No Left Turns tells us that Alan Keyes has decided to run against Barack Obama for the Illinois senate seat:
A lot of people have wondered why our intelligence agencies announce the captures of various terrorists. It would seem that the wiser course would be to keep their Islamist comrades in the dark while we extract as much information from the captured individuals as possible. As soon as the terrorists read in the papers that someone who knows about them has been caught they are certain to change their methods, procedures, plans, addresses, and anything else they can in order to avoid capture.
Yet there is the hope that our intelligence personnel know what they're doing. We trust that their decisions, policies, and methods are well-thought out so we give them the benefit of the doubt. That benefit, however, is going to be much harder to concede after this MSNBC account of the leak of the name of the Pakistani who was the source of information for all the terrorist arrests in Europe that have occured in the last couple of days. Some excerpts:
The key word here is "unintentionally". It may be that the name was released deliberately to sow confusion or deception. Nevertheless, if whoever revealed the identity of this man did it recklessly, he/she should be fired. Naming Khan may have unnecessarily alerted dozens of terrorists who might survive to murder in the future. If so, whoever made the decision to expose Khan's arrest will be partly responsible for the deaths of the victims.
Jim Geraghty who writes KerrySpot at National Review Online cites what Hugh Hewitt believes is perhaps the most devastating revelations in the forthcoming book on Kerry's Viet Nam service titled Unfit For Command. Kerry appears to have deliberately lied on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1986 when he said that he was ordered into Cambodia on Christmas Eve of 1968 (Hewitt's permalinks are down so once at his site you'll have to scroll to the piece on Kerry's Christmas Eve in Cambodia).
Geraghty quotes from Unfit for Command:Viewpoint wonders how long it will take the major media to start reporting on these revelations. By sitting on them they are doing a serious disservice to the American people who have a right to know the truth about the men they are being asked to elect as president. One thing we can be sure of, if new questions about George Bush's integrity had emerged they would be splashed across every headline and news broadcast all weekend and every day until November 2nd.
Unfit For Command has the potential to dampen a lot of enthusiasm for Kerry, an enthusiasm which, like Lake Okachobee, is miles wide and only inches deep to begin with. The danger to the Democrats is not just that undecideds will be persuaded to move toward Bush by the indictments of Kerry's character that the book contains, but that the millions who are moderately disposed toward Kerry and who are not driven by any particular animus toward Bush will simply stay home on election day.
In the Sudan the holocaust continues while Khartoum plays dumb.
Sudanese Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein says: "It is true that the situation is out of control, but we will make an effort."
"Making an effort" is not good enough. These guys have had years to "make an effort" and have done nothing to stop the militias that are murdering, terrorizing, and dispossessing millions of people in their country. Indeed, the evidence is that they have abetted it. The effort they need to make is to pack their bags and get out.
Kofi Annan announced that the Sudanese government has about three weeks left to show the U.N. Security Council that it is serious about disarming the Janjaweed [the Sudanese militia] or face possible sanctions.
That must be a real rib-tickler in Khartoum. U.N. sanctions do not have a very reassuring record of concentrating tyrannical minds on the necessity of caring for their people. Meanwhile, in three weeks hundreds more children will starve to death.
On Thursday, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Khartoum: "Our policy is that anything that the AU wants we will cooperate (with). Before that we need to sit down, study it carefully and reach agreement on how we are going to implement it."
Yes, of course. Examine the problem carefully, anything to prolong the genocide and to evade having to do anything to stop it. What's needed in the Sudan is for someone to say that the games are over in Khartoum and to send in several thousand well-equipped troops to wipe out the Janjaweed, restore the people of Dharfur to their homes and farms, and to bring them relief from their suffering.
These wretched people can't count on U.N. sanctions. How would sanctions help them anyway? Sanctions invariably hurt rather than help the poor and dispossessed. The U.N. is as useless as a space heater in hell and the African Union is worse.
Perhaps the French and Germans are available for a humanitarian mission. They should have plenty of cash on hand for such an undertaking after having profited handsomely from their deals with Saddam at the expense of the Iraqi people. Maybe someone should give Chirac and Schroeder a call on behalf of the suffering Sudanese.
An article here points out that 1.1 million kids are home-schooled by parents who feel that public schools are just not safe or morally healthy environments for their kids:
How many more parents are disillusioned with their child's school but lack the resources to take them out? How many children would be home schooled if parents had the time, energy, and expertise to do it. How many children in our public schools would be in private schools if parents could afford the tuition? I suspect the number is substantial and that confidence in public schools is low and declining. Our schools are in trouble and the first person to come along with an affordable way of privatizing education is going to find a receptive public. Why is this?
The problems began to incubate in the sixties, but they emerged in the seventies when legislation and court decisions made it increasingly more difficult to maintain effective discipline in the halls and classrooms. At the same time, schools became more than just educational institutions, today they are full-service day care, offering all manner of social services, therapeutic programs, extra-curricular activities, etc. These burgeoning programs have become the tail that wags the dog in public schools almost everywhere. Many private schools feel that in order to compete with their tax-subsidized neighbors they have to add to their own menu of offerings.
Add to this the fact that many schools are not run by educators but rather by managers. They may have advanced degrees in education, but many of them are in administration because they really didn't love what they were doing in the classroom. Thus to them what happens in the classroom is secondary to everything else the school does. They would not admit this, of course, but it's clear where most administrators' priorities lie to anyone who has worked in the education field for any length of time. All one needs do is to observe how easy it is for students to be excused from class in order to engage in other activities.
There is much that needs to be done if public education is going to be rescued from irrelevance and obsolescence. One thing that must change before anything else will be of any effect is that schools need to be granted the authority to discipline their students, to permanently expel them when expulsion is appropriate without having to employ phalanxes of lawyers to justify the measure, and to use that authority once they have it.
A second step needs to be that people put in positions of leadership in schools need to be themselves men and women who love learning, leaders who will subordinate everything else that takes place in the school day to classroom excellence. School administrators all pay lip service to learning, they all say that the education their students receive is their highest concern, but in too many of our schools, class is simply where students go when they have no other claim on their time.
Many of the problems public schools face are problems they can do nothing about. Viewpoint, for example, has discussed the correlation between the quality of families in a community and the quality of schools in that community (See here, for instance).
Nevertheless, there are things that educators and legislators can do to make them better, and it is an indictment of our schools that so many parents are willing to go to such lengths to find an alternative. Public school educators can no longer afford to shrug these people off as malcontents and cranks. Public schools need to do better, but they won't as long as they keep telling themselves and us that the problems they face can all be fixed by giving them more money.
They're accusing him of having betrayed his country, of lying to the American people about the circumstances of the war, of being unfit to serve as president of the United States. Sound familiar? These are the same claims made by hysterics like Al Gore and Howard Dean about George Bush, but this time the claims are being made by calm, apolitical men who have no partisan or ideological ax to grind. This time the claims are made by men who are actually familiar with the service of the man they criticize. In a thirty second television ad they can offer no evidence to support their allegations, but presumably that will be presented in the book due out next week titled Unfit for Command by John O'Neill. The book, if these men are indeed telling the truth, should flesh out the indictment presented in the advertisement.
Meanwhile, it is extraordinarily hypocritical of the left to call this ad "dirty politics", "gutter politics", and to say that it is "as low as you can go". John Kerry has made his service in Viet Nam a major qualification for serving as president, and the Democrats spent weeks seeking to make George Bush's service in the Air National Guard a proof of his fecklessness and unworthiness to hold the presidency. The Democrats want voters to believe that Kerry is a hero and that George Bush evaded war-time service. Now contrary testimony is emerging and the Democrats are acting like this is some sort of dirty trick.
They complain that the ad is funded by some rich guy in Texas, but many of the most virulent anti-Bush ads and websites out there are funded by George Soros and other wealthy donors.
John McCain calls the ad dishonest and dishonorable, but how does he know it's either? It's only dishonorable if it's dishonest. Does Senator McCain know that the men in the ad are lying? If these men are indeed telling the truth then the American people should know it. If it's true that Kerry didn't deserve his Purple Hearts, if it's true that he was awarded a Silver Star for actions in violation of the military code of conduct and Geneva conventions, if it's true that he accepted praise for actions unworthy of praise, then the American people should know that. If it's true that he lied under oath in his Senate testimony in 1971 then the American people should also know that.
Viewpoint takes the position that a lot of men do things, especially in war, which they regret later in life and that it is better to just put all those demons behind us. Senator Kerry and his party, however, thought they could capitalize on deeds that may turn out to be something the Senator should have been content to bury in the past. Senator Kerry and the Democrats, not the Republicans, made the decision to shine the spotlight on his military record, to contrast it with Bush's, and to urge us to vote for him on the basis of it. They cannot now complain if Americans insist on having the record clarified.
John Kerry and his allies at the Democratic National Convention have made his war exploits the centerpiece of his campaign, contrasting his meritorious service in combat with George Bush's service in the National Guard. However, a book is coming out next week which will cast serious doubts on the claims of heroism and gallantry that suffused the convention speeches. The book is co-authored by John O'Neill who took over Kerry's command after Kerry was sent home from Viet Nam and is called Unfit For Command.
Matt Drudge has some excerpts:
Look for the Democrats to do everything they can to discredit this book. If past experience is any guide, they'll attack its timing, its source of funding, and they'll even seek to destroy the reputations of the men who are quoted in it, but it'll be interesting to see if they actually challenge what the book claims to be the facts.
It will also be interesting to see whether the Bush-haters in the media even care about the facts.
This article reveals that Alan Keyes is mulling over an invitation from Illinois Republicans to run for the Senate in their state against Barack Obama. It would seem to be a difficult slog against a popular opponent for a man who has never even lived in the state, but Viewpoint hopes that Keyes accepts the challenge.
A campaign between Keyes and Obama would be fascinating for several reasons, not the least of which is that it would afford Keyes a forum for getting his conservative message out to an African-American audience that doesn't often hear such themes from able black advocates.
In addition, it would be interesting to see a campaign between two powerful, charismatic proponents of conservatism and liberalism, and especially one in which the race issue has been effectively neutralized.
As for the fact that Keyes has never lived in Illinois, state law apparently allows a candidate to be eligible as long as he is a resident on election day, and, besides, not having lived in the state didn't prevent New York voters from electing Hillary Clinton.
Go for it Alan!
Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker has written an absolutely riveting piece on Islamic terror titled The Terror Web. Wright explains how the internet is being used by the jihadis to facilitate their operations and also discusses at length the Madrid train bombings and how the perpetrators were apprehended. The Terror Web is chilling but important reading. Some excerpts:
John Kerry suggested in his Convention speech that he would keep the American military strong, well-equipped and well-manned. "We will add 40,000 active duty troops," he assured us, "not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure....To all who serve in our armed forces today, I say, help is on the way." In light of his record in the Senate, however, these promises are simply laughable, and Kerry himself looks foolish to anyone who has had a glimpse of what he has done when he's been given the opportunity to do something for our military besides make empty rhetorical gestures.
One of the most egregious bits of hypocrisy in a convention that was larded with it was Kerry's outrage that military families were forced to hold bake sales to buy body armor for their soldiers because of President Bush's implied failure to equip the troops properly for the invasion of Iraq. This claim was all the more reprehensible because funding for body armor and other equipment was contained in the $87 billion appropriations bill that Kerry so famously voted against. Also in that bill was funding for hazardous duty pay for soldiers and $1.3 billion to provide for medical care for military families. Kerry voted against all of it.
In fact, for Kerry to actually do what he suggests, now that he wants to be elected president, he will have to reverse completely the utter disdain toward the military and our intelligence services that he consistently demonstrated during his nineteen year tenure in the senate. The following information about Kerry's voting record on military issues is taken from the book Reckless Disregard by Lt. Col. Robert Patterson:
In 1994, 1995, and 1997 Kerry voted to cut several billion dollars from our intelligence gathering agencies, and yet after 9/11 he told Face the Nation "...at the moment, the single most important weapon for the United States of America is intelligence. It's the single most important weapon in this particular war." Nevertheless, he served eight years on the Senate Intelligence Committee and never cast a single vote to increase human intelligence capability or to reform the intelligence community or to provide greater funding for their efforts. This record is especially deplorable in light of his charge that President Bush has not moved fast enough in the wake of 9/11 to shake up the Intelligence establishment and to make us more secure against our enemies. What has Senator Kerry himself been doing in the last eight years other than emasculating the very agencies which might have prevented the Islamist attack?
When Senator Kerry talks about a strong America it must be borne in mind that whatever kind of strength he's talking about it's not the kind that he wants us to think it is.
The Democrat left has gradually over the last few years revised the lexicon employed in our political debates and Viewpoint, as a public service, wishes to announce the following updates in no particular order:
Perhaps readers can think of some additional revisions. We'll post updates as they are available.
TruthOut.Org is touting an article by Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times on Senator Kerry's recent remarks to that paper about his plans for Iraq. His intentions are, essentially, to persuade more foreign countries to help shoulder the load:
Sensing, perhaps, that the Times was expecting a little more contrast with the White House's goals for Iraq, especially after the sharp battles fought in the Democrat primaries over just this issue, Kerry went on to explain how he would accomplish this.
Setting aside the incoherence of the last sentence, we might ask why the Senator thinks the U.N. should have any say at all in how Iraq is rebuilt? If the U.N. had had its way, Saddam would still be cutting out Iraqi tongues and filling huge trenches with bullet-riddled bodies. Iraq is now a sovereign nation. It doesn't need the U.N. telling it what to do. The only countries who should profit from the rebuilding process, aside from those to whom Iraq deigns to award contracts, are those who stood with us in OIF and who are standing with us now. The American taxpayer is footing much of the bill for this "rebuilding" and for Kerry to think that we should subsidize French industry after their attempt to sabotage the liberation of Iraq in the Security Council is looney.
"A message of responsibility"?! That'll stir European consciences. "More international cooperation on other issues"? Like what, the Kyoto Treaty? Tariffs? Is Kerry telling us that he'll be able to get the cooperation of other countries in Iraq by capitulating to their demands on everything else?
Indeed, how much of our sovereignty is Senator Kerry willing to cede to the United Nations? This is not an idle question. In 1971 he stated that he was an internationalist and would like to see our troops disbursed around the world "only at the direction of the United Nations." In 1971 he was eager to turn over de facto control of our military to the likes of Kofi Annan. It might be instructive for one of the journalists on his campaign bus to ask him where he stands on that issue today.
This is pure flummery. Kerry has been a senator for nineteen years and has done nothing to distinguish himself. Now he expects us to believe that he will suddenly be a forceful, influential leader in the international arena when he was little more than a "back-bencher" for three terms in the senate.
Many people, of course, know what it means to convene meetings and demand plans. The only reason for saying such a vacuous thing as this is to try to sound like a tough guy and make Bush seem weak. Nor does the senator know what Bush has demanded of his subordinates in the years since 9/11. Kerry's statement is just simply fatuous, and this nullity comes from a man who prides himself on being smarter than everyone else.
If Kerry wanted to demonstrate his commitment to openness he could start by releasing his medical records from Vietnam. Kerry has made his military service a major, if not the chief, reason why Americans should vote for him. His service, therefore, is relevant to this campaign and should be thoroughly examined, including his medical records. As long as he refuses to let us see what's in those he shouldn't talk to us about unprecedented transparency and openness.
Kerry Spot at National Review Online has a good analysis of why President Bush seems to be unable to close ground with Senator Kerry in the polls. For some reason, one hopes it's not ineptitude, the Bush team has been very lackadaisical about getting his record out before the public. A reader of Kerry Spot looks at the Bush ads and makes a strong case that unless things change this month, Bush could be in real trouble. It's worth quoting almost the entire piece:
This is interesting. Scary, but interesting. The scary thing is that the Republicans have run three consecutive lackluster campaigns. The elder Bush, an incumbent president with eight years as vice-president to one of the most popular presidents of the 20th century, and a successful and fairly popular war to his credit, lost in 1992 to a relatively unknown southern governor with some serious personal baggage.
In 1996, the Republicans were unable to nominate a candidate that could exploit the weaknesses of the incumbent and they got trounced. It seemed as if the only reason Bob Dole was running was because it was his turn. Both campaigns, 1992 and 1996, seemed listless and full of squandered opportunities.
In 2000 the Republicans should have won handily against a man tarnished by his association with Bill Clinton and unable to assure the voters of his own mental stability. Florida should not have been close, given that it had a natural Republican constituency and that its Republican governor was also the brother of the Republican candidate. Yet, George W. Bush came within a millimeter of losing the state.
Viewpoint doesn't wish to appear to be a Nervous Nellie, but this is not a record that inspires a great deal of confidence. So one reads a piece like the one above and hopes that someone at the helm of this campaign knows what they're doing and why they're doing it.
Senator Kerry assures us that President Bush has either no plan or a lousy plan for post-war Iraq and that he, if he were president, would handle things differently. He never tells us what he would do, exactly, but if he were as smart as he wants us to believe he is, he would do in Iraq precisely what the United States is doing right now. The media focusses on the car bombs and the killings, but these are a relatively small, though certainly tragic, part of the picture of what is happening in Iraq. In fact, when one reads an account like Chrenkoff's 7th installment of Good News from Iraq one feels a deep sense of pride in our soldiers, our leaders, and our people for what they're accomplishing in this troubled land.
I don't understand how anyone can read Chrenkoff's reports and not feel that we have undertaken something profoundly good. I don't know how anyone can think that the Iraqi people are not better off today than they were two years ago. Bush's critics have to deliberately ignore the evidence in order to deprecate the progress that has been made in Iraq. What we've done and are doing in that land is an historic achievement and one that makes all of the carping we hear from Kerry and the Democrats seem so small and whiny.
Perhaps among the most telling anecdotes in Chrenkoff's report is this:
John Kerry said today that if George Bush was serious about reforming our Intelligence operations and responding to the 9/11 Commission recomendations he'd summon Congress back from their vacations and force them to adopt the needed reforms. Perhaps, but if Bush did follow Kerry's recommendation it's highly unlikely that the good senator himself, or his running mate, would show up. Their level of concern for the safety and well-being of our country can be descried from the fact that on approximately 442 recorded votes taken in the senate since May of 2003 Senator Kerry has bestirred himself to vote on only 65 of them. Senator Edwards' voting record is similarly dismal. I wonder if this duo had a clear conscience as they deposited their paychecks.
Then there's this bit of liberal hypocrisy from Ben Affleck courtesy of Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost:
It really is amazing how many Democrats complain about not paying enough in taxes but who won't voluntarily return their tax refunds to the government. These people are making themselves harder and harder to take seriously.
There's a fascinating story in the New York Times about the source of the information on the new terror threat to American financial centers. Some excerpts:
One of the things Americans need to keep firmly in mind is that this war has, in the minds of the jihadis, been going on for seven centuries. They're not going to surrender, nor are they going to stop attacking us any time soon. We need to unburden ourselves of our traditional notion of fighting a war for a distinct period of time and then enjoying peace for a generation thereafter. This war will not end until either Western civilization is destroyed or the Islamists are rendered impotent. Even if we critically degrade their ability to strike us, there will only be a temporary cessation of hostilities until they can regain enough strength to attack us again.
The Islamists are fanatics obsessed with killing Christians and Jews. There is no remedy for this. It's not a matter of reasoning with them or negotiating with them. It's not a matter of restoring land or improving economic conditions. It's not a matter of leaving them alone. They believe it is Allah's will that they kill all infidels. The only way to stop them, unfortunately, is to kill them first.
Matt Drudge has a bombshell. Evidently part of George Bush's plans during his second term is to eliminate the IRS and replace it with a national sales tax. According to Drudge:
I don't know how a sales tax could possibly compensate for the loss of income tax revenue, but I'm sure Hastert isn't just talking off the top of his head. They must have thought this through. Well, at least one hopes they have. It'll be interesting to see how the Kerryites respond.
The Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal advocacy group, assigns a Liberal Quotient (LQ) to all voting members of congress. Senator Kerry has a lifetime ADA rating of 92% which makes him the most liberal pol in the current senate and third all-time among members of congress. Edwards is fourth among current congressmen and senators with an 88% LQ. Their combined averages make the Kerry/Edwards ticket the left-most pair of nominees for the American presidency in the history of the ADA.
The Washington Times writes:If the Republican nominees in any election were as far to the right as Kerry/Edwards are to the left wouldn't we be hearing the word "extremist" used about every five seconds to describe them and their positions on the issues? Wouldn't candidates whose voting records were the most conservative in history be pilloried by the major media for being way "out of the mainstream"?
There's still time for the media to whisper a mention of the extremism of the current candidates, of course, but from the current silence on the matter one might be forgiven for thinking that extremists only reside on the right of the ideological divide and that the mainstream in this country runs from left of center all the way left to the far horizon. The reigning attitude among the media worthies is that, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, extremism in pusuit of a left-wing agenda is no vice.
Let's count how many times between now and November we hear the E-word applied to the current Democrat tandem by Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw, the NYT, LAT, and the WaPo. Viewpoint's guess is that it'll be a round number.
There's a report, as yet unconfirmed, that the terrorist al Zarqawi, the man responsible for many of the kidnappings and beheadings of American hostages, has been captured near the Iraqi/Syrian border. A number of Iraqi bloggers are carrying the report, but no major media have said anything about it yet as far as I know. They could be waiting for independent confirmation or the report may be groundless. We should know soon enough.
Some of us have often wondered why it is that when Jerry Falwell urges his flock to vote Republican he is engaging in an unconstitutional breach of Church/State separation, but when Jesse Jackson urges black parishioners to vote Democrat he's standing in the best tradition of African American preachers. Creationists are accused of illicitly trying to impose a religious point of view on students by suggesting that metaphysical naturalism may not be true, but Darwinians who tacitly advocate metaphysical naturalism are not. It seems that religion in the public square is just fine as long as it's used to reinforce the liberal side in the culture war, but not if it is invoked by conservatives. Thus Bill Clinton's religious affirmations were never seen as a threat to the health of American politics, but George Bush's are.
Even granting that religion should have a legitimate place in our public life, however, there is a right way and a wrong way to express it. Steve Waldman has some interesting thoughts on this at National Review Online He writes:
Waldman is right. Unless people can argue from mutually shared assumptions they'll just be talking past each other. Thus Christians may hold to a particular belief primarily for religious reasons, but unless they can find non-religious premises from which to advocate their beliefs they'll be unpersuasive to people who don't share their religious worldview. If Christians wish to be effective players in the public arena they have to learn to meet those with whom they disagree on their opponent's turf.
In other words, every big game for the Christian has to be an away game. The only time they can play at home is when they debate each other. If they insist on engaging non-Christians on their own field by quoting Scripture, etc. they're going to find that nobody is going to show up for the game.