Conservative commentary served up in bite-sized bits.

" Considerettes"?

"Warning: first examination of Considerettes suggests an excess of rational thought goes into that blog."
- Clayton Cramer

Comments, questions, cookie recipes? E-mail me! (frodo at thepaytons dot org)

Considerettes in the news:
UPI
Hugh Hewitt
Slate

<< Return to
"Consider This!"



Features
Georgia Marriage Amendment Rally
Considerettes Radio:

2004
2 /16/04 2 /23/04 3/ 5/04 3 /9/04 3 /10/04 3 /16/04 4 /1/04 4 /7/04 4 /21/04 5 /4/04 5 /6/04 6/ 1/04 6 /9/04 6 /16/04	7 /6/04 (1) 7 /6/04 (2) 7 /29/04 7 /30/04 8 /16/04 9 /1/04 9 /8/04 9 /13/04 9 /16/04 9 /24/04 1 0/6/04 1 1/9/04 1 2/9/04
2005
1 /11/05 1 /31/05 2 /28/05 3 /14/05 3 /21/05 5 /16/05 5 /23/05	8 /1/05 8 /10/05 9 /6/05

Considerettes for your PDA



Web Rings
p ? Atlanta Blogs # n
< GAwebloggers ? >

My other blog
Considerable Quotes
Contributor to
Stones Cry Out

My diaries at

(Commenting available)

I'm a reporter for BNN:
The Bloggers News Network





Ye Olde Blogroll

Join Fair Tax Fans

There will be live-blogging of the debate tonight over at Redstate.org. If time permits, I'll participate, but regardless it'll be an interesting place to hang out.
posted at 4:41 PM

Georgia same-sex marriage amendment update (free registration required):

A Fulton County judge on Wednesday declined to halt a Nov. 2 referendum on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, a major victory for supporters of the measure.

Opponents of the amendment said they will appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Superior Court Judge Constance Russell ruled in a four-page order that the court has no authority to intervene before the legislative process is concluded. Until a constitutional amendment has been voted on by the electorate, she said, it is the equivalent of a bill that has not yet passed the General Assembly.

"The courts may not insert themselves into the legislative process prior to the enactment of laws any more than legislators may intervene in a jury's verdict or a judge's ruling in a specific case," Russell wrote.

The Georgia ACLU, Lambda Legal and the Atlanta law firm of Alston and Bird filed the lawsuit Sept. 16 seeking to stop the referendum on the grounds that the amendment violates the state constitution's single subject rule by addressing other issues, such as civil unions and the jurisdiction of Georgia courts.

They also contended that the question voters will see on the ballot is misleading because it asks only if the state should recognize as marriage the "union of man and woman."

Russell heard arguments from both sides Friday, with the attorney general's office representing the state. At the conclusion of the hearing, she hinted she would be unwilling to stop the referendum based on an 84-year-old court decision.

Russell cited the 1920 Georgia Supreme Court case of Gaskins v. Dorsey, which stemmed from a lawsuit in which several south Georgians tried to stop a vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to create a new county in their area, Lanier. The high court unanimously decided that the referendum should proceed, ruling that the legislative process was not complete until voters had cast their ballots.

Russell based her decision Wednesday largely on that case. In her order, the judge did not comment on the legal merits of the ACLU and Lambda Legal's case.

Since the case the judge based her ruling on was also the attempted block of a proposed constitutional amendment, it sounds to me like this lawsuit is destined for the scrap heap after the state Supreme Court hears it. After the vote, I'm sure they'll give it another shot, but for now, my (pretty safe) prediction is it's outta here.

(Cross posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)
posted at 9:51 AM

Over at Redstate.org, there have been a few recent diary entries from others about Sen. Patty Murray and her quote about bin Laden building roads and hospitals, and how that quote is being used in ads for George Nethercutt. In the first one, a poster nicknamed "kevdawg" asked this question:

If those statements she made are false, please provide the evidence they are so. I have seen no one falsify the truth of those assertions.

If you can't do so, that implies you have a problem with politicians that tell the truth to their constituents. She was explaining why Osama bin Laden has such a large base of popular support in the middle east and pakistan. Which he does. And though I haven't seen proof that he used his financial stockpile to curry favors (and yes, make the lives of those who he gave money to, if he did), I also have yet to see anyone show that those facts are false.

I came late to that post, and another diary entry has appeared with a similar subject. So in the current one I posted this comment:

I'm going to pick this new Murray post to bring up something from the last one, and which is still germane to this diary entry. Kevdawg, I think, did have a point in his comment when he asked if the statements were false.

Before the knees jerk, take a look at my diary or my blog and you'll know I'm no liberal or moderate. However, being a conservative, I believe, means calling a spade a spade even if it makes my side look bad. (I'd argue that's why a more conservative influence at Fox News makes them more fair and balanced. But I digress.) Therefore, let's look at this honestly.

Murray gave her opinion as to why the people in the Middle East support bin Laden. She was not speaking for herself. That's pretty clear to me in a reading of the comment in context. So using this quote to make her look like a bin Laden supporter is dishonest. The irony is, there are other ways that it does speak badly of her that could be used instead. Examples:

• Bin Laden's building roads and hospitals, etc., and we should do more of that? Sounds to me like Ms. Murray thinks the War on Terror will be won by whoever spends the most money on public works project in the Mideast. Imagine the first paragraph of a NY Time article the day we win the war:
  

  With cost overruns plaguing the recent construction of "Bin Laden High School" in suburban Baghdad, and al Qaeda's commitment to avoid deficit spending, Mr. bin Laden himself came out of his cave in Pakistan to turn himself in to authorities and stand trial for crimes against humanity. When asked what finally broke him, he replied, "Let's see you try to beat the evil Americans in charitable contributions! We're broke!" Bin Laden and the remaining al Qaeda members will be tried for, among other things, over 3,000 counts of first-degree murder and 32 counts of writing bad checks.

  
  Yeah, right.
  
• A free and liberated Iraq will has already, and will continue to, bring to the Iraqis more (working) hospitals, more (usable) schools, and more private enterprise allowing more road-building. In short, instead of imposing better roads on the Iraqi people (in a manner of speaking), Bush is making it possible for the economy of Iraq to prosper, which will result in the very things Murray says we ought to be doing. Victory over terrorists first, followed by rebuilding, is the plan. She should be supporting Dubya in this endeavor if she really believes this is where bin Laden's support comes from. If she doesn't, her remarks are nothing but partisan blather against the President; something we don't need in wartime.
  

And there's probably more disconnects. Kevdawg, if you're reading this, you did have a point, but only to a point. Beyond that, I hope you'll reconsider your vote.

posted at 9:34 AM

Fox News Channel is beating all rivals' combined stats:

For the first time in its history, Fox News Channel beat the combined competition in primetime during the third quarter of 2004, with major headlines of the summer including the national political conventions and a brutal string of hurricanes.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News averaged 1.8 million viewers, while CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Headline News averaged a combined total of 1.7 million. The quarter ended Sunday.

CNN came in a distant second, averaging 882,000 viewers, while MSNBC drew 421,000. Headline News averaged 226,000 in primetime, and CNBC attracted a paltry 133,000.

Yesterday McQ over at Q&O deconstructed a major media column by blogger Kos (Markos Moulitsas). Kos was trying to make the point that the mainstream media is dominated by conservative voices (please, hold your guffaws until after the posting is complete), but McQ points out how that's only true if you utterly ignore CBSNBCABCNPRMSNBCCNN, the NY Times the Washington Post and a host of other news sources. Coming up from behind, Fox news beats all challengers (and there are a lot of challengers), and all of a sudden it "proves" the media are conservative.

You have to go back to the Rush Limbaugh phenomenon of the late 80's to understand the real reason for the rise of more conservative voices in the media. Rush likes to say that he doesn't need to be balanced by equal time on the left because he is equal time; a balancing voice on the right for all the opinion (pure opinion and opinion posing as news) from the left. Fox News has more of a balance of opinions on it's shows (including panelists who are there to express opinions on news shows like "Special Report"), but it's news is also more balanced. The only reason they get charged with just reading Republican talking points is that you don't hear the Republican side of things on the other networks. If you did, and if you did get a balanced perspective from other outlets, Rush's show and FNC might not even exist.

They do exist because, in my opinion, they provide products that were lacking in the marketplace. Rush provides an outlet of opinion that people were not getting. Callers in the earlier years would talk about how they finally heard something on the air that they could agree with. Folks flocked to Limbaugh, not because he changed their minds, but because they already believed it and hadn't heard anyone else in the media saying it. FNC provides an outlet for getting both sides of the issue. Kitty Kelley got 3 days on the "Today" show when her book dishing dirt on the Bushs came out. How much time did John O'Neill of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" get? FNC gives both sides of an issue more often than the others, and for that they're derided as "conservative". Well if by "conservative" they mean fair and balanced, I'll go with that.

(The Kelley/O'Neill thing is just one example. Get the Media Research Center's daily E-mail "CyberAlert" to find more. I think they get a little oversensitive sometimes, but there's still plenty of food for thought. My favorites are when they compare the same situation under a Republican vs. Democratic administration and see the differences in how it was covered.)

What I'd like to hear is Kos et. al. at least being intellectually honest about the slant in other media outlets instead of talking in vague generalities. Look at the trends that the MRC documents and either explain it or admit it. But that isn't going to happen. As McQ notes,

If the "Right Wing Noise Machine" exists it exists in reaction to a perceived left leaning media monopoly . It arose as an alternative to that monopoly on the news. What Kos wants badly is to return to the heady days of monopoly leftist spin.

And that's what Kos would consider "fair and balanced". Sorry, can't go with that.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)
posted at 9:48 AM

Via Conservative Eyes (fellow Homespun Blogger) via WorldNetDaily comes this possible capture in the War on Terror.

Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been captured in Pakistan, according to a report quoted by Israel Radio today.

The Jerusalem Post says Pakistani forces operating against al Qaida strongholds in the country report capturing the Egyptian national, who was formerly the head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which operated in the past against the Cairo regime.

This would be good news if true. But of course, Democrats wouldn't like it, because it wouldn't help their guy, never mind that the beheadings might stop. They hated it when Hussein was captured, and that wasn't even during an election season.

If you know a die-hard Democrat, keep a concerned eye on him/her. >grin<

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)
posted at 10:26 PM

I've often noted the intellectual disconnect in folks who think that Bush is both a dunce and an evil genius. In a post at NRO's "Kerry Spot", we find this quote from Tucker Carlson yesterday: "If you listen to the Democrats, George W. Bush is not only a moron who can barely tie his own shoes, but he's the most brilliant debater in the history of western civilization."

Now, some of this is raising the bar so that the expected outcome is below what you've set people up for; get them thinking he'll demolish Kerry and when he doesn't Kerry looks better. The Republicans did this before the Democratic National Convention when they predicted a double-digit bounce for Kerry. So this latest example is simple electioneering on the part of Democrats. No big deal in that regard.

However, I do find it amusing to see how many Democrats swallow this disconnect hook, line and sinker. How can Bush be both verbal bumbler yet master debater? How can he be both stupid and brilliant? How can he be both beholden to Saudi interests yet in bed with Israel? Odd.
posted at 6:27 PM

Bryan Preston is putting his money where his mouth is. First the background:

In case you're wondering what all the fuss is about, it's about letting enemy propaganda influence our troops who are on the front lines protecting us from terrorists. Michael Moore's films and books outrageously charge that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are irrelevant to the war against jihad, and that both wars have only been undertaken to make President Bush and his friends rich. Moore's lies have found their way to Iraq thanks to a clever little game he played with file sharing: He permitted his fans to share bootlegged files of his Fahrenheit 9-11 film, burn them to cd or dvd and send them to US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military theatres, caught in a bind between a popular yet truthless film and a possible charge of censorship if they didn't run it, chose to run Fahrenheit 9-11. That has managed to give hack crockumentarian Michael Moore the imprimatur of the Pentagon's approval.

According to several reports, the results of all this have been devastating. Certainly not every unit has been effected, and certainly no majority of the troops have bought into Moore's lies, but in any group of 130,000 to 150,000 young individuals you will find enough people who will believe anything, and enough of them will become disgruntled or disillusioned enough to despise the very country and leadership that sent them to war. For commanders in the field, this can create a potential morale and discipline problem.

So what's Bryan going to do about it?

What Moore did in making that film was unconscionable, and what he did in making it available both via pirated files and even via the Army and Air Force Exchange Service--which operates theatres on bases around the world--is unforgivable. Michael Moore is trying to make sure we lose this war. His new book is just one more part of that effort. We are at war with the very same enemy that murdered in cold blood 3,000 innocents on 9-11, yet Moore chose to make President Bush the villian of his film. We are at war with the same enemy that is currently capturing and beheading civilians, including charity workers, and Moore insists that those killers are "the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen...and they will win."

Only if we let them. And part of letting them win is leaving Moore's shameless propaganda unchallenged. That's where Truth for Troops comes in. Truth for Troops is the counterattack to Moore's vicious lies. Truth for Troops gives you a chance to make a difference in this war where it will count the most--on the front lines, with the troops who are gallantly sacrificing so much to keep us safe. We can send DVDs of a movie that directly refutes Moore's lies, with a bipartisan cast. We owe it to the troops to make sure Michael Moore's insidious and evil manipulations don't stand as this generation's understanding of the war. We owe it to our troops to treat them better than Michael Moore has. He has lied to them about this war; we owe them the truth. That's what Truth for Troops is about.

The web site isn't up yet (see today's post on it for more details), but it will be soon, possibly tomorrow.

See, blogs aren't just for folks to talk, it can also produce a groundswell for action as well. Sure this kind of thing has been done on the net before, but I think with all the cross-talk among blogs the word can really get around. E-mail from a buddy asking for help in an endeavor has been the way it was done before, but the conversation in the blogosphere can be to a larger audience. (And you can't Google an E-mail making the rounds.)

Go get 'em, Bryan.
posted at 1:54 PM

Now Kerry is asking for an end to the political ads.

Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry appealed for an end to the TV advertising war that has marked his election battle against President George W. Bush.

Bush called for an end to all 527 ads, looks like Kerry's finally on the bandwagon as well.

Kerry said the avalanche of negative television spots and attacks being shown on US screens was scaring off voters.

"Americans need a real conversation over our future," Kerry said in a speech at a school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

I'd have to agree. I'm not in favor of banning negative advertising, but enough over a period of time can desensitize some folks to politics in general. We do need a conversation, a debate.

"I'm calling them 'misleadisments,'" Kerry said of the adverts. "It's all scare tactics ... because (Bush) has no record to run on."

Ah, so now we see what Kerry really means! He's only against Bush's negative ads, not his own. Gotta understand the code words he uses to find out what he really means by "conversation". What he really wants is a monologue; his monologue.
posted at 7:54 PM

This just in...

Beyond the tired cliches and sperm-and-egg basics taught in grade school science class, researchers are discovering that men and women are even more different than anyone realized.

...

"Women are different than men, not only psychologically (but) physiologically, and I think we need to understand those differences," says Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In next month's journal; new evidence showing that only women can have babies.
posted at 5:16 PM

Promises vs. reality.

Mr Kerry, who has attacked President George W. Bush for failing to broaden the US-led alliance in Iraq, has pledged to improve relations with European allies and increase international military assistance in Iraq.

Except that...

French and German government officials say they will not significantly increase military assistance in Iraq even if John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, is elected on November 2.

Listen to see if Kerry stops making promises for world leaders that those world leaders don't intend to keep.

(Hat tip to tankertodd at Redstate.org.)
posted at 3:28 PM

I remember when I was a kid and Nixon and McGovern were running against each other for the presidency. One of the rumors that went around the school was that if McGovern was elected, he would make us go to school on Saturday. Well, that made us schoolkids dead set against him, of course, but it was just some rumor, an urban legend, probably started by someone who didn't like McGovern.

Today, the Internet is where those rumors really kick into high gear. Here's the latest:

One of those "come-out-of-nowhere" emails now circulating in cyberspace warns about a sneaky administration effort to begin a "mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages 18-26) starting June 15, 2005...just after the presidential election."

The email says the Bush administration "is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections."

In fact, the bill in question - HR 163 - was introduced by liberal New York Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel on Jan. 7, 2003 - almost two years ago -- and it does not have administration backing.

The companion Senate bill is S. 89, was introduced by Democrat Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, also on Jan. 7, 2003.

The legislation was introduced by lawmakers who oppose the war in Iraq. The bill, according to Rep. Pete Stark, (D-Calif.), "will ensure all Americans share in the cost and sacrifice of war."

Anti-war Democrats introduced the legislation, knowing it would be unpopular. They wanted to make the point that the burden of fighting the war in Iraq would fall disproportionately to poor and minority populations unless a mandatory draft is imposed.

According to the alarmist, pre-election email now circulating, the mandatory draft bill "eliminates higher education as a shelter and includes women in the draft" It says "crossing into Canada" as a means of avoiding the draft has been "made very difficult."

Readers of the email are urged to send it to "all the parents and teachers you know, and all the aunts and uncles, grandparents, godparents. . . And let your children know -- it's their future, and they can be a powerful voice for change!"

You want to be a voice for change? Work to get rid of Rangel, Hollings and Stark. Then you'll be less likely to get drafted. And, of course, Kerry's going along with this hoax.

Last week, at a campaign stop in West Palm Beach, Sen. John F. Kerry said in response to a question:"If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, it is possible" that he would support a mandatory draft.

The Bush campaign called Kerry's statement "irresponsible."

They could also call it "par for the course".
posted at 1:02 PM

Georgia same-sex marriage amendment update:

ATLANTA - A Fulton County judge delayed a decision until next week on whether a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Georgia could stay on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Constance Russell heard arguments from both sides Friday, but referred the Attorney General's Office and plaintiffs, including lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, to a Georgia Supreme Court case that casts doubt on whether the court could intervene until after the election.

"I did some looking on my own … and neither one of you cited (the case) and frankly I'm concerned," Russell said.

Reading from the case decided in 1920, she said, "judicial power will not be exercised to stay the course of legislation while it is in the process" of being enacted.

She gave both sides until Monday to convince her why she does or does not have jurisdiction in the case.

The judge, rightly in my view, gave both sides a thwack for not noticing this. This could make the whole case moot if she's not convinced, which I'm sure scares the ACLU. The bigger the margin of victory on the amendment vote (and it's projected to be very big), the worse it would look for them to being up the lawsuit at that point ("the will of the people" and all that). It's good to hear there's a judge with a level head looking into this, and isn't playing favorites, whatever her predisposition might be.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)
posted at 10:19 AM

CBS President Les Moonves, speaking about the fake document fiasco.

"We are risk-taking," he told NEWSWEEK. "When you extend yourself, it sometimes becomes controversy.''

Ah, so chucking journalistic ethics out the window, all while strongly saying that you do have them, is just a "controversy".

He emphasized that the current "60 Minutes" crisis is profoundly different from other episodes. "Clearly errors were made,'' he says. "But that doesn't reflect the history or integrity of CBS News."

Well, what errors, exactly? The best Rather will say is that he can't be sure the documents are real, in spite of the preponderance of evidence against them.

Euphamism-mania has gripped a network news organization that supposedly calls 'em as they see 'em.
posted at 9:03 AM

Fellow Homespunner Jeff Blanco has some casualty reports, not just from the Iraq war, but from the other wars fought by America for comparison. Compare Iraq (which Kerry/Edwards is now calling a "quagmire") to the other war where that description was used. We're a long way from that, in case you're wondering.
posted at 8:51 AM

If Dan Rather doesn't get fired for using fake documents in his reporting, shouldn't there be some apology for Jayson Blair? Wouldn't reporting on events without having been there, but giving the impression that you were, rise (or fall) to CBS's "fake but accurate" standard? I discussed the question with Kim Peterson on today's installment of "Considerettes Radio".

"Considerettes Radio" on The Kim Peterson Show (WGST, Atlanta, GA) 9/24/2004 6:10pm EST (148K)
posted at 9:15 PM

The proposed Georgia constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is under fire before it gets on the ballot.

A lawsuit to remove a gay marriage amendment from the November ballot will go before a Fulton County judge Friday.

Authors of the amendment to ban gay marriage in Georgia thought the State Legislature had settled the issue earlier this year by leaving it to be decided by voters. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union is trying to halt what they call a loaded question that actually presents two questions, instead of one.

Beth Littrell, of the ACLU, said, “They didn’t mention civil union because they know that voters would not favor putting that into the [Georgia] Constitution.”

The ACLU is calling for the amendment to ban gay marriage to be removed from the November 2 ballot. Passed overwhelmingly by Georgia lawmakers during the previous legislative session, the amendment would affect only gay marriages.

In fact, though, what voters will see on the November ballot only asks them if Georgia should recognize marriage as the union of a man and a woman. But, there’s a second section omitted from the ballot that says no same-sex union shall be entitled to the benefits of marriage.

The ACLU claims that would also outlaw civil unions and, along with them, any chance of legally acquiring domestic benefits. The amendment’s authors deny that, saying the ACLU lawsuit simply reinforces the need to have what’s already Georgia law protected from being overturned by a state court.

Opponents of the ban point out that gay marriage is already against the law in Georgia, but as the last paragraph notes, they've taken the fight to the courts, so that's where they're being met. This is just further proof of that.

The "civil union" point that the ACLU is quibbling over is a bit of a smoke screen. From Ms. Littrell's description, one might think that the proposed amendment would also outlaw civil unions, but it doesn't. It just says that "civil unions" aren't "marriage" and shouldn't be treated as such by the state. So civil unions are still in play, but they'll just be civil unions, not marriage under a different name. Thus it's not one question being put to the Georgia voters. It's just one question clarified by two sentences.

Further, it doesn't prohibit employers from offering the same benefits to married couples and those joined by civil union. Private citizens/groups are free to treat them as they see fit

So this lawsuit is merely a desperate attempt at finding a "friendly" judge to get the amendment off the ballot. Kinda' the way the whole same-sex marriage thing has been playing out around the country. That's why we need a constitutional amendment. Hats off to the ACLU for proving the point.
posted at 4:32 PM

Sometimes it's hard to keep the attack dogs at bay. When they're your attack dogs, then you've got a real problem.

High-level Democrats, including some inside the Kerry campaign, were appalled by this week's political sideshow. Just as John Kerry began finding his voice on Iraq, he was in danger of being drowned out by Democratic operatives Joe Lockhart and Terry McAuliffe. But the Democratic presidential candidate had only himself to blame.

Democratic critics can hardly comprehend that Lockhart, President Bill Clinton's spokesman who was recently taken aboard the campaign by Sen. Kerry, telephoned a notorious Bush-bashing eccentric who was CBS's source of the discredited documents. They also are unhappy that McAuliffe, the Clinton-selected Democratic National Committee chairman, has launched an advertising campaign attacking President Bush's National Guard record.

The complaints are not limited to specific cases. One party activist with a nationally familiar name calls Lockhart and McAuliffe ''attack dogs'' who go beyond the facts and get Kerry off message. But the nominee brought Lockhart into the campaign and could, with a single telephone call, suppress McAuliffe's Bush-bashing. This is Kerry's campaign, and he is responsible for these distractions from his new focus on Iraq.

McAuliffe is about the worst person you can have on your team. Look out, Mr. Kerry.
posted at 5:39 PM

I send out to a few friends and family E-mailings of news articles that I think they'd be interested in and that, as far as I can tell, don't get much press coverage but should. Sometimes it amounts to spam (I'll admit it) but for some it's their connection to news that they're interested in but not seeing (for various reasons, including being out of the country).

One of the people on that list sent out the question below to the group. He quotes from what appears to be a news story, although it looks like it was written by Sidney Blumenthal, who's not a news guy. I didn't have the opportunity to look up the quote myself.

I thought it would be worth posting (with names expunged) in case it might be edifying to others.

Would someone out there help me and please tell me what is going on in Iraq and what our goals are there? Christian perspective welcomed....what is it that I'm not seeing? I'm not looking for right wing rhetoric or ideology...just some reasons for it all. I just can't believe that this is what Christ would want.

'Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency [under the first President Bush], told me [Sydney Blumenthal]: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al Qaeda, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends." Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

My response:

First of all, Sid Blumenthal was a Clinton advisor, and has been eager to pounce on any bad news or opinion that makes Bush look bad. On Sept. 9th, he got all worked up about how "finally" Bush was going to have to answer questions about his National Guard service because some new evidence had surfaced. The day that article appeared, that "new evidence"--the forged documents at CBS--was exposed. Sid is willing to take hook, line and sinker on any story against Dubya. He's not a newsman, he's an opinion guy. Regard anything with his by-line pretending to be news with the same suspicion you would a "news" story by Rush Limbaugh. (Difference is, Rush doesn't put himself forth as a news guy.)

With that in mind, it's not hard to understand how this story sounds scary. That's the angle Sid wanted, and he went out and found it. In fact, the media's coverage of Iraq has been mostly the bad news. That's partly because bad news is more sensational, and partly because (I believe) of their prevailing liberal slant. If you want good news from Iraq, you have to go elsewhere. Arthur Chrenkoff is a blogger who regularly puts out "Good News from Iraq" and "Good News from Afghanistan" on his blog. The most recent posts in his Iraq entries are here:

http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2004/09/good-news-from-iraq-part-10.html
http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2004/08/good-news-from-iraq-part-9.html
http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2004/08/good-news-from-iraq-part-8.html
http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2004/08/good-news-from-iraq-part-7.html

The only problem you face in reading these is that you need to set aside quite a bit of time to read these and follow the links. That's because there's so much good news to report.

The war in Iraq and its aftermath have been compared to World War II. One of the similarities is that the number of pundits back then, after the fall of Berlin, who worried that the US was "losing the peace". In the middle of things, yeah, it looked pretty bad. Not all of Germany welcomed the Allies with open arms. Rebuilding the country was going to take boatloads of cash and patience, and insurgents were a problem. But we committed to it, and it worked.

Was it worth it? I think we'd agree that it was, from a political as well as Christian perspective. Even with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, it was worth it. We removed a dictator with designs on dominating the region and exterminating a race; a race that as Christians, we have a connection with and owe something to.

Of course, the question of if the war in Iraq is worth it, in spite of any similarities to WWII, has to stand on its own. We removed a dictator with designs on dominating the region (he'd invaded 2 countries in the past, and only left 1 after we kicked him out). The latest reports say his WMD programs were dormant, but were waiting for inspectors to leave before starting them up again. An Iraq with WMDs would be a threat to American interests. Yes, this means oil (Hussein staying in Kuwait would've been a severe hit to our economy), but this includes Israel, who has little but us as an ally.

Do they want us there? Well, you can't blame folks for preferring not to have foreign soldiers all over, but at the same time they aren't marching in the streets en masse to get us out. Yes, there are some, but in a country of 250 million, the percentages are small.

And what of the lives lost? Every life is sacred, but consider the relative cost. Instead of hundreds of thousands, we only recently lost the 1000th soldier. If any war can be considered a success, this surely rates as one.

I think there are legitimate questions as to how to proceed in this rebuilding. Some say that we're forgetting the lessons of Vietnam; that half-measures and political correctness don't produce victory over those who want this fledgeling democracy to fail. If we cut and run, it surely will fail.

Germany didn't go from beaten Axis power to functioning democracy in less that a year. Even America took 3 years from the end of the Revolutionary War to a Constitution. Why should Iraq be any different? You will continue to hear bad news from the front lines. That's to be expected. But it's not the whole story.

A democratic republic is being attacked by those who wish it to fail. That sentence is just as true about Iraq today as it was about America on 9/11. This is the War on Terror, and I think that despite the bad news and hand-wringers, it's still worth fighting.
posted at 4:49 PM

That was then:

CNN TRANSCRIPT:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN RATHER, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been. There isn't going to be -- there's no -- what you're saying apology?

QUESTION: Apology or any kind of retraction or...

RATHER: Not even discussed, nor should it be. I want to make clear to you, I want to make clear to you if I have not made clear to you, that this story is true, and that more important questions than how we got the story, which is where those who don't like the story like to put the emphasis, the more important question is what are the answers to the questions raised in the story, which I just gave you earlier.

This is now:

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry.

Dan's apology, however, brings up more questions.

• Why did "60 Minutes" go with documents that they had not researched well enough, especially when some of their own experts advised them not to consider them authentic? Dan Rather personally reported the story, so what was gave him such confidence in their authenticity? The blogosphere blew the case wide open within 12 hours of the report, for goodness sake.
  
• Who forged the documents? Who is the actual source, if not Burkett? And why isn't CBS News asking that question?
  
• When do we get an apology? Rather's "apology" was just finger-pointing and backpedaling. "I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question." So basically it's someone else's fault that you jumped to quickly on an anti-Bush story that, with minimal checking, fell apart hours after you reported it. That's an apology?

Sorry Dan, this doesn't cut it.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

Of course that's important, though in your case the reason is that the more folks who swallow what you offer, hook, line and sinker, the more of this blatant partisanship you could have gotten away with. Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Rather.
posted at 9:03 AM

I'm teaching a class this week, so blogging will be very light (yes, even lunchtime breaks will be short).

One thing I want to pass along. Watching Fox news over the weekend, I heard a guest (and for the life of me I can't remember who) put this point of view forward:

Iraq is a fledgling democracy. There have already been some local elections of sorts, and the national one is coming in January. Their own national guard is beginning. "Insurgents" have been killing people to stop this. So how does this sound any different than guy blowing up building in our own democracy (OK, "democratic republic" but you get the idea)? The 9/11 guys were "terrorists", not insurgents, not activists and not militants. The guys doing this in Iraq are not all from Iraq--a substantial number are from Iran, for example--so it's not entirely an internal "civil war". These guys are "terrorists" trying to thwart a democratic republic that, among other things, allows for a measure of freedom of religion. They are "terrorists" in the exact same way the 9/11 guys were.

Shouldn't we be fighting alongside a new ally in the war on terror? Yes, the bombings are probably happening because of our presence there, but not entirely, since often the targets these days are Iraqis, in whole or in part. And our presence there is the only reason those reforms are happening. Should we have left a murderous dictator alone? Isn't democracy a Good Thing? Even if you don't think the war in Iraq was part of the war on terror, the reforms that are in place are giving terrorists fits and they're trying to stop it with all they have. This is the War on Terror.

So then, where would you rather it be fought; on the terrorists turf, or downtown Manhatten?
posted at 12:52 PM

No stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq.

Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

Yup, this is a black eye, but not just for Bush. Leaders and intelligence organizations all over the world thought he had them (especially since he'd used them). So as much as the lefties would like to lay the blame squarely on Bush for this, there's plenty of folks to spread the blame over, including John Kerry. But that's not stopping them from getting ready to blame just Dubya.

If the report is released publicly before the Nov. 2 elections, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticize the Bush administration's leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.

So was the war a mistake?

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticized the president's handling of the war, but also has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.

So this should mute the criticism from the left, right?

Wrong.

One other thing to note: If Saddam was ready to kick the weapons programs back in once the inspectors left (and, on cue, the left would proclaim that inspections had "worked" and that Hussein was not a threat), then the threat would inevitably increase to a point where we would have needed to take him out anyway. And in the meantime, money and lives would be spent ensuring that Hussein didn't start killing Kurds, while on the ground torture and mass graves would continue to be the order of the day. And that is what the left would have considered a "victory".

No thanks.
posted at 3:30 PM

Oil-for-Food-for-al-Qaeda?

Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam's coffers and Usama bin Laden declared his infamous war on the U.S.

Now, buried in some of the United Nation's own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link — clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort.

I realize that to some Democrats, a "tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda" reported by the 9/11 Commission might come as a complete surprise, given how the news media and liberal pundits have redefined this to say "no connections at all". It might be worth it, then, to read the whole thing. Claudia Rosett has been all over the UNSCAM story from the beginning and has a history of good reporting on it.
posted at 3:17 PM

Are Congressional investigations necessary to hold CBS's feet to the fire, or is the free market's response enough? On "Considerettes Radio" from a call yesterday, I note the free market issue and Hugh Hewitt give his reasons for wanting Congress to get involved. We report, you decide.

"Considerettes Radio" on The Hugh Hewitt Show (WGKA, Atlanta, GA) 9/16/2004 6:50pm EST (611K)
posted at 1:27 PM

First it was Bob Schieffer exposing cracks in the CBS facade, now it Andy Rooney of all people.

CBS curmudgeon Andy Rooney indicated yesterday he believes the controversial documents on President Bush's National Guard service are fake and said it could cost Dan Rather down the road.

"I'm surprised at their reluctance to concede they're wrong," Rooney said, referring to CBS brass.

The cracks have become fissures. But really, Andy. This reluctance to admit to being wrong shouldn't come as a surprise to you. You, yourself, haven't apologized for your own double standards. When going after conservatives or the religious, journalistic standards typically go out the window. How exactly is this surprising?

Despite praising Rather as "a good, honest newsman," Rooney added, "I'm unsure if they're whistling in the dark instead of apologizing."

Do you mean "honest newsman" in the same way Dan Rather thought Bill Clinton could "lie about any number of things" and still be considered honest "at core"?

Rooney doesn't think the network would try to ease out Rather over the memo mess, but he added, "It might have an effect on him six months from now."

Ease him out then and hope that Ra^thergate doesn't mar his retirement. Could this be a hint that Dan may not last longer than that at anchor?

Rooney and other CBS staffers are still holding out hope that Rather will produce something to authenticate the supposed memos from the early 1970s that criticized Bush's record in the Texas Air National Guard.

...especially since this has put their ratings in the tank. It's interesting to hear that staffers at CBS itself don't take Dan's or the network's word for it that they stand behind the story. If they won't, certainly we shouldn't.
posted at 11:10 AM

The free market kicks in.

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU SEPT 16, 2004 11:42:09 ET XXXXX

CBS CONCERN OVER VIEWERSHIP PLUNGE; RATHER RATINGS FADE IN MAJOR MARKETS

CBS executives on both coasts have become concerned in recent days that Dan Rather's EVENING NEWS broadcast has plunged in the ratings since the anchor presented questionable documents about Bush's National Guard service.

And that's how it's supposed to work when you do shoddy reporting.

NIELSEN numbers released this week show Rather fading and trailing his rivals in every Top 10 city, other than San Francisco,

...where many reflexively believe anything anti-Bush and have more in common with France than the United States...

with audience margins in some cities running more than 6 to 1 against CBS!

Executives fear many voters inclined to vote for Bush are now switching off Rather.

What they ought to fear is that many people who were inclined to believe CBS's claims of "objectivity" are switching off CBS in general. They may try to paint it as as some sort of "conservative flight", but I think it's deeper than that.

"The audience appears to [be] polarized," a top CBS source said from LOS ANGELES on Thursday. "Rightly or wrongly, we're being perceived as 'anti-Bush,' which I do not think is fair to Dan, who is a fine journalist... of course we do not like to see the ratings coming back the way they are this week."

Whenever they've reported polls during this election season, they've noted the polarization. Why should it be a surprise to them now?

And the misdirection is amazing. This isn't about being fair to Dan, it's about being fair, period. If you can't be fair with the facts, don't expect any leeway.

In Philadelphia, the nation's #4 market, Rather pulled a 2.6 rating/5 share on Tuesday night against ABC's 13.3 rating/23 share and NBC's 4.0/7.

In Chicago, Rather hit a 2.3/5 to ABC's 9.2/20.

CBS trailed ABC by more than 2 to 1 in Los Angeles.

Hugh Hewitt may want Congressional investigations, but I think the people have spoken louder than any Congressman can.

And in the nation's top market, New York, Rather finished not only behind NBC NIGHTLY NEWS and ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT -- but also pulled less audience than reruns of the SIMPSONS, WILL & GRACE and KING OF QUEENS.

Insult, meet injury.

Rather finished dead last in New York during the 6:30 pm timeslot among all broadcast channels tracked by NIELSEN on Tuesday.

Developing...

Oh yeah, it most certainly is.
posted at 1:33 PM

Hurricane Dan continues to swirl, with blusters reaching record speeds. One of the tornados spawned off from this has been the Abilene, TX Kinkos angle.

Documents allegedly written by a deceased officer that raised questions about President Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko's copy shop in Abilene, Tex., according to another former Guard officer who was shown the records by the network.

...

There is only one Kinko's in Abilene, and it is 21 miles from the Baird, Tex., home of retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, who has been named by several news outlets as a possible source for the documents.

Burkett has had an axe to grind with Bush for a good long time. This isn't a coincidence.

And now Dan himself is admitting to doubts about the memos.

CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes."

"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said in an interview last night. "Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "

Somebody get this man a laptop and an Internet connection before he tries to "break" a story that's been all over the blogosphere, and even in the MSM, for over a week. Is that the CBS definition of a "scoop"?

"This is not about me," Rather said before anchoring last night's newscast. "I recognize that those who didn't want the information out and tried to discredit the story are trying to make it about me, and I accept that."

Um, Dan. Since you presented these documents as real to the American public, and you personally vouched for them (for a time, anyway), then it most certainly is about you. Why are you blaming fact checkers for the false "facts" you tried to foist on us? This sounds like Clinton blaming Starr for discovering Clinton's lies; blame the investigator(s) for uncovering the truth. What arrogance!
posted at 10:28 AM

Backcountry Conservative's been doing a boatload of live-blogging of things like the delayed statement from CBS and the follow-up "60 Minutes II" segment on problems. A bunch of very interesting reads if you've missed some of the whirlwind going on today. (No, I'm not talking about hurricane Ivan.)

Just start with the report by Drudge that the faked memos were possibly faxed to CBS from a Kinkos, and keep on scrolling.
posted at 10:18 PM

A poster at Redstate.org known only as "W" posted a diary entry noting that ABC has been ahead of the curve in the mainstream media on exposing the CBS forged memos incident. But read the last paragraph:

Many have marked this story as a seminal moment when the new media has eclipsed the old. But, without ABC, this story may have never made it beyond the ranks of the pajamahadeen.

The "Pajamahadeen"? Now that's funny. (Explanation here for those not getting the PJ reference.)
posted at 12:43 PM

The 2nd anniversary of the Carnival of the Vanities is up at its home base, Silflay Hraka. Thanks to the dudes there for getting this thing going in the first place (and spawning a bunch of copycats, all good for the blogosphere).

(OK, yeah, and I have an entry on there myself. Pity me, the self-promoter. Thanks to the guys for putting up what I thought was my funniest portion as the excerpt.)
posted at 12:12 PM

Cracks are appearing in the CBS News organization.

CBS News' Bob Schieffer said Tuesday he hopes the network does more reporting to definitively prove the authenticity of memos 60 Minutes II received about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard.

"I think we have to find some way to show our viewers they are not forgeries,'' Schieffer, CBS' chief Washington correspondent and host of the network's "Face the Nation,'' said at a news conference in Sioux City. "I don't know how we're going to do that without violating the confidentiality of sources.''

No, see, that's the whole problem. If you folks are so sure these are authentic, saying why doesn't require you to say who gave you that information. And frankly the only way to ensure authentication is to have the originals; no handwriting expert worth his pay would guarantee anything without the originals. Do you have the originals? If so, why not bring them out, instead of 10th generation copies? If not, how can you possibly be so sure of them?

But let's assume for the moment that saying why would give away who. Are handwriting experts really confidential sources? Someone leaking information from the White House; yes. Someone vouching for your reporting; no. If you revealed an inside source of information, you might not get their cooperation, or leaks from others, in the future. Are you worried that if you reveal the name(s) of your expert(s) that they'll no longer work for you? Now why would that be? Could it be that their reputation would take such a hit being associated with this, and they agreed up front to stay anonymous?

Or perhaps the sources you're referring to are actually the folks you got the documents from. Where they came from shouldn't matter more than the authentication, especially since many of the people who would known of Killian's personal files (his wife, his son, his secretary), are all shooting down their authenticity. What should matter most is expert testimony. If you think you can only prove they're good by exposing confidential sources, that doesn't speak well for your due diligence.

CBS has stood by its story, with Rather saying there is "no definitive evidence'' that has emeged [sic] to prove the documents are fake.

"He is very confident of his sources,'' said Schieffer, who has talked to Rather daily during the flap. "He says he is absolutely convinced these documents are real.''

Again, it's the sources that convince Rather of the validity of the memos. If they're experts, why won't they reveal themselves? If they're operatives,...well, we know why they wouldn't want to reveal themselves. Either way, it's bad for CBS.

CBS, which has declined to reveal the source of the memos, has pointed to its own experts who have verified that documents could have been produced on typewriters of the 1970s. But the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the lead expert CBS retained said he examined only Killian's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

It again brings up that question; if the on-air experts are ambivalent, why not bring out those that stand, rock-solid, behind their conclusions? Hmmm.

"People ask me, 'Do I think somebody was trying to set up Dan Rather?' I say, "No that's completely out of the question,'' said Schieffer, who addressed the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce's annual dinner/meeting Tuesday night. "Would somebody do this in an effort to smear George Bush? That may be so. We're in the middle of a political campaign, and this would not be the first campaign where somebody on one side slipped something to a reporter because he feels it would hurt the guy on the other side.''

Schieffer is trying to patch up the cracks now. Everybody does it, it's no big deal. (Echoes of the Clinton administration, eh?) But he's conveniently sidestepping the real issue. Nobody's suggesting that political operatives try to make the opponent look bad. The current accusations are that CBS took poor forgeries, did minimal checking on them, ignored contrary evidence, and used them to buttress a report on their premier news magazine. And if Rather wasn't set up, then he was either foolish or complicit. None of those outcomes speaks well of him as a news anchor.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org, where you can comment.)
posted at 10:59 AM

Welcome, Dean's World readers. The Dean notes that Kerry supporters are starting to sound silly, even without the forged memos fiasco. Sid's editorial about this being Bush's turn in the hot seat was written before that blew up, adding insult to injury.

Enjoy.
posted at 9:10 AM

Sometime soon, I will be embarking on an adventure, full of danger, with many twists & turns. Hopefully, I will come out of this unscathed, but there are never any guarantees in this endeavor.

I refer, of course, to changing my web hosting service.

A buddy of mine has graciously let me "sub-let" a portion of his space, and even having given me fair warning that he planned on removing this account in early summer, it's still here. But it's time for me to launch out on my own. This means, for them what cares, getting a new space, moving everything over to it, and >gulp< get the name servers switched with minimal downtime.

Anyway, just fair warning. If, at some point in the next month you find that the web site has seemed to disappear, fear not. I'll be back.
posted at 3:28 PM

For those of you concerned that Bush is trying to create some sort of theocracy because of the way he publicly refers to his religion, Paul Kengor has some news for you. After recounting a recent, very under-reported story about Clinton getting a church in New York mobilized to vote for Democrats, he puts the stats out.

Here’s the reality: Though clearly a devout Christian, Bush is no more outwardly religious than the vast majority of this nation’s presidents, including the most recent.

I researched the Presidential Documents — the official collection of every public presidential statement. An examination of the mentions of Jesus Christ by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton showed that through 2003, Bush cited Jesus, or Jesus Christ, or Christ in 14 separate statements, compared to 41 by Clinton during his eight years in office. On average, Clinton mentioned Christ in 5.1 statements per year, which exceeded Bush’s 4.7.

Bush’s biggest year was 2001, when he mentioned Christ in seven statements. This was the year of September 11; he was especially introspective, and often looked upward for strength. In 2002, he cited Christ in five statements.

Most interesting, in all of 2003, the Presidential Documents displayed only two statements in which Bush mentioned his Savior: the Easter and Christmas messages. It may be reasonable to conclude that the hostile press reaction to Bush’s mention of Jesus has pressured him into silence.

Such pressure was never placed on Bush’s Democratic predecessor. President Bill Clinton’s top year for Christ remarks was 1996 — the year of his re-election campaign — when he spoke of Christ in nine separate statements. Clinton mentioned Christ almost twice as much in election years.

In addition, the Presidential Documents list only three incidences of Bush speaking in a church through his first three years.

By contrast, Clinton spoke in churches 21 times, with over half in election years. And often what he said and did in these churches was blatantly partisan, from identifying New York’s Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo as a “prophet” to instructing worshippers to go vote.

The press is feeding the fire of those who think that only a Republican does these sorts of things. They ignore what doesn't fit the template. Liberals love it when Clinton or Jesse Jackson or any other Democrat get the faithful moving while at church, but if a Republican uses the J-word anywhere it's some sort of "separation of church and state" Constitutional crisis.

That liberal media, the one that feeds the red meat to the liberal faithful.
posted at 12:34 PM

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, page 1:

Mindful of the political perils, the state Parole Board has begun talking about softening a get-tough-on-crime policy that has helped pack Georgia's prisons.

At a recent out-of-town retreat, parole board members discussed rules passed in 1998 that required felons convicted of one of 20 offenses to serve at least 90 percent of their sentence. They asked staffers to study the impact of the policy, expressing concerns about its fairness and its effect on a growing prison population.

"You know we have some problems with it," parole board member Eugene Walker told board attorney Tracy Masters. "Help validate the kinds of concerns we're raising and why we need to change it."

AJC, same issue, not on page 1:

The nation's crime rate last year held steady at the lowest levels since the government began surveying crime victims in 1973, the Justice Department reported Sunday.

The study was the latest contribution to a decade-long trend in which violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 55 percent and property crime by 49 percent. That has included a 14 percent drop in violent crime from 2000-2001 to 2002-2003.

"The rates are the lowest experienced in the last 30 years," Justice Department statistician Shannan Catalona said in the report. "Crime rates have stabilized."

Hmm, which would I rather have; more crime or crowded prisons? And do ya' think that the two stories are related somehow? Do we need to change a policy that is reducing crime?

Does anyone at the AJC notice this? Do they read their own paper?
posted at 2:00 PM

Nameless, faceless charges from the Kerry campaign:

John Kerry suggested Saturday night that Republicans may try to keep black voters from casting their ballots to help President Bush win in November. "We are not going to stand by and allow another million African American votes to go uncounted in this election," the Democratic presidential nominee told the Congressional Black Caucus.

"We are not going to stand by and allow acts of voter suppression, and we're hearing those things again in this election."

Kerry has a team of lawyers to examine possible voting problems to try to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election disputes. He also has said he has thousands of lawyers around the country prepared to monitor the polls on election day.

"What they did in Florida in 2000, some say they may be planning to do this year in battleground states all across this country," Kerry said. "Well, we are here to let them know that we will fight tooth and nail to make sure that this time, every vote is counted and every vote counts."

"Some say"? Who says this, and who do they say is planning this? Is this just you saying this, Mr. Kerry? If not, why can't you reveal who it is that's claiming this? How is all this supposed to take place?

This is why Kerry won't sit down with a reporter or call a press conference. The questions left unanswered are all very damaging. But they make good content-free rhetoric, eh?
posted at 1:47 PM

RatherGate.com is up, documenting (and pointing to others who are documenting) the case against Dan Rather and "60 Minutes" in the Bush Guard duty memos.
posted at 11:44 AM

The press has been trying to draw a moral equivalence between the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which elicited retractions from the Kerry campaign, and the Kitty Kelley and CBS "60 Minutes" charges, which are a combination of gossip and likely bogus sources. On "Considerettes Radio" today, I talked with Bill Bennett about this.

"Considerettes Radio" on Bill Bennett's Morning in America (WGKA, Atlanta, GA) 9/13/2004 8:10am EST (221K)
posted at 11:16 AM

Via Hugh Hewitt: For those of you who hold up the Canadian health care system as an example of what we need here, you need to read this:

Canada Looks for Ways to Fix Its Health Care System

Y'know how people say that our system benefits the rich who can pay for their own care, and that the Canadian system is so much more fair?

"If you are not bleeding all over the place, you are put on the back burner," Ms. Pacione said, "unless of course you have money or know somebody."

And of course, just like any government program, the government is loathe to relinquish the power.

The publicly financed health insurance system remains a prideful jewel for most Canadians, who see it as an expression of communal caring for the less fortunate and a striking contrast to an American health care system that leaves 45 million people uninsured. But polls indicate that public confidence in the system is eroding, although politicians remain reticent to urge increasing privatization of services.

And what are Canadian doctors doing in this system?

A 2002 report from the Canadian Senate said that the actual number of family doctors had decreased only slightly in recent years but that the demands of an aging population were growing. Meanwhile, several recent studies have shown that family doctors are working shorter hours.

Young doctors are more likely to seek the most lucrative work in cities or go to the United States rather than start more modest practices in small towns because of growing debts when they leave medical school. That has set off an increasing competition among small towns to attract doctors.

What gets me is this question:

"It's like winning the lottery to get in and see the doctor," Mayor Marcel Brunelle said. "This is a very wealthy country. What happened to bring the situation to this point?"

Oh come on, this is way too easy. What has happened to a big government program? It's become a money pit, as they all do. This doesn't take any Holmsian deduction; it's simply a matter of looking at history and predicting the trend will continue.
posted at 10:08 PM

Greets to the folks coming here from the link at Chrenkoff's. Just one correction: I'm not a native Georgian, per se. I'm a transplant (as it seems most folks in metro Atlanta are) from up north, but I have been here for 19 years, so that may count for something. >grin<
posted at 9:45 PM

9/11, 3 years on:

I remember the first words I heard telling me that something unusual had just happened. I remember the voice mail I got at the office from my wife telling me to listen to the news. I remember hearing people relay news reported to them from spouses or friends over the phone (some of which turned out to be wrong). I remember thinking that when the towers came down the death toll could reach into 5 figures. (I remember being so grateful later on that it wasn't.) I remember my boss telling everyone to go home. I remember watching TV pretty much the rest of the day. I remember when my kids got home from school and we talked about what had happened.

My kids took it well. They asked questions, and I answered them the best that I could. I've always tried to instill a sense of history in them when interesting things happened (we talked a lot about the 2000 election debacle), but in this case there was history mixed with a sadness, even a reverence, for those who just went to work that day and never came home.

One of my daughters was studying the state of New York in school and had recently decided to do a diorama of New York City. When it came time to do the buildings, I was going to print out a picture of the skyline, which we'd cut up and give a 3-D look to. When we asked her whether she wanted the Twin Towers there or not, she thought for a second and decided that she wanted them to be in there. She and her sister had visited the Twin Towers a couple years earlier with their aunt from Queens, and they remember looking out from the top.

Some time after the clean-up at Ground Zero was finished, I took my 3 oldest kids there. I have some pictures of them there, as well as the perfectly-proportioned cross made of steel beams that was found in the wreckage, standing tall in the midst of what should have been two tall towers and thousands of people. My picture of the cross is part of my computer wallpaper rotation, to remember that day.

I have a lot of memories from 9/11, but not nearly as many as others. One of my brothers-in-law was stuck in downtown Manhatten for 3 straight days. He did maintenance work at a hospital, and for him to leave would have meant putting patients in peril, so he stayed. When he did come home, he ate, slept, and went right back. You want memories? He's got 'em, and they're far more emotional than mine. My wife read Lisa Beamer's book "Let's Roll". Lisa's husband, as you probably know, was one of those that is likely responsible for downing a plane in Pennsylvania instead of the Capitol or some other target that the terrorists had planned on. You want memories? Few of ours hold a candle to hers.

So 3 years on, we're remembering the day, each in our own way, based on our own memories. But we, as a nation, have a corporate memory as well; the sum total of all of our thoughts and experiences. This national memory sometimes fades, in and out, especially as the time passes. We were so patriotic in the days after 9/11, but where has that gone now? Some of us still are. My vehicles still have the decorations I bought for them soon after the attacks. But flag decals don't make you patriotic. I think standing up for your country when you believe your country is right is nothing to be ashamed of. I also think criticizing your country, in a honest manner, when you believe your country is wrong is nothing to be ashamed of, either.

So I believe that criticizing a war you think is wrong is patriotic, but I don't think that marching in the street complaining of a tyrannical government that is worse than al Qaeda is, because it's not honest. If they were tyrannical, if they were stifling dissent, you couldn't be marching in the street against them.

In one episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space 9", Captain Sisko noted the problem between how Earth was handling a situation and how he thought it should be handled. His complaint was that Earth itself was the problem. They had such a utopian society there--no hunger, no disease, full employment, no poor--that they couldn't understand the situation outside. In a similar fashion, I think we in the U.S. don't really understand how good we've got it. We've forgotten, as a nation, what it felt like that fall morning when 3,000 died and our notion of impenetrability was shattered.

When half the populace agrees with a guy who wants to make terrorism a "law enforcement" issue, being reactive instead of proactive, you know we're losing our national memory. When people consider the man going after terrorists to be the "real" terrorist, amnesia has set in.

Hopefully, today will remind some folks about what is really going on in the world. Seeing people who have more of an emotional attachment to their 9/11 memories might awaken in others the real reason we can't wait for the rest of the world to agree that our country needs defending. Today is not just a day to pause presidential campaigning. It's not just an occasion to light some candles. It's not just for comforting those who've lost loved ones. It is all those things, but it is also one thing above all.

This is a day to remember.

Remember.
posted at 3:12 PM

It's 3 years late, but it's very encouraging to hear.

Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join the war against terror, we need to take the lead in this war.

As to apologizing, we will no longer wait for our religious leaders and “intellectuals” to do the right thing. Instead, we will start by apologizing for 9-11.

We are so sorry that 3000 people were murdered in our name. We will never forget the sight of people jumping from two of the highest buildings in the world hoping against hope that if they moved their arms fast enough that they may fly and survive a certain death from burning.

We are sorry for blaming 9-11 on a Jewish or right wing conspiracy.

We are so sorry for the murder of more than three hundred school children and adults in Russia.

We are so sorry for the murder of train passengers in Spain.

We are so sorry for all the victims of suicide bombings. We are so sorry for the beheadings, abductions, rapes, violent Jihad and all the atrocities committed by Muslims around the world.

We are so sorry for a religious education that raised killers rather than train people to do good in the world. We are sorry that we did not take the time to teach our children tolerance and respect for other people.

We are so sorry for not rising up against the dictators who have ruled the Muslim world for decades.

We are so sorry for allowing corruption to spread so fast and so deep in the Muslim world that many of our youth lost hope.

We are so sorry for allowing our religious leaders to relegate women to the status of forth class citizens at best and sub-humans at worse.

We are so sorry.

The group that put this out gives their religious leaders a scolding for not doing this on their behalf sooner. I'd have to agree, but this is going to go a long way in healing the hurt many people have.
posted at 9:49 PM

Tim Blair has his own mondo post on the allegedly fake documents touted by "60 Minutes" on Bush's National Guard duty, but he makes a link to my fisking of Blumenthal yesterday that, I'll have to admit, I should have seen myself. (OK, and he also gave me an actual web link on Spleenville, too. I'll have to admit that, too. >grin<)

Sid's big point was that the Guard service issue was going to make it Bush's turn to squirm, but Sid's new "evidence of the President's fudged war record" is, in large part, these potentially bogus documents. Blair refers to it as a modern classic in the tradition of "Dewey Defeats Truman". Too funny.

And Dan Rather's digging the trenches (some might say "graves") himself for CBS, putting his own credibility on the line. (Although most of the blogosphere was already doing that for him.) PowerLine believes that the only reason he'd do this is that Rather himself is the source of the documents (at least within CBS News itself; no telling if/where he got them outside of the organization), and that, as his last, big contribution to Kerry before retiring, he plans on getting the Democrat elected.

Truly amazing to watch.
posted at 3:00 PM

I hate Clippy the paper clip, but it's possible he might be arrested for aiding & abetting a hoax.
posted at 12:09 PM

Just a bit of an update on the previous post: While CNN was still running with the CBS documents as authentic and getting reaction from them, Fox News' "Special Report with Brit Hume", recorded earlier in the day, did note the questions about a forgery. Advantage: Fox News Channel.

And talk about your flashbacks! Sen. Tom Harkin called these documents evidence that "the president lied to the American people in the Oval Office". This is the same Tom Harkin that, before Starr had a chance to present his evidence of Clinton lying, pronounced the as-yet-unseen evidence a "dung heap". Today, it looks like he's been handed a heap of dung and pronounced it "evidence".

This is rich. The sound of Democrats doing 180s could really be interesting to listen to.
posted at 8:25 AM

Yeah, it's late. I've been up reading all the blogs about this very possible forgery situation. As I passed by the TV, I flipped on the news channels to see if anyone was mentioning it. CNN was still reporting as though the documents were 100% authentic, complete with quotes from Democratic politicians blasting Bush over their content.

Advantage blogosphere. It's entirely possible that CNN and the Democrats [Redundancy Alert] may have to eat their words tomorrow. Should be an interesting news day.
posted at 11:40 PM