Considerettes

In the aftermath of the record-setting blizzard in the northeast US, who are the big heros, getting hospital workers to work and bringing family members of dying patients to the bedside? SUV drivers. Not exactly fitting the “self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities” picture that Keith Bradsher’s book attempted to paint them as.

Tony Blair delivered a speech to the Labor Party’s Spring Conference in Glasgow on February 15. The Observer exerpted his speech, titled “The Price of My Conviction”. Best part:

If there are 500,000 on the [Stop the War] march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for. If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started. So if the result of peace is Saddam staying in power, not disarmed, then I tell you there are consequences paid in blood for that decision too. But these victims will never be seen, never feature on our TV screens or inspire millions to take to the streets. But they will exist none the less.

I heard a comment on the radio yesterday in a similar vein. Where were all these protestors when Saddam was killing his people and others, but the UN did nothing about it? If they really aren’t anti-American, they’re at least not anti-Saddam. And of course it’s a matter of record that ANSWER and groups like them who have organized the anti-war protests have communists at their foundation who have absolutely nothing good to say about America (in spite of their freedom to express those ideas in this country without reprisal).

At some point, this is anti-American. If you don’t know or don’t care whether it is, it ought to be your business to know.

The EU has given Hussein his last last last chance today. >yawn< Wonder if they mean it this time. The good news is that the EU is suggesting that the buildup of troops in the area has forced Saddam to cooperate with inspectors, but the question then is, why did it take troops to do that? If Iraq was fully cooperating…oh, you know the drill.

Birth of the “Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy”: The NY Times is reporting (free registration required to read) that a group called “AnShell Media L.L.C.” and subsidized by big Democrat supporters Sheldon and Anita Drobny, is planning on creating a whole slate of liberal radio shows to combat the likes of Rush Limbaugh and FOX News Channel. Well, there are so many angles to this story, it’s hard to decide where to begin.

The obvious point is that it’s amazing how over-the-top liberals react when confronted with even the smallest of opposition. FOX News Channel is one of a number of TV news outlets, the vast majority of which ignore or underreport the conservative view. Liberal bias is considered “balance” by those on the left, of course, and no dissenting voices will be tolerated (which, coming from the allegedly “tolerant” left is a telling response).

Listen to how they plan to counter Rush Limbaugh:

“This side has failed by going at Rush, and trying to be Rush ? you’re not going to beat him at his game,” Mr. [Jon] Sinton [CEO of AnShell & radio executive] said. “What really makes this work is tapping into Hollywood and New York and having a huge entertainment component, where political sarcasm is every bit as effective as Rush Limbaugh is at bashing you over the head.”

Do you see the difference here? Rush combats ideas with ideas. His show certainly does have its entertainment aspect, no doubt, but his main thrust is the triumph of ideas, not comedy, over other ideas. The liberal answer to him will be comedy and entertainment, where typically complex ideas are oversimplified and errant thinking is lost among the laughter. Liberals continue to prove that they must appeal to your emotions rather than your intellect in order to make a case. When they try the latter, they get failure (e.g. the article mentions Jim Hightower and Mario Cuomo as aborted attempts).

Al Franken, who is being considered as one of the satirists for the group, explained how his approach would differ from Limbaugh’s. “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 man who titled a book “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot”.

The main reason I think people tune in to conservative talk radio is because they’re finally hearing ideas that they already believe in but aren’t being equally reflected in news and opinion in the mainstream media. I think that if the TV networks and the newspapers were actually fair and balanced, Rush wouldn’t be as big a hit as he is. I think the reason FOX News Channel is beating CNN is because it does, in fact, present both sides far more fairly than any other network. (I do have to say that I believe the folks on FNC are more conservative than liberal, on the whole, although Rivera and van Susteren certainly are no right-wingers. Sometimes I wish Sheppard Smith wouldn’t let his leanings spill over so much in his interviews, but FNC’s other personalities do far better keeping their personal beliefs in check than on your random major broadcast network, and asking questions that challenge both sides.)

The rise of so-called “conservative media” is not because it’s packaged better or is more combative or more outrageous. It’s because it provides something the mainstream media has been ignoring. In that sense, it’s the exception that proves the rule of liberal bias everywhere else.

“You’ve been blogging since April, where are you going now?”

“I’m going to Disney World!”

See you later, I’ll be back Monday.

Jonah Goldberg has responded to Mary McGrory’s change of heart. Actually, he seems convinced that it’s more a change of heart than head.

This is a woman who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, and not one of her reasons has anything to do with the actual facts at issue. She doesn’t like Bush. She doesn’t like his advisers. Comments about Bush’s intelligence seem to be the lynchpins of her opposition to war. When she says that “among the people” she knows, “nobody was for the war,” she sounds like Pauline Kael, the New Yorker writer who famously said in 1972 that Nixon couldn’t have won because, “I don’t know a single person who voted for him!” Ultimately, McGrory says she’s convinced because Powell’s on board with a war and she likes Powell. She deserves credit for publicly changing her mind, but that is what’s so damning about the knee-jerk opposition of so many anti-war liberals -it’s based in animus, not logic.

He’s got a point, one that I’ve made for a long time: liberal arguments for so many things are based on emotion and feelings rather than facts or reality. The points in McGrory’s article that I excerpted earlier weren’t really all that new. We’ve known that Hussein has had chemical and biological weapons for years. But when Colin Powell says the same words, suddenly it all makes sense.

As Goldberg says later on, it’s nice to have her on board, but we wish it was because she realized it’s the right position to take rather than because she feels better about it now. That kind of support dries up and blows away with a change of wind.

I’ve always heard the adage that Hollywood makes R-rated movies and throws in all the sex it can get away with because that’s what sells. But that’s not true according to the box office numbers.

WorldNetDaily has been covering this story for years, and each year the results are the same; the vast majority of top-grossing movies don’t have an R-rating, sex or excessive violence. In fact, the top 29 grossing movies of all time are rated G, PG or PG-13.

Worth considering.

Looks like Mary McGrory, columnist for the Washington Post, is one of those whom I described yesterday as viewing Colin Powell as a “light in the darkness” of the Bush administration. In yesterday’s column she offers her credentials as one who was “clinging tightly to the toga of Colin Powell”, wishing he would oppose the war outright rather than just advise against it.

But she has seen his transformation, and the reasons for it. And now, after his presentation of evidence to the UN, she’s starting to see the truth.

I wasn’t so sure about the al Qaeda connection. But I had heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein, with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I had thought. I’m not ready for war yet. But Colin Powell has convinced me that it might be the only way to stop a fiend, and that if we do go, there is reason.

The minds, they are a’changin’.

Hal Lindsay provides another instructional history lesson. When you hear people comparing the UN to the League of Nations, this is why.

Basically, Colin Powell tipped our hand (slightly) to the world yesterday. Hussein’s going to plug whatever intelligence leaks he can, now that he knows what some of them are. So the Bush administration was putting quite a bit on the line in revealing what they knew, and that’s one thing that should speak in their favor when it comes to who to believe; Powell’s pictures or Iraq’s denials.

But a guest on “Fox & Friends” this morning (don’t recall his name) added an angle to the presentation I’d not thought of (nor had Steve, E.D. and Brian). Given what we know about Iraq’s weapons programs, other regimes in the region must now be wondering what we know about their programs. He said that the video of the MIG with spray tanks attached was probably the one thing that got other ambassadors thinking, “If the US knows that much about Iraq, what do they know about us?” Saudi Arabia is already showing signs that they understand that, having submitted a new proposal to the UN Security Council for one more “last chance” to have Hussein leave or be overthrown. When you hear the blustering from Mideast government officials, just consider that.

The thing that interests me the most is that Powell, whom the left has embraced as some sort of lone voice in the darkness in the midst of a Republican administration, is thoroughly convinced that we must proactively work to remove Saddam Hussein, rather than wait for some sort of attrition to occur. (I wonder if some in the UN plan on just passing resolutions until he’s dead.) And what convinced him was the very evidence he presented. But those on the left that have considered Powell their political soul mate now conveniently doubt him (or at least ignore him) when he starts making a convincing case for “the other side”.

Case in point: The Daily Kos has been utterly unconvinced by the evidence (which is not surprising; he reflexively disagrees with anything that comes from the Bush administration). But just recently, on January 16th, he was confused as to why Colin Powell is a Republican given his position on a number of issues and his actions as a member of Bush’s cabinet. The obvious question is; what does Kos think of Powell now?

When a Republican senator votes against the party line, he’s called “principled” by the left. Now let’s see what happens when this “lone voice in the darkness” realizes he’s been in the light this whole time.