The extent that some people take Media Matters, and its serial liar founder David Brock, seriously depends on how much they value the truth versus the opportunity to distort it in favor of the cheap shot at their ideological opponents. So when Media Matters fed the main stream media its phony attack on Rush Limbaugh’s truthful comment on a real phony soldier, Jesse MacBeth, it became quite clear that those on the left, and certain Democrats valued the latter. From Keith Olbermann to Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and John Kerry the whole spectrum of the left riled itself into a spittle-flecked uproar over what Limbaugh did NOT say. Absurdly, one senator, Ken Salazar (D-CO) ,wants to censure Limbaugh, forgetting the obvious fact that the Senate can only censure its members, not private citizens.
The real issue here is, as Jonah Goldberg notes, is that the “questioning our patriotism” pablum is a red herring used by left and Democrats to deflect from legitimate criticisms of their positions and statements. It is really quite dishonest coming from the folks who constantly whine about George W. Bush and the right wing stifling “dissent.”
liberals routinely and righteously condemn the “questioning” of anyone’s patriotism — until they have a chance to do it themselves. For example, in the debates over the formation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of Patriot Act, Democrats accused George Bush and the GOP leadership of questioning Democrats’ patriotism. But they never did any such thing. Rather, Democrats asserted that Republican criticism of their opposition was tantamount to questioning their patriotism…
John Kerry was the all-time champ of this sort of thing. He routinely insinuated that criticisms of his positions on national defense were tantamount to McCarthyism. Indeed, like Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent, Kerry could psychically predict the reaction before it happened. Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations, he prophesied, “I know what the Bush apologists will say to this — that it is unpatriotic to question, to criticize and to call for change.”…
Howard Dean, the nearly invisible chairman of the Democratic National Committee, used to get himself into those I’m-turning-into-the-Hulk rages over the merest hint that Republicans questioned the patriotism of Democrats. But he saw nothing wrong with righteously proclaiming that John Ashcroft “is no patriot. He’s a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy.”…
Now, the fact that no serious person actually thinks Limbaugh really or intentionally called soldiers dissenting on the war “phony” doesn’t matter to the Democrats. Rather, they’re just gleeful to play the pot to Limbaugh’s kettle. Never mind that it’s unfair and dishonest, never mind that what they’re doing is far closer to the McCarthyism they routinely denounce, never mind that such Limbaugh-lynching Democratic senators as John Kerry and Dick Durbin have suggested, respectively, that American troops are “terrorizing kids” in Iraq and are akin to the torture masters of Nazi Germany or Pol Pot’s “mad regime.”
Then again, I should just keep quiet; someone might yank this out of context and accuse me of McCarthyism.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Green is the New Red
There are a few areas where Greens and conservatives meet in agreement.
Strong criticism of business as usual, corrupt one-party Democratic rule in Baltimore and in Maryland
The futility of the drug war
Elected School Boards
However, for a party that claims it is for the people, some its stated policy objectives as embodied in Maria Allwine’s candidacy for President of the Baltimore City Council would harm the people they ostensibly seek to help. Green polices would do nothing more than trade one bad set of policies and ineffective government bureaucracy for another, and stifle both economic growth and job growth.
Energy Policy
Allwine wants to “Marylandize” BGE, that is make it a publicly owned and operated utility. This is a nice pie in the sky idea however, Allwine does not go into the specifics of how this would happen or how this new entity would be operated. She cites Hagerstown and Austin TX as examples of successful municipally owned utility services. However, Hagerstown and Austin are not Baltimore. Is there any reason to believe that a city owned and operated utility would be any better? Baltimore can’t even run a decent trash pick-up service let alone a power utility. This plan would replace, an albeit troubled private service with an even more troubled and ineffective government bureaucracy. Citizens of Baltimore have enough trouble getting a voice in the current government agencies as it is, imagine one given the task of supplying power to the over 600,000 residents.
Instead of the Keiffer Mitchell proposed BGE city tax rebate that would return $30 a year to consumers and $30.8 million to the city; Allwine wants to keep collecting the tax and “create a Baltimore Alternative Energy program.” The BAE would use that money “to begin "solarization" of Baltimore city homes or use it to pay the legal fees to achieve a public takeover of BGE."
Allwine’s proposal is nothing more than a coercive government mandate on how you should power your home. She wants to trade a privately owned monopoly for government owned monopoly.
Allwine’s proposal for a government power grab of utilities would fulfill the Green’s wish to make Baltimore “a proud leader in the fight against global warming.” Now we come to it. Under Allwine’s plan of forced solarization we would be forces to choose how and we power our homes and how much energy we use. Allwine, in her campaign flyer wants to stop the “Enroning of Maryland.” That is a choice statement coming from a champion of global warming alarmism, given that Enron was the chief lobby on the Clinton administration to sign the Kyoto treaty. Funny how that "inconvenient truth" is never mentioned.
Green is the new Red. Allwine’s proposals for publicly owned utilities and government mandates on individual decisions regarding energy use is nothing more than a backdoor to socialism masked in do-gooder environmentalism.
Economic and Tax Policy
Typical of the Greens, Allwine’s economic and tax proposals drip with rank class warfare rhetoric.
Allwine wants to require a city wide, “livable/minimum wage of $12/hour for companies with 10 or more employees.” Typical of such socialist twaddle, it lacks the concrete understanding that such livable wages actually creates unemployment. Allwine would create high wages for jobs that would no longer exist.
Allwine wants to “restructure corporate taxes”, and “stop sweetheart deals,” which is newspeak for raising taxes and “soaking the rich”. Allwine says:
“Why should any CEO make millions while the workers eke by on wages that no longer allow them to afford to rent, much less buy, no longer cover their rising BGE bills and prescription drugs, no longer allow them to send their children to college? Corporations receive enormous hidden subsidies (such as Payment In Lieu of Taxes programs and obscene tax breaks that ensure they pay little or no corporate state income taxes) from our lawmakers.”
Allwine’s solution, make the tax climate even more oppressive further reducing economic growth and employment opportunities for the middle-class folks she purports to speak for.
Baltimore’s tax burden on both businesses and private property is oppressive for growth as it is. Why do you think the city makes such deals in the first place to attract business and residents? Lost on Allwine, is the fact that higher taxes creates lower tax receipts, this is the folly of the cigarette tax funding healthcare coverage. Lower taxes creates a favorable climate for business and economic growth, and actually increases overall tax receipts. Then you could close all the tax loopholes and use the revenue fund all the warm and fuzzy things Allwine and the Greens want like public works programs.
Allwine wants to create “a new public works program to provide well--paying jobs in our city, train our unemployed and underemployed city residents in new trades and skills, and repair our crumbling roads, bridges and infrastructure.” This program would obviously be funded through new taxes. But Allwine wants to tax businesses out Baltimore. So where would the money come from? It would come from taxes on you, me and all the other middle class folks Allwine wants to help.
If the Greens are the so-called “alternative” to business as usual, business as usual doesn’t sound so bad.
Strong criticism of business as usual, corrupt one-party Democratic rule in Baltimore and in Maryland
The futility of the drug war
Elected School Boards
However, for a party that claims it is for the people, some its stated policy objectives as embodied in Maria Allwine’s candidacy for President of the Baltimore City Council would harm the people they ostensibly seek to help. Green polices would do nothing more than trade one bad set of policies and ineffective government bureaucracy for another, and stifle both economic growth and job growth.
Energy Policy
Allwine wants to “Marylandize” BGE, that is make it a publicly owned and operated utility. This is a nice pie in the sky idea however, Allwine does not go into the specifics of how this would happen or how this new entity would be operated. She cites Hagerstown and Austin TX as examples of successful municipally owned utility services. However, Hagerstown and Austin are not Baltimore. Is there any reason to believe that a city owned and operated utility would be any better? Baltimore can’t even run a decent trash pick-up service let alone a power utility. This plan would replace, an albeit troubled private service with an even more troubled and ineffective government bureaucracy. Citizens of Baltimore have enough trouble getting a voice in the current government agencies as it is, imagine one given the task of supplying power to the over 600,000 residents.
Instead of the Keiffer Mitchell proposed BGE city tax rebate that would return $30 a year to consumers and $30.8 million to the city; Allwine wants to keep collecting the tax and “create a Baltimore Alternative Energy program.” The BAE would use that money “to begin "solarization" of Baltimore city homes or use it to pay the legal fees to achieve a public takeover of BGE."
Allwine’s proposal is nothing more than a coercive government mandate on how you should power your home. She wants to trade a privately owned monopoly for government owned monopoly.
Allwine’s proposal for a government power grab of utilities would fulfill the Green’s wish to make Baltimore “a proud leader in the fight against global warming.” Now we come to it. Under Allwine’s plan of forced solarization we would be forces to choose how and we power our homes and how much energy we use. Allwine, in her campaign flyer wants to stop the “Enroning of Maryland.” That is a choice statement coming from a champion of global warming alarmism, given that Enron was the chief lobby on the Clinton administration to sign the Kyoto treaty. Funny how that "inconvenient truth" is never mentioned.
Green is the new Red. Allwine’s proposals for publicly owned utilities and government mandates on individual decisions regarding energy use is nothing more than a backdoor to socialism masked in do-gooder environmentalism.
Economic and Tax Policy
Typical of the Greens, Allwine’s economic and tax proposals drip with rank class warfare rhetoric.
Allwine wants to require a city wide, “livable/minimum wage of $12/hour for companies with 10 or more employees.” Typical of such socialist twaddle, it lacks the concrete understanding that such livable wages actually creates unemployment. Allwine would create high wages for jobs that would no longer exist.
Allwine wants to “restructure corporate taxes”, and “stop sweetheart deals,” which is newspeak for raising taxes and “soaking the rich”. Allwine says:
“Why should any CEO make millions while the workers eke by on wages that no longer allow them to afford to rent, much less buy, no longer cover their rising BGE bills and prescription drugs, no longer allow them to send their children to college? Corporations receive enormous hidden subsidies (such as Payment In Lieu of Taxes programs and obscene tax breaks that ensure they pay little or no corporate state income taxes) from our lawmakers.”
Allwine’s solution, make the tax climate even more oppressive further reducing economic growth and employment opportunities for the middle-class folks she purports to speak for.
Baltimore’s tax burden on both businesses and private property is oppressive for growth as it is. Why do you think the city makes such deals in the first place to attract business and residents? Lost on Allwine, is the fact that higher taxes creates lower tax receipts, this is the folly of the cigarette tax funding healthcare coverage. Lower taxes creates a favorable climate for business and economic growth, and actually increases overall tax receipts. Then you could close all the tax loopholes and use the revenue fund all the warm and fuzzy things Allwine and the Greens want like public works programs.
Allwine wants to create “a new public works program to provide well--paying jobs in our city, train our unemployed and underemployed city residents in new trades and skills, and repair our crumbling roads, bridges and infrastructure.” This program would obviously be funded through new taxes. But Allwine wants to tax businesses out Baltimore. So where would the money come from? It would come from taxes on you, me and all the other middle class folks Allwine wants to help.
If the Greens are the so-called “alternative” to business as usual, business as usual doesn’t sound so bad.
Why They Call Him Mr. Reason
Ron Smith on why he doesn't like Martin O'Malley
People ask me all the time why I seem to dislike Maryland’s current governor so much. Is it because he defeated my friend, Bob Ehrlich, last year? Uh, no.
Is it because Martin O’Malley is a crazed tax-grabber who seems to think the public goose can be further plucked without too much hissing taking place? Well, that’s some of it.
There are those who swoon over MOM because of his good looks and bulging biceps, and they are certainly entitled to admire whomever they choose, and I have nothing against good looks or muscularity in a man. So, that’s not it.
Examining my visceral aversion to O’Malley and his political style – which I dislike even more than his leftwing substance – I am forced to admit what bothers me more than any other thing is the sheer sanctimony of his public utterances.
It’s reminiscent of preachers in their pulpits, so pious, so filled with certitude, so saturated with palpable distaste for those whose beliefs are different from their own. Either you believe what they believe or hellfire and damnation will be your lot for all eternity. (This has always seemed to me to be a disproportionate penalty to pay for being skeptical of some dogma, but maybe that’s just me).
Of course, as we know, a lot of preachers and priests and rabbis fall prey to behaving in ways contrary to their professed piety and god-kissed personas. The same is true in spades for political office holders. Talking about God doesn’t make one godly, and talking about compassion doesn’t make one compassionate.
So when the governor takes off on one of his flowery little lectures about fairness and working families and how Maryland has to do more – fork over more dollars to the rulers – because it’s such a rich state, and makes dismissive comments about “aberrant” Republicans who aren’t in synch with his tax grab, well, I just get shivers up and down my spine.
We know what power is all about. We know what rulers do. And when the game at hand is disguised as something noble and selfless, we are just amazed that great numbers of the public seem unable to see through it all.
People ask me all the time why I seem to dislike Maryland’s current governor so much. Is it because he defeated my friend, Bob Ehrlich, last year? Uh, no.
Is it because Martin O’Malley is a crazed tax-grabber who seems to think the public goose can be further plucked without too much hissing taking place? Well, that’s some of it.
There are those who swoon over MOM because of his good looks and bulging biceps, and they are certainly entitled to admire whomever they choose, and I have nothing against good looks or muscularity in a man. So, that’s not it.
Examining my visceral aversion to O’Malley and his political style – which I dislike even more than his leftwing substance – I am forced to admit what bothers me more than any other thing is the sheer sanctimony of his public utterances.
It’s reminiscent of preachers in their pulpits, so pious, so filled with certitude, so saturated with palpable distaste for those whose beliefs are different from their own. Either you believe what they believe or hellfire and damnation will be your lot for all eternity. (This has always seemed to me to be a disproportionate penalty to pay for being skeptical of some dogma, but maybe that’s just me).
Of course, as we know, a lot of preachers and priests and rabbis fall prey to behaving in ways contrary to their professed piety and god-kissed personas. The same is true in spades for political office holders. Talking about God doesn’t make one godly, and talking about compassion doesn’t make one compassionate.
So when the governor takes off on one of his flowery little lectures about fairness and working families and how Maryland has to do more – fork over more dollars to the rulers – because it’s such a rich state, and makes dismissive comments about “aberrant” Republicans who aren’t in synch with his tax grab, well, I just get shivers up and down my spine.
We know what power is all about. We know what rulers do. And when the game at hand is disguised as something noble and selfless, we are just amazed that great numbers of the public seem unable to see through it all.
King Crapweasel Update
My new friends over at The Baltimore Reporter reveal yet again why Keith Olbermann is either devious or stupid. This time Olbermann distorts what Michael Medved wrote about American slavery. One wonders if Olbermann actually read Medved's column or just what Media Matters fed him. Monday, October 1, 2007
King Crapweasel
Last week I talked about the Unholy Alliance between the progressives and the Isalmo-fascists, and my esteemed colleague Greg Kline mentioned it in the latest Conservative Refuge podcast. Well leave it to the left to provide the ammunition with which to shoot them down.King of the Crapweasels Keith Olbermann pulled a vintage stunt worthy of the old communist left smearing David Horowitz and the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Olbermann named Horowitz as his Sept. 28 Worst Person in the World for daring to hold a week of demonstrations highlighting the danger of Islamo-fascism. This is a big no-no because from Olbermann to George Soros to Move On, there is no islamo-fascist threat.
The impetus for Olbermann involved the poster advertising Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. The poster depicted the stoning of woman convicted of adultery. It was really a still shot from a Dutch film made by an Iranian director to raise awareness of the actual stoning of women by radical Islamic thugs. So by this sleight-of-hand trick, Olbermann has manufactured a "lie" by Horowitz, with which to discredit, via wilful deceit, a movement that is raising awareness of an enemy determined to kill us.
You see Olbermann fancies himself a modern-day Edward R. Murrow, seeking to punish contemporary versions of Joe McCarthy, which to Olbermann is anyone slightly to the right of Daily Kos. A quick history lesson is needed here to show the full irony of Olbermann's self-delusion of himself as Murrow and his attack on Horowitz
Edward R. Murrow took on McCarthy because he attacked Lawrence Duggan, the son of his mentor. Turns out McCarthy was right about Duggan. The Venona decrypts reveal that Duggan (codename Frank) passed sensitive State Dept. documents to the NKVD(later the KGB). Duggan's NKVD handler Boris Basarov said of Duggan's commitment to the Soviet cause, "The only thing which kept him at his hateful job in the State Department where he did not get out of his tuxedo for two weeks, every night attending a reception, was the idea of being useful for our cause." At least one man, Ignatz Reiss was murdered by the NKVD to protect Duggan's identity as Soviet spy. Funny that these inconvenient facts are not mentioned in George Clooney's Murrow hagiography Good Night and Good Luck, or that the Cold War was on, but I digress.
The irony of Olbermann is that he uses a textbook stunt of the communist movement Duggan committed himself to, to smear Horowitz. Would Edward R. Murrow approve?
Education is Newspeak for Activism
From The Examiner's interview with Johns Hopkins president William Brody
Q How would you distinguish Johns Hopkins for prospective students?
A Johns Hopkins is like a small liberal arts college in the middle of the world’s largest research institution. It’s for self-starters, so there’s not a lot of defined curriculum. If you’re looking for a lot of structure, you should probably look somewhere else. We’re looking for students who want to get passionate about something, who want to get involved. We don’t train people for a specific career or a specific job, though they may be ready for it. Many people will have three, four or five different careers. In real life, you need to absorb what’s all around you and solve problems that haven’t been proposed. About 80 percent of our undergrads have some sort of independent study as part of their curriculum. I would like that to be 100 percent.
With leaders like Brody setting the academic course, is it any wonder why Hopkins students scored dead last on the 2006 version of the ISI civics quiz I mentioned last month. According to the ISI Hopkins actually showed "negative learning." What do you expect from an history department that has no set core curriculum.
As evidenced by his own words Brody is not interested in educating young people to be good citizens rather he is interested in attracting passionate activists, presumably to take part in his new initiative to make Johns Hopkins a central location in the fight against catastrophic, man-made global warming.
Q How would you distinguish Johns Hopkins for prospective students?
A Johns Hopkins is like a small liberal arts college in the middle of the world’s largest research institution. It’s for self-starters, so there’s not a lot of defined curriculum. If you’re looking for a lot of structure, you should probably look somewhere else. We’re looking for students who want to get passionate about something, who want to get involved. We don’t train people for a specific career or a specific job, though they may be ready for it. Many people will have three, four or five different careers. In real life, you need to absorb what’s all around you and solve problems that haven’t been proposed. About 80 percent of our undergrads have some sort of independent study as part of their curriculum. I would like that to be 100 percent.
With leaders like Brody setting the academic course, is it any wonder why Hopkins students scored dead last on the 2006 version of the ISI civics quiz I mentioned last month. According to the ISI Hopkins actually showed "negative learning." What do you expect from an history department that has no set core curriculum.
As evidenced by his own words Brody is not interested in educating young people to be good citizens rather he is interested in attracting passionate activists, presumably to take part in his new initiative to make Johns Hopkins a central location in the fight against catastrophic, man-made global warming.
The Long Sub-Space Transmission err uhh I mean Telegram
John Podhoretz adds this great Star Trek Week parody of George Kennan's Long Telegram, or the Mr. X article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" published in Foreign Affairs in 1947.
The Sources of Klingon Conduct
This is an excerpt from a classic essay first drafted as a memo to Federation Headquarters by an anonymous Vulcan diplomat and published in Interstellar Affairs in its Stardate 1114.3 issue. The essay had an enormous impact on the decision to pursue a confrontational policy toward the Klingons. Its author was later revealed to be Kennok, who would spend the balance of his career disavowing much of the intragalactic policy that was made partly as a result of it.
There can no longer be any doubt that the aggressive conduct of the Klingon Empire is irredentist in nature, its purpose to spread its sphere of influence beyond the Neutral Zone. This presents a new kind of threat to the galactic order, as the Klingon conduct does not comport with classic models of planetary self-interest. Rather, their intent is ideological in nature. They seek not to influence but to convert, not to find an atmospheric cushion but to create a gravitational pull toward a set of beliefs. Their evangel is by definition destabilizing and dangerous, since it postulates its own superiority, a superiority that will be demonstrated by conquest….
[O]ur goal must be to contain the menace through a series of means that will reveal the hollowness of a society which seeks its own perpetuation only through expansion. If we can contain the Klingons by restricting their sphere of influence to the planets immediately on their borders and sealed within the contours of the Neutral Zone boundary, eventually it will collapse of its own internal contradictions…The thoughtful observer of Federation-Klingon relations will experience a certain gratitude for a Providence which, by providing the peoples of the Federation with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a planetary alliance dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.
Obviously this is a huge inside baseball parody that most people would not get without much explanation. This is sad because Kennan's article formed the basis of US foreign policy (with some tweaking by NSC-68) toward the Soviet Union throughout most of the Cold War: containment.
Ask a high-school student, or even a college senior who George Kennan was, and why he was important, and a blank stare will be your most common response. This type of history is rarely taught anymore, and if it is, it is to twist the real significance of Kennan's influence to portray the United States as the aggressor in the Cold War.
The Sources of Klingon Conduct
This is an excerpt from a classic essay first drafted as a memo to Federation Headquarters by an anonymous Vulcan diplomat and published in Interstellar Affairs in its Stardate 1114.3 issue. The essay had an enormous impact on the decision to pursue a confrontational policy toward the Klingons. Its author was later revealed to be Kennok, who would spend the balance of his career disavowing much of the intragalactic policy that was made partly as a result of it.
There can no longer be any doubt that the aggressive conduct of the Klingon Empire is irredentist in nature, its purpose to spread its sphere of influence beyond the Neutral Zone. This presents a new kind of threat to the galactic order, as the Klingon conduct does not comport with classic models of planetary self-interest. Rather, their intent is ideological in nature. They seek not to influence but to convert, not to find an atmospheric cushion but to create a gravitational pull toward a set of beliefs. Their evangel is by definition destabilizing and dangerous, since it postulates its own superiority, a superiority that will be demonstrated by conquest….
[O]ur goal must be to contain the menace through a series of means that will reveal the hollowness of a society which seeks its own perpetuation only through expansion. If we can contain the Klingons by restricting their sphere of influence to the planets immediately on their borders and sealed within the contours of the Neutral Zone boundary, eventually it will collapse of its own internal contradictions…The thoughtful observer of Federation-Klingon relations will experience a certain gratitude for a Providence which, by providing the peoples of the Federation with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a planetary alliance dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear.
Obviously this is a huge inside baseball parody that most people would not get without much explanation. This is sad because Kennan's article formed the basis of US foreign policy (with some tweaking by NSC-68) toward the Soviet Union throughout most of the Cold War: containment.
Ask a high-school student, or even a college senior who George Kennan was, and why he was important, and a blank stare will be your most common response. This type of history is rarely taught anymore, and if it is, it is to twist the real significance of Kennan's influence to portray the United States as the aggressor in the Cold War.
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