Diane Lane picture of the week

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Cox & Forkum cartoon

Which dovetails with my recent Roper rant

Link with commentary

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MoveOn.org: Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'...

Rolling Stone has an article about how MoveOn.org has become a force to be reckoned with - for the Democrat Party, that is. Despite having been largely impotent in effecting the outcome of elections, they keep coming back for more.

They signed up 500,000 supporters with an Internet petition -- but Bill Clinton still got impeached. They organized 6,000 candlelight vigils worldwide -- but the U.S. still invaded Iraq. They raised $60 million from 500,000 donors to air countless ads and get out the vote in the battle-ground states -- but George Bush still whupped John Kerry. A gambler with a string of bets this bad might call it a night. But MoveOn.org just keeps doubling down.

It reminds me of the story of the guy who keeps hitting himself in the face with a cast-iron frying pan. His buddy asks "Why do you keep doing that?", to which he responds: "Cuz if feels so good when I stop."

And now they're seeking to use their grass-roots foundation to infiltrate and take over effective control of the Democrats.

"It's our Party," MoveOn's twenty-four-year-old executive director, Eli Pariser, declared in an e-mail. "We bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back." The group's new goal is sweeping in its ambition: To make 2006 a watershed year for liberal Democrats in Congress, in the same way that Newt Gingrich led a Republican revolution in 1994.

Good Luck dude. The sweep to GOP control of Congress was a backlash against Liberalism, its policies and an ever-encroaching Federal bureaucracy. Republicans have INCREASED their gains in Washington since 1994. It goes to show how little Pariser and his renegade band of Bush-haters understand about the American electorate.

But not all Democrats are blind to the ill-effects of the kook insurgency.

"It's electoral suicide," says Dan Gerstein, a former strategist for Joe
Lieberman's presidential campaign. MoveOn committed a series of costly blunders last fall: It failed to remove two entries that compared Bush to Hitler from its online ad contest, and its expensive television spots barely registered in the campaign. One conservative commentator, alluding to MoveOn's breathless promotion of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, branded the group the "MooreOn" wing of the party. All of which leaves political veterans wondering: As MoveOn becomes a vital part of the Democratic establishment, will its take-no-prisoners attitude marginalize the party and strengthen the Republican stranglehold on power?

Here's the short answer that even some Democrats will quietly concede: "Uh, yep."

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Peter Arnett - Saddam Booster...

Remember Peter Arnett, the schmuck at CNN most famous for having his lips glued to Saddam Hussien's glutes ever since the first Gulf War? I saw this report this a.m and thought to myself "OK, so Uday was allegedly going to overthrow his pappy and Iraq would have become a garden paradise - thereby mitigating the need to enforce the U.N. resolutions and topple him ourselves? Yeah, right. And I suppose Iraqi children would have been dancing in the streets too." Please.

VodkaPundit though pretty much the same thing and did some excellent research on just how much of a psychopath the fruit of Saddam's loins was and what a great service our military performed by wasting his sorry ass.

Great work, Steve!

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What have the Romans ever done for us?

The UK's "Times Online" has a terrific column today comparing a scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian to the current hand-wringing in Europe over America's "hyperpower" foreign policy and the results that it has wrought for the people of the Middle East.

Anybody that can convincingly tie-in a Monty Python reference to make a political point gets bonus points in my book, and Gerard Baker gets the kudos today. Mirroring a line that John Cleese voiced in a scene from Life of Brian, Baker writes:

“All right, all right. But apart from liberating 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining dictatorships throughout the Arab world, spreading freedom and self-determination in the broader Middle East and moving the Palestinians and the Israelis towards a real chance of ending their centuries-long war, what have the Americans ever done for us?”

Baker explains how even in Great Britain, the folks who gave us Winston Churchill, there are whiners and doubters that the future of the Middle East can be a positive one:

"[The view of] the bold foreign policy strategists in Washington was that the status quo that existed before September 11 could no longer be tolerated. Much of the Muslim world represented decay and stagnation, and bred anger and resentment. That was the root cause of the terrorism that had attacked America with increasing ferocity between 1969 and 2001.

AmericaÂ’s critics craved stability in the Middle East. DonÂ’t rock the boat, they said. But to the US this stability was that of the mass grave; the calm was the eerie quiet that precedes the detonation of the suicide bomb. The boat was holed and listing viciously.

As a foreign policy thinker close to the Administration put it to me, in the weeks before the Iraq war two years ago: “Shake it and see. That’s what we are going to do.” The US couldn’t be certain of the outcome, but it could be sure that whatever happened would be better than the status quo.

And what's happening - a democracy domino effect - is helping make the world safer and more free. History is unfolding before our eyes.

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"It's not dead, it's pining...for the fjords"...

President Bush spoke out yesterday to rain on the Democrats premature celebration of the "death" of the Social Security reform movement in Congress. After a recent newspaper headlines quoted Sen. Charles Grassley and Sen. Bill Frist has doubting whether legislation can get a vote anytime soon, the MSM trumpeted the news that Bush has lost on this one.

Not so fast there, buddy. On FoxNews.com today:

According to a FOX News-Opinion Dynamics poll released Thursday, a majority of young people — 65 percent — favor the idea. On the opposite side, 56 percent of those surveyed over age 55 oppose it.

In the president's view, admitting that a problem exists is a first step toward fixing it.

"People are beginning to say, 'We have a problem.' The next phase ... is going to be, 'What are you going to do about it?' And I am willing to put out some ideas about what to do about it," Bush said.

Both Senator Grassley and Frist are quick to point out that their comments were taken out of context.

"This president and this Congress are facing this challenge and the challenge is to fix Social Security for seniors, for near retirees, and for the next generation. We need to do it and we will do it this year. Not next year, but this year," Frist said on the Senate floor.

The White House ain't gonna roll over that easy.

Administration officials are striking back with their own campaign — 60 stops in 60 days. Bush was making two appearances on Friday.

For more common sense, see: Social Security Choice

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AARP - The Big Fear Campaign Begins...

One of things in this whole Social Security debate that really pisses me off is how the AARP is in such denial about the crisis that this country will be facing in the near future. Not their current members, mind you, but their offspring and their children's children. And so on , and so on...

Anyway, the AARP - which exists only to fund the most powerful lobbying group in Washington - loves to release press releases on the "dangers" and "risks" of private savings accounts, one of the proposed reforms for the existing Social Security system. They scare seniors on their website with this kind of crap:

"Under privatization, current workers will have to pay three times," says Certner. "Once to ensure the benefits for those currently at or near retirement, once for themselves, and once more for those whose investments didn't pan out."

In the current Social Security system, the risk is near zero. You know it will be there regardless of what the market does. That's because U.S. Treasury bonds don't crash when the stock market does.

Guess what? In about thirty years the return will be zero as well. In fact, after that, the average person will collect less money in his retirement than he put into the system in their working years.

And here's the real hypocrisy. The AARP will go to great lengths to warn its members of the "risks" of putting private investment in the stock market and on the same website they offer their members the AARP Investment Program.

What's this you ask? Oh nothing, just a simple lucrative service the organization offers - the chance to invest in a selection of 38 mutual funds. Hey, last time I checked mutual funds are portfolios of stock, publicly traded on Wall Street.

So spare me with the "risky" scheme pitch. And stop LYING to your members. Those currently collecting Social Security checks will have NO change to their benefits under any of the proposed plans. They'll get theirs. But maybe the younger members of society will get a chance at a better deal - and keep the system from imploding as well.

The only thing the AARP is trying to protect is its own survival. Because without programs like the current Social Security system - there's no need for it.

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Blogswarm on the horizon...

To be spurred by FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith's (remember the name, you're going to see a LOT of it) comments about regulating political speech in the Blogosphere.

This has been buzzing all over, but Michelle Malkin has a good round-up.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be bumpy ride...

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Not Good (if it's true)...

Just caught a post over at Ramblings' Journal regarding Star Trek: Enterprise.

There's a rumor that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, the guys who figured out a way to screw up a perfectly good franchise have a couple of unpleasant surprises in store for fans in the series finale.

Suffice to say the one character is supposed to die and the last four years will be presented in an entirely new context that is sure to piss off the fans. Beware of spoilers, but the link is here. I've also found a "confirmation" at TrekWeb.

It's bad enough that certain suits at CBS which owns UPN (you know who you are Les Moonves) don't have the cojones to keep the series going just as it's getting good but for the creators to flip off the fans in this way sucks beyond belief.

So go watch Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica - it's a better show presented by someone who has a much deeper respect for the fans.

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Bizarre media news...

According to Drudge, ABC has a pilot in the works called "Commander In Chief" about a woman President. The show will star actress (and political activist) Geena Davis of "Thelma & Louise" fame. Didn't she already crash and burn on a TV show?

Hey ABC, why not have it star Janeanne Garofalo? Maybe Whoopi Goldberg would like the chance to fail at another TV venture or small-screen disaster.

This one ought to be a ratings winner.

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If PBS doesn't do it, then who cares?

George Will makes a strong case about scrapping Public Broadcasting in his column today titled PBS No Longer Relevant.

"[In 1967,] The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission hailed public television's promise of "more diversity" and a Carnegie report foresaw increased "diversities." Thirty-eight years later, 500 channels mock public television as crucial to diversity. "

He also picks apart the lame arguments for keeping the money funnel from the U.S. Treasury turned on.

Public television, its supporters say, is especially important for poor people who cannot afford cable or satellite television. But 62 percent of poor households have cable or satellite television and 78 percent have a VCR or DVD player.

Don't believe the VCR/DVD stat? Just go to Costco or Best Buy and look around.

"The impervious argument is: The small size of the audiences for most of public television's programming proves how necessary public television is. The big networks gather big audiences by catering to vulgar cultural tastes, leaving the refined minority an orphan, because any demand the private market satisfies must
be tacky.

The self-refuting argument is: Big Bird. Never mind that the average age of PBS viewers is 58. "Sesame Street" -- see how its merchandise sells, and Barney's, too -- supposedly proves that public television can find mass audiences.

But the refined minority, as it sees itself, now has ample television choices for the rare moments when it is not rereading Proust. And successes such as "Sesame Street" could easily find private, taxpaying broadcast entities to sell them."

Of all the possible uses of the taxpayer's money, keeping this outlet of "progressive" propaganda on life support is about the least desirable one that I can think of. Will sums up the condition of this dinosaur aptly:

"Public television is akin to the body politic's appendix: It is vestigial, purposeless and occasionally troublesome."

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"Sheets" Byrd makes as ass out himself...AGAIN.

Sen. Robert (ex-KKK Kleagle) Byrd (D) - WV went on the Senate floor yesterday to bitch about the GOP's threat to change Senate rules on judicial nominations. Just how this doddering old fool manages to keep himself from drooling on camera is, in itself, amazing enough. But to see a former Klansman make references to Hitler and Nazis is just rich.

It's nice to finally see someone call out this racist (the MSM certainly never would). The Anti-Defamation League is looking for an apology for his remarks comparing President Bush and the Republicans to the folks who slaughtered six million European Jews (an event Byrd no doubt would have given his approval if he happended to be a particularly orthodox Klan member).

This is another one of those moments where Democrats encourage one of their most embarrassing spokespersons to help in their efforts to market themselves to the voters. Oops.

Hat Tip: New England Republican

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GOP Senator wants to regulate "decency" for Pay media...

Alright, here's a perfect example of how I will point out when a Republican is being a perfect A-hole. Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens wants to apply broadcast decency standards to cable television and subscription satellite TV and radio.

Look, I am a father of three and I really don't have much of a problem with the FCC trying to maintain some kind of standards for free media - broadcast TV and radio. But when a Senator advocates censorship for media that individuals pay for - which in most cases is to get the kind of material they can't get from the free media - that is WAY over the line.

Fortunately, there are cooler heads in the Senate:

Sen. George Allen, a Commerce Committee member and Virginia Republican, told reporters he would be "hesitant to expand it to those" services.

While lawmakers and some parents groups are anxious to wipe the airwaves clean of indecency after singer Janet Jackson bared her breast last year during the Super Bowl halftime show, President Bush has said parents are the first line of defense and can just "turn it off."

Sen. Allen, BTW, is a personal favorite of mine and someone I would support for the 2008 GOP nomination.

The Senator from Alaska, however, seems to be pursuing this with uncommon zeal.

Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by the cable industry that Congress does not have the authority to impose limits on its content.

"If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.

When members of the Senate make controversial public statements, it usually means one of two things: Either they are trying to make a national name for themselves to bolster their political ambitions or they are making a direct pitch to political donors.

Regardless of the case here, he's just plain wrong. And in the eyes of the voters, he's likely making a fool of himself. Stevens needs to back off - NOW. This is the kind of thing that raises the ire of more than just Libertarians.

UPDATE (12:12pm)
Ace of Spades weighs in with comments that are both laugh-out-loud funny and thought provoking.

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Supremes Legislating From the Bench...AGAIN.

Yesterday's decision in Roper v. Simmons, ruling out the death penalty for those who committed their crime while under the age of 18, is a troubling one.

I'm not going to argue the morality of the issue itself, because that is an issue for the people of each State to decide - not an unelected court. Five justices made a decision that imposes their ruling as "the law of the land" because of their personal feelings on the matter. The tenth amendment to the Constitution is very clear that all matters not SPECIFICALLY given Federal jurisdiction in preceding articles are to be decided by each State as it sees fit, via the consent of the people.

The imposition of one standard on all fifty States is creating new law out of whole cloth - that is, judicial activism.

In OpinionJournal.com, the editorial board quotes from the dissent:

As Justice Antonin Scalia writes in a dissent that is even more pungent than his usual offerings, "The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards."

Justice Anthony Kennedy rationalizes the decision with the idea of "national consensus" - that is he believes that State laws allowing the death penalty for minor offenders violate modern American society's "standards of decency". According to whom? An unaccountable judiciary?

But wait a minute. This is contradictory to prior Court decisions that actually ignored this "national consensus" idea. As the WSJ explains:

This idea of invoking state laws to define a "consensus" also runs up against any number of notable Supreme Court precedents, including Roe v. Wade. When Roe was decided in 1973, all 50 states had some prohibition against abortion on the books. But never mind. Even weaker is the Roper majority's selective reliance on scientific and sociological "evidence"--the kind that legislatures (and juries) are used to weighing. The American Psychological Association claims in this case that killers under the age of 18 are incapable of making appropriate moral judgments. But this is the same organization that has told the Court in the past that teen-age girls are mature enough to decide whether to have an abortion without parental input. Which is it?

The irony is that the ruling of Roe v. Wade in itself was a form of judicial activism that created a "right" that does not exist in the Constitution but that the Justices felt should be found there. Regardless of your personal feeling on abortion - or the death penalty for minors - the fact remains that the Constitution does not specifically address issues such as these for exactly the reason that the Court is ignoring - it is not for a judge to decide. Rather the jurisdiction belongs to the State legislatures (those individuals that are subject to the will of the voters).

But what is the most chilling aspect of this decision is Kennedy's reliance on foreign opinion as a factor.

"It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty," Justice Kennedy writes. We thought the Constitution was the final arbiter of U.S. law, but apparently that's passé.

Apparently, Kennedy - with his four colleagues - seriously believes that the founders intended for the laws of this nation to be influenced by the laws of other nations. When did the American people have a say in foreign laws? They didn't. And the idea that the "standards" of another nation will determine - through a Court - how U.S. laws will be determined is very scary. This standard is not even being imposed consistently. For example, the vast majority of nations around the globe have much tougher laws regulating abortion than the United States does, so why aren't the Justices advocating that we conform to "international" standards on that issue? Because it doesn't fit into their philosophical paradigm.

Such inconsistency suggests that the real reason this Court has taken to invoking "international opinion" is because it is one more convenient rationale that the Justices can use to make their own moral values the law of the land. And it is no surprise that Justice Kennedy's majority opinion is joined by the four liberal Justices who have long been on record as opposing the juvenile death penalty--Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. In Roper they finally found a case, and an inventive legal hook, on which they could lure Justice Kennedy.

Folks, this is a HUGE red flag of things to come if President Bush's judicial nominees are blocked from the bench. The Federal judiciary is peeling away our system of Federalism and taking away the right of the American voter to determine the laws that govern them. The only way to put a stop to it is to ensure that the judges appointed to the Federal bench are dedicated to preserving the Constitution and not "adapting" it to their personal whims because they think they know better than the American people.

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A Kindred Spirit on the Left Coast...

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for directing me to this op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. The author, Cinnamon Stillwell, recounts her turning away from the Left as a 9/11 Republican.

Although Cinnamon's upbringing was decidedly much more liberal than mine and I had my "second thoughts" prior to 9/11, the process she went through is very similar to my own experiences and to read them is very meaningful for me.

Some of the passages that made me think "yes - me too":

"I wrote off all Republicans as ignorant, intolerant yahoos. It didn't matter that I knew none personally; it was simply de rigueur to look down on such people. The fact that I was being a bigot never occurred to me, because was certain that I inhabited the moral high ground."

"Thoroughly disgusted by the behavior of those on the left, I began to look elsewhere for support. To my astonishment, I found that the only voices that seemed to me to be intellectually and morally honest were on the right. Suddenly, I was listening to conservative talk-show hosts on the radio and reading conservative columnists, and they were making sense. When I actually met conservatives, I discovered that they did not at all embody the stereotypes with which I'd been inculcated as a liberal."

"I began to find myself in concurrence with other aspects of conservative political philosophy as well. Smaller government, traditional societal structures, respect and reverence for life, the importance of family, personal responsibility, national unity over identity politics and the benefits of living in a meritocracy all became important to me. In truth, it turns out I was already conservative on many of these subjects but had never been willing to admit as much."

"Indeed, liberals had become strangely conservative in their fierce attachment to the status quo. In contrast, the much-maligned neoconservatives (among whose ranks I count myself) and Bush had become the "radicals," bringing freedom and democracy to the despotic Middle East. Is it any wonder that in such a topsy-turvy world, I found myself in agreement with those I'd formerly denounced?"

"In the end, history will be the judge, and each of us will have to think about what legacy we wish to leave to future generations. If there's one thing I've learned since 9/11, it's that it's never too late to alter one's place in the great scheme of things."

Whether you're teetering on the brink of moving away from the Left or you're already there and marveling at all the folks that are coming over, the column, The Making of a 9/11 Republican, really needs to be read in it's entirety.

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War! What is it good for?

Actually, the list is quite long. WizBang Blog spells out the positive effects currently being experienced in Libya, Syria, Lenanon, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine...

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As always Mark Steyn nails it...

on events unfolding in the Middle East:

"Three years ago, those of us in favour of destabilising the Middle East didn't have to be far-sighted geniuses: it was a win/win proposition. As Sam Goldwyn said, I'm sick of the old clichés, bring me some new clichés. The old clichés - Pan-Arabism, Baathism, Islamism, Arafatism - brought us the sewer that led to September 11. The new clichés could hardly be worse. Even if the old thug-for-life had merely been replaced by a new thug-for-life, the latter would come to power in the wake of the cautionary tale of the former.

But some of us - notably US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz - thought things would go a lot better than that. Wolfowitz was right, and so was Bush, and the Left, who were wrong about the Berlin Wall, were wrong again, the only difference being that this time they were joined in the dunce's corner of history by far too many British Tories. No surprise there. The EU's political establishment doesn't trust its own people, so why would they trust anybody else's? Bush trusts the American people, and he's happy to extend the same courtesy to the Iraqi people, the Syrian people, the Iranian people, etc.

Prof Glenn Reynolds, America's Instapundit, observes that "democratisation is a process, not an event". Far too often, it's treated like an event: ship in the monitors, hold the election, get it approved by Jimmy Carter and the UN, and that's it. Doesn't work like that. What's happening in the Middle East is the start of a long-delayed process. Eight million Iraqis did more for the Arab world on January 30 than 7,000 years of Mubarak-pace marching."

Link: The Arabs' Berlin Wall has crumbled

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Freedom Dividends in Beirut...

Tens of Thousands of Lebanese protesters cheer the resignation of the Syrian-backed puppert government. This is NOT a scene you would witness if Saddam were still thumbing his nose at the world.

The Bush Doctrine in action.

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The Guys at Right Wing News unveil the new Democrat marketing spot...

Updated from the "I hate Republicans" bit, the commentary behind the awesome graphic is here.

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Oscar audience DOWN from last year...

by 2 million viewers. Looks like another case of those "early exit polls" that showed one thing but the final results show another. The AP reports that:

The drop in total viewership was an indication that this year's Oscar ceremony was more popular in the big cities than rural areas, more so than an average Academy Awards, said Larry Hyams, vice president of audience analysis and research for ABC.

Oscar ratings were up from last year among viewers aged 18 to 34 — a prime target for the advertisers who pay millions of dollars for time on what is traditionally the year's highest-rated program after the Super Bowl.

Hyams attributed the boost in young viewership to Rock.

So, 41 million viewers. In context, that means this year was lower than last year - which was no banner year for ratings. In fact it's not all that much better than 2002, which at the time was an all-time low. So my original prediction that it would be "one of the lowest rated" stands.

Looks like the "hip" metropolitans in the big markets (mostly in Blue States) watched in droves, but the rest of America (mostly Red states) opted out. Another indication of a culture schism in the nation?

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