WarrenPeese

Can We Fire Kofi Annan Now?

by

The possible reasons for Kofi Annan’s stonewalling the oil-for-food investigation have come into clearer focus.  It wasn’t just to obstruct Kofi’s own negligent oversight, it was perhaps to protect his own son’s involvement in this massive scandal.  From the London Times: The son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations … Read more

Tipping Points and Presumptions

by

For the most part, I have defended the practice of denying prisoner-of-war status to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and I still stand by it. What I can’t tolerate, however, is the mistreatment of those detainees. The stated policy is that, while these men do not merit POW classification under the Geneva Conventions, they would be … Read more

Another Gasbag Disaster

by

Brookings Institution, April 5th, 2004

Iraq is Ted Kennedy’s Vietnam, warmed over for 2005. Stuck in the decade-long quagmire of minority status in the US Senate, Kennedy’s "solutions" will offer more years of backbenching for Democrats. His ideas for Iraq today are the same as they were for Vietnam thirty two years ago: Cut and run. In June 1973, he voted to cut off all funding to the South Vietnamese government, practically ensuring a communist takeover by the North Vietnamese, the ramifications of which were the killing fields of Cambodia and a bruised and shaken USA for years to come. Kennedy’s answer then is not too different from his answer today, which is to abandon our mission in Iraq and send our troops home, denying our soldiers the chance to see those objectives to fruition.

Building on his January 12th speech, which urged Democrats to be more liberal, not to mention the Mayflower Gasbag Disaster of 2004, Senator Kennedy is continuing the Jurassic politics of a bygone era. Last Thursday, he was at it again:

In the name of a misguided cause, we continued the war too long. We failed to comprehend the events around us. We did not understand that our very presence was creating new enemies and defeating the very goals we set out to achieve. We cannot allow that history to repeat itself in Iraq.

Read more

“The Evil Principle of Democracy”

by

There were many unofficial Democratic responses to President Bush’s superb inaugural address (one of which I’ll hone in on further down), but there was no official Democratic response. There was, however, an official terrorist response from none other than un-Iraqian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Zarqawi. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it."

Read more

Sharia Vigilantism in New Jersey?

by

Last Sunday, the New York Post reported on the murder of the Armanious family, consisting of husband, wife and two daughters.  The Armanious’ were Coptic Christians originally hailing from Egyptian.  Hossam Armanious was outspoken in his beliefs and he displayed them for all to see on paltalk.com.  He paid for those beliefs in full, not … Read more

Edgy Advertising

by

Kevin over at Wizbang came across a Volkswagen commercial for a model known as the Polo, and it literally ends with a bang.  As it turns out, the ad was not sanctioned by Volkswagen or its ad agency, and they referred to it as a "hoax viral commercial".  The creators of the ad are known … Read more

Like a Punch Drunk Boxer

by

There is no other conclusion. Barbara Boxer is either an utter moron or bald-faced liar. Or worse, both. In her cross examination of Condoleeza Rice earlier today, it makes you wonder if she ever read the resolution authorizing George W. Bush to remove Saddam Hussein, or just happened to hear about it from Dan Rather. This…is CNN:

Rice insisted the war in Iraq was not launched solely over WMD. Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, she said, welcomed terrorists, attacked his own neighbors and paid suicide bombers in the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

But Boxer said the bill passed by Congress authorizing the war in Iraq was, "WMD, period."

"Let’s not rewrite history, it’s too soon for that," Boxer said.

Read more

Muayed Al-Nasseri is Our Enemy (and Iraq’s)

by

There’s not much more to add to this stunning interview captured by memri.org. The interview of al Nasseri, commander of the Army of Muhammed, was aired by an Iraqi TV channel that operates from the UAE, Al-Fayhaa TV. It again shows that the so-called insurgents are enemies of freedom and democracy, and that they are aided and abetted by the governments of Syria and Iran. Some excerpts from al Nasseri:

Read more

Speaking Truth to Power Works

by

In the January/February issue of Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan wrote a devastating and eye-opening piece on Democratic consultants and their history of being rewarded for repeated failures.

Hansen and Mellman are joined by the poster boy of Democratic social promotion, Bob Shrum. Over his 30-year career, Shrum has worked on the campaigns of seven losing presidential candidates—from George McGovern to Bob Kerrey—capping his record with a leading role in the disaster that was the Gore campaign. Yet, instead of abiding by the “seven strikes and you’re out” rule, Democrats have continued to pay top dollar for his services (sums that are supplemented by the percentage Shrum’s firm, Shrum, Devine & Donilon, gets for purchasing air time for commercials). Although Shrum has never put anyone in the White House, in the bizarro world of Democratic politics, he’s seen as a kingmaker—merely hiring the media strategist gives a candidate such instant credibility with big-ticket liberal funders that John Kerry and John Edwards fought a fierce battle heading into the 2004 primaries to lure Shrum to their camps. Ultimately, Shrum chose Kerry, and on Nov. 3, he extended his perfect losing record.

On January 12th, Bob Shrum announced his retirement, the New York Times reported.  I don’t believe the timing of Shrum’s announcement was a coincidence.  It makes me wonder what the political landscape would look like had Sullivan written this four years ago.  Erick Erickson, editor at Redstate.org, is a Republican consultant and he offered some insights into this strange world.

Read more

Another Mainstream Media Distortion

by

All too often the mainstream press will take a long, dryly written report and then distort it beyond belief.  Sadly, this is exactly what happened with mainstream reporting on the National Intelligence Council’s 123-page Mapping the Global Future, which looked at world trends and tried to peer into the next fifteen years.  The predominant meme that the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times took from the report was that Iraq is a training ground for terrorists.  OK.  Let’s test their hypothesis. 

If we want to find out the importants bits in the NIC report, the best place to start is the executive summary.  The summary even helpfully highlights in red letters what the NIC thinks are the most important issues.  None of thirty red-colored sentences in the summary contain the word "Iraq".  There is only one reference to Iraq in the whole summary:  "This revival [of Muslim identity] has been accompanied by a deepening solidarity among Muslims caught up in national or regional separatist struggles, such as Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq, Kashmir, Mindanao, and southern Thailand, and has emerged in response to government repression, corruption, and ineffectiveness."  That’s it. 

The two most relevant references to terrorism in Iraq don’t appear until page 94 of the report, as follows:

Read more

Famous Quotes From Clint Eastwood

by

"I have strong feelings about gun control. If there’s a gun around, I want to be controlling it."Pink Cadillac "I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum – … Read more

Word to Chris Rock: Don’t Send Your Daughter to Palo Alto

by

On more than one occasion, comedian and sometime actor Chris Rock has spoken of his new role as daddy to his little girl:

When he walked on the stage, he immediately professed having become the father of a baby girl and now his only job was "to keep her off the pole." He contended that having a daughter who is a stripper is the ultimate failure for a father. He went on to dispel what he called "The Stripper Myth," which believes that girls are only doing it to pay for their education. "I haven’t heard of a college that takes dollar bills. I haven’t seen any clear heels in biology. I haven’t ever gotten a smart lap dance."

I can just hear his distinct voice saying that.  Well Chris, scratch Palo Alto from your list of schools:

Students at a Palo Alto middle school learned more than school officials ever expected when a recent "career day" speaker extolled the merits of stripping and expounded on the financial benefits of a larger bust.

The hubbub began Tuesday at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School’s third annual career day when a student asked Foster City salesman William Fried to explain why he listed "exotic dancer" and "stripper" on a handout of potential careers. Fried, who spoke to about 45 eighth-grade students during two separate 55-minute sessions, spent about a minute explaining that the profession is viable and potentially lucrative for those blessed with the physique and talent for the job.

According to Fried and students who attended the talk, Fried told one group of about 16 students that strippers can earn as much as $250,000 a year and that a larger bust — whether natural or augmented — has a direct relationship to a dancer’s salary.

Now there’s a fine message from the Jane Lathrop Lapdance Stanford Middle School.  For 11-to-14 year old girls, a father’s ultimate failure is a legitimate career option.  At a school-sanctioned career seminar, young girls just blooming into womanhood got to hear that shaking their naked asses in a dark, sleazy, windowless tavern is a path to riches, that having a nice rack can help them pull down a cool quarter mil a year.  Impressionable teenage girls–most of whom are already fully self-conscious about their looks–heard from an authority figure in a taxpayer subsidized school that if get themselves a larger set of bazoombas they can increase their income-earning potential.  I know I’m sounding like the church lady here, but isn’t that just special.

Read more

Holy Smokes

by

Just yesterday, the death toll was 153,000.  Today it’s 272,000: An official document posted here says that nearly 210,000 people in Indonesia are dead or missing from the Dec. 26 tsunami, a death toll that appears to be far higher than officials have reported publicly. Rescue workers think even that number may be low. The … Read more

Billionaires’ Cabal

by

Otherwise titled If At First You Don’t Succeed, Fail Fail Again or Soros Reloaded, the sequel to the 2004 ballot box flop Soros Revolutions.  Last month, three billionaires conspired in San Francisco, deciding how to best influence the Democratic Party and left-wing politics.

A group of billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of millions more dollars to develop progressive political ideas in the US in an effort to counter the conservative ascendancy.

George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund industry; Herb and Marion Sandler, the California couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in the 2004 election cycle to organisations seeking to defeat George W. Bush.

At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.

Also taking part was Steven Bing, who is a few sheckels short of a billion but no slouch in his own right.  How much will they give to the progressive cause?

Read more

Torts Get a Raspberry

by

I haven’t read much from Sebastian Mallaby but he writes a cogent piece in the Washington Post on the costs of our current tort system:

In 2003, according to Tillinghast, the tort system cost $246 billion — meaning that the average American paid $845 for it via more expensive goods and services. But the really shocking thing is where the billions went. Injured plaintiffs — the fabled little guys for whom the system is supposedly designed — got less than half the money.

According to Tillinghast’s 2002 data, plaintiffs’ lawyers swallowed 19 percent of the $233 billion. Defense lawyers pocketed an additional 14 percent, and other administrative costs, mainly at insurance firms, accounted for a further 21 percent. The legal-administrative complex thus guzzled fully 54 percent of the money in the tort system, or $126 billion. That’s 43 times as much as the federal government has budgeted this year to combat the global AIDS pandemic.

Read more

My Take on Talk Radio: Part II

by

As noted in Part I of this series, long hours of driving around listening to talk radio has–if I say so myself–made me a connoisseur of this medium (or, for the French-averse, aficionado). For purposes of s***s and giggles, I developed a Ten List of talk radio programs, ranking them from worst to first. My criteria for judgment is the total package: content, presentation and entertainment value. Talk shows compete with the other stations on the dial, both against music and other talk formats. If the program doesn’t get your attention or if the presentation puts you to sleep (not a good thing for commuters), then content quality of the show is wasted.

The worst talk show fellas were covered in Part I, and this one will hit the Middle of the Pack. Another thing. If I haven’t listened to it, I can’t comment on it. I literally heard Air America for the first time just a few days ago. Al Franken was on and he was grousing about the Democratic Party not being liberal enough, and lobbying for Howard Dean as DNC chair. The next day Janeane Garofolo, in the absurdly named "Majority Report", was trying to rally the progressive troops in calling the Ohio presidential results illegitimate. While I’m sorely tempted to rank Fringe Radio No. 11, fifteen minutes of painfully listening to these harangues is not enough time to pass judgment. Other guys I haven’t listened to much or at all are Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, Oliver North, Mike Gallagher, Gordon Liddy, etc. So, without any more ado, drumroll please…

Read more

Jon Stewart: Powerful Television Mogul

by

Well, he’s not a mogul but he is powerful.  Less than three months ago, Stewart appeared on CNN’s Crossfire and totally annihilated the show and its hosts.  As I wrote here, Stewart should get an Emmy Award for the category of Best Guest on a Talking Head Show.  There isn’t a real category for this, … Read more

I’m Switching Camps

by

At the risk of sounding like a wishy-washy flip-flopper, I have no choice but to change my position.  After the third recount in the Washington State governor’s race, I wrote in several comment sections in several weblogs that Dino Rossi should concede the election to Christine Gregoire, provided that an independent audit be conducted and that the state legislature enact laws that would prevent the re-occurrence of all these voting mishaps.  That position is now untenable, and now I’m firmly on the side of a revote.  Here’s why.

Read more

My Take on Talk Radio: Part I

by

I have a job that puts me in the car several times a week. The radio is usually on and it’s frequently tuned in to talk radio. How did I get started? Back in the late 1980s, after several hours out in the field and getting bored with music stations, I switched over to the AM band and heard Rush Limbaugh for the first time. Quite frankly, I was hooked because outside the Wall Street Journal and a few low-circulation magazines, there was no real outlet that represented and articulated my conservative views. The alternative was to fume at the obvious bias of CNN and network news coverage. Judging by the growth of Rush’s listenership and the number of subsequent offshoots, I wasn’t the only one was frustrated with TV news.  So began my journey as a talk radio listener.

Read more

How Wahhabism Gets Spread

by

You wouldn’t think that a guy with a name like Stephen Schwartz would be a Sufi Muslim, but he is, having converted to the faith during his time in Bosnia. In his latest piece at techcentralstation, Schwartz examined the anticipated spread of a harsher brand of Islam in Athens, all centering around the "proposed construction of the first state-recognized mosque in the vicinity of Athens in modern times."

The Islamic Center in the Athenian suburb of Peania, more than 15 miles northeast of Athens near the new international airport, will be financed directly by the King Fahd Foundation of Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily, some 8.5 acres were donated by the Greek government for the structure. Foreign assistance for the radicalization of Islam in Greece will inevitably be a central element of the activities at the mosque, which will be very large, intended, it is said, to accommodate all of the estimated 120,000 Muslim faithful in the capital city. The total number of Muslims in Greece is estimated at more than 500,000.

This new mosque will introduce Wahhabism to Greek society, the very ideology that western civilization is at war with. The name "King Fahd" rang a bell with me because he also funds madrassas in Britain, Germany and untold other places, offering dis-assimilation and the oppression of females in its coursework. Are we really at war with Wahhabism? I believe we are, and that we should be outspoken in saying that this form of Islam is heretical. As I wrote here, the sect is too closely entwined with the House of Saud, and its precepts are disturbingly similar to those preached by al Qaeda. There is also quite a bit of overlap with Qutbism, which is highly influential in the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. The butchers of Beslan were also Wahhabi influenced.

Read more

And Now For Something Completely Different

by

Well, not really.  The nub of it is this.  Von and Edward asked me to contribute some writings to Obsidian Wings and I said "yes", and I extend a heartfelt thanks.  At Tacitus, I was under the moniker of "Bird Dog" and, since a new era is being ushered in over there, I thought I’d usher in some small changes as well, such as using my real name.  So what’s the point of this post?  To introduce myself, something I’ve never really done before on a weblog, so here goes.

Read more