Thursday, November 30, 2006

On Second Thought....

...cry for Venezuela! The following is a post of the executive summary of a research paper recently published by Gustavo Coronel for the Cato Institute. The title speaks for itself. The entire document is available here in PDF (292 kb).

Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela



Corruption has existed in Venezuela since at least 1821, when it gained independence. In the 19thand 20th centuries, the level of corruption fluctuated, depending on the government in power. During the government of President Hugo Chávez, however, corruption has exploded to unprecedented levels. Billions of dollars are being stolen or are otherwise unaccounted for, squandering Venezuelan resources and enriching high-level officials and their cronies.

The windfall of oil revenues has encouraged the rise in corruption. In the approximately eight years Chávez has been in power, his government has received between $175 billion and $225 billion from oil and new debt. Along with the increase in revenues has come a simultaneous reduction in transparency. For example, the state-owned oil company ceased publishing its consolidated annual financial statements in 2003, and Chávez has created new state-run financial institutions, whose operations are also opaque, that spend funds at the discretion of the executive.

Corruption now permeates all levels of Venezuelan society. Bureaucrats now rarely follow existing bidding regulations, and ordinary citizens must pay bribes to accomplish bureaucratic transactions and have to suffer rampant neglect of basic government services. All this has been encouraged by a general environment of impunity: officers implicated in major corruption scandals have sometimes been removed from their posts, but they have not otherwise been held legally accountable.

The dramatic rise in corruption under Chávez is ironic since he came to power largely on an anti-corruption campaign platform. To truly fight corruption, the government needs to increase the transparency of its institutions and reduce its extensive involvement in the economy, something that has placed Venezuela among the least economically free countries in the world.

After reading the document ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ would be willing to wager that the 03 December 2006 election in Venezuela will either be stolen or declared invalid by Hugo Chavez. What could follow may very well be a blood bath that the left will try to blame on George W. Bush. Stay tuned.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ



Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Brainwashing??

Leonidas and family had the pleasure of entertaining for the last few days family members from Sweden. Like most modern Swedes, their english is quite good but their preconceptions of the US and Americans torture the definition of "stereotyping". After visiting several museums and attractions in the local area they wanted to know the name of the "Minister of Culture". When they were advised that the US has no Minister of Culture they were aghast. "How does "art" get funded here without government support?" I advised them of the NEA (National endowment of the Arts) and they were somewhat mollified but at the same time chagrined at the pittance ponied up by the US taxpayers for such works of "art " as "Piss Christ". They were adamant that Denmark did not go far enough in assuaging Muslim angst over the "cartoon" flap. We wrote much of this off to the traditional rivalry between Sweden and Denmark.
Another shocker for them was the lack of a commitment to saving the "environment" on the part of most Americans. The Swedes are taught that their country's coastal areas will be submerged in the next 20 years due to George Bush not signing the Kyoto Treaty and dismissed any position which attributed part of climate change to natural forces.
Swedes, like most Americans are totally committed to the religion of "recycling" and charged Leonidas with heresy for questioning the economic returns on the practice.
It would appear that the gulf between the attitudes of most Europeans and Americans is enormous. Sweden has had a government of the Social Democratic (socialist) party for better part of the last 60 years. A discussion of the deteriorating health care system there (colonoscopies are conducted without benefit of anesthetic) must be left for a later post.
In sum, it appears that many Swedes view Americans as more or less barbarians in spite of the likelihood that were it not for us "barbarians" the official language in Stockholm today would be Russian.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Blogaversary!!


This humble blog is one year old today. Readers who have recently begun imbibing the ideas presented here may not have taken the trouble to investigate the esoteric nature of the title or the upper case Greek script used in the signature. The image at the right is a statue of what the Persian (Iranian) "Immortals" were to face on the morning of 11 August 480 BC upon approaching the Greek hoplites defending the narrow pass at Thermopylae.

The original posting on this blog of one year ago today is reposted below:

Fighting in the shade

In the year 480 BC the Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece with his army of more than 100,000 men. The Greeks determined to resist the invasion and sent a detachment of hoplites (heavy armed infantry) to resist at the pass of Thermopylae. The Greek force was led by the Spartan King ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ (Leonidas) and consisted of his 300 hoplite bodyguard and 1200 other infantryman from several Greek city states. Upon encountering the blocking force, the Persian king sent a herald to Leonidas stating "Deliver up your arms." Leonidas replied: "ΜΟΛΩΜ ΛΑΩΕ which romanized reads MOLON LABE" and translates: "Come and take them". After loosing several thousand of his best soldiers in the resulting next two days of fighting, the Persian king sent a further demand to the Greeks to surrender or he would have "the sun blocked out by the clouds of arrows" from his Persian archers. The Spartan reply: "Then we will fight in the shade"
Herodotus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae


The final outcome of the battle, however was never in doubt and the Greeks were slain to a man.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Thursday, November 23, 2006

The Leftist's Paradox: Nanny State vs Choice

George Reisman:
Soon, in New York City, you won’t be able to buy a donut baked with trans fat, but you will be able choose your sex, irrespective of your anatomy.

If you think this is crazy, you’d better watch out and not say so. That’s because sooner or later, if there isn’t already, there will be a further regulation that bans such dissent as “antisocial,” “insensitive,” or “offensive.”

Even so, I can’t suppress the thought that if the hosts of, say, the Boston Tea Party, were alive, they might physically relocate New York City’s Board of Health to the streets below, perhaps with its office furniture wrapped around its members’ necks. A hostile response, I know. But then I’m feeling like that rattlesnake on a flag of my country’s Revolutionary War. His message to the world was, “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Comment:
I doubt the New Yorkers are smart enough to have figured out the implication of allowing people to name their own sex. This means you could have a business made up entirely of men, but half of them could change their sexual identity on their birth certificates and claim they are complying with EEOC regulations. :)
# posted by EdMcGon

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Don't Cry For Me Venezuela



On the way to the barber shop today I heard for the very first time an ad for Citgo petroleum. This tells me that the informal boycott of the wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan State oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) is beginning to impact the bottom line of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' socialist enterprise.

Sr. Chavez is locked in a very close reelection race with his opponent, Manuel Rosales. In the run up to the election which will occur on 03 December there have been 2.2 million new voters added to the rolls since January of this year. Additionally the voting rolls contain 39,000 voters who are over 100 years old and continue to vote for Chavez. The oldest registered voter, Sra Josefa Molina Lantz was born on 30 April 1831.

Chavez who styles himself as the heir to Fidel Castro as the hemisphere's yanqui basher has been shipping crude oil to the Communist controlled island for some time now to the tune of nearly 100,000 barrels per day. Castro has only been paying PDVSA for about half of the shipments. This is a very advantageous deal for Castro as the current market price for Venezuelan crude oil is close to US $49.00/ barrel. In effect Castro is paying what amounts to under US $25.00/barrel. This giveaway to Chavez' foreign political allies has become an election issue.
Since instituting his "Revolución Bolivarano Sr Chavez has fired all employees of PDVSA suspected of political opposition. The lists of persons to fire were easily obtained from those who signed a petition to recall el supremo in 2004. On the other hand Chavez rewarded his allies by using them as replacements for the fired oil workers and managers.

No wonder that these new millionaires are able to import new luxury cars (duty free) into the country and in some cases decorate them with images of the Supreme Leader.

Considering the huge crowds of Rosales supporters turning out for his rallies and marches, the theft of this election by Chavez could have bloody repercussions.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Monday, November 20, 2006

Sky Falls, World Ends...

... women and minorities hardest hit."

George Reisman :

In the last 500 million years, there have been two ice ages at the same time that vastly higher carbon dioxide levels prevailed in the earth's atomosphere—up to 16 times the present level.

This remarkable finding, along with others, was reported in the November 7, 2006 New York Times. For details, see the article by William Broad, “In Ancient Fossils, Seeds of a New Debate on Warming."

The article contains references to the work of a number of important scientists who aren’t supposed even to exist, according to the environmentalist [and warmista] propaganda machines, which brook no opposition. The article deserves to be required reading for everyone who is seriously interested in the subject of global warming.
George Reisman is a Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus.

The global warmistas advise: "In order to avert this catastrophe you must sacrifice your favorite goat".

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Sunday, November 19, 2006

What Did He Say?















"An ABC News reporter said the incident occurred Tuesday outside of the Old Senate Chamber as members of the new Democratic leadership, of which Kerry is not a part, left the chamber en route to the Ohio Clock Corridor to discuss leadership elections, the incoming majority's agenda and Iraq.

The ABC reporter said Kerry left the room behind Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Caucus Secretary Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Caucus Vice-Chair Schumer, D-N.Y. However, when Schumer noticed Kerry, D-N.Y., walking behind him, he turned and said something to the Massachusetts
senator that caused him to stop.

Kerry waited for the Democratic leaders to walk ahead and then ducked between two statues. The ABC reporter speculated that Schumer may have told Kerry to stay clear of the leadership shot.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ would speculate Shumer said something along the lines of: "Go fetch 4 martinis."

Friday, November 17, 2006

Following the Rats

One of the reasons ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ abandoned his native state of Kalifornia.

According to the analysis of poverty rates in the U.S. from 1990-2000:

The 10 states with the highest state spending per capita (Alaska, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming) saw an average increase of 7.3 percent of overall poverty rates and a 4.5 percent increase in childhood poverty.

The 10 states with the lowest spending (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas) saw overall poverty decline by 11.2 percent and childhood poverty fall 12.2 percent.

The two most populous states, California and Texas, could not have differed more; California's overall poverty rate increased 13.6 percent and childhood poverty rose 10 percent, while Texas' overall poverty rate declined 14.9 percent and its childhood poverty rate decreased by 17.3 percent.

Overall, according to the 2004 definition of red and blue states, red states saw an average decline of 11.7 percent in poverty rates, while blue states saw an average increase of 2.7 percent.



The dramatic declines in poverty in the "small government" states strongly confirms the hypothesis that reduced taxes and state spending encourages the emigration of people and businesses to areas where private-sector job growth is able to flourish and become a powerful and effective antipoverty program, says Ladner. And while taxes and business climate alone are not the only factors in reducing poverty rates, they certainly go a long way in helping fight the war on poverty.

ht/ dick McDonald

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

United Nations: The Sky is Falling!!

Josef Goebbels alleged that if a lie was repeated often enough that the masses would believe it. The United Nations seems determined to test that statement in order to further its agenda of a world government.
In 1988, James Hansen, a climatologist, told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch). The UN set up a transnational bureaucracy, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.
Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "
So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years.

Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Then, there were no glaciers in the tropical Andes: today they're there. There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they're under permafrost. There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.
The UN has even recently published a children's book replete with talking animals in order to scare them that the culprit in so called "climate change" is modern western industrialization while ignoring the sun's cycle of warming and cooling. This is further evidence that politicians with an agenda will not shrink from using the public treasury to subvert science in order to achieve their goals.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Update: 11/14/06 21:33
A Self-Correcting Problem
"Global warming" strikes again, Reuters reports from Toronto:

Aboriginal communities in Ontario's far north are becoming increasingly isolated as rising temperatures melt their winter route to the outside world and impede their access to supplies. . . .

During the coldest months between January and March, "winter roads" are cleared on the frozen network of rivers and lakes to let trucks deliver bulk supplies like fuel and building materials. . . .

About 20,000 people live in the remote reservations and rely on winter shipments of heating oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel to power generating stations.

Of course, if they can't get fuel, they can't burn it--which means they will no longer contribute to "global warming"! Isn't it nice how that works out?
ht/ James Taranto

Monday, November 13, 2006

Looking Forward to Shaira

Several years ago a group of environmentalist/animal rights activists rescued a number of sea otters that had been caught in an oil spill in Alaska (Exxon Valdez ring a bell?). When the otters had recovered sufficiently the rescue group transported them down to the shore of a nearby bay to conduct a "releasing" ceremony. When the furry little creatures were released among cheers and whoops of delight they began swimming and frolicking merrily out to sea whereupon a pod of orcas (as in the "save the whales" environmentalist slogan) swooped in, slaughtered and devoured all of the cuddly little otters before the very eyes of the shocked greenies. A similar occurrence recently transpired in Israel during a scheduled "gay pride" march. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

-- A group of gay Palestinian Americans canceled a planned pride march in East Jerusalem on Friday after one of them was beaten unconscious by a local man who said he was from the Waqf Muslim religious authority.

The beating incident occurred on the same day an Israeli gay pride rally went ahead as scheduled, though without a planned march through city streets. The march had been called off after threats by religious and right-wing opponents to mount huge counterdemonstrations. Only minor violence marred the event.

In the East Jerusalem beating, two men -- one wielding a knife -- came looking for the group of gay Palestinian Americans who were staying at the Faisal Hostel near the Damascus Gate of the Old City. One of the assailants identified himself as being from the Waqf, the clerical trust that administers Muslim religious sites in the city.

"I'm pretty terrified right now," said Daoud, an MBA student from Detroit who declined to give his full name. "We left the hostel immediately, but when my friend went back to collect some things, they were waiting for him. They asked if he was with 'the homos' and then started beating him."

He said the victim, from Chicago, was badly beaten, knocked down a flight of stairs and left unconscious. The man, whose name was withheld for his safety, was taken to the El-Mokassed Hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.

"It was very scary. These two guys came in and said they had heard we were planning to march. They drew a knife and said if we marched they would cut our heads off. They sounded like they meant it," he said.

Daoud said nine gay Palestinian Americans had come to Jerusalem to join the pride march. "Maybe I was just being naive. I heard about the pride rally, and I thought it would be nice for us to do something together as a gay community," he said. "We got a different kind of reception instead."

In America, he said, "you have some tolerance and appreciation and understanding of what it means to be gay and to be a Palestinian. We're discovering the hard way it's not so acceptable here."

Rotem Biran, 25, a hotel sales executive from Tel Aviv, said she was disappointed not to be able to march with the Palestinians from East Jerusalem. But by the time she arrived at the Faisal Hostel, Daoud and his friends had disappeared.

"Gay Palestinians are really afraid," she said. "It's not the same as being Jewish and gay. For them, it's dangerous. They can't really do anything openly in their own community because it's so strict, so they come all the way to Tel Aviv to be with other gay people."

Imagine that. One leftist victim group attacking another. Read the whole article. It's a real hoot.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Saturday, November 11, 2006

It's about Religion NOT Poverty!

"Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe"

* Dr. Tawfik Hamid is a medical doctor, author, and activist who once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos.



* He's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism. "Yes, 'imperialism,'" he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."

* He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine. I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way."

* The extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from Saudi Arabia to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia. * "We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme, and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed, and Jews called pigs and monkeys."

* "I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"

* "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."

ht/ dick McDonald

Pacificism: The Bloodiest of all Utopian Philosophies


Pacifism, like all utopian philosophies, has always failed when implemented. Unfortunately, human nature unchangeable my mortal efforts, militates against the universal adoption of utopian ideas. Only one of the tragic examples of this is the Jesuits selling several tribes of the Huron Indians on the benefits of pacifism in the 17th century. The Huron people's traditional enemies, the Iroquois, were thus able to subsequently defeat them and disperse the survivors. The Jesuits, having the best of intentions, were complicit in the genocidal near annihilation of many of the Hurons .

How many times, in its history, has Europe gone 60 years without a major war, as it has since 1945? That peace has been due to American [nuclear/military] power, which was all that could deter the Red Army from marching right across Europe to the Atlantic Ocean.

Having overwhelming military force on your side, and letting your enemies know that you have the will to use it, is being genuinely anti-war. The Daladier/Chamberlain appeasement of 1938 brought on World War II whereas Reagan's military buildup ended the Cold War.

The famous Roman peace of ancient times did not come from negotiations, cease-fires, or pretty talk. It came from the Roman Empire's crushing defeat and annihilation of Carthage, which served as a warning to anyone else who might have had any foolish ideas about challenging Rome.

Only after the Roman Empire began to lose its own internal cohesion, patriotism and fighting spirit over the centuries did it begin to succumb to its external enemies and finally collapse.

That seems to be where western civilization is heading today.

source

ht/ ¡No Pasarán!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Thursday, November 09, 2006

What it Means

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ will finally weigh in with his take on the results of the recent exercise in plebean muscle-flexing. Of all the opinions expressed on the reasons for the Republicans having their asses handed to them on 07 November, George Will , an avowed conservative, most closely expresses the views of the libertarian ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ:

Republicans sank beneath the weight of Iraq, the lesson of which is patent: Wars of choice should be won swiftly rather than lost protractedly. Of course the election-turning issue was...incontinent spending by a Republican-controlled Congress trying to purchase permanent power.

The Iraq War, like the Alaska bridge [to nowhere], pungently proclaims how Republicans earned their rebuke. They are guilty of apostasy from conservative principles at home (frugality, limited government) and embrace of anti-conservative principles abroad (nation-building grandiosity pursued incompetently).

The most left-wing speaker in U.S. history will return to being minority leader in 2009 unless she eschews an agenda that cannot be enacted without requiring the many Democrats elected from Republican-leaning districts to jeopardize their seats.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Circling the Bowl in South America II

Having spent considerable time in Venezuela while cruising in the eastern Caribbean, ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has been following with interest the recent political situation there and has what one could describe as "bad vibes". Most Americans are aware that the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has no love for the United States even though he cloaks his vitriol in "anti Bush" rhetoric in order to gain legitimacy with the American left. He appears to see himself as the heir to the soon to be departed Fidel Castro as the hemisphere's "yanqui baiter". What most in the US are unaware of is the increasing heat of the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election which will take place on 03 December 2006. Since coming to power in 1998 Chavez and his political allies have fully socialized the huge Venezuelan oil and gas industry PDVSA which does business in the US as CITGO and fired most of the employees whom they regarded as opposing the further sovietization of the Venezuelan economy. Many of these former employees although well educated have suffered substantial economic hardship.
The opposition candidate who seems to be gaining public support is Manuel Rosales, a maracucho (from the western district near Lake Maracaibo) who drew huge crowds to his march/rally in Caracas on 04 November. The Chavez government's reaction to this support for Rosales appears to be thinly veiled threats which ring eerily of the political intimidation engaged in by the National Socialists under herr Hitler in Germany in the period 1928 1938. Recent speeches and comments by Chavez and his associates raise the specter of two possible outcomes of the 03 December polling: 1) massive election fraud resulting in an overwhelming Chavista victory or; 2) a declaration of a "state of emergency" following a Chavista defeat with its concomitant refusal to surrender power to a victorious Rosales.
For those in the nether parts of the western hemisphere, you should be aware that Venezuela sits atop the largest deposit of proven petroleum reserves in North and South America. An excellent source of reporting on the situation is here. Stay tuned.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Imagine That!

So, the New York Times reports on its front page [Nov 03] that Saddam Hussein had the necessary information and expertise to build nuclear weapons as far back as pre-1991, and that the information is so damning even now that posting it on a public website fifteen years later could assist other regimes, including Iran, in building such weapons.

The Times has just confirmed two things: 1. President Bush was right when he said that Hussein was a threat to the world because, among other things, he would continue to pursue weapons of mass destruction; and 2. congressional Republicans were right in demanding a more aggressive and thorough effort by the Pentagon to interpret the enormous number of documents captured from the Iraqi regime.

The Times's emphasis on "Republicans" demanding the release of these documents and the administration's posting them on a public website was an obvious attempt by the newspaper to cause some kind of eleventh-hour Republican embarrassment. The Times had hoped the weekend before the election would be spent debating the handling of this information rather than its existence and substance. But it was wrong. This is a stunning find that confirms a primary basis for the president ordering the military to remove Hussein from power. This finding also strikes a blow to the Democrat mantra that the president lied to get us into the war with Iraq.

The Democrats and their partners in the liberal media demand to know what the president plans to do to stop Iran and North Korea from securing nuclear weapons. Yet, when he did, in fact, stop Iraq from getting those same weapons, he is loudly denounced for it.

Thanks to the New York Times for disclosing this important information four days before a crucial election. Your November surprise has just backfired.

source

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Ignore That Man Behind the Curtain


On Dec 5 2002 Trent Lott stated at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday celebration:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Whereupon John Kerry stated:
"It saddens me greatly to suggest this, but in the interests of the Senate, his party, and the nation, I believe Trent Lott should step aside as majority leader," Kerry said. "I simply do not believe the country can today afford to have someone who has made these statements again and again be the leader of the United States Senate."

The non stop media feeding frenzy drove Lott from his leadership position in the U.S. Senate.

On October 30 2006 John Kerry stated:

"You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The mainstream media neglected to report this statement (as most of their reporters agree with it) until their darling, John McCain remarked on it and they were thus forced to address it.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is waiting for Howard Deane to attribute the Kerry remark to Rove induced hypnosis.

We are now exposed to the results of journalism students at the major "universities" responding to the query: "why have you chosen to major in journalism?" by the response "to save the world" instead of : "report the news".

Update: 11/02/06 08:52hrs EST

Francis Porretto:
[John] Kerry, whose brain is definitely not his finest organ, elected to counterattack, as if for anyone to call attention to the insulting implications of his remark was somehow beyond the pale -- "questioning his patriotism" redux. By doing so, he's demonstrated all the following:

* That his arrogance, expressed in his unwillingness ever to admit to a mistake, remains boundless;
* That his ability to foresee the consequences of his words and deeds approaches zero;
* That though his primary goal is power -- the presidency -- his secondary goal, and not far behind at all, is the exaltation of his own image and public profile;
* That his image/publicity obsession completely eclipses any sense of duty to his party or regard for its fortunes.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ