Liberal myths debunked-America isolated?

A major liberal myth since the Iraq invasion is the “isolation” the invasion has caused the United States. Day after day, the liberal press repeated the big lie that our “friends and allies” didn’t support the Iraq invasion.. Today, the red herring of deceit was confronted by the hammerhead of reality.

The lie was always obvious. All but four NATO nations supported the Iraq invasion. A majority of the UN Security Council nations supported the invasion. Two of the four NATO nations that opposed the campaign , France and Germany, then had governments inexorably implicated in the “Food for Oil Scandal”. In both France and Germany the liberal governments were trounced in their first elections following their break with the US over Iraq.

Here at TRS we have frequently exposed the disconnection between objective factual evidence of “isolation” by citing to the dramatically improved relationships the United States has enjoyed with several nations, significantly places like Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan (where the pro American Musharraf is engaged in some political brinksmanship with the even more pro American Bhutto) as well as former enemies like Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Hell, we’ve kind of got handle on the nut bag in North Korea (knock on wood).

It wasn’t just TRS saying it today. French President Sarkozy told the world that France is renewing its vows with Uncle Sam. French President Sarkozy said today that he came to the United States with a simple message: "To reconquer the heart of America in a lasting fashion." Doesn’t it sound nice to be courted again?

The only gray lining in this silver cloud is the limited audience it received. No coverage on the three network nightly news broadcasts. These are the same networks that do lavish close up coverage of every anti-American rally in the world.

Guess the good news doesn’t fit the template.

Dowd on Clinton-worth the read.

No one knows you like your own family.

In the context of a liberal cat fight between long time socialist, feminist, archetypes, Maureen Dowd and Hillary Clinton we have a glimpse of how nasty they get with each other.

Dowd’s column today is almost Coulteresque in describing the latest entries on Evita’s enemies list - the vast left wing conspiracy. Democrats like Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, whose assignation the Clinton camp advocated, are part of the get Hillary crowd and must be liquidated while Madam Defarge hides her insidious agenda behind the veil of American womanhood.

Maureen, I say you go get ‘em sister.

Immigration: One hundred years later the Bull Moose is still right on!

One hundred years ago, one of the greatest of Republicans was confronted by what people at the time described as an “immigration crises”. Both coasts were inundated with immigrants.

On the east coast, millions poured into the United States, mostly from southern Europe, TRS’s grandparents among them. On the west coast, millions more were entering from Asia. Vast cultural differences separated the immigrants, who came from environments as diverse as Sarajevo and Shanghais or Tokyo and Thermopylae. Those vast cultural differences were subordinated to the one common belief and desire that prompted a little Greek boy of 14 to cross the Atlantic by himself and bicycle from New York to Centerville Iowa-the desire to be an American.

In times most similar to our own, the question arose of the Republican and American response to all of the newcomers, whose strange languages and strange social practices were disturbing the mostly northern European traditions of the early migrants to America.

The original Bull Moose had an answer. In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt said:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

As the modern Democrats demagogue the issue, seeking to brand us as racists because we expect modern immigrants, mostly Hispanic, will engage in the same social, political and cultural assimilation as did all of the previous immigrants to this country, we must fight back with TR's pugnacity. Democrats will use the press and the schools to preach "diversity" as a means of Balkanizing America by defining each individual as the member of a demographic group, cretaing special exceptions to American traditions (like refusing to fly an American flag at a school in Colorado because it might offens Hispanic students and parents) and worst of all, by creating a multi-lingual failed state-kind of like the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires from which so many of those early 20th Century immigrants came.

There really can be no "give" on this issue. Even in Iowa the Democrats are using the power of the Governor's office to pollute the election lists with registered voters who are not citizens of the United States. If we don't win now, there won't be any rematch on this issue.

Does anyone really want to wake up and find themselves in Yugoslavia?

Sunday Talk Review: FDT v. Delaware Joe on the Karachi Canvass

A comparison of Fred D. Thompson’s appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press with Joe Biden’s appearance CBS’s Face the Nation demonstrates the vast difference between the Democrat and Republican world views.

As most TRS readers by now know, Gen. Musharraf suspended the Pakistani constitution and declared martial law. The Supreme Court has been dismissed. Soldiers are surrounding the homes of several liberal (by Pakistani standards) political and judicial leaders. Of course, those soldiers just might be a comforting sight to the Pakistani liberals who have been the object of several foiled suicide bombings in recent weeks. Gen. Musharraf’s declaration hardly moves Pakistani democracy forward, at least in the short run.

Schieffer and Russert demonstrated their Democrat roots by framing the questions to both Biden and Thompson as if Musharraf’s suspension of the Pakistani constitution and declaration of martial law as somehow entirely within an American President’s control. Biden, of course, grabbed the bit and ran.

First, both Schieffer and Russert conflated the domestic Pakistani political situation with America’s relationship with Pakistan. Musharraf is pro-western. If Musharraf controls Pakistan the Pakistani government will continue to operate in a manner that is largely, although not entirely, consistent with American international needs. As with all foreign policy decisions the gain from destabilizing Musharraf must be balanced against the likely loss.

Moreover, the risk of any US action must also be weighed against the gain. Pakistan is the only Islamic nation with a nuclear weapon. Many elements within the Pakistani public, scientific and intellectual elites closely identify with militant Islam. Destabilizing Musharraf also risks placing Pakistan’s nuclear assets in contact with terrorists who would use them in a heartbeat. Whatever attempt to contain Islamofascism would be replaced with actual support for bin Laden and Al Qaida.

Delaware Joe opened with a crazy attack on President Bush as the cause of Musharraf’s action, without, of course, describing how American policy could have forestalled Musharraf’s action. In what has become the normal substitute for reason in the liberal critique of American politics, simply pressed the attack as a failure of a “Musharraf” policy rather than a “Pakistan” policy. What then, Senator, would you have done? That question remained unanswered.

However, Delaware Joe did provide a look at what he would do. First, he would have a plan to get out of Iraq (now, there’s a surprise). Then, assuming that we could exit Iraq without victory, the troops apparently aren’t coming home, they’re going to Afghanistan. Once deployed in Afghanistan the American military posture would be forward, poised to invade Pakistan so as to capture Osama.

How could anyone think that a large scale American military invasion of Pakistan could fail to discredit the fragile hold pro-Western Pakistanis have on their government and military. God knows TRS rarely rejects the rapid use of American power as an instrument of American security but Delaware Joe sounded just like the jingoes that discounted all risk in starting WW 1. The worst aspect of the Biden Pakistan policy-he’s the best the Democrats have on foreign policy, a veritable FDR compared to the other socialist pacifists in the Democrat field.

FDT sounded very Presidential on the subject. First, he laid out the risks of any American policy toward Pakistan. FDT spoke clearly of the American preference for a more democratic Pakistan. At the same time, Fred also urged the need for patience and the avoidance of snap decisions. FDT recognized that the Pakistani domestic crises might sort itself out without any US action. FDT discounted the idea of sanctions against Musharraf, presumably because of the risk that a destabilized Musharraf would be replaced by anything from a vacillating western style parliamentary gridlock to a near Sudan like failed state. At either end the risk that Paki nukes or other military and intelligence assets certainly would seem to urge caution in confronting the less democratic aspects of the Pakistani elite.

Fred gave Joe a beat down like Ali gave Frazier in Manila.

Gov. Pumpkin and the politics of pander.

Today’s DM Register features a story about Gov. Culver’s commitment to “help reduce the disproportionate number of young minority residents in detention facilities” in Iowa. Such a statement necessarily generates some rather disturbing questions.

Virtually every juvenile court worker in Iowa (and probably elsewhere) is a Democrat. Virtually every police officer who investigated the incarcerated juveniles’ crimes was a Democrat. Virtually every social worker from the Department of Human Services who worked with the incarcerated juveniles is a Democrat. Most, if not all, of the county prosecutors who prosecuted and requested the incarceration of the incarcerated juveniles is a Democrat. Most, if not all, of the Juvenile Court judges who actually ordered the incarceration are Democrats or independents. Republicans and conservatives had and have essentially nothing to do with or responsibility for the incarcerations of any juveniles, minority or otherwise.

Moreover, the failure to address the issue of discriminatory incarceration also is the Democrats’ cross to bear. The Democrats have controlled the Iowa Attorney General’s office for most of TRS’s life, since sometime in the 70’s I think. Since the AG is charged with the protection of civil rights in Iowa, why has Tom Miller failed to protect the rights of minority juveniles who have been disproportionately incarcerated?

If, in fact, racial or ethnic discrimination exists in the Iowa juvenile court system such discrimination is a product of liberal Democrat bias. If so, the Democrats have perpetrated and succored and expanded a system of invidious racial discrimination that strikingly resembles the Jim Crow laws that Democrats maintained in the south for a hundred years after the Civil War. So basically, Culver, Judge and the Democrat liberals are either saying that the liberal system has inappropriately incarcerated thousands of minority youths. However, a much more likely and much more grotesque explanation exists for Gov. Culver’s epiphany on minority incarceration-pure racial pandering.

Rather than address the possibility that the incarcerated juveniles required/deserved incarceration, which possibility would offend the Democrats’ most reliable constituency (black voters) Culver is pandering. Culver, in a typical liberal fashion, is seeking to blame the “system” for the minority incarcerations rather than the behavior of the incarcerated individuals.

Imagine the implications of permitting dangerous, violent or habitually criminal juveniles to escape punishment and correction because the current politically correct environment prohibits effective management of the miscreant youth based on nothing more than the color of their skin? The Democrats want to see these misguided, undisciplined and dangerous youths free to prey on the public, which also bespeaks the lack of concern for the mostly minority victims of the juvenile crimes, because their incarceration might offend a political constituency that is vital to Democrat electoral success.

That’s what passes for leadership and patriotism in the Pumpkin Tax Party.

Iowa Presidential Recap: Mitt hangs tough, Huckabee surge continues, everyone else fighting it out.

Earlier this week, prior to release of the most recent American Research Group (“ARG”) poll TRS did a brief coverage of the anecdotal evidence of the Republican Presidential candidates’ respective standing in Iowa. This opinion was formed after some pretty candid conversations with Iowa Republican leaders from the precinct to the state wide level. It was the TRS perspective that Huck and FDT were surging and Mitt was holding firm at the 25-30 percent range, which probably means first place in the Caucuses.

The Rasmussen Report is among the most reliable of polling providers. A Rasmussen poll from earlier in the month ( 10/10-10/14) showed Mitt outside the margin of error at 25, FDT at 19, Huck in a statistical near tie at 18, with Rudy at 13 percent of likely caucus goers. John McCain trailed badly at six percent and no one else had more than 3 percent less than eighty days out.

ARG, another very reliable polling service surveyed Iowa last weekend (10/26-10/29) and found similar results for Mitt (27%), Huck (19%), Rudy (16%), McCain (14%), with FDT trailing (8%). No other remaining candidate has more than 2%, now only 65 days from the Caucuses.

Huckabee had a great October in Iowa. The “word on the street” shows a definite trend toward Little Rock in Iowa. TRS and its many Real Correspondents around the state have almost all observed a substantial increase in coversation about The trend line is currently quite positive. However, ARG, Rasmussen and almost every other October poll show Mitt’s lead to both real and resilient. With the imminence of January 3 it looks increasingly like Mitt is going to come in somewhere between 25 and thirty percent.

A review of October also shows that FDT, Rudy and John McCain are fighting over a relatively fluid group of voters on an almost monthly basis. A small shift among the remaining soft commits and openly undecided voters could have an earth shattering impact on January 3. We aren't that far from four finishing with the margin of error of each other.

Whew...........

Small things can explain a lot.

Dennis Kucinich saw a UFO.

No shit.