Considerettes

In direct contrast to all the evil anti-Semitism and violence that “The Passion of the Christ” was supposed to inspire, it turns out that just the opposite is true. It’s inspiring the bad guys to confess for crimes as far back as 10 years ago! There’s even a documentary in the works to show what has happened because of the movie.

Popularity: 3% [?]

As we all “know”, Clear Channel is nothing but a shill for the Bush administration. Which, of course, is why it’s hired Jesse Jackson for a Sunday morning talk show.

Of course!

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Georgia state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is set to be voted on this afternoon. Another rally is set, but I won’t be able to make it. According to a Republican representative, they’ve lined up 121 votes, with 120 being required to get the amendment on the November 2nd general election ballot.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I found an interesting write-up on the new “Air America Radio” (debuting tomorrow). At the aptly named WLIB in New York, here’s some of what’s to come.

New York, March 10, 2004 - Air America Radio, a progressive talk radio network, announced today it will hit the airwaves on March 31st.

Note the term “progressive”, the euphemism for this political philosophy.

It also mentions that “Comedian, and best selling author Al Franken…is known for fact-based, drug-free satire, will host a weekday show on the network called ‘The O’Franken Factor.’” Looks like the satire is already kicking in, given the “drug-free” shot at Limbaugh. But there may be issues with the “fact-based” assertion as well. As Spinsanity said,

For these reasons, Franken’s work is much subtler than Coulter’s fabrications or Michael Moore’s inventions. It’s not that he isn’t funny (just as, at times, Coulter can be). Rather, it’s the way in which Franken’s humor sometimes becomes a stand-in for honest argument whenever he wants to make a particularly nasty point about conservatives. Rather than making things up out of whole cloth, Franken leaves them unsaid, hiding behind his humor. The more satirical parts of the book, funny as they may be to those of liberal political convictions, raise questions about their effect on our already polarized political discourse.

This is what I predicted Franken’s show will become (see below); a dash of truth in a torrent of satire that will bury the salient points.

Let’s take a look at the description of Franken’s show:

The O’ Franken Factor: 12:00-3:00pm

Relentless, pure satire, delivered by the leading political humorist of this generation. With his partner, longtime radio host Katherine Lanpher, this will be three hours of fearless barbs, sketches, and interviews with newsmakers and characters who have lived, up until now, only in Al’s fertile imagination. He’s no policy wonk, but this best-selling author and veteran of Saturday Night Live, is devoting his energy to fighting back against rightwing propaganda with hard evidence and facts.

Consider this: First we have “relentless, pure satire”, “three hours of fearless barbs, sketches”, “interviews with newsmakers and characters who have lived, up until now, only in Al’s fertile imagination”. Following all this is that Franken allegedly “is devoting his energy to fighting back against rightwing propaganda with hard evidence and facts.” Up until that last word, the whole idea of the real world was nowhere at all in the program’s description. As I said, a torrent of satire, a dash of truth, and too much laughing to notice the difference.

Janeane Garofalo will have her own show as well:

The Majority Report: 8:00pm-11:00pm

This program will introduce new, younger voices and opinions, with live guests from the world of politics, the arts and entertainment.

Given her political persuasion, and that she’s looking for “younger voices and opinion”, she might be mortified to find that teens (both here and in England as well) are more conservative than their elders. Guess she’s on the wrong side of the curve.

What’s going to keep this network alive is the infusion of investor money, not so much sponsor money because I don’t think that’ll be enough to keep it going. What’ll happen is that the network’s highly partisan sugar daddy AnShell Media is betting it’s life on it, and the Democrats donating to the cause will keep the IV going as long as possible. That why, while some of the commentors on Tim Blair’s blog may be predicting far less than my 2 year estimate, I think it’ll hang in there a while.

But now, go back to the WLIB web page, kick in your browser’s Find function, and type in “liberal”. Find anything? Nope. In fact, the euphemism “progressive” only appears two times itself. Conservative talk-show hosts are not afraid of their stand, and aren’t afraid to honestly tell you what they are before you listen. It appears that liberal talk radio doesn’t have the guts yet to do that. In fact, other than the single word “rightwing” in the description of Franken’s show, there’s not even a mention of what it is this network was created for; to counter conservatives. To read this you’d think that this was all going to be so fair and balanced, when it’ll be 100% left-leaning. (Hmm, kinda sounds like the mainstream media. Oh, and look for that phrase, “mainstream media”, to find out that one of the shows will supposedly give you “fresh new voices not available in the mainstream media”. Well, except that, other than the actual voices themselves, the perspectives will be precisely the same as from the mainstream media.)

Fantasy mixed with a dash of fact, mislabelling, and humor disguised as open and honest debate are what’s going to kill this network.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Are Southern Republicans racist by default? Byran Preston at Junkyard Blog points to an article that shows that thought to be a myth. And he encapsulates the whole upside-down notion that Democrats have been historically for minorities:

I have to say, one of the many reasons I’m a Republican is because I believe my party’s position and history on racial issues is superior to those of the Democrats. Our party was founded to destroy slavery; the majority of theirs fought a bloody war to preserve slavery even at the expense of destroying the Union. Our party has long fought against the KKK; members of their party founded and nurtured the KKK. Our party had no role in enacting Jim Crow; theirs created, enforced, and defended Jim Crow. The majority of our party voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the majority of their party did not. Our party believes in equal opportunity for all regardless of race; theirs believes in income redistribution and equality of outcomes at the expense of individual freedom and achievement. Ultimately, our party seeks to be truly colorblind and wants to create a society on that model; theirs cannot survive the creation of such a society for the simple reason that it depends on a coalition which must believe that government still has massive racial issues to solve into perpetuity. Without that belief, the Democrat coalition would fracture and ultimately dissolve.

Again, a knowledge of history is a dangerous thing for the Democrats.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Wednesday will be the first day for the official liberal talk radio network, “Air America”. The anchor for this network is Al Franken’s “The O’Franken Factor”. I guess that there wasn’t any real good way to spoof the title of “The Rush Limbaugh Show”, so he went with O’Reilly’s. And that sounds to me like he’s already set the tone for his show; comedy, parody, attack, and, oh yeah, issues (maybe). As I said over a year ago, this should tell you all you need to know about how this crew is going to go about their business; they’ll attack ideas with comedy, where complex ideas are oversimplified and you’ll be too busy laughing to notice the errors. Franken himself said, “I think the audience isn’t there for a liberal Rush, because I think liberals don’t want to hear that kind of demagoguery.” This from a guy who wrote a book titled, “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”. Franken’s books and comments have been attacks, while Rush and O’Reilly, while they do have their share of taking down the other side, spend most of their time putting forth what they believe are better ideas, not simply pure deconstruction. But even before he’s been on the air one minute, Franken can keep from attacking.

And speaking of attacking, don’t forget how Franken fights–physically, stifling free speech in the name of promoting free speech. I asked last January that if he was on opposite Rush Limbaugh, would Rush be allowed to jam his signal? (And as it turns out, they will be on opposite each other.) Combine that with Matt Margolis’ experience getting beaten up while carrying pro-Bush signs at an anti-Bush rally, and one may have a taste of how this new network will operate.

And consider this: Limbaugh’s radio program didn’t start with a radio network with a slate of conservative hosts and a big media fanfare. It was just him doing a brand of talk-show that hadn’t been done before. I recall when Neal Boortz was just a local Atlanta talk-show guy, and he would occasionally criticize Limbaugh’s show for only taking 3 calls in one particular hour. That did go against the format of talk-shows up until that time, but Limbaugh made it work–by himself. Liberal talk radio, after a number of individual failed attempts (anyone remember hearing Mario Cuomo?) is investing heavily into this, in an apparent attempt to start winning the talk-show wars by quantity rather than quality.

That’s why I think this will ultimately fail. People did not rush to Rush because of a media blitz or advertising. They came because they finally heard what they couldn’t get from the mainstream media. I believe that in large part the American people are generally conservative. Many folks don’t like labeling, and I understand that, but if they were to take a political test, I think a good majority would be center to far right. Rush’s success in the field came from saying what made sense to these people, and for some it challenged what they were thinking. Rush is no pure intellectual by any stretch of the imagination; he certain does his share of comedy, parody and attack. But most of his program is not that. Given the history of Franken, and the way he’s starting out on the wrong foot, I don’t think we’ll be able to say the same thing about his show.

Considerettes Prediction: Franken’s show is gone in 2 years. I’m going on the record with this.

Correction: The first broadcast will be the 31st, not today. Corrected it above.

Popularity: 4% [?]

For your consideration:

• Rush Limbaugh’s attorney, writing in the Wall St. Journal, outlines the unique treatment Rush is getting by the Florida prosecutor. Even the ACLU is concerned.
• The statistics are in and, notwithstanding Hollywood’s defense that they just sell what the public wants, sex in the movies doesn’t sell as well as you think.
• Terrorist mourned by Arafat. (Is this really news?)
• For those claiming that Richard Clarke’s accusations toward the Bush administration aren’t partisan because he said he’s a registered Republican, one should also consider the fact that the only politicians he ever gave money to were Democrats. Follow the money.

• “[T]he Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we’ve now made public to some extent. … The second thing the [Bush] administration decided to do is to initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.”

  Bush administration official? Well, yes, actually. Richard Clarke! But if you hadn’t heard that, it’s not really all your fault. The news media has been extremely quiet on the subject of his past approvals of Bush’s anti-terrorism efforts. (Wanna see the stats?)

• “They’ve [Republicans] known for months what Mr. Clarke was going to say,” Daschle charged. “Instead of dealing with it factually, they’ve launched a shrill attack to destroy Mr. Clarke’s credibility,” he said.

  When you point out contradictions in what a person says, you aren’t destroying their credibility, they have already done that.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Another strike for Newdow:

Just a day after arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, nationally known atheist Michael Newdow has failed in his attempt to stop congressional chaplains from offering prayers on Capitol Hill.

The same Congress that passed the First Amendment instituted chaplains. But Mr. Newdow, oh he knows better.

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Looks like the Supreme Court doesn’t have a problem with “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. In their questioning of Michael Newdow, they got in a good one.

“You may disagree that it’s ‘under God.’ You may disagree that it’s `liberty and justice for all,”’ Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said, referring to another part of the pledge. “That doesn’t make it a prayer.'’

Popularity: 3% [?]

Another day, another round of testimony that shows Bush got it right.

The CIA also had depended too much on Afghan indigenous groups to attack bin Laden and CIA Director George Tenet understood its chances of succeeding were only 10 percent to 20 percent, the federal commission on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said in a preliminary report.

Mostly because Democrats didn’t want to get their hands dirty actually defeating the terrorists. Rather, they’d like to say they were “doing something” even if it was only 10-20% effective.

If officers at all levels of the agency questioned the effectiveness of the most active strategy that policy-makers were employing to defeat the terrorist enemy, “the commission needs to ask why that strategy remained largely unchanged throughout the period leading up to 9/11,” the report said.

Good point. Richard Clarke should be asked that question. And recall that the reason it was still in place during the Bush administration was because it was the de facto policy while they were coming up with a better one, signed on or about 9/10.

Also appearing Wednesday was Richard Clarke, counterterrorism adviser in both administrations. In a newly published book, Clarke accuses President Bush of ignoring the threat posed by al-Qaida until the day of the attacks.

By “ignoring the threat”, he means allowing the Clinton / Clarke policies to remain in effect until they improved upon it. To wit:

Clarke’s charges were strongly rebutted Tuesday by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. They said they were going beyond past practices of carrying out retaliatory strikes and had been developing a strategy for defeating al-Qaida.

“Defeating”, not merely holding them back.

“President-elect Bush asked whether killing bin Laden would end the problem. Pavitt said he and (Tenet) answered that killing bin Laden would have an impact but not stop the threat,” the report said.

The CIA later told the White House that “the only long-term way to deal with the threat was to end al-Qaida’s ability to use Afghanistan as a sanctuary for its operations.”

If the CIA thought that when Bush was still “President-elect”, they knew it during the Clinton administration. The difference was, Clinton / Clarke did precious little to defeat al Qaeda, while the Bush administration actually started working on a plan to do just that.

After intelligence agencies began seeing strong indications in June and July 2001 that a terrorist attack was likely, some CIA officials were frustrated when some policy-makers questioned the intelligence. But Tenet, who was briefing Bush daily, “told us that his sense was that officials at the White House had grasped the sense of urgency he was communicating to them,” the report said.

Keep this in mind when Democrats talk about how the White House should have looked at Iraq intelligence skeptically before the war there. They bash Bush for giving it too much credence, while they’ll bash him for giving the pre-9/11 intelligence too little credence.

President Clinton had issued several orders for “the CIA to use its proxies to capture or assault bin Laden and his lieutenants in operations in which they might be killed. The instructions, except in one defined contingency, were to capture bin Laden if possible.”

While Clinton administration officials believed those orders authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden, many CIA officials - including Tenet - believed they were authorized only to capture bin Laden. “They believed the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation,” the report said.

Who knows what opportunities were missed because of a failure to communicate in the Clinton administration?

Also, the CIA’s reluctance to engage personnel in Afghanistan because of its dangers meant that the agency had to rely on local forces to provide intelligence or mount operations to capture bin Laden.

“For covert action forces, proxies meant problems,” the report said. “First proxies tend to tell those who pay them what they want to hear.” Proxies also require training to carry out operations.

…which is why we had to send in American troops. The war on terror cannot be fought by proxy; we have to do it ourselves, anti-war protestors notwithstanding. If we don’t defend ourselves, no one will do it for us, or at least not nearly as well as we could do it ourselves.

Tuesday’s report also said that both the Clinton and Bush administrations engaged in lengthy, ultimately fruitless diplomatic efforts instead of military action to try to get bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

As I said before, that negotiations with terrorists during both administrations failed is not news

Both Rumsfeld and Powell expressed doubt that the administration, which took office less than eight months before the attacks, could have stopped them through military force.

Because by the time Bush took office, the al Qaeda operatives in the U.S. had already had 4 years of preparation on Clinton’s & Clarke’s watch. Attacking Afghanistan, while curtailing al Qaeda in general, wouldn’t have stopped 9/11, because the operation was being carried out here.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The 9/11 commission is pretty much proving that the Bush administration’s way of dealing with terrorists beats Clinton’s and Europe’s methods hands down. Some excerpts from this AP story:

The independent commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks said in a preliminary report that the decision to use diplomatic rather than military options against al-Qaida allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture years before the attacks.

Negotiating with terrorists doesn’t work. This is not news.

The Clinton administration turned to the Saudis for help. Clinton designated CIA Director George Tenet as his representative to work with the Saudis, who agreed to make an “all-out secret effort” to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden.

Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, using “a mixture of possible bribes and threats,” received a commitment from Taliban leader Mullah Omar that bin Laden would be handed over.

But Omar reneged on the agreement during a September 1998 meeting with Turki and Pakistan’s intelligence chief.

See above. Should we be surprised by this?

The Clinton administration had early indications of terrorist links to Osama bin Laden and future Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as early as 1995, but let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad, the commission’s report said.

This is the “law enforcement” solution that John Kerry thinks will solve the terrorism issue. It’s been tried and it failed. This is, again, not news.

“From the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden to a country where he could face justice,” the report said. “The efforts employed inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed.”

I’ve said this before (2 years ago) and I’ll say it again: If there were failures in the intelligence or the handling of said intelligence leading up to 9/11, you have to lay blame on both administrations, Clinton and Bush. If you’re going to blame Bush for not being tough on terror in the 9 months prior to 9/11, then you have to lay it even thicker on Clinton for his 8 year watch, or at least back to the first WTC bombing in 1993. Negotiations didn’t work, but consider this: When Bush took his stance against terrorism post-9/11, the world community was still ready to label him a “cowboy”. Imagine what they would have said if Bush had adopted the “Bush doctrine” before 9/11! He continued some of the policies of the previous administration, but, as Condi noted yesterday, was asking for plans to defeat al Qaeda, not just keep them in check. That was progress.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the commission that President Clinton and his team “did everything we could, everything we could think of, based on the knowledge we had, to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al-Qaida.”

No, I’m sorry Madam Secretary, but you did not. You don’t “defeat” terrorism by negotiation or secret deals or bribery or whatever. You defeat terrorism by, in fact, defeating it.

The preliminary report said the U.S. government had determined bin Laden was a key terrorist financier as early as 1995, but that efforts to expel him from Sudan stalled after Clinton officials determined he couldn’t be brought to the United States without an indictment. A year later, bin Laden left Sudan and set up his base in Afghanistan without resistance.

Remind me again; who was in the White House between 1995 and 2001?

The commission’s report Tuesday said Clarke pushed for immediate and secret military aid to the Taliban’s foe, the Northern Alliance. But Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, proposed a broader review of the al Qaida response that would take more time. The proposal wasn’t approved for Bush’s review until just weeks before Sept. 11.

Had Clarke suggested that to Clinton, or did he just start the day Dubya was inaugurated? And, given the Cole, and the Khobar Towers, and the WTC, and the African embassies, isn’t it reasonable to assume that taking the advice of the guy on who’s watch they happened isn’t quite the way to prevent more of them?

The more I hear about what’s going on at the hearings, the more it shows that Bush had the right idea on dealing with terrorists. That’s not partisan, that’s just looking at history.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I heard Jim Lileks on the Hugh Hewitt show last night (well, he is, after all, a regular guest) talking about, among other thing, the Richard Clarke kerfuffle. Lileks made a good point; both Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neil got sweet spots on CBS’s “60 Minutes” (who’s parent company sold both books, though you wouldn’t have known that from the lack of disclaimer), while, when Lileks tried to google for any mention of Gary Aldrich on the same show returns no mention at all. Surprise, surprise.

Although what you will find is a mention by the Media Research Center that, at the time, that paragon of journalism Larry Flynt got more press coverage over his attack on Bob Barr that Aldrich could muster, and this article that pointed out how hard the Clinton pushed the media to keep Aldrich off the air. (At the time, George Stephanopoulos boasted that “we killed it”. That was then. Today, however, when asked if the Clinton White House had ever mounted a “full court press” against an author like Richard Clarke, George now says “no”–something that Time Graham of National Review called “today’s Chex-spew moment”.)

This just isn’t liberal media further proving the accusations. They’re actively involved in trying to be the country’s kingmaker.

Popularity: 3% [?]

For perspective, from an interview of Vice President Dick Cheney by Rush Limbaugh, speaking about the Richard Clarke accusations, Limbaugh editorializes:

Despite all of these attacks — actually I think Mr. Vice President if you’ll permit me an editorial comment here, you have the Clinton administration if they defended the country as eagerly and with as much fervor as they are attempting to defend themselves in all this, we might have — I don’t expect you to comment, I just — we might have escaped some of the attacks that we’ve had.

Cheney had noted earlier that Clarke was on board since 1993, during which time, during the Clinton administration, the WTC was first hit, the embassies in Africa were hit, and the USS Cole was hit. Bush has done far more combat terror than Clinton ever did. And remember, planning for 9/11 went back at least 5 years, so to put the blame solely on Bush is to be selectively blind.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Via The Command Post, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is putting out some “talking points” to keep in mind as the news media downplays the role Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin had in the terrorism in Israel. One of them is similar to what I said before about him being a “spiritual” leader to terrorists.

Trying to characterize Yassin as a “spiritual leader” is similar to trying to characterize Osama bin Laden in the same vein. Yassin took advantage of his status as a spiritual leader to influence the carrying out of hundreds of murderous attacks, from the Dolphinarium attack in Tel Aviv in 2001 to the Passover eve attack in Netanya in 2002. He personally was responsible for the June 2002 attack on the Number 19 bus in Jerusalem at the Patt Junction, in which 19 people were murdered and 74 wounded.

Remember, Hamas considers that being “spiritual”.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Good News Watch:

Students in the largest urban public-school systems showed improvement in reading and math in the first year under the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to a coalition of inner-city schools.

The study by the Council of the Great City Schools reviewed test scores from 61 urban school districts in 37 states. It compared 2002 and 2003 test results.

The council’s executive director, Michael Casserly, said the gains in fourth-grade reading were especially impressive.

“It’s one of the first signs that the major cities are making substantial headway at the elementary school level in teaching students to read,” he said.

Popularity: 3% [?]