While they were unsuccessful in destroying the White House or Capital, and the fact that the likelihood that even if they had hit the White House of the Capitol they would have killed any “major players,” such an attack would have been a symbolic blow to the US).
Secondly, and most significantly, we have to consider the fact that such extremists not only desire our destruction, but they desire the means (capacity) to bring about that destruction. And so we find ourselves in Iraq, wherein we hoped to prevent such monsters as Osama bin Laden from acquiring WMD’s which would thus give them the capacity to do large, wide-scale destruction.
The fact that Bell leaves these arguments out of his piece makes me suspicious. I’m no genius (in fact, I can’t even spell the word as the Spell Check tool as just underlined it in red…), but even I can see that these are the most basic flaws in Bell’s piece. To me, the possibility that Bell was aiming to cause a stink and get some attention must at least be considered. In a time when it has become “hip” to think that 9/11 was a vast government conspiracy which was allowed to go forth (or perhaps even carried out) by our leadership in order to build the ground on which to launch “wars of aggression” in the Middle East, I think it’s at least possible that some–Bell included–might just see this as a means to achieve a few minutes in the national spotlight…
Technorati Tags: War on Terror
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
Hillary Clinton visited Iowa this weekend, causing a big stink in her wake. Video of the most talked about portion of her town-hall style meeting can be seen at HotAir. Yahoo also reports:
Clinton held a town hall-style forum attended by about 300 activists, giving a brief speech before taking questions for nearly an hour. Pressed to defend her vote to authorize force in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Clinton responded by stepping up her criticism of Bush.
“I am going to level with you, the president has said this is going to be left to his successor,” Clinton said. “I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it.”
[...]
One questioner asked Clinton if her track record showed she could stand up to “evil men” around the world.
“The question is, we face a lot of dangers in the world and, in the gentleman’s words, we face a lot of evil men and what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men,” Clinton said. She paused to gaze while the audience interrupted with about 30 seconds of laughter and applause.
Meeting later with reporters, she was pressed repeatedly to explain what she meant. She insisted it was a simple joke.
“I thought I was funny,” Clinton said. “You guys keep telling me to lighten up, be funny. I get a little funny and now I’m being psychoanalyzed.”
She told reporters that evil men included al-Qaida leader
Osama bin Laden, who remains at large. “Isn’t it about time we get serious about that?” she said.
[...]
“The height of irresponsibility,” spokesman Rob Saliterman said, “would be to cap our troop numbers at an arbitrary figure and to cut off their funding.”
Clinton does not support cutting funding for American troops, but does favor that step for Iraqi forces if the Baghdad government fails to meet certain conditions.
Clinton defended the role that Congress has played, saying newly empowered Democrats are beginning to build pressure on Bush to act, but the public needs to be patient.
“We are at the beginning of a process,” Clinton said. “It’s a frustrating process, our system is sometimes frustrating.”
My, oh my. Hillary hit all the major hallmarks of what it takes (at least since the ‘04 General Election) to be a presidential candidate for the Democrat Party, didn’t she?
- Emulating her favorite fellow senator John Kerr, she botched a bad joke (or, if she didn’t botch a bad joke, she was read as having attempted a bad joke).
- She turned a very serious–in my opinion the single most serious and important–issue into a laughing matter. After all, it is the President’s single most awesome responsibility to protect the United States from “evil and bad men” and Clinton turned it into a joke–whether about Republicans, Ken Starr or her husband. This sort of joking is something we should have gotten used to by now, though.
- Flip-flopper. “I was being serious.” “I thought I was funny…” Can she have it both ways? Can she be serious and be funny? No. I don’t think so.
Beyond the above outline idiocy, Clinton illustrated yet another contradiction in her views on the war. Consider this: Senator Clinton does not support Bush’s troop increase. She does not support a new strategy in Iraq. She wants to “cap” troop numbers and funding at their current levels (thus maintaining the status quo), yet she has the audacity to say this:
“We are at the beginning of a process [...] It’s a frustrating process, our system is sometimes frustrating”
Clinton defended the role that Congress has played, saying newly empowered Democrats are beginning to build pressure on Bush to act, but the public needs to be patient.
Certain members of the Congress need to heed this advice: be patient. Bush has acted. That’s the reality. He has changed leaders and strategy and initial reports seem to suggest some measure of success.
Hillary says, “Isn’t it about time we get serious about [the War on Terror]?”
Yes, it is. It is time that you–Democrats–get serious about the War on Terror. You don’t like the Bush policy. Fine. I myself am not convinced it will work. But at the moment it’s the best we’ve got. So either get serious and provide an alternate plan, or shut the hell up.
Technorati Tags: War on Terror, Iraq, Bush, 2008 Election
Filed under: Uncategorized
From The New York Times via Instapundit:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.
[...]
A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.
The advice and science seems so simple, yet so logical. It wasn’t that long ago that our ancestors were in much better overall health (even without the benefits of modern medicine) meaning that some development of recent time must be responsible for the shift towards obesity, cancer and diabetes, all of which are controlled, again, by the miracle of modern medicine.
At the beginning of January, I posted a review of Nina Planck’s book Real Foods, in which Planck explains the importance of eating real food. In case you forgot, here’s a snippet from Planck’s site:
Don’t you find it odd that the experts blame butter and beef for heart disease, even though heart disease as we know it has only been around since 1912, and we’ve been eating butter for 30,000 years and beef for 3 million?Don’t you find it funny that the foods in all traditional diets – starting with breast milk – are loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol, yet people who eat these traditional foods liberally don’t get heart disease? Nor are they fat or diabetic.
The experts are mistaken. The so-called diseases of civilization – obesity, diabetes, and heart disease – are not caused by real food. The diseases of industrialization – as I call them – are caused by the foods of industrialization.
What are industrial foods? In the triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, the three main villains are trans fats, corn oil, and sugar – not butter and eggs.
In Real Food: What to Eat and Why, I explain why traditional foods such as butter are healthy and industrial foods are not. You’ll learn how butter, lard, beef, cheese, eggs, and other foods we’ve been eating for thousands of years got a bad rap – and why it’s a bad rap.
Now I am no purists. While I try to eat mostly organic products, lots of veggies, lean meat and dairy along with some whole grains (mostly wheat bread, organic oatmeal and bran or wheat cereal), I still find myself eating food that contains forbidden products (particularly HFCS). One thing I have noticed, though, is that the more I eat real foods, the less I enjoy eating highly processed foods, artificially sweetened foods. In particular, I can no longer even stomach the taste of white bread. The taste and texture simply make me gag. Sweetened cereal on the other hand–particularly PB Crunch–is another story.
Still, the more I read about the “real foods approach,” the more it makes sense, and the harder I try to stick to a mostly real-foods diet. I think these folks are on to something…
Filed under: Uncategorized
A new Time poll shows Hillary has a sizable advantage:
Despite the buzz generated by Senator Barack Obama entering the race,
the survey found that Senator Clinton would beat him for the Democratic
nomination by a margin of 40% to 21%.
All the talk about Obama and he still trails by 19 points? It’s not look good for a man who is being played up as the new Chosen One. When coupled with this story for CBS which suggests that “many black voters dont’ identify with Obama,” I can’t help but doubt any speculation that he has a real chance of beating Hillary. According to the CBS report:
As CBS 2 political editor Mike Flannery reports, Obama faced questions
about it as he met with a one-time street preacher from New York who’s
run for president himself – Rev. Al Sharpton.
Sharpton made
clear that he does plan to keep putting pressure on Barack Obama and
Obama’s about-to-be-launched campaign for president. Sharpton
complained publicly that none of the presidential candidates, including
Obama, has worked for what Sharpton called an “urban agenda.”
This seems to play into that ideology which is often used to discredit Colin Powell or Condi Rice’s contributions to the black community: you just ain’t black enough. What does that mean anyway? State Senate President Emil Jones attempts to answer this:
“It does not mean that you have to be on welfare in order to represent
the African-American community,” said State Senate President Emil
Jones. “The mere fact that he’s a U.S. Senator, the mere fact that he’s
a credible candidate running for President, does more for our children
and grand-children than all of them combined.”
“Saying you’re not black enough is an attempt to discredit him among black voters,” said Professor Timuel Black.
That answer still isn’t enough for me, but we’ll come back to examine that another time…
It seems to be that at the end of the day (unless somebody else declares their intent to run) Senator Clinton has a much better chance to emerge than Obama. Why?
Clinton is such a polarizing force–you either really love her, or you really hate her. The fact is that, while there are democrats–many democrats–that hate her, the majority of Clinton-haters are on the right side of the isle. So it seems logical to me to infer that the most vehement Hillary supporters will be coming out in droves to support her.
On the other hand, Obama’s inexperience adds a different element. A friend of mine discussed this last night. He sees to believe that Obama’s separation from Washington politics will make him appear less corrupt, that it some how distances him from insider-influence. I see it differently. I think there are people out there (like me) who would vote against Obama because of his inexperience. We need a presidential candidate who has experience, preferably at a national level and on foreign policy issues, who can transition from their current position to the presidency without any major problems. Secondly, I have zero respect for somebody who has nothing on their resume. In other words, Hillary, like her or hate her, has an extensive resume of political positions and public service. Obama? Not so much.
So that’s my spin on the democrat primary situation. Please use the comment section and tell me who you see as coming ahead…
Technorati Tags: 2008 Election
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
Tax his wage,
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirts,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his booze,
Tax his beers,
If he cries,
Tax his tears.
Tax his bills,
Tax his gas,
Tax his notes,
Tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know
That after taxes, he has no dough.
If he hollers,
Tax him more,
Tax him until he’s good and sore.
Tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb,
“Taxes drove me to my doom!”
And when he’s gone,
We won’t relax,
We’ll still be after the inheritance TAX!!
A kind of shocking look at the sad state of our tax system. Don’t think it’s that bad? Below this clever poem was a partial list of some of the taxes that exist:
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax),
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax),
Liquor Tax,
Luxury Tax,
Marriage License Tax,
Medicare Tax,
Property Tax,
Real Estate Tax,
Service charge taxes,
Social Security Tax,
Road Usage Tax (Truckers),
Sales Taxes,
Recreational Vehicle Tax,
School Tax,
State Income Tax,
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
Telephone Federal Excise Tax,
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax,
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax,
Telephone State and Local Tax,
Telephone Usage Charge Tax,
Utility Tax,
Vehicle License Registration Tax,
Vehicle Sales Tax,
Watercraft Registration Tax,
Well Permit Tax,
Workers Compensation Tax.
One person noted that this country still had relative prosperity around 100 years ago, though none of these taxes existed…
Technorati Tags: Taxes
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
Don’t bother standing up or clapping, any of you. I already know who won the election, and I know how you feel.
I come before you tonight not to make amends, not to make it good, curry any favor or find any middle ground.
[...]
So what is the best thing I can do tonight? I can tell you the
truth. What none of you want to hear. What you’ve been stopping your
ears to. The ugly truth.The State of the Union is a disaster. I did my best, but I made mistakes, and my best wasn’t good enough.
We went to war without building up our army, and now, I am trying to make up for that.
But that is not the disaster.
The disaster is that you, Congress and the American people, do not care to fight.
[...]
ou didn’t like it when I talked about evil. Sounded too simple, too uncompromising, too moralistic. Too … biblical.
I don’t know what else you call people who fly passenger jets into
office buildings; who rape women in front of their husbands and
children, and execute their opponents in acid baths; who seek to spread
tyrannical and archaic religious regimes that enslave women and stifle
fundamental freedoms. Who want to dominate the world’s primary oil
fields with nuclear weapons.I call it evil. Works for me.
[...]
I will engage evil directly where I find it, in Iraq and in Iran.
With an aggressive and ruthless new strategy and a plan to build our
army as we should have a long time ago, I will show the American people
that we can fight and we can win. I expect that the American people,
though misled by their press and many of their elected representatives,
will see results and will get it. Because the American people are a
people who in the end don’t give up, don’t stop fighting, refuse to
lose, and will choose to win. I have faith in them.Oh, there’s another one of those words you don’t like.
A nation that is not willing to fight for what it believes in, for
its place in the world, is not worthy of its own ideals. But that is
not America. I now intend to help America restore its faith in itself.
By fighting this necessary fight that we cannot afford to lose.
Well said indeed. I have always stood by the President’s use of the word “evil” to describe the Islamists extremists that want to murder us. Though I wasn’t there, I fully understand and accept Reagan’s labeling of the USSR as “the Evil Empire.” Unless we call it what it is, we will never overcome the dark forces that are controlling the actions of our enemies.
More important than continuing the discussion of the evil we face, though, is the will to face it. The President can explain that we face evil, but knowledge of such evil is only half the battle. Here is where the president must shine. He must, as Crittenden as stated, explain that he is not here to discuss middle ground or compromises. He is not going to be a lame duck. He must continue to battle this evil with ruthless determination. The State of the Union depends on it. The state of Freedom depends on it.
Technorati Tags: Bush, War on Terror
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
The pain for me is that, but also the knowledge that as a young woman finding my way in life, I once advocated the ‘continued right’ for pregnant women to abort their unborn babies. There are fiercely strong elements of both guilt and shame inside me over my old beliefs about abortion, so strong that I can’t write or talk about the issue without being overcome with emotion. I simply cannot forgive myself that I, in my own small way, contributed to the culture of death at one point in my life. It is something I continue to have to work through, not just as a Christian, but as a human being, because you don’t have to be a Christian to understand that abortion is morally reprehensible.
[...]
The word “abortion” alone speaks volumes about the procedure, and you can best believe that over the years pro-abortion forces in groups such as NARAL and NOW have sought to reframe the debate by preferring to use the term “pro-choice” more and more rather than “pro-abortion” (Example 1 and Example 2). There is a reason for this, which is evident when you analyze the word “abortion” itself. The word “abort” means to “stop” or “terminate” something and in the case of “abortion” what exactly are we “stopping” or ‘terminating”? Pro-abortionists don’t want you to consider this aspect of the argument because they’d have to admit that you were “stopping” or “terminating” the very maturation of a little life – a human life – where we all began. Thus the attempt at reframing the debate by claiming they are ‘pro-choice’ (or ‘pro reproductive freedom’) rather than ‘pro-abortion.’ They want you to believe it’s not about a ‘aborting a life’ but instead ‘making a choice.’ Right.
[...]
The hypocrisy involved in pro-abortion arguments is so obvious that it amazes me that pro-abortionists can make them with a straight face, but make them they do and they’ve gotten away with it for years. For example, you frequently hear and read pro-abortionists exclaim “the government has no business in my sex life” yet these same people advocate that the government does get involved in your sex life, especially if you’re poor and don’t have the money to get an abortion. Then they’re ok with the government getting involved in your sex life – specifically involved in your choosing to terminate the result of your irresponsible sexual behavior via a state-funded abortion. Never ever let a pro-abortionist convince you that they don’t want the government involved in your sex life – they most certainly do. If they didn’t want government involved in your sex life, then they wouldn’t support continued funding for state-sponsored abortions, and they wouldn’t advocate government-approved sex education in the public school system.
[...]
Another hypocritical position pro-abortionists take is the one where they claim to promote ‘responsible sexual behavior’ which would be laughable if the issue itself wasn’t so serious. How on earth can you claim to promote ‘responsible sexual behavior’ when you encourage women to feel free to engage in sex with whoever whenever? Whether they are protected from disease and pregnancy or not, it is not – I repeat – not responsible to routinely engage in casual sex, whether you are a man or a woman. Respect for your body comes not in seeing how many people you can share it with, but saving it for the person with whom you intend to share your life. That is the real way to engage in ‘responsible sexual behavior’, not giving in to your every sexual urge with everyone you’re attracted to. Not only that, but with each new partner, you increase your chances of getting an STD, and/or either getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant, and as a result may have to rely on the government to either pay for your abortion, your child, and/or your healthcare. How is that ‘responsible’? You simply do not promote sexual responsibility by giving the green light to engage in frequent casual sex. Taking disease and pregnancy out of the equation does not make frequent casual sex any more responsible. Furthermore, pro-abortionists in feminist groups like NARAL and NOW betray their ‘responsiblity’ argument by routinely blaming the man for everything that happened. Check out some of these bumper stickers on the NOW website.
/>
Probably the biggest logical fallacy involved in pro-abortion arguments is that the baby growing inside a woman’s body is supposedly not yet human because it couldn’t sustain life outside of the womb. I find it beyond comprehension that one pregnant woman’s 2 week old child is another woman’s 2 week old ‘blob of tissue.’ I find it even more incomprehensible that women who have had children can remain ‘pro-choice’, considering they’re not ignorant about when their son or daugther’s life started. It’s either a child or it’s not. In actuality, we really don’t get to decide: once that child is conceived that’s what it is: a child. Why there is a debate about this is beyond me, because everyone single one of us, whether on the pro-life side or pro-abortion side, started off as a ‘blob of tissue.’ Thank goodness that our mothers didn’t view at us the way pro-abortionists look at pregnancy today, eh? A question pro-abortionists are reluctant to answer is: “In retrospect, would you have been in favor of your mother aborting you or your brother or sister when you or they were just ‘blobs of tissue’ if she had wanted to?” It’s easy for them to be pro-abortion when they don’t have to consider the possibility that they or one of their beloved family members could have been aborted at their mother’s ‘choosing.’
President Reagan once famously said: “I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.” Timely then, and timely now.
There is much, much more on her site. Please read it.
I started to read the David Kupelian book “The Marketing of Evil” before Christmas. I didn’t finish becuase a lot of it seemed a little over the top to me. However, one thing that did stand out was the very first chapter in which he addressed the way gay right’s activists used marketing ploys to frame the debate in a way that forced the opposition (traditionalists who opposed gay marriage) into a corner. They made it an issue about gay “rights” rather than gay privelages. They force fed us bad science on genetics without accepting any debate on the role of choice in the matter and so on and so forth. It occurs to me after having read Sister Toldja’s post that we have been victims of the same thing with abortion: they have framed it as a matter of personal choice, a matter of privacy and a matter of individual rights not being trumped by the government. Yet, as she notes, they have left off their own call for government in sex through sex education and through access to clinics run on government funding etc. etc. She also reminds us that they have phrased their position such that we now call those who support abortoin “pro-choice” (who doens’t like choice) rather than pro-abortion. Well not anymore. I will personally no longer use the term “pro-choice.” Instead I will say “pro-abortion,” because that’s what they are. They are supporting an institution which murders millions of children each and everyday. It’s disgusting.
Technorati Tags: Abortion, Liberalism
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
From the Herald Sun via Common Sense and Wonder:
Organisers of the Aussie rock festival at Homebush will confiscate any flag or bandana bearing the national symbol at the gate.
Labelling Sydney a hot bed of racism, producers of the Sydney Showground event said it will be the only city in the nationwide event to be subject to the draconian action.
Promoters have already moved the event from the traditional Australia Day gig to a day earlier to avoid nationalistic overtones.
Spooked by last year’s event, which came only weeks after the Cronulla riots, organisers will outlaw flags being brandished as a “gang colour”.
Prime Minister John Howard said the Big Day Out should be cancelled unless organisers reversed their decision to ban the flag. Big Day Out patrons were intimidated and harassed at the Sydney event on Australia Day 2006 by bigoted fans brandishing flags and demanding people pledge their allegiance.
[...]
“I am telling people not to bring flags – they are free to get them out at midnight on their way home when it is Australia Day.”
Wanna be frightened? Read the whole thing!
It’s funny. I somehow doubt that Urban-Outfitter garb, which has gained much publicity through LGF in recent weeks, would be included on the list of unacceptable clothing.
Technorati Tags: Liberalism, Multiculturalism
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
ABC News reported Bill Richardson is running for president. He becomes the first major Hispanic presidential candidate.
He follows Hillary, the first ex-first lady presidential candidate.
Who followed Barack Obama, the first Muslim-fathered presidential candidate.
Who followed Biden, the first hair-plugged presidential candidate.
Who followed Kucinich, the first elfin presidential candidate.
Who followed McCain, the first ex-POW presidential candidate.
Who followed Mitt Romney, the first Mormon presidential candidate since his brain-washed daddy.
And so on and so on.
Can’t we just have a presidential candidate who does not front for some minority group, real or imaginary? You know, someone who runs on qualifications based on something other than chromosome or pigmentation or genetic code.
I think Surber makes a good point. Wanna know something else I’m tired of? Using the word “historic” to describe everything. “It was a historic day on Capitol Hill today as Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker.” Not convnced? Think that really deserves to be described as historic? How about this? “Obama’s presidential bid is one of a historic nature?” Oh, that’s true because he’s, what, black? Muslim (though he doesn’t openly embrace this)? Why is that historic? How about this one, uttered this morning on Fox News Sunday: “Hillary Clinton kicked off her historical campaign for the Presidency…”
Now by their very definitions (the fact that they are happening) all of these events are historical so why we have to constantly preface things such as these with the term “historic” or “historical” is beyond me. Does anybody out there have an answer?
Technorati Tags: 2008 Election
powered by performancing firefox
Filed under: Uncategorized
“Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?”
And here’s how the American people answered: 63 percent said yes, 22 percent said no, 15 percent said they didn’t know.
Let me see if I understand that. For four years, regardless of this or
that position on the merits of the war, almost everybody has claimed to
“support our troops.” Some of us have always thought that ‘’supporting
the troops” while not supporting them in their mission is not entirely
credible. But here we have 37 percent of the American people actually
urging defeat on them. They ‘’support our troops” by wanting them to
lose. This isn’t a question about whether you think the plan will work,
but whether you want
it to work. And nearly 40 percent of respondents either don’t know or
are actively rooting for failure. Which is to say: more dead American
troops and more dead Iraqi civilians. Asked whether they want the surge
to succeed, 34 percent of Democrats answered ”No,” and so did 19
percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans. What were the
numbers like for D-Day?
/>Hmm. A fairly daunting statistic, no?
Technorati Tags: War on Terror, Iraq
powered by performancing firefox
