Archive » 2005 » November

In living palor.
He is ordering major strikes on Iraq because, in his words, it had abused its “last chance.”

NBC’s inexplicably popular Law N Order does a hit job on the Minutemen.
Full disclosure: I’ve never been able to sit through a whole episode of that show. If the producers are trying to shock me into watching, they have failed.

Dick Cheney has now joined the “push back” with a forceful speech. Here are a few excerpts:
What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war. The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these [...]

Air America Radio has just sent its third fundraising letter, this time full of boasts about election “victories” against the “right-wing”.
This time, it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joining the party. Just how bad is the liberal radio network’s situation?
See it at the Radio Equalizer.

Tony Blankley wisely advises the President to “veto any bill that would grant Congress even a syllable of war-fighting strategy.”
It was 30 years ago when Congress last took the reins of national war fighting. In August 1974, Nixon had been scandalized and left office. The November 1974 election brought forth the “Watergate babies” congress filled [...]

Who is messing with the memory of fallen California Highway Patrolman John Pedro?
Twice in the last three months, memorials to Watsonville-based Pedro, who died on-duty during a 2002 pursuit, have been destroyed.
From the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Over the weekend, a handmade redwood cross erected in loving memory of officer John Pedro off the Riverside Drive exit [...]

The Senate’s twin votes this week on the war put the mid-terms next year into sharp focus. The Senate voted 58-40 against a measure introduced by Sen. Carl Levin that would have set up a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and voted in favor of a more vague measure that merely suggests that the [...]

Jim Hoft has text and video excerpts from an excellent speech just given by President Bush in Japan praising the country as a great ally and calling for expanding freedoms in China. This reminded me of a similar speech Bush gave at Tsinghua University in China several years ago. Jim Hoft points out [...]

David Cloud reminds us of another president regarded as a terrible failure at the time.
“I wonder how well you have been sleeping these last nights? Mothers and fathers all over our beloved land are spending sleepless nights worrying again over their boys being sent to fight wars on foreign soil—wars that are no concern of [...]

The Washington Post reveals that big foot reporter Bob Woodward heard from some government official who was not either Libby or Rove about the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent about a month before Libby is supposed to have told anyone about Wilson’s wife and before Wilson wrote his NYT editorial.
Washington Post [...]

Here is some good news about the achievements women in Afghanistan had made in their elecitons.
Before September’s parliamentary vote, the first for 30 years, there had been widespread predictions that, due to the conservatism of Afghan society, women would only gain seats through a quota system which automatically reserved 25 per cent of [...]

Within the conservative movement, is there a growing sense of malaise? Or is it merely something the other side desperately wants us to feel?
After relentless recent liberal media poundings, I’ve noticed at least a few on the right seeming a bit down-in-the-dumps.
Why I’m instead upbeat:
1) Republican fundraising is clobbering parallel opposition efforts. Howard Dean isn’t [...]

The Republican National Committee needs to learn some internet etiquette. To wit, writing in ALL CAPS or weird capitalization schemes is bad. Posting walls of text full of quotes–but without links to original sources–is bad. Take a look at this RNC page. It’s full of good information useful for pushing back [...]

Thank you very much to Michelle for allowing me to guest-blog on her site. I appreciate the invitation very much.
In my other life outside blogging, I’m a teacher at a relatively new, yet successful charter school in Raleigh, NC and, as such, I’m very interested whenever I see news about education. I [...]

This DU post discovered by John Hawkins looks like an excellent contender for inclusion in a followup to Michelle’s new book Unhinged.

The Did Bush Lie? Just Google It meme seems to be catching on, so here’s a new graphic you can use if you want to support it. Don’t hotlink it, but feel free to swipe it and post it on your own bandwidth.

The link to the search is:
http://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+iraq+1998
Trackback if you use any of this–I’d [...]

When you watch this incredibly good RNC web video you might ask how on earth the Democrats ever thought they would get away with accusing the President of lying and misleading the country into the war in Iraq. I would answer that with the following:
1. They were emboldened when they were successful [...]

What’s the difference between your local “shopper” throwaway rag and the New York Times? Perhaps very little.
Using a widely-circulated internal memo obtained by the Radio Equalizer, we’re exploring whether Sunday’s glowing profile of Air America Radio’s Randi Rhodes and Rachel Maddow was the direct result of a corporate spin campaign.
Is this how a major [...]

Senate Republicans have drafted legislation that aims to spell out how the war in Iraq will end. One can only hope, given our present national leadership on both sides of the aisle, that the word “victory” shows up somewhere in all that legalese. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.
This move by members of [...]

Stop the ACLU interviews Glenn Reynolds.
It’s a very good interview from both sides. Though I find Glenn’s final answer…ambiguous. It’s kind of a non-denial denial on the whole puppy blending controversy.

The big news story today is likely to be the proposal by congressional Republicans, and specifically a plan from Senate Republicans, calling “for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war.” I will update with [...]

Al Franken thinks President George W. Bush should “confess”, according to today’s Denver Post. He’s so kind, in fact, he’d “forgive” Bush for an “outright confession”:
“The best way for us to start getting out is for the president to finally admit some mistakes,” Franken said in a phone interview. “Just say,’OK, we kind of cherry-picked, [...]

The Bush administration is finally and concertedly pushing back against the Deaniac Democrat lie that President Bush somehow lied us into war in Iraq. The president has delivered two speeches in the past few days that take direct aim at those Democrats who voted in favor of the war but now claim that the [...]

I’m going to be in the air and on the road until Friday on the endless Unhinged book tour. I’ll check in when I can. Meantime, I’ve invited back a fabulous foursome of guest-bloggers:
Brian Maloney, The Radio Equalizer
Bryan Preston of The Junkyard Blog
Lorie Byrd of Polipundit and Byrd Droppings
Betsy Newmark of Betsy’s Page
Give them a [...]

The RNC has just e-mailed an advance copy of the remarks President Bush will deliver this evening at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. Here’s a key excerpt:
Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war –­ but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American [...]

More bloody consequences of lax immigration enforcement…from Dallas, Tx., via the Dallas Morning News:
Marta Cruz had told police that her ex-boyfriend had been threatening her for weeks.
But as he emptied his handgun in an act of rage early Sunday, police say, his last bullet found another victim.
Dallas police Officer Brian Jackson died of a gunshot [...]

Take a lunch break at INDC Journal, where Bill Ardolino posts some beautiful photos taken this weekend at Arlington National Cemetery.
They shall grow not old
as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
we will remember them.
-L. Binyon
***
On a related note, congrats [...]

I missed this one a few days ago, but it’s just too good (or rather, bad) to pass up:
CNN anchor Carol Lin referring to the two French teenagers of Tunisian descent whose death sparked the Paris riots as “African-American.”
Newsbusters has the video.
Cassandra’s Page and Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants chuckled over the boneheaded remark last [...]

Two newspapers, the Modesto Bee and the Sacramento Bee, did the right thing this weekend and published lengthy explanations of how and why they came to publish the unverified claims of former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, the anti-war Left’s favorite slanderer of American troops.
David Holwerk, Sacramento Bee editorial pages editor, wrote:
We should have done [...]

Time magazine names her one of the nation’s worst governors:
Failures aren’t born. They’re made. Before Hurricane Katrina, it wasn’t the job of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to plan for the evacuation of the elderly and poor from New Orleans. Afterward, she wasn’t in charge of the federal response. But it was her job [...]