Today, Iraq and America should be proud

The Iraqi people began voting a few hours ago, and the reports so far indicate a high voter turnout. There have been attacks, and I have no illusions that the day will be one of joy without tragedy; as those opposed to a Democratic Iraq will continue their murderous campaign against Iraqi civilians. The risk that Iraqis must take to cast their vote can only add to the legitimacy of the election.

As Iraqi women vote, crickets chirp at the headquarters of "feminist" group NOW

Today I am proud to be an American. This is a pride that goes beyond that swelling of the heart upon hearing the national anthem, or viewing an American olympian take a gold medal. The pride I feel is like no other. The United States of America is the only country on the planet with the capability and, more importantly, the will to give the gift of democracy to a country like Iraq. It is for this reason that I am proud today.

Democracy: brought to you courtesy of the American soldier, despite the "Democratic" Party

I look to France, Germany, and other European nations and feel not anger, but pity. With all the objections to the war in our own country, there still exists the consensus that the ultimate objective of a democratic Iraq is a noble and just cause. Our national debate is not so much about the goal, but the means by which we achieve it. The story in Europe is very different. Europeans view the spread of democracy with cynical contempt. They oppose US action in Iraq not only because of their pacifistic tendencies, but also because they don't believe the Arab people are capable of embracing democratic values. Europe has lost faith in the principle of Liberty itself.

I'll take: "Images you'll never see featuring a French flag" for $1000 Alex

As I watch my television right now, it is clear that the people of Iraq do not share in Europe's cynicism.

UPDATE: No surprise here; as Election Day winds down in Iraq (the polls will close in 2 hours) the American media is in a desperate search for bad news to report on what has been a stunning success. I pulled the following sentence from an AP story:

A low Sunni turnout could undermine the new government and worsen tensions among the country's ethnic, religious and cultural group.

Keep crossing your fingers AP! I find it incredibly ironic that the left/media care so much about the Sunni people turning out to vote. The best analogy I can think of to describe the Sunni's is that they are to Saddam what the Nazi party members were to Hitler. Did we give a damn if former Nazis turned out to vote after the Second World War? I think not.

Russia's slippery slope

AP reports:

A group of nationalist Russian lawmakers called Monday for a sweeping investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations and punishing officials who support them, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred and saying they provoke anti-Semitism.

In a letter dated Jan. 13, about 20 members of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, asked Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to investigate their claims and to launch proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist."

How do you like that logic: "Russia has Jews. Russians are anti-Semetic. Anti-Semitism is bad. Let's get rid of all the Jews so there won't be anymore anti-Semitism."

Disgusting.

Only in these modern times, where truth is relative, could an elected official spew their hatred while blaming the target of their loathing for breeding the very racism they project. Europe and Russia have been so poisoned by their own anti-Semitism that they have abandoned even the most basic logic in their campaign to erradicate the Jews.

In other news today, Jews are fleeing French anti-Semitism by emigrating to Isreal. AFP reports:

Unofficial figures put the number of immigrants to Israel from France at about 2,500 in 2004. Aliya Day was attended by some 4,350 people, the highest figure ever, according to David Roche, director of the Jewish Agency in France. [...]

A report from the French interior ministry in December said racist violence including anti-Semitism had increased by over 70 percent in 2004, with 194 reported acts and 711 threats, compared to 112 acts and 418 threats over the same period in 2003.

Maybe this is part of a new Franco-Russian alliance. After all, the French have made dirtier little friendships in the past.

French premier Henri-Philippe Petain shakes hands with ally Adolf Hitler

Democrats send Klansman Byrd after Dr. Rice

Democratic Senator Robert "Sheets" Byrd has booked an entire hour tomorrow to oppose the nomination of Dr. Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State; the first African-American woman to hold the post. But if you were to take AP's word on the matter, you would think Byrd was mearly giving an anti-war speech:

Two Democratic opponents of the war, Sens. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Barbara Boxer of California, have booked an hour each to speak, with eight other Democrats due to weigh in with briefer speeches.

This party has really lost its mind. They decide to have the party basket case, Babs Boxer, and their resident Klansman, Sen. Bryd, act as the star performers in their attempt to smear Dr. Rice's nomination as Sec. State. And to top it off, they offer if up as an "anti-war" statement; as if Rice could do anything to stop combat operations in Iraq as Secretary of State.

Maybe during his speech Sen. Byrd will offer some of the inspiring rhetoric he has used in the very recent past:

There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word.
-Sen. Robert Byrd, March 4, 2001

Do you think after the 2006 elections, when they get their lunch handed to them again, the Democrats will rethink this whole theory they have that Americans would agree with everything they have to say so long as they "get the message out" better? These people have a political "tin ear".

WI Dems slapped with felony charges

Remember that story on Election Day about the tires of 25 vehicle rented by the Republican Party of Wisconsin being slashed? Well if you didn’t hear about it, it’s because the press all but ignore the story. The WI Republicans rented the vehicles for their get-out-the-vote efforts. But their efforts were ultimately in vain, being that all the vehicles were rendered useless by politically motivated saboteurs.

So whats foul group of individuals would carry out such a nasty trick? None other than the "make every vote count" screaming liberal Democrat whack jobs. WisPolitics reports:

Republican Party of Wisconsin (RPW) Chairman Rick Graber issued the following statement today after Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann filed felony charges against five Democrat Party employees who slashed tires on 25 vehicles rented by RPW for get out the vote activities in last November’s elections. Those charged include the sons of U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore and former Milwaukee Mayor Marvin Pratt.

“Make no mistake, this was an act of political sabotage - a coordinated effort by paid Democrat workers to disrupt the political process and prevent Republicans from getting to the polls. It is especially interesting to note that, according to the criminal complaint, those charged made detailed plans to vandalize Republican headquarters and even gave their project a name – ‘Operation Elephant Takeover.’

So where is the avalanche of stories from the New York Times, Washington Post, and AP documenting the disenfranchizement of Republican voters? Will Jesse Jackson be beating a path to the offices of the Wisconsin Democratic Party to hold series of sit-ins and press conferences? Are the hack "journalists" over at MSNBC and CBS News going to dedicate 23 hours of their daily news coverage to discuss this crime against democracy carried out by the Democratic party?

Of course not.

Stories like this only get attention these days thanks to bloggers and other alternative forms of media. I can only imagine the scandal that would sweep Republican ranks if this were carried out by any of their party officials.

(hat tip to National Review's The Corner)

The Jones Act, Union hucksters, and other fun tid-bits...

I’ve been working on a little project concerning the Jones Act; a protectionist law that costs Hawaii's economy hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The law, enacted in 1920, basically protects all ships operating between US ports from competing against any non-US shipping companies. US shipping companies and organized labor have a very powerful lobby in place to keep the Jones Act in place. Even conservative Republicans - the same ones that claim to be "free-market capitalists – don’t seem to have the spine to go near the bill.

Having said that; while carrying out some of the research on my project, I came accross some interesting information I thought was worth sharing. I'm also hoping to get some feedback from anyone familiar with the Jones Act.

The Jones Act is a popular subject among my economics professors. One professor in particular dedicates an entire week’s worth of class time to the subject. This obsession makes sense seeing as though I attend university in one of the most effected states of the Jones Act: Hawaii. When giving the estimated per-household cost of the Jones Act to Hawaii’s residents, the numbers vary, but they hover around $3,000 per year. Whether or not this figure is “dead-on” is not my concern. But it can certainly be said that the Jones Act inflates the price of goods that are shipped under the anti-competitive auspices of the Act.

Cliff Slater, a writer for the Honolulu Advertiser and ardent critic of the Jones Act, points out in his article entitled Jones Act Costs Us Big Bucks that no real research has been carried out on the Act’s effect on Hawaii. But in the same article he points to the following comparison between shipping routes protected by the Act and those which are open to competition:

The cost to ship a standard-size 40-foot container of apples 2,100 miles from Oakland to Honolulu via Matson (using Jones Act ships) is $4,862, or $2.31 per container/mile.

To ship the same container of apples 5700 miles from Seattle to Hong Kong (using competitive ships) costs $3,800, or 68 cents per container/mile.

Allowing that the cost of loading and unloading is disproportionately higher for the shorter runs, it is not unreasonable to assume that, everything else being equal, Jones Act shipping costs about twice as much as competitive shipping.

Again, the exact cost to Hawaiian consumers is not the issue here, but their should at least be an agreement on the fact that the Jones Act does indeed create higher costs on shipped goods. Having said that, consider the following assessment by a University of Hawaii professor:

In summary, using Jones Act opponents' numbers, there would be a net loss of $257.25 million to $1.5 billion in output per year in Hawai'i, or a loss ranging from $611 to to $3,563 per household if the Jones Act were repealed. The number of jobs lost in ocean shipping ranges from a low of 5,675 to a high of 17,025. This compares with a total loss of jobs in the Hawaiian economy of approximately 13,000 since 1991. The loss in personal income would range from a low of $157,750,000 to a high of $473,250,000.

You can check out this professor's "study" for yourself (and contact me if you can make any sense of the reasoning behind his conclusion). Also, put aside his argument that almost every shipping job on the islands would be lost as a result of repealing the Jones Act (does he assume port maintenance, unloading/loading of ships, ship repair, and all the other jobs that make up the vast majority of the shipping industry could be carried out by the crew of a foreign ship?). This professor's economic reasoning is a whole other matter in and of itself. But the fact that someone is actually making an argument that the Jones Act actually saves the Hawaii economy money makes me wonder who this guy is shilling for.

The professor behind this "study" is Dr. Lawrence Boyd, a labor economist for the Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR) at the University of Hawaii. Dr. Boyd's resume is pretty thin, so its hard to pin down where hes been or who may have influence over his "research". But the director of CLEAR, William Puette, has a resume that leaves little to the imagination in terms of where his interests lie. Here's an excerpt:

He is also the publishing editor for a Hawaiian labor history series, author of the booklets, CLEAR Guide to Hawai'i Labor History, Labor Dispute Picketing: Organizing a Legal Picket in Hawai'i, A Picket Guide for Hawai'i Public Employees: Organizing a Legal Picket Line Under Chapter 89, HRS, and Pa'a Hui Unions: the Hawai'i State AFL-CIO, 1966-1991; […] Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor.

Hmm... wonder if this guy is pro-union? Anyways, back to Dr. Boyd's "study" on the Jones Act, and his claim that it actually benefits Hawaii's economy. To explain the enourmous difference between the conclusions of other economists and his own, Boyd makes the following statement/claim:

Why are these results so different? Often when highly charged debates take place you occasionally see "dueling experts" for both sides who provide different results because they are paid or committed to one side or the other. This is not the case here. This research is a spin off of a larger research project where I am trying to determine the degree to which competition exists in the Hawaiian shipping trade. Neither the Center for Labor Education and Research nor myself have received any financial support for this effort. (Emphasis added)

Whenever someone makes a statement like the one above, and claims to be an inpartial critic, I will always assume the exact opposite. To me, a statement of pre-emptive denial should be treated as a red flag screaming out "GOOGLE THIS HACK!" So, I did some "Googling", and found that CLEAR is – surprise! - far from impartial.

CLEAR received a $1,000,000 from Unity House, a non-profit group formed to benefit Local 5 and Hawaiian Teamsters. The endowment was presented to the University of Hawaii and CLEAR by none other than Anthony Rutledge, son of Unity House’s founder Arthur Rutledge. The Rutledge name is no stranger to union corruption and fraud. Consider the following report from the National Legal and Policy Center Organized Labor Accountability Project:

On Oct. 30 of [2002], the U.S. Attny. for the Dist. of Hawaii charged Aaron Rutledge with persuading an unnamed individual to destroy and withhold records and "objects" sought by fed. investigators on Oct. 30, 1997. That day, the agents were searching the offices of the non-profit, Unity House, and Local 5 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees union (HERE). They also searched the home of Aaron's grandfather, Art, frmr. chief of Local 5 and founder of Unity House, a non-profit established to benefit members of Local 5 and the Hawaii Teamsters union. Reportedly, the agents seized computer files and bundles of cash that day.

Can Dr. Boyd really claim CLEAR's inpartiality when one of their major sources of income is from an organization with dubious connection to organized labor? Also, can the director of CLEAR be even-handed when setting the priorities of the organization when he himself has such a long history of labor advocacy? Does the University of Hawaii, a public university, feel comfortable spending tax payer's hard-earned money to fund such shady "studies"?

Stay tuned.

The moral case for Social Security reform

Reason Online has a great article up by Jonathan Rauch on how the real motivation behind George W. Bush's plan to reform Social Security is not so much economic, but that of morality. Here's an excerpt, but I recommend reading the entire article:

Conservatives need to frame Social Security reform as a dollars-and-cents issue, but that is not really why they are excited. What they really hope to change is not the American economy but the American psyche.

Conservatives used to speak derisively of liberal social engineering. The attempt to create private Social Security accounts is, so to speak, conservative social counter-engineering. Government should help provide for unforeseeable contingencies: tsunamis, unemployment, open-heart surgery. But if there is one event in all of human life that is wholly foreseeable, it is the advent of old age. Why, then, shouldn't people save for their own retirement, instead of relying on welfare from the government—which is what Social Security, as currently constituted, really is?

Tanner argues that people who own assets behave differently and see their place in society in a different light. Private accounts, he says, would encourage a culture of saving and personal responsibility; they would discourage political class warfare; they may, he argues, improve work habits, and even reduce crime and other social pathologies. Create private Social Security accounts, and millions of low-income Americans will be stockholders and bondholders. Republican political activists look at the way portfolio investors vote—and salivate at the prospect of millions more of them.

The 2004 exit polls suggested, to many conservatives, that "moral values" won the election for Bush. It may seem odd, then, that his boldest post-election priority is not abortion or gay marriage or schools, but Social Security. The key to the paradox is that Social Security reform is not, at bottom, an economic issue with moral overtones. It is a moral issue with economic overtones.

When liberals try to contemplate the morals of a red state voter, I wonder what they imagine. Are they really so fixated in their own hatred of Christians that they build this moral template around their own stereotype? When the Left speaks of those voters who cast their ballot for George W. Bush because of "morals", without fail they will bring up abortion, gay marriage, and the role of Judeo-Christian values in America. However, by mockingly defining the values of these Americans with their own distorted stereotypes, liberals unintentionally miss several other morals that define conservatives.

Work ethic, reliance on Self, and personal responsibility are the moral tones that ring hollow upon the ears of liberals. Principles such as these would never cross the mind of a liberal because they have such a warped view of their own country. To them, an individual can only realize happiness through government. This makes perfect sense when you consider most liberal Democrats have never earned a real living, and only made a name for themselves once they entered government.

How the Democrats painted themselves into this corner is of little concern to me. But seeing how they plan on realligning themselves with the values of most Americans will be interesting. Intellectual sloth has reduced the left's rhetoric to creating characters of their opposition. While its easy for them to create a distasteful image of a Bible thumping demagogue, it would be nearly impossible to do the same of a hard working American who wants nothing more than to be able to support his family without the feds bleeding him dry.

So long as the Democratic party stands for growth of the federal government, they will find themselves increasingly marginalized by an electorate that would rather be left alone.

EU scum...

The Scotsman reports:

Tsunami struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.

Do I even need to comment on why this is disgusting? Hey Europe, quit blackmailing countries to sell your crap, and learn to compete in the open market.

Because I know the French must be behind this, I present the following picture in their honor:

Time magazine poll good news for Bush

I have a feeling the Dems were crossing their fingers that 2005 would be different, and they would finally get some traction in their opposition to the President's plolicies. But judging by this latest poll from Time magazine, this is going to be another tough year for the Left. Time reports:

President Bush's approval rating has risen to 53%, according to the latest TIME poll conducted January 12 and 13. His approval rating is up 4 points from his Dec. 13-14 approval rating of 49%. The President's approval numbers have improved across a variety of issues, including his handling of the economy (51% approve, up from 40% approve in September), his handling of the situation in Iraq (45% approve, up from 41% approval in September), and his handling of the war on terrorism (56% approve, up from 49% in September).

Note the internals of the poll; 11% jump on handling of the economy, and 7% jump concerning the war on terror. Numbers like these, especially on the economy, will hurt the Dem's come the 2006 midterms. How many Senate Democrats swore up and down about the Bush tax cuts being a catalist for disaster? If the voters don't remember now, I'm sure the RNC will do a great job of reminding them. The next big indicators will be Bush's numbers on Iraq following the elections at the end of the month, and polling on his Social Security reforms.

Tic-toc tic-toc... do you hear that, Democrats? It's your countdown to irrelevancy.

Yellow journalism: U.S. media coverage of Iraq borders on treason

Everyday Americans are bombarded with bad news from Iraq. Every morning we wake to new "reports" on how our troops are losing the peace, and the spiraling "quagmire" Iraq has become. But if you talk to the soldiers who have returned from Iraq, or read the dispatches of soldiers who are over there now, you will quickly learn that this is not only a distortion of the situation on the ground, but an outright lie.

I've come accross just such a dispatch from a US commander in Iraq. Lt. Colonel Tim Ryan reports what he sees as media treason in his essay posted on the military blog BlackFive. Here's a teaser:

What if domestic news outlets continually fed American readers headlines like: "Bloody Week on U.S. Highways: Some 700 Killed," or "More Than 900 Americans Die Weekly from Obesity-Related Diseases"? Both of these headlines might be true statistically, but do they really represent accurate pictures of the situations? What if you combined all of the negatives to be found in the state of Texas and used them as an indicator of the quality of life for all Texans? Imagine the headlines: "Anti-law Enforcement Elements Spread Robbery, Rape and Murder through Texas Cities." For all intents and purposes, this statement is true for any day of any year in any state. True -- yes, accurate -- yes, but in context with the greater good taking place -- no! After a year or two of headlines like these, more than a few folks back in Texas and the rest of the U.S. probably would be ready to jump off of a building and end it all. So, imagine being an American in Iraq right now.

I just read yet another distorted and grossly exaggerated story from a major news organization about the "failures" in the war in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a small fraction of the events in Iraq and more often than not, the events they cover are only the bad ones. Many of the journalists making public assessments about the progress of the war in Iraq are unqualified to do so, given their training and experience. The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq. The result is a further erosion of international public support for the United States' efforts there, and a strengthening of the insurgents' resolve and recruiting efforts while weakening our own. Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy.

Since the onset of operations in Iraq, the U.S. media has worked nearly as hard as our enemy to break the will of the American people. This officer gives one of the most damning assesments of media coverage in Iraq, and the toll it has taken on our efforts their. Here's just one more bit of the article:

What about the media's portrayal of the enemy? Why do these ruthless murderers, kidnappers and thieves get a pass when it comes to their actions? What did the media not show or tell us about Margaret Hassoon, the director of C.A.R.E. in Iraq and an Iraqi citizen, who was kidnapped, brutally tortured and left disemboweled in streets of Fallujah? Did anyone in the press show these images over and over to emphasize the moral failings of the enemy as they did with the soldiers at Abu Ghuraib? Did anyone show the world how this enemy had huge stockpiles of weapons in schools and mosques, or how he used these protected places as sanctuaries for planning and fighting in Fallujah and the rest of Iraq? Are people of the world getting the complete story? The answer again is no! What the world got instead were repeated images of a battle-weary Marine who made a quick decision to use lethal force and who now is being tried in the world press. Is this one act really illustrative of the overall action in Fallujah? No, but the Marine video clip was shown an average of four times each hour on just about every major TV news channel for a week. This is how the world views our efforts over here and stories like this without a counter continually serve as propaganda victories for the enemy. Al Jazeera isn't showing the film of the CARE worker, but is showing the clip of the Marine. Earlier this year, the Iraqi government banned Al Jazeera from the country for its inaccurate reporting. Wonder where they get their information now? Well, if you go to the Internet, you'll find a web link from the Al Jazeera home page to CNN's home page. Very interesting.

Please read the rest of Lt. Colonel Ryan's essay here:

Aiding and Abetting the Enemy: the Media in Iraq

CIA report: EU's future bleak

A CIA report has made some very troubling predictions concerning the future of the EU. Unless the EU makes significant changes to it's welfare system, the CIA predicts the Union will break up within 15 years. The report cites Germany as the crux of the problem - with France and Italy getting honorable mention:

[T]he EU’s economic growth rate is dragged down by Germany and its restrictive labour laws. Reforms there - and in France and Italy to lesser extents - remain key to whether the EU as a whole can break out of its "slow-growth pattern".

After pointing to several problems facing the EU, the report goes on to say that the current leadership of Europe is unlikely to make the reforms necesary, and that it will most likely take a major economic crisis to break the current thinking in the EU.

Concerning the growing migrant population in Europe, the report states that EU state must do a better job of accomodating this growing demographic or face even further problems. The report makes specific reference to the growing number of muslims in Europe:

Europe’s Muslim population is set to increase from around 13% today to between 22% and 37% of the population by 2025, potentially triggering tensions.

With regards to NATO, and other post WWII alliances, the CIA is convinced these institutions will also dissolve and US and EU relations continue to erode:

The EU, rather than Nato, will increasingly become the primary institution for Europe, and the role Europeans shape for themselves on the world stage is most likely to be projected through it. Whether the EU will develop an army is an open question.

If this news wasnt bad enough, the report also predicts the econonomies of China and India will surpass Europe in the near future. One of the reasons for this, according to the report, is the increased level of research and development going on in these countries compared to the EU. Also, the EU's dependence on natural gas from an increasingly instable Russia will be another headache for our European cousins.

So what should we make of all this? Nothing. It will be entertaining to sit back and watch the grand liberal experiment that is Europe disintegrate before our very eyes. The Left in the US has also held up Europe as a shining example of their policies in action. Europe is impotent as a military power, has bankrupted itself with its socialist welfare system, and now faces a cultural crisis like no other because of it's myopic immigration policies.

What no one on the left will admit, however, is that it was U.S. might that has shielded Europe from global realities since the end of the Second World War. Now Europe thinks its all grown up, and they want to venture out on their own. But without the United States backing them up, Europe will be incapable of protecting their own economic interests or those of their allies. As a result, Europe will see its roll in global affairs continue to diminish.

The Europeans have found themselves in the unenviable position of having neither a carrot, nor a stick.

More anti-Christian hatred from the Left

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reports on just the latest example of the bias against Christians by leftist college administrators:

Florida’s Indian River Community College (IRCC) is engaging in a campaign of repression against a Christian student group for attempting to show Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" on campus. The college banned the Christian Student Fellowship from showing the film despite the fact that the college has hosted a live performance entitled "F**king for Jesus" that describes simulated sex with "the risen Christ." When the group complained to the college president, administrators pulled group leaders out of class and demanded an apology.

FIRE is an organization that defends students in cases such as the one stated above. The group takes on cases for students representing any ideology, though in most cases it is conservatives and Christians who are under attack. By the way, at what point did the Left decide they wanted to take on the predominant religious group in this country? And they wonder why they can't win national elections anymore.

AcedemicBias, who is also covering the case above, has a video up on their site that documents another case of bias against conservatism on a college campus. The video is in documentary form, and was created by Evan Coyne Maloney from BrainTerminal - another great site. The bias in thise case is on the campus of Cal Poly in California.

The film is titled Brainwashing 101; I highly reccomend viewing it. If your interested, here's the link: Brainwashing 101

Like deja vu, all over again

Fox News reports:

Palestinian militants set off a large truck bomb as gunmen stormed an Israeli base at a vital Gaza crossing Thursday, killing five Israelis and wounding five others in an attack that defied peace efforts by new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Looks like Abbas will be no better at controlling the Palestinian militants than Arafat. When will the opinion leaders in the U.S. face the facts that this region of the world will continue to breed violence as long as "elected" officials try to co-exist with terrorists groups like Hamas. But I suppose it's unavoidable. The Palestinian people, like much of the Middle East, have been so poisoned by the lies of their leaders they have come to respect terrorists murderers more than their "elected" leaders.

To paraphrase Ronaldus Magnus:

Mr. Sharon, build up this wall!

UPDATE:

Looks like the Isrealis are the only realists left on the planet.

Israel is suspending all contacts with the Palestinian Authority until it completes an investigation into Thursday's deadly attack in the Karni crossing where six Israelis were killed, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman announced on Friday evening.

A man of God

The President may have just picked the fight of his life, and I'm not talking about Social Security. In an interview with the Washington Times, the President said the following:

I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord.

Wow! This is a man who knows who is, knows his maker, and is not the least bit afraid to tell the secularists accross this country who he attributes his success to. The Left is going to go nuts over this, and they would be wise to bite their tongues. So far the Democratic party has been able to fake their religious bonafides (Bill Clinton, "Southern Baptist"? - pff!), so the American people, who are mostly a Christian people, have not caught on to the fact that the Democratic party has been attempting to undermine the Christian foundation of our nation.

If the Left lets the cat out of the bag by going after the president for his comments, they will soon regret it. I assume the first charge will be that the president only thinks Christians can be true Americans. But W is used to dealing with this band of Christian bashers and hedged his statements:

I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit. That's what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have or one of the greatest freedoms is the right to worship the way you see fit.

It will be interesting to see what tack the Left takes to attack the president on this. Given the fact their lunatic fringe has taken over, it will certaintly be entertaining. But they will be hard pressed to find a majority of Americans who will follow them in tearing apart Bush on this. Whether or not you believe in God or not, it should still be refreshing to know your president serves a higher authority than himself. I think most Americans would agree.

The jig is up!

Howard Fineman has written an article explaining why the dominance of the MSM has come to an end, and the vicious spiral into irrelevancy has begun:

A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.

Its a great read, and Fineman's entire premise for the story is the fact media bias does in fact exists, it has for awhile, and it has favored the Democrats.

Dick Morris is dreaming

NewsMax has an piece up by Dick Morris where Morris explains the 2008 matchup will be between Hillary and Condi.

Dick Morris, the nation's most prominent political consultant, says the 2008 race is shaping up to be showdown between two of America's most popular women: Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton.

I like Dick Morris, but he is one of these guys who predicts every single political outcome possible so that at some point down the road he will definitely be able to say "See, I told you so". This is one of those times. Not only will Condi never make it through the primary, but Hillary's chances are slim as well. Maybe its just wishful thinking on the part of Morris - God knows he'll be a hot commodity on the cable news shows if its Hillary vs. Anyone.