How in God's name did we ever take Al Gore seriously

In all the noise of the past week, with various individuals and groups saying regrettable things in a unfortunate ways, there has been a misconception created, that Conservatives are just the same as Liberals when it comes to emotional instability. But I think there are still significant differences, and so it is appropriate to re-examine a major figurehead of the Liberal movement, a man who holds considerable sway among the Left, and whose total lack of either candor or consistent principles makes it a chilling thought indeed, to consider that he very nearly came to claim the White House.

The following comments were made in a prepared speech to The Media Center’s “We Media” conference last Wednesday in New York City. The speaker was Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, and present co-owner of a small independent television network, and celebrated speaker for both the Democratic Party and the “Progressive” political movement.

“Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people?”

Just in case you ever wondered whether Al Gore and Michael Moore have experimented with the Mind Meld, I present this exhibit in hysteria and rumor-mongering.

“In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.”

A telling comment. The moment Gore seems to prize so highly, was when Mayor Nagin predicted 10,000 dead in New Orleans, and was screaming obscenities on a radio show at the President. It seems Gore is fondly reminiscing about the unbalanced Cindy Sheehan yelling about New Orleans being “occupied”. In those few days, the MSM picked up on that hysteria and began to parrot false rumors and harangue the President for not somehow foreseeing the disaster. Once it became obvious that the rescue and relief efforts were effective, and that casualties were far below predictions, and that local and state officials were far more culpable for the conditions creating the chaos and delay, then as Mr. Gore said, ”the moment faded”. Leave it to Al Gore to miss a mob frenzy.

“Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others – but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.”

This is a great irony. Since newspapers and television networks broadcast to the public but do not allow for effective feedback and true communication from the public, this statement effectively proves that the Internet is the true great hope for democratic speech. Yet somehow Gore misses that obvious truth, and instead tries to build this statement into support for the chattering hairpieces of the television networks.

“Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.”

Note that Gore makes no attempt to discover the reason why newspapers are losing readership. He simply assumes that the problem is with the public, rather than the bias of the newspapers. Note also that while Gore takes a distinct dislike to the syndicates and conglomerates of some cable and radio networks, he pays no attention at all to the growing monopoly of newspaper syndicates, who tightly control content and allowed opinion in their papers.

“Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation’s leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.”

Only a Liberal could possibly believe that the television news of the 1970s and later was, in any way, honorable or observant of a professional standard.

“It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.”

A distinctly ironic statement. That statement is completely true, and proves the need and virtue of the blogosphere. Yet Gore uses this statement not to support the New Media, but to try and defend the Old media oligarchy, as we saw for so many years under the Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw regimes.

“Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.”

Again ironic. That statement, taken by itself, is very true, and would be a valuable caution to network executives and television managing editors. Instead, Mr. Gore misses the fact that the “world of television” which has so cut people off from the information and discourse they need is largely comprised of and controlled by the likes of CBS, CNN, and the Mainstream Media.

“Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers. Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens. Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.”

In that statement Mister Gore has, however accidentally, touched on the value and importance of blogs. Though the word “blog” never once escaped Gore’s lips, nor could the man who thought so much of himself that he implied he played a leading role in making the Internet a reality, bring himself to acknowledge the New Media and the effect of citizen journalists. So it is, that every salient point made by Mr. Gore is established by accident rather than intent.

“ Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.”

Personally, I find Rush Limbaugh a bit of a pompous sort, and more than once he has handled himself in a manner I found unhumorous. That said however, I have heard Limbaugh’s show enough times to know that the man takes pride in open debate on most days, even keeping Fridays open to the topic of the audience’s choice. His callers regularly include Liberals and opponents to Limbaugh’s position, who are invited (“head of the line”, promises Rush) to express themselves and who are never insulted, degraded, or cut off so long as they can remain civil. Comparing Rush’s show to others like Larry King or Al Franken, I maintain that it is a particularly false claim to say that Rush Limbaugh has ever been an advocate of Hate, nor tolerant of hate speech; Rush has always maintained an atmosphere of tolerance and open speech, and far more than any show on the Left with a comparable audience . While his opinions are strong and he will mock the Left for contradictions and hypocrisy, not once has Limbaugh been guilty of the kind of violence advocated by Alec Baldwin in 1999, nor the race baiting advocated by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, nor the outright lies promoted regularly by Moore and Sheehan. In no sense can Mr. Gore’s charge be said to stand up to inspection, nor has Gore properly acknowledged the extreme hatred voiced so often by the Left.

And for Talk Radio in general, it truly speaks volumes that where he ought to be praising the first truly interactive current-events forum in media, both for its commercial success, accessibility and even field for participation, Mr. Gore instead derides the entire venue. Note further that Gore does not dare to suggest what he would put in its place, knowing that the sheer idiocy of specifically advocating the return of the monolith of Big Media Networks would be too much for even him to pursue with a straight face.

“The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President”.

That statement right there, I submit, is prima facia evidence that Al Gore has indeed gone over the edge. Not only are the charges baseless and without evidence, the irony of complaining about the blogs’ style of commentary by comparing them to Nazis is priceless. Never mind that blogs have nothing of the sort of resources of the major networks or the political parties, or that there are easily hundreds of blogs, on both the Right and Left which regularly criticize the President, his policies and his nominations. Mr. Gore has managed to indict his own positions, even as he attempts to slander the myriad individuals who write their own blogs without direction or organized control. The blogs are the sole independent reporters and analysts in the modern media, and Mr. Gore tacitly admits as much by his attempt to slam them all with the same vitriolic tantrum.

“ As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been “dumbed down and tarted up.”

Only a CBS executive or leading Democrat could now believe that Rather was anything but a criminal who got caught in his own fraud. Fascinating though, that in a speech about the responsibilities of the media, that Mr. Gore never once saw fit to acknowledge the multiple attempts by a major television network to influence a federal election.

“And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.”

Does anyone else here find it a strange thing that Al Gore, who once used a Buddhist Temple to launder his campaign funds from offshore contributors when he was Vice-President, and who was in all likelihood well aware of the goings-on at the Rose Law Firm and the various “special” arrangements made for the Clinton’s real estate deals, has the temerity to bring up the spectre of corrupt government? Does anyone else here, aware that the Clinton-Gore Administration was responsible for preventing the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden in 1997, and for creating the wall of bureaucracy between the CIA and FBI that prevented cooperation which could have allowed the Able Danger information to prevent the 9/11 attacks, find Mr. Gore’s statement just a bit disingenuous?

“We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy’s future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.”

In the end, people must choose for themselves what information they desire, and by what means they wish to acquire it. Al Gore is as arrogant as he ever was, to presume that a handful of elites should decide what the public will be allowed to choose, or to pronounce actual participation by the public in news analysis as unhealthy, even as he attempts to paint Dan Rather and similar frauds as courageous defenders of the First Amendment. Blogs and Talk Radio and Cable Television were not imposed on anyone, but thrive because there is a market, a hunger, for them. People like being able to express their own opinions, they prefer being able to sort through the information and make their own decisions. And I am merely exercising my own First Amendment rights to clearly state that Al Gore is very wrong in his assertion that our democracy is “hollow”; on the contrary, our democracy is very sound and growing, and it is vain, hollow men like Al Gore who fear its strength and vitality. But as long as men like Gore can find a ready audience in the Old Media, and sponsors to support their destructive agenda in a campaign against the rights of ordinary people, we must make sure we know the ways and mind of our enemies, and for the good of the nation we must stand together in defense of our common rights, for our common hope.

Harriet Miers

President Bush is a politician trained in strategic thinking at Harvard Business School, and schooled in tactics by experience and advice, including the experience and advice of his father, whose most lasting political mistake was the nomination of David Souter. The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court shows that he has learned his lessons well. Regrettably, a large contingent of conservative commentators does not yet grasp the strategy and tactics at work in this excellent nomination.

There is a doom-and-gloom element on the Right which is just waiting to be betrayed, convinced that their hardy band of true believers will lose by treachery those victories to which justice entitles them. They are stuck in the decades-long tragic phase of conservative politics, when country club Republicans inevitably sold out the faith in order to gain acceptability in the Beltway media and social circuit. Many on the right already are upset with the President already over his deficit spending, and his continued attempts to elevate the tone of politics in Washington in the face of ongoing verbal abuse by Democrats and their media allies. They misinterpret his missing verbal combativeness as weakness Top of Form

There is also a palpable hunger for a struggle to the death with hated and verbally facile liberals like Senator Chuck Schumer. Having seen that a brilliant conservative legal thinker with impeccable elite credentials can humble the most officious voices of the Judiciary Committee, they deamnd a replay. Thus we hear conservatives sniffing that a Southern Methodist University legal education is just too non-Ivy League, adopting a characteristic trope of blue state elitists. We hear conservatives bemoaning a lack of judicial experience, and not a single law review article in the last decade as evidence of a second rate mind.

These critics are playing the Democrats’ game. The GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness. Nor does the Supreme Court ideally consist of the nine greatest legal scholars of an era. Like any small group, it is better off being able to draw on abilities of more than one type of personality. The Houston lawyer who blogs under the name of Beldar wisely points out that practicing high level law in the real world and rising to co-managing partner of a major law firm not only demonstrates a proficient mind, it provides a necessary and valuable perspective for a Supreme Court Justice, one which has sorely been lacking.

Ms. Miers has actually managed a business, a substantial one with hundreds of employees, and has had to meet a payroll and conform to tax, affirmative action, and other regulatory demands of the state. She has also been highly active in a White House during wartime, when national security considerations have been a matter of life and death. When the Supreme Court deliberates in private, I think most conservatives would agree that having such a perspective at hand is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Other conservatives are dismayed that the President is playing politics (!), rather than simply choosing the “best” candidate. But the President understands that confirmation is nothing but a political game, ever since Robert Bork, truly one of the finest legal minds of his era, was demonized and defeated.

The President’s smashing victory in obtaining 78 votes for the confirmation of John Roberts did not confirm these conservative critics in their understanding of the President’s formidable abilities as a nominator of Justices. Au contraire, this taste of Democrat defeat whetted their blood lust for confirmation hearing combat between the likes of a Michael Luttig or a Janice Rogers Brown and the Judiciary Committee Democrats. Possibly their own experience of debating emotive liberals over-identifies them with verbal combat as political effectiveness.

In part, I think these conservatives have unwittingly adopted the Democrats’ playbook, seeing bombast and ‘gotcha’ verbal games as the essence of political combat. Victory for them is seeing the enemy bloodied and humiliated. They mistake the momentary thrill of triumph in combat, however evanescent, for lasting victory where it counts: a Supreme Court comprised of Justices who will assemble majorities for decisions reflecting the original intent of the Founders.

Rather than extend any benefit of the doubt to the President’s White House lawyer and counselor, some take her lack of a paper trail and a history of vocal judicial conservatism as a sign that she may be an incipient Souter. They implicitly believe that the President is not adhering to his promise of nominating Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. The obvious differences between Souter, a man personally unknown to Bush 41, and Miers, a woman who has known Bush 43 for decades, and who has served as his close daily advisor for years, are so striking as to make this level of distrust rather startling. Having seen the Souter debacle unfold before his very eyes, the President is the last man on earth to recapitulate it.

He anticipates and is defusing the extremely well-financed opposition which Democrat interest groups will use against any nominee. Yes, he is playing politics by nominating a female. A defeated nominee does him and the future of American jurisprudence no favors. By presenting a female nominee, he kicks a leg out from under the stool on which the feminist left sits. Not just a female, but a career woman, one who has not raised children, not married a male, and has a number of “firsts” to her credit as a pioneer of women's achievement in Texas law. Let the feminists try to demonize her.

If they do so, almost inevitably, they will seize on her religious beliefs and practice. Some on the left will not be able to restrain their scorn for an evangelical Christian Sunday school teacher from Dallas, and this will hurt them. They will impose a religious test against a member of a group accounting of a third of the voting base. Speculation on her being a lesbian has already started. "She sure seems like a big ol' Texas lesbian to me," as one of the Kos Kidz put it.

They are going to make themselves look very ugly.

The President must also prepare himself for a possible third nominee to the Court. With the oldest Justice 85 years old, and the vagaries of mortality for all of us being what they are, it is quite possible that a third (or even fourth) opportunity to staff the Court might come into play. Defusing, demoralizing and discrediting the reflexive opposition groups in the Democrats’ base is an important goal for the President, and for his possible Republican successors in office.

Then there is the small matter of actually influencing Supreme Court decision-making.

This president understands small group dynamics in a way that few if any of his predecessors ever have. Perhaps this is because he was educated at Harvard Business School in a legendary course then-called Human Behavior in Organizations. The Olympian Cass Gilbert-designed temple/courtroom/offices of the Supreme Court obscure the fact that it is a small group, subject to very human considerations in its operations. Switching two out of nine members in a small group has the potential to entirely alter the way it operates. Because so much of managerial work consists of getting groups of people to work effectively, Harvard Business School lavishes an extraordinary amount of attention on the subject.

One of the lessons the President learned at Harvard was the way in which members of small groups assume different roles in their operation, each of which separate roles can influence the overall function. The new Chief Justice is a man of unquestioned brilliance, as well as cordial disposition. He will be able to lead the other Justices through his intellect and knowledge of the law. Having ensured that the Court’s formal leader meets the traditional and obvious qualities of a Justice, and is a man who indeed embodies the norms all Justices feel they must follow, there is room for attending to other important roles in group process.

According to a source in her Dallas church quoted by Marvin Olasky, Harriet Miers is someone who

taught children in Sunday School, made coffee, brought donuts: "Nothing she's asked to do in church is beneath her."

As the court’s new junior member, the 60 year old lady Harriet Miers will finally give a break to Stephen Breyer, who has been relegated to closing and opening the door of the conference room, and fetching beverages for his more senior Justices. Her ability to do this type of work with no resentment, no discomfort, and no regrets will at the least endear her to the others. It will also confirm her as the person who cheerfully keeps the group on an even keel, more comfortable than otherwise might be the case with a level of emotional solidarity.

But there is much more to it than group solidarity, important though that ineffable spiritual qualty may be. Ms. Miers embodies the work ethic as few married people ever could. She reportedly often shows up for work at the White House at 5 AM, and doesn’t leave until 9 or 10 PM. I have no doubt that she will continue her extraordinary dedication to work once confirmed to the Court. She will not only win the admiration of those Justices who work shorter hours, she will undoubtedly be appreciated by the law clerks who endure similar hours, working on the research and writing for the Justices. These same law clerks interact with their bosses in private, and their influence intellectual and emotional may be more profound than some Justices might like to admit.

The members of the Supreme Court all see themselves as serving the public and the law to the best of their abilities. Their self-regard depends on their belief in the righteousness and fairness of their deliberations. They must listen to the arguments of the other Justices. But their susceptibility to viewpoints they had not yet considered is matter of both an intellectual and emotional character. Open-mindedness uusally requires an unfreezing of deeply and emotionally-held convictions.

Having proven herself capable of charming the likes of Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is there much room for doubt that Harriet Miers is capable of opening up opponents emotionally to hear and actually consider as potentially worthwhile the views of those they might presume to be their enemies?

George Bush has already succeeded in having confirmed a spectacularly-qualified intellectual leader of the Court in Chief Justice Roberts. If conservatives don’t sabotage his choice, Harriet Miers could make an enormous contribution toward building Court majorities for interpretations of the Constitution faithful to the actual wording of the document.

Where's Ozzie?????

Harriet Miers for High Court

Where's the coverage?

A suicide bomber on Saturday near the University of Oklahoma football game, and there's no national coverage? Odd. And if you watch the linked TV report, there was a second bomb.

What Bill Bennett Said

People have nothing better to do than blow the most mundane things out of proportion. This post is not so much a defense of Bill Bennett (because he has nothing to defend) as it is a response to people who are so intellectually vapid or just dishonest enough to understand what was said and in what context. (Bennett’s remarks).

Last Wednesday on his radio show, this is what Bennett said in response to a caller’s comment about abortion and crime:

But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

In typical fashion, black politicians and other hustlers are calling for Bennett’s head on a platter. In the backrooms, out of sight, white liberals are jumping for joy. If they can’t sell their ideas enough to win elections, they’ll keep floating the conservatives-are-racists meme because they know exactly how blacks will react.

First of all, I am embarrassed that blacks react in such predictable ways whenever a white conservative utters anything remotely related to skin color. All pretense of reason flies right out the window, blown about like a feather caught up in the wind. White liberals thrive on it, my friends.

Part of what makes Democrats liberal is that their agenda, devoid of real ideas and solutions, is based on race. In order to win elections, they must pit the races against each other. Constant racial and class warfare is what they wage, nothing more. For the love of God, I am asking blacks to think, use their minds and stop reacting with infantile emotion.

You’ve allowed the media to fan you into a feeding frenzy. The white men you vote for every election don’t give a rat’s behind about you or your black babies, so why, for crying out loud, do you allow yourselves to be manipulated and played like screechy violins by a bunch of snot-nosed, empty-headed goofs in left-leaning newsrooms?

Frankly, it makes black people look like insolent children. It magnifies either a reluctance or inability to think beyond the sound bite. If white Democrats are raging over it, it must be a big deal, right? The anti-intellectual streak in too many parts of the black community is absolutely abhorrent.

Why do black Americans, people who live in the greatest country in the world where they have more freedom that blacks in other countries can only fantasize about, believe they’re the most put-upon and oppressed race in the history of the world? Many cultures have done much worse to all kind of people, including people of their own race.

Second, black liberals have been voting for people who openly advocate abortion for the past 40 years. Child killing is morally reprehensible, as Bill Bennett said, but for some strange reason, it doesn’t bother black folks when it’s time to go to the polls. A full 90 percent continue voting for men who advocate the death of black babies. They cavort with women whose life mission is child killing via Planned Parenthood.

The head honcho was the late Margaret Sanger, who was a eugenicist.

Black women more than three times as likely than white women to kill their babies in utero. Thirty-six percent of all abortions are performed on black women. Bennett said that is morally reprehensible. But you won’t ever hear the media-addicted Jesse Jackson or the clownish Al Sharpton or the virulent Howard Dean or bigoted John Kerry say that. Your very own NAACP advocates the murder of their own people, and over 70 percent of black babies are born to women who didn’t bother to get married and create a stable home for their children, but you’re “outraged” over what some white man said?

A bunch of hysterical hypocrites, the whole lot of you.

Third, Bennett’s hypothetical is based on fact. Blacks are 12.3 percent of the population, and about half are black men, which means black men are approximately 6 percent of the U.S. population. Yet, they commit over half of the violent crimes (see Bureau of Justice statistics). Hypothetical speaking, if fewer black boys were born, there’d be fewer around to commit crimes. Bennett didn’t (and couldn’t if he wanted to!) say that all blacks commit crimes. But in the aggregate, blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes relative to their numbers in the general population. It follows, statistically speaking, that the fewer blacks there are, the fewer crimes will be committed. This is not a racist statement, people. It is a statistical reality.

The problem with the black subculture in general — not each and every individual black person — is that facts have little meaning. Emotions and hair-trigger reactions to anything racial are the norm. And you know what? It sets a bad precedent for our children. They must learn to use their minds, to reason and to think critically about these issues, not throw tantrums because somebody said something they didn’t like.

Bennett’s crime was alluding to black crime rates. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s OK to discuss black grievances and entitlements but taboo to discuss black criminality. James Taranto of the Opinion Journal concurs:

So why do we see this as a sign of political correctness’s decline? Well, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we kept hearing from our liberal friends that what this country needs is an honest discussion of race. Of course, liberals who call for a discussion of race never actually want it to be honest. Rather, they want to engage in the old familiar ritual in which blacks air their grievances, white liberals trumpet their moral superiority, the rest of us shut up and listen, and dissenters are shamed and silenced (see John Conyers’s and Wade Henderson’s demands regarding Bennett, above). (Emphasis added)

If I were Bennett, I wouldn’t apologize for jack.

A man named Steven Levitt, author of the best-seller Freakonomics, made a similar argument about crime rates and abortion. He said that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s led to a reduction in crime a generation later.

Levitt’s assumptions rest on the belief that abortion reduces the number of “unwanted” babies. Sailer says that crime actually went up in the generation after Roe v. Wade, owed in part to the crack epidemic and middle-class black women killing their babies. In that regard, since middle-class women are more likely to be married than women in the underclass, black babies aborted after the legalization of child killing would’ve had better upbringings than babies born to underclass women.

I ask you, why weren’t the media up in arms about Levitt’s book? Because he is not a white conservative man, and it would make for a dull sound bite. It’s as simple as that. If the media don’t cause a firestorm about something, blacks don’t pay much attention to it.

Must Read

Shameful Attacks
Bill Bennett stresses our morality…and pays the price.

In the course of a free-wheeling conversation so common on talk-format programs, Bill Bennett made a minor point that was statistically and logically unassailable, but that touched a third rail — namely, the nexus between race and crime — within the highly charged context of abortion policy.

He emphatically qualified his remarks from the standpoint of morality. Then he ended with the entirely valid conclusion that sweeping generalizations are unhelpful in making major policy decisions.

That he was right in this seems to matter little. Bennett is being fried by the PC police and the ethnic-grievance industry, which have disingenuously ripped his minor point out of its context in a shameful effort to paint him as a racist. He’s about as bigoted as Santa Claus.

Here’s what happened. In the course of his Morning in America radio show on Wednesday, Bennett engaged a caller who sought to view the complexities of Social Security solvency through the narrow lens of abortion, an explosive but only tangentially relevant issue. Specifically, the caller contended that if there had not been so many abortions since 1973, there would be millions more living people paying into the Social Security System, and perhaps the system would be solvent.

Bennett, typically well-informed, responded with skepticism over this method of argument by making reference to a book he had read, which had made an analogous claim: namely, that it was the high abortion rate which was responsible for the overall decline in crime. The former Education secretary took pains to say that he disagreed with this theory, and then developed an argument for why we should resist “extensive extrapolations” from minor premises (like the number of abortions) in forming major conclusions about complex policy questions.

It was in this context that Bennett remarked: “I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Was he suggesting such a thing? Was he saying that such a thing should even be considered in the real world? Of course not. His whole point was that such considerations are patently absurd, and thus he was quick to add: “That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.”

Bennett’s position, clearly and irrefutably, is that you cannot have tunnel vision, especially on something as emotionally charged as abortion, in addressing multifaceted problems. It is almost always the case that problems, even serious ones, could be minimized or eliminated if you were willing to entertain severe solutions. Such solutions, though, are morally and ethically unacceptable, whatever the validity of their logic. The lesson to be drawn is not that we can hypothetically conceive of the severe solutions but that we resolutely reject them because of our moral core.

This is a bedrock feature of American law and life. We could, for example, dramatically reduce crimes such as robbery and rape by making those capital offenses. We don’t do it because such a draconian solution would be offensive to who we are as a people. But it is no doubt true that if we were willing to check our morality at the door, if the only thing we allowed ourselves to focus on were the reduction of robbery and rape, the death penalty would do the trick.

We are currently at war with Islamo-fascists, and our greatest fear is another domestic attack that could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The attacks we have suffered to this point have been inflicted, almost exclusively, by Muslim aliens from particular Arabic and African countries. Would it greatly reduce the chance of another domestic attack if we deported every non-American Muslim from those countries? Of course it would — how could it not? But it is not something that we should or would consider doing. It would be a cure so much worse than the disease that it would sully us as a people, while hurting thousands of innocent people in the process.

The salient thing here is the moral judgment. But, to be demonstrated compellingly, the moral judgment requires a dilemma that pits values against values. Remarkably, Bennett is being criticized for being able to frame such a dilemma — which was wholly hypothetical — but given no credit for the moral judgment — which was authentically his.

Statistics have long been kept on crime, breaking it down in various ways, including by race and ethnicity. Some identifiable groups, considered as a group, commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate.

Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact. Indeed, our public discourse on it, even among prominent African Americans, has not been to dispute the numbers but to argue over the causes of the high rate: Is it poverty? Breakdown of the family? Undue police attention? Other factors — or some combination of all the factors? We argue about all these things, but the argument always proceeds from the incontestable fact that the rate is high.

The rate being high, it is an unavoidable mathematical reality that if the number of blacks, or of any group whose rate outstripped the national rate, were reduced or eliminated from the national computation, the national rate would go down.

But Bennett’s obvious point was that crime reduction is not the be-all and end-all of good policy. You would not approve of something you see as despicable — such as reducing an ethnic population by abortion — simply because it would have the incidental effect of reducing crime.

Abortion, moreover, is a grave moral issue in its own right. It merits consideration on its own merits, wholly apart from its incidental effects on innumerable matters — crime rate and social security solvency being just two.

“[T]hese far-out, these far-reaching … extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky,” Bennett concluded. It was a point worth making, and it could not have been made effectively without a “far-out” example that highlighted the folly. Plus he was right, which ought to count for something even in what passes for today’s media critiques.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Must Read

Shameful Attacks
Bill Bennett stresses our morality…and pays the price.

In the course of a free-wheeling conversation so common on talk-format programs, Bill Bennett made a minor point that was statistically and logically unassailable, but that touched a third rail — namely, the nexus between race and crime — within the highly charged context of abortion policy.

He emphatically qualified his remarks from the standpoint of morality. Then he ended with the entirely valid conclusion that sweeping generalizations are unhelpful in making major policy decisions.

That he was right in this seems to matter little. Bennett is being fried by the PC police and the ethnic-grievance industry, which have disingenuously ripped his minor point out of its context in a shameful effort to paint him as a racist. He’s about as bigoted as Santa Claus.

Here’s what happened. In the course of his Morning in America radio show on Wednesday, Bennett engaged a caller who sought to view the complexities of Social Security solvency through the narrow lens of abortion, an explosive but only tangentially relevant issue. Specifically, the caller contended that if there had not been so many abortions since 1973, there would be millions more living people paying into the Social Security System, and perhaps the system would be solvent.

Bennett, typically well-informed, responded with skepticism over this method of argument by making reference to a book he had read, which had made an analogous claim: namely, that it was the high abortion rate which was responsible for the overall decline in crime. The former Education secretary took pains to say that he disagreed with this theory, and then developed an argument for why we should resist “extensive extrapolations” from minor premises (like the number of abortions) in forming major conclusions about complex policy questions.

It was in this context that Bennett remarked: “I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Was he suggesting such a thing? Was he saying that such a thing should even be considered in the real world? Of course not. His whole point was that such considerations are patently absurd, and thus he was quick to add: “That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.”

Bennett’s position, clearly and irrefutably, is that you cannot have tunnel vision, especially on something as emotionally charged as abortion, in addressing multifaceted problems. It is almost always the case that problems, even serious ones, could be minimized or eliminated if you were willing to entertain severe solutions. Such solutions, though, are morally and ethically unacceptable, whatever the validity of their logic. The lesson to be drawn is not that we can hypothetically conceive of the severe solutions but that we resolutely reject them because of our moral core.

This is a bedrock feature of American law and life. We could, for example, dramatically reduce crimes such as robbery and rape by making those capital offenses. We don’t do it because such a draconian solution would be offensive to who we are as a people. But it is no doubt true that if we were willing to check our morality at the door, if the only thing we allowed ourselves to focus on were the reduction of robbery and rape, the death penalty would do the trick.

We are currently at war with Islamo-fascists, and our greatest fear is another domestic attack that could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The attacks we have suffered to this point have been inflicted, almost exclusively, by Muslim aliens from particular Arabic and African countries. Would it greatly reduce the chance of another domestic attack if we deported every non-American Muslim from those countries? Of course it would — how could it not? But it is not something that we should or would consider doing. It would be a cure so much worse than the disease that it would sully us as a people, while hurting thousands of innocent people in the process.

The salient thing here is the moral judgment. But, to be demonstrated compellingly, the moral judgment requires a dilemma that pits values against values. Remarkably, Bennett is being criticized for being able to frame such a dilemma — which was wholly hypothetical — but given no credit for the moral judgment — which was authentically his.

Statistics have long been kept on crime, breaking it down in various ways, including by race and ethnicity. Some identifiable groups, considered as a group, commit crime at a rate that is higher than the national rate.

Blacks are such a group. That is simply a fact. Indeed, our public discourse on it, even among prominent African Americans, has not been to dispute the numbers but to argue over the causes of the high rate: Is it poverty? Breakdown of the family? Undue police attention? Other factors — or some combination of all the factors? We argue about all these things, but the argument always proceeds from the incontestable fact that the rate is high.

The rate being high, it is an unavoidable mathematical reality that if the number of blacks, or of any group whose rate outstripped the national rate, were reduced or eliminated from the national computation, the national rate would go down.

But Bennett’s obvious point was that crime reduction is not the be-all and end-all of good policy. You would not approve of something you see as despicable — such as reducing an ethnic population by abortion — simply because it would have the incidental effect of reducing crime.

Abortion, moreover, is a grave moral issue in its own right. It merits consideration on its own merits, wholly apart from its incidental effects on innumerable matters — crime rate and social security solvency being just two.

“[T]hese far-out, these far-reaching … extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky,” Bennett concluded. It was a point worth making, and it could not have been made effectively without a “far-out” example that highlighted the folly. Plus he was right, which ought to count for something even in what passes for today’s media critiques.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

This is a "Code Pink" protestor from yesterday's Hate America March led by the Queen Moonbat Cindy (Media Whore) Sheehan. Let's stipulate that the left is not made up of pretty people. 

Queen of the Moonbats and her bestest pal 

MSM keeps Cindy (Media Whore) Sheehan alive

While about 100,000 aged hippies, anti-American socialists and assorted conspiracy-theorists gathered in DC for a hate-America fest, you need to see this comment from a Marine serving presently in Iraq.

**"The battlefield this weekend will be on the homefront. The only thing that truly concerns me is that the seditionist groups will succeed in causing the American people to lose their will and the enemy will win politically the victory we have denied them militarily. Let there be no mistake: we are winning here. Morale is outstanding and we are successfully taking the fight to the enemy. You will see a successful referendum in less than 3 weeks and a successfull election in less than 3 months. I see the positive resuts of our actions everyday. The MSM ignores or denigrates almost every piece of positive news, exaggerates every negative and makes the enemy and his actions out to be more than they are. They absolutely cannot defeat us militarily and have no strategic vision except the destruction of all who oppose them. A strategy based on such a negative is doomed to fail, unless we cut and run."**

Git it? What is so obvious that it hurts--is that the MSM and the "Hate America" crowd are so blinded by their hatred of all things Bush that they are ready to spit on the graves and wounds of our best and brightest to make a political point. They actually believe that they can force Iraq to be Vietnam and win the political and PR war making the USA lose the fighting war to a bunch of rag-tag fanatics.

It is a strange commentary on our modern world that what we've got here is a Marine, facing death all the time in Iraq, trying to ensure that our morale here at home remains high. I think I can understand the worry: After years of effort and so many of our best killed, it would be criminal for the United States to lose heart at this point and betray our troops in the field - but this is the worry of our best over in Iraq and elsewhere in the War on Terrorism. There isn't a thing the enemy can do to stop the United States military - only a failure of will here at home can defeat us.

Fortunately, I don't see any lack of will to win. President Bush is determined, and his supporters are behind him 100%. 100,000 people in DC means about 1% of the hard-core anti-Americans showed up...hardly a good showing; and this is their best time...with the war becoming a grind and Katrina/Rita depressing spirits, if there was a time when an anti-war movement could tap into public dismay, this was it. It hasn't happened - and for two reasons:

1. We really do want to win - all of us who support the liberation of Iraq will do whatever proves necessary to secure absolute victory.

2. The anti-war protestors aren't really anti-war - they are actually anti-American. I feel for those who are just misguided into the anti-war movement, but one has to face the fact that if you are within a country mile of the really horrible people of ANSWER, then you are besmirched with the muck of treason. The broad mass of the American people will never sign on to a group which not only says that the war should end, but calls our efforts to date part of a criminal conspiracy.

Something about Mary

Today's loser hails from the state that received the least amount of damage from Hurricane Katrina yet you would think that it was the only state hit.

Mary Landrieu (Dumbass-LA) has recently garnered National attention by threatening the President of the United States. This being the only thing that she has accomplished since she was voted out of Louisiana. "Her" website HERE.

Mary was elected to her first term in 1996 at a time when Republicans were being slaughtered in the streets in Louisiana by desperate Democrats. She was re-elected in 2002 when she ran on the platform of an Escalade in every driveway in New Orleans. Surprisingly enough only seventeen votes were cast in her Senate election and ALL were for her. That is odd coming from the loins of a former New Orleans mayor and U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Moon Landrieu, her DAD.

Since Mary has never had an iota of impact on the Senate or government in general, it is assumed that she is just there because no one wants her in Louisiana. Mary's committee asignments include Appropriations where she makes the coffee, which everyone complains about and she also serves on the District of Columbia Subcommittee where she is tasked with making DC's school system into the worst in the entire industrialized world. So far she has been a smashing success at that.

Since 1999, Mary has served on the Senate Armed Forces Committee where she is tasked with picking out the pillows for each Senator's chair. Most of them admit that she is less than talented at this important position. On to Part Two.

No lie, this is from the "About Mary" part of "her" website. I'm just surprised that she didn't put "There's Something" in front of the "About Mary" part. Remember when she put Ben's love potion in her hair? Ahem, nevermind. While I am almost certain this moron attended a university, I can find nothing about it on "her" website.

She was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives when she was just twenty-three years old. Who in their right mind would elect a twenty-three year old dumbass? I remember when I was that age and I wouldn't have voted for myself then. Anyway, she was elected and has never had to accomplish another thing. Please folks, don't make this a habit. Otherwise, your levee might break and everyone's stuff gets ruined. Oh, that's right, Mary lives ABOVE Pontchartrain, imagine that.

Mary is married to an attorney from Monroe named Frank Snellings. They have two kids, Connor and Mary Shannon who attend an exclusive private school in DC. This is ironic in itself since Mary makes policy concerning the public school system in the area.

The best thing that I found on "Mary's" site was the link to her staff. Forty total. I know that every Senator has a staff this large or larger, but do you have to rub my nose in it? Why in the holy Hell would a Senator need a staff of forty? This is completely outta hand.

Mary, there was a time when I considered Barbara Boxer the dumbest Senator (of the female persuasion) but alas I'm now torn. Okay----Boxer is sitll the dumbest but you are gaining.

Hollywood loves Dan. Of course they do. 

Stuck on Stupid

Dan Rather finds that there is an increasing "climate of fear running through newsrooms" these days. I certainly hope that this is so -- the former monopolists in the newsrooms should fear that, unless they report with less bias, their audience will continue to decline in the face of competition. And, at a minimum, they should fear that if they present blockbluster reports based on fabricated evidence, as Rather did, they will lose their jobs.

However, the MSM's coverage of Hurricane Katrina suggests that there is no such fear factor. Indeed, Rather himself deems this coverage represents "one of television news' finest moments."

I wonder which part of the coverage Rather liked best. Perhaps it was the appearance on NBC's Meet the Press of Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La. He recounted for a national audience the story of a woman stranded in a nursing home who kept calling her son for help, day after day, until she finally died on September 2, ostensibly because the federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina was too slow. Only the story was false. The patients at St. Rita nursing home died on August 29, the same day the hurricane struck New Orleans. The purportedly slow federal response had nothing to do with it. How did this Ratheresque error occur? Perhaps NBC, like CNN, wanted Broussard to "get angry."

Or maybe Rather was happiest with the bogus death count estimate of 10,000 that the MSM put forth. I'm partial to this one because it springs, in part, from a central fallacy of the leftism of the MSM and others -- that people have no capacity to act without the government's help. The intitial impact of the storm could not have caused anything like 10,000 deaths, nor was this the impression the MSM wanted to convey. The estimate assumed instead that, with government not functioning, a substantial number of residents who did not evacuate the city lacked the intiative to move to higher ground (or to the Superdome, as they were told to) as the water level rose, and the decency to help the incapacitated do so. In effect the estimate assumed that a large number of residents lacked the sense, as the old saying goes, "to come in out of the rain." Only a liberal (think Bill Clinton, for example) would have such a low regard for the ability of humans to engage in minimal self-help. And, given the demographics of New Orleans, it would also help for the liberal to be a racist.

Rather says the Katrina coverage was great because reporters were "willing to speak truth to power." Putting aside the hoariness of the cliche, can Rather possibly be so clueless that he doesn't know that much of what the MSM reported turned out not to be true at all? Or is it that he just doesn't care? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that for Rather, "speaking truth to power" means "smearing Republicans with whatever means come to hand." In other words, the MSM coverage of Hurricane Katrina was fake, but accurate.

Beer holsters and Schmucks

During the past week I read story after story about how so many of New Orleans' middle and upper income residents were able to flee the city as Katrina approached, but the poor were left to fend for themselves. The difference here wasn't money. The difference here was attitude. It was the self-sufficient vs. the dependent. The evil rich and middle-income residents fled New Orleans because they are used to accepting the responsibility for their own welfare and safety. The poor stayed behind because they're mired in the sludge of generation after generation of dependency on government. The accomplished class knows that they bear the responsibility for meeting their own needs and providing for their safety. The poor by-and-large bear no such responsibility. To them, it's the government's job. Instead of taking responsibility for their own safety --- they just sat there, waiting for government to come and save them. The achievement-oriented residents of New Orleans were spared the horrors of the violence and filth that followed the flooding because they kept doing what they had been doing all along -- accepting responsibility. The poor were subjected to the violence and filth because they also kept doing what they had been doing all along -- depending on government.

Hurricane Katrina illustrated the truth behind the contention that poverty is a behavioral disorder.

JUST THE SAME ... IT'S ALL BUSH'S FAULT

Now here's something you probably didn't know about Louisiana and Hurricane Katrina. At the very time Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, there were several top-level officials in the very department of Louisiana government that prepares for emergencies such as Katrina sitting around and waiting for their trial. Trial, you say? Trial for what? Let's try corruption and throw in a bit of fraud.

It seems that these Louisiana officials either misspent or misplaced or ... worse ... about 60 million federal taxpayer bucks. Here are some details ...

In March of this year -- that's about five months before Katrina -- FEMA was asking for the return of $30.4 million that the federal government had sent to Louisiana for emergency planning and preparedness. Most of this money was sent to some state office called the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Wait .. it gets worse. According to the Los Angeles Times, much of that money was sent to Louisiana under some federal program called the Hazard Mitigation Grant program. That is a program that is, in part, supposed to help states improve flood control facilities. Flood? Did someone say flood?

Hazard mitigation would have been a great idea in New Orleans, don't you think? Especially that "improve flood control facilities" part, but nobody seems to know where the money went! OK ... let's follow the trail of $15.4 million dollars that was spent by the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. The $15.4 million was part of a $40.5 million grant of your money that was sent to Louisiana for the Hazard Mitigation Program. You know ... flood control and all that. Oops! Hold on a second here. My bad. It seems we can't follow that $15.4 million.. You see, the Louisiana officials say that they awarded that money to subcontractors for 19 major hazard mitigation programs, but they just can't seem to find any receipts to account of 97% of the funds. Ninety-seven percent of $15.4 million, my friends. No receipts. That's $14.94 million .. gone, and nobody can trace it.

Do any of you think that something good might have been done with some of this money? Lives saved? Flooding prevented? If you're thinking that, remember ... we're talking Hurricane Katrina here, and we all know that every bad thing that happened in Hurricane Katrina was --- all together now ---- Bush's Fault!

Perhaps if these Louisiana officials ever actually go to trial now they will be able to use the "Blame Bush" defense.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL .....

Let's see ... what else have we learned in the past week about the response to Katrina.

Doctors from across the United States poured into Louisiana to offer their services in shelters and hospitals treating Katrina's victims. They could do nothing. They just sat. You see, they weren't licensed to practice medicine in Louisiana. It took the amazing Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, five days to sign a waiver to allow these doctors to practice medicine in Louisiana. Five days, while people were suffering and dying. Don't blame Blanco, though. It was clearly Bush's fault.

New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin

On the Saturday before the hurricane New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin received a call from Amtrak. There was a passenger train sitting in the New Orleans station with 900 empty seats. Did the Mayor want to put some evacuees in those seats? No thanks. The train left nearly empty. You cannot blame Mayor Nagin for this decision, that clearly would be racist. It just has to be Bush's fault.

In 1997 the U.S. Congress appropriated $500,000 of your money -- not federal money, taxpayer's money -- to the State of Louisiana. The money was set aside to create a "comprehensive analysis and plan of all evacuation alternatives for New Orleans." Now correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the big deal here, isn't it? New Orleans didn't get evacuated, right? Well, for two years nothing happened. Then the Congress demanded of Louisiana a plan for evacuation in the event of a category 3 story, a levee break, a flood or some other natural disaster. The $500,000 of your money got to Louisiana .. but then what? It was spent by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission, not on an evacuation plan, but things that needed to be done to the Lake Pontchartrain causeway over the next fifteen years or so. What does the incredible Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness have to say about the funds and the causeway study? The spokesman says that they can't find any information. Actually, we shouldn't be holding the Louisiana emergency preparedness folks or the state responsible for this ... not when we all know it was Bush's fault.

Speaking of flood control. You did know, didn't you, that in 1996 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was going to raise and strengthen the very levees that failed in New Orleans. They were going to, but they didn't. And why not? Because of a lawsuit, that's why. The plaintiff in the lawsuit didn't want the work done until extensive and expensive environmental impact statements were prepared by the Corps of Engineers and approved by the EPA. And who filed that lawsuit? Why .. it was the Sierra Club. The very same Sierra Club, by the way, that listened with rapt attention in San Francisco on September 9th while Al Gore told them that the leaders of this country ought to be held accountable for the flooding in New Orleans. Now, some of us might be so twisted as to think that the very Sierra Club that was so enthralled by Gore's rantings should bear some of the blame here ... but that's only because we just don't realize that it was all Bush's fault. Oh .. and by the way. Why haven't we heard more about this Sierra Club lawsuit in the mainstream media? Remember the template.

Mayor Ray Nagin is inviting residents of some areas of New Orleans to come back to their homes and businesses and begin the cleanup process. There's another possible hurricane bearing down on the Florida Keys --- a tropical storm that could become a hurricane and could head toward New Orleans. Now it's possible that if over 100,000 residents return to New Orleans and are further victimized by another hurricane and another flood .. will it be Mayor Ray Nagin's fault? Of course not, you idiots! It will be George Bush's fault! Haven't you been paying attention?

HOLD IT---STOP THE PRESSES---Mayor Nagin has changed his mind and now agrees with Bush that folks should not come back to New Orleans just yet. So they will stay in Houston which is on target for a direct hit and will suffer another major strike and it will all be------------------------------------ you got the idea!

Fat Lying Pantload

Bumped: Another Katrina Myth: Aaron Broussard's "Emotional" Appearance on MTP (Updated: MSNBC/NBC Correction(?))

In yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times [9/12/05], Richard Roeper called Jefferson Parish, LA president Aaron Broussard's tearful outburst, shown September 4th on Meet the Press, "One of the defining media moments of all the hurricane [Katrina] coverage":

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in a St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.""

Like a lot of people, I didn't think Broussard's story passed the "smell test". We were right: He was lying.

MSNBC's Dateline web site, September 5th:

On Sunday, America met 56-year-old Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard in an extraordinary display of raw emotion on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when he talked about a colleague whose mother was trapped in a nursing home awaiting rescue.

The man he was talking about is Thomas Rodrigue, who told “Dateline” that his 92-year-old mother was one of 32 elderly people found dead at the St. Rita’s nursing home.

September 7th, New York Times reported on the deaths at St. Rita's:

St. Bernard Parish officials say that 32 of the home's roughly 60 residents died on Aug. 29, more than a week ago.

August 29th was a Monday. Was Broussard confused about the day on which Rodrigue's mother died?

Susan Candiottoti, reporting on the September 8th broadcast of Newsnight With Aaron Brown:

CANDIOTTI: Sunday night [ed: August 28th], as Katrina struck, Rodrigue was 30 miles away directing emergency personnel for Jefferson Parish. He called the nursing home in St. Bernard Parish again, pleading with officials to get the residents out. He was told they were going to try.

RODRIGUE: I called the St. Bernard officials again and, you know, told them that, you know, they've got to get, you know, these people out. And they said they notified them, and that they weren't -- they refused to leave. And I said, "Well, you need to send the sheriff's office down there and make them leave." And he said, "I'm doing everything I can."

So, Thomas Rodrigue says he was calling the St. Rita's nursing home, and St. Bernard Parish officials on Sunday, August 28th, asking them to send the local sheriff to evacuate the nursing home. Katrina hit St. Bernard Parish on Monday, August 29th, killing his mother.

Broussard claims Rodrigue was talking to his mother for four days after she died, promising her some nebulous "cavalry" was on the way. His story doesn't jibe with the reporting of CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, or even Thomas Rodrigue's own account.

Why would he lie about such a thing?

Aaron Broussard's crocodile tears came at the tail-end of a tirade against FEMA, in response to a question from Tim Russert asking whether the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Loisiana could have been "more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area." Just before his "breakdown," Broussard said:

"Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming.""

Who is the "they" he's referring to? It's worth noting that, according to the State of Loisiana's Emergency Preparedned Plan (PDF warning)local officials are responsible for evacuating residents of the various parishes before and during the early stages of the aftermath of a hurricane.

Was Broussard (a Democrat) trying to score political points (and possibly deflect blame away from local government officials) by blaming federal agencies for failing to respond in a timely manner when people's lives were in danger?

If that was his intention, it worked (at least at first). Russert didn't challenge him, even when he made wild accusations of FEMA "cutting [his parish's] emergency [communication] lines" and ordering the Coast Guard not to give them badly needed fuel. Since any blame for this should be placed on Lousiana state and/or local government officials, any OUTRAGE or RIGHTEOUS indignation should be directed toward them. But don't hold your breath waiting for Tim Russert to issue a correction.

To their credit, even Lies.com issued a correction after initially reporting on Broussard's accusations:

So, assuming the MSNBC story is accurate, Broussard’s story was at least significantly embellished... Broussard, for all the apparent sincerity in his emotional on-air breakdown, was willing to lie in order to make his story work better as political theater, which in turn makes it harder for me to credit the rest of the slow-FEMA-response anecdotes he described.

I won't be as kind. At best, I think Aaron Broussard is the political equivalent of a price gouger; taking advantage of a tragedy in order to gain political capital. He may very well be purposely trying to blame someone's death on an innocent party (or parties). Either way, it's despicable.

See also: Heh.

Bill Clinton=Dishonest, Lying Asshole-now and forever

In recent years, the Democrats have violated many of the tacit conventions of civility that have enabled our political system to work for more than two centuries. Yesterday another barrier fell, and once again, we entered uncharted waters: former President Bill Clinton launched a vicious attack on President Bush on ABC's "This Week" program.

This has never happened before. Until now, both parties have recognized a patriotism that, at some level, supersedes partisanship. Consistent with that belief, former Presidents of both parties have stayed out of politics and have avoided criticizing their successors. Until now. The Democrats appear bent on destroying every element of the fabric that has united us as Americans.

Clinton's vicious attack is even worse in the context of his wife's Presidential bid: it is fair to assume that he was motivated not only by partisanship, but by his own desire to re-occupy the White House, and, most likely, wield once more the levers of power.

AFP reports:

Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq "virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction."

This attack was false in every respect. The invasion of Iraq had the support of dozens of nations. The UN's inspections could never be "completed," but the UN itself had reported that large quantities of WMDs remained unaccounted for. On the other hand, Clinton's suggestion that there was "no real urgency" about the situation in Iraq was probably sincere, as it typified Clinton's approach to terrorism: he perceived no urgency after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, or after al Qaeda's attempt to simultaneously destroy a dozen American airplanes over the Pacific in 1995; or after the attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998; or after Saddam's attempt to assassinate former President Bush; or after Saddam repeatedly tried to shoot down American aircraft; or after the Cole bombing in 2000; or after the Taliban took over Afghanistan and converted it into a training ground for anti-American mass murderers; or after any number of other provocations. So, naturally, Clinton saw no urgency with respect to dealing with Saddam's regime. Of course, had Saddam facilitated a post-9/11 attack on the U.S. using chemical or biological weapons, you can imagine how harshly Clinton would have criticized Bush for his lack of foresight.

Clinton's assertion that there was "no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction" is a flat-out lie. The Consensus Estimate of the American intelligence agencies has been made public, and we have quoted from it and linked to it on many occasions. America's intelligence agencies said, with a "high degree of confidence," that Saddam possessed both chemical and biological weapons. These were the same intelligence reports that Clinton received as President, so he is well aware of them. His statement was not a mistake, it was a lie.

Clinton goes on:

Clinton said there had been a "heroic but so far unsuccessful" effort to put together a constitution that would be universally supported in Iraq.

A ridiculous standard, of course. No nation has ever adopted a constitution that was "universally supported," least of all, our own.

And more:

The US strategy of trying to develop the Iraqi military and police so that they can cope without US support "I think is the best strategy. The problem is we may not have, in the short run, enough troops to do that," said Clinton.

Someone tell me: what did Clinton ever do, during his eight years in office, to build up America's armed forces or increase our power? He continues:

On Hurricane Katrina, Clinton faulted the authorities' failure to evacuate New Orleans ahead of the storm's strike on August 29.

People with cars were able to heed the evacuation order, but many of those who were poor, disabled or elderly were left behind.

"If we really wanted to do it right, we would have had lots of buses lined up to take them out," Clinton.

Note that when Clinton faulted the "authorities," he meant the Bush administration--although, as AFP points out, he "agreed that some responsibility for this lay with the local and state authorities." In fact, the entire responsibility lay with state and local authorities. Here, Clinton is simply playing on the ignorance of his listeners--a time-honored Democratic tactic. And speaking of "buses lined up to take them out," readers of this site are well aware that buses were "lined up," and that the City of New Orleans' hurricane plan contemplated that those buses would be used to evacuate residents. But, due entirely to the incompetence and fecklessness of local authorities, hundreds of buses that were "lined up" were never used. Clinton knows this; again, he is baldly attempting to deceive his listening audience.

Clinton finished up with some budget commentary:

On the US budget, Clinton warned that the federal deficit may be coming untenable, driven by foreign wars, the post-hurricane recovery programme and tax cuts that benefitted just the richest one percent of the US population, himself included.

More lies. As Clinton well knows, the Bush tax cuts benefited all taxpayers. And by historical standards, the current deficit is relatively small as a proportion of GDP, and is dropping.

Again and again, President Bush has tried to work with the Democrats as if they were loyal Americans first, and partisans second. He has treated Bill Clinton with a friendship and respect that, candidly, is disproportionate to Clinton's meager accomplishments. Again and again, the Democrats have rebuffed Bush's overtures and taken advantage of his patriotism and good faith. Clinton's politically-motivated tissue of lies and distortions is just the latest example out of many. But it is unprecedented, coming from a former President. That is a sad thing: the latest wound inflicted on the body politic by the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Tefft sends this Clinton quote from July 23, 2003:

[I]t is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

That was then, I guess; this is now. And 2008 is just a few short years away. So it's time, apparently, to revise the historical record.

Icky Poo 

SPIDER

Spiders are ancient animals with a history going back many millions of years. They have always been with us, an ancient source of fear and fascination. They are abundant and widespread and are natural controllers of insect populations. Wherever you live, you're always close to a spider.

Then there are the human spiders especially those human spiders from Ohio. Internationally renowned as the dumbest spiders of the total species they are more a subject of fascination than fear. You can see this particular spider usually around moonbats. Cindy Sheehand, Ward Churchill, Ted Kennedy, Maurene Dowd, Frank Rich, Harry Ried and others of the “Whackado Wing” of the moonbat ilk are so infected with human spiders that one should be careful when shaking hands with these particular moonbats.

Human spiders aren’t really spiders of the arachnids; they are in the insect category. Some have even been known to wear “beer holsters”. I would post a picture of a human spider but I refuse to put pornography on the site. However if you have the stomach for complete and total intellectual dishonesty and the highest level of ignorance you too can correspond with a human spider at:

spider22997@sbcglobal.net

Good luck and don’t say you weren’t warned.

HITCHENS DESTROYS GALLOWAY

What it means to be pro-Iraq war and anti-Iraq war was brought into crystal clear relief two nights ago in a nationally broadcast debate from New York City between writer Christopher Hitchens and British MP George Galloway. It was not a good night for neo-libs. Hitchens, a writer and lecturer with long and deep ties to the socialist left, calmly, humorously at times and with scholarship, spoke of the coalition and Iraqi forces struggle against Baathists and Al-Queda as a battle against the real imperialists and fascists. He spoke of Sharia law that would be imposed in an Al-Queda Iraqi state. He spoke of Casey Sheehan who was murdered while assisting his comrades in restoring water to Sadr City by the very people his mother would later acquit. He talked candidly about his own change of heart from 1991 to the present having seen for himself in Kurdistan the wasteland Saddam left there. He pointed out the politicizing of so-called facts, the now discredited figure of "100,000 people killed by coalition forces." Saying "you are no longer allowed to mention Iraq and WMDs in the same sentence," he cut through the rhetoric by pointing out Saddam's clear maneuvering to acquire these weapons, his extensively and indelibly documented use of them and the fact that these actions had made Iraq, prior to the war, a virtual "ward of the international community." He asked the audience to consider how anyone would want to be taken seriously making statements to the effect that imported murderers are "freedom-fighters." And, exposing himself with candor for his opposition to the Gulf War (I was also among those who opposed that war and it seems these days having a mind open enough to reassess one's views is a war crime) he stated that had the anti-War movement of the last 15 years gotten its way, murdering regimes in not just Iraq but in the Balkans and Rwanda would have expanded their efforts at liquidating neighboring states as well as their own people.

For his part George Galloway could only speak of the past.(I should say he could only shout of the past since he spent most of his time extolling at the high end of the VU meter) He talked about America's arming of Iraq. He talked of America's "imperialist" march into Lebanon in 1958. He invoked the names Cheney and Rumsfeld as well as Bush Sr. as the real, historic culprits. He time and again used the anti-War manual for meekly acknowledging the horror of mid-east fascism while declaiming its root causes. To that end, he claimed 9/11 was some kind of logical reaction, as if fascists are people that can be reasoned with. (Hitchens tried to tell him New york City wasn't the best place to say something like that) He resorted to faux indignation. When Hitchens pointed out that the Johns Hopkins report on the so-called 100,000 killed in Iraq was, by its writers own admission, faulty and inconclusive, Galloway retorted that Hitchens was calling the academicians of Johns Hopkins "fabricators," saying it with an almost wide-eyed astonishment. He also had to be continuously reminded that the war in '91 was not against Iraq proper but it's invasion of Kuwait, a war given international sanction and support.

For me, the knockout came early when Hitchens told the assembled that, recently, Galloway had stood with the dictator of Syria, Assad, and praised his support of the insurgents in Iraq. Galloway then traveled to America to give comfort to Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed by the very people he had just given approbation to. The audience was stunned for a split second before some of the idiots actually started booing Hitchens. The truth hurts.

I listened to the stream at kpftx.org but it was a little out of sequence. However, there are a great many links to be found. CSPAN2 will air it Saturday night at 7.p.m. central (that's tonight boys and girls).

Ralph Neas - Prince of the Moonbats

PFAW's Ralph Neas issued this statement on the Roberts hearings. Shockingly, he's opposed to Judge Roberts' confirmation. Here's the text of his statement, with my translations mixed in for clarity.

Any Supreme Court nominee should be expected to demonstrate a commitment to the constitutional & legal principles that protect Americans’ rights, liberties & legal protections. John Roberts started his confirmation hearing with two major obstacles to overcome: a long record of advancing legal positions that would undermine protections for Americans’ rights & liberties; & the White House’s refusal to release information about Roberts’ role as the powerful second in command at the solicitor general’s office in the first Bush administration at a time when the office worked to undermine legal protections for privacy, civil rights, women’s rights & religious liberty.

CORRECTION: Any Supreme Court nominee should be expected to demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution, its Amendments, the laws of the land & international treaties we're signatories to. PERIOD. It isn't a justice's duty to advance protections for Americans’ rights & liberties. It's their job to adhere to the aforementioned Constitution.

I think Mr. Roberts put it best when asked if he'd side with the "little guy". Mr. Roberts stated that he'd side with the little guy when the laws & the Constitution was on his side.

Roberts had an opportunity, dozens of opportunities actually, to address both his troubling record & the lack of clarity about his role & positions on critical cases. But he chose instead to evade, mislead & stonewall. He refused to answer over a hundred questions posed by Senators from both sides of the aisle, unacceptable obstructionism from a Chief Justice nominee.

TRANSLATION: John Roberts answered with a precision never seen before in confirmation hearings & he answered more questions than any other Supreme Court nominee, too, if my information is right. Even hyper-partisan Chuck Schumer called him the "most brilliant legal mind" to ever come before the Judiciary Committee.

Quite frankly, he manhandled 'Goofy' Joe Biden & 'Angry' Ted Kennedy in such a way that I almost felt sorry for them. ALMOST. Biden's performance was as pathetic as Howell Heflin's in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, which is speaks volumes. Judge Roberts was like that of the well-respected Dean of a law school & Biden & Kennedy were like freshmen law students.

He repeatedly distanced himself from his own record by claiming to have been just doing his job, but often without telling senators what he thought then or thinks now about the positions he was advocating. Silence is normally golden, but in the case of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, it’s downright ominous, especially given his long record of using his political positions to weaken Americans’ legal protections.

TRANSLATION: Judge Roberts simply pointed out that he was a zealous advocate for his client, whether his client was at the Solicitor General's office or if it was at the Justice Department. There's nothing ominous about that, Mr. Neas. You just don't like that he isn't a reactionary liberal. That's what happens when you can't win elections.

This week we’ve been watching the classic hidden ball trick. John Roberts has spent the last three days trying to hide the ball from senators who are charged by the Constitution with evaluating whether to entrust him with the nation’s most powerful legal job for the rest of his life. No American can expect to be hired for a job if he refuses to answer questions in the interview & Roberts is no exception. As Chief Justice, John Roberts would have a huge impact on Americans’ lives & legal protections, for decades to come. His record, his silence & the power of the position to which he’s been nominated, make John Roberts a dangerous bet, one that senators shouldn’t take.

TRANSLATION: Mr. Neas's cronies in the Senate were stumped the entire time. That doesn't, however, translate into being Judge Roberts being evasive. It just translates into Kennedy, Biden, Leahy & Feinstein being inferior legal minds compared with soon-to-be Chief Justice Roberts.

QUEEN OF THE MOONBATS 

Ignorance personified

In the past, Sheehan has called for the US to move out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but today she upped the ante by calling for them to move out of the United States, too...well, New Orleans at least:

One thing that truly troubled me about my visit to Louisiana was the level of the military presence there. I imagined before that if the military had to be used in a CONUS (Continental US) operations that they would be there to help the citizens: Clothe them, feed them, shelter them, and protect them. But what I saw was a city that is occupied. I saw soldiers walking around in patrols of 7 with their weapons slung on their backs. I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me. Sand bags were removed from private property to make machine gun nests.

The vast majority of people who were looting in New Orleans were doing so to feed their families or to get resources to get their families out of there. If I had a store with an inventory of insured belongings, and a tragedy happened, I would fling my doors open and tell everyone to take what they need: it is only stuff. When our fellow citizens are told to "shoot to kill" other fellow citizens because they want to stay alive, that is military and governmental fascism gone out of control.

...If George Bush truly listened to God and read the words of the Christ, Iraq and the devastation in New Orleans would have never happened. I don't care if a human being is black, brown, white, yellow or pink. I don't care if a human being is Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or pagan. I don't care what flag a person salutes: if a human being is hungry, then it is up to another human being to feed him/her. George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power. The only way America will become more secure is if we have a new administration that cares about Americans even if they don't fall into the top two percent of the wealthiest."

I think the overwhelming majority of Americans, as opposed to moonbats like Cindy Sheehan, think the military came to New Orleans, and is still there, to clothe, feed, shelter, and protect people after the disaster.

But see, that's the difference between most people and anti-war wackos like Cindy Sheehan.

The average person who's still in New Orleans probably takes a great deal of comfort in having all those troops around after a disaster like Katrina. On the other hand, Cindy Sheehan and her anti-war ilk view the troops as "occupiers" who are to be feared, even when they're aiding other Americans.

That, as much as anything else Cindy Sheehan has said so far, should tell you how out of touch she is with reality.

Welcome to Good Morning America, I'm Diane Sawyer, and I'll be smiling for the entire first half of the show, even when it's inappropriate. Be sure to stay tuned, because later I'll be demonstrating expressions of deep empathy, genuine concern and profound sadness. 

SATIRE ALERT !!!

If Bush is to blame for such a high death toll, then shouldn't he also get the credit for the number of casualties being so low?

That's the question my neo-con niece asked me yesterday afternoon right before I dropped her off on the turnpike. Naturally, I blew it off as the ignorant bleatings of a brainwashed Nazi larvae. But as her wailing visage grew smaller in my rear view mirror, I couldn't help but wonder if she had clumsily stumbled onto something.

The staggeringly high body count in the latest of Bush's hurricanes was a monument to his incompetence, if not his intense hatred for blacks. Compassionate democrats had looked forward to surfing the tide of human suffering all the way to the 2008 elections. Now, with the number of casualties significantly lower than the 10,000 we had counted on, many of us are left wondering where it all went right.

Granted, 279 dead is nothing to sneeze at. Democrats might be able to milk it for a few votes, but nowhere near what they need to repeal Bush's tax cuts and put the Hillary-Obama ticket over the top in 2008. Sadly, we soon may have to face the undeniable truth that a good deal of people survived Hurricane Katrina.

Very convenient for the Shrub, isn't it?

Almost TOO convenient.

Frank Rich is a Fat--Panty Sniffing--Weasel

An infantry marine talks back to the NYTimes' Frank Rich (published in yesterday's NYTimes letters section):

To the Editor:

I am an infantry marine with 12 years of service, and I am presently stationed in Falluja, Iraq. I am also a New Orleans native and my parents live in Mandeville, which is on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. They have lost everything.

I take issue with "Falluja Floods the Superdome," by Frank Rich. Falluja is doing quite well. I know because my marines are out on the streets every day. We've been here for almost seven months, and the difference is night and day since we got here.

Secondly, I have 20 other marines in my battalion who are from Louisiana, and not one of us considers himself a "have-not." In fact, every marine in this battalion is proud of what we have accomplished, and we are proud to be marines. Military service was a choice, not a last resort for us.

(Staff Sgt.) Jeff Harilson
Falluja, Iraq, Sept. 5, 2005