Considerettes

Great column by Kathleen Parker today, which is a primer for folks who still insist that David Kay’s report said they’ve found nothing in Iraq, but haven’t read the actual report itself. Also Neal Boortz has a good analogy for considering what Kay did find, comparing it to raiding the home of a counterfeiter and finding all the wares of a counterfeiter (press, plates, paper, inks) but not one single fake $100 bill. Does that mean you failed?

No, and neither did Kay. And Kay’s not done yet.

Some random thoughts on the California recall:

• The influence of the Clintons is seriously waning, if it ever was all it was hyped up to be.
• It’s amazing how a law can be on the books for 92 years, and all of a sudden folks are coming out of the woodwork proclaiming it a bad law. I saw 3 people last night, as I occasionally popped over to CNBC, complain that the recall law would make America’s founding fathers roll over in their graves and that it was bad for political stability. If it was so bad, why have none of these concerned folks done anything about it, except complain once it’s used on their guy? And for concerns that this will bring about all sorts of recalls now, one merely has to remember that recalls in California has been tried before, but failed, and this is the first on in almost a century to even come to a vote. That’s pretty stable (and it doesn’t reflect well on Davis).
• In addition, a talked-about recall of Governor Schwarzenegger would be made much harder than the Davis one, thanks to Davis himself. The number of signatures required is 12% of the turnout at the last statewide election, and Davis’ governing got so many folks upset that this recall garnered record turnout. Thus the number of signatures required for a recall vote on Arnold will be significantly more.
• Spinmeister Terry McAuliffe was on FOX News Channel (and, I imagine, all the other news stations) suggesting that the success of the recall reflected poorly on Bush, and that the anger felt by Californians was due to the national economy and thus the recall of Gray Davis is not Davis’ fault. Of course, if the recall had failed, he’d be saying that reflected poorly on Bush, too. So why does anyone bother interviewing this guy? Sure he’s a cheerleader for the Democrats, but he’s got a history of utterly ignoring reality. He needs one of those captions that the ficticious Joe Isuzu used to have:

  Terry McAuliffe: DNC Chairman
  (He’s lying)

• It was most interesting to hear Democrats who defended Clinton in the Lewinsky matter go after Schwarzenegger. Maureen Dowd put it this way
  

  Now Republicans who thundered against Bill – not Arnold, who scorned impeachment as a waste of time and money – argue that peccadilloes are not relevant to governing. And feminists who backed Bill are ushering Arnold gropees up to the Democratic microphones.

  Let’s compare the two:

  • Arnold’s “peccadilloes” did not occur while he was in office, any office, and certainly not as the most powerful person on the planet (who just might be subject to a bit of blackmail should he not want news of said peccadillo to get out).
  • Clinton lied to the American people and the courts about his behavior. (Memo to Dowd: That’s what the impeachment was about.) Arnold has taken responsibility for his actions without being forced into a corner first and without having to parse the word “is”. That, I think, is the major difference between the two situations, and why people are more forgiving of Arnold than they were about Clinton.

  This is not to say that what Arnold did is “OK”. It’s just that what he did is quite a bit down the scale from what Clinton did, it didn’t happen in a situation where the power of his position might compromise a state or a nation, and he freely admitted it when confronted, asked for forgiveness, and didn’t try to brush it aside. This is why I see the change of behavior noted by Dowd differently than she sees it. For Republicans, it’s reasonable and compassionate. For Democrats, I see the change of behavior as hypocritical and as partisan as they come.

OK, Arnold. You have the power now. Use it for good.

Taranto used something I sent to him again. On today’s list of Best of the Web, the last item is entitled “The MoveOn Mob–II”. I forwarded him the column by the NY Post’s Bob McManus talking about him getting “swarmed” by calls from the group. (This time it wasn’t just a funny heading. >grin<)

After David Kay gave his preliminary report on the search for WMDs in Iraq, a number of liberal pundits asked, “So where are the WMDs?” David Kay has been responding that they’re finding them all along. As Andrew Sullivan has been saying, “read the report!” Given that the report covers only the first three months of searching for things Saddam had 10 years to hide, you’d think the same folks who thought he should have more time in power would give just a tad more time for our guys to uncover it.

From Reuters:

Wilson said it now appeared his wife’s name was actually leaked by someone outside the White House, as an act of revenge to stop him and others from questioning the intelligence used to go to war with Iraq.

“This administration apparently decided the way to do that was to leak the name of my wife,” he told NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Are these, too, “measured words”? Is the yardstick really that flexible?

In response to those who have been saying, “See, David Kay’s report shows no WMDs in Iraq, so Bush lied”, please head on over to Snopes.com for others who have “lied” to us in the past. Snopes is a great source for checking out hoaxes or urban legends before you forward something on in E-mail, but while it usually debunks things, sometimes it…um…”bunks” them. The link goes to a page that describes an E-mail apparently making the rounds listing a host of Democrats who insisted that Hussein did in fact have WMDs (a number of whom are now saying that he didn’t). Barbara Mikkelson puts each quote in context within the speech it was given, but the quotes themselves are gems.

I’ve always known that the Ten Commandments were featured prominently at the Supreme Court, but this article from the Cybercast News Service does a good job of detailing what and where. I’ve considered the Supremes cowards for not dealing with this issue head-on. Part of that I imagine is that they’re up to their hips in religious images, and trying to say that all that they are surrounded with is unconstitutional would be ludicrous on its face.

I found a couple of other places that carries the story about Kuwait catching biochem arms smugglers: the DowJones Newswires and NASDAQ. They, and the report in the Hindustan Times, are all pretty much the same thing, but they all credit AP with the story, not each other or some other news service. This was truly a strange situation for a potentially explosive news story. Wonder if we’ll ever hear what the deal was.

Another reason to dismiss polls: Wednesday’s Washington Post-ABC News poll asked this question (boldface mine):

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether someone in the White House broke the law by identifying a former diplomat’s wife as an undercover CIA agent. The former diplomat claims this was done to punish him for criticizing U.S. policy on Iraq. Have you heard or read anything about this situation, or not?

Later questions asked if folks thought this was a serious matter or not. But, if she’s not an undercover CIA agent, those answers would most likely change, would they not? Yet there is still no clear indication what her job was except from Novak who quotes someone from the CIA who says she wasn’t undercover. Officially, the CIA won’t answer that question, and Wilson won’t say himself.

Leading questions to push liberal bias. Thank you, “unbiased” mainstream media.