Considerettes

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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.)

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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”.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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)

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