Whither The Fool?

This guy, apparently.

I mean, “good luck” if he thinks he’s onto something that’s gonna revivify that mummified freak called the modern Democrat Party. But he appears to have forgotten one important detail in his misty memorializing of the Clinton years.

The first two years, when Clinton had a Democrat Congress, saw unprecedented rises in both taxation and spending–right in line with the “tax and spend” mantra that is the true legacy of the Democrats since FDR, whether Clinton was around or not.

Does he not recall the first budget initiative Bill Clinton put his name to (not long after his seeking to redress centuries of perceived wrong with his “gays in the military” program)? Clinton declared that, given the “worst economy in fifty years” (in reality a tiny blip of a recession that was over months before he was elected), what we needed was a gargantuan infusion of government spending to set things to rights.

He figured “hey, I got Congress, this is as good as done!” He forgot that a simple majority doesn’t necessarily get you there, and he didn’t count on the fierce objection of the Republican minority. His initiative went down to defeat–a good thing, because it would have ballooned the deficit far beyond anything ever seen at that time.

It was only after full fiscal sanity was assured with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and Clinton’s decision to adopt a “triangulation” strategy where he would co-opt all Republican Congressional initiatives while blaming them for any perceived difficulties.

It was, in very fact, the Republican fiscal restraint that shrank the deficit–for which the Clintonistas have been taking credit ever since.

So unless Mr. Bull Moose can manage to a) get another Clintonoid elected along with a Democrat majority and then b) lose the Congress once again to fiscally responsible Repubicans (i.e. not the current crop of RINOs that infest the halls of the Capitol), I don’t think he can count on lightning to strike twice.

I have made a sort of hobby debunking internet (also called “urban”) legends. Despite the maturity of electronic mail as a communications medium, it is amazing how the same bogus stories–many of them a decade or more old–continue to be sent ’round and ’round with the breathless admonition to “send this to everyone you know!”

Snopes.com is one of my favorite sites to check when I encounter something that sounds suspicious, or too good to be true. I’m rarely ever disappointed.

However, this is about the lamest excuse for a “debunking” that I have ever seen on the Snopes site. This guy turns double-cartwheels, a triple-gainer and an extra twist trying to convince us that when Al Gore, running for President in 2000, claimed he “took the initiative in creating the Internet,” his statement was both reasonable and defensible.

My favorite warping of logic is his attempt at analogy. He says if, back in the early 1950s, then-President Eisenhower had claimed to have “created the Interestate Highway System,” no one would have taken it amiss.

Uh, hello?

I most emphatically assure you that it would have been taken amiss–and President Eisenhower’s Democrat critics would have made tremendous hay with it. Of course, President Eisenhower, not being a bloviating, self-important stuff-shirt son of a bigoted, racist former Senator, would never have made such a self-promoting statement.

Gore’s claim to have “created” (not “invented,” though the context of his statement certainly admits that interpretation) the Internet will go down as one of the lamest-ass public comments by any political candidate, ever.

Dan Quayle may have gotten the reputation for unjudicious commentary–mostly trumped up by the MSM, as it happens–but Gore takes the prize for the biggest idiot that the liberal press will always give a pass.

Ex-mass-murderer Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi’s wife, who died with him, was reportedly all of 16 years old.

I mean, I have a 16 year old daughter myself.

Sheesh.

N.B. If our vaunted MSM were really on top of things, as they like to pretend, we would have the full story as to how this monster came into possession of a 16 year old girl as “wife.” They could delve into the likelihood, for example, that the girl’s family gave her to the monster, and that it was probably not her idea.

But why waste time with accurate portrayals of who these people really are? We have U.S. servicemen’s lives to ruin, no time for that.

And besides, it would be “insensitive.”

UPDATE

More information on the monster’s pre-death existence, from Wikipedia:

Time magazine reported that Zarqawi’s 16-year-old wife was among those killed in his assassination[3]. Al-jazeera reported that among the dead was Zarqawi’s 18-month-old son. [4]. Based on the ages of the mother and child, Zarqawi was 38 years old when he consummated his marriage to the unnamed 14-year-old woman.

[h/t Sweetness & Light]

UPDATE 2

Daisy Cutter notices that Time magazine doesn’t have a lot to say about the death of Mrs. Monster and her child, and he gives a very good opinion as to the reason why.

No, probably more Leftist lies.

I don’t know, wasn’t there, can’t possibly tell for sure, but I suspect that this will turn out to be the true story.

In the meantime the Drive-By Media certainly seems willing to fill in the void left by lack of facts.

And they say the blogosphere is unaccountable.

UPDATE

“Evidence accumulates of a hoax in Haditha” at Daisy Cutter.

How many more of these before the Leftist media is throughly bankrupt, literally and figuratively?

More good stuff at Power and Control.

Since the Left “Supports the Troops” by reminding us how they are wounded and dying for a “pointless war” fomented by a “lying President” (who in turn is merely a puppet-figurehead for the evil Vice President, ad infinitum), I find quite telling the notion that the great majority of U.S. troops who are wounded in battle, opt to go right back to the Iraqi theater as soon as they possibly can.

Sweetness & Light has the details.

It was before my time, but I seem to recall that in World War II, a serious wound meant you’d “punched your ticket home.” I don’t know how many of those servicemen–most of them conscripts for all the support for that war effort on the homefront–insisted on getting back into the fighting as soon as possible.

Some of the folks in the S&L article have been wounded multiple times. These are nearly all professional soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, after all, so on that account it doesn’t really surprise me. But I can’t help but compare this to another multiple recipient of the Purple Heart, Navy Lt. John F. Kerry.

In Kerry’s case, the evidence points to his concocting his own incident reports that ultimately allowed him the one-way punched ticket out of ‘Nam. I would think that the concept of going back into action even after achieving that “dream-goal” would make Sen. Kerry’s head explode.

To be fair, there is another Democrat who has served in the Senate with distinction, and his nation as a naval officer, who truly was wounded in the line of duty: Bob Kerrey. The former Senator from Nebraska won the Medal of Honor. I do not believe that, his political orientation notwithstanding, he ever besmirched his country as Kerry did.

I can imagine Kerrey clamoring to get back into action–a difficult thing when you have lost a portion of your leg, however. I think he would stand in good company with the latter-day Band of Brothers.

Very clever, Protein Wisdom.

However, it’s been done before (1973 National Lampoon, to be exact).

“The List” of Islamic Terror Attacks for the Past 5 Months (Courtesy TheReligionofPeace.com).

Check out the rest of the site, too. Nauseating. For instance, would you ever guess that “Islamic terrorists murder more people every day than the Ku Klux Klan has in the last 50 years”?

It makes me wonder: Why are we so reluctant to go after this loathsome creed with all the unbridled fury with which we relentlessly exterminated Fascism? In fact, there is no discernible difference between Islamism and Nazism save the peculiar religious creed.

Instead, we play kid-gloves with them, O so worried that someone will criticize us for beating up on people with a dark complexion.

I firmly believe that Shelby Steele is right. And it may be the death of us yet.

Stunningly detailed report at Counterterrorism Blog on the activities of the little-known (that is to say, little-reported in the MSM) Task Force 145 in Iraq, which was responsible for systematically boxing in and finally killing the S.O.B. Zarqawi in Baquba, Iraq yesterday.

It’s not just that we got the folks at the top. TF-145 has been taking the al-Qaeda-in-Iraq structure apart. Do not forget that Zarqawi was finally slagged because of inside information from al-Qaeda associates. This is far more significant than simply “we got him.” We got him because his peeps ratted him out.

I realize that all such details should not be publicized but the facts appear to be the the multination coalition in Iraq charged with seeking out and destroying terrorists in that country have been experiencing stunning success for some time now.

Don’t expect to hear about this on CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC and all their fellow travelers.

That’s what the Blogosphere is for.

I’m sorry, I’m really trying to scrape up some umbrage at Ann Coulter for her comments regarding The Jersey Girls. Yeah, I know it was kinda on the uncouth side.

But it was also true.

I guess I’m just sick and tired of the double-standard in the public discourse today, where the Left can say whatever the h*ll it wants while conservatives are held to this arbitrary standard whereby they are pilloried not just for what they say, but for how it can be (mis)construed.

Example of the former: Robert Byrd, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton.

Examples of the latter: Trent Lott, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Bennett, Dan Quayle.

As I often say to my wife when her suspicious mind begins to work overtime where I’m concerned:

(In hurt tones) “Dear, my real screw-ups are bad enough, without accusing me of stuff I didn’t do!”

If a conservative is going to get pilloried every time he or she says something that can be twisted around in ways they didn’t intend, then Ann Coulter might as well just come right out and say what she thinks without worrying about weighing her words.

What she said might have been rude.

But what she said was nevertheless correct.

I have been told, repeatedly, by “libertarians” that “true conservatives” oppose any and all intrusion by the state into the affairs of individuals.

The fallacy with this argument lies in the assumption that “the state” never has had power over individual lives as it has today.

The problem is with Federal power, not state power. The Constitution as it reads literally, gives broad powers to The People of the individual states. The major problem we have isn’t with government power per se, but that in the last century power has been usurped by the Federal that it was never intended to have under the U.S. Constitution.

The fact is that intrusive laws have always existed, since the birth of the Republic. What today we would consider intrusions into the individual lives of persons were commonplace in the past. For example, for many years—really until fairly recently—it was forbidden under penalty of fine or imprisonment to engage in any sort of illicit sexual activity, for a husband to refuse to support his wife, to engage in certain types of trade, and a host of other things that we, today, consider “none of the government’s business.”

But most “libertarians” speak and behave as though there used to be NO limits on personal freedom (as they like to term it), and that all of this is a recent invention. It isn’t. In fact, if anything we have FAR less practical enforcement of law respecting persons than ever before, and many of those we cling to, such as laws against pornography or prostitution, are constantly under attack as too intrusive.

In truth, it isn’t that the state has more control over personal lives today, it’s that there has been a rising tide of immorality and disrespect for traditional values that has led to umbrage against what many perceive as “laws that limit freedoms.” The laws have always been there; it’s just that now there are a significant number of people who don’t like them and don’t want to obey them any longer.

The laws of a society reflect the values of that society. But when societal values are in flux, there is bound to be a lag between the letter of the law and the spirit of the times.

A few years ago, a great uproar arose over the state of Texas’ prosecution of two men who were caught engaging in homosexual activity in the privacy of their home. The case ultimately was found in favor of “personal liberty” by the Supreme Court, and now laws against sodomy are no longer constitutional (even though they have existed in virtually every state of the union since its inception).

The reason we have a distinct culture war going on today is America isn’t because we have a bunch of new laws calculated to limit freedom, but because there is (in the minds of some) a new definition of “freedom” today, that in past generations was called “license” and “moral turpitude.” There was a time when no one questioned that the values of our society generally were identical to those of the judaeo-christian ethic. But if you try to argue that today, you will get a hot argument from a great many. What was once unquestioned by nearly all, is now denied by many.

My understanding of the definition of “conservative” is “the impulse to conserve the values and traditions that have stood the test of time.” Those who try to say that personal license (what THEY call “liberty”) is a conservative value make a mockery of the very meaning of the term. “Conservative” has never meant “no government involvement whatsoever.” Traditional conservatism realizes that government—at the level as close the people as possible—is a safeguard of traditional values.

That’s why I reject the very notion that “libertarians” (whom I call, more accurately, “libertines”) are the antithesis of “conservative,” because they wish to radically change—even destroy—the whole set of values that we have held in esteem from this nation’s beginnings.