I see Clark and Lieberman are skipping the pre-ordained Iowa caucuses. If everyone stops taking this insignificant state’s primaries seriously, will that mean an end to ethanol subsidies?
Archives for 2003
Will Mark Kleiman Apologize?
Last week, Mark Kleiman posted a pretty nast below-the-belt slap at the President which I addressed here. He reused to apologize, stating:
Update This seems to have struck a nerve, judging from the angry emails. But none of my correspondents specified which word in the phrase “noted Jew-baiter Mahathir Mohammed” needed to be more carefully explained. The Prime Minister’s career has relied from its beginning on whipping up hatred of Jews (despite the fact that Malaysia has no Jews). Nor did anyone explain why it was wrong to blame George W. Bush for giving such a warm greeting to such a thoroughgoing scoundrel.
Second update And no, I’m not silly enough to think that the picture constitutes an argument. It’s merely a symbol. If anyone can find a word of criticism by Mr. Bush of Mahathir Mohammed’s general record of anti-Semitism or his latest statement, I’ll be happy to link to it.
Foolish and partisan, because Conrad employed the exact same technique that Dr. Kleiman used to show how Kleiman was wrong, which he simply dismissed as Conrad simply having “a bad hangover.” At any rate, what was so annoying about the childish slur from Kleiman was that it is rather clear that Bush would not endorse Mahathir’s remarks, just as it is rather clear that Bush has never endorsed or acted upon any such similar sentiments. Kleiman, though, in an act of rather overwhelming petulance, took it upon himself to try to create such an impression. In fact, I don’t know whether the picture Mark used for his slur was even taken before or after Mahathir’s remarks.
At any rate, Bush has renounced Mahathir’s Jewish remarks, stating what we all knew (including Mark):
President Bush told Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad his remarks about Jews controlling the West by proxy were “wrong and divisive,” the White House said Monday.
“It stands squarely against what I believe,” Bush told Mahathir during an Asia-Pacific summit in Bangkok, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Poor President Bush- he thinks the truth counts with these party hacks. It doesn’t matter what you believe, it matters what Dr. Kleiman and others can get people to think you believe. At any rate, I will be waiting for Dr. Kleiman to link to these stories and to issue his apology. Also, Dr. Kleiman, if you would spend an afternoon and go through a list of the world leaders, writing down who we should engage in discussions with and who we should avoid, I am sure the White House would appreciate your useful input.
Some Dissent I Would Like to Stifle
Evan Coyne Maloney has a new video up titled “When Protestors Attack.”
My personal favorite is the man at the end of the vdieo screaming into a megaphone “Long Live the Intifada” to a boisterous crowd. For the record, this is the kind of ‘dissent’ that I think needs to be stifled.
I wonder what all the Palestinian supporters would do if Evan were to rip open his button-down shirt exposing a fake suicide belt bomb on underneath. Think all the giddy Palestinian enablers would still be screaming for the everlasting Intifada?
More Bad News for Democrat Candidates
Even the NY Times can no longer pretend the economy is tanking:
After a recession, a long period of sluggishness and growing concern about swelling budget and trade deficits, the economy is now getting back into high gear, a little more than a year before Election Day. Just last week, consumer confidence ticked up, new claims for unemployment insurance edged down, housing construction surged and industrial production increased. Stock prices hovered near 16-month highs. Analysts increased their estimates of economic growth over the summer and for the last three months of the year.
Although that doesn’t mean that the NY Times has given up yet, as the title of the story indicates (“A Bright Economy? Only the Voters Know for Sure”):
Statistics are one thing; voter perception is another. That perception is shaped more than anything by jobs, or the lack thereof. Defying traditional patterns, this recovery has yet to generate sustained improvement in employment, after two and a half years of steady losses
A Special Breed of Cynicism
Robert Tagorda and Matt Stinson provide us with an elite group of Democrats who, for pure partisan domestic politics (I defy you to come up with another reason), voted in favor of demanding that the reconstruction funds be loans, yet voted against the over-all bill. In other words, they wanted to merely sabotage the bill to weaken the President politically. Charming, hunh? Here is the list of offenders:
Boxer (D-CA)*
Edwards (D-NC)*
Graham (D-FL)*
Harkin (D-IA)
Hollings (D-SC)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Sarbanes (D-MD)* indicates up for reelection
Assholes. I have made my case here and here why I think the loans are a bad idea- If you disagree, I think you are foolish and wrong, but this sort of nonsense from Senators is just beyond the pale.
Who Are You?
The Democrat frontrunner sounds alot like a Republican… again:
From Day One as a Democratic presidential candidate, Wesley K. Clark, the retired general, has had to defend his past praise of the president’s national security advisers
Our Friends the Saudi’s
As always, a great Mark Steyn, but this paragraph was very interesting:
Here’s an easy way to make an effective change: Less Wahhabism is in America’s interest. More Wahhabism is in the terrorists’ interest. So why can’t the United States introduce a policy whereby, for the duration of the war on terror, no organization directly funded by the Saudis will be eligible for any formal or informal role with any federal institution? That would also include the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute, whose “adjunct scholar” is one Joseph C. Wilson IV. Remember him? He’s the fellow at the center of the Bob-Novak-published-the-name-of-my-CIA-wife scandal. The agency sent him to look into the European intelligence stories about Saddam Hussein trying to buy uranium in Africa. He went to Niger, drank mint tea with government flacks, and then wrote a big whiny piece in the New York Times after the White House declined to accept his assurances there was nothing going on. He was never an intelligence specialist, he’s no longer a “career diplomat,” but he is, like so many other retired ambassadors, on the House of Saud’s payroll. And the Saudis were vehemently opposed to war with Saddam.
This is news to me- does anyone have any more information about Joseph Wilson working for the Saudi government?