1426
3DHS / Not learning from our mistakes
« on: November 21, 2006, 03:13:51 AM »
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1427
3DHS / In ‘88, Pelosi Voted to Impeach Hastings —
« on: November 21, 2006, 03:05:59 AM »
Will She Support Him Now?
Pelosi, Hoyer, Conyers, Rangel, Frank, Waxman — they all voted to impeach.
By Byron York
On August 3, 1988, the House of Representatives voted on a resolution, co-sponsored by Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, to impeach Alcee Hastings, the federal judge in Florida accused of conspiring to take a bribe. On that day 18 years ago, some of the Democrats who are today preparing to take power in the House were relatively new to the job; others were, even then, veterans who had served in Congress for years. For both, the vote was a rarity; Hastings was just the 10th judge in U.S. history to face impeachment.
One of the newcomers to the House was the future Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been in office a little more than a year. She voted to impeach Hastings.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, the future Majority Leader, also voted to impeach. And so did the lawmakers who will soon chair powerful House committees. Rep. Conyers, now in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Charles Rangel, soon to chair the Ways and Means Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Barney Frank, in line to head the Financial Services Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Henry Waxman, next chair of the Government Reform Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. John Dingell, in line to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. George Miller, soon to head the Education and the Workforce Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. David Obey, in line to chair the Appropriations Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Ike Skelton, next chair of the Armed Services Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. John Spratt, next in line for the Budget Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Howard Berman, next head of the Ethics Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Tom Lantos, in line to chair the International Relations Committee, voted to impeach. And Rep. Louise Slaughter, next chair of the Rules Committee, voted to impeach.
So did other well-known Democratic lawmakers like Rep. John Lewis, Rep. (and later Sen.) Barbara Boxer, Rep. (and later Sen.) Charles Schumer, Rep. (and later Sen.) Richard Durbin, Rep. Ed Markey, Rep. Ron Dellums, Rep. Julian Dixon, and Rep. Richard Gephardt.
In fact, just about everybody in the House voted to impeach Judge Hastings: the vote was 413 to 3. (Just for record, the three who voted against impeachment were Reps. Gus Savage, Mervyn Dymally, and Edward Roybal.)
A few of those members have left the House, moved on to the Senate, or died. But the ones who remain — the ones who now have the seniority to hold influential positions — have another tie to Hastings: They’ve been his colleagues for more than a dozen years. Hastings, who was convicted in the Senate but not barred from holding future office, ran for Congress himself in 1992, winning a seat from Florida’s 23rd District. And now, because incoming Speaker Pelosi has apparently ruled out the appointment of next-in-line Rep. Jane Harman to chair the House Intelligence Committee, Hastings appears to be headed toward the top position on that panel — one of the most sensitive and responsible posts on Capitol Hill.
The question of whether Hastings should be put in charge of the Intelligence Committee is not as clear-cut as the vote to impeach him years ago. For one thing, these days the 43-member Congressional Black Caucus is solidly behind Hastings, who is black. That’s a much different situation from 1988, when Conyers, a founding member of the CBC, voted against Hastings, along with fellow founders Rangel, Dellums, William Clay, and Louis Stokes. (In fact, all the founders of the CBC who were in the House in 1988 voted to impeach Hastings.)
Late last week, the CBC sent a letter to Pelosi affirming the group’s support for Hastings “The CBC sent a letter to Ms. Pelosi just to let her know that the CBC is behind Mr. Hastings 100 percent,†CBC spokesman Myra Dandridge told National Review Online Friday. CBC officials declined to release the letter itself, but Dandridge said it was sent after CBC members discussed the Hastings issue at their weekly meeting on Wednesday.
On the other hand, the 37-member Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats, has sent a letter of its own to Pelosi, this one in support of Harman (a Blue Dog member herself). “She exemplifies all the reasons the American people instilled their trust in our party on November 7th to protect them here and abroad,†the letter said. “We believe she is supremely qualified for the job.â€
The decision is Pelosi’s to make; the head of the Intelligence Committee is chosen by the Speaker. But the Hastings case is not just a problem for Pelosi. It could present an agonizing choice for other Democrats who were in the House in 1988 and went on the record in favor of Hastings’s impeachment. If they support Hastings, they will likely feel some pressure to explain why they once believed him unfit for office but now feel he is the right choice to occupy such a critical position.
The pressure might be particularly acute for Conyers, who not only voted for Hastings’s impeachment but also chaired the House Judiciary subcommittee that investigated the case, co-sponsored the impeachment resolution, and argued for Hastings’s conviction as an impeachment manager in the Senate trial. As such, Conyers left a long record explaining his belief that Hastings was guilty.
“No one could have been more skeptical than I at the start of this process,†Conyers told the Senate during the trial. “No one more anxious to ensure that this man be neither penalized for his race or insulated by his race, from the consequences of wrongful conduct. No one was more predisposed to believe the best of Judge Hastings and his case and to doubt his accusers. I said so.â€
But as chairman of the subcommittee, Conyers continued, he examined the evidence that Hastings conspired with a close friend, a man named William Borders, to solicit money from defendants in return for favorable treatment in Hastings’s court. And that evidence changed Conyers’s mind. “I heard some evidence that forced me to reevaluate my position, the evidence presented, not only in my subcommittee but over here as a manager,†Conyers said. “I have heard this thing twice. And what I have seen and heard and studied and listened to and reread and argued with my staff counsel and back and forth has only matured my conclusion that, measured by any standard, Judge Hastings’ guilt has been established and Congress has an obligation to protect the integrity of the judiciary.â€
“There is an enormous amount of evidence that makes no sense at all unless Judge Hastings conspired with William Borders and lied at the trial,†Conyers concluded. “It is the mass of evidence that makes the case, but it may be just one of the undisputed facts that convinces you that Judge Hastings is not to be believed on this and many, many other facts made both in and outside of this legal process.â€
“Justice and the integrity of our government depend on the importance of these impeachment proceedings, and they argue that the judge should be removed from the bench.â€
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGZjNDljZDkwNjEwNjNhYWNkMWViOWVkNDJiZDQ0ZGI=
Pelosi, Hoyer, Conyers, Rangel, Frank, Waxman — they all voted to impeach.
By Byron York
On August 3, 1988, the House of Representatives voted on a resolution, co-sponsored by Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, to impeach Alcee Hastings, the federal judge in Florida accused of conspiring to take a bribe. On that day 18 years ago, some of the Democrats who are today preparing to take power in the House were relatively new to the job; others were, even then, veterans who had served in Congress for years. For both, the vote was a rarity; Hastings was just the 10th judge in U.S. history to face impeachment.
One of the newcomers to the House was the future Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been in office a little more than a year. She voted to impeach Hastings.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, the future Majority Leader, also voted to impeach. And so did the lawmakers who will soon chair powerful House committees. Rep. Conyers, now in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Charles Rangel, soon to chair the Ways and Means Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Barney Frank, in line to head the Financial Services Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Henry Waxman, next chair of the Government Reform Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. John Dingell, in line to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. George Miller, soon to head the Education and the Workforce Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. David Obey, in line to chair the Appropriations Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Ike Skelton, next chair of the Armed Services Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. John Spratt, next in line for the Budget Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Howard Berman, next head of the Ethics Committee, voted to impeach. Rep. Tom Lantos, in line to chair the International Relations Committee, voted to impeach. And Rep. Louise Slaughter, next chair of the Rules Committee, voted to impeach.
So did other well-known Democratic lawmakers like Rep. John Lewis, Rep. (and later Sen.) Barbara Boxer, Rep. (and later Sen.) Charles Schumer, Rep. (and later Sen.) Richard Durbin, Rep. Ed Markey, Rep. Ron Dellums, Rep. Julian Dixon, and Rep. Richard Gephardt.
In fact, just about everybody in the House voted to impeach Judge Hastings: the vote was 413 to 3. (Just for record, the three who voted against impeachment were Reps. Gus Savage, Mervyn Dymally, and Edward Roybal.)
A few of those members have left the House, moved on to the Senate, or died. But the ones who remain — the ones who now have the seniority to hold influential positions — have another tie to Hastings: They’ve been his colleagues for more than a dozen years. Hastings, who was convicted in the Senate but not barred from holding future office, ran for Congress himself in 1992, winning a seat from Florida’s 23rd District. And now, because incoming Speaker Pelosi has apparently ruled out the appointment of next-in-line Rep. Jane Harman to chair the House Intelligence Committee, Hastings appears to be headed toward the top position on that panel — one of the most sensitive and responsible posts on Capitol Hill.
The question of whether Hastings should be put in charge of the Intelligence Committee is not as clear-cut as the vote to impeach him years ago. For one thing, these days the 43-member Congressional Black Caucus is solidly behind Hastings, who is black. That’s a much different situation from 1988, when Conyers, a founding member of the CBC, voted against Hastings, along with fellow founders Rangel, Dellums, William Clay, and Louis Stokes. (In fact, all the founders of the CBC who were in the House in 1988 voted to impeach Hastings.)
Late last week, the CBC sent a letter to Pelosi affirming the group’s support for Hastings “The CBC sent a letter to Ms. Pelosi just to let her know that the CBC is behind Mr. Hastings 100 percent,†CBC spokesman Myra Dandridge told National Review Online Friday. CBC officials declined to release the letter itself, but Dandridge said it was sent after CBC members discussed the Hastings issue at their weekly meeting on Wednesday.
On the other hand, the 37-member Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats, has sent a letter of its own to Pelosi, this one in support of Harman (a Blue Dog member herself). “She exemplifies all the reasons the American people instilled their trust in our party on November 7th to protect them here and abroad,†the letter said. “We believe she is supremely qualified for the job.â€
The decision is Pelosi’s to make; the head of the Intelligence Committee is chosen by the Speaker. But the Hastings case is not just a problem for Pelosi. It could present an agonizing choice for other Democrats who were in the House in 1988 and went on the record in favor of Hastings’s impeachment. If they support Hastings, they will likely feel some pressure to explain why they once believed him unfit for office but now feel he is the right choice to occupy such a critical position.
The pressure might be particularly acute for Conyers, who not only voted for Hastings’s impeachment but also chaired the House Judiciary subcommittee that investigated the case, co-sponsored the impeachment resolution, and argued for Hastings’s conviction as an impeachment manager in the Senate trial. As such, Conyers left a long record explaining his belief that Hastings was guilty.
“No one could have been more skeptical than I at the start of this process,†Conyers told the Senate during the trial. “No one more anxious to ensure that this man be neither penalized for his race or insulated by his race, from the consequences of wrongful conduct. No one was more predisposed to believe the best of Judge Hastings and his case and to doubt his accusers. I said so.â€
But as chairman of the subcommittee, Conyers continued, he examined the evidence that Hastings conspired with a close friend, a man named William Borders, to solicit money from defendants in return for favorable treatment in Hastings’s court. And that evidence changed Conyers’s mind. “I heard some evidence that forced me to reevaluate my position, the evidence presented, not only in my subcommittee but over here as a manager,†Conyers said. “I have heard this thing twice. And what I have seen and heard and studied and listened to and reread and argued with my staff counsel and back and forth has only matured my conclusion that, measured by any standard, Judge Hastings’ guilt has been established and Congress has an obligation to protect the integrity of the judiciary.â€
“There is an enormous amount of evidence that makes no sense at all unless Judge Hastings conspired with William Borders and lied at the trial,†Conyers concluded. “It is the mass of evidence that makes the case, but it may be just one of the undisputed facts that convinces you that Judge Hastings is not to be believed on this and many, many other facts made both in and outside of this legal process.â€
“Justice and the integrity of our government depend on the importance of these impeachment proceedings, and they argue that the judge should be removed from the bench.â€
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGZjNDljZDkwNjEwNjNhYWNkMWViOWVkNDJiZDQ0ZGI=
1428
3DHS / Tough choices ahead for Bush
« on: November 16, 2006, 11:57:22 AM »
The Right Coalition
Which bipartisanship will Bush choose?
BY NEWT GINGRICH
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The election results pose two enormous strategic choices for America. First, the obvious outcome of a Democratic-controlled Congress and a Republican White House is the need for bipartisan cooperation in order to get anything done. The key question is: Which kind of bipartisanship will emerge? Will there be a Ronald Reagan approach to bipartisanship which appeals to the conservative majority of the House? Or will there be an establishment bipartisanship which cuts deals between liberals and the White House? Second: Will the departure of Donald Rumsfeld and his replacement by Robert Gates lead to a tactical effort to minimize the difficulties of Iraq, or to a fundamental rethinking of the larger threats to American safety?
These two choices are strikingly interrelated. An establishment bipartisanship between the White House and liberal congressional leaders will almost certainly make it necessary to focus narrowly on how to minimize difficulties in Iraq and postpone consideration of the larger threats to America for the remainder of this and into the next presidency. By contrast, a conservative bipartisanship that knits together the House Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats into a floor majority, working with a White House that emphasizes popular issues at the grassroots, would make it much easier to focus on the larger threats to American safety. (Such a bipartisanship could stress making the cap gains tax cut permanent; controlling set-asides and discretionary spending; oversight on failing bureaucracies and waste; English as the language of government; and biofuels as part of an energy policy.)
How these bipartisanship choices are made will do a great deal to define our government and politics for the next few years. Each strategy cross-pressures a different part of the House and Senate. Each requires some members to choose between their loyalty to their values and those held by their districts on the one hand and their party leadership on the other.
A liberal establishment strategy will almost certainly split the GOP and lead to a grassroots rebellion against the kind of policies which a Pelosi-Reid alliance would force on the White House. House Republicans would find themselves split again and again as their leadership cooperated with Nancy Pelosi to bring forward liberal legislation. Conservative senators would find themselves blocking and filibustering liberal legislation brought forward by the Senate establishment Republican leadership and Harry Reid. Their supporters at home would be angrily insistent on active opposition to a liberal establishment legislative agenda.
On the other hand, a conservative populist grassroots strategy would almost certainly make daily interactions with liberal leaders more confrontational as they found themselves nominally chairing committees but losing votes on the floor and having their initiatives rejected by a conservative grassroots coalition. With a conservative populist grassroots strategy it is the 44 Blue Dog Democrats who would find themselves cross-pressured. In the House, some 54 Democrats won by claiming they were much more conservative than Nancy Pelosi, and much more conservative than the San Francisco values she represents. Here, they would be forced to choose between their voters back home and the promises made to them during the campaign, and their leadership.
Ironically, the very nature of the Democratic victory makes it possible to re-establish the conservative Democrat and House Republican coalition which made the Reagan legislative victories of 1981-82 possible. Tip O'Neill was the liberal Democratic speaker when Reagan became president, but he did not have a liberal majority in the House. Yet despite a seemingly liberal Democrat lock in a 242-192 majority, they lost control of the floor on the most important bill of Reagan's first term. His tax cuts were initially passed 238-195 with 48 Democrats splitting from the leadership and siding with Reagan and the GOP. The final passage of the conference report passed 282-95, with a 113-vote Democratic majority siding with Reagan and only 95 liberal democrats voting "no."
I was a sophomore during this exciting Reagan first term and I learned from him the art of appealing to the American people to win votes in Washington. When we passed welfare reform in 1996, the Democrats split 98 "yes" and 98 "no." When we passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the Democrats split 153 "yes" and only 52 diehard liberals voted "no."
If President Bush decides to govern as President Reagan did, he will work to unify the Blue Dog Democrats with the Republicans to win a handful of very large victories while accepting a constant barrage of unhappiness from the liberal leadership. That is what conservative bipartisanship is like.
If on the other hand, President Bush decides on an establishment strategy of cooperating with the liberal leadership, he will guarantee splitting his own party and will see his legacy drift further and further to the left as the Pelosi-Reid wing of their party demands more and more concessions.
This choice of which strategy to follow domestically has an enormous implication for national security. A liberal coalition will focus narrowly on Iraq and seek to avoid thinking about the scale of threat we face internationally. A conservative bipartisan coalition will look first to the larger threat to American security and will then seek to find solutions in Iraq to strengthen American security. It is hard to see how a liberal coalition will be able to look at the larger threats to our safety, even when the threat, articulated in this warning by Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, is clear: "What we are talking about today is an ideology that thrives on murder, intimidation and fear. It puts innocent people at risk, particularly those in open societies. What we are talking about are people who worship death itself."
Thus the decision about which bipartisanship to pursue with regard to a legislative agenda and the Iraq war becomes for the Bush administration a decision about how safe and how prosperous America will be under divided government.
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009251
Which bipartisanship will Bush choose?
BY NEWT GINGRICH
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The election results pose two enormous strategic choices for America. First, the obvious outcome of a Democratic-controlled Congress and a Republican White House is the need for bipartisan cooperation in order to get anything done. The key question is: Which kind of bipartisanship will emerge? Will there be a Ronald Reagan approach to bipartisanship which appeals to the conservative majority of the House? Or will there be an establishment bipartisanship which cuts deals between liberals and the White House? Second: Will the departure of Donald Rumsfeld and his replacement by Robert Gates lead to a tactical effort to minimize the difficulties of Iraq, or to a fundamental rethinking of the larger threats to American safety?
These two choices are strikingly interrelated. An establishment bipartisanship between the White House and liberal congressional leaders will almost certainly make it necessary to focus narrowly on how to minimize difficulties in Iraq and postpone consideration of the larger threats to America for the remainder of this and into the next presidency. By contrast, a conservative bipartisanship that knits together the House Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats into a floor majority, working with a White House that emphasizes popular issues at the grassroots, would make it much easier to focus on the larger threats to American safety. (Such a bipartisanship could stress making the cap gains tax cut permanent; controlling set-asides and discretionary spending; oversight on failing bureaucracies and waste; English as the language of government; and biofuels as part of an energy policy.)
How these bipartisanship choices are made will do a great deal to define our government and politics for the next few years. Each strategy cross-pressures a different part of the House and Senate. Each requires some members to choose between their loyalty to their values and those held by their districts on the one hand and their party leadership on the other.
A liberal establishment strategy will almost certainly split the GOP and lead to a grassroots rebellion against the kind of policies which a Pelosi-Reid alliance would force on the White House. House Republicans would find themselves split again and again as their leadership cooperated with Nancy Pelosi to bring forward liberal legislation. Conservative senators would find themselves blocking and filibustering liberal legislation brought forward by the Senate establishment Republican leadership and Harry Reid. Their supporters at home would be angrily insistent on active opposition to a liberal establishment legislative agenda.
On the other hand, a conservative populist grassroots strategy would almost certainly make daily interactions with liberal leaders more confrontational as they found themselves nominally chairing committees but losing votes on the floor and having their initiatives rejected by a conservative grassroots coalition. With a conservative populist grassroots strategy it is the 44 Blue Dog Democrats who would find themselves cross-pressured. In the House, some 54 Democrats won by claiming they were much more conservative than Nancy Pelosi, and much more conservative than the San Francisco values she represents. Here, they would be forced to choose between their voters back home and the promises made to them during the campaign, and their leadership.
Ironically, the very nature of the Democratic victory makes it possible to re-establish the conservative Democrat and House Republican coalition which made the Reagan legislative victories of 1981-82 possible. Tip O'Neill was the liberal Democratic speaker when Reagan became president, but he did not have a liberal majority in the House. Yet despite a seemingly liberal Democrat lock in a 242-192 majority, they lost control of the floor on the most important bill of Reagan's first term. His tax cuts were initially passed 238-195 with 48 Democrats splitting from the leadership and siding with Reagan and the GOP. The final passage of the conference report passed 282-95, with a 113-vote Democratic majority siding with Reagan and only 95 liberal democrats voting "no."
I was a sophomore during this exciting Reagan first term and I learned from him the art of appealing to the American people to win votes in Washington. When we passed welfare reform in 1996, the Democrats split 98 "yes" and 98 "no." When we passed the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, the Democrats split 153 "yes" and only 52 diehard liberals voted "no."
If President Bush decides to govern as President Reagan did, he will work to unify the Blue Dog Democrats with the Republicans to win a handful of very large victories while accepting a constant barrage of unhappiness from the liberal leadership. That is what conservative bipartisanship is like.
If on the other hand, President Bush decides on an establishment strategy of cooperating with the liberal leadership, he will guarantee splitting his own party and will see his legacy drift further and further to the left as the Pelosi-Reid wing of their party demands more and more concessions.
This choice of which strategy to follow domestically has an enormous implication for national security. A liberal coalition will focus narrowly on Iraq and seek to avoid thinking about the scale of threat we face internationally. A conservative bipartisan coalition will look first to the larger threat to American security and will then seek to find solutions in Iraq to strengthen American security. It is hard to see how a liberal coalition will be able to look at the larger threats to our safety, even when the threat, articulated in this warning by Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, is clear: "What we are talking about today is an ideology that thrives on murder, intimidation and fear. It puts innocent people at risk, particularly those in open societies. What we are talking about are people who worship death itself."
Thus the decision about which bipartisanship to pursue with regard to a legislative agenda and the Iraq war becomes for the Bush administration a decision about how safe and how prosperous America will be under divided government.
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009251
1429
3DHS / OK Dems, now what?
« on: November 16, 2006, 05:59:38 AM »
OK, Democrats, now what?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: November 16, 2006
Democrats take charge!
For the Republicans' loss of Congress, credit public anger over Iraq. Not just because, as the president put it, "Iraq is not working well enough, fast enough," but the accusation – often unchallenged by members of the mainscream media – that "President Bush lied us into the war."
After the Democratic takeover of Congress, one pundit simply wrote off this hideous allegation as mere pre-election posturing. You know, just "politics." Thus, the Democrats slander the commander in chief during a period of wartime. And, after they win, it's just political chitchat.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, once posted on his website the alleged acts of the president that, in his view, constitute grounds for impeachment. Suddenly, before the election, Conyers removed this from his website. And incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calls the impeachment efforts now "off the table."
Surely, if the president indeed "lied us into the war," he damn well deserves impeachment. But now that the Democrats captured Congress, they suddenly stopped believing that President Bush sent men and women into harm's way as a result of a calculated, considered, deliberate deceit.
In 2000 and 2004, many Democrats yelled about "stolen elections" and voter "disenfranchisement." In a letter to Democrats in Ohio, John Kerry claimed that state election officials stole the election from him. But what of the lack of Republican cries of voter fraud, "disenfranchisement" and demands for investigations? Apparently, when Democrats win, elections function smoothly, but when Republicans win, the fix is in.
Pre-election, Democrats claimed they possessed a "unified" strategy to deal with Iraq. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had a "four-point plan." Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the architect of the Democratic House takeover, touted his "five-point plan." But on election night, after the Democratic takeover became obvious, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., offered a slightly different perspective.
Sherman: I don't think the party has united behind a plan that is any more specific than we should leave a little sooner than George Bush has in mind.
Elder: That's not much of a plan.
Sherman: The voters did not require us to have a plan. ... Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future and whether the Democratic idea or the Republican plan on this or that issue is going to be good. ...
Elder: But I remember watching Sunday morning chat shows and hearing Chuck Schumer say the Democrats were united behind a plan to deal with Iraq. I heard Rahm Emanuel say the Democrats were united behind a plan for Iraq. Now what I'm hearing you say is whatever our plan is, we're not going to stay quite as long as George W. Bush would stay. So which is it?
Sherman: I think Democrats have a variety of different plans that have only one thing in common, and that is leave sooner than George Bush. ... I think that it's hard to say that Democrats are unified on Iraq behind something very specific.
The military uses a term, AOS – All Options Stink. Withdrawing the troops precipitously with a timetable simply encourages our enemies to wait us out. Indeed, a week after the election, a front-page headline in the New York Times read: "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say" – a little too late to influence the election.
The Iraqi government, itself, wants us to stay until its military and police forces grow stronger. By withdrawing, leaving behind a weak, fragile Iraqi government, we betray the brave Iraqis who went to the polls and voted for democracy, as well as those who joined the military and the police to provide security for their fledgling government. We run the risk of betraying our allies the way we did in Vietnam with a resulting bloodbath, and leaving an oil-rich launching pad for terrorists to continue attacks against "apostate governments" in the Arab world, as well as against Europe and the United States.
Despite the sound Bush economy, historians will judge the Bush administration – as a success or a failure – based upon Iraq. Even with the new Democrat Congress, the president remains commander in chief for two more years. President Bush should ignore the polls, the cries for a "strategic redeployment" and the demand for a "summit" between the terror states of Syria and Iran.
If Bush, as he says, refuses to leave Iraq until it can defend itself and become a reliable ally on terror, then the war should be fought more, rather than less, aggressively. This might require, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., proposes, sending more troops. One more thing. Notwithstanding the violence in Iraq, 61 percent of recently polled Iraqis say that whatever their hardships, getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do.
The military says that, by providing terrorists and weapons, Syria and Iran work to destabilize Iraq. Perhaps it's time we send them a message.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52981
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: November 16, 2006
Democrats take charge!
For the Republicans' loss of Congress, credit public anger over Iraq. Not just because, as the president put it, "Iraq is not working well enough, fast enough," but the accusation – often unchallenged by members of the mainscream media – that "President Bush lied us into the war."
After the Democratic takeover of Congress, one pundit simply wrote off this hideous allegation as mere pre-election posturing. You know, just "politics." Thus, the Democrats slander the commander in chief during a period of wartime. And, after they win, it's just political chitchat.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, once posted on his website the alleged acts of the president that, in his view, constitute grounds for impeachment. Suddenly, before the election, Conyers removed this from his website. And incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calls the impeachment efforts now "off the table."
Surely, if the president indeed "lied us into the war," he damn well deserves impeachment. But now that the Democrats captured Congress, they suddenly stopped believing that President Bush sent men and women into harm's way as a result of a calculated, considered, deliberate deceit.
In 2000 and 2004, many Democrats yelled about "stolen elections" and voter "disenfranchisement." In a letter to Democrats in Ohio, John Kerry claimed that state election officials stole the election from him. But what of the lack of Republican cries of voter fraud, "disenfranchisement" and demands for investigations? Apparently, when Democrats win, elections function smoothly, but when Republicans win, the fix is in.
Pre-election, Democrats claimed they possessed a "unified" strategy to deal with Iraq. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had a "four-point plan." Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the architect of the Democratic House takeover, touted his "five-point plan." But on election night, after the Democratic takeover became obvious, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., offered a slightly different perspective.
Sherman: I don't think the party has united behind a plan that is any more specific than we should leave a little sooner than George Bush has in mind.
Elder: That's not much of a plan.
Sherman: The voters did not require us to have a plan. ... Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future and whether the Democratic idea or the Republican plan on this or that issue is going to be good. ...
Elder: But I remember watching Sunday morning chat shows and hearing Chuck Schumer say the Democrats were united behind a plan to deal with Iraq. I heard Rahm Emanuel say the Democrats were united behind a plan for Iraq. Now what I'm hearing you say is whatever our plan is, we're not going to stay quite as long as George W. Bush would stay. So which is it?
Sherman: I think Democrats have a variety of different plans that have only one thing in common, and that is leave sooner than George Bush. ... I think that it's hard to say that Democrats are unified on Iraq behind something very specific.
The military uses a term, AOS – All Options Stink. Withdrawing the troops precipitously with a timetable simply encourages our enemies to wait us out. Indeed, a week after the election, a front-page headline in the New York Times read: "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say" – a little too late to influence the election.
The Iraqi government, itself, wants us to stay until its military and police forces grow stronger. By withdrawing, leaving behind a weak, fragile Iraqi government, we betray the brave Iraqis who went to the polls and voted for democracy, as well as those who joined the military and the police to provide security for their fledgling government. We run the risk of betraying our allies the way we did in Vietnam with a resulting bloodbath, and leaving an oil-rich launching pad for terrorists to continue attacks against "apostate governments" in the Arab world, as well as against Europe and the United States.
Despite the sound Bush economy, historians will judge the Bush administration – as a success or a failure – based upon Iraq. Even with the new Democrat Congress, the president remains commander in chief for two more years. President Bush should ignore the polls, the cries for a "strategic redeployment" and the demand for a "summit" between the terror states of Syria and Iran.
If Bush, as he says, refuses to leave Iraq until it can defend itself and become a reliable ally on terror, then the war should be fought more, rather than less, aggressively. This might require, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., proposes, sending more troops. One more thing. Notwithstanding the violence in Iraq, 61 percent of recently polled Iraqis say that whatever their hardships, getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do.
The military says that, by providing terrorists and weapons, Syria and Iran work to destabilize Iraq. Perhaps it's time we send them a message.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52981
1430
3DHS / Another Republican that doesn't get it
« on: November 12, 2006, 10:58:48 PM »
(I'm on record as having been against his being made Majority leader, when he was 1st being considered. I wonder if the GOP has learned their lesson yet?)
Leave Boehner Behind
By Philip Klein
Published 11/10/2006
In the run-up to this year's elections, many prominent conservatives argued that a Republican defeat could have a silver lining by forcing the party to recommit itself to small government principles. John Boehner is not that silver lining.
Should Republicans elect current Majority Leader Boehner as their minority leader next week, it will be a clear signal that they have learned nothing from their electoral defeat and will remain the party of big government.
In a statement announcing his intention to run for the leadership post, Boehner cited his close involvement with the drafting of 1994's "Contract With America" as well as his work toward achieving earmark reform this year to demonstrate his fiscal conservative bona fides. But no two laws better represent the modern brand of big government Republicanism than the Medicare prescription drug law and the No Child Left Behind Act. Any congressman who voted for either legislation should not be taken seriously as a proponent of limited government, and yet Boehner voted for both of them.
Not only did Boehner vote for the largest federal expansion into education since the Carter administration, but he sponsored the legislation. Shortly after President Bush signed the bill with Boehner standing over one shoulder and Sen. Ted Kennedy standing over the other, Boehner said its passage was "one of the proudest accomplishments of my tenure in Congress."
No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization next year and in his post-election press conference President Bush cited it as an issue he wanted to work together with Democrats on. If they are going to be negotiating education policy with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republicans can ill afford to be led by Boehner, a man who is personally invested in the legislation and who proved willing to compromise conservative principles in order to get a "bipartisan" bill passed.
The original No Child Left Behind bill included provisions for school vouchers, but Boehner was willing to abandon those provisions in desperate pursuit of Democratic votes. Boehner also ditched a push by House conservatives to allow some states to decide how to spend federal education dollars.
After the law went into effect, liberals criticized President Bush for not providing adequate funding. In response, Boehner passionately touted how much Republicans had increased education spending.
On Febuary 5, 2003, he issued a statement in response to criticism by the American Federation of Teachers, pointing out that: "If the President's FY 2003 and FY 2004 budget requests are enacted, Title I funding will have received a larger increase during the first two years of President George W. Bush's administration than under the previous seven years combined under President Bill Clinton."
In fact, funding was increasing so fast, he argued, that by January 2004, federal money was pouring into states faster than they could spend it. "We are pumping gas into a flooded engine," he declared.
As if his staunch support for expanding the federal role in education isn't bad enough, Boehner also voted in favor of the biggest expansion of entitlements since Lyndon Johnson's presidency.
"A quarter of all senior citizens find themselves without prescription drug coverage, and this legislation commits an unprecedented $400 billion over ten years to close that gap," Boehner said after voting in favor of the legislation. Actually, the bill is now projected to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years and also add $8 trillion to the nation's long-term entitlement deficit.
In the wake of the Republican electoral "thumping," it is imperative that the party return to its small government roots. Perhaps there would be an argument for Boehner maintaining his leadership role if there weren't another viable option. But Mike Pence, who is also running for the minority leader post, has been a dedicated defender of limited government. Despite tremendous pressure from members of his own party -- and even the president -- Pence was one of a few Republicans who voted against both No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug bill. That's the type of strong conviction that will be required to rebuild the Republican Party on small government principles and to stand up to Speaker Pelosi.
Boehner, on the other hand, will virtually guarantee more of the same.
A month before the 2004 election, Boehner gloated that: "Funding for the U.S. Department of Education has increased by more than 142 percent under GOP control of the House, from $23 billion in FY 1996 to nearly $56 billion in FY 2004."
Boehner isn't the solution to the problem. Boehner is the problem.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10615
Leave Boehner Behind
By Philip Klein
Published 11/10/2006
In the run-up to this year's elections, many prominent conservatives argued that a Republican defeat could have a silver lining by forcing the party to recommit itself to small government principles. John Boehner is not that silver lining.
Should Republicans elect current Majority Leader Boehner as their minority leader next week, it will be a clear signal that they have learned nothing from their electoral defeat and will remain the party of big government.
In a statement announcing his intention to run for the leadership post, Boehner cited his close involvement with the drafting of 1994's "Contract With America" as well as his work toward achieving earmark reform this year to demonstrate his fiscal conservative bona fides. But no two laws better represent the modern brand of big government Republicanism than the Medicare prescription drug law and the No Child Left Behind Act. Any congressman who voted for either legislation should not be taken seriously as a proponent of limited government, and yet Boehner voted for both of them.
Not only did Boehner vote for the largest federal expansion into education since the Carter administration, but he sponsored the legislation. Shortly after President Bush signed the bill with Boehner standing over one shoulder and Sen. Ted Kennedy standing over the other, Boehner said its passage was "one of the proudest accomplishments of my tenure in Congress."
No Child Left Behind is up for reauthorization next year and in his post-election press conference President Bush cited it as an issue he wanted to work together with Democrats on. If they are going to be negotiating education policy with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republicans can ill afford to be led by Boehner, a man who is personally invested in the legislation and who proved willing to compromise conservative principles in order to get a "bipartisan" bill passed.
The original No Child Left Behind bill included provisions for school vouchers, but Boehner was willing to abandon those provisions in desperate pursuit of Democratic votes. Boehner also ditched a push by House conservatives to allow some states to decide how to spend federal education dollars.
After the law went into effect, liberals criticized President Bush for not providing adequate funding. In response, Boehner passionately touted how much Republicans had increased education spending.
On Febuary 5, 2003, he issued a statement in response to criticism by the American Federation of Teachers, pointing out that: "If the President's FY 2003 and FY 2004 budget requests are enacted, Title I funding will have received a larger increase during the first two years of President George W. Bush's administration than under the previous seven years combined under President Bill Clinton."
In fact, funding was increasing so fast, he argued, that by January 2004, federal money was pouring into states faster than they could spend it. "We are pumping gas into a flooded engine," he declared.
As if his staunch support for expanding the federal role in education isn't bad enough, Boehner also voted in favor of the biggest expansion of entitlements since Lyndon Johnson's presidency.
"A quarter of all senior citizens find themselves without prescription drug coverage, and this legislation commits an unprecedented $400 billion over ten years to close that gap," Boehner said after voting in favor of the legislation. Actually, the bill is now projected to cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years and also add $8 trillion to the nation's long-term entitlement deficit.
In the wake of the Republican electoral "thumping," it is imperative that the party return to its small government roots. Perhaps there would be an argument for Boehner maintaining his leadership role if there weren't another viable option. But Mike Pence, who is also running for the minority leader post, has been a dedicated defender of limited government. Despite tremendous pressure from members of his own party -- and even the president -- Pence was one of a few Republicans who voted against both No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug bill. That's the type of strong conviction that will be required to rebuild the Republican Party on small government principles and to stand up to Speaker Pelosi.
Boehner, on the other hand, will virtually guarantee more of the same.
A month before the 2004 election, Boehner gloated that: "Funding for the U.S. Department of Education has increased by more than 142 percent under GOP control of the House, from $23 billion in FY 1996 to nearly $56 billion in FY 2004."
Boehner isn't the solution to the problem. Boehner is the problem.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10615
1431
3DHS / Democrats' to-do list
« on: November 12, 2006, 05:42:05 PM »
Pelosi and the rest of the congressional leadership figure to focus more on investigations than charting a new course
ALAN BOCK
Sr. editorial writer
The Orange County Register
Before the election, Nancy Pelosi, in line to be the first speaker of the House from California, was asked about how things might change if the Democrats gained a majority in the House, She quickly ticked off a list of measures she promised to bring to the floor within the first 100 hours of her ascension to the speakership in January.
- Increase the federal minimum wage.
- Tinker with prescription drug coverage under Medicare.
- Approve all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
- Pass new ethics rules to make the 110th Congress "the most honest, ethical and open" in history.
- Dump the ban on federal funding for research involving new lines of stem cells.
- Do something about energy prices and oil-company profits.
- Enforce fiscal discipline by pairing new proposals with higher taxes to pay for them or cuts in other programs.
It sounds like an ambitious agenda, but in terms of legislative substance, let alone a larger policy agenda, it is rather modest. The Democrats will control both houses of Congress in January, but they will not have a veto-proof majority on most issues.
THE IRAQ WAR QUESTION
Discontent with the war in Iraq was uppermost in many voters' minds last Tuesday. But foreign policy is still almost exclusively the domain of the executive branch, and even after replacing Donald Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, President Bush has signaled that he is not open to anything like a timetable for withdrawal, though he could make some tactical changes following the report of a bipartisan commission headed by James Baker, his father's secretary of State, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. Congress could affect policy by controlling the purse strings.
Despite enthusiasm for a pullout from some in the base, congressional Democrats are likely to be cautious on Iraq. They recognize that the perception of their party's ability to handle national security has suffered since Vietnam, and they're afraid that chaos in Iraq following an American pullout could tarnish their image further. And, as Cato Institute scholar John Samples told me, they might well prefer for this war to continue to be Bush's issue rather than trying to set policy and thereby assuming responsibility.
On the other hand, the Republicans would just as soon have this issue off the table by the presidential election in 2008, so they may find ways to let the Bush administration know it would be helpful to find a way to spin withdrawal as a victory. Given the president's record of defining victory only in the vaguest of terms, that just might be possible.
IMMIGRATION COMES BACK
The president mentioned immigration as one issue on which he and the new Democratic majority might find common ground. The president supported a "comprehensive" immigration bill passed by the Senate earlier this year that included a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship (or amnesty, as many see it) for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country. However, he signed a bill passed by the House that emphasized enforcement and building a 700-mile wall along the Mexican border. He might just see revisiting and enacting the Senate version as a positive legacy, and Democrats just might go along.
On the other hand, Democrats might prefer to have the issue still unresolved when the 2008 elections roll around.
While many Democrats might like to phase out the tax cuts the president got enacted at the start of his first term before their scheduled 2010 expiration dates, it could reinforce their image as tax raisers, and the president might well find his veto pen.
'INVESTIGATIVE ZEAL'
The most significant thing the Democrats are likely to be able to do is to use their control of all congressional committees to launch investigations into numerous aspects of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, as well as corporate conduct.
Rep. Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills will be chairman of the House Reform Committee and has already promised investigations into Halliburton and other Iraq war and Katrina contractors. Tobacco company executives would also do well to have their lawyers ready.
George Miller of Richmond will take over the Education and Workforce Committee. He is likely to press more aggressive hearings on convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
John Dingell of Michigan, in line to head the House Commerce Committee, is a veteran Great Society liberal who seldom met a business transaction of which he wasn't skeptical. He has promised hearings on Medicare and energy policies, and perhaps a push to regulate vitamins and nutrients as drugs.
It is uncertain whether Jane Harman of El Segundo, Alcee Hastings of Florida or somebody else will head the House Intelligence Committee. Whoever heads it will press more aggressive investigations into pre-9/11 and pre-Iraq war intelligence failures. Who didn't connect the dots? What uncertainty about Saddam having WMDs was ignored? Who forged the Niger documents?
In the Senate, Vermont's Patrick Leahy is slated to head the Judiciary Committee, Michigan's Carl Levin is the likely head of the Armed Services Committee, Delaware's Joe Biden should head Foreign Relations, Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy should head Health, Education and Labor, while Connecticut's Chris Dodd should be in charge of Rules.
The Democrats could very well overdo this investigative zeal and begin to alienate most Americans, even as most Americans were eventually alienated by the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton during his lame-duck term. But they will be in a position to grab headlines from the White House and to some extent determine the issues dominating the national agenda. And the flurry of subpoenas will demand attention in the executive branch and could put the administration in a "hunker down" mode for much of the next two years.
NEW MAJORITY, MINORITY LEADERS
Before the action, both parties will choose other leaders. Current Speaker Dennis Hastert will not seek reelection and the race for minority leader between Ohio's John Boehner and Indiana's more ideologically conservative Mike Pence will tell us something about how the GOP conceives its role as a minority in the House. On the Democratic side, Maryland's Steny Hoyer, a traditional liberal, will face off against more conservative but strongly anti-war John Murtha from Pennsylvania for majority leader.
Buckle your seat belts. It could be a wild ride.
(What happened to Impeachment?)
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/columns/article_1351019.php
ALAN BOCK
Sr. editorial writer
The Orange County Register
Before the election, Nancy Pelosi, in line to be the first speaker of the House from California, was asked about how things might change if the Democrats gained a majority in the House, She quickly ticked off a list of measures she promised to bring to the floor within the first 100 hours of her ascension to the speakership in January.
- Increase the federal minimum wage.
- Tinker with prescription drug coverage under Medicare.
- Approve all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
- Pass new ethics rules to make the 110th Congress "the most honest, ethical and open" in history.
- Dump the ban on federal funding for research involving new lines of stem cells.
- Do something about energy prices and oil-company profits.
- Enforce fiscal discipline by pairing new proposals with higher taxes to pay for them or cuts in other programs.
It sounds like an ambitious agenda, but in terms of legislative substance, let alone a larger policy agenda, it is rather modest. The Democrats will control both houses of Congress in January, but they will not have a veto-proof majority on most issues.
THE IRAQ WAR QUESTION
Discontent with the war in Iraq was uppermost in many voters' minds last Tuesday. But foreign policy is still almost exclusively the domain of the executive branch, and even after replacing Donald Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, President Bush has signaled that he is not open to anything like a timetable for withdrawal, though he could make some tactical changes following the report of a bipartisan commission headed by James Baker, his father's secretary of State, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. Congress could affect policy by controlling the purse strings.
Despite enthusiasm for a pullout from some in the base, congressional Democrats are likely to be cautious on Iraq. They recognize that the perception of their party's ability to handle national security has suffered since Vietnam, and they're afraid that chaos in Iraq following an American pullout could tarnish their image further. And, as Cato Institute scholar John Samples told me, they might well prefer for this war to continue to be Bush's issue rather than trying to set policy and thereby assuming responsibility.
On the other hand, the Republicans would just as soon have this issue off the table by the presidential election in 2008, so they may find ways to let the Bush administration know it would be helpful to find a way to spin withdrawal as a victory. Given the president's record of defining victory only in the vaguest of terms, that just might be possible.
IMMIGRATION COMES BACK
The president mentioned immigration as one issue on which he and the new Democratic majority might find common ground. The president supported a "comprehensive" immigration bill passed by the Senate earlier this year that included a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship (or amnesty, as many see it) for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country. However, he signed a bill passed by the House that emphasized enforcement and building a 700-mile wall along the Mexican border. He might just see revisiting and enacting the Senate version as a positive legacy, and Democrats just might go along.
On the other hand, Democrats might prefer to have the issue still unresolved when the 2008 elections roll around.
While many Democrats might like to phase out the tax cuts the president got enacted at the start of his first term before their scheduled 2010 expiration dates, it could reinforce their image as tax raisers, and the president might well find his veto pen.
'INVESTIGATIVE ZEAL'
The most significant thing the Democrats are likely to be able to do is to use their control of all congressional committees to launch investigations into numerous aspects of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, as well as corporate conduct.
Rep. Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills will be chairman of the House Reform Committee and has already promised investigations into Halliburton and other Iraq war and Katrina contractors. Tobacco company executives would also do well to have their lawyers ready.
George Miller of Richmond will take over the Education and Workforce Committee. He is likely to press more aggressive hearings on convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
John Dingell of Michigan, in line to head the House Commerce Committee, is a veteran Great Society liberal who seldom met a business transaction of which he wasn't skeptical. He has promised hearings on Medicare and energy policies, and perhaps a push to regulate vitamins and nutrients as drugs.
It is uncertain whether Jane Harman of El Segundo, Alcee Hastings of Florida or somebody else will head the House Intelligence Committee. Whoever heads it will press more aggressive investigations into pre-9/11 and pre-Iraq war intelligence failures. Who didn't connect the dots? What uncertainty about Saddam having WMDs was ignored? Who forged the Niger documents?
In the Senate, Vermont's Patrick Leahy is slated to head the Judiciary Committee, Michigan's Carl Levin is the likely head of the Armed Services Committee, Delaware's Joe Biden should head Foreign Relations, Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy should head Health, Education and Labor, while Connecticut's Chris Dodd should be in charge of Rules.
The Democrats could very well overdo this investigative zeal and begin to alienate most Americans, even as most Americans were eventually alienated by the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton during his lame-duck term. But they will be in a position to grab headlines from the White House and to some extent determine the issues dominating the national agenda. And the flurry of subpoenas will demand attention in the executive branch and could put the administration in a "hunker down" mode for much of the next two years.
NEW MAJORITY, MINORITY LEADERS
Before the action, both parties will choose other leaders. Current Speaker Dennis Hastert will not seek reelection and the race for minority leader between Ohio's John Boehner and Indiana's more ideologically conservative Mike Pence will tell us something about how the GOP conceives its role as a minority in the House. On the Democratic side, Maryland's Steny Hoyer, a traditional liberal, will face off against more conservative but strongly anti-war John Murtha from Pennsylvania for majority leader.
Buckle your seat belts. It could be a wild ride.
(What happened to Impeachment?)
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/columns/article_1351019.php
1432
3DHS / U.S. ...1st Superpower with ADHD
« on: November 12, 2006, 05:19:24 PM »
U.S. must prove it's a staying power
November 12, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.
I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked.
You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.
Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.
Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.
What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.
For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.
Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"
On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.
As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.
It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/132340,CST-EDT-steyn12.article
November 12, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.
I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked.
You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.
Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.
Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.
What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.
For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.
Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"
On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.
As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.
It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/132340,CST-EDT-steyn12.article
1433
3DHS / Let the Witchhunts begin
« on: November 11, 2006, 07:03:32 PM »
Waxman Set to Probe Areas of Bush Gov't
Nov 10, 2006
By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES
The Democratic congressman who will investigate the Bush administration's running of the government says there are so many areas of possible wrongdoing, his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue.
There's the response to Hurricane Katrina, government contracting in Iraq and on homeland security, political interference in regulatory decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and allegations of war profiteering, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
"I'm going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything," Waxman said Friday, three days after his party's capture of Congress put him in line to chair the panel. "The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose."
Waxman, who's in his 16th term representing West Los Angeles, had plenty of experience leading congressional investigations before the Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans in 1994.
That was the year when, as chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, he presided over dramatic hearings he convened where the heads of leading tobacco companies testified that they didn't believe nicotine was addictive.
The scene made it into the movie "The Insider," but Waxman noted Friday that no subpoenas were issued to produce that testimony.
Republicans have speculated that a Democratic congressional majority will mean a flurry of subpoenas and investigations into everything under the sun as retaliation against the GOP and President Bush.
Not so, Waxman said.
"A lot of people have said to me, `Are you going to now go out and issue a lot of subpoenas and go on a wild payback time?' Well, payback is unworthy," he said. "Doing oversight doesn't mean issuing subpoenas. It means trying to get information."
Subpoenas would be used only as a last result, Waxman said, taking a jab at a previous committee chairman, GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who led the committee during part of the Clinton administration.
"He issued a subpoena like most people write a letter," Waxman said.
Waxman complained that Republicans, while in power, shut Democrats out of decision-making and abdicated oversight responsibilities, focusing only on maintaining their own power.
In contrast to the many investigations the GOP launched of the Clinton administration, "when Bush came into power there wasn't a scandal too big for them to ignore," Waxman said.
Among the issues that should have been investigated but weren't, Waxman contended, were the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the controversy over the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name, and the pre-Iraq war use of intelligence.
He said Congress must restore accountability and function as an independent branch of government. "It's our obligation not to be repeating with the Republicans have done," Waxman said.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/10/D8LAEECG1.html
(But when do the Impeachment Precedings begin?)
Nov 10, 2006
By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES
The Democratic congressman who will investigate the Bush administration's running of the government says there are so many areas of possible wrongdoing, his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue.
There's the response to Hurricane Katrina, government contracting in Iraq and on homeland security, political interference in regulatory decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and allegations of war profiteering, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
"I'm going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything," Waxman said Friday, three days after his party's capture of Congress put him in line to chair the panel. "The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose."
Waxman, who's in his 16th term representing West Los Angeles, had plenty of experience leading congressional investigations before the Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans in 1994.
That was the year when, as chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, he presided over dramatic hearings he convened where the heads of leading tobacco companies testified that they didn't believe nicotine was addictive.
The scene made it into the movie "The Insider," but Waxman noted Friday that no subpoenas were issued to produce that testimony.
Republicans have speculated that a Democratic congressional majority will mean a flurry of subpoenas and investigations into everything under the sun as retaliation against the GOP and President Bush.
Not so, Waxman said.
"A lot of people have said to me, `Are you going to now go out and issue a lot of subpoenas and go on a wild payback time?' Well, payback is unworthy," he said. "Doing oversight doesn't mean issuing subpoenas. It means trying to get information."
Subpoenas would be used only as a last result, Waxman said, taking a jab at a previous committee chairman, GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, who led the committee during part of the Clinton administration.
"He issued a subpoena like most people write a letter," Waxman said.
Waxman complained that Republicans, while in power, shut Democrats out of decision-making and abdicated oversight responsibilities, focusing only on maintaining their own power.
In contrast to the many investigations the GOP launched of the Clinton administration, "when Bush came into power there wasn't a scandal too big for them to ignore," Waxman said.
Among the issues that should have been investigated but weren't, Waxman contended, were the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the controversy over the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name, and the pre-Iraq war use of intelligence.
He said Congress must restore accountability and function as an independent branch of government. "It's our obligation not to be repeating with the Republicans have done," Waxman said.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/10/D8LAEECG1.html
(But when do the Impeachment Precedings begin?)
1434
3DHS / Surprise...Surpise....
« on: November 11, 2006, 03:34:04 PM »
...actually not
Khamenei calls elections a victory for Iran
Fri Nov 10, 2006
By Jon Hemming
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.
"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
The Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in this week's mid-term elections, partly because of voter concern over the war in Iraq.
Khamenei, a senior cleric in power since 1989, has the last word on matters of state in Iran's complex system of Islamic rule, while the government, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in charge of day-to-day decision making.
"The result of this election indicates that the majority of American people are dissatisfied and are fed up with the policies of the American administration," the IRNA state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Khamenei said military maneuvers in the Gulf this week in which Iranian forces tested new missile systems showed Iran was ready to face any threat.
But, he said: "With the scandalous defeat of America's policies in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, America's threats are empty threats on an international scale."
Khamenei condemned Israel for its artillery attack on Wednesday in Gaza which killed 18 civilians, and also the "silence" of Western nations over "this great oppression".
"The daily crimes by the savage Zionists in Gaza once more prove that holding talks with this occupying regime is of no use."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-11-10T140135Z_01_L10266591_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-ELECTIONS-IRAN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
Khamenei calls elections a victory for Iran
Fri Nov 10, 2006
By Jon Hemming
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.
"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
The Democrats wrested control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in this week's mid-term elections, partly because of voter concern over the war in Iraq.
Khamenei, a senior cleric in power since 1989, has the last word on matters of state in Iran's complex system of Islamic rule, while the government, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in charge of day-to-day decision making.
"The result of this election indicates that the majority of American people are dissatisfied and are fed up with the policies of the American administration," the IRNA state news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Khamenei said military maneuvers in the Gulf this week in which Iranian forces tested new missile systems showed Iran was ready to face any threat.
But, he said: "With the scandalous defeat of America's policies in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, America's threats are empty threats on an international scale."
Khamenei condemned Israel for its artillery attack on Wednesday in Gaza which killed 18 civilians, and also the "silence" of Western nations over "this great oppression".
"The daily crimes by the savage Zionists in Gaza once more prove that holding talks with this occupying regime is of no use."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-11-10T140135Z_01_L10266591_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-ELECTIONS-IRAN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
1435
3DHS / Is this thing on?
« on: November 10, 2006, 11:59:44 PM »
Kerry's 'botched joke'
November 9, 2006
In the wake of the Democratic congressional victories, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. – perhaps more than any other Democrat – heaved a sigh of relief.
Speaking to students at California's Pasadena City College Oct. 30, 2006, the former presidential candidate said, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
As for the number of those offended, let us count the ways.
A straightforward reading of his remarks makes it pretty clear that John Kerry considers people in the military stupid, devoid of other options. Kerry attempted to dismiss the remark by calling it a "botched joke," an attempt to take a swipe at President Bush. You know, President Bush equals stupid, equals improperly analyzing the situation in Iraq, equals the U.S. getting "stuck" in Iraq.
Question: Between Bush and Kerry, which one actually made better grades in college? Answer: They both attended Yale as undergraduates, with Bush's GPA at 77 to Kerry's 76. Kerry received four D's in his freshman year, in geology, two history classes and political science.
What about Kerry's assertion that, in effect, called today's military enlistees dumb? The facts do not support Kerry's slam. Today's average recruit is more likely to have graduated from high school than a non-recruit. Many officers have graduate degrees.
Bill Carr, acting deputy under secretary for military personnel policy, said in December 2005 that more than 90 percent of recruits have a high-school diploma, compared to 75 percent of civilian youth. And on aptitude tests, says Carr, today's recruit scores much higher average aptitudes than do non-recruit youths. The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test is designed so that the average young person scores at 50 percent. Yet in fiscal 2005, 67 percent of recruits scored above the 60th percentile on that test.
The "Today" show's Matt Lauer attempted to help the senator. After all, said Lauer, surely Kerry, a vet, did not intend to demean the military. Over at ABC, Charlie Gibson, too, offered up that damage-control opinion. But when it comes to demeaning the military, Kerry is a serial offender. Last year, he accused soldiers in Iraq of "going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing women and children. ..."
In 1972, Kerry opposed switching to an all-volunteer army, arguing that such an army would be "an army of the poor and the black and the brown. We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job.'" Contrary to Kerry's prediction, middle-class young people comprise the bulk of today's wartime volunteer Army recruits.
Tim Kane, an economics scholar and Air Force Academy graduate who prepared a report for a 2005 Heritage Foundation study on recruits, said, "We found that recruits tend to come from middle-class areas, with disproportionately fewer from low-income areas." The study found that "on average, recruits in 2003 were from wealthier neighborhoods than were recruits in 1999." Never mind Kerry's insult to the poor, the black and the brown by suggesting that, were they the bulk of the all-volunteer army, they would happily engage in "war crimes" as a matter of policy!
Kerry also repeated the lie of "inequities" during the Vietnam War – that minorities died in higher percentages than their numbers in the population. Not true, according to David Horowitz of the Freedom Center. During the Vietnam War draft era, blacks comprised 13.5 percent of the population. Of those who died in Vietnam, 12.5 percent were black, with blacks comprising 12.1 percent of men killed in actual battle.
When Kerry returned from Vietnam and testified before Congress in 1971, he accused the military of engaging in widespread atrocities and war crimes, recounting soldiers' stories that American GIs had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan. ..."
Many of the stories Kerry recounted then and in a book he wrote turned out to have been fabrications. Tim Russert, in 2004, confronted Kerry on "Meet the Press" about his 33-year-old accusations.
Russert: You committed atrocities.
Kerry: ... I think it's an inappropriate word. ...
Russert: You used the word "war criminals."
Kerry: ... It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in, and I don't like it when I hear it today.
Russert: ... A lot of those stories have been discredited ...
Kerry: Actually, a lot of them have been documented. ... Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim.
As for Kerry's Pasadena City College remark, he finally apologized – that is, to anyone "offended" by his words, which he claimed were "misinterpreted."
The "botched joke" didn't hurt the Democrats on election night, but what about the military?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52873
November 9, 2006
In the wake of the Democratic congressional victories, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. – perhaps more than any other Democrat – heaved a sigh of relief.
Speaking to students at California's Pasadena City College Oct. 30, 2006, the former presidential candidate said, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
As for the number of those offended, let us count the ways.
A straightforward reading of his remarks makes it pretty clear that John Kerry considers people in the military stupid, devoid of other options. Kerry attempted to dismiss the remark by calling it a "botched joke," an attempt to take a swipe at President Bush. You know, President Bush equals stupid, equals improperly analyzing the situation in Iraq, equals the U.S. getting "stuck" in Iraq.
Question: Between Bush and Kerry, which one actually made better grades in college? Answer: They both attended Yale as undergraduates, with Bush's GPA at 77 to Kerry's 76. Kerry received four D's in his freshman year, in geology, two history classes and political science.
What about Kerry's assertion that, in effect, called today's military enlistees dumb? The facts do not support Kerry's slam. Today's average recruit is more likely to have graduated from high school than a non-recruit. Many officers have graduate degrees.
Bill Carr, acting deputy under secretary for military personnel policy, said in December 2005 that more than 90 percent of recruits have a high-school diploma, compared to 75 percent of civilian youth. And on aptitude tests, says Carr, today's recruit scores much higher average aptitudes than do non-recruit youths. The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test is designed so that the average young person scores at 50 percent. Yet in fiscal 2005, 67 percent of recruits scored above the 60th percentile on that test.
The "Today" show's Matt Lauer attempted to help the senator. After all, said Lauer, surely Kerry, a vet, did not intend to demean the military. Over at ABC, Charlie Gibson, too, offered up that damage-control opinion. But when it comes to demeaning the military, Kerry is a serial offender. Last year, he accused soldiers in Iraq of "going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing women and children. ..."
In 1972, Kerry opposed switching to an all-volunteer army, arguing that such an army would be "an army of the poor and the black and the brown. We must not repeat the travesty of the inequities present during Vietnam. I also fear having a professional army that views the perpetuation of war crimes as simply 'doing its job.'" Contrary to Kerry's prediction, middle-class young people comprise the bulk of today's wartime volunteer Army recruits.
Tim Kane, an economics scholar and Air Force Academy graduate who prepared a report for a 2005 Heritage Foundation study on recruits, said, "We found that recruits tend to come from middle-class areas, with disproportionately fewer from low-income areas." The study found that "on average, recruits in 2003 were from wealthier neighborhoods than were recruits in 1999." Never mind Kerry's insult to the poor, the black and the brown by suggesting that, were they the bulk of the all-volunteer army, they would happily engage in "war crimes" as a matter of policy!
Kerry also repeated the lie of "inequities" during the Vietnam War – that minorities died in higher percentages than their numbers in the population. Not true, according to David Horowitz of the Freedom Center. During the Vietnam War draft era, blacks comprised 13.5 percent of the population. Of those who died in Vietnam, 12.5 percent were black, with blacks comprising 12.1 percent of men killed in actual battle.
When Kerry returned from Vietnam and testified before Congress in 1971, he accused the military of engaging in widespread atrocities and war crimes, recounting soldiers' stories that American GIs had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan. ..."
Many of the stories Kerry recounted then and in a book he wrote turned out to have been fabrications. Tim Russert, in 2004, confronted Kerry on "Meet the Press" about his 33-year-old accusations.
Russert: You committed atrocities.
Kerry: ... I think it's an inappropriate word. ...
Russert: You used the word "war criminals."
Kerry: ... It was, I think, a reflection of the kind of times we found ourselves in, and I don't like it when I hear it today.
Russert: ... A lot of those stories have been discredited ...
Kerry: Actually, a lot of them have been documented. ... Have some been discredited? Sure, they have, Tim.
As for Kerry's Pasadena City College remark, he finally apologized – that is, to anyone "offended" by his words, which he claimed were "misinterpreted."
The "botched joke" didn't hurt the Democrats on election night, but what about the military?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52873
1436
3DHS / Amazing what comes out AFTER the elections
« on: November 10, 2006, 11:38:04 PM »
BY JAMES TARANTO
Friday, November 10, 2006
Ayatollah So
Democrats aren't the only ones declaring victory this week, Reuters reports from Tehran:
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.
"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
This column is scrupulously nonpartisan, so we won't comment one way or another on Khamenei's view of the election--except to say we are hopeful that the Democrats will do everything possible to prove him wrong.
We Have Allies?
"America's rejection of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy is a slap in the face for his allies," Reuters reports from London:
- Many analysts believe that [Donald] Rumsfeld's departure clears the way for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But ministers and world leaders have warned in recent days about the long-term result of abandoning the country.
- Jordan's King Abdullah said Iraq could end up as another generations-long conflict in the Middle East.
- Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would tell Bush "it would be against everybody's interest, except the terrorists, for the coalition to leave in circumstances of defeat."
- And commentators in Poland, one of Bush's closest allies on Iraq, did not anticipate a major shift after the U.S. vote.
- Mainstream parties on the right and left in the biggest ex-communist EU member backed the war in Iraq and continue to see the United States as a key ally.
- Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said his country would keep its troops in Iraq for the time being.
- "Danish foreign and security policies are decided in the Danish parliament and not in the United States," he told reporters, playing down the impact of the vote.
So it turns out America has allies in Iraq after all! It's amazing what comes out after the election.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009229
Friday, November 10, 2006
Ayatollah So
Democrats aren't the only ones declaring victory this week, Reuters reports from Tehran:
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.
"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.
"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
This column is scrupulously nonpartisan, so we won't comment one way or another on Khamenei's view of the election--except to say we are hopeful that the Democrats will do everything possible to prove him wrong.
We Have Allies?
"America's rejection of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy is a slap in the face for his allies," Reuters reports from London:
- Many analysts believe that [Donald] Rumsfeld's departure clears the way for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But ministers and world leaders have warned in recent days about the long-term result of abandoning the country.
- Jordan's King Abdullah said Iraq could end up as another generations-long conflict in the Middle East.
- Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he would tell Bush "it would be against everybody's interest, except the terrorists, for the coalition to leave in circumstances of defeat."
- And commentators in Poland, one of Bush's closest allies on Iraq, did not anticipate a major shift after the U.S. vote.
- Mainstream parties on the right and left in the biggest ex-communist EU member backed the war in Iraq and continue to see the United States as a key ally.
- Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said his country would keep its troops in Iraq for the time being.
- "Danish foreign and security policies are decided in the Danish parliament and not in the United States," he told reporters, playing down the impact of the vote.
So it turns out America has allies in Iraq after all! It's amazing what comes out after the election.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009229
1437
3DHS / The GOP's bridge to nowhere
« on: November 10, 2006, 01:52:14 AM »
A loss's silver lining
By George Will
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | At least Republicans now know where the "Bridge to Nowhere" leads: to the political wilderness. But there are three reasons for conservatives to temper their despondency.
First, they were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism.
Second, they admire market rationality, and the political market has worked.
Third, on various important fronts, conservatism continued its advance Tuesday.
Of course the election-turning issue was not that $223 million bridge in Alaska or even the vice of which it is emblematic — incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power. Crass spending (the farm and highway bills, the nearly eightfold increase in the number of earmarks since 1994) and other pandering (e.g., the Terri Schiavo intervention) have intensified as Republicans' memories of why they originally sought power have faded.
But Republicans sank beneath the weight of Iraq, the lesson of which is patent: Wars of choice should be won swiftly rather than lost protractedly. On election eve the president, perhaps thinking one should not tinker with success, promised that his secretary of defense would remain. That promise perished yesterday as a result of Tuesday's repudiation of Republican stewardship, which, although emphatic, was not inordinate, considering the offense that provoked it — war leadership even worse than during the War of 1812.
Tuesday's House result — the end of 12 years of Republican control — was normal; the reason for it was unprecedented. The Democrats' 40 years of control of the House before 1994 was aberrant: In the 140 years since 1866, the first post-Civil War election, party control of the House has now changed 15 times — an average of once every 9.3 years. But never before has a midterm election so severely repudiated a president for a single policy.
The Iraq war, like the Alaska bridge, pungently proclaims how Republicans earned their rebuke. They are guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently).
About $2.6 billion was spent on the 468 House and Senate races. (Scandalized? Don't be. Americans spend that much on chocolate every two months .) Although Republicans had more money, its effectiveness was blunted because Democrats at last practiced what they incessantly preach to others — diversity. Diversity of thought, no less: Some of their winners even respect the Second Amendment.
Free markets, including political markets, equilibrate, producing supplies to meet demands. The Democratic Party, a slow learner but educable, has dropped the subject of gun control and welcomed candidates opposed to parts or even all of the abortion rights agenda. This vindicates the candidate recruitment by Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairmen of the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees, respectively. Karl Rove fancies himself a second iteration of Mark Hanna, architect of the Republican ascendancy secured by William McKinley's 1896 election. In Emanuel, Democrats may have found another Jim Farley, the political mechanic who kept FDR's potentially discordant coalition running smoothly through the 1930s.
Making the Democratic House majority run smoothly will require delicacy. The six elections beginning with 1994 produced Republican majorities averaging just 10 seats. The six elections before 1994 produced Democratic majorities averaging 44. Nancy Pelosi's majority will be less than half that. The most left-wing speaker in U.S. history will return to being minority leader in 2009 unless she eschews an agenda that cannot be enacted without requiring the many Democrats elected from Republican-leaning districts to jeopardize their seats.
This year Democrats tacitly accepted much of the country's rightward movement over the past quarter-century. They did not call for restoring the 70 percent marginal tax rates that Ronald Reagan repealed. And although Pelosi and 15 of the 21 likely chairmen of committees in the coming Congress voted against the 1996 welfare reform, which has helped reduce welfare rolls by roughly 60 percent, Democrats this year did not talk about repealing it.
The property rights movement gained ground Tuesday as voters in nine states passed measures to restrict governments from exercising eminent domain in order to enlarge their tax revenue. In Michigan, opponents of racial preferences in public hiring, education and contracting easily passed their referendum, 58 to 42 percent, in spite of being outspent more than three to one. In Minnesota — the only state Democrats have carried in each of the past eight presidential elections, but one that is becoming a swing state — Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was reelected. And, come January, the number of Republicans in the House (at least 200) will still be larger than the largest number during the Reagan years (192 in 1981-83).
The country remains receptive to conservatism. That doctrine — were it to become constraining on, rather than merely avowed by, congressional Republicans — can be their bridge back from the wilderness.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will110906.php3
By George Will
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | At least Republicans now know where the "Bridge to Nowhere" leads: to the political wilderness. But there are three reasons for conservatives to temper their despondency.
First, they were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism.
Second, they admire market rationality, and the political market has worked.
Third, on various important fronts, conservatism continued its advance Tuesday.
Of course the election-turning issue was not that $223 million bridge in Alaska or even the vice of which it is emblematic — incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power. Crass spending (the farm and highway bills, the nearly eightfold increase in the number of earmarks since 1994) and other pandering (e.g., the Terri Schiavo intervention) have intensified as Republicans' memories of why they originally sought power have faded.
But Republicans sank beneath the weight of Iraq, the lesson of which is patent: Wars of choice should be won swiftly rather than lost protractedly. On election eve the president, perhaps thinking one should not tinker with success, promised that his secretary of defense would remain. That promise perished yesterday as a result of Tuesday's repudiation of Republican stewardship, which, although emphatic, was not inordinate, considering the offense that provoked it — war leadership even worse than during the War of 1812.
Tuesday's House result — the end of 12 years of Republican control — was normal; the reason for it was unprecedented. The Democrats' 40 years of control of the House before 1994 was aberrant: In the 140 years since 1866, the first post-Civil War election, party control of the House has now changed 15 times — an average of once every 9.3 years. But never before has a midterm election so severely repudiated a president for a single policy.
The Iraq war, like the Alaska bridge, pungently proclaims how Republicans earned their rebuke. They are guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently).
About $2.6 billion was spent on the 468 House and Senate races. (Scandalized? Don't be. Americans spend that much on chocolate every two months .) Although Republicans had more money, its effectiveness was blunted because Democrats at last practiced what they incessantly preach to others — diversity. Diversity of thought, no less: Some of their winners even respect the Second Amendment.
Free markets, including political markets, equilibrate, producing supplies to meet demands. The Democratic Party, a slow learner but educable, has dropped the subject of gun control and welcomed candidates opposed to parts or even all of the abortion rights agenda. This vindicates the candidate recruitment by Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairmen of the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees, respectively. Karl Rove fancies himself a second iteration of Mark Hanna, architect of the Republican ascendancy secured by William McKinley's 1896 election. In Emanuel, Democrats may have found another Jim Farley, the political mechanic who kept FDR's potentially discordant coalition running smoothly through the 1930s.
Making the Democratic House majority run smoothly will require delicacy. The six elections beginning with 1994 produced Republican majorities averaging just 10 seats. The six elections before 1994 produced Democratic majorities averaging 44. Nancy Pelosi's majority will be less than half that. The most left-wing speaker in U.S. history will return to being minority leader in 2009 unless she eschews an agenda that cannot be enacted without requiring the many Democrats elected from Republican-leaning districts to jeopardize their seats.
This year Democrats tacitly accepted much of the country's rightward movement over the past quarter-century. They did not call for restoring the 70 percent marginal tax rates that Ronald Reagan repealed. And although Pelosi and 15 of the 21 likely chairmen of committees in the coming Congress voted against the 1996 welfare reform, which has helped reduce welfare rolls by roughly 60 percent, Democrats this year did not talk about repealing it.
The property rights movement gained ground Tuesday as voters in nine states passed measures to restrict governments from exercising eminent domain in order to enlarge their tax revenue. In Michigan, opponents of racial preferences in public hiring, education and contracting easily passed their referendum, 58 to 42 percent, in spite of being outspent more than three to one. In Minnesota — the only state Democrats have carried in each of the past eight presidential elections, but one that is becoming a swing state — Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was reelected. And, come January, the number of Republicans in the House (at least 200) will still be larger than the largest number during the Reagan years (192 in 1981-83).
The country remains receptive to conservatism. That doctrine — were it to become constraining on, rather than merely avowed by, congressional Republicans — can be their bridge back from the wilderness.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will110906.php3
1438
3DHS / "Feed the big dog"
« on: November 10, 2006, 01:31:56 AM »
Perfect example of non-existant 'Racism' and worse, how it sets a tone that Blacks must be treated differently then everyone else.
Black firefighter settles suit over racial prank
A black firefighter who was served dog food in his dinner by fellow firefighters at the Westchester station will receive $2.7 million.By Sandy Banks, Times staff writer
November 9, 2006
A black firefighter who was served dog food in his spaghetti by fellow firefighters will be paid more than $2.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging racial harassment within the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The award, approved on an 11-1 vote Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council, is the latest in a recent string of settlements of lawsuits by firefighters claiming discrimination and harassment and retaliation against those who complain.
It is believed to be the largest payout for misconduct in the department's history, which was long considered among the nation's finest, but has often been the target of complaints about hostility toward African American and female firefighters.
Firefighter Tennie Pierce, 51, alleged in his lawsuit that Firefighter Jorge Arevalo mixed canned dog food into Pierce's dinner at their Westchester station two years ago; that Capt. John Tohill purchased the dog food; and that Capt. Chris Burton knew about the prank but didn't warn Pierce. All three men were present when Pierce ate the dog food.
Pierce "took a large bite, at which time he noticed the other firefighters were laughing and making noises," the lawsuit says. He took a second bite, then demanded to know what was in his food, "but no one would tell him." Pierce then left the kitchen "with his co-workers laughing at him."
A Fire Department investigation suggested the incident was intended to "humble" Pierce — who stands 6 feet 5 — after his team won a fire station volleyball game. A lawyer for one of the defendants initially called the incident "a good-natured prank … [not] in any way motivated by race." (this article failed to mention that in this investigation, it was learned that Pierce calls himself the "Big Dog", even introducing himself as such, and during this volleyball match, numerous times was boasting to "feed the dog", in other words, set him another ball so he could spike it)
But a UC Santa Cruz professor who was hired by Pierce's attorney to review department records of discrimination complaints said the prank was clearly intended to "humiliate and dehumanize" Pierce.
"The association of a black man and dog food resonates with the deep historical roots of slavery and the corresponding dehumanization," said sociologist David Wellman, co-author of "Whitewashing Race: Colorblind Policies in a Color Conscious America."
"It's not just silly stuff. It's racially motivated…. The organization labels it as macho, 'boys will be boys' behavior. I think it's more about keeping blacks out by making their lives so miserable that they don't want to stay." (this article also fails to mention that he'd been with the FD for 20+ years)
In addition to the three firefighters, the lawsuit named the city as a defendant because the fire captains allegedly allowed a hostile workplace to exist in violation of department policies forbidding harassment. The two captains were given one month off without pay as punishment. Arevalo was ordered off work for three days without pay. As part of the settlement, they were dismissed from the lawsuit, so they are not liable financially.
Fire Chief William Bamattre admitted the incident was "intolerable" and violates department "guidelines on what's professional performance.... That type of harassment or prank or whatever you call it is not consistent with what the public expects from the Fire Department, the confidence the public has in us."
But Councilman Dennis Zine, a police officer for 38 years and the lone vote against the settlement, said he thought the $2.7-million award was "outrageous for something that caused no serious injury, no permanent harm…. "
"That's not to say it was right, not to justify what they did. But $2.7 million?…. I don't think it was a racial deal. It was a prank that turned sour, but did it go bad to the point that he's harmed for life? That it should cost the taxpayers $2.7 million?"
In his lawsuit, Pierce said that for more than a year after the October 2004 incident he was subjected to "verbal slurs, insults [and] derogatory remarks" — including taunting by firefighters "barking like dogs [and] asking him how dog food tasted" — in the presence of supervisors.
In addition to the payout, the settlement provides for Pierce to remain on fully-paid administrative leave until April, when he reaches his 20-year service anniversary. Then he can retire with an annual pension amounting to half of his salary for life.
Pierce was out of town and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But his attorney, Genie Harrison, said the incident — and the unwillingness of other firefighters at the table to intervene — was a "shocking betrayal" for Pierce, who grew up in South Los Angeles.
"He was targeted by people he considered brothers and then was mercilessly harassed out of the job that meant so much to him," Harrison said. "Now he's calling for the public's help to change the working environment for African Americans who remain on the department."
The department hired its first black firefighter in 1897, but for almost 60 years blacks were assigned only to segregated stations in black neighborhoods. As the city's black population grew, all-black crews began displacing white firefighters, who often responded with animosity. In 1936, white firefighters at a Central Avenue station who were forced to move to accommodate a black crew responded by trashing the station with garbage and human waste.
In the 1940s, pressure mounted to integrate the force. But then-Chief John H. Alderson declared integration a "social experiment" and refused; 90% of white firefighters joined a fund-raising campaign to support him. Those who expressed a willingness to live and work alongside blacks were ostracized by peers and often disciplined for insubordination.
The city's fire stations were officially integrated in 1956, but blacks were denied kitchen privileges and subjected to such vicious hazing that off-duty black firefighters began patrolling integrated stations, some carrying guns.
In 1974, the department entered into a federal consent decree that required half of all new recruits to be black, Latino or Asian American. The decree was lifted in 2001, but some blame it for lowering morale and stoking resentment among white male firefighters who considered it reverse discrimination and complained that it allowed the hiring of unqualified minorities.
Today the 3,600-member department is 53% white, 29% Latino, 12% black and 5% Asian American. Women make up 2.7% of the department.
But some say the diversity masks problems that has continued to hold minorities back.
In 1994, complaints of discrimination reached such a fever pitch, the City Council ordered an audit of the department and held hearings that led to the resignation of Chief Donald Manning. The audit found that women and minorities were frozen out of management positions and often drummed out of the department as rookies.
An audit earlier this year by City Controller Laura Chick revealed similar findings. Among black firefighters, 87% said they had experienced or witnessed discrimination.
Some firefighters say pranks are part of the firehouse culture and not directed specifically at blacks. But black firefighters report much of the teasing they experience involves racial slurs, offensive comments or pranks aimed at humiliation.
"Blacks have experienced this for over 300 years," sociologist Wellman said. "They have a gyroscope that picks up hostile stuff that somebody else would not see as hostile.
"Culture becomes very important," he said. "In the black community people come together and talk about the way they've been treated. They run it up the flagpole … 'Tell me if I'm off the wall here.'
"Their group picks it up and your group doesn't because their group has a history that yours doesn't share."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dogfood9nov09,1,4660029.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Black firefighter settles suit over racial prank
A black firefighter who was served dog food in his dinner by fellow firefighters at the Westchester station will receive $2.7 million.By Sandy Banks, Times staff writer
November 9, 2006
A black firefighter who was served dog food in his spaghetti by fellow firefighters will be paid more than $2.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging racial harassment within the Los Angeles Fire Department.
The award, approved on an 11-1 vote Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council, is the latest in a recent string of settlements of lawsuits by firefighters claiming discrimination and harassment and retaliation against those who complain.
It is believed to be the largest payout for misconduct in the department's history, which was long considered among the nation's finest, but has often been the target of complaints about hostility toward African American and female firefighters.
Firefighter Tennie Pierce, 51, alleged in his lawsuit that Firefighter Jorge Arevalo mixed canned dog food into Pierce's dinner at their Westchester station two years ago; that Capt. John Tohill purchased the dog food; and that Capt. Chris Burton knew about the prank but didn't warn Pierce. All three men were present when Pierce ate the dog food.
Pierce "took a large bite, at which time he noticed the other firefighters were laughing and making noises," the lawsuit says. He took a second bite, then demanded to know what was in his food, "but no one would tell him." Pierce then left the kitchen "with his co-workers laughing at him."
A Fire Department investigation suggested the incident was intended to "humble" Pierce — who stands 6 feet 5 — after his team won a fire station volleyball game. A lawyer for one of the defendants initially called the incident "a good-natured prank … [not] in any way motivated by race." (this article failed to mention that in this investigation, it was learned that Pierce calls himself the "Big Dog", even introducing himself as such, and during this volleyball match, numerous times was boasting to "feed the dog", in other words, set him another ball so he could spike it)
But a UC Santa Cruz professor who was hired by Pierce's attorney to review department records of discrimination complaints said the prank was clearly intended to "humiliate and dehumanize" Pierce.
"The association of a black man and dog food resonates with the deep historical roots of slavery and the corresponding dehumanization," said sociologist David Wellman, co-author of "Whitewashing Race: Colorblind Policies in a Color Conscious America."
"It's not just silly stuff. It's racially motivated…. The organization labels it as macho, 'boys will be boys' behavior. I think it's more about keeping blacks out by making their lives so miserable that they don't want to stay." (this article also fails to mention that he'd been with the FD for 20+ years)
In addition to the three firefighters, the lawsuit named the city as a defendant because the fire captains allegedly allowed a hostile workplace to exist in violation of department policies forbidding harassment. The two captains were given one month off without pay as punishment. Arevalo was ordered off work for three days without pay. As part of the settlement, they were dismissed from the lawsuit, so they are not liable financially.
Fire Chief William Bamattre admitted the incident was "intolerable" and violates department "guidelines on what's professional performance.... That type of harassment or prank or whatever you call it is not consistent with what the public expects from the Fire Department, the confidence the public has in us."
But Councilman Dennis Zine, a police officer for 38 years and the lone vote against the settlement, said he thought the $2.7-million award was "outrageous for something that caused no serious injury, no permanent harm…. "
"That's not to say it was right, not to justify what they did. But $2.7 million?…. I don't think it was a racial deal. It was a prank that turned sour, but did it go bad to the point that he's harmed for life? That it should cost the taxpayers $2.7 million?"
In his lawsuit, Pierce said that for more than a year after the October 2004 incident he was subjected to "verbal slurs, insults [and] derogatory remarks" — including taunting by firefighters "barking like dogs [and] asking him how dog food tasted" — in the presence of supervisors.
In addition to the payout, the settlement provides for Pierce to remain on fully-paid administrative leave until April, when he reaches his 20-year service anniversary. Then he can retire with an annual pension amounting to half of his salary for life.
Pierce was out of town and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But his attorney, Genie Harrison, said the incident — and the unwillingness of other firefighters at the table to intervene — was a "shocking betrayal" for Pierce, who grew up in South Los Angeles.
"He was targeted by people he considered brothers and then was mercilessly harassed out of the job that meant so much to him," Harrison said. "Now he's calling for the public's help to change the working environment for African Americans who remain on the department."
The department hired its first black firefighter in 1897, but for almost 60 years blacks were assigned only to segregated stations in black neighborhoods. As the city's black population grew, all-black crews began displacing white firefighters, who often responded with animosity. In 1936, white firefighters at a Central Avenue station who were forced to move to accommodate a black crew responded by trashing the station with garbage and human waste.
In the 1940s, pressure mounted to integrate the force. But then-Chief John H. Alderson declared integration a "social experiment" and refused; 90% of white firefighters joined a fund-raising campaign to support him. Those who expressed a willingness to live and work alongside blacks were ostracized by peers and often disciplined for insubordination.
The city's fire stations were officially integrated in 1956, but blacks were denied kitchen privileges and subjected to such vicious hazing that off-duty black firefighters began patrolling integrated stations, some carrying guns.
In 1974, the department entered into a federal consent decree that required half of all new recruits to be black, Latino or Asian American. The decree was lifted in 2001, but some blame it for lowering morale and stoking resentment among white male firefighters who considered it reverse discrimination and complained that it allowed the hiring of unqualified minorities.
Today the 3,600-member department is 53% white, 29% Latino, 12% black and 5% Asian American. Women make up 2.7% of the department.
But some say the diversity masks problems that has continued to hold minorities back.
In 1994, complaints of discrimination reached such a fever pitch, the City Council ordered an audit of the department and held hearings that led to the resignation of Chief Donald Manning. The audit found that women and minorities were frozen out of management positions and often drummed out of the department as rookies.
An audit earlier this year by City Controller Laura Chick revealed similar findings. Among black firefighters, 87% said they had experienced or witnessed discrimination.
Some firefighters say pranks are part of the firehouse culture and not directed specifically at blacks. But black firefighters report much of the teasing they experience involves racial slurs, offensive comments or pranks aimed at humiliation.
"Blacks have experienced this for over 300 years," sociologist Wellman said. "They have a gyroscope that picks up hostile stuff that somebody else would not see as hostile.
"Culture becomes very important," he said. "In the black community people come together and talk about the way they've been treated. They run it up the flagpole … 'Tell me if I'm off the wall here.'
"Their group picks it up and your group doesn't because their group has a history that yours doesn't share."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dogfood9nov09,1,4660029.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
1439
3DHS / Where's all the "disenfranchised voters"?
« on: November 09, 2006, 01:51:14 PM »
In 2000, '02 & '04, we had widespread cries of voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression, voter intimidation (minus any serious evidence of such of course), and the mainscream media played it up weak after week, month after month. In '06, we had a plethora of razor edge races, arguably significantly more than the last 3 elections combined, pretty much all of them going in the favor of Dems, and .................. silence regarding any of the above claims.
What happened? Oh yea that's right, if Republicans win, it had to have been stolen, but if Dems win, then all is fine in the land of milk & honey
What happened? Oh yea that's right, if Republicans win, it had to have been stolen, but if Dems win, then all is fine in the land of milk & honey
1440
3DHS / so, if the Dems "really" believe "Bush lied-people died"...
« on: November 09, 2006, 12:43:11 PM »
How fast should we expect to see Impeachment proceedings? 1st week. 1st month at the latest right?
I mean, that was the big mantra from Dems, time and time again, both on their stump speeches & in the AM talk shows. So obviously they meant what they said, right?
I mean, it wouldn't have been a political ploy, maligning the president during a time of war, just for the hope of scoring policitial points, right? That'd be pretty disgusting if it were. Perhaps some good fodder for 2008 campaign speeches by the right, even
I mean, that was the big mantra from Dems, time and time again, both on their stump speeches & in the AM talk shows. So obviously they meant what they said, right?
I mean, it wouldn't have been a political ploy, maligning the president during a time of war, just for the hope of scoring policitial points, right? That'd be pretty disgusting if it were. Perhaps some good fodder for 2008 campaign speeches by the right, even