How can a tax increase be called a tax cut? Washington's tax-scoring magic.
Budget bean-counters measure tax hikes from a baseline that assumes tax rates are going up. Thus, merely extending the existing rates is called a tax cut and gets headlines as such -- even though the extension just maintains the status quo.
Permanent new taxes are then attached to the so-called cuts and labeled "offsets," a technical term for a tax hike. But these new taxes often get little attention. Adding to the size of the offsets, the growth benefits of maintaining current rates (and the harm from letting the rates rise) are arbitrarily excluded from the congressional scoring process.
The net effect of the current system is a strong upward ratchet in tax rates and tax complexity. Even many anti-tax Republicans seem to have acquiesced. Budget baselines build in repeated tax increases, as if those are normal, and assume that economic growth, stock prices and home prices are unaffected by higher tax rates. A more pro-growth Congress could pay for maintaining existing tax rates, if it thought that was necessary, by restraining the budget's built-in spending increases. But this choice seldom, if ever, materializes.
-- David Malpass, Bear Stearns's chief economist.
Labels: taxes
[National Review's Kate O'Beirne]: The Washington Post recently reported that Virginia and 17 other states are considering the vaccine requirement “at the urging of New Jersey–based pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. . . . [which] stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars annually on Gardasil, according to Wall Street estimates.” Public-health organizations have joined Merck in urging that the vaccine be made available in public clinics and encouraging its coverage by private insurers, but they don’t support Merck’s push for a school requirement.
There were 210 cases of cervical cancer in Maryland last year. Democratic state senator Delores Kelley introduced a bill to require the HPV vaccine for sixth-grade girls. Following complaints from parents and recent non-compliance problems with current mandated vaccinations, Kelley has withdrawn her bill (though she has spoken openly of reintroducing it next session). She explains that she was unaware of Merck & Co.’s lobbying efforts, and that she learned about the new HPV vaccine through a nonpartisan group of female legislators called Women in Government. More than half of its listed supporters are pharmaceutical manufacturers or other health-related companies. Women in Government is spearheading the campaign to mandate the HPV vaccine through school requirements, and some watchdog groups question the support it receives from Merck & Co. “It’s not the vaccine community pushing for this,” explains the director of the National Network for Immunization Information. Governor Perry’s critics point to his own connection with Gardasil’s manufacturer: His former chief of staff is a lobbyist for Merck & Co. in Texas.
Now, one very important fact downplayed in Kate O'Beirne's story regarding Gov. Rick Perry's executive order for mandatory Gardasil vaccinations of school girls: Parents may overrule the order by having a state form notarized at their local FedEx Kinko's.
So in the end all the bickering about government overstepping its boundaries, alleged profit motives - what company doesn't lobby for profits? - and an odd alliance between the right-leaning family-values groupies and the reactionary left-wing anti-Big Pharm crowd, is much ado about nothing.
[National Review's Kate O'Beirne]: The Washington Post recently reported that Virginia and 17 other states are considering the vaccine requirement “at the urging of New Jersey–based pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. . . . [which] stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars annually on Gardasil, according to Wall Street estimates.” Public-health organizations have joined Merck in urging that the vaccine be made available in public clinics and encouraging its coverage by private insurers, but they don’t support Merck’s push for a school requirement.
There were 210 cases of cervical cancer in Maryland last year. Democratic state senator Delores Kelley introduced a bill to require the HPV vaccine for sixth-grade girls. Following complaints from parents and recent non-compliance problems with current mandated vaccinations, Kelley has withdrawn her bill (though she has spoken openly of reintroducing it next session). She explains that she was unaware of Merck & Co.’s lobbying efforts, and that she learned about the new HPV vaccine through a nonpartisan group of female legislators called Women in Government. More than half of its listed supporters are pharmaceutical manufacturers or other health-related companies. Women in Government is spearheading the campaign to mandate the HPV vaccine through school requirements, and some watchdog groups question the support it receives from Merck & Co. “It’s not the vaccine community pushing for this,” explains the director of the National Network for Immunization Information. Governor Perry’s critics point to his own connection with Gardasil’s manufacturer: His former chief of staff is a lobbyist for Merck & Co. in Texas.
Now, one very important fact downplayed in Kate O'Beirne's story regarding Gov. Rick Perry's executive order for mandatory Gardasil vaccinations of school girls: Parents may overrule the order by having a state form notarized at their local FedEx Kinko's.
So in the end all the bickering about government overstepping its boundaries, alleged profit motives - what company doesn't lobby for profits? - and an odd alliance between the right-leaning family-values groupies and the reactionary left-wing anti-Big Pharm crowd, is much ado about nothing.
Having already passed a "non-binding" resolution designed to stop the war without actually taking any responsibility for stopping the war, Democrats are next trying to pass an unconstitutional bill to [MSNBC] "limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq."
Seriously, as any high-school student can tell you Congress has the ability to authorize war but not to micromanage how that war is fought - this is not debatable; it is defined clearly as, "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." That's pretty clear cut, eh?
But here's where it goes from illegal to just plain silly:While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.
Restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida? How's that work exactly? "Wait, we can't shoot back at those masked gunmen because we don't know if they're al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militia, Iranian spies, Syrian pro-Saddam sympathizers, etc.!!"
Are you kidding me? Of course, such a silly law simply underscores a lack of understanding by liberal Democrats when it comes to just who the enemy is. They'd have us only fight al Qaeda, but not the radical Islam that fosters any specific group. So, al Qaeda but not if we come across some Jamal Islamia faction there, or not against Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, or not the The Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), or some other terrorist group of convictions similar to al Qaeda. A California orange may taste a little different than a Florida orange, but they're both oranges. This matters not to Democrats, who'd apparently have our troops ask the people shooting at them to provide valid ID cards.
And the second news flash: whether Democrats choose to fight the war Islamic terrorists or not makes no difference to the Islamic terrorists fighting us. We can quit. They won't.
Congressional Democrats and their few gutless Republican allies have one option -- to cut funding, as specified in Article I, Section 8. But they won't because they'd prefer to micromanage from the back seat. They'll vote against the war after they voted for the war, but not by actually stopping the war because any backlash or negative consequences from that action could actually be tied to them in future elections. They won't stand up for their own proclaimed convictions of opposing the war (which, again, they voted for).
But then again, unconstitutional or not, all you need is 5 Supreme Court judges and you can rewrite - what they call "interpret" - any part of the constitution you want. It's not lawful, it's not Federalism, it's not our democratic system, and certainly not what our founders intended, but it is often true.
It had been a while since I gave any thought to the summer of 2001, when head 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and the key logistics officer for the operation, Ramzi Binalshibh, both acting under the command of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], had each separately traveled to Spain. (Atta had previously traveled to Spain, again for reasons unknown, in January 2001).
It was one of the more underreported facets in the investigation of the 9-11 attacks. But today, in a commentary by investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein, I was reminded just how much we really don't know, and might never know, about the attack and its supporters.The Spanish Connection
What the 9/11 Commission didn't consider.
BY EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN
Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
The 9/11 Commission relied on information derived from two captured al Qaeda perpetrators for much of its picture of the conspiracy leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The interrogations of these men--Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or "KSM," who masterminded the plot and got Osama bin Laden to finance it, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who acted as KSM's liaison with lead suicide terrorist Mohamed Atta--were performed by the CIA at secret locations.
KSM claimed that he left almost all the tactical details to Atta, and therefore could not say where Atta went, or whom he visited, in the final months of the plot. Binalshibh claimed he was Atta's only contact with al Qaeda during this period and that, other than himself, Atta never met with anyone on his trips abroad in 2001.
If these accounts are true, it follows that the conspiracy was a contained one, and the 9/11 Commission could preclude outside collaborators, including the participation of foreign countries. Thus, although the CIA was unable to trace the origin of the money supplied to Atta, the commission deemed this gap "of little practical significance" since the CIA's prisoners established that no one else was involved in the plot. Thus, too, when the CIA found that Iran had "apparently facilitated" the travel of eight of the 9/11 muscle hijackers in flights to and from Afghanistan (by not putting the required stamps on their passports, and by having a top Hezbollah official accompany their flights in and out of Iran), the commission could nevertheless rule out the possibility Iran or Hezbollah were "aware of the planning." The basis for this conclusion was the information provided by KSM and Binalshibh.
But what if these CIA prisoners--who after all are diehard jihadists--were lying?
Enter Judge Baltazar Garzon, Spain's terrorism magistrate, who has been for many years investigating the links between al Qaeda and a Spanish Islamic cell headed by one Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas (who Mr. Garzon arrested in November 2001 and is currently in prison on a conspiracy conviction). The Spanish security service secretly had this cell under scrutiny since the mid-1990s; Mr. Garzon was thus able to draw on wiretaps, surveillance reports and other intelligence, as well as his own interrogations of suspects and captured documents from Afghanistan.
Mr. Garzon has produced a 697-page investigative report for Madrid's central court in September 2003, which charges that the Spanish cell--through its connections to Mohamed Atta's Hamburg cell and some of the pilots it recruited--helped plan, finance and support the 9/11 attacks.
In an interview, Mr. Garzon explained to me through an interpreter that the support of the Spanish cell began in the early days of the plot and continued up until the attack. He described evidence that ranged from video tapes that Spanish police had confiscated from the home of one of the Spanish conspirators, which methodically surveyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center from five different angles in the late 1990s, to a phone call intercepted by Spanish intelligence in August 2001 (at a time when the hijackers were buying tickets on the planes they planned to commandeer), in which an operative in London informed Yarkas that associates in "classes" had now "entered the aviation field," and were beheading "the bird." After drawing a diagram for me on a blackboard of how the Spanish cell connected to Atta's and Binalshibh's recruiters in Germany, he said it was "supporting the operation at every level."
Consider the unexplained activities of Atta and Binalshibh in Spain in 2001. Atta made two trips to Madrid, paid for with al Qaeda funds at critical points in the plot. The first one was in January, just after he finished his flight training classes in Florida and qualified as a pilot. The second one was just after most of the contingent of muscle hijackers had arrived in Florida in July. During that second trip, July 7 to July 19, Atta clocked 1,908 kilometers on his rented Hyundai and changed hotels frequently--except for five nights, where he vanished from all hotel registries.
Atta's 9/11 co-conspirator, Binalshibh, also made two trips to Spain: The first, July 9 to July 16, was to the Terragona resort region near Barcelona, where he met up with Atta and then, during the same period, also vanished from the hotel registries. Binalshibh's second trip, Sept. 5 to Sept. 7, was to Madrid, where he obtained a bogus passport which he used to fly to Pakistan and make his escape to Afghanistan.
Why did Atta and Binalshibh make these trips? The 9/11 Commission turned to the CIA, which reported that Binalshibh (captured in 2002) said in his interrogation that neither he nor Atta had contacted anyone else in Spain. Thus the commission stated, "According to Binalshibh, they did not meet with anyone else while in Spain."
The problem here is that Atta and Binalshibh made independent trips to Spain. Atta went to Madrid in January when Binalshibh was in Germany; Binalshibh went to Madrid in September when Atta was in America. And when Atta arrived in Madrid on July 8, Binalshibh was in Hamburg. They were never in Madrid at the same time. On July 9, Atta did meet up with Binalshibh in the resort area of Terragona, but Atta then stayed in Spain three days after Binalshibh returned to Hamburg.
Presumably, they made separate trips because they had separate business, but the critical fact is this: Binalshibh was not in a position to know whom Atta did (or didn't) contact in Madrid or during his final three days in Spain.
Mr. Garzon argues that his extensive investigation of the Spanish cell directly contradicts Binalshibh's story that he and Atta had seen no one else.
Take, for example, the week they were together, July 9 to July 16. Both Atta and Binalshibh dropped from sight, leaving no hotel records, cellphone logs or credit-card receipts. Mr. Garzon reasons that someone organized a safe house for them to conduct their business.
That person, according to Mr. Garzon, is Mohamed Belfatmi, aka "Mohamed the Algerian," a man who had worked closely with the Spanish cell in getting its operatives in and out of Afghanistan for terrorist training. About a month before Atta's arrival in Spain, Belfatmi rented a house in Terragona very near to where Atta's rented car was last seen parked.
Mr. Garzon says that Belfatmi's house was used for the 9/11 "final planning sessions." From telephone intercepts, Mr. Garzon has established that Binalshibh was in contact with Belfatmi after the latter had returned to Germany. And in a brief call Belfatmi made to Yarkas on Sept. 1, Yarkas, correctly suspecting that his phone was being tapped, abruptly cut Belfatmi off, telling him not to continue with "that theme."
Later that week, Belfatmi flew to Karachi with Binalshibh's and Atta's Hamburg roommate and fellow al Qaeda cell member Said Bahaji, staying with him at the same hotel. Binalshibh arrived in Karachi on a separate flight. So did other members of the Hamburg cell, who along with Belfatmi and Bahaji escaped to Afghanistan (and have not been yet apprehended).
Mr. Garzon concluded that Binalshibh knew both Yarkas--whose private number he had in his address book--and Belfatmi. According to Mr. Garzon, Binalshibh "was clearly lying to the CIA to protect those he and Atta saw in Spain."
Baltazar Garzon, known for his prosecutorial zeal, is a controversial figure in Spain, having investigated everything from Basque terrorism to the Madrid bombing investigation whose alleged perpetrators are currently on trial in Madrid. But even many who don't agree with his methods--or his politics--agree he is on solid ground in his relentless pursuit of the connections between the Spanish cell and al Qaeda.
Yet if Mr. Garzon is correct about the Spanish connection to 9/11, it is not only the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation of its al Qaeda prisoners that is called into question. The information from Binalshibh, KSM and other detainees was used to fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw, and those gaps concerned the contacts the 9/11 conspirators might have had with others wishing to harm America. By saying that no one else was involved--not in Spain, Iran, Hezbollah, Malaysia, Iraq, the Czech Republic or Pakistan--these detainees allowed the 9/11 Commission to complete its picture of al Qaeda as a solitary entity.
Yet to come to its conclusion on this most fundamental issue, the commission was prohibited from seeing any of the detainees whose accounts it relied on. Nor was it allowed even to question the CIA interrogators to determine the way that information was obtained. The commission's joint chairmen themselves later acknowledged that they "had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information." So when Judge Garzon comes up with evidence that runs counter to detainees' claims, cracks begin to emerge in the entire picture.
Mr. Epstein is writing a book on the 9/11 Commission.
Labels: 9-11
This is fascinating: what to think of a country that could wiretap without warrant, investigate upon hearsay, suspend Habeas corpus, ethnically or religiously profile, suspend bail and detail at will? Here's the kicker - it's France! Yep. One would never have known that France's counterterrorism tools dwarf ours in the US. Liberals say we need to be more European in our policy? If they only knew! "Every single attempt to bomb France since 1995 has been stopped before execution," says one French official. Here's why.Who Needs Jacques Bauer?
February 20, 2007; Page A16
Bret Stephens
Twenty-nine defendants went on trial last week in a Spanish courtroom for complicity in the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 commuters and injured another 1,800. Among the accused: Jamal Zougam, a 33-year-old Moroccan immigrant who once ran a cellphone business. In June 2001, Spanish police raided Mr. Zougam's apartment, where they found jihadist literature and the telephone numbers of suspected terrorists. But the Spaniards judged the evidence insufficient to arrest or even wiretap him. Today, the Moroccan is believed to have furnished the cellphones through which the trainbombs were detonated.
In raiding Mr. Zougam's apartment, the Spanish were acting on a request from French investigative magistrate and counterterrorism supremo Jean-Louis Bruguiere. Earlier, Mr. Bruguiere had also warned the Canadian government about a suspicious Algerian asylum-seeker named Ahmed Ressam, but the Canadians took no real action. On Dec. 14, 1999 Mr. Ressam -- a.k.a. the Millennium Bomber -- was arrested by U.S. customs agents as he attempted to cross the border at Port Angeles, Wash., with nitroglycerin and timing devices concealed in his spare tire.
It would be reassuring to believe that somewhere in the ranks of the FBI or CIA America has a Jean-Louis Bruguiere of its own. But we probably don't, and not because we lack for domestic talent, investigative prowess, foreign connections, the will to fight terrorism or the forensic genius of a Gallic nose. What we lack is a system of laws that allows a man like Mr. Bruguiere to operate the way he does. Unless we're willing to trade in the Constitution for the Code Napoleon, we are not likely to get it.
Consider the powers granted to Mr. Bruguiere and his colleagues. Warrantless wiretaps? Not a problem under French law, as long as the Interior Ministry approves. Court-issued search warrants based on probable cause? Not needed to conduct a search. Hearsay evidence? Admissible in court. Habeas corpus? Suspects can be held and questioned by authorities for up to 96 hours without judicial supervision or the notification of third parties. Profiling? French officials commonly boast of having a "spy in every mosque." A wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies? France's domestic and foreign intelligence bureaus work hand-in-glove. Bail? Authorities can detain suspects in "investigative" detentions for up to a year. Mr. Bruguiere once held 138 suspects on terrorism-related charges. The courts eventually cleared 51 of the suspects -- some of whom had spent four years in preventive detention -- at their 1998 trial.
In the U.S., Mr. Bruguiere's activities would amount to one long and tangled violation of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. And that's not counting the immense legal superstructures that successive Supreme Courts have built over and around the Bill of Rights. In France, however, Mr. Bruguiere, though not without his critics, is a folk hero, equally at home with governments of the left and right. The main point in his favor is that whatever it is he's doing, it works.
"Every single attempt to bomb France since 1995 has been stopped before execution," notes a former Interior Ministry senior official. "The French policy has been [to] make sure no terrorist hits at home. We know perfectly well that foreign-policy triangulation is not sufficient for that, [even if] it helps us go down a notch or two in the order of priority [jihadist] targets. So we've complemented our anti-U.S. foreign policy with ruthless domestic measures."
That's something that U.S. civil libertarians, who frequently argue that the Bush administration should follow the "European model" of treating terrorism as a law-enforcement issue instead of a military one, might usefully keep in mind. As lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey argue in the forthcoming issue of the National Interest, "the [Napoleonic] Civil Law system offers considerable advantages to the state in combating terrorism -- especially in terms of investigative tools and a level of secrecy -- that are simply unavailable in the ordinary Common Law criminal prosecution and trial, at least as governed by the United States Constitution."
Again, review the contrasts between American and European practices. Except in limited circumstances, the U.S. does not allow pre-trial detentions. But according to figures compiled by the U.S. State Department, 38% of individuals held in Italian prisons in 2005 were awaiting trial or the outcome of an appeal, while Spanish law allows for pre-trial detentions that can last as long as four years for terrorism suspects. In the U.S., the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of the military in law-enforcement work, and paramilitary units are relatively rare. By contrast, most European countries deploy huge paramilitary forces: Italy's Carabinieri; France's Gendarmerie Nationale; Spain's Guardia Civil.
Even Britain, which shares America's common law traditions, has been forced by Irish and now Islamist terrorism to resort to administrative detentions, trials without jury (the famous Diplock courts) and ubiquitous public surveillance. Wiretapping is authorized by the Home Secretary -- that is, a member of the government -- rather than an independent judge. In the early days of the Northern Irish "troubles," the government of Edward Heath placed some 2,000 suspects, without charge, in internment camps. Ironically, it was the decision to treat terrorists as ordinary criminals that led to the famous hunger strikes of Bobby Sands and his IRA crew.
All this calls into question the seriousness, if not the sincerity, of European complaints that under the Bush administration the U.S. has become a serial human-rights violator. Europeans have every right to be proud of civil servants like Mr. Bruguiere and a legal tradition that in many ways has been remarkably successful against terrorism. But that is not the American way, nor can it be if we intend to be true to a constitutional order of checks and balances, judicial review and a high respect for the rights of the accused. When President Bush declared a war on terror after 9/11, it was because he had no other realistic legal alternative. And when the rest of us make invidious comparisons between Europe and America, we should keep our fundamental differences in mind. There is no European 82nd Airborne, and there is no American Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
Labels: terrorism
$400 million in energy aid to North Korea and an easing of economic sanctions against them in return for promising to give up the production ability for nuclear weapons... sounds like a great deal, right? Peace in our time, and all that jazz. Except one thing: legal documents with North Korea aren't worth the paper their printed on because North Korea always breaks the agreement. Indeed, legal agreements presuppose first that the interested parties are both honorable and law abiding. How does one trust a country that with authoritatively iron-fist rule imprisons and starves its own population? (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6)
As James Robbins says, "We have lost sight of the fact that the only way substantive and permanent change will come to the Korean peninsula is with the end of Kim Jong Il’s regime." Kim Jong Il could have as much nuclear energy as he liked -- were he simply to create a democratic society as free and liberty-laden as North Korea's sister country, South Korea. Of course, that's a pipe dream.
Labels: North Korea
A recent commentary from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman has received attention of late because, in short, it's a diatribe comparing Holocaust deniers to global warming skeptics. Yep, you read that right. To question an unverified scientific theory is to some members of the Left akin to denying historical fact backed by enough documented evidence to dwarf Mount Everest.
I've read Goodman's piece (as in piece of steaming dung) and it ranks somewhere between typical condescending editorializing to just plain silliness.
Let's get one fact straight right now: The only people acting as fascists would be the global warming scaremongers, such as Ms. Goodman, who stifle scientific retort and debate on the subject in favor propagating the public with images of giant tidal waves and drowning polar bears.
As New Scientist's Nigel Calder wrote this week, "a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea." So much for Ms. Goodman's absolute dictation that 90 percent "is about as certain as scientists ever get."
As for her slight implying that any skeptic must be bought and paid for by Big Oil -- the Wall Street Journal reported last week that the American Enterprise Institute "didn't offer money [$10K] to scientists to question global warming." Fact checking anyone? Besides, last time I checked Hillary Clinton received almost $58,000 in campaign contributions from
Below is a great retort to Goodman's rationale by Dennis Prager. I love his money shot: "[The Left's] admonition [to always question authority] applies to questioning the moral authority of Judeo-Christian religions or of any secular conservative authority, but not of any other authority. UN and other experts tell us that there is global warming; such authority is not to be questioned." Boy, ain't that the truth. The likes of Al Gore spend all their time pronouncing that "the debate is over" while simultaneously fleeing from any debate from notable scientists like Bjorn Lomborg. That's like a boxer saying there's no debate that they're the champ without ever bothering to get into a ring to prove it.
All this leads to a phenomenon worth scientific exploration: why do so many mediafolk become Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass when covering global warming?
Here's Prager's retort:In her last column, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers . . . "
This is worthy of some analysis.
First, it reflects a major difference between the way in which the Left and Right tend to view each other. With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad.
Those who deny the Holocaust are among the evil of the world. Their concern is not history but hurting Jews, and their attempt to rob nearly six million people of their experience of unspeakable suffering gives new meaning to the word "cruel." To equate those who question or deny global warming with those who question or deny the Holocaust is to ascribe equally nefarious motives to them. It may be inconceivable to Al Gore, Ellen Goodman and their many millions of supporters that a person can disagree with them on global warming and not have evil motives: Such an individual must be paid by oil companies to lie, or lie -- as do Holocaust deniers -- for some other vile reason.
The belief that opponents of the Left are morally similar to Nazis was expressed recently by another prominent person of the Left, George Soros, the billionaire who bankrolls many leftist projects. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Soros called on America to "de-Nazify" just as Germany did after the Holocaust and World War II. For Soros, America in Iraq is like the Nazis in Poland.
A second lesson to be drawn from the Goodman statement is that it helps us to understand better one of the defining mottos of contemporary liberalism: "Question authority." In reality, this admonition applies to questioning the moral authority of Judeo-Christian religions or of any secular conservative authority, but not of any other authority. UN and other experts tell us that there is global warming; such authority is not to be questioned.
Third, the equation of global warming denial to Holocaust denial trivializes Holocaust denial. If questioning global warming is on "a par" with questioning the Holocaust, how bad can questioning the Holocaust really be? The same holds true with regard to Nazism and the George Soros statement. Claiming that America in the Iraq War is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany in World War II trivializes the unparalleled evil of the Nazis.
Fourth, the lack of response (thus far) of any liberal or left individual or organization -- except to defend Ellen Goodman -- or from the Anti-Defamation League, the organization whose primary purpose has been to defend Jews, is telling. Just imagine if, for example, an equally prominent Christian figure had written that denying America is a Christian country is on a par with denying the Holocaust. It would have been front-page news in the mainstream media, the individual would have been excoriated by just about every major liberal individual and group, and the ADL would have cited this as an example of burgeoning Christian anti-Semitism and Holocaust trivialization. But not a word at the ADL on Soros's comments about de-Nazifying America or Goodman's Holocaust-denial comment.
Fifth, and finally, the Ellen Goodman quote is only the beginning of what is already becoming one of the largest campaigns of vilification of decent people in history -- the global condemnation of a) anyone who questions global warming; or b) anyone who agrees that there is global warming but who argues that human behavior is not its primary cause; or c) anyone who agrees that there is global warming, and even agrees that human behavior is its primary cause, but does not believe that the consequences will be nearly as catastrophic as Al Gore does.
If you don't believe all three propositions, you will be lumped with Holocaust deniers, and it would not be surprising that soon, in Europe, global warming deniers will be treated as Holocaust deniers and prosecuted. Just watch. That is far more likely than the oceans rising by 20 feet. Or even 10. Or even three.
Labels: global warming
This one by Thomas Sowell:The political Left’s favorite argument is that there is no argument. Their current crusade is to turn “global warming” into one of those things that supposedly no honest and decent person can disagree about, as they have already done with “diversity” and “open space.”
Read the whole thing.
Labels: global warming
Most of the terrorists represented in "24" through the years have been Arab Muslims. Why? Well, probably because most terrorists today are, in fact, Arab Muslims. As a descendant of Syrian Muslims, I am very well aware that the majority of Muslims world-wide are peaceful, hard working, and law abiding. That still does not change the fact that the greatest terrorist threat to the U.S. today comes not from the ETA, the IRA, etc., but from one group: Islamic terrorists.
That's from author Emilio Karim Dabul, retorting to the typical reactionary attacks that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), among others, have slug on the popular Fox network program.
And here's something else about CAIR that you might not know: A sitting CAIR board member was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As Dabul says, "Look a little closer, and maybe you'll find that CAIR has good reason to get nervous about shows like 24."
Here's an interesting angle from Mark Steyn. It seems as though Baker-Hamilton realists forgot that illiberal dictatorial regimes focused only on staying in power often don't follow the logical or realist path. By the way, you can find the NY Sun article Steyn is citing here.The New York Sun’s Eli Lake had an interesting story the other day about various Iranian documents recently found in Iraq. According to a U.S. intelligence official, the cache confirms that “Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups.”
Got that? In Iraq’s alleged Sunni–Shiite “civil war,” Iran has checked the both-of-the-above box.
On the face of it, that doesn’t make a lot of sense — if, by “sense,” you mean the wise old foreign-policy “realism” of the Iraq Study Group types. You may recall that Messrs. Baker, Hamilton & Co. assured us that Iran had an “interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” Apparently, Iran feels differently.
And what they’re doing suggests a clearer-headed view of the situation than the unreal realpolitik crowd in Washington can muster. Why would Shiite Iran support Sunni Iraqis who kill Shiite Iraqis?
Because Iraq is not about Iraq. It’s about America.
The mullahs get that, even if the entire Democratic party and half the Republicans don’t. It’s in Iran’s interest for the U.S. adventure in Mesopotamia to end in a failure so chastening, if not traumatizing, that Washington withdraws from the region. So to that end they have arranged a proxy war.
Once upon a time, every itsy-bitsy dustup on the planet was a proxy war: The Soviets had their guy in North Wackistan, and the West had its guy in South Wackistan, and they went at it and one of them came out on top. But since the Cold War, we seem to have lost the knack of picking sides in proxy wars, so the Iranians saved us the trouble and picked both sides.
For three years, the naysayers kept assuring us there was a “civil war” in Iraq, and the Iraqis kept declining to show up for it. Then the Iranians decided to get serious about it, and to them it doesn’t matter a whole lot whether Shiite Iraqis kill Sunni Iraqis or vice versa. Indeed, a straightforward “civil war” in Iraq would be over very quickly: There aren’t a lot of Sunnis, and the Shiites could deal with them swiftly and nastily. Hence, Tehran’s admirably bipartisan approach.
... At the risk of spending the whole column quoting myself, here’s another reprise. In the summer of 2002, Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, warned BBC listeners that a U.S. invasion would “threaten the whole stability of the Middle East.” I wrote: “He’s missing the point: That’s the reason it’s such a great idea.” Invading Iraq made sense because it offered the best way to prick the puffed-up pustule of regional stability. We seem to have forgotten that. The Iranians haven’t. They’re at war with us, but they reserve the right to pick the kind of war that suits them. Tank battles, naval bombardments, air strikes would be a disaster for them: That kind of war they’d lose very quickly. But asymmetrical insurgency suits them just fine: That kind of war grinds down the superpower.
I’m not advocating instant bombardments of Tehran. But Iran has plenty of proxies: Some are strong, some aren’t. Syria is a weak proxy that nevertheless has been allowed to subvert post-Saddam Iraq for almost four years. The argument made by George W. Bush — we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here — is a good one: It’s always better to wage war on foreign soil. But, psychologically, in the eyes of the world, Iraq for the moment isn’t “foreign” soil: It’s ours. So the administration should follow its catchphrase to its logical conclusion: Let’s fight on the offense on enemy turf, so we don’t have to play defense on ours.
If Iran can arrange both sides of a “civil war” on our side of the border, why can’t we cause some trouble on theirs?
Make sure you read that NY Sun article. Nothing crashes the ship of the realists on sharp rocks like the statement from former State Dept. official Wayne White:"One problem that we all have is that people consistently conduct analysis assuming that the actor is going to act predictably or rationally based on their overall mindset or ideology. Sometimes people don't. One example of a mindset that may hinder analysis of Iranian involvement is the belief that Iran would never have any dealings with militant Sunni Arabs. But they allowed hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives to escape from Afghanistan across their territory in 2002."
Sheesh, and they say Cheney is delusional? Care to revise your Iraq Study Group report, Misters Hamilton and Baker?
