This is the frick'n theme song for the left. It's like the bedtime story they tell over and over and over again. It is the only prism through which they view life.
It is a positive, happy story ...Unfortunately, this story is not complete without explaining that the next valley, the one visible through the gap in the mountains, is "insecure."
It's just that we haven't yet faced up to what we have undertaken to do here.
Children play happily, unaware that just around the corner, death and darkness await.
#2
Unfortunately, this story is not complete without explaining that the next valley, the one visible through the gap in the mountains, is "insecure."
You bet they never tell it the other way: "Unfortunately, this story is not complete without explaining that the next valley, the one visible through the gap in the mountains is "secure"
Posted by: Mike ||
09/16/2008 15:32 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
There is no known cure for Palinosis.
Yes, there is no underlying cure. However, I suspect relief can be found in the health care system of France, Germany, England, et al, though you must be a card carrying member to sustain the treatment. Maybe such a change in climate is in order.
Professor John Frary, who is running for Congress in Maine, has isolated and formulated a preliminary typology of a new pathogen that is circulating through the body politic,
Palinosis, n. pl. palinoses. Any of several poorly differentiated disorders among Left-lurchers that involve demented social, political, and rhetorical behaviors. They are distinguished individually by special manifestations (as paralysis of the cognitive functions, frothing at the mouth, rotating eye-balls, hyperventilation, semantical seizures).
Working together with researchers in the field (that dedicated group Médecins Sans Illusions), I have been able to piece together an incomplete epidemiological portrait of the malady.
Kevin D. Williamson, "Media Blog" @ National Review
One of the great things about blogs is that they allow people to really be themselves: truly, anonymously, and sometimes horribly. Here's a nice big dose of Barack Obama's base, as they express themselves at barackobama.com, the candidate's own website.
Why, you might wonder, is Obama lagging in the polls? The Palin Effect? His dodgy tax plan? His many associations with oddballs, kooks, and the odd bomb-planting terrorist? Team Obama says the only possible explanation is racism, or "white privilege," as they put it:
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
McCain, fighting in a war for his country, was held prisoner for years and tortured. And that's "privilege"? A danged odd definition of privilege for anybody, white or otherwise.
On strategy, the Obamites are every bit as vulgar and crude as they are on "white privilege," wondering aloud how they can recruit Jewish supporters to "use" Gov. Palin for the purposes of spreading alarm in the Jewish community while assuaging fears that Obama is weak on national defense and on Mideast issues in particular:
Also, we need some surrogates to start to spread the mesage, very slowly, that having Palin as VP is scary. This needs to be done but very subtle. And we need to use her with our Jewish friends, like Koch, to drive the message that Palin is not a good chice [sic] for Jewish voters at all.....We need to act fast and show we are fighting for it. In this way people will feel that Obama will be strong in National Security.
In all fairness, these aren't sophisticated, professional Obama operatives; these are just garden-variety enraged Democrats of the subspecies Kos diarius punching away on their Macs in their mother's basement. But it does give one a little insight into the mentality that drives the lumpen Left and their slightly more eloquent media wing. But the ideas do bubble up from the bottom to polite society. The probability that any Obama stumbles, or his ultimate loss, will be immediately blamed on racism has been a subject of discussion around here for some time, and that meme has already made the jump from Obama diarists to mainstream media. See: Virginia, HuffPo, Georgia/Florida, Washington, South Carolina.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/16/2008 12:33 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
publications of the slut at Huffington the article references: pubs bio
her hubbie wrote this book: The estrangement of the rain god
Jordan Fell is afraid that his passionate marriage is over. His wife Leah's affections have suddenly chilled. Her cautious eyes flash the cold visage of a stranger. Suddenly in pursuit of a new career, Leah renounces the freely chosen traditions of her family life. As she begins to walk her new career path with the help of another man, Jordan hears the certain footfalls of abandonment. Wracked by his wife's looming discontent, Jordan departs for Asia and his own fidelity is challenged. Upon his return, the fragile marriage ends. As his children suffer this great loss, Jordan plunges into drunken despair--to the edge of madness. An exotic song heard in a lonely Metro in Paris finally frees his possessed mind and Jordan learns the true nature of human estrangement. Fascinated by the spirit of a new woman from the mountains, Jordan unlocks her dark secret and recovers the sovereignty of the Rain God.
#2
the link "Georgia Flordia" below:
Adam C. Smith,
Times Political Editor
Political Editor since 2001, Adam Smith was named the best political writer in Florida by washingtonpost.com and one of the country's top 10 political reporters by Columbia Journalism Review. He focuses on state and national politics.
Smith has been with the Times since 1992 and has covered local and state government, as well as general assignment and investigative beats. He appears most Sundays on "Political Connections" on Bay News 9, is a primary contributor to The Buzz political blog. Smith grew up in New York City, graduated Kenyon College in Ohio, and when he's not chasing politicians tries to keep up with his wife, three kids and basset hound.
Phone: (727) 893-8241
E-mail: asmith@sptimes.com
Blog: The Buzz
I wouldn't have posted the contact info but I notice that he posted name and town for some poor lady a pollster called and publicly named her a racist in print.
#5
Aside from the fact that the only campaign that has been racist from start to finish has been that of Sen. Obama, let's examine yet another of their erroneous presuppositions:
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president...
The point that Sen. Obama and his willing dupes continually miss is simply this. Sen. McCain's stint in the armed forces (without any false posturing or self aggrandizement) shows social responsibility. Social responsibility (my definition anyway) nothing more, and nothing less, than the willingness to put the needs of your social group (family, city, state, nation) above your own.
No one from the Radical Left has ever succeeded in doing this to any noticeable degree. And this is why they fail to win Joe Sixpack over. This is why all they ever end up with is a bunch of self serving sycophants whining to each other about how much more they know than the rest of us. They may know more than the common man (doubtful, but accept it for the sake of argument for the moment) but they don't have the moral foundation of social responsibility to build on. And so their political castle rests on a foundation of sand.
And when it topples they have no clue why, so there must be a reason found or invented. And it must be an unreasonable reason since they, as the intellectual elite, could not possibly make such a mistake.
#6
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time,
As has been pointed out the vast majority of votes in the senate are unanimous in that they are to congratulate some baseball team or some silly thing. Obama himself probably voted with George Bush (the few times he did vote that is..) over 90 percent of the time. I guess Obama also enjoys 'white privledge'.
#8
White privilege?
Don't make me f*cking laugh.
Show me one black kid who graduates from Univ. with $50,000 or more in student loans and I'll kiss your ass.
And I know dozens of black kids who don't have those loans because they willingly joined ROTC or one of the service academies -- and did so knowing full well they will most likely be deployed into a shooting zone when they graduate.
#10
"white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time"
-It's painfully obvious that this dumb lib has never read the US Const. Is Bush a senator as well? Senators don't vote after presidents. Senators vote on bills that go to the president or possibly on policy initiated by the pres or the budget, etc. The president doesn't necessarilly vote on anything. Gov't 101. Fucking retards.
Sarah Palin's reputation survived her interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson.
The same cannot be said for Charlie Gibson.
On my radio show last week, I twice defended Barack Obama. Once, against those conservatives who took a comment made by Obama in an interview with George Stephanopoulos out of context and suggested that Obama had inadvertently admitted he was a Muslim. And again, when I contended that Obama did not imply that Palin was a pig in his now famous "lipstick on a pig" reference.
I mention this only because I want to assume that people of good will on both sides can still be honest about what transpires politically. And in this instance what transpired was that Gibson intended to humiliate Palin.
It wasn't even subtle. Virtually everything Gibson did and virtually every question he posed was designed to trap, or trick, or demean Gov. Palin. There are views of his face that so reek of contempt that anyone shown photos of his look would immediately identify it as contemptuous.
But one series of questions, in particular, blew any cover of impartiality and revealed Gibson's aim to humiliate Palin.
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His worldview?
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
When he asked Palin whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine without defining it, he gave the game away. He lost any pretense of fairness. Asking the same unanswerable question three times had one purpose -- to humiliate the woman. That was not merely partisan. It was mean.
I couldn't answer it -- and I have been steeped in international affairs since I was a Fellow at the Columbia University School of International Affairs in the 1970s. I have since been to 82 countries, and have lectured in Russian in Russia and in Hebrew in Israel. Most Americans would consider a candidate for national office who had such a resume qualified as regards international relations. Yet I had no clue how to answer Gibson's question.
I had no clue because there is no right answer. There are at least four doctrines that are called "Bush Doctrine," which means that there is no "Bush Doctrine." It is a term bereft of meaning, as became abundantly clear when Gibson finally explained what he was referring to:
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that -- the right to preemptive attack of a country that was planning an attack on America?
That's the Bush Doctrine? "The right to preemptive attack of a country that was planning an attack on America?"
Isn't that just common sense? What country in history has thought it did not have the right to attack those planning to attack it? I learned the "Bush Doctrine" when I was a student at yeshiva in the fourth grade, when I was taught a famous Talmudic dictum from about 1,800 years ago: "If someone is coming to kill you, rise early and kill him."
And preemptive attack is exactly what happened in June 1967, when Israel attacked Egypt and Syria because those countries were planning to attack Israel. Would any American president before George W. Bush have acted differently than Israel did? Of course not. Did they all believe in the Bush Doctrine?
That is how Gibson added foolishness to his meanness.
All the interview did was reconfirm that Republicans running for office run against both their Democratic opponent and the mainstream news media.
This year it is more obvious than ever. The press's beatification of Obama is so obvious, so constant (how many covers of Newsweek and Time has Obama been on?) that media credibility even among many non-conservatives has been hurt.
Let me put this another way. Charlie Gibson showed far greater hostility toward the Republican vice-presidential candidate than Dan Rather did in his interview with Saddam Hussein or Mike Wallace did in his interview with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Which reminds me of another Talmudic dictum: "Those who are merciful to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful."
We might call it the media's Gibson Doctrine: Confront Republicans, act obsequious toward tyrants.
My initial reaction to Bacongate was, "Well, it's just another gaffe. Obama couldn't possibly be dumb and mean enough to call Palin a pig." Yeah, she mocked him during her convention speech, but it was all about his record (or lack thereof) and soaring rhetoric. Which isn't nice, perhaps, but that stuff is fair game in a political campaign. Could he really be so thin-skinned and self-serious that he'd start hitting back with personal insults?
At first I thought it was a mistake for the McCain camp to demand an apology. As I told my close personal friend Glenn Reynolds, I thought they should have said something like:
"We're pleasantly surprised by Senator Obama's newfound sense of humor, and look forward to watching it develop over the coming weeks and months."
You know, rise above it, while still reminding everybody that Obama is a stiff, humorless, gaffe-prone scold.
But now I'm having second thoughts. I think he meant exactly what the crowd obviously thought he meant, because it fits a clear pattern of behavior.
Putting aside the astonishing smear campaign against Palin, which is definitely not grassroots, just look at some of Obama's past antics. In no particular order:
"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same."
Yeowtch! And her palmprints on the podium were still warm. (Quite a contrast to McCain's ad, less than 24 hours earlier, congratulating Obama on his achievement.) But then, later that same day, Obama walked it back:
"I think that... campaigns start getting these hair triggers and the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments," he said, according to the pool report, apparently criticizing his staff for going overboard, as he did occasionally in the primary.
So he's not the hostile, panicky jackass. It was his staff's fault. Yes We Can... Pass the Buck!
Speaking of McCain's congratulatory ad, which as far as I know is unprecedented, how did Obama return the gesture? By finally going on The O'Reilly Factor, after months of begging by O'Reilly, on the night of McCain's speech. Your opponent goes out of his way to show some class on your big day, and you thank him by trying to steal his thunder?
After Bill Clinton, ahem, swallowed his pride and endorsed Obama at the DNC, what song did they play afterward? "Addicted to Love." Classy!
During a campaign event last April, Obama emphasized a point about Hillary by scratching his cheek. With his middle finger. Innocent, offhand gesture? I thought so at first. Now I'm not so sure.
The "dirt off your shoulder" thing. At first I thought it was funny, and I like that Jay-Z song, but in retrospect the gesture seems -- much like Jay-Z -- arrogant and deeply unpleasant. And based on what we've seen from Obama over the past week, it's obviously delusional. Not only can't he brush the dirt off his shoulders, but he's piling even more on them as he digs this deep, deep hole.
And to go beyond mere jerkiness: What's up with putting out an "Obama Action Wire" to try to shut down a Chicago radio station for talking about his ties with William Ayers? If Ayers is just a guy in Obama's neighborhood, why launch thousands of phone calls and e-mails at the station, all spouting the same talking points? You can download an MP3 of the show in question here. It's one thing for MoveOn or Kos or Media Matters (at the risk of redundancy) to do that kind of crap, but this came from the official campaign site. Does it bother anybody else that a presidential candidate is openly trying to stifle dissent? Doesn't Obama know that as president, he would be criticized every minute of every day? Does he plan to shout them all down?
But hey, I could be wrong. These could all be coincidences and/or innocent mistakes. Maybe it's everybody else's fault. Maybe he isn't really throwing rocks and hiding his hand.
P.S. And before you start? In the words of the immortal Harvey Keitel: "I didn't make a statement. I asked a question."
Posted by: Mike ||
09/16/2008 08:25 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Treacher must have missed that middle finger bit the second time it happened.
I've seen two videos in two different locations where Zero is giving the exact same speech and at the exact same point in that speech he scratches his cheek with his middle finger.
#4
What about his admission that he DID ask the Iraqis to delay an SFA till after the election?
Of course in the most surreal statement of all time the campaign screeched about the lie and the smear while confirming what was said.
In the New York Post, conservative Iranian-born columnist Amir Taheri quoted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari as saying the Democrat made the demand when he visited Baghdad in July, while publicly demanding an early withdrawal.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview, according to Taheri. . . .
But Obama's national security spokeswoman Wendy Morigi said Taheri's article bore "as much resemblance to the truth as a McCain campaign commercial."
In fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office, she said.
In the face of resistance from Bush, the Democrat has long said that any such agreement must be reviewed by the US Congress as it would tie a future administration's hands on Iraq.
#7
Betty, I remembered that NRO article after I clicked through to it, but I hadn't made the connection.
I'm wondering if despite his exceedingly cool, calm, pleasant demeanor, Obama is a much angrier guy than he lets on. Not swearing at colleagues and blowing-off-steam angry (as John McCain reputedly is), but that he's driven by a quiet, white-hot, continually burning anger, seeing great injustice everywhere, and compelling him to accumulate more and more power to set things right as only he can.
I do believe you are on to something here.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/16/2008 13:39 Comments ||
Top||
#8
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview, according to Taheri. . . .
This is red meat, and McCain should jump on it.
Negotiations without portfolio can be treason.
#9
Of course, these are merely unfortunate and unrelated coincidences. Hussein, being the polite Muslim he is, would never directly offend any kufir, until he knows he's got him under his thumb. Standard Muzz procedure.
#1
Creationism is crap. And, I believe it is sinful to believe in it. Why? Simple, it takes the outright denial of God's gifts, the gifts of reason and logic, to believe in that fantasy. And to deny God's gifts is to deny God.
#2
Agreed, what if all scientists ran around trying to figure out a way to reduce all science to "God did it". We'd still be burning witches and drilling holes in peoples heads to let the evil spirits out. What we have learned at every pass is that there is a reason, a system, a symetry or a physical law deep down in the biggest mystery that need only to be discovered. Otherwise there is no point in even asking "why?".
#3
Funny, I feel the same way about the Theory of Evolution.
It's not science. Why? Because it's not repeatable.
Furthermore, the methods used to teach it in the public schools are little less than propaganda. Ernst Haeckel's wood carvings of embryonic development are known to be fraudulent, yet they are in EVERY biology text used in the public schools. And this is ONE quibble with the way evolution is taught, I have more issues with the teaching of evolution than I have time to type here.
Don't misunderstand me. God gave us the gifts of reason and logic. Science is a result of those gifts and we are to use it to learn about the world around us. If God created us by evolution then glory be to God! If God created us as literally described in the book of Genesis, then glory be to God. But let's weigh the evidence from both sides on the same scale, and not one rule for me and another for thee.
#4
I am coming back to a belief in a literal six-day creation, mainly due to certain facts that science tends to ignore.
At the same time, I do NOT support the teaching of Creationism in schools: evolutionists have become as venal dealing with Creationism as the MSM is when dealing with Republicans, so I expect them to screw it up.
Better that it be taught in the home and Church, where all the facts can be put on the table without intimidation.
#5
Creationism doesn't matter, because it is not scientific, so should not be taught in a science class.
Any more than checkers should be taught in chess class. Checkers has its own validity, but it is not chess. It is a different game.
Importantly, science does *not* explain the universe. That is not its function. Science is a strict set of rules, and if you perform those rules, you will have conducted a scientific experiment. THAT IS ALL.
If you play a game of chess by the rules, that is all you have done as well. A chess player may win almost entirely using his knights, but that does not "prove" that knights are inherently superior as chess pieces.
The problem arises when people interpolate and extrapolate from scientific experiments, and still call it science. It is not. It may be accurate as all get out, but it is not science. Science is a closed system.
Because of this mistaken assumption, everybody wants to steal the credibility of science for non-scientific purposes. Things like anecdotal results, subjectivity, opinion, religion, and Al Gore are not scientific either.
Even in a university, there should be a debate. Studies like history, anthropology, psychology, etc. are called "Social Sciences", but in fact are "Social Studies", even though each incorporate very limited scientific analysis, for things like statistics.
They are 99% non-scientific, but importantly, they are still valid as studies. As are religious and philosophical studies, even if the people studying them are non-believers.
So again, the bottom line is that Creationism should not be taught in a science class, any more than it should be taught in a music class, a P.E. class, a shop class, or French class.
And this says nothing about the value or accuracy of Creationism. Just that it does not conform to the rules of science, so it is not scientific.
#6
Intelligent Design is a better approach than Creationism, but it certainly deserves equal time in the classroom. Presenting only evolulution is propoganda, not education.
#7
Educate yourselves, please. Evolution is a multifacted theory on the development of life. While macro-evolution is not repeatable in a laboratory, micro-evolution most certainly IS repeatable. People need to understand basic science. Science realizes that our understanding of the world is incomplete and sometimes flawed. Science strives to improve its understanding. The Theory of Evolution has evolved greatly from the days of Charles Darwin.
Ptah, can you please elaborate on these "facts" that science tends to ignore?
Intelligent Design is a crock of shit. I firmly believe in God and a Creator. Belief in one does not preclude belief in the other. Only ignorant preachers want you to think otherwise. Science seeks to answer the question, how? Not why, or even by whom. Evolution is a thoroughly vetted scientific principle, that is contiuously debated and refined by scientists. Just because you can't understand it doesn't make it 'propoganda'. If we are going to teach ID or creationist bullshit, then we'll also need to teach Hindu creation myth. And Native American creation myth as well.
I could quote a dozen passages from the Bible that tells us the Earth is flat! Are we going to teach that crap to? God, is shaking his head in heaven, wondering how people can turn their backs on the gifts he's given them.
#9
Presenting only evolulution is propoganda, not education.
The teaching of creationism and ID belongs in Religious Education lessons. Scientific theories such as evolution should be discussed in science lessons. If the students don't want to sit through a science lesson including evolution they should have the decency to keep quiet and stop studying biology at the first opportunity they have, just as the science-orinetated students might want to ditch RE. I'm sure we all had less-favroured subjects at school.
#11
Creationism has no bizness in early-age public schools. Intelligent design can (and I believe in it), but not in science curriculum. Sorry. It's a faith thing that we should inculcate at home and church, and which has place in a higher-than-elementary level classes with reflection on the world at large. Once you start with a simple question: "how did the universe start?" All the rest is fair game, and God becomes a better answer than anything else, no?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/16/2008 19:56 Comments ||
Top||
#12
So, Frank G, who's God are you going to put in classrooms? First, let's be honest. Intelligent Design is merely a new code-word for Creationism. If people want to contemplate the meaning of life and the origin of existence, that's fine for say a college level philosophy class. And of course home and Church. I strongly believe in an almighty God and that Jesus was His Son and that He created this universe with all its splendor. But, mankind's knowledge of the world has grown by leaps and bounds. And that growth is through God's gifts (reason and logic), and I believe through God's own plan. After all, did he not create us in His image? To believe in the biblical creation requires a person ignore reality. Why can some ignorant preachers discard the parts of the Bible that tell us the Earth is flat or the Earth is the center of the universe, but can't accept Genesis as metaphor? How many people here also believe Noah really fit 2 of every kind of animal on his tiny little boat?
#13
IMHO - I believe God exists and no physical proof will verify that, other than, "where did we (all material) come from?" To date, no atheist has been able to answer that. Once you put that "first thought" in kid's minds, they will be equipped to evaluate the rest. Or not. I am a Roman Catholic, but believe people should come to their conclusions on their own. My "first thought" should logically lead a sentient being to the fact that there's something higher than us, or to try and explain how everything came into being otherwise. If they could do that, they're a higher intellect than I (not a select criteria, I acknowledge). I believe the bible incorporates metaphors and stories to explain history. I do not believe Noah saved all species via the Ark (ridiculous on its' face) but it was a metaphor for successive pre-history of global wiping of species...
OK? Flame away
that's what I would teach, and I would encourage students to explore on their own, and logically defend their theses. End results? It all comes back to faith and my "first thoughts*"
*no, I didn't "first think" em, so shuddup
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/16/2008 21:31 Comments ||
Top||
#14
The first 11 chapters of Genesis do read quite a bit different than the chapters from 12 on. Eden isn't a particularly concrete place. Ur-of-the-Chaldeans, however, was. Where in the world is the Pishon River? (I'll give you the Tigris and Euphrates.)
The style is definitely creation myth, and I'm totally cool with that. The Church has gotten itself in a bind by trying to insist Genesis 1-11 are literal.
So why write it that way? I suspect that the early Hebrews had any particular interest in knowing the specifics about creation. The differential equations alone would have likely given them fits. They'd never get off chapter 1 and what good would that have done anyone?
#15
If creationism is how it really happened, prove it. It's that simple, just give us some scrap of proof. Anything will do. But it has to be more than bible verses, I've heard them. I don't believe in your religion, therefore I have no burden of "faith" to adhere to. Therefore I require proof of some tangible kind.
Evolutionists have spent the last century putting the pieces together to map our past. They have fossils and core samples and shit like that, but what PROOF do creationists have other than pointing out the spots evolutionists havent filled in yet? Maybe I'm missing something here, but it doesn't make any sense to me, it never did, even when I was a kid I had questions that they couldn't answer.
Pakistan Is the Problem - And Barack Obama seems to be the only candidate willing to face it.
An excellent article by Fraser Nelson in London's Spectator at the end of July put it as succinctly as I have seen it:
At a recent dinner party in the British embassy in Kabul, one of the guests referred to "the Afghan-Pakistan war." The rest of the table fell silent. This is the truth that dare not speak its name. Even mentioning it in private in the Afghan capital's green zone is enough to solicit murmurs of disapproval. Few want to accept that the war is widening; that it now involves Pakistan, a country with an unstable government and nuclear weapons.
"Don't mention the war," as Basil insists with mounting hysteria in Fawlty Towers. And, when discussing the deepening crisis in Afghanistan, most people seem deliberately to avoid such telling phrases as "Pakistani aggression" ormore accurate still"Pakistani colonialism." The truth is that the Taliban, and its al-Qaida guests, were originally imposed on Afghanistan from without as a projection of Pakistani state power. (Along with Pakistan, only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ever recognized the Taliban as the legal government in Kabul.) Important circles in Pakistan have never given up the aspiration to run Afghanistan as a client or dependent or proxy state, and this colonial mindset is especially well-entrenched among senior army officers and in the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.
We were all warned of this many years ago. When the Clinton administration sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan in reprisal for the attacks on our embassies in East Africa, the missiles missed Osama Bin Ladin but did, if you remember, manage to kill two officers of the ISI. It wasn't asked loudly enough: What were these men doing in an al-Qaida camp in the first place? In those years, as in earlier ones, almost no tough questions were asked of Pakistan. Successive U.S. administrations used to keep certifying to Congress that Pakistan was not exploiting U.S. aid (and U.S. indulgence over the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan) to build itself a nuclear weapons capacity. Indeed, it wasn't until after Sept. 11, 2001, that we allowed ourselves to learn that at least two of Pakistan's top nuclear scientistsMirza Yusuf Baig and Chaudhry Abdul Majidhad been taken in for "questioning" about their close links to the Taliban. But then, in those days, we were too incurious to take note of the fact that Pakistan's chief nuclear operative, A.Q. Khan, had opened a private-enterprise "Nukes 'R' Us" market and was selling his apocalyptic wares to regimes as disparate as Libya and North Korea, sometimes using Pakistani air force planes to make the deliveries.
The very name Pakistan inscribes the nature of the problem. It is not a real country or nation but an acronym devised in the 1930s by a Muslim propagandist for partition named Chaudhary Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind. The stan suffix merely means "land." In the Urdu language, the resulting acronym means "land of the pure." It can be easily seen that this very name expresses expansionist tendencies and also conceals discriminatory ones. Kashmir, for example, is part of India. The Afghans are Muslim but not part of Pakistan. Most of Punjab is also in India. Interestingly, too, there is no B in this cobbled-together name, despite the fact that the country originally included the eastern part of Bengal (now Bangladesh, after fighting a war of independence against genocidal Pakistani repression) and still includes Baluchistan, a restive and neglected province that has been fighting a low-level secessionist struggle for decades. The P comes first only because Pakistan is essentially the property of the Punjabi military caste (which hated Benazir Bhutto, for example, because she came from Sind). As I once wrote, the country's name "might as easily be rendered as 'Akpistan' or 'Kapistan,' depending on whether the battle to take over Afghanistan or Kashmir is to the fore."
I could have phrased that a bit more tightly, since the original Pakistani motive for annexing and controlling Afghanistan is precisely the acquisition of "strategic depth" for its never-ending confrontation with India over Kashmir. And that dispute became latently thermonuclear while we simply looked on. One of the most creditable (and neglected) foreign-policy shifts of the Bush administration after 9/11 was away from our dangerous regional dependence on the untrustworthy and ramshackle Pakistan and toward a much more generous rapprochement with India, the world's other great federal, democratic, and multiethnic state.
Recent accounts of murderous violence in the capital cities of two of our allies, India and Afghanistan, make it appear overwhelmingly probable that the bombs were not the work of local or homegrown "insurgents" but were orchestrated by agents of the Pakistani ISI. This is a fantastically unacceptable state of affairs, which needs to be given its right name of state-sponsored terrorism. Meanwhile, and on Pakistani soil and under the very noses of its army and the ISI, the city of Quetta and the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas are becoming the incubating ground of a reorganized and protected al-Qaida. Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally. He began using this rhetoric when it was much simpler to counterpose the "good" war in Afghanistan with the "bad" one in Iraq. Never mind that now; he is committed in advance to a serious projection of American power into the heartland of our deadliest enemy. And that, I think, is another reason why so many people are reluctant to employ truthful descriptions for the emerging Afghan-Pakistan confrontation: American liberals can't quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he's ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at thatnot less.
#1
Obama is a clueless buffoon. Does he understand logistics at all? How are we supposed to support the troops in Afghanistan without a cooperative Pakistan?
Yes, Pakistan is a big problem, but unless you are talking about a full scale war with Paki-waki land (they do have nukes you know) what exactly are we supposed to do that hasn't been done to date?
Obama as a football coach would want to start throwing Hail Marys from his own 10 yd line in the first quarter.
#2
AlanC is right. Obama may have snagged a few words that suggest a good path to a solution in that area, but that is a very long way from being able to follow through. He has no knowledge or experience to carry it out. So, who's he going to depend on to make it happen? In his cabinent of 300 prophets the only one's with State and military expertience are mostly Clinton hasbeens. We know how well 'God's Gift To Women From Arkansas' did with the war on terror. Only Joe B iden and John McCain have anywhere near the knowledge and experience to carry something through here. John can do the best we can expect with this. Joe is a hopeless, embarrassing mess.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/16/2008 11:22 Comments ||
Top||
#3
But it is such a nice soundbite for OB to say that Pakistan is the real problem and that we need to go after them in a bigger way. Hitchens, who is normally smarter than this, takes the bait. But OB, as Alan and Richard note, would no more be able to really go after Pakistan than fly to the moon. He is all talk. He will take no action. Jimmy Carter redux. An ass.
American liberals can't quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he's ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at thatnot less.
Lots of 'if' here,. That said, it means that Obama has hoisted himself on his own petard, whether he acts or not.
It also means that the left side of the political spectrum is screwed in any case.
#1
"It is painfully obvious that Wall Street mavens who lust for better connections and expanded markets in the islamic world often have no clue to the backgrounds, connections, ideologies, or ultimate goals of some of the central officials and organizations involved in many "Islamic finance" or "shariah finance" vehicles.
Neither does Wall Street, nor K Street in Washington for that matter, realize that shariah finance vehicles are seen by Islamists as perfect indirect mechanisms for funding the implementation of extremist shariah law and/or violent jihad."
#2
It is sad that sharia law has been implemented in Great Britain. It won't be long before the Brits won't have a culture or a country.
Wall Street has had problems because of greed. Jumping into get rich quick schemes such as subprime loans has caused much of the problem. Merrill Lynch paid their last CEO 160 million bucks to leave the company. The amount some of these companies are paying their execs is just plain screwing the shareholders.
The sad fact is that actual artistic oppression - book banning in its many modern forms - is a matter of course in the entertainment industry, especially when the underlying product is declared politically incorrect or runs contrary to the interests of Hollywood's political altar, the Democratic Party.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations runs rings around Hollywood's pious First Amendment absolutists.
"I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs," director Phil Alden Robinson wrote after changing the script from Muslim terrorists to Austrian neo-Nazis in the Tom Clancy thriller, "The Sum of all Fears." "And I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination."
While Mr. Clancy put up an admirable fight, actor Ben Affleck acquiesced, cashed his multimillion-dollar check and fought the dreaded Austrians, whose flagging Teutonic self-confidence again took a hit. Thanks to Hollywood artistic appeasement, Arab youth in totalitarian Muslim countries indoctrinated in anti-Western thought dodged another esteem bullet.
Perhaps Mr. Affleck would still have a career as a leading man if the highly anticipated "The Sum of All Fears" added up to the realistic "war on terror" headlines that dominated news cycles as it came out in 2002 - or, God forbid, matched up to its authors' chosen words, characters and ideas. Now Mr. Affleck sits near the craft service table watching his wife, Jennifer Garner, fight the bad guys.
The silence of the celebrity political class was heartbreaking when Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic radical in retaliation for making "Submission," a critically acclaimed film that portrayed horrific female oppression within the practice of Islam.
Yet Hollywood - quick to find martyrs near to its heart (Valerie Plame, et al) - ignored its fallen Dutch comrade and refused to celebrate the film and its maker, fulfilling his murderer's greatest desire.
"It's like a really bad Disney movie," Mr. Damon said of Mrs. Palin's political rise.
Yet it was a really good Disney movie that stands as a lasting symbol that censorship is alive and well in liberal Hollywood. In 2006, ABC and its parent company poured $40 million into a five-hour, commercial-free miniseries called "The Path to 9/11." Built to play every year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the docu-drama chronicles how the al Qaeda menace grew under the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Night 1 focused on the Clinton years; Night 2 looked into the eight months leading up to the attacks under President Bush. ABC considered the two-day movie experience a gift to the country, and over the two-night airing an astounding 28 million viewers tuned in.
Less about politics, "The Path to 9/11" focused on the emergence of radical Islamic terror as a clear and present American threat. Neither administration was cast as the villain; the Islamic terrorists were. Both administrations were rightfully portrayed as underestimating the threat.
Yet politicians and government employees tied to Bill and Hillary Clinton, all who admittedly hadn't seen the film, took to the airwaves to demand it not be aired or be radically edited, with only days to go before its premiere.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter and even former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who was convicted of destroying top-secret national security documents, demanded that Disney cut the movie to their liking or pull it from the air, within days of its anticipated airing.
Political hacks gleefully declared victory over free speech. Hollywood stood silent as the political class demanded blatant censorship.
Because the Clinton political family didn't like one scene in one movie - one that accurately portrayed that the Clinton administration had chances to take out Osama bin Laden - ABC and Disney folded to the pressure and, as a result, the film will likely never be seen on network television again, nor will it ever make its way to the lucrative DVD market - the modern equivalent of taking it off the library shelf.
Even $2 million movies make their way to the marketplace - let alone $40 million controversial ones that already have been seen by millions.
"It's censorship in the most blatant way," left-wing filmmaker Oliver Stone said. "I'm not vouching for its accuracy - it's a dramatization - but it's an important work and needs to be seen."
"Blocking the Path to 9/11" is a devastating documentary directed by former talk-show host John Ziegler that shows exactly how censorship works in America. As long as it is supported by Democratic politicians and by liberal Hollywood players, censorship is a useful tool to stifle dissent.
Mr. Ziegler's documentary is a cautionary tale on how the mainstream media play a crucial role in supporting Democratic causes and how liberal blogs bolster the media and Hollywood's leftward attack. No film better illuminates how censorship is operative in modern America and is utilized by the very people who demand absolute creative freedom.
If you can't find "The Path to 9/11" or the documentary that spells out the crime of its suppression, perhaps you should look out for Matt Damon's latest project, "The People Speak," featuring "dramatic live readings" from America-bashing usual suspects Danny Glover and Eddie Vedder, and honoring Howard Zinn, the celebrity left's favorite revisionist historian and the Marxist professor who inspired the Robin William's character in "Good Will Hunting."
Maybe Sarah Palin can give it a look on the campaign trail and understand why a beautiful and accomplished woman from Alaska poses such a threat to Hollywood and the Democratic Party - and why so many people in heartland America are rooting for her to win.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
It wasn't even subtle. Virtually everything Gibson did and virtually every question he posed was designed to trap, or trick, or demean Gov. Palin. There are views of his face that so reek of contempt that anyone shown photos of his look would immediately identify it as contemptuous.
Jim Treacher
The sad fact is that actual artistic oppression - book banning in its many modern forms - is a matter of course in the entertainment industry, especially when the underlying product is declared politically incorrect or runs contrary to the interests of Hollywood's political altar, the Democratic Party.
