ABU GHRAIB IS BACK
Do you know what this past Tuesday was? Just another day? Nope. Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy (known to his friends as 'Teddy' and to some friends of Mary Jo Kopechne as 'murderer') took time out of his busy schedule to issue a press release reminding us all that it was the first anniversary of the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Thank you very much, Senator Kennedy.
Did Ted Kennedy say anything about the first anniversary of the liberation of Iraq? The capture of Saddam Hussein? Nope. When this slime ball wants to celebrate an anniversary, he looks for one that can be cast in anti-American terms.
Make no mistake, Ted Kennedy and his liberal buddies hate the United States of America and especially despise the Military. They will never pass up an opportunity to bash the U.S., make us look bad, or draw attention to what they perceive as our shortcomings. All of this on top of the fact that Ted Kennedy is a backstabbing partisan Bush-hater. Back to his press release, though.
It was filled with all sorts of outrageous claims and outright lies. Right off the bat, he refers to the "torture" at Abu Ghraib. Actually, most of what went on there would barely qualify as prisoner abuse. He also compared the United States Military to Saddam's henchmen. Nice going. He also bemoaned the damage to our reputation in the Middle East. You see, liberals constantly worry what Islamic terrorists and assorted hate-mongering Muslims might think of us.
Like racism, the left must continue to dredge up problems so that they can continue to draw power from the "problem." Exploiting the men and women of the U.S. military for political gain is no problem for hardcore leftists like Teddy Kennedy.
Not that anyone seems to care. His brain-damaged constituents have been sending this national embarrassment to Washington for over 40 years.
My Favorite Quote Of The Week
“I think the only people who could conceivably be talking about a draft are people who are speaking from pinnacles of near-perfect ignorance."– Donald Rumsfeld
The statement above made by Rumsfeld during a hearing of a Senate appropriations subcommittee, “prompted laughter among the spectators.” Well, I just bet it did.
dumb and dumber
The New York Times reports that many Americans are ignorant about basic economics. No kidding. Were that not true, Democrats would be as rare as libertarians.
Most Democrat policy is based on zero-sum economic thinking: if someone gets wealthy, someone else must have gotten correspondingly poorer. Creation of wealth is thus mislabeled as exploitation. That's not just dumb, it's dangerous.
Of course the Times has another agenda, which is convincing voters that we're too dumb to invest some of our Social Security funds in private accounts.
Dumb people fall for Ponzi schemes, and the current SS system is exactly that. How smart must you be to understand that the $1.7 trillion dollar SS "trust fund" is not an asset, but a liability that today's young citizens will be stuck paying?
The notion that the government can be both a lender and borrower in the same transaction is absurd. Yet Democrat partisans claim just that. Along those lines, I have a perfect solution to the problem. When I retire, I plan to sue myself for $2 million. That'll do me nice. If everyone does the same, we'll all be in clover.
Full Circle:
1986--I think we should protect our borders and enforce immigration laws.
Response: Racist!
1996--I think we should do a better job of protecting our borders and enforcing immigration laws.
Response: Racist!
9/12/2001--I think we should really, finally get serious about protecting our
borders and enforcing immigration laws.
Response: Good idea! Never forget! Whatever it takes!
Spring 2005--Hey, um, what happened to protecting our borders and enforcing immigration laws?
Response: Racist!
He's Working On It
Decision '08 has a progress report on John Kerry's effort to sign a form 180 to release his military records, now entering its fourth month:
In a hastily organized news conference, a spokesman for the Perpetual John Kerry for President Campaign said the initial phases of "Operation Sign Form SF-180" were going better than expected. Specifically, in the 90 days since Kerry promised on national television to sign the form releasing his military records, the following milestones have been achieved:
--a pen has been procured from a Walmart on the outskirts of Little Rock "for substantially less than the $12,000 budgeted";
--a special committee has been formed to discuss the best way to remove the cap from the pen;
--a copy of the notoriously difficult to obtain form has been located on eBay and bidding is underway; and
--a "Dinner With John" fundraising extravaganza is in the works to obtain the necessary postage to mail the signed form, should such a step be required.
UPDATE: Archie Thomas is puzzled:
Strange I mailed a copy with a stamped envelope - addressed to the proper offices - to John Kerry's office in Washington over two months ago with a request for him to complete it. He must be good at filling out forms - is that not the way he got all of those medals?
“Economy Grows at Slowest Pace in Two Years” and “Dow Loses 128 Points on Weak GDP Report” raged the Associated Depressed.
{gasp}
It’s gloom. Doom. Vote Kerry!!!
From what pipe are these people smoking?
First of all, of course the economy is slowing down. How could it not? It grew at breakneck speed, for 18 consecutive months, and the Fed has been raising rates to stem inflation. And there’s the oil and gas price issue with which we’ve been saddled too. And, incidentally, the stock market has been in the process of correcting for several months. Do they not even teach basic economics and finance in school anymore?
Second, today’s (preliminary) report indicated real GDP growth of 3.1 percent over the first 90 days of the year. I mean, come on. It’s not like 1931 revisited. Plus, to put things into perspective, what, pray tell, was real GDP growth in the first quarter of 1997, when the media used to swoon about the economy nearly every single day? Yep, you guessed it, the very same 3.1 percent. In fact, in between January 1, 1996 and December 31, 1997, and despite the brewing tech/telecom mania, there were three separate quarters in which real GDP growth (annualized) came in at or below last quarter’s 3.1 percent expansion. (See here.) But if you think the media trotted out even one gloom and doom headline about the economy, back then, please call me. And please be prepared to provide me with your credit card numbers and their respective PIN’s.
In any event, the “mainstream media” is suffering from an affliction. It’s called the GOP runs the country and will be doing so for quite some time. And those space cadets are nearly as happy about that development as Anheuser-Busch would be happy to see prohibition return.
Beam me up, Scotty.
Mario Cuomo is a lying, failed, Dickhead!
In his radio address for the Democrats on Saturday, Mario Cuomo showed himself to be the faithful student of cornpone constitutionalist and former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd. Thus spake His Honor:
Now, the Republicans in the Senate...are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they can not get from the proper political bodies: the Congress and the presidency.
How will they do this? By destroying the so-called filibuster, a vital part of the 200-year-old system of checks and balances in the Senate that allows the fullest possible debate before one of the president's choices for the Supreme Court or other federal courts is allowed to take his or her place on the bench. That would be a change so undesirably destructive that it has been called the nuclear option.
The Republicans say it would assure dominance by the majority in the Senate. That sounds democratic until you remember that the Bill of Rights was adopted, as James Madison pointed out, in order to protect all Americans from what he called, the tyranny of the majority. And it sounds nearly absurd when you learn that the minority Democrats in the Senate actually represent more Americans than the majority Republicans do.
How many whoppers, stretchers, flips and flops can you spot in these three paragraphs? It would be cruel to unleash Paul Mirengoff on them, but even I can follow the Cuomo postulates to the inference Cuomo shrinks from drawing explicitly: that the Bill of Rights was adopted to protect us from the tyranny of the Democrats. But then again, I am a Straussian and a believer in "reading between the lines."
These are the three most ludicrous paragraphs I've seen in a long time. First Cuomo stands history on its head; as in the classic instances of Roe v Wade and gay marriage, it has always been the Democrats, never the Republicans, who have used the federal courts to force policies on the American people that the "proper political bodies" won't vote for.
Next he stands the meaning of the filibuster on its head, pretending that the device is intended to assure "the fullest possible debate" before a judicial nominee "takes his or her place on the bench." In reality, as Harry Reid explicitly admitted just last week, the filibuster has nothing to do with assuring ample debate; that's why he rejected the Republican compromise that offered 100 hours of debate--more than two weeks--on each and every judicial nominee. In reality, as everyone knows, the filibuster is intended to prevent Republican nominees from "taking their places on the bench," ever.
Finally, he stands the Constitution on its head with the absurd suggestion tbat the minority should run the Senate rather than the majority, apparently on the theory that majority rule is per se tyrannical. It's hard to respond to that except by saying, "Huh?" And he concludes with a stunning non sequitur: Senate Democrats represent more people than Senate Republicans; therefore it's appropriate for the minority Democrats to get their way. We do, of course, have a body where votes are apportioned on the basis of population; it's called the House of Representatives. But population is completely irrelevant to the Senate. It's also irrelevant to the filibuster, which can just as easily be implemented by Senators from the twenty smallest states. And if the question is, where do most Americans stand on the question of who gets to appoint judges to the federal bench, they answered that question last November, when President Bush won by something like three million votes.
Setting The Record Straight: Social Security Reform Means Funded Benefit Growth, Not "Benefit Cuts"
Today, some opponents of fixing Social Security are suggesting that the President's proposals would result in "benefit cuts." This rhetoric recklessly disregards the facts about the President's proposal:
- Fact: Under the President's proposal, benefits would grow relative to today's levels. Future generations of seniors would receive benefits that are at least as high as seniors receive today (even after adjusting for inflation.)
- Fact: The Pozen proposal referenced by the President would allow for faster overall long-term benefit growth than can be paid by current-law Social Security.
- Fact: Under the Pozen proposal referenced by the President, lowest-income Americans would get the fastest benefit growth of all, significantly faster than inflation.
- Fact: Under the Pozen proposal referenced by the President, medium-wage workers would also receive faster benefit growth than the current system can pay.
- Fact: The current Social Security system can fund only 74% of promised benefits in 2041. The Social Security actuary's analysis of the Pozen proposal finds that at the same time, each of "Low Earners," "Medium Earners," and 'High Earners" would all receive benefits that are higher than the current system can pay.
- Fact: All of the above figures exclude income from personal accounts. Social Security Administration figures show that expected benefit growth will be even greater for those who choose to participate in voluntary personal accounts.
