Month: July 2007

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

mostly unedited thoughts on the youtube debate

I was about to give the YouTubers credit for keeping the conversation serious, and then the second half of the debate happened.  Of course I think CNN gets most of the blame for this.  Maybe the entertainment factor is a good thing for political junkies who are close to getting burned out with all these debates. I Loved the snowman video as well as the one with the folks from TN, and the singing tax guy.

Quick takes on the candidates:

Hillary Clinton – continues to impress.  Who’s going to stop her from getting to the finish line? Not any of these guys.  She was asked about whether she considers herself a liberal.  Of course not. She’s a “progressive” just like all the  other Democratic proponents of expanding government.

Barack Obama – ok, but not spectacular.  Had a few good answers.  Maybe it’s unfair to compare him to Hillary.  Made a strong defense of his approach (more affordable coverage) to health care vs. John Edwards’ approach(mandating coverage).

John Edwards – Hair looked good as always.  Nice tie. Got more than enough time to talk about his signature issues.  Would have loved to hear him go into more detail on his statement in Cleveland regarding a national fund to help people in danger of losing their homes.

Biden – one of the many “truth to power” candidates on Iraq. I don’t mean that he is right about everything he says.  Just that he seems to have a more realistic take on the aftermath of Iraq than most of the other candidates. He also had a few great lines…which I will get to shortly.

Richardson – didn’t make any major gaffes (that I noticed anyway)

Dodd, Kucinich, and Gravel-  The problem that all these second to fourth tier guys have is that all the niche groups are taken by the top 5. That is, except for the rabidly anti-war group.  Kucinich is a true believer.  You have to credit him for that.  The problem is that, despite what all the polling seems to be telling us, this is not where the country is on the Iraq war and on pre-emptive war in general. Both Kucinich and Gravel kept the debate from getting too serious, but the format of this debate would have made that impossible anyway.

This debate is more about entertaining the public then informing them on the issues.  Buried in the zany videos there have been some serious questions that, as always have only gotten sound-bite type answers.  Kucinich wants us to text for peace. Yup.  I think that it would be more useful to text Kucinich himself and tell him that his time is up as a candidate.
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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

something barack obama needs to explain

Check out this lede from Philip Elliott, AP writer, in his article titled, “Obama: Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide”.

He says:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

Obama goes on to say that he believes that there will be bloodshed after we leave Iraq, and yet he thinks that the risk is greater if we stay than if we continue to “occupy Iraq and serve as a magnet for terrorist activity”. Well, at least Obama has acknowledged the possibility that there wouldn’t be a painless exit from Iraq. That’s a possibility not many Democrats are willing to even consider.

Barack Obama seems to believe that the answer to Iraq is international forces and more diplomacy. He sees the situation in Iraq as hopeless and chaotic enough that our troops should leave. He appears to suggest that it is time to let the Iraqis deal with the consequences of not meeting their political objectives. Many Democrats agree with Obama on this, but some are more committed to troop withdrawal than others. It’s a sympathetic position to take, even for a few stray Republicans who are deserting the President on this war.

If that’s his position, then how can he then support US military intervention in Darfur? What makes the Iraqis less worthy of being saved from genocide than the Sudanese?

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Posted on Iraq

this surge strategy could work

Charles Krauthammer:

Ever since the December 2005 Iraqi elections, the U.S. has been waiting for the central government in Baghdad to pass grand national accords on oil, federalism and de-Baathification to unify and pacify the country. The al-Maliki government has proved too sectarian, too weak and perhaps too disposed to Iranian interests to rise to the task.

The Democrats cite this incapacity as a reason to give up and get out. A tempting thought, but ultimately self-destructive to our interests. Accordingly, Petraeus and Crocker have found a Plan B: Pacify the country region by region, principally by getting Sunnis to join the fight against al-Qaida.

This has begun to happen in Anbar and Diyala. First, because al-Qaida are foreigners. So are we, but — reason No. 2 — unlike them, we are not barbarous. We don’t amputate fingers for smoking, decapitate with pleasure and kill Shiites for sport.

Third, al-Qaida’s objectives are not the Sunnis’. Al-Qaida live for endless war and a reborn caliphate. Ultimately, they live to die. Iraqi Sunnis are not looking for a heavenly date with 72 virgins. They are looking for a deal, and perhaps just survival after U.S. troops are gone.

That’s why so many Sunnis have accepted Petraeus’ bargain — they join our fight against al-Qaida, and we give them weaponry and military support. With that, they can rid themselves of the al-Qaida cancer now. And later, when the Americans inevitably leave, they’ll be better positioned to defend themselves against the 80% Shiite-Kurd majority they are beginning to realize they may have unwisely taken on.

It’s definitely a different strategy than the one we had before. This could work. Also worth reading is the Investor’s Business Daily editorial smacking down the pajama party Democrats.  I’ll give you one line: “It’s pathetic when a major political party holds a pajama party to publicize its desire to surrender during a war. But it’s even worse when such shenanigans drown out a vital message from a real leader.” All they are saying is: Give General Petraeus a chance. YEP. Read it.

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1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, George W. Bush, Republicans

stand by your man (part 1)

Let me preface this by saying that there are many areas where conservatives believe that President Bush has disappointed them. The debate over McCain-Kennedy comprehensive “immigration reform” is the most recent example of this perceived apostasy, and it’s a great example of how tone-deaf the administration has become lately. We are also annoyed with the massive increases in federal spending that the President allowed to pass his desk. To some conservatives, there is a long list of Dubya’s sins, real and imagined, and they are ready to move on from this President. Our reasons are different than those of the Democrats. While acknowledging that he should be given all of the credit for his SCOTUS picks and some of the credit for our strong economy, we still find him lacking in other areas. Some of the criticism is unfair in this way: He never ran as a fiscal conservative. He was always supportive of making it easier for illegal immigrants to come here. We voted for the President, not because of these things, but because of Iraq and because we wanted conservative judges on the Supreme Court.

Bill Kristol believes that President Bush will be judged as a successful president. His argument almost convinces me, but even though I know that there have been some successes with the surge strategy, I’m just not buying his optimism on Iraq. He says that in order for a war president to be judged a success, the war has to be won. Many of us are discouraged with Iraq. Maybe we are buying in too deeply to what the MSM is selling. Maybe we are just being realistic about the obstacles the administration is facing in continuing the surge and trying to improve the conditions on the ground in Iraq. In either case, it’s an uphill battle to keep the Republicans from defecting to the Democratic side on the war, and it’s a continuing struggle to keep the impatience of the American people with the progress of this war from forcing those defections from those standing for re-election next time. I’m not rooting against the President. I want him to succeed, not because it validates me, or neocons, or because he would have a better legacy. I want Iraq to succeed because that would mean the terrorists and insurgents have failed there.

Maybe we are asking for too much in our presidents and in our presidential candidates. After all, none of the Republican presidential candidates currently in the field are as committed to reducing the size of the federal government as the average conservative is. They don’t have any new ideas on Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, and they would not implement anything different from what Bush has done so far. On the other hand, Romney, Giuliani, and Fred are all better communicators than President Bush. Romney is probably the weakest of the three because of his tendency to sound wonkish when discussing anything. All I’m saying is that if conservatives intend to vote for a Republican for President in ’08 (rather than sitting the election out and giving the election to Hillary by default), that means that we will have to settle for someone who doesn’t fit everything we want. And that includes FRED.

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election

just run already

At some point, the potential campaign of Fred Thompson has to kick off, and we need to find out if he is everything we want in a nominee or whether this whole deal is just hype. Right now that’s all it is.  He sounds good. He says all the right things. He has a solid conservative record in most areas of concern to us, and he’s not Rudy or Mitt. What more can we possibly want?

How about a candidate who doesn’t duck formal debates with other potential nominees?  How about somebody who takes a few risks on the way to the nomination? If Fred waits until September to officially announce that he is running for President, it could be too late for us to find out if he is the strongest candidate we have to put up against Hillary. Fred can’t possibly live up to the hype built around him. I think he could be a strong candidate, and see no reason why he couldn’t win a debate against the current Republican field.  I just want to see the proof.

Dean Barnett makes a similar point here.

He says:

But even more disconcerting is the news that Fred’s going to delay entering the race until September. If I didn’t know better, I would say the Thompson campaign thinks that he can get the nomination by running out the clock and relying on eager dorko-fanboys to keep saying, “Did you see that Michael Moore video?!!!”

As usual, to preempt the angry line of commenters now cueing up, let me assert that I like Fred. If he’s the nominee, I’ll support him enthusiastically. But his “campaign” is doing neither himself nor his party any favors. It’s time he enters the ring and proves that he can play on this level. It’s only fair that he allows Republican Party members to make an informed decision about the man who seeks to lead them.

Folksy blog posts are nice. But the country and the party deserve more.

It’s time to see what kind of candidate Fred can be.  I hope he gives us enough time to find out.

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Posted on Editorials, Iraq

after iraq

As long as President Bush is still in the White House, it’s hard to imagine that the Democrats in Congress can get enough support from the Republicans on the other side to abandon the war in Iraq entirely or just to de-fund it.  There will be a few defectors. We have already seen them start to appear on the Republican side. But when it comes down to calling for withdrawal or defunding the war, that’s where their resolve disappears.  That won’t always be the case.  I don’t know how much longer the President has to keep the surge going, but the famously impatient media and some of their enablers in Congress will ensure that it is not as long as our military needs to succeed.

I don’t know what the answer is for Iraq, but if we are going to leave soon, then we need to have a honest discussion about what will happen after we leave. There will be serious consequences to leaving Iraq without stabilizing it, and we need to decide whether we could stand by and watch the chaos happen without doing anything about it.  If we can, then there is no reason to keep troops in Iraq. If we can’t, then it makes more sense to finish what we started in Iraq.

Those who advocate immediate withdrawal from Iraq do so because they think that’s what the American people want.  They look at the unpopularity of this war and the frustration with its progress.  Maybe they honestly believe that as Harry Reid once said, “the war is lost”.  Maybe they don’t believe Iraq could get any worse than it is now after we leave.  It could, and we should acknowledge that possibility and be willing to deal with the aftermath of our withdrawal if this is the direction for this war that we ultimately choose.

Robert Haddock from TCS Daily takes a look at our history of military intervention and comes up with a few sobering conclusions on the future of our foreign policy after Iraq. Well worth reading, even if you believe the surge needs more time to succeed.

9 Comments Posted on Random Musings

‘private jets for climate change’

Not everyone is buying into the purity and all-around-goodness of those lads and lasses putting their massive carbon footprints behind Al Gore’s publicity stunt — I mean his noble efforts to save the planet by raising awareness of climate change. Yeah, that’s it. The Daily Mail in the UK is also skeptical of Live Earth. (BTW, what the heck is Madonna wearing in that picture???)

Here’s the money quote:

The Live Earth event is, in the words of one commentator: “a massive, hypocritical fraud”.

For while the organisers’ commitment to save the planet is genuine, the very process of putting on such a vast event, with more than 150 performers jetting around the world to appear in concerts from Tokyo to Hamburg, is surely an exercise in hypocrisy on a grand scale.

Matt Bellamy, front man of the rock band Muse, has dubbed it ‘private jets for climate change’.

The Daily Mail is giving these performers way too much credit. Efforts like these are designed to show how much the performers care about the environment without actually making them do anything significant to sacrifice luxuries or change their behavior to match their rhetoric. There are a few exceptions to this, but very few walk the talk. And why should they? It’s great being rich and owning expensive toys (or so I’ve heard). If you can mute all that guilt all the rest of us are supposed to feel by buying bogus carbon offsets and buying a hybrid as your second car, bully for you. But unless you are willing to back up your preaching, there’s no reason for us to buy what you are selling.

All that said…The Police can still rock, and they proved it in their set. I just wish that they didn’t have to share the stage with that amateur political commentator Kanye West.
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1 Comment Posted on Editorials, Random Musings

july 4th random thoughts

There will always be skeptics of the American experiment. They reappear every July 4th to encourage us not to fly the flag or to embrace anything remotely patriotic, simply because America has a flawed history. It’s also a very popular view worldwide, that every world problem could be solved if it weren’t for those meddling Americans. Americans look at the state of affairs in Iraq, and wonder if we might just be better off as a nation if we just left the rest of the world to fend for itself, and left the terrorist punishment to Europe and the UN. It’s tempting to think that way, but we can’t give in to that impulse because there is still a terrorist threat to this country and we need to do all we can to prevent another attack.

These critics don’t seem to realize that being an American allows them to write pretty much anything they want to write, say just about anything they want to say, and do everything within the law to protest what they see as injustices. No one will come and throw them in jail or physically abuse them simply for having an unpopular opinion. That’s one of many things the United States offers to its citizens that can’t be found in too many Islamic-run nations. And yet the US is the one country getting the bulk of the criticism…

There’s something seriously wrong with that.

On a lighter note, there’s also something wrong with calling competitive eating a sport. The annual hot dog eating contest happened again this year, with plenty of overhyped rhetoric to go along with the gorge-fest. The most ridiculous statement came from NYC mayor and potential entrant into the presidential race Mike Bloomberg, who compared the Joey Chestnut – Kobyashi matchup to the one between Ali-Frazier. He is a silly man. Please run, Mayor Mike. Anyway, can we really call Chestnut’s win over Kobyashi an upset? Aren’t we taking this hot dog eating contest too seriously by providing commentary and play-by-play for it? It’s definitely entertaining….but come on…it’s just a bunch of people stuffing their faces with unhealthy food. We have seen this in real life too many times already at the family picnics. Should this really be on TV?
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Posted on '08 Election, Editorials, UK

just a sticker on that burning suv

At what point are we all going to admit that terrorism is a real problem? Terrorism did not stop after 9/11. There were attacks all over the world, including the 7/7 terror atttack in London. Some countries stayed strong, like the UK, and some caved in and made concessions to try to appease the bloodthirsty murderers killing innocents mostly in the name of Islam. But it’s not our friends, or family, or co-workers this time around. It’s only been someone else’s friends, family, co-workers, and fellow countrymen. It should still matter to us. What makes us so invincible? We are doing almost everything that is in our power to do to try to prevent another 9/11. (That is, everything except making a serious attempt to secure our borders – and we need to keep pressuring Congress and the White House to do what they have no desire to do.) Even with our aggressive attempts to stop a potential terrorist attack here in the United States, we have no guarantees that we won’t have another terrorist attack.

That’s why we should care what is happening in the UK — London with the foiled bomb plot, and the more recent events at Glasgow Airport when a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders crashed into the main entrance at that airport and burst into flames. It’s a reminder to us to stay vigilant. It’s a reminder to us that there are people out there who are willing to sacrifice their own lives for revenge on the infidels (or for those 72 virgins). Either way, negotiation with someone who thinks like that isn’t possible. You would think that Islam would win more converts if those fringe elements in their religion would stop beheading people or blowing things up. But I guess that kind of religion just can’t be understood.

Islamic extremists must be stopped. Anyone who wants to trivialize what we are now seeing in the UK, simply because it might not have been a top-of-the-line car bomb, or because this could be something concocted by the Bush-Cheney-Blair conspiracy, is not someone we should want to lead this country for the next 4-8 years. No serious presidential candidate should have this view, and we should disqualify anyone who isn’t willing to do whatever is necessary to protect America from all her enemies, both foreign and domestic.

(This is not a rip on John Edwards for two reasons. First of all, his position on terrorism is much more nuanced than his memorable soundbite about terrorism being a bumper-sticker slogan. It’s still a wrong-headed approach, but I think to some limited degree he knows that terrorism is a threat to this country. Secondly, I don’t see him as as a viable threat to Hillary and Obama, so I’m only worried about what those two or our Republican nominee might do about this threat once elected.)

It’s all well and good to talk about how the government could fix Darfur, health care, education, and every domestic problem by throwing all of our tax money at those areas, but when events like these keep the terrorist threat on our minds, will those domestic issues still take priority over national security? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have solutions about health care and education. After all, the Democrats claim to want to fix those things EVERY SINGLE election cycle. But if we ignore the bigger problems right in front of our eyes, then someday we might have more to worry about than the price of our prescription drugs.