:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Friday, March 26, 2004 ::

Things that make you go hmmmmmm.

"It's official," Norquist exclaimed in a press release. "Europe is actively participating in the U.S. election and is collaborating with the Kerry campaign."

:: Mark 2:52 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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An interesting set of statistics.

Less than 20 percent of the top 10 movies at the domestic box office in 2001, 2002 and 2003 had excessive or very graphic sex in them, according to Movieguide, the monthly publication of the Christian Film & Television Commission.

Movieguide's ratings, however, showed 63 percent of the top films had either a moral worldview or a Christian worldview.

:: Mark 8:43 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Lileks nails another one.

So if Al Qaeda had failed on 9/11, do you think OBL and the rest of the merry band would be sitting around a table in Kabul holding hearings about who was to blame? I tend to think they would have moved on.

:: Mark 8:32 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Ah ha! So that is what they mean.

There are risks in any decision. But when Presidents fail to act at all, or act with too little conviction, we get a September 11.

This is the real lesson emerging from the 9/11 Commission hearings if you listen above the partisan din. In their eagerness to insist that Mr. Bush should have acted more pre-emptively before 9/11, the critics are rebutting their own case against the President's aggressive antiterror policy ever since. The implication of their critique is that Mr. Bush didn't repudiate the failed strategy of the Clinton years fast enough.

:: Mark 7:56 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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A true hero without the recognition so rightly earned.
Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity - 97.01

Borlaug's mission -- to cause the environment to produce significantly more food -- has come to be seen, at least by some securely affluent commentators, as perhaps better left undone. More food sustains human population growth, which they see as antithetical to the natural world.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

:: Mark 8:51 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Absolutely appalling! From the "Why Doesn't This Surprise Me?" Department

Only 21 percent of administrators and 30 percent of students knew that the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom.

:: Mark 8:46 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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No commentary required here:

A Vietnam veteran who said he remembers John Kerry participating in a 1971 Kansas City meeting at which an assassination plot was discussed says an official with the Kerry presidential campaign called him this month and pressured him to change his story.

:: Mark 5:22 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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As I noted before, I think that Kerry's VVAW past and faulty recollection of the same should be cause for concern.

"I still have no memory of a Kansas City meeting.
"I have this stark memory of the humidity that day [I resigned from VVAW]…. I just remember forever a dark storm brewing, with these huge thunderhead clouds."

But his recollection was that he resigned at the St. Louis meeting. "And every reminder we have since then has put it there, including Nicosia's book," he said.

But the files include a "priority" memorandum dated Nov. 16, 1971 — the day after the VVAW's Kansas City meeting ended — from Hoover to Nixon and other high-ranking administration officials. Quoting a "confidential source," the report said Kerry was there and had resigned from the VVAW for personal reasons.

"It's just weird," Kerry said, when asked about the discrepancy. He attributed his previous assertions to a faulty memory.

:: Mark 4:06 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Keep your eye on the Supreme Court today. If police ask who you are, do you have to say?

Under Nevada law, a citizen must reveal his or her name to a police officer who has reasonable suspicion that the person might be involved in a crime. Even if the suspect is innocent, the mere act of refusing to identify oneself is - itself - a crime.

Analysts say the law creates a legal irony. If the police officer possessed enough evidence to place the suspect under arrest, the suspect would be given a Miranda warning that he or she had the right to remain silent. But if the police officer possessed only reasonable suspicion - not the higher standard of probable cause needed to justify an arrest - a suspect could be arrested and convicted merely for refusing to identify himself.

"Why should a criminal have more rights than an innocent person?" asks Harriet Cummings, a Nevada public defender who is part of the team challenging the law.

:: Mark 10:50 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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So, you say the French are duplicitous cheese eating surrender monkeys?

:: Mark 10:26 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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John Kerry's record on defense apropriations:

Among the systems John Kerry said he wanted to cancel were the B-1 bomber, the Apache helicopter, the Patriot anti-missile system, the Aegis cruiser, the AV-8B Harrier jump jet, the F-15, the F-14 A and D models, the Phoenix air-to-air missile, and the Sparrow air-to-air missile. And those Tomahawk cruise missiles that have become the standoff weapon of choice? Kerry wanted to cut the program in half.

That's what makes the recent charge by John Kerry that troops have had to buy their own body armor so hypocritical. Because if John Kerry had had his way, our troops would have had to buy their own tanks, their own fighter jets, their own missiles, their own helicopters, their own warships, their own...you get the idea. (For the record, according to the Pentagon, all troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have body armor.)

His attack also ignores the fact that funding for additional body armor was contained in the $87 billion bill funding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that John Kerry voted against (after he voted for it, of course).

:: Mark 10:23 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Susan Lindauer enters the history books along side E. Stanley Jones, Harry hopkins and other well-intentioned idiots.

In assessing the damage Lindauer might have done it is worth considering another prewar incident from Roosevelt's administration. Roosevelt's friend, E. Stanley Jones, a well-known Methodist preacher, offered to carry messages back and forth between Roosevelt and a Japanese diplomat, Hidenari Terasaki. Terasaki implored Roosevelt to appeal for peace directly to the emperor. He also begged Roosevelt not to mention his name owing to the risks Terasaki ran by his secret peacemaking correspondence.

Roosevelt assured Jones that Terasaki's secret was safe, and the next day he discussed with his Cabinet the idea of an appeal to the emperor. The telegram was never sent, but Roosevelt took the message to mean the Japanese were disorganized and "running around like wet hens." That was on December 2, 1941.

:: Mark 10:17 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Heh, as Instapudit is wont to say...

:: Mark 10:10 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Does this report of John F. Kerry's relationship with the infamous 'Gainesville 8' bother you?

Scott Camil, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, presented to the group, including Kerry, a plot to assassinate conservative congressmen at a November 1971 meeting.

The Kerry campaign denies the senator and presidential candidate was present at the meeting, saying he quit the organization prior to the heated session in Kansas City, Nov. 12-15, 1971.

However, Randy Barnes of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, disputes that account. Barnes participated in the meeting and he says Kerry, then 27, was at the meeting, voted against the plot and then resigned from the organization. According to a New York Sun report, another Vietnam vet who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, agreed that Kerry was there.

:: Mark 9:02 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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More insanity on our nation's university campuses as two student senators at Western Oregon University try to ban student-sponsored blood drives on the school’s campus because they say questions associated with the donor screening process are discriminatory against gays.

“By continuing to allow the Red Cross on our campus, the university is telling all the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students that we don’t care about you,” said Bates.

:: Mark 1:15 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Dick Cheney said it.

We must support those around the world who are taking risks to advance freedom, justice, and democracy, just as President Reagan did. American policy must be clear and consistent in its purposes. And American leaders--above all, the commander in chief--must be confident in our nation's cause, and unwavering until the danger to our people is fully and finally removed.

And I agree.

:: Mark 9:01 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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The outcome of the recent Spanish elections is somewhat of a disapointment to me. Many of my spanish friends disagree, but only time will tell if they have made a wise decision. I side with many, including the editors of the Wall Street Journal, who believe that Al Qaeda and other groups with similar aims and tactics will interpret the results as a victory of sorts. This is likely to enbolden them; make recruiting easier, and bring sorrow and death to many more innocents. I pray that I am wrong.

So, in their wisdom, Spanish voters ousted the ruling Popular Party on Sunday and elected the Socialists. Only three days after 10 bombs killed 200 in Madrid, this exercise in free choice shows the difference between terror and democracy.

But there's also no denying that the world's terrorists will take away a different, and more dangerous, lesson from the Spanish vote: That by murdering innocents they were able to topple one of the pillars of the Western anti-terror alliance. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party, which brought prosperity in eight years of rule and forged a strong bond with the U.S., had seemed headed for victory before Thursday's attacks.

We aren't among those who think the Spanish have repudiated everything Mr. Aznar stood for. A switch of only a few percentage points determined the outcome, and in the wake of Thursday's violence a public outpouring in favor of saying "enough!" is perhaps understandable. A similar wave of fear swept the U.S. after September 11--until it could be tempered by leadership and shaped into a new national resolve.

The Socialists were thus able to exploit the bombings by arguing that somehow they were caused by Mr. Aznar's alliance with America. "Thank You Aznar for al Qaeda Terror," read a banner at a rally in Barcelona. The Socialists were helped by the tactical mistake of the Aznar government in insisting that the bombers had been from the Basque ETA, even as evidence built that Islamists linked to al Qaeda may have been responsible. The Socialists cynically cried "coverup" without any evidence, but the charge played amid Spanish grief.

:: Mark 10:11 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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John Kerry on John Kerry.
...I refuse ever to accept the notion that anything I've suggested with respect to Iraq was nuanced. It was clear. It was precise. . . ."

The vote is the vote. I voted to authorize. It was the right vote, and the reason I mentioned the threat is that we gave the--we had to give life to the threat. If there wasn't a legitimate threat, Saddam Hussein was not going to allow inspectors in. Now, let me make two points if I may. Ed [Gordon] questioned my answer. The reason I can't tell you to a certainty whether the president misled us is because I don't have any clue what he really knew about it, or whether he was just reading what was put in front of him. And I have no knowledge whether or not this president was in depth--I just don't know that. And that's an honest answer, and there are serious suspicions about the level to which this president really was involved in asking the questions that he should've.

With respect to the question of, you know, the vote--let's remember where we were. If there hadn't been a vote, we would never have had inspectors. And if we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes, and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat. So I think we did the right thing. I'm convinced we did.

:: Mark 8:33 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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The Marmot's (Final) Hole: Defectors tell of cannibalism, lost families, misused ash trees

:: Mark 9:59 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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It's your call. Decide by November.WorldNetDaily: Kerry would abandon terror war

The Democratic Party's presidential front-runner, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has pledged that if elected he will abandon the president's war on terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes and apologize for three-and-one-half years of mistakes by the Bush administration.

:: Mark 4:55 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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