Considerettes

For perspective, “trevino” at RedState.org compares Kos’ bitter “we were right, they were wrong” pouting with what freedom really looks like in Iraq; it’s not (as one Kos poster said) just a bunch of pretty pictures. He also points out that the first free elections in South Africa “was preceded by a series of horrific ‘township wars’ that left tens of thousands dead”. Were they worth it? The answer to both election battles is a resounding “Yes”.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The fourth Homespun Bloggers Radio program is on the air! This edition of HBR includes the following segments:

• Jay Dean (The Radical Centrist) shows how California politics could be made more responsive to the voters.
• Andrew Ian Dodge (Dodgeblogium) has advice for British libertarians who are trying to regain a foothold. We also feature a song by his band, “Growing Old Disgracefully”.
• Derek Gilbert (Weapon of Mass Distraction) observes that in the evolution / creation debate, certain news organizations and certain bloggers are ignoring discoveries that don’t conform to their positions.

To listen, click here or on the “Homespun Bloggers Radio” button to the left. The current audio feed is a loop of show #4. Also, you can click here to download a CD-quality version of the show. The 3 previous shows can also be heard by clicking here.

Popularity: 3% [?]

On “Considrettes Radio” today I talked with Bill Bennett about comparing Iraqi voters, who braved threats of violence and death to vote in huge numbers, with some American voters, who, along with Barbara Boxer (D-Neptune) think that standing in the rain to vote is equivalent to disenfranchisement. (In my call, I said that Boxer complained about California voters in the rain, but she actually came to the defense of the poor, wet voters in Ohio.) Fractured definitions of “disenfranchisement” aside, though, you really have to hand it to the Iraqis for not cowering in the face of real danger and standing up for themselves.

“Considerettes Radio” on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America (WGKA, Atlanta, GA) 1/31/2005 8:20am EST (181K)

Popularity: 4% [?]

From Instapundit, comes this E-mail he got regarding the Democrats and their situation as the minority party.

You rightly point out that we liberals must do our best to shout down, disassociate ourselves, do everything we can to make ourselves no longer the party of Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, et al.

And as you noted, the Right does do a better job of quieting its ‘idiotarians’. The only problem is, they essentially do it with the “bribes and promises” approach. Jerry Falwell, even when muzzled, knows that to some degree he and the people he represents will get a hearing from the White House and congress, the American seats of power.

On the left, we are a minority in all branches of government. How can we cast off the extremists if we have nothing to offer to placate them, nothing to drive them away with? It makes it harder to easily dismiss them, and as we get drawn into a serious debate with them (which we’d handily win), the Republicans will simply say, “Look, the Democrats can’t even stop their circular firing squad, how can they run the country?” and we’ll lose more seats in Congress.

I’m with the College Dems at my school, and the reactionary extremism is so thick you could cut it with a knife. What’s the solution for people like me? What *can* we do? Casting out the extremists seems an awful lot like putting salt on a bird’s tail.

The first thing that came to my mind was, “Well, how did the Republicans do it?” They certainly haven’t been in this current situation for very long, relatively speaking. I’m no political strategist, but I’d at least have to say that it can be done (even if I can’t explain how). The Right has had its share of extremists; how did we handle them?

As Glenn asks:

The question is, will the Democrats be willing to do to Ted Kennedy, for his remarks on the war, what Republicans did to Trent Lott, for his remarks on Strom Thurmond and the 1948 election?

I’d add that they could learn something from how the Republicans handled David Duke as well. The Democrats have shown, over the course of decades, that it doesn’t really matter what you sound like as long as you vote the Democrat line. You can shake down corporations like Jesse Jackson as long as you pull in Democrat voters. You can engage in the politics of personal destruction, as James Carville has done for years, as long as you don’t question a Democrat president.

That’s the attitude that has to change before anything else can.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Honestly, I wrote my comment about “…but…” yesterday totally unaware that James Lileks had made the concept of the “Damning But” a full-blown blogosphere meme. Well, great minds think alike…and sometimes so does mine.

Tim Blair this morning has seen 2 examples of the DB already. Thus begineth the avalanche.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’ve found the local Air America radio station in Atlanta, and I’ll occasionally flip over to it when the other stations are at commercial. It’s difficult to listen to for all the trash talk going on. (Republicans are less concerned about the troops than Democrats are? Please, Ms. Rhodes! It’s Ted Kennedy trashing the troops, not Republicans. The story is even linked on the Air America site today. You do read your own network’s site, right?)

I’m not typically in the car when Al Franken is on, but apparently his show is just as pointless. John Hinderaker, of Power Line fame, was interviewed by Franken today, and Franken couldn’t even be bothered to ask about the allegations that were made of John earlier in the show. He was more interested in talking about himself. Read all about it here.

This, along with the way the top-tier liberal blogs have shown that they don’t want to cover any topic that might be damaging to them, continues to show that if you want to hear the whole story, you’re far more likely to hear it from the right than from the left. Conservative / libertarian bloggers will be far more fair and honest in their attitudes and opinions, especially of their own, than liberals have shown themselves to be. Again, I say this as a generality. I’m sure there’s evidence of other individual lefties doing some introspection, but the ones more folks are reading & listening to simply just don’t have the time to be intellectually honest. For the big-time lefties, blind partisanship is the rule, not the exception.

Popularity: 3% [?]

“…but…”

That’s the word that has made the Left in this country sound like they were bolstering dictators and terrorists.

• “Saddam Hussein is a murderous dictator, but….”
• “Osama bin Laden may want us dead, but….”
• “Elections in Afghanistan were good, but….”
• “The capture of Saddam Hussein was good, but….”

In most of these cases, the argument or idea following “but”, had it been followed, would have left the status quo in place for the foreseeable future. Sanctions and the Oil-for-Palaces Food program would have continued to enrich Hussein and left the people of Iraq in poverty, even while the rape rooms would still in operation and Uday and Qusay would be continuing their own reign of terror . Al Qaeda would still be protected by the Taliban. Women would still be denied an education and voting rights in Afghanistan.

But no thanks to the anti-war left, liberation has come to two countries, and the second one of them is holding an election. I wonder how soon we’ll hear this: “Oh, the election was a good thing, but….” There’s no question we’ll hear it. it’s just a matter of when. How quickly will the pessimism of the Left kick in?

Be listening. And realize who really wants to see freedom spread.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Planned Parenthood dismisses the idea that there is any link at all between having an abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer.

Studies have shown that abortion is not associated with breast cancer. Undaunted by the absence of compelling evidence, anti-choice extremists insist on making the connection anyway. Once more they are using misinformation as a weapon in their campaign against safe, legal abortion.

However, it appears they’re not willing to publicly argue the science in court.

For the first time, a court ordered a judgment against an abortion clinic for performing the procedure without informing the patient of psychological risks and increased risk of breast cancer.

The lawsuit against the All Women’s Health Services clinic in Portland, Ore., was the second of its kind in the U.S. to be successfully prosecuted but the first to obtain a judgment.

Jonathan Clark, attorney for the 19-year-old plaintiff, told WorldNetDaily he believes the judgment “makes a pretty powerful statement about the science,” indicating the clinic was not willing to argue against the claim that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.

“This case was set to be tried in Multnomah County, which is a very liberal county where folks are inclined to lean towards abortion,” he said. “But in the trial setting, the science would have come under close scrutiny.”

The clinic made an offer of judgment last year enabling the plaintiff, who was 15 at the time of the May 2001 abortion, to win the lawsuit without a trial. The judge signed the agreement Monday. The amount of the judgment was not disclosed.

This action may open the door for others, since PP doesn’t seemed to want to put it’s claims to the test.

Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, said in a statement that women in the position of the plaintiff will not receive justice until they file civil lawsuits.

“Women have been told lies about the research and have been cruelly exploited by two industries — the breast cancer fund-raising industry and the abortion industry,” she said.

The plaintiff has a family history of breast cancer, which she indicated on the clinic intake forms.

Malec points to research in 1994 at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center by Janet Daling and her colleagues, showing teenagers with a family history of the disease who procure abortions before age 18 have an incalculably high breast cancer risk.

Biological and epidemiological evidence also indicates abortions that occur before the birth of a first child are the most carcinogenic, Malec said.

And who do you think has been aiding and abetting PP in this bit of denial?

In the process of researching the case, Clark said he came across many media headlines that slanted studies on abortion and breast cancer.

“As I read the studies, which we would have tried to bring into evidence [if there had been a trial], they often showed abortion does pose increased risk for breast cancer,” Clark said.

Oh, that liberal media, who are more concerned with their pet issues than keeping women from disease.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The mainstream media is portraying the controversy over the “We Are Family” tolerance film and accompanying teaching materials incorrectly. Nobody’s calling “SpongeBob” gay. Here’s the real story.

The mainstream media is twisting the truth about the controversy over a tolerance video to be distributed to elementary school children that features a who’s who of cartoon characters, including SpongeBob and Barney the dinosaur, claims a pro-family advocacy group.

The content of the video itself — tolerance and diversity — and whether or not SpongeBob is “gay” are not the issues, insists Stephen Bennett of the American Family Association.

“No, Sponge Bob or none of the other cartoon characters featured in the video are ‘gay,’” said Bennett. “The video itself does not promote homosexuality, but no doubt will open the door to a secondary discussion of accepting homosexuality as natural and normal.”

The AFA has claimed that the new video — “We Are Family,” based on the 1979 hit song — is being used as a “gateway” to promote the homosexual lifestyle through an accompanying teacher’s guide and the producer’s website, which has a “tolerance pledge” for children to sign and print out that includes “sexual identity.”

However, that’s not all. There’s a Soviet-style scrubbing of history going on now.

Bennett, who says he formerly was homosexual, claims an entire list of downloadable teacher’s guides disappeared from the We Are Family Foundation website over the weekend.

“We have documented proof of the organization’s deletion of the pro-homosexual material after the controversy hit the media last week,” Bennett says.

The material discusses fighting “homophobia” and “compulsory heterosexuality,” as well as using “gender neutral” language.

The AFA said it has been threatened with a lawsuit by Nile Rogers, the maker of the video, and the We Are Family Foundation.

Bennett said that after he debated Rogers on Fox News Live on Saturday, all of the pro-homosexual content was removed, including the “tolerance pledge.”

Another posting of the pledge, however, remains on the site here.

Bennett said a report by ABC News with Peter Jennings treated the story fairly, showing Bennett providing links that included pro-homosexual books such as “Heather Has Two Mommies” and “Daddy’s Roommate.”

But these links from the We Are Family Foundation also are gone.

Sounds like the “tolerance” crowd can’t tolerate a little scrutiny

Popularity: 3% [?]

Back here and here and finally here I discussed how little attention some of the top liberal bloggers gave to the CBS panel report on the “Memo-gate” issue. I noted, however, that they did find time to dissect Armstrong Williams’ admission of getting money from the Bush administration while commenting favorably on “No Child Left Behind”. Now that was a legitimate story and worthy of dissection, but I noted that while conservative blogs covered both issues quite fully, Kos, Atrios and Josh Marshall gave extremely short shrift to the CBS issue. In the case of Marshall, it got “zero shrift”. Both stories had to do with media believability and behind-the-scenes influence, but while the conservatives gave big coverage to both stories, the liberal bloggers couldn’t get past their blind partisanship.

I wrote to Josh Marshall, noting this situation. The E-mail I sent is in the second link above, and his response is in the third. His answer to my charge of blind partisanship was that he hadn’t commented on quite a few issues besides Social Security lately, which was true, although he did find time to mention the “big” news that a radio station in Brattleboro, Vermont dropped the Rush Limbaugh program for Air America.

Today comes the news that Maggie Gallagher got a bunch of cash from the Bush administration for research and articles. Again, it’s worth looking into, for the same reason that the CBS issue is worth looking into. And again the conservative bloggers are all over the story (Instapundit, RedState.org, La Shawn Barber, and Captain Ed, to name just a few).

And wouldn’t you know, in the middle of an avalanche of Social Security posts, Josh Marshall manages to find time to cover this, too! A major media news organization gets outed for “myopic zeal” and heads roll, but that’s not worthy of coverage. Yet a single writer’s potential conflict of interest (which Marshall himself says “wasn’t as egregious as the Williams one”) is enough for Josh to do the research to look for some dots to connect.

Once again, we have another good reason to look to center-right blogs to give you a more even-handed treatment of the news. This is not to say that there aren’t liberal blogs that did cover the CBS issue, but if the top-tier guys–the ones drawing the readers–can’t manage a little fairness and balance, it really doesn’t speak well for their side of the aisle.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)

Popularity: 3% [?]

Anti-semitism is still alive and well.

Russia’s nationalist lawmakers have asked the prosecutor general to ban all Jewish organizations because of their “extremist” views, in a vitriolic call ahead of this week’s 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

The letter was dated January 13 but only rose to public attention this week. It shocked human rights defenders and even some of the original signatories reportedly changed their minds and were recalling their names.

A foreign ministry statement issued on the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s attendance at the Auschwitz memorial commemoration in Poland said “the statement has nothing to do with the official position of the Russian leadership.”

The seven-page call signed by 20 members of the 450-seat State Duma lower house of parliament that included the Communist Party and nationalist groups used some of the most profane language against Jews publicly published in the post-Soviet era.

“The whole democratic world today is under the financial and political control of the Jews,” said the statement.

The group was led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his Liberal Democratic Party.

How short our memories are.

Popularity: 3% [?]

My blogger-in-law, Jim Jewell, has a piece published in “Christianity Today”. It’s about the challenges and victories of he church in Mongolia, where he and my sister visited last year to observe the work of one of their clients, LifeQwest.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Sen. Hillary Clinton is trying to sound more centrist as she prepares the ground for a possible presidential bid.

ALBANY, Jan. 24 - Proposing new political language about abortion rights for the Democratic Party, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said today that friends and foes on the issue should come together on “common ground” to reduce the number of “unwanted pregnancies” and ultimately abortions, which she called a “sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.”

Yes, she’s sounding more conservative on this. I mean, she’s challenging the orthodoxy as put out by the biggest proponents of abortion, Planned Parenthood:

Claim:
Many women who have an abortion suffer severe and lasting psychological damage.

Expert Opinion:
Serious emotional problems following abortion are uncommon. Most women report a sense of relief, although some may experience temporary depression. Serious psychological disturbances after abortion occur less frequently than after childbirth.

[Hat tip to James Taranto for the link.] So Hillary’s building her common ground some distance from the liberal foundational idea that abortions are, in fact, a very good thing overall. Mrs. Clinton says that to “many, many women”, abortion is a “tragic choice” while Planned Parenthood’s “Expert Opinion” says that “most women” feel relieved. She’s sounding positively pro-life for a bit there.

Mrs. Clinton, in a speech to about 1,000 abortion rights supporters at the state Capitol, firmly restated her support for the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, Roe v. Wade. But then she quickly shifted gears, offering warm words to opponents of abortion - particularly members of religious groups - asserting that there was “common ground” to be found after three decades of emotional and political warfare over abortion.

And here she’s reaching out to religious groups for that common ground. Well, as you know, for many of those religious groups I’m assuming she’s referring to, the time to deal with this issue is far earlier than the third trimester of the pregnancy; about 9 months earlier. Don’t have sex, and there’s a 0% chance you’ll get pregnant. Finding common ground between “abortions for all” and “abstinence” is a tough call to make, and Hillary continues to reach for it.

While she acknowledged in her address today that Americans have “deeply held differences” over abortion rights, Mrs. Clinton told the annual conference of the Family Planning Advocates of New York State, “I for one respect those who believe with all their heart and conscience that there are no circumstances under which abortion should be available.”

In addition to her description of abortion as a “tragic choice” for many,” Mrs. Clinton said that faith and organized religion were the “primary” reasons that teenagers abstain from sexual relations, and reminded the audience that during the 1990’s, she promoted “teen celibacy” as a way to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

“The fact is, the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Again, positively pro-life, although the “teen celibacy” thing doesn’t really ring a bell, neither in my mind nor on the Web. A search of Google for “teen celibacy” and “clinton” doesn’t turn up much (though it does turn up this book review on a NOW website that claims teen celibacy doesn’t work). In fact, the majority of the web sites found cut down the idea and/or associate it with President George W. Bush. Nobody on the left who expressed an opinion in this search had anything good to say about it, let alone remembering anything Hillary did in that cause. Maybe that’s why she needed to remind folks about what she did, but it appears her efforts didn’t do much good. Is she trying to get that idea out there again as part of her “common ground”?

Mrs. Clinton also called today for the Bush administration, religious groups, supporters and opponents of abortion rights and others to look beyond the abortion rights divide and form a broad alliance on other issues that she suggested as less incendiary: sex-education programs for teenagers that included abstinence education, emergency contraception for women who have recently had unprotected intercourse, and family planning.

Ah, here’s where she let’s us know what this “common ground” is:

• “sex-education programs for teenagers that included abstinence education” - A small but good point, although when I was in high school 20-some years ago, that’s exactly what I got; a sex-ed class that did include abstinence along with what the other options were. That’s not really a radically new idea, and not one that seems to have been all that effective. But at least it’s one small step for Hillary.
• “emergency contraception for women who have recently had unprotected intercourse” - Sounds like RU-486. Yeah, the religious groups will love that.
• “family planning” - That’s what Planned Parenthood (you know, the “abortion is a relief” folks) already says it’s doing.
• And the aforementioned teen celibacy.

So of the four “common ground” areas, one’s been tried and didn’t work well, two are the status quo in favor of pro-abortionists, and one, while sounding good, is virtually uniformily rejected by liberals even with Hillary behind it. How exactly is this “common ground”?

Several women in the audience reacted positively to Mrs. Clinton, whose remarks were interrupted by applause several times and ended with a standing ovation. But they also said her language and themes seemed politically calculated to deal with the abortion “freak-out” among Democrats, as one audience member put it, and reach out to independent and conservative voters in hopes of broadening her base of support for a possible 2008 presidential run.

And that’s what this all is; political calculation. She checks off a list of conservative-sounding objectives, but her ideas are nothing more than the standard leftist line. Liberals will love it because it sounds centrist. Independents and Conservatives shouldn’t be fooled until she acts centrist. Given what actions she thinks needs to be taken, we won’t be.

(Cross-posted at RedState.org. Comments welcome.)

Popularity: 7% [?]

First climate change scientists tell us that curbing fossil fuels may actually speed up global warming. And now climate change scientists tell us to…curb fossil fuels.

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

…

The report urges all the G8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. It also calls on the G8 to form a climate group with leading developing nations such as India and China, which have big and growing CO2 emissions.

They don’t know why it may be happening, they don’t really know if man is causing it, and they can’t agree on what will change it, if anything. Again, is this the kind of thing we want to base public policy decisions on? If we’d followed the “global freezing” crowd’s advice in the 70s, what kind of hit would our economy have taken because of bad science?

UPDATE: WorldNetDaily covers this report today, but also notes this about the circumstances surrounding Russia’s signing of the Kyoto Protocol:

The report comes just three weeks before the Kyoto Protocol, designed to deal with the climate change issue, takes legal effect on signatories Feb. 16.

The controversial Kyoto Protocol became binding on industrialized nations who have signed onto it after Russia reluctantly moved to ratify it.

But, Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin reports, Vladimir Putin’s personal economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, said last summer Russia’s approval of Kyoto came under severe duress – an “all-out and total war on Russia” directed by Blair. He said the pressure included “bribes, blackmail and murder threats.”

Illarionov said global warming advocates refused to answer questions posed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at a Moscow symposium. He claimed British science advisers tried to stop skeptics from being heard.

“When this attempt to introduce censorship … failed, other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar,” said Illarionov.

Illarionov said “none of the assertions made in the Kyoto Protocol and the ’scientific’ theory on which it is based have been borne out by actual data. … There is no evidence confirming a positive linkage between the level of carbon dioxide and temperature change. If there is such a linkage, it is of a reverse nature. … The statistical data … are often considerably distorted if not falsified.”

One wonders if other countries signatures are just results of this kind of coercion.

Popularity: 4% [?]

OK, I supposed it’s about time I cleared something up about the name of this blog. (After almost 3 years, it’s about time, no?) I’ve never really covered that topic, and something happened recently that I figured would happen a lot earlier, and it gives me a reason to talk about it.

Clayton Cramer was among the first big-time blogs to link to and blogroll me, of which I was extremely honored. (By “big-time” I mean someone way higher than me in the ecosystem.) I even quote some very kind words from him from that initial post up on the top of the left-hand column. That was almost a year ago.

He linked to another post of mine on Friday, and he introduced it this way:

Excuse me while my brain explodes. Considerettes pointed me towards this, and as much as I think highly of Considerettes, I had to go read the Reuters article she linked to:

Emphasis mine. I would just like to let folks know that I am, in fact, of the male gender. >grin< I most certainly do not fault Clayton for this little slip-up, because it’s entirely understandable. To wit, from Dictionary.com:

-ette
suff.

1. Small; diminutive: kitchenette.
2. Female: usherette.
3. An imitation or inferior kind of cloth: leatherette.

[Middle English, from Old French, feminine of -et, -et.]

The word “Considerettes” is my title for this site because it is part of my larger essay site called “Consider This!“ The longer pieces would be there, and the shorter takes on the day’s events would be here; hence “Considerettes” using sense 1 of the definition. (Although, you could make the case that the long essay portion has languished while the blog has moved to the fore. I may need to reorganize that layout sometime in the future.) With the recent meteoric rise of a bloggress calling herself “Wonkette”, the assumption of sense 2 was inevitable. (And I’m definitely not intending sense 3! These are only the highest quality pixels you’re reading.)

So now you know. “Conservative commentary served up in bite-sized bits” are “Considerettes”.

(You know, couldn’t “Considerettes” be the name of the cheerleading squad for the high school debate team? Naaah.)

Popularity: 15% [?]