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Bush’s Iraq Policy Vindicated By Obama Adviser. “We Are Responsible For Imposing Peace.”

October 5, 2008 – 8:24 pm

Former Obama adviser on invading Israel

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Interesting.

The caption identifying her, Journalist, Lawyer, Activist seems to be an oxymoron.A journalist is an observer, a reporter, not an activist. Of course that presupposes that the identifications mean something.Another interesting point.

This interview was done in 2002. Before the Iraq invasion. In it she states that we have a responsibility as a “Liberal Democracy” to impose a “peace” on an unwilling populace. She used the example of not allowing in “Palestine” what had happened in Rwanda. Of course, if Israel actually was conducting “genocide” it would seem to be a very slow one. And why would we have less responsibility toward the Iraqi’s than we have for the Palestinians? Seems kind of out of whack. Imposing a settlement on Israelis and Palestinians but ignoring Saddam’s depredations?

She noted that the criticism would be tremendous but that it was something that needed to be done. Change “Palestine” to “Iraq” and see how it reads then. Not much difference is there?

So does Powers really believe that the only liberal democracy in the Middle East is worse than Ba’athist Iraq?

I think that ordering the American military to stand between Israel and the Palestinians would severely challenge the leftist vision of the military as a mindless bunch of automatons. There would be a LOT of resistance to getting between them. It would be Beirut 1983 on steroids.

Only someone that is an “intellectual” could come up with something as stupid as this. Especially in light of the history.

[image]John Dunshee | [image]Media, Elections 2008, Middle East, terrorism, St. Obama, War on Terror, The Evil Party, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islamic "Civilization" | [image]Comments (0)

More Like Me, Less Like Them

October 5, 2008 – 8:12 pm

See the world, get elected - Los Angeles Times

I suggest the Constitution be amended to require that candidates for the presidency (and vice presidential selections as well) have visited a minimum of 20 countries. The amendment would require that each visit would have been made more than four years before the candidate’s possible inauguration and that it would have lasted at least 48 hours. This serves as proof that a candidate is genuinely interested in, and possibly even knowledgeable about, the world around him or her.

Once again we are being treated to the opinion of yet another intellectual that people running for office should be more like them and less like the rest of us.

Peter Guttman thinks that candidates should be more widely traveled. Something like the 19th Century “tour” that every well brought up youth of a certain class was provided with. It is not surprising to find out that Mr. Guttman writes travel books and has a degree in Geography.

So much for the conceit that in American anyone can grow up to be President.

Maybe once upon a time. Under Mr. Guttman’s formula Abraham Lincoln would have been disqualified. But now? The fact is that one one should be running for President that doesn’t have the time and funds to take a trip around the world. How else is there to meet the ‘right” people?

The number of countries visited is not a number that was just plucked out of the air. A serious candidate must have visited at least 20 countries for no less than 48 hrs for a simple reason. There are a great many people, such as myself, who have spent far longer than 48 hrs in foreign countries. The problem is that most of those countries had names like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Korea or Japan. That is, they visited there while performing military service. But no one who Mr. Guttman would consider enough like him to qualify for office would serve in the military. It’s just so…common and it is peopled mostly by the kind of people that you wouldn’t want to associate with on a normal basis.

But doesn’t it seem curious that a travel writer wants someone running for office to be more like him? In fact, it seems to be a common trope. Hollywood celebrities want the President to be like them, academics want him to be like them, pundits want him to conform to their ideas. It seems that wanting the President to be more like them and less like us is very common, and simply by its normalcy unattainable.

When I was young it was accepted that anyone had the chance of becoming President. In the 50 some years since that time things seem to have changed from the President being the leader of the people to the President being the ruler of the people. That is a big distinction. Leaders are developed from within. Rulers are imposed from without. A leader can be anyone with the right talent. A ruler has to have the right family, the right schools and the right friends. A leader is first among equals, a ruler is a class apart.

[image]John Dunshee | [image]Media, Obamatons, Palinography, The Clintons, WTF?, The Stupid Party, St. Obama, The Evil Party | [image]Comments (0)

Don’t Spend It All In One Place.

October 5, 2008 – 9:02 am


Economic bill throws rural Oregon counties a lifeline

Passage of the massive bailout bill Friday brought cheers of relief in Oregon, from the governor’s office in Salem to county boardrooms in the southern end of the state.

Tucked inside the massive rescue plan is $3 billion in federal relief to rural counties that once relied on logging money to pay for roads, schools, jails and sheriff patrols.

Of that, about $740 million is headed to 33 Oregon counties during the next four years, staving off a looming financial crisis in the state.

“What Oregon got is a lifeline for the next four years,” Gov. Ted Kulongoski said.

In fact, don’t spend it to fund continuing programs. Use it for one time purchases of things that would be nice to have but haven’t been able to fund.

Be prepared to lose the funding in 4 years!

Use it for capital purchases or infrastructure repair. Don’t set up the Gay Baby Whale Support agency with it.

Bur you know that that is exactly what the politicians are going to do. They’re going to use it to fund programs and then threaten to cut them when the funding goes away hoping to scare people into accepting tax increases.

Don’t count on the Pork Fairy delivering again.

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Success! NYT Finds A White Guy To Blame For Fannie Mae’s Problems

October 5, 2008 – 7:59 am

The Democrats have been really upset. It was looking like Franklin Raines and others with connections to the Democrat Party and the Obama campaign might have to accept some of the blame for the subprime mortgage crisis.

But the NYT once again came through for them. Their guys quit after the plunge into the subprime market and a new guy was promoted to head Fannie Mae. He wasn’t connected to the Party or Obama and best of all, he is white.

Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Hit a Tipping Point - Series - NYTimes.com

Just two decades earlier, Fannie had been on the brink of bankruptcy. But chief executives like Franklin D. Raines and the chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard built it into a financial juggernaut by aiming at new markets.

[…]
With that self-assurance, the company announced in 2000 that it would buy $2 trillion in loans from low-income, minority and risky borrowers by 2010.

All this helped supercharge Fannie’s stock price and rewarded top executives with tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Raines received about $90 million between 1998 and 2004, while Mr. Howard was paid about $30.8 million, according to regulators. Mr. Mudd collected more than $10 million in his first four years at Fannie.

Whenever competitors asked Congress to rein in the company, lawmakers were besieged with letters and phone calls from angry constituents, some orchestrated by Fannie itself. One automated phone call warned voters: “Your congressman is trying to make mortgages more expensive. Ask him why he opposes the American dream of home ownership.â€

[…]

Between 2001 and 2004, the overall subprime mortgage market — loans to the riskiest borrowers — grew from $160 billion to $540 billion, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. Communities were inundated with billboards and fliers from subprime companies offering to help almost anyone buy a home.

Within a few years of Mr. Mudd’s arrival, Fannie was the most powerful mortgage company on earth.

Then it began to crumble.

Mr. Howard and Mr. Raines resigned. Mr. Mudd was quickly promoted to the top spot.

Notice the order of the last two sentences.

The NYT article, one of continuing series arbitrarily decided that the problems didn’t start until 2004. After the exit of anyone connected to Obama.

As the Church Lady would say, “How Conveeenent.”

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Do Facts Matter?

October 5, 2008 – 7:35 am

Do Facts Matter? by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online

It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years — including the present year — denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Sen. Dodd, Congressman Frank, and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the president. So did Bush’s secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration “right-wing ideology†of “de-regulation†that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn’t.

Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?

Judging from the way the financial crisis has been reported, the answer seems to be a resounding NO!

[image]John Dunshee | [image]Elections 2008, Media, The Stupid Party, The Evil Party | [image]Comments (0)

Biden’s Foreign Policy Experience Is Showing.

October 4, 2008 – 8:12 pm

Joe Biden’s Alternate Universe

In Thursday night’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life. “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.†Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.†[Emphasis added.]

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.

[image]John Dunshee | [image]Media, WTF?, The Evil Party | [image]Comments (0)

Wise Investment Or Political Boondoggle?

October 4, 2008 – 8:09 pm

Amazon Green Scene’s Blog: First U.S. CO2 Auction Brings in $38.5 Million

“ALBANY, N.Y. - The owners of Northeastern fossil fuel-burning power plants, which are now required to buy credits to cover the carbon they emit, spent nearly $40 million in the first cap-and-trade greenhouse gas auction in the United States.
The auction, the results of which were released Monday, raised money that will be spent by the 10 Northeast states on renewable and energy-efficient technologies.

The question still remains. Is this money going to be spent on breakthrough technology, or is it going to be used to reward political supporters?

How are we going to know?

My bet is on jobs programs and sweetheart contracts for environmental groups. A consulting job here and a “study” there; pretty soon you’re going to have to hold another auction to keep funding your buddies.

No matter. The taxpayers and the ratepayers, who are actually one and the same, can’t do anything about it. Hell, once Obama gets elected, the news media won’t even have to report it.

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An 1985 Interview With A Soviet Defector

October 1, 2008 – 8:55 pm

Yuri Bezmenov
Uploaded by onmyway02

Other than that unfortunate incident with the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union he seems to have things pretty well pegged. But it’s probably too late now.I’ve often wondered who won the Cold War. Especially when I read the newspaper every day.
[image]John Dunshee | [image]UN, Media, WTF?, Gotta Love It, The Evil Party | [image]Comments (0)

This IS A Parody, Isn’t It?

October 1, 2008 – 8:19 pm

It’s so hard to tell.

The sentences of Sarah Palin, diagrammed. - By Kitty Burns Florey - Slate Magazine

There are plenty of people out there—not only English teachers but also amateur language buffs like me—who believe that diagramming a sentence provides insight into the mind of its perpetrator. The more the diagram is forced to wander around the page, loop back on itself, and generally stretch its capabilities, the more it reveals that the mind that created the sentence is either a richly educated one—with a Proustian grasp of language that pushes the limits of expression—or such an impoverished one that it can produce only hot air, baloney, and twaddle.

I found myself considering this paradox once again when confronted with the sentences of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. No one but a Republican denial specialist could argue with the fact that Sarah Palin’s recent TV appearances have scaled the heights of inanity. The sentences she uttered in interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and Katie Couric seem to twitter all over the place like mourning doves frightened at the feeder. Which left me wondering: What can we learn from diagramming them?

With the Huffpo post on whether or not Sarah Palin’s lip lines are tattooed and other stupid stories, it has gotten almost impossible to determine whether a particular story is sophisticated satire or not.

The writer in this case does not appear to be a satirist. Draw your own conclusions.

Kitty Burns Florey is the author of Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog, a history of diagramming sentences. Her new book, Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, will be published in January.

Maybe she will be hired by the Obama White House to insure that all criticisms of The One are diagrammed properly before he is shown them.

[image]John Dunshee | [image]Palinography, WTF? | [image]Comments (0)

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