Why Libs are Kooky

I just had to copy in this quote from some lunatic named Lloyd, writing this, believe it or not, as part of his effort to denounce a recent book by Bernard Goldberg, 100 People Who are Screwing Up America. What this has to do with Goldberg's book, I couldn't begin to tell you.

And finally, how could anyone create a list of people screwing up America without listing President Bush and many of his cronies? Is lying and poor judgment that leads to a war that kills an estimated 110,000+ on both sides, wastes hundreds of billions and increases the threat of terrorism no big deal? Or what about the mess he has made of the federal deficit and the Iraq occupation, bungling 2004 flu vaccine production, undermining Social Security (while thousands lose private pensions), failure to address global warming, pollution, CAFE standards, thieving government contractors ($9 billion missing in Iraq), dishonest (eg. Rove) and incompetent staffers (eg. Tenet, Rice), outsourcing American jobs (CAFTA and allowing Mexican truckers into the U.S. will worsen the problem), the trade deficit, and the flood of illegal immigrants into the U.S (also hides potential terrorists). Then there is his his support of medical malpractice limitations that lessen incentives to reduce the 100,000+ annual unnecessary medical deaths - anesthesiologists did it while REDUCING real dollar malpractice premiums. And opposing medical marijuana, and total failure to take any preventive action pre-9/11, despite repeated evidence of al-Quaeda's plans to use planes as missiles? Finally, as if to atone for all the deaths he has caused, Bush severely limits medical research using stem cells, and makes a "Federal case" out of the Terry Schiavo tragedy.

What a piful life Lloyd must lead, to be filled with so much anger and hatred for the president, most of which is based on bad information. Now I (and many other conservative types) am very concerned about CAFTA, and admit to being angry about Bush's failure to protect our borders from the national emergency of illegal immigration. And I'm also upset that the courts are opening the door wide open for our biggest corporations to walk away from their pension obligations. But the rest of his diatribe is so skewed and devoid of factual support to be ludicrous.

It would be fairly simple for me to make a point-by-point refutation of nearly every statement in his murderously outrageous rant, but unfortunately there is so much divisiveness over political philosophy today that it likely wouldn't change anyone's mind. Those who pay attention to the facts, don't let spinners on the left or right form their opinions for them, and aren't already reds would already understand and agree with what I posted, while the rest would stand up and cheer Lloyd without bothering to even read me.

It would be tempting to beat up heavily on poor Lloyd for his ignorance, but I'm more inclined to feel sorry for him.

The Answer to Cindy Sheehan

The answer just struck me on how the president could deal with the Cindy Sheehan protest. The woman who's being managed by the left-wing radicals and held up as a hero by the so-called mainstream media should get what she's asking for - and then some.

The president should get her a message that says to Cindy "I'll not only meet with you, but I'll let you spend a few days with me".

The president should take her with him to Iraq. There they will meet with the soldiers in her son's company and hear about their experiences and attitudes toward the war and the Iraqi people.

She can be invited to attend a briefing with the military leadership about the progress of the war and hear where the insurgents are coming from, who they represent, where they get their weapons and bombs, their tactics, and how the US and Iraqi forces are responding.

She should then be taken to meet with ordinary Iraqi citizens to learn their attitudes about the war, life before and after Saddam, how they feel about America, and their hopes and dreams for their country.

Of course, she also needs to meet the Iraqi leaders who were elected by the people and can tell her how they feel about America, and how long they think they will need the assistance of US troops.

The president's staff should take a cameraman along to record every meeting and event in the trip, providing the resulting video to the news media without editing and without any reporter adding comments or observations.

If Cindy is truly honest and interested in the truth and what's best for our country, I believe such a trip would transform both her perspective on the war and of the president. If not, she will prove her irrelevance as a left-wing idealogue who refuses to allow facts to get in the way of her ideology.

Personally, I would greatly enjoy seeing the resulting video diary of her days with the president. Of course, I know that the usual suspects at ABC/NBC/CBS will take the video and edit it to only show what they want us to see, but I'm sure other networks will be more than happy to show it in its entirety so everyone in America can learn the truth about the war first-hand.

Ignorance or Prevarication

Saw a rant from somebody in Columbus in the local newspaper today. He wrote a letter to the editor with the apparent purpose of ripping Carl Rove in the whole Plame/Wilson issue. I read the rantings out of curiosity, trying to understand how people like this guy think.

There are really only two possible explanations to his Rove Rant, which was full of inaccuracies and spin. He started from stating his absolute certainty that Rove committed a crime and is being protected from prosecution by his "neo-con" buddies, then predictably moved on to try to link the whole thing to what I suppose he believes is a pattern of lies and manipulation by his real object of hatred - the Bush administration.

If anyone wants the facts of the case as they have been discovered so far, I think the best source is factcheck.org

That is a site that seems completely non-partisan and is very balanced on calling attention to efforts from both parties to try to spin stories to their advantage. If the guy had read the extensive information on this site, he would realize that 90 percent of his rant is factually wrong. Thus the question, does he know the facts but is lying about it anyway, or is he just another ignorant guy on the political left that has bought the whole anti-Bush, anti-War rhetoric?

There isn't any need to review the facts of the case here, since they are already covered in great detail at "factcheck". But the main question I came up with after reading through the information was, why is NY Times reporter Judith Miller staying in jail and refusing to give up her sources for a story she never actually wrote? The other reporter called by the investigation, Matthew Cooper, gave all his information to the investigators with permission from Carl Rove. There doesn't seem to be any more to the story, at least from Rove's standpoint, based on the information already provided.

So the only conclusion I can reach about Judith Miller is that she's protecting somebody other than Rove. I'm very curious who that might turn out to be. It seems that there must be something nobody knows about yet being tracked down by investigators looking into this case, and I'm looking forward to when it's brought to light.

But the bottom line, an impartial reading of the facts would lead any reasonable person to conclude that Rove broke no law, and I don't even think he broke any ethical guidlines in telling Cooper that Wilson's wife was involved in sending him to Niger. And Wilson clearly had political motivation in telling his somewhat distorted story about Niger and Uranium while directly supporting Kerry's presidential run, so his claims related to that trip should be viewed in that light.

For me, I could care less if Rove is innocent or guilty. If he broke the law, he should be prosecuted. But the facts as I read them seem pretty clear that he not only broke no law, but Valerie Plame was no longer an undercover operative with the CIA at the time her name was published in the article by Novak that started this whole flap.

Reading and Listening

My method of staying current on events is to read and listen as often as possible. I read the local newspaper and often USA Today, then check stories online from a variety of outlets. Whenever a new issue appears, I try to get the facts through checking all of these sources, which cover the spectrum of political bias.

How about a couple of recent examples of stories we've all been hearing in August:

Cindy Sheehan

The regular networks (ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN) tell us Cindy is a grieving mother of a son killed in Iraq who wants to meet with the president to express her concerns about the war. They craft their stories and interviews with this woman to support this message, and manage the story to convey a disbelief that Bush would be so callous to reject a meeting with this poor grieving mother.

But the alternative news sources tell a somewhat different story. Yes, Cindy is a grieving mother who lost a son in Iraq. But she and her family had a meeting with Bush last year, when he apparently spent a lot of time with them and was very comforting and caring for their loss. Cindy turns out to be a fire-breathing extreme liberal who talks about Bush as the new Hitler who should be impeached and prosecuted. She says her son was killed, not by terrorist bombers in Iraq, but by President Bush. That the Iraq war was concocted by the president to support Israel and enrich his oil buddies. She's even gone so far as to suggest that we should help the Palestinians drive the Jews from Palestine and stop our support for Israel. And no, these aren't distortions or characterizations by some right-wing pundits, but real quotes from Cindy herself.

In addition, we find out that she is surrounded and supported by the most radical leftist groups in the country, like MoveOn.Org and Code Pink. And she keeps a regular blog on Michael Moore's website. And much more.

Air America and the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club

Here is a story you won't find anywhere but the alternative media. If you haven't heard already, there was a guy named Evan Cohen who was a major player in the launch of the liberal Air America network, which was formed in an attempt to offset the influence of conservative radio talkers like Limbaugh and Hannity.

The simple story is that Cohen diverted a little under $900K from the New York City charity into Air America, purportedly as a "loan". The charity can't get the money back, because the media corporation the money was funneled into folded and Air America reorganized under another name, apparently to try to leave behind the debts in the former bankrupt media company. Obviously this is a criminal case, and Cohen will be prosecuted for his malfeasance in the matter.

The above are the fundamental facts of the case, which any reasonable person could interpret as some widespread fraud and ethical lapses in the Air America organization, not just Cohen. But the major news media outlets don't consider this to be a story worthy of publication. Nobody's covering it except for the conservative outlets.

Both of these stories are clear illustrations of how the news is carefully managed by the journalistic outlets who are supposed to be the protectors of our democracy. Instead of a commitment to dig up the whole truth no matter where it leads, journalists are instead carefully managing the news to either ignore stories that might hurt their "side", while spinning or obscuring the facts in other stories to convey their desired message to the masses.

In reading through some liberal blogs and articles, I've noticed their visceral hatred for conservative media, in the form of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the gang. What I've particularly noticed is through all their protestations that mock Fox's "Fair and Balanced" pledge and call the individual commentators the worst names they can imagine, they offer zero examples to back up their attacks.

I've searched in vain for a liberal example of distorted reporting on any individual topic. They don't exist. I try watching different news programs on television to spot the differences, comparing reporting on the Today Show or Nightly News to Fox News. Certainly Fox News has O'Reilly and Hannity, who openly present themselves as conservatives (but I find O'Reilly to be more of a moderate). The difference is that people like Brian Williams and Katie Couric pretend to be fair while showing clear bias in reporting, while the Fox News program just reports the news.

The easiest way to tell the difference is to catch the reporting on a particular story of the day from one of the mainline networks and compare to Fox. Most of the time, the story will be presented on the mainline network with very little substantive facts and lots of interviews with Democrat or liberal leaders who tell the reporters and viewers what everyone should think about the story. Most of the time there is a one-sentence sound byte from a Republican or conservative, or no alternate viewpoint at all offered in the reporting of the story. So if you are frustrated by high gas prices, for example, and want to find out why they are so high, you are more likely to get a message from some interview with a Democrat politician that it's the oil companies making obscene profits causing the problem.

Then switch to Fox News. There the story will dig into the causes of fluctuation in crude oil prices, such as increased world-wide demand, especially by China, the fact that environmentalists have successfully blocked oil exploration in America, and that refinery capacity is maxed out but environmental restrictions won't permit building more.

These days a citizen's identification with one party or the other, I believe, is closely tied to two major factors: Religious belief or lack thereof, and knowledge of the factual truth of each important issue. Atheists are more likely to be Democrats whether they know the facts of issues or not, just because they perceive Republicans as being pro-religion and therefore anti-debauchery. Everyone else who doesn't really pay much attention to politics, those who would not be able to name the Secretary of State or Speaker of the House, is usually going to be a Democrat, just because they only hear the occasional sound byte from their music radio station or television that tells them about the evil Bush administration.

Wasn't it Ben Franklin who said that our democracy depends on an educated and involved populace? He couldn't have been more correct, and we're fast approaching mass ignorance, which will evolve into tyranny.

War

What better way to start the new blog than to tackle the biggest issue of the day - war.

It has been disappointing to see the outrageous amounts of spin and hatred and prevarication taking place since the Iraq war commenced. I sometimes wonder if half the country forgot about 9/11 and the series of events leading up to the invasion. The solid majority of the country supported the president in his declaration that we must do whatever it takes to protect ourselves from the terrorists and those states who sponsor them.

When congress demanded that Bush first exhaust every avenue to pressure Saddam to comply with the UN, he did so. Despite months of diplomacy in the UN, France and Germany refused to allow any vote on sanctions for Iraq. Since then there has been clear evidence uncovered that high-ranking officials in those governments and the UN were getting paid off by Saddam, either directly or through the so-called "oil for food" program.

Without going into gory detail of history, the president ended by going to congress and asking for approval to commence the war in Iraq. And the vote was decisive, including plenty of Democrats and Republicans, to go forward. Despite a huge victory, the upcoming presidential campaign led a gaggle of Democrats who wanted the oval office to begin undermining the war effort.

Those who disagreed with the decision to go to war have only two choices today. They can either support the war effort and encourage our leaders to do everything possible to finish the job. Or they can undermine the war effort with protests and inflammatory rhetoric against the president, his cabinet, and the military, and basically root for the terrorists to win. It makes me very sad that most of these people have chosen the latter. How can our country survive if it is true that a giant segment of the population want to see us defeated?

Some ask the question, why Iraq? Why not Syria or Iran, the other two members of Bush's "axis of evil"? I think the answer is very simple. Iraq is right in the middle, somewhat weakened by the Gulf War a decade ago, and Saddam was openly defying UN resolutions about disarming and destroying WMD. If your goal is to eventually defeat terrorism, it makes sense to start in Iraq. A democratic and friendly Iraq will certainly have a major impact on the region, given that the effort is successful. A booming economy in Iraq with its citizens enjoying higher living standards and a voice in their own government will rub off on the people of Iran and Syria, who may replace their repressive regimes on their own simply through a desire to get what Iraq has. That's Bush's objective, and agree or disagree, I think people need to stop attacking him personally for this strategy that was clearly stated and easily understood from the beginning.

No one can engage in a debate on the Iraq war without discussing the famous issue of WMD. The fact that Saddam had them, used them in the war with Iran and against his own people, and refused to account for them to the UN mean nothing to the anti-war firebreathers. They were so quick to pronounce Bush a liar when the troops were unable to find the weapons after the invasion. The enemies of the president refuse to consider the question of what happened to those WMD we know Saddam had.

The simple logic of common sense is all that is needed to look at the circumstances and figure out what probably happened to Saddam's WMD. The months leading up to the invasion gave him all the time he needed to hide his weapons. I believe that's exactly what he did, and there are some reasonable but unverifiable reports of those WMD being moved into a willing neighbor (Syria) for safekeeping against inspectors until the UN backed down and they could be brought back into Iraq. There isn't another reasonable theory, because if Saddam had destroyed his WMD, all he had to do was tell the UN the details of how and when.

So now there are frequent car and truck bombs plus suicide bombers trying to disrupt the creation of the new democratic Iraqi government. And everywhere you turn there are people suggesting that these bombings are signs that things are not going well or even we are losing the war. Bush's approval ratings on conduct of the war are reportedly low, and more and more Americans are losing their stomachs for losing countrymen to wild-eyed Islamic terrorists half a world away. Too many are now saying, or thinking, that maybe we should just declare victory, wish the Iraqis luck, and get out.

News reporting ignores the facts of the positives in Iraq, such as free elections, a consititution on the way to ratification, restored power, open schools, a growing market economy, restored oil production, and many other successes. And reporting also skips certain details of the insurgency itself, failing to honestly identify insurgents as foreign terrorists imported from places like Syria and Iran. Most importantly, the reporting glosses over the fact that Iraq's #1 terrorist/insurgent leader, Al-Zarqawi, is one of bin Laden's lieutenants from Al Quaeda. (Not to mention he's not an Iraqi either).

Personally, I'd like to see a more aggressive approach. Our troops, partnered with the Iraqis, should mount a WWII-style house-to-house operation to clean out the insurgents from Iraq, city by city, until they are all killed or arrested and all of their bomb-making materials confiscated and destroyed. At the same time, I think we should find and eliminate terrorist camps across the Iraqi borders with Syria and Iran.

I fear the Bush administration has fallen too far under the spell of political correctness and may be trying to wage John Kerry's "more sensitive" war. Sorry, war can't be sensitive. It must be brutal and overwhelming, to the end of complete victory. No war should be undertaken without an absolute commitment to victory.