politics
I think Congress has better things to do
Let's see: renewing the Patriot Act, the Senate needing to confirm Bush's judicial nominees, as well as a Supreme Court nominee, et cetera, et cetera. So what do they turn their attention to? Why, the Bowl Championship Series, of course. Pay attention, because this is likely one of the few political issues Lawson and I will agree on: Representative Barton, you're wasting your time, your colleagues' time, the time of BCS board members, and taxpayer dollars. Congress has no business sticking its nose in to the BCS mess. I wouldn't go as far as Barton in saying the BCS is "deeply flawed," though it has made some whoppers in the past few years: picking Oklahoma over USC to face LSU in 2003, and picking Oklahoma over Auburn to face USC in 2004 immediately spring to mind. The solution to the problems of the BCS is not a Congressional investigation. Rather, the football bigwigs at the NCAA need to get together with the various bowl organizers and sponsors and develop a playoff system for Division I-A football where the championship game will be rotated among the bigger bowls. As the ESPN article notes, there's a lot of money in the bowl games, particularly the BCS bowls, and a playoff system would theoretically kill off some of those dollars. I don't believe that would happen; look at March Madness with NCAA Division I-A basketball. Nevertheless, the overriding issue is money. If it wasn't, then the cadets and midshipmen wouldn't be crammed into the corners of the stadium for the annual Army-Navy game, but would be seated, out of respect, directly behind their teams' benches. (We wouldn't see that awful swoosh logo on those classically minimalist uniforms, either.) Until the NCAA and the bowls figure out a way to not lose money, we won't see the much-needed playoff system--for the only sport in Division I-A without a playoff system--for college football, and we will continue to have controversy over whom should play for the championship, and which team is truly number one.
Error and trust
Jeff points to Lorie Byrd's recent column, and correctly notes how voters should want their elected officials to err: on the side of caution. What really stood out for me when I was reading Lorie's piece, was this:
[I]t must be pointed out that Democrats are not to be trusted with the nation’s security. They have shown that not only will they endlessly debate until it is possibly too late but that after a military action has been initiated, in the face of difficulties and waning public support, many will back out and abandon the mission and the troops. The approach of the Democrats to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein as outlined in all of the intelligence reports available prior to the war in Iraq stands in stark contrast to that of the Bush administration.
Don't mind us, we're just voting this way to get re-elected
Apparently Brownstein and Vaughn could not find one elected Democrat willing to defend the 2002 vote as right at the time and right in retrospect, which tells us a great deal about the Democrats and national security -- primarily that they ought not to be allowed anywhere close to its control. [Emphasis added. --R]
Determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
Happily for Mr Zarqawi, no matter how desperate the head-hackers get, the Western defeatists can always top them. A Democrat Congressman, Jack Murtha, has called for immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. He's a Vietnam veteran, so naturally the media are insisting that his views warrant special deference, military experience in a war America lost being the only military experience the Democrats and the press value these days. Hence, the demand for the President to come up with an "exit strategy".
In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.
Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.
But there is no media bias, part 7
You can always count on the press to put a gloomy tone on bright economic news.
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Are four-year highs really modest? Here's hoping the rest of the Christmas shopping season is marked by such "black clouds," "modest gains," "reluctance," and "challenge."
Yeah, some more about those oil company profits
But profits can't be judged by dollar amounts alone. What counts is the percentage of revenues those profits represent. "Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge," Exxon CEO Lee Raymond tried, probably in vain, to explain during last week's big Senate hearing on oil company profits. Exxon's profits last quarter amounted to 9.8 cents for every dollar of sales. Is that obscene? Well, it was more profitable than Shell (which netted 7.8 cents of each dollar of revenue) or Chevron (6.6 cents) or BP (4.6 cents). But compared to Coca-Cola (21.2 cents), Bank of America (28.3 cents), or Microsoft (33.2 cents), it was nothing to write home about. Everyone is complaining about the price they're paying at the pump, yet no one seems bothered that a can of Coke that used to cost 35 cents has now doubled in price, or that they don't see any dividends returned on that free checking account from BoA, or why the cost of Office isn't $99 instead of $299. I'm not begrudging Coca-Cola, Bank of America, or Microsoft their profits any more than I begrudge the oil companies theirs. The market is clearly bearing what the market will bear in each of the industries the above companies find themselves. Do you want Microsoft Office to cost under a hundred bucks? Then stop buying Microsoft Office. Use one of the scores of alternative word processors available. Well, if you're using a Macintosh, any way. Microsoft seems to have strangled word processor development for Windows. But you see my point. When there's less demand, companies are forced to reduce prices. Gas prices haven't gone down, because Americans aren't buying less gas in significantly high numbers to warrant bringing the prices down dramatically. It's called free enterprise, last time I checked. Smacking oil bosses around may be good politics, but the unglamorous fact is that Big Oil's earnings, 7.7 percent of income in the second quarter of 2005, is lower than the overall US corporate average of 7.9 percent. The oil industry is more profitable than some (automobiles, media, utilities), but it can only envy the profits earned by semiconductors (14.6 percent), pharmaceuticals (18.6 percent), or banks (19.6 percent). Can you just see the CEOs of Intel, AMD, Motorola, and IBM being dragged before Congress to explain why they're making so much money? Ridiculous. The kicker, though, is this: Government revenue from gasoline taxes alone has exceeded oil industry profits in 22 of the past 25 years. Does the road work, including on roads which appear to need no work, ever stop where you live? Perhaps instead of gouging consumers with high gasoline taxes, state and local governments should examine their budgets more carefully. Rather than begin "improvement" projects on roads which are perfectly fine, under the guise of the "use it or lose it" excuse, perhaps state and local governments could channel those gas tax revenues in to paying off debt. Should there be no debt, then why not cut the tax? I suppose that would be too easy.
The MRC needs to hire Jeff
The tin-foil-hat crowd got one thing right after all: The American people have been systematically lied to since 9/11. Not by the President, but by the press.
Deeply irresponsible is an understatement
As usual, Jeff says it better than I was thinking:
It’s as if we’ve got a country full of people who are walking around under the impression that the moon is made of green cheese, repeating it to each other, going on television talk shows to discuss the green cheese issue, publishing lengthy editorials in prominent newspapers about the implications of new revelations about lunar green cheese. It’s positively baffling.
But there is no media bias, part 6
Federalist Patriot 05-44 Digest:
The Big Three nightly newscasts have become nothing more than anti-war activists with a national platform. The Media Research Center recently released a review of over 1,300 news stories on Iraq from January through September. Among their findings was the following: 61 percent of the stories were negative or pessimistic, while only 15 percent were positive. The gap became even worse in August and September with negative stories nearing 75 percent; positive stories at seven percent. Stories about heroic actions by the troops were outnumbered eight to one by stories of abuse or other misconduct. Two of every five news stories covered bombings, kidnappings and other mayhem. Election stories also trended negative, as if things truly were better under Saddam Hussein. We think most Patriot readers will agree--the words that come to mind are "aiding and abetting."
Inquiring minds want to know
Please explain to me how our children have had no school yesterday and today so that the Teachers Unions can go out and organize for Democratic candidates -- but the schools will be open on Friday when the federal Government and most offices will be closed to commemorate our nation's war heroes? This must be an East Coast (West, too?) thing, or perhaps confined to Shirley's home state (Virginia?). The kids were in school yesterday and are today in DFW.
No such thing
Memo to Brendan Miniter: Marines don't like being called "former Marines." "Once a Marine, always a Marine" is how they view it. Having known a few Marines in my time, perhaps "retired Marine" would be a better term in the future.
Yeah, about those oil company profits
So, Exxon Mobil broke corporate records last week, posting a $9 billion profit on $100 billion in revenue in the third quarter. Right on cue, Democrats demanded that Washington confiscate some of those profits. Are they predictable or what?
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Want to know who is making a bigger windfall than oil companies are making from the prices paid by the poor gasoline consumer? It’s good old Uncle Sam and his 51 little brothers.
Refining costs and profits combined make up about 15 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Department. State and local taxes make up almost double that, about 27 percent. (New Hampshire’s 18 cents per gallon fuel tax accounted for 7.2 percent of last week’s average gas price of $2.49 a gallon.)
State and local gas tax collections exceed oil industry profits by a large margin, according to a Tax Foundation study released last week. Since 1977, consumers have paid $1.34 trillion in gas taxes — more than twice the profits of all major U.S. oil companies combined during that same period. Last year, state and federal gas taxes took in $58.4 billion. Major U.S. oil company profits last year totaled $42.6 billion.
Want to make an immediate dent in gas prices? Cut gas taxes. But of course cutting the fat from local, state, and federal bureaucracies isn't the answer. It's confiscation of private industry profits! [Emphasis added. --R]
Lying about the war non-lie
Harry Reid pulled the Senate into closed session Tuesday, claiming that "The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq." But the Minority Leader's statement was as demonstrably false as his stunt was transparently political.
What Mr. Reid's pose is "really all about" is the emergence of the Clare Boothe Luce Democrats. We're referring to the 20th-century playwright, and wife of Time magazine founder Henry Luce, who was most famous for declaring that Franklin D. Roosevelt had "lied us into war" with the Nazis and Tojo. So intense was the hatred of FDR among some Republicans that they held fast to this slander for years, with many taking their paranoia to their graves.
We are now seeing the spectacle of Bush-hating Democrats adopting a similar slander against the current President regarding the Iraq War. The indictment by Patrick Fitzgerald of Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis Libby has become their latest opening to promote this fiction, notwithstanding the mountains of contrary evidence. Excellent article, with point-by-point facts which rebuff the "Bush lied" crowd, as well as exposing the outright hypocrisy of leading Democrats.
Join the Axis of Alitists!
Okay, so if I can't have Janice Rogers Brown, then Sam Alito is a fine choice. The son of an immigrant and a public school teacher is already under fire from the Dems and radical left --notice how it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the two--according to Hugh.
War with Jihadistan update
The Federalist Patriot, 05-43 Digest:
Al-Qa'ida murdered almost 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil in about an hour back in 2001--almost all of them civilians. The reason no additional American civilians have died in attacks on our homeland is that 150,000 uniformed American Patriots have formed a formidable front on al-Qa'ida's turf, a very inhospitable region of the world. These Patriots are a proud breed--Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen--and they have chosen to stand in harm's way in order to defend their families, their friends, their country.
In doing so, more than 2,000 of these brave souls have been killed.
This week, every mass media outlet took a break from their "CIA leak" promotion to run headlines and lead stories about the Iraq death toll reaching 2,000 (1,567 killed in action since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 19 March 2003)--as if the death of American Patriot number 1,999 was somehow less important. Typical was this headline from The New York Times: "2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, A Grim Mark." But not a whisper in the Leftmedia about the 3,870 Iraqi security forces killed in the last six months alone, in defense of their emerging democracy.
For The Patriot, every death of a member of our Armed Forces is equally devastating, and we mourn each one. Not a day passes without our prayers for both those standing in harm's way, and their families.
The "dezinformatsia" machines promote this "milestone" for one reason only--to foment additional dissent and rally support against the Bush administration's national-security strategy, which is to protect our homeland by taking the battle with Jihadis to their turf. In doing so, the Leftmedia has reduced the sacrifice of these young Patriots to nothing more than political fodder for their appeasement agenda.
On the night of 11 September 2001, President Bush told the nation, "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." He set in motion pre-emptive operations, which would become the "Bush Doctrine." Our analysts continue to support the doctrine of pre-emption firmly as the best measured response to the Jihadi threat around the world.
As for those still "Stuck on Stupid", insisting that there were no WMD found in Iraq, here's a partial list of what didn't make it out of Iraq before the invasion: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, 1,700 gallons of chemical-weapon agents, chemical warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin, thousands of radioactive materials in powdered form designed for dispersal over population centers, artillery projectiles loaded with binary chemical agents, etc.
As The Patriot noted in October, 2002, our well-placed sources in the region and intelligence sources with the NSA and NRO estimated that the UN Security Council's foot-dragging provided an ample window for Saddam to export some or all of his deadliest WMD materials and components. At that time, we reported that Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover Iraq's WMD stores, noting, "Our sources estimate that Iraq has shipped some or all of its biological stockpiles and nuclear WMD components through Syria to southern Lebanon's heavily fortified Bekaa Valley."
In December of 2002, our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq's biological and nuclear WMD material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug on the UN's ruse.
To that end, we are deeply indebted to our Patriot Armed Forces, who have prevented al-Qa'ida or some other Jihadi terrorist cell from striking a U.S. urban center with WMD. Make no mistake--Islamofascists want to bring America to ruin, and they will use any means at their disposal to do so. Mr. President, stay the course. [Emphasis added. --R]
It's nominating time...again...
Harriet's out. There will be speculation on whether she acted one hundred percent unilaterally, or if this is just the way the administration is spinning it. It doesn't really matter. Now the contemplation begins on who the President will put forth as the replacement for Justice O'Connor. A common refrain from the Left has been that a woman should be nominated, to replace a woman. I have no problem with that. Janice Rogers Brown is my personal pick. A woman, and a minority woman at that. The Left should be quite happy with that, no? Of course not, because Justice Brown is conservative, and based upon her record, mostly an originalist when it comes to constitutional matters. Obviously, this means she is radically out of the mainstream, and not fit for the robes of a Supreme. It would be fun just to watch the Democrats and their radical left backers fall all over themselves trying to figure out how to disparage a black woman being elevated to the highest court in the land.
The Palestinian descent in to barbarism
Many explanations have been given to account for the almost matchless barbarism into which Palestinian society has descended in recent years. One is the effect of Israeli occupation and all that has, in recent years, gone with it: the checkpoints, the closures, the petty harassments, the targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. I witnessed much of this personally when I lived in Israel, and there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.
Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.
In other words, while Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn't hold.
I hope we don't reap what we're sowing
When one pharmaceutical company offered to sell a new pneumococcal vaccine to the government for $58 a dose, the Centers for Disease Control demanded a $10-a-dose discount. Politicians want companies to take all the risk of developing new vaccines, but they don't want the companies to make any money from taking those risks. Then the politicians profess surprise and dismay that there's a vaccine shortage.
We'll accept help from everyone, except...
[I]t was not until Oct. 14, six days after Israel had communicated its willingness to help the earthquake victims "in any way possible," that it finally received a formal response. Yes, aid from Israel would be welcome, provided it was laundered through a third party. "We have established the president's relief fund, and everyone is free to contribute to it," a government spokeswoman coolly acknowledged. "If Israel was to contribute -- that's fine, we would accept it." Israel could help save Pakistani lives, in other words, as long as it wasn't too public about doing so. There mustn't be any embarrassing images of planes with Israeli markings offloading relief supplies at Islamabad's airport.
Those media b-st-rds
If the president were to call for two plus two to equal four, the media would report that such a proposal had the support of only 42 percent of likely voters, and a slippage of even conservative support from 87 percent to 63 percent. Perhaps on the jump page, in the 38th inch of the story in the New York Times, they might get around to quoting a professor of mathematics from MIT to the effect that, in fact, the president was right that two plus two still equals four. But for television and radio break news, the story would end at the polling result, which is bad news for the president.
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One doesn't mind, so much, mainstream journalists being b-st-rds. It's being such dumb b-st-rds that one finds so irksome.