:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Friday, August 15, 2003 ::

A great piece of analysis by Michael Novak on George W. Bush on National Review Online that does a fine job of contrasting W's reality with common perception in Europe ans elsewhere.

Another difference between the philosophy of "compassion" pursued by the Democrats and that pursued by the Republicans is that, in words President Clinton made famous, Democrats emphasize "feeling your pain," sensitivity, caring intentions. (The left presents itself as a kind of parallel to, or substitute for, religious feelings.) This emphasis on the heart also accounts for the disdain which leftists express for those on the right, whom they regard as either stupid or evil, or both, and decidedly beyond the pale of human decency.

By contrast, the Republicans define compassion in view of results achieved. Good intentions don't count. (The road to hell is paved with them.) They don't much admire sensitive feelings, or delicate expressions of solicitude. "Talking the talk" doesn't count — they think Democrats do altogether too much of that. What counts is results: actually improving the daily lives of the purported recipients of compassion. Europeans may have noticed how often Bush describes himself as a "results-oriented guy."

:: Mark 1:00 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Oh; now this is fabulous! OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

Accepting for the sake of argument that the enemy in Iraq indeed consists of 'mostly Iraqis' (more on this in the next item), they are 'the people' America is in Iraq to liberate only in the sense that the oppressors and the oppressed are of the same nationality. But this reinforces Rice's point, for the same was true in Birmingham in 1963. Jim Crow was a system under which Americans oppressed Americans, just as Baathism was a system under which Iraqis oppressed Iraqis.
The only obvious difference is that in the South, the oppressors and the oppressed were easily identifiable by skin color. Wickham's argument thus amounts to the assertion that because to him Iraqis all look alike, their oppression counts for nothing. What an appalling display of moral idiocy.

:: Mark 2:33 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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This column "OpinionJournal - The Western Front" highlights some very disturbing possibilities.

Federal authorities say Moussaoui has been tied to Flight 93 by a phone number found on a business card carried by one of the terrorists aboard the plane, which went down in Pennsylvania. They claim Moussaoui had called that same number. If prosecutors are right, Moussaoui shouldn't be thought of as the '20th hijacker' and the would-be fifth terrorist on Flight 93. Instead, he may have been one of 25 terrorists who'd planned to crash planes into U.S. targets.

Go read it all.

:: Mark 10:02 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Just in case you thought that YOU were having a bad day!
HoustonChronicle.com - Man sues clinic, doctors after sex organ removed

WICHITA FALLS -- A mechanic is suing a clinic and two doctors, claiming they removed his penis and testicles without consulting him after they mistakenly thought he had cancer.

:: Mark 5:11 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Some more crazy stuff going on...
WorldNetDaily: Iran, Cuba zap U.S. satellites

By successfully jamming a U.S. communications satellite over the Atlantic Ocean, the regimes of Cuba and Iran challenged U.S. dominance of space and the assumptions of free access to satellite communication that makes undisputed U.S. military power possible

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'Interfering with outside transmissions intended for a third country borders on hostile action,' says Johnson. 'A weak response may invite further mischief.' But a 'ham-handed' response, Johnson adds, might give Cuban dictator Fidel Castro a martyr image he craves.

:: Mark 5:08 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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What sort of society would hold this man up as a cultural icon, while diriding the Boy Scouts as insensitive bigots?

Days after announcing his candidacy for California governor, self-described "smut peddler" Larry Flynt staged a peculiar event to rally supporters – a prayer vigil seeking the death of Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

:: Mark 4:57 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Oooooh; This report from Reuters sounds promising

TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea is in talks to export its Taepodong 2 long-range ballistic missile to Iran and to jointly develop nuclear warheads with Tehran, a Japanese newspaper reported on Wednesday.

:: Mark 4:52 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Hans Zeiger has a column up on WorldNetDaily entitled, "Boy Scout zealots at Camp Balboa?" that should be required reading for anyone with interest in the issues surrounding the B.S.A. of late. Please read the whole artile. It is well researched and direct in disclosing the facts in this instance, and in the overall battle for the heart and soul of this nation.

With 'overwhelming and uncontradicted evidence,' Judge Napoleon Jones found that the Boy Scouts are a religious organization and they were given preferential treatment when the City of San Diego first agreed to let the Boy Scouts utilize public land in Balboa Park 88 years ago.
''Belief in God is and always has been central to BSA's principles and purposes,'' Judge Jones wrote. ''Adult leaders are expected to reinforce in Scouts the values of duty to God and reverence.''
Duty to God? Reverence? Those are old-fashioned values. The Boy Scouts must be stuck in the past. It is time for the Boy Scouts to change and allow atheists and homosexuals and girls to join in on camping trips and troop meetings. Thus saith the ACLU.

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There is "overwhelming and uncontradicted evidence" that the ACLU is destroying America, one Boy Scout camp at a time.

Indeed.


Update: WorldNetDaily: Judge rules Scouts 'religious' group

"The fact that they've invested a substantial amount of money in the park is not a justification for them to occupy park land for free," Budd told the Union-Tribune.

Budd said if the Scouts want a public subsidy and free access to public park land, they must do what virtually every other youth organization has done.

"The Girl Scouts, the Campfire Girls, the YMCA, the YWCA – every other youth organization has abandoned exclusive membership policies," he said.

:: Mark 11:55 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Hey!, The Australian PM gets it. Whay can't the Episcopalians?NEWS.com.au | Howard rules out gay marriage (August 5, 2003)

PRIME Minister John Howard has ruled out supporting gay marriages because they were incompatible with an institution designed to ensure 'the survival of the species'.

Read it.

:: Mark 11:43 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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This story points out some good news coming out of Iraq. The integrity of the Iriqi police officer in this event is refresshing and should serve to bolster the confidence of the Iraqi citizenry in a free future.
United Press International: Saddam's gold discovered in truck

A routine Iraqi traffic stop has turned up what may be $90 million in gold bars in this town just over 50 miles south of Baghdad.
While the financial haul is major, U.S. Marines helping to get this town back on its feet say something more valuable has come out of the episode: the notion that Iraqis can begin to trust their government.
just shows you the character and integrity of the people will come up and surprise you,' said Maj. Martin Casado, the operations officer for the 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment of the Marines, 1st Division, which is headquartered here.
'They will definitely surprise you and make you feel like you are here for a reason, and it's a good reason.'

:: Mark 11:40 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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You could find a much less productive use for you time than to read Norman Geras' column in the Opinion Journal as he tries to explain Why did so many on the left march to save Saddam Hussein?

What they align themselves with is a future of prolonged hardship and suffering for the Iraqi people, whether via an actual rather than imagined quagmire, a ruinous civil war, or the return (out of either) of some new and ghastly political tyranny; rather than a rapid stabilization and democratization of the country, promising its inhabitants an early prospect of national normalization. That is caring more to have been right than for a decent outcome for the people of this long-unfortunate country.
Such impulses have displayed themselves very widely across left and liberal opinion in recent months. Why? For some, because what the U.S. government and its allies do, whatever they do, has to be opposed--and opposed however thuggish and benighted the forces which this threatens to put your antiwar critic into close company with. For some, because of an uncontrollable animus towards George W. Bush and his administration. For some, because of a one-eyed perspective on international legality and its relation to issues of international justice and morality.
Whatever the case or the combination, it has produced a calamitous compromise of the core values of socialism, or liberalism or both, on the part of thousands of people who claim attachment to them. You have to go back to the apologias for, and fellow-traveling with, the crimes of Stalinism to find as shameful a moral failure of liberal and left opinion as in the wrongheaded--and too often, in the circumstances, sickeningly smug--opposition to the freeing of the Iraqi people from one of the foulest regimes on the planet.

:: Mark 12:56 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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This is disturbing.Boston.com / Latest News / Northeast / Schools chief fails must-pass test

LAWRENCE, Mass. (AP) Superintendent of Schools Wilfredo T. Laboy, who recently put two dozen teachers on unpaid leave for failing a basic English proficiency test, has himself flunked a required literacy test three times, The Eagle-Tribune reported Sunday.

It is not quite as bad as it seems at first glance; the super's native language is Spanish, but that does not get him off the hook, nor does his failure excuse or in anyway justify the poor performance of the other 24 teachers. I weep for the children of this nation that must face these teachers in school.

:: Mark 12:50 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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We may NEVER hear the end of the Clinton's! NEW RICH $CANDAL
- New York Post Online Edition: seven

Bill Clinton's socialite pal Denise Rich disguised a $2,000 donation to Hillary Rodham Clinton by coercing her record promoter to make the contribution and later reimbursing him, a new $30 million legal suit charges.
The promoter, Jimmy Hester, who filed the federal lawsuit in Manhattan yesterday, is now at the center of the FBI's long-running criminal probe into the circumstances surrounding Clinton's last-minute presidential pardoning of Rich's ex-husband, Marc Rich, The Post has learned.

Update: NY Daily News - World and National Report - Hillary playing it low-key on talk of illegal C-notes

Sen. Hillary Clinton should return a possibly illegal $2,000 campaign contribution made in 1999 by an employee of a top Democratic fund-raiser, a former federal elections official said yesterday.
In a federal lawsuit filed Friday, music manager Jimmy Hester charged that in 1999 his then-boss - wealthy songwriter and fund-raiser Denise Rich - demanded he make an illegal $2,000 campaign contribution to Clinton's Senate campaign. Hester said Rich later reimbursed him.
Representatives for Rich and Clinton (D-N.Y.) declined to comment yesterday.
But Larry Noble, general counsel of the Federal Election Commission from 1987 to 2000, said Clinton should simply give back the money amid the charges of impropriety.
The lawsuit is 'probably a pretty strong indication that [the money] should be returned ... that would raise enough concern,' Noble said.

:: Mark 12:45 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Moseley Braun says it's time for a female U.S. president - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics

Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois yesterday said it is time to elect a woman president to solve the nation's problems.
'Women tend to be oriented to practical solutions and problem solving,' the Democratic presidential candidate said. 'If you want practical solutions that solve multiple problems, turn the job over to a woman. Women deserve a chance to lead.'

I agree. Let's elect Condi Rice in '08.

:: Mark 12:43 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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There is some scary stuff going on out there.U.S. parents say son in Iraq was casualty of chemical weapons - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics

The parents of an American soldier who died in Iraq after contracting a mysterious pneumonialike illness that ravaged his major organs are convinced that their son stumbled across deadly chemical weapons while clearing rubble from one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.

:: Mark 12:41 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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A note about the search for weapons from Instapundit.com:: "

IF THE WEAPONS HAVEN'T BEEN FOUND BY NOW, THEY WERE CLEARLY NEVER THERE -- I don't care what this report says:

Then Glenn says you should read this.

You just have to read it all.

:: Mark 10:00 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq on National Review Online attempts to bring some historical perspective to the "Quagmire" argument.

he forces that win or lose wars are insidious, cumulative, and often hard to discern. Apparently dormant, they suddenly burst forth, and the entire complexion of the struggle without warning is forever changed; or the war itself can even be abruptly ended. We saw that in week three in Iraq: The quagmire suddenly became the cakewalk, leaving exasperated the nitpickers who had hours before predicted weeks of killing and thousands of dead.

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Poor Abraham Lincoln, during the late spring and early summer of 1864! There was talk then of an endless quagmire, of a Copperhead presidency under McClellan with the specter of a brokered armistice. Grant was bogged down in a slugfest in northern Virginia; Sherman's long supply lines were being shredded by Nathan Bedford Forrest and his own sort of Fedayeen.

Read the whole thing

:: Mark 9:53 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Ramesh Ponnuru comments on the controversy surrounding the confirmation debate on the federal appeals-court nomination of William Pryor and claims that, Yes, They’re Anti-Catholic" in reference to "The Democrats and judges."

So Republican rhetoric about the Democrats' having adopted a "religious test for office" is not true. It is true, however, that the Democrats have adopted the next best thing. They have a viewpoint test for office that has the effect of screening out all Catholics faithful to their church's teachings on abortion. The fact that the test screens out a lot of Protestants, too, makes the problem worse, not better. It really is true that faithful Catholics "need not apply" as far as most Democrats are concerned. A Catholic can win their support only by ceasing, on the decisive issue, to be Catholic — by breaking from his church's teaching, as Senator Durbin has done. (It is rather disgraceful for a man who went in six years from supporting the Human Life Amendment to supporting partial-birth abortion to keep carrying on about the extremism of people whose beliefs have been less supple.)

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Is it fair to make a political issue of the impact that a litmus test has on a religious group? Absolutely. In the hypothetical example above, I think it would be entirely reasonable to ask a politician to declare openly that adherents to the ritual-murder religion should not be eligible for certain jobs. That declaration would of course affect the votes of those adherents, and of other citizens who are sympathetic to them. The Democrats are not prepared openly to say that their litmus test excludes Catholics and evangelical Protestants. That's why they will continue to squeal even if Republicans make the argument in the most precise, rhetorically clean way possible. And why Republicans should not flag in doing exactly that.

:: Mark 9:48 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Vincent Carroll points out a bit more media hipocracy in the coverage given to some "peace activist" nuns.OpinionJournal - Taste

Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson--who were sentenced, respectively, to 41 months, 33 months and 30 months--did something that is socially acceptable among many mainstream journalists. In October of last year, they cut through a security fence and poured their own blood in the shape of crosses onto a Minuteman III silo lid. And this was by no means their first run-in with authorities. Their long history of activism included arrests at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs two years before for striking a fighter jet with a hammer and tossing a bottle of their blood on its landing gear.
A Denver Post columnist found such behavior positively angelic. 'The nuns have never hurt anyone,' he wrote. 'They never will. They're sort of like angels. If the whole world adopted their sacrifice and respect for humanity, terrorism and war would cease. So would crime.' Another columnist in the same paper extolled the sisters for living 'a philosophy of nonviolence, simplicity, community, economic justice . . . and environmental sensitivity.'

Uh, excuse me, Colorado press corps, but your bias is showing. Oh, you don't mind? Well fine then. Just don't whine when your objectivity is questioned. Please do not misunderstand me; I strongly support your right to you make your opinions known. Just don't expect me to agree with them, and don't cry when I voice my dissent.

:: Mark 9:30 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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