This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Politics

  • Red Ken and Redder Hugo

    Hugo Chavez paying for the heating oil of the poor in South Bronx Joe Kennedy shilling for him and now he’s underwriting the bus passes of poor Londoners with Red Ken playing backup. The Wall Street Journal’s Review and Outlook piece today entitled “Brits on Venezuelan Dole“;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has found a British business partner in the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Mr. Chávez is doling out $32 million, which is supposed to allow a 50% cut in bus fares for low-income Londoners. In return, Transport for London will go to Caracas to tutor locals on fixing traffic jams.

    Of course the Journal’s editors point out that Britain’s per capita GDP is $31,000 compared to venezuela’s $6000, but they stop short of pointing out that simple agricultural products are missing from the shelves of Caracas’ markets – things like milk, eggs and rice.

    But Red Ken and Redder Hugo have cut a completely useless deal – purely for the sake of making themselves look better than they really are. And of course, who’s fault is it that poor Londoners need someone to supplement their bus fares (someone aside from Red Ken, their mayor)? I’ll give two guesses;

    “Frankly, I’d rather be getting into bed with [Mr. Chávez] than, as the British government has been, getting into bed with George W. Bush.”

    Any excuse, I guess. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Congress has given Chavez initial approval for his reforms – no big surprise there, huh?

    After about six hours of debate, National Assembly president Cilia Flores said Mr. Chávez’s proposed changes to the constitution, including the lifting of presidential term limits, received “majority approval.” Ms. Flores did not say how many of the 167 lawmakers voted in favor of the reforms, saying only that they were approved with overwhelming support. Final approval is expected within two or three months, and the changes would have to be approved by voters in a referendum. The National Assembly has been solidly pro-Chávez since the opposition boycotted a 2005 vote and had been expected to sign off on the changes proposed by Mr. Chávez in Tuesday’s first reading. The reforms, if approved, would extend presidential terms from six to seven years and allow Mr. Chávez to run again in 2013.

    So where are the US Democrats on Chavez and his Constitutional reforms? So far, Chavez has acted exactly like the Bush caracature the Democrats used to threatened voters in the last two presidential elections. It would seem to me that if the “human rights” Democrats were truly all about human rights, they’d be up in arms about a self-proclaimed adversary stealing rights from his people, without a peep from the legislature almost on a daily basis. I’ll tell you why they don’t have anything to say about it – because Chavez is doing exactly what US Democrats want to do. They want to shut down the broadcast opposition, they want to rule by decree, they want to rewrite the Constitution in their favor. They don’t oppose Chavez, they envy him. And maybe they’ll even move the clocks ahead 1/2 hour like Chavez wants according to the New York Times;

    Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chávez said clocks would be moved forward by half an hour at the start of 2008. He announced the change on his Sunday television program, accompanied by his highest-ranking science adviser, Héctor Navarro, the minister of science and technology. “This is about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight,” Mr. Navarro said in comments reported by Venezuela’s official news agency. Mr. Chávez said he was “certain” that the time change, which would be accompanied by a move to a six-hour workday, would be accepted.

    He sounds more like the new revolutionary leader of Woody Allen’s movie “Bananas” as quoted by Sweetness and Light.

  • Remember Stalin

    In her article “Reins on Rememberance” Marsha Lipman in the today’s Washington Post laments Russia’s tendancy to forget it’s own bloody history during the Stalin purges of the late 1930s;

    This month marks 70 years since the drastic surge of Stalin’s terror: In 1937 the Kremlin butcher scrapped even the faintest appearance of court procedures. The infamous “troika trials” — a system of justice by rubber-stamped death sentences — killed more than 436,000 in one year. The anniversary observances were intended to honor the victims. But the ceremony held earlier this month at Butovo, the site of mass killings on the outskirts of Moscow, revealed the government’s desire to keep the public’s mind off reflections about terror and its perpetrators.

    The Russian Orthodox Church oversaw the ceremony, a religious service focused on the martyrdom of the executed, not on the crimes or who committed them. In an interview about three years ago, the superior of the Butovo church said he thought it best not to differentiate between those who were shot and those who shot them: “One shouldn’t search for who was right and who was wrong.”

     

    Well, that might be convenient for the Russians today, but publicizing who was “wrong” could save another million-or-so lives in the near future.

    There are still purges occuring throughout the world – most notably, in Iran, but the Serb government was just purging it’s territory of Kosovars just a scant few years ago. The Rwandans were ridding themselves of each other less than ten years ago. Zimbabwe is busy freeing themselves from starvation by killing farmers and their families.

    I used to read voraciously about the Stalinist years since I was a teenager when Alexander Solzhenitsyn finally published his books in the west. My favorite has to be “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” which described in great detail a single day as a prisoner in the gulags – the reader can’t help but feel relief at the conclusion of the book/day. Another was Robert Conquest’s “Harvest of Sorrow” and perhaps a fitting appendix to the era was Martin Ami’s “Koba the Dread”.

    I guess my point is that, although it’s probably to be expected that a Church would urge people to forgive and forget, to forego judging our antecedents – because afterall, it’s up to God to make final judgements. But in the meantime, all of us mortals should remember what misjudgements of the past brought to the world, and how close to the brink of total anhilation we came all in the name of a single man

  • Expand the war to end the war

    Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Examiner fuels the anti-Iran debate with more evidence that the Quds Force which President Bush recently designated as a terrorist organization is operating in Iraq;

    One analyst estimates that more than 300 members of al Quds Force, the terrorist arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, are operating in southern Iraq. The Revolutionary Guards answer directly to Tehran’s ruling mullahs.

    The intelligence about al Quds comes from an Iranian resistance group, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney told The Examiner.

    “They have penetrated into the Tehran system,” McInerney said of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK). “Everything they have put out has always check out.” He said that despite new U.S.-Iran talks in Baghdad, Quds operations inside Iraq are increasing, not decreasing.

    Army Maj. Rick Lynch, who oversees U.S. troops in an area south of Baghdad, told reporters on Sunday he believes 50 Quds operatives alone are operating in his sector.

    While al Qaeda’s main weapon is the vehicle-borne suicide bomber targeted at civilians, Quds Force specializes in building huge roadside bombs (explosively formed projectiles) primarily designed to kill American troops.

    “The damage to U.S. forces right now is greater from Quds than from al Qaeda,” McInerney said.

    We’ve known since the inception of this war against terror that Iran has been behind every move that’s been made against us. Some Taliban and al Qaeda leaders escaped from Afghanistan into Iran, there is supported evidence that Hussein moved some of his weaponry to Syria and Iran before the US bombs fell. He famously flew his jets to Iran to protect his air force before the Gulf War, it stands to reason he sent more stuff before this war.

    Now we have evidence (but really who needs evidence in war – I ask you) that Iran is physically operating against our interests and against democratic Iraqi interests. So what do we do? Shrug our shoulders and bow to the wishes of the US anti-war crowd? Or do we light up the Iraqi borders between Syria and Iran?

    In the realm of diplomacy, the Europeans, despite the fact that they support sanctions against Iran for their nuclear program, won’t participate out of pure greed. From the Washington Times’ David Sands;

    Among them: EU members Germany and Austria, as well as India, which just signed a major nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States that Mr. Burns had a central role in negotiating, and Turkey.

    Mr. Burns said the United States had not insisted on a “quid pro quo” with India to give up its lucrative oil trade or pipeline projects with Iran. But he said the United States was forcefully telling India and Iran’s other trading partners that Tehran does not represent a good investment or credit risk with a package of U.N. sanctions hanging over its economy.

    “If countries around the world want diplomacy to be the way to resolve problems with Iran, then there has to be a harder-edged diplomacy. There has to be some teeth,” he said.

    And at home, the political wing of radical Islamists (otherwise known as the US Congress) is busy undermining the democratically-elected government of Iraq, says the Washington Post;

    Declaring the government of Iraq “non-functional,” the influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said yesterday that Iraq’s parliament should oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his cabinet if they are unable to forge a political compromise with rival factions in a matter of days.

    “I hope the parliament will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government,” Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said after a three-day trip to Iraq and Jordan.

    I guess it’s much easier to criticize our allies than it is to criticize the enemy. Why doesn’t Levin grow a pair of cojones and announce that Ahmadinijahd is “non-functional”?

    The same goes for the inhuman way that prisoners are treated in Iran. Nearly every week we’re subjected to the lies and scare-mongering of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but what about the treatment of Iranians by their own government?

    My new friend, Kamangir, an Iranian student who toils from the safety of Canada to translate Iranian news sources, report some new tragedy nearly every day. Yesterday, he wrote;

    Mahmoud Moghimi and the brothers Mohammad and Davood Sharei were executed in Saveh, Iran,  despite the controversy surrounding their case. The execution was announced for Monday, but was carried out a day earlier, disrupting their lawyer’s efforts in proceeding with legal actions to stop it. Jahani, the defense lawyer of the executed individuals stated “if they had not executed them before noon, we had gotten the cancellation verdict.

    Two weeks ago, Kamangir translated;

    “The executed individuals have been tortured beforehand”, stated Shiva Nazar Ahari, a human rights’ activist, to Rooz.

    The interview was carried out right before the execution of fifteen individuals, a short while ago. Shiva says “They were arrested more than eighty days ago and fifteen of them are to be executed today. The families do not know if their sons are among the ones to be executed. Whenever they talk about execution, all the parents get excited. To my understanding, the Judiciary is intentionally doing this to hurt the families. That is while according to the Human Rights Law, the detainee’s family must be informed of their whereabouts and health immediately.” 

    Yet, we get to hear the Left whine about our “mistreatment” of the killers and thugs in Guantanamo. I guess because it’s so much easier to cricize someone when you know they won’t retaliate – sissies.

    Where is the NY Times and the Washington Post on these REAL atrocities? Well, when the Islamists finally get themselves a nuclear weapon, I guess all of the pain and suffering in the world will end, won’t it?

  • Anything Chavez can do, Bush can do better

    With a hat tip to Ace of Spades and Hot Air, apparently the really, really whacko people out there are accusing Republicans of planning to install President Bush as president for Life. The evidence? This entitled Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy;

    President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

    I guess it takes all kinds to make a world.

    Just to be clear, in case you don’t know, I don’t endorse changing the Constitution – except repealing the 17th Amendment - so I certainly don’t think that we should change it for President Bush. I doubt President Bush would endorse it either.

  • Lieberman; al Qaeda’s travel agent

    Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a commentary by Joe Lieberman entitiled Al Qaeda’s Travel Agent – it gives me hope that someone, anyone from the Senate recognizes Syria as a threat to the troops in Iraq – instead of someone to whom we can play nice;

    Recently declassified American intelligence reveals just how much al Qaeda in Iraq is dependent for its survival on the support it receives from the broader, global al Qaeda network, and how most of that support flows into Iraq through one country — Syria. Al Qaeda in Iraq is sustained by a transnational network of facilitators and human smugglers, who replenish its supply of suicide bombers — approximately 60 to 80 Islamist extremists, recruited every month from across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and sent to meet their al Qaeda handlers in Syria, from where they are taken to Iraq to blow themselves up to kill countless others.

    Although small in number, these foreign fighters are a vital strategic asset to al Qaeda in Iraq, providing it with the essential human ammunition it needs to conduct high-visibility, mass-casualty suicide bombings, such as we saw last week in northern Iraq. In fact, the U.S. military estimates that between 80% and 90% of suicide attacks in Iraq are perpetrated by foreign fighters, making them the deadliest weapon in al Qaeda’s war arsenal. Without them, al Qaeda in Iraq would be critically, perhaps even fatally, weakened.

    That is why we now must focus on disrupting this flow of suicide bombers — and that means focusing on Syria, through which up to 80% of the Iraq-bound extremists transit.

    Even though this old news to anyone has read an article on the Syria-Iran connection, it’s just heartening to hear a politician, any politician involve Syria in a discussion of security in Iraq. Lieberman goes on to point out that, if Syria, particularly Assad was interested in securing the area, it wouldn’t be that hard – if he wanted to, that is;

    Before al Qaeda’s foreign fighters can make their way across the Syrian border into Iraq, however, they must first reach Syria — and the overwhelming majority does so, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, by flying into Damascus International Airport, making the airport the central hub of al Qaeda travel in the Middle East, and the most vulnerable chokepoint in al Qaeda’s war against Iraq and the U.S. in Iraq.

    Syrian President Bashar al Assad cannot seriously claim that he is incapable of exercising effective control over the main airport in his capital city. Syria is a police state, with sprawling domestic intelligence and security services. The notion that al Qaeda recruits are slipping into and through the Damascus airport unbeknownst to the local Mukhabarat is totally unbelievable.

    I’ve always said that it’s ridiculous to expect that Syria couldn’t stop the influx of fighters into Iraq – which is essentially what Pelosi’s trip to make kissy-face Assad last Spring told the world. I wonder if she asked him to tighten airport security (since she has the same access to intelligence that Lieberman has) while she was passing along false peace messages.

    But Lieberman admitting this in public is fairly unique, since no one else in the Senate is brave enough to even mention Syria – in any discussion. Lieberman doesn’t stop there, though. He goes on to outline a course of action for the Senate and the Administration;

    When Congress reconvenes next month, we should set aside whatever differences divide us on Iraq and send a clear and unambiguous message to the Syrian regime, as we did last month to the Iranian regime, that the transit of al Qaeda suicide bombers through Syria on their way to Iraq is completely unacceptable, and it must stop.

    We in the U.S. government should also begin developing a range of options to consider taking against Damascus International, unless the Syrian government takes appropriate action, and soon.

    Imagine that! Barack Obama should take notes – Lieberman is actually threatening our enemies instead of threatening our allies. This could be the dawning of a whole new age.

    Proving the Left still doesn’t get the whole idea of this war, The Carpetbagger Report claims that Lieberman wants to start a “third war” with Syria. Hey, fellas, it’s all the same war. Just like Nixon’s excursions into Cambodia wasn’t opening up a “new front” – it was all a part of fighting the North Vietnamese. This is all part of defeating tyranny and radical Islam in the Middle East.

    And Think Progress’ commenters’ antisemitism is showing.

  • Becoming a third world nation

    Wall Street Journal’s Ian Vasquez writes an excellent article about Peru and their failing infrastructure today. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons while I was reading it to our own system and it’s failures;

    The water monopoly — which loses some 40% of its water through leaky pipes or in ways otherwise unaccounted for — is only one of Peru’s monuments to government incompetence. Peruvians were reminded of another last month when the communist-led teacher’s union went on strike, paralyzing schools and triggering violence across the country. The union was protesting a law requiring that teachers be tested and held accountable for competency. An evaluation earlier this year found that one-third of teachers are deficient in reading comprehension and that nearly half cannot do basic math.

    Yeah, who needs competent teachers? It’s similar to schools here in the US – teachers’ unions rail against competency tests as an insult, but what’s insulting to the rest of the country is that they think they’re above proving that they can understand what they teach. Nearly every job I’ve ever had required that demonstrate that I maintain a level of proficiency in that job – why do teachers think they are above investment advisors, doctors, lawyers, and so on?

    Peruvians have discovered the same solution that Americans discovered;

    By chance, during my visits I learned that the rejection of state services has extended to education as well. One day, a woman in Villa El Salvador confirmed to me that the large building in the distance was a public school, and volunteered that she did not send her son there. Instead, he goes to a private school that charges a fee. “It hurts, but it’s well worth it,” she explained.

    Somewhat surprised, I then asked if many other parents there send their children to private schools. She estimated that at least half do so. Standing on the dusty hillside overlooking the town, with the putrid smell of human waste wafting through the air, the mother pointed to building after building where private, informal-sector schools educate the poor.

    As it turns out, Peru’s shanty towns are full of such private, for-profit schools. Yet to my knowledge, the phenomenon has not been carefully studied. The anecdotal evidence is, however, consistent with the pathbreaking work of University of Newcastle Professor James Tooley, who documented how private schools in the African and Indian slums he studied have arisen to educate the majority of the children there. Mr. Tooley found that students in private schools performed notably better than those in public schools, and private schools rated better on most indicators, including teacher attendance.

    A majority of teachers have shown more interest in the betterment of their own condition at the expense of children’s futures and parents have taken the matter into their own hands. In Peru, as well as the US, homeschooled students perform better than public-educated students because homeschooling cuts out all of the “innovative” BS. Innovation in education used to be about teaching methods and student understanding – now it’s about teachers not teaching. When I was in school, innovation meant television – the teachers turned on Public Television and left the room while we watched the tube. Now it’s computers.

    In the 90s, teachers unions convinced an easily persuaded Bill Clinton that they needed computers to keep children competitive with the rest of the world – nevermind that children were falling behind the world in reading, writing, science and math – they needed to learn how to play games on massively expensive computers. Innovation has come to mean a way to keep kids occupied, and a way to make teachers highly-paid playground monitors.

    Today an innovation would be to turn out literate students. Even Peru’s poor have figured out that their only hope for a decent future is an educated child – when are Americans going to figure it out? 

  • Disparging the vision against tyranny

    In a half-mocking tone, Peter Baker in the Washington Post describes another Bush failure – his failure to end tyranny;

    By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of “ending tyranny in our world,” yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision.

    As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. “You’re not the only dissident,” Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them.”

    Baker goes on to blame the failed Bush vision of ending tyranny in the world on bureaucrats in the State Department, Republican candidates for president, even the Vice President.

    But Baker doesn’t blame Democrats – you know, those guys who stood on the roof of Hussein’s palace on the eve of our attack and declared Hussein to be a more honest broker than the President. Those guys who deliver false messages of peace to tyrannts against the advice of the White House, the guys who do their best to keep the Iraqis scared that we’re going to pull out and leave them to their own devices.Those folks that coddle every dictator they can get their puny arms around. Sacrificing the lives and well being of our planet’s citizens for purely political reasons. All for the Bush Derangement Syndrome – sacrificing human lives at the alter of Al Gore’s and John Kerry’s political defeat – such petty, petty little cretins.

    And those career diplomats in the State Department who figure that turmoil in the world is their job security:

    But some officials worry about alienating a friend in a region where Russia is reasserting influence. Assistant Secretary of State Richard A. Boucher has argued for giving Nazarbayev more time to reform. The discord has gotten so personal that rivals have dubbed him Boucherbayev. In an interview, Boucher said those promoting democracy are not responsible for the broader picture. “We have to work on an overall relationship,” he said. “The issue of democracy is not to be able to denounce people. The issue is to make progress.”

    Still, after an invigorating start in 2005, progress has been harder to find. Among those worried about the project is Sharansky, whose book so inspired Bush. “I give him an A for bringing the idea and maybe a C for implementation,” said Sharansky, now chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Israel. “There is a gap between what he says and what the State Department does,” and he is not consistent enough.

    The challenge Bush faced, Sharansky added, was to bring Washington together behind his goal.

    “It didn’t happen,” he said. “And that’s the real tragedy.”

    What a rational person can’t tell these arrogant imbeciles is that those tyrannts who oppress their people don’t respond to kind words and cajolery – that’s why we call them tyrannts. Regimes who hang dissidents in public, threaten the media and the families of dissident students don’t respond to diplomatic gestures. No matter how hard you wish it to be so.

    I’d never thought I’d see the day that the US government wouldn’t stand behind the President on such an essential issue as spreading Democracy and improving conditions for people world wide. Yet, here we are.

  • Democrat feud; DLC vs. Kos

    Donald Lambro of the Washington Times reports a growing rift in the Democrat Party between the Democrat Leadership Council and the internet lunatic fringe;

    The groups held dueling conferences this month, and the Yearly Kos Convention clearly came out on top. It drew 1,500 liberal activists — including 500 bloggers — and a half-dozen Democratic presidential candidates, led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The New York Democrat has been embraced by the DLC as one of its own.

    The DLC drew 350 elected officials to its conference but was snubbed by all the presidential candidates. However, Mrs. Clinton’s husband, a former DLC chairman, delivered the keynote speech.

    Markos Moulitsas Zuniga stepped up his war of words against the DLC this month. The founder of the Daily Kos blog and the annual Kos conference considers DLC members “Republican-lite,” as opposed to true Democrats.

    “The DLC doesn’t want a victorious Democratic Party unless such victories happen using their formula. We’ve been there, done that, and it simply didn’t work,” Mr. Moulitsas wrote in his blog last week. “Even working out of their own playbook, we couldn’t get that magical majority of the popular vote. We lost control of the House and Senate. Things truly seemed hopeless. We as a movement sprung from those failures.”

    The article goes on to say that the KosKids consider Hillary Clinton the DLC’s candidate and they don’t think she can run against her own negatives.

    “She is also the DLC candidate, literally,” [Kos] wrote earlier this year in a blog that quoted from a Ford memo accepting the DLC chairmanship in which the former congressman wrote, “I assume there will be an effort to help Senator Clinton’s campaign, and I would support such an effort.”

    Well, who does that leave?

    Barack Obama, who has decided he’s going to cut back on his debates because everytime he opens his mouth these days, everyone discovers that he really is a blathering idiot and little more than a nice suit. So that’s quite a strategy – hide the candidate from discussing issues until the election. We could even put up a cardboard cutout of him at the Inauguration ceremony if they’d be more comfortable with that. I’m sure the Kossacks will like him for the obvious reasons – they think Americans would feel too guilty to vote against a purportedly Black man. They would – so the rest of us will, too.

    Or maybe openly hypocritical John Edwards, the prettiest girl in the presidential campaign, who can only seem to raise enough cash when he mentions Ann Coulter’s name. Victory-hungry Democrats won’t tolerate the scandals that’ll erupt around him if he won the nomination. I figure his happy face will collapse before the primaries begin.

    Or maybe the prince of peace Dennis Kucinich, who is quickly becoming the heir apparent to the mantle of perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, the original moonbat.

    Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd nor Joe Biden will get the KozKranks’ support – they’re too conservative (as Democrats go) on the war and taxes. So who does that leave?

    There’s still time to get Cindy Sheehan, I suppose – that’s one candidate all of the KozKids can get behind. Maybe the DLC can put lipstick on that pig.Â