The Savage Planet
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
I've tried to get some of the posts from my Live Journal over to Blogspot and it looks like they're up. It's not pretty, but hey, that's life.
2003-07-31 09:02:00; DAVID HOROWITZ ON "THE PASSION":
Unlike Paula Frederickson and others who want to destroy Mel Gibson's film about Christ before they have seen it, I have. It is not an attempt to portray the historical Jesus -- which is the subject of Frederickson's entire screed -- nor could it be. By her own account there is no evidentiary basis for such a portrait and if anyone tried to create one it would be eviscerated (to use your word) by Savanarolas like Frederickson and her committee the same way, precisely because no one can know what the truth is.
Gibson's film is an artistic vision and must be judged that way. Like others who have seen the film, I am sworn to keep details confidential so that it gets its chance when the distributors present it to the viewing public next Easter. However, I will say this: It is an awesome experience, an overpowering work. I can't remember being so affected by a film before. It is extremely painful to watch and yet the violence is never gratuitous. You never feel like you want to take your eyes off the screen. It is a wracking emotional journey which never strays from its inspirational purpose. It is as close to a religious experience as art can get.
It is not anti-Semitic, as the film-burners charge. Two illustrative: Jesus is referred to in the film as "rabbi," and there is never any distancing of Jesus or his disciples from their Jewishness. (One point missed by ignorant bigots like Frederickson whose only familiarity with The Passion is with a stolen script) is that while the film is in Aramaic -- a brilliant effect that enhances the symbolic resonance of the story -- it has subtitles. Second detail: A Jew carries Jesus' cross along the terrible route to Golgotha and shares his miseries. But yes the film is also faithful to the Gospels and therefore the Pharisees are Jesus' enemies and they and their flock do call for Jesus' death (and why wouldn't they since Jesus was a threat to their authority and their beliefs?).
But all this is to miss the point. This is a Christian parable. The cruelty, intolerance and lack of compassion of human beings is limitless -- and we who have lived through the Twentieth Century know this all too well. The moral of this Christian story -- of Mel Gibson's film -- is that we all killed Jesus -- Jew and Gentile alike -- and tortured him, and we do so every day. But if you believe the vision that Gibson has rendered so searingly and so well, Jesus forgives us for that very act. Whosoever will give up cruelty and love his brother will enter paradise. That is the message that Gibson has framed in his extraordinary work. The effort to shut down his film before it opens is just another station of the cross.
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2003-07-29 17:23:00; Democrats - Party of the "working man" my ass.
A June study by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org/) shows that Republicans outraise Democrats by 63 percent to 37 percent among penny-ante donors - those who give under $200. The GOP retains that advantage at all levels up to $100,000, although it steadily narrows as the dollar amount rises. Once you hit $100,000, Democrats really begin to clean up. They hold a fundraising advantage that widens rapidly as the numbers get more stratospheric. In contributions of over $1 million, Democrats outraise Republicans by 92 percent to 8 percent. For a list of top givers, and who they give to, click here: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.asp?order=A
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2003-07-24 11:30:00; I can't wait for Election '04
I suppose you might expect that French President Jacques Chirac would be in a particularly bad mood these days, given that American troops are making damn good progress in completing the liberation of the Iraqi people and are also closing in fast on his good buddy Saddam.
Still, earlier this week in Malaysia Chirac went into a public spasm of anti-Americanism that left even the reporters covering the event taken aback. Here's the lede from the International Herald Tribune:
"When two virulent opponents of American involvement in Iraq like President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia get together, the language of disapproval of U.S. policy normally gets a full workout. But this was a notch above standard."
So what exactly did Chirac say? Well, he is quoted by the AFP as urging the establishment of a new international "mechanism" that will help "do away with unilateralism and bring multilateralism" Mssr. Chirac then continued:
"We can no longer accept the law of the strongest, the law of the jungle."
Apparently there was a bit of controversy over the official translation, though Chirac's press office released a clarification the following day that was just as lame.
Later in the IHT article, however, we come across even more of a knee-slapper:
Chirac was honored, the AFP dispatch said, for his "resolute opposition to the war in Iraq and the courage he demonstrated in placing himself on the side of the oppressed."
What's most striking about Chirac's statement and the rest of the language quoted in the article isn't that it came from two virulently anti-American international leaders halfway around the world, it's that it could have just as easily come from nearly all of the current Democrat presidential challengers at a campaign stop anywhere in America.
It is absolutely bizarre. Most rational politicians would recognize the fact that when your policy and rhetoric becomes indistinguishable from France and Malaysia, you've got a teeny-weeny bit of a problem on your hands.
Not Democrats. Led by Howard Dean, they've all got their feet pressed firmly on the antiwar gas pedal. The top on the convertible is down. Empty beer cans are tink-tinkling down the open road and they've got smiles on their faces as they speed toward the brick wall of election 2004.
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2003-07-22 11:08:00; It Ain't Necessarily So - Army Spec Ops letter from Iraq
This email is from a Special Ops guy in Iraq and looks to be ligit. Makes you wonder why none of this is being reported back home though.
H.
E-mail from SOCOM ~ Courtesy of Freeper Lexington Green | 01 Jul 2003 | Mark w/ Army Spec Ops
Subject: FW: Message From Iraq
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003, 11:09:09 GMT
Hey Guys, sorry it's been so long since I've sent anything but a quick note to you individually. However things have been pretty hectic since the end of hostilities and the start of the real war. Despite what the assholes in the press like to say over and over about the Ba'ath Party and Feydaheen.
1) It isn't any worse than expected;
2) Things are getting better each day, and
3) The morale of the troops is A-1, except for the normal bitching and griping.
My brief love affair with the press, especially the guys who had the cajones to be embedded with the troops during the fighting, is probably over, especially since we are back being criticized by them same Roland Headly types that used to hang around the Palestine Hotel drinking Baghdad Bob's whiskey and parroting his ridiculous B.S.
I'm in Baghdad now, since SpOpComm 5 relocated here from Qatar. It looks, sounds and smells about the same but at least you can get Maker's Mark at the local OC. We came up in mid-June to help set up operation Scorpion and Sidewinder. It represents a major (and long overdue) shift in tactics. Instead of being sitting ducks for the ragheads we now are going after the worthless pieces of fecal matter.
I'm no longer baby-sitting the pukes from CNN and the canned hams from the networks, but have a combat mission coordinating a bunch of A teams, seeking, finding and rooting out the mostly non-Iraqis that are well-armed, well-paid (in U.S. dollars) and always waiting to wail for the press and then shoot some GI in the back in the midst of a crowd.
The only reason the GIs are pissed (not demoralized) is that they cannot touch, must less waste, those taunting bags of gas that scream in their faces and riot on cue when they spot a camera man from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN or NBC. If they did, then they know the next nightly news will be about how chaotic things are and how much the Iraqi people hate us.
Some do. But the vast majority don't and more and more see that the GIs don't start anything, are by-and-large friendly, and very compassionate, especially to kids and old people. I saw a bunch of 19 year-olds from the 82nd Airborne not return fire coming from a mosque until they got a group of elderly civilians out of harm's way. So did the Iraqis.
A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and children as human shields.The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't been a problem inthat neighborhood since. How many such stories, and there are hundreds of them, never get reported in the fair and balanced press? You know, nada.
The civilians who have figured it out faster than anyone are the local teenagers.
They watch the GIs and try to talk to them and ask questions about America and Now wear wrap-around sunglasses, GAP T- shirts, Dockers (or even better Levis with the red tags) and Nikes (or Egyptian knock-offs, but with the "swoosh") and love to listen to AFN when the GIs play it on their radios.
They participate less and less in the demonstrations and help keep us informed when a wannabe bad-ass shows up in the neighborhood.
The younger kids are going back to school again, don't have to listen to some mullah rant about the Koran ten hours a day, and they get a hot meal.
They see the same GIs who man the corner checkpoint, helping clear the playground, install new swingsets and create soccer fields. I watched a bunch of kids playing baseball in one playground, under the supervision of a couple of GIs from Oklahoma. They weren't very good but were having fun, probably more than most Little Leaguers
The place is still a mess but most of it has been for years. But the Hospitals are open and are in the process of being brought into the 21stCentury. The MOs and visiting surgeons from home are teaching their docs new techniques and One American pharmaceutical company (you know, the kind that all the hippies like to scream about as greedy) donated enough medicine to stock 45 hospital pharmacies for a year.
Safe water is more available. Electricity has been restored to pre-war levels but saboteurs keep cutting the lines. And The old Ba'ath big shots are upset because they can't get fuel for their private generators. One actually complained to General McKeirnan, who told him it was a rough world.
The MPs are screening the 80,000 Iraqi police force and rehabbing the ones that weren't goons, shake-down artists or torturers like they did in East Berlin, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
There are dual patrols of Iraqi cops and U.S./U.K./Polish MPs now in most of the larger cities. Basra has 3.5 million inhabitants. Mosul is a city of 2 million. Kirkuk has 1 million. How many and hundreds of other small towns have not had riots or shootings? The vast majority.
The six U.K. cops were killed in a small Shiite town by the ex-cops they were re-habbing. According to a Royal Marine colonel I talked to, the town now has about twenty permanent vacancies in its police force. Mick, he's a big potato eater from Belfast named Huggins and knows how to handle terrorists after twenty years fighting with the IRA. He sends his regards and says he'd love to have you here. Thinks you'd make a great police chief, even though the cops would be more frightened of you than the local hoods (then he laughed)
I heard one doofus on MSNBC the other night talk about how "nearly 60" GIs have been killed since 01 May. The truth is that 21 GIs have been killed in combat, mostly from ambush, from 01 May through 30 June, Another 29 have been killed by accidents or other causes (two drowned while swimming in the Tigris).
The MSNBC turd is the same jerk who reported on the air that "dozens of GIs" were badly burned when two RPGs hit a truck belonging to an Engineer Battalion that was parked by a construction site. The truck was hit and burned, three GIs received minor injuries (including the driver who burnt his hand) and three warriors of Allah were promptly sent to enjoy their 72 slave girls in Paradise. Hell of a way to get laid.
A mosque in that shithole Fallujah blew up this morning while the local imam, a creep named Fahlil (who was one of the biggest local loudmouths that frequently appeared on CNN) was helping a Syrian Hamas member teach eight teenagers how to make belt bombs. Right away the local Feyhadeen propaganda group started wailing that the Americans hit it with a TOW missile (If they had there wouldn't have been any mosque left!) and the usual suspects took to the streets for CNN and BBC. One fool was dragging around a piece of tin with blood on it, claiming it was part of the missile.
The cameras rolled and the idiot started repeating his story, then one of my guys asked him in Arabic where he had left the rag he usually wore around his face that made him look like a girl. He was a local leader of the Feyhadeen. We took the clown in custody and were asked rather indignantly by the twit from BBC if we were trying to shut up "the poor man who had seen his mosque and friends blown up." I told the airy-fairy who the raghead was and if he knew Arabic (which he obviously didn't) he'd know he was a Palestinian. I suggested we take him down to the local jail and we'd lock him and his cameraman in a cell with the "poor man" and they could interview him until we took him to headquarters. They declined the invitation. Guess what played on the Bullshit Broadcasting System that evening? Did the Americans blow up a mosque? See the poor man who is still in a state of shock over losing his mosque and relatives? Yep. Our friend the Palestinian.
Our search and destroy missions are largely at night, free of reporters and generally terrifying to those brave warriors of Allah. The only thing that frightens them more is hearing the word "Gitmo". The word is out that a trip to Guantanimo Bay is not a Caribbean vacation and they usually start squealing like the little mice they are, when an interrogator mentions "Gitmo". No wonder the International Red Cross, the National Council of Churches and the French keep protesting about the place. They know it has proven to be very effective in keeping several hundred real fanatical psychopaths in check and very frankly would rather see them cut loose to go kill some more GIs or innocent Americans, just to make W. look bad.
We have about 200 really bad guys in custody now and probably will park them in the desert behind a triple roll of razor wire, backed up by a couple of Bradleys pointed their way, if they decide to riot. Maybe a few will get to Gitmo but most are human garbage that wouldn't take on your five-year old grandson face-to-face. The more we go after them and not vice-versa I think we will see the sniper attacks go down. Yeah, they'll get lucky now and then, but it's showtime, fellows.
Our first objective is to get the die-hards off the street (or make them too scared to come out in them) and destroy their caches of weapons (we have collected more than 227,000 A-47s and that is only the tip of the iceberg; Curly bought nearly a million of them from our pal Vladimir), then cut off their money supply, mostly from Syria and Lebanon. We must continue to get public services up and running, so the local families can get water, sewage and garbage service; electricity, public transportation; oil fields and refineries working and a dinar that won't halve in value every month.
It's going to be a long haul (remember it took 10-15 years in Japan and West Germany) but if we don't stick with it, nobody else will, and we'll have some other looney running the place again.
This place has greater potential than Saudi Arabia (bunch of goat-herders who struck black gold) or Iran (weird dudes who can't run a rug bazaar much less a major country).
Armageddon, here we come. Remember, it's located on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Enough of that cheery speculation. The good news is that General Schoonmaker is going to appointed ChiefArmy and the old man is coming to Tampa to run the SpOps desk at CentComm. He's tops and will be getting his second star. To me it means that SpOps will be more predominant in future operations and after 18 years as a GB maybe I'll have a shot at a bird-level combat command. The old man asked me to come to MacDill and be his ACS but I told him after I spent four months changing the diapers of the media types, I wanted to go back to action. Hence, my current gig. As the movie quoted old General Patton, "God help me, I love it." I do. Nothing more satisfying than working with the BEST damn soldiers in the world, flushing real human poop down the drain and giving some folks a chance at trying freedom for a change. They may learn to like it and then my great-great-grandson won't have to worry about some maniac trying to destroy the planet.
My tour is over at the end of August, and I plan to return to Tampa, brief the old man, then head to San Rafael and see my two sweethearts. I'd like to visit my parents in Toronto and my brother in London, before taking on a trip across the country. Just like any other family. It will charge my batteries before I end up back in some other shit ... er, interesting and challenging location. I hope to see most of you and ask for some advice, not support. I know I've had that all along. Thanks.
Now about that Maker's Mark.
God Bless America
Mark.
"War doesn't determine who wins, war determines who is left"
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2003-07-18 09:58:00; Tony Blair Rocks
"We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind -- black or white; Christian or not; left, right or merely indifferent -- to be free -- free to raise a family in love and hope; free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts; free not to bend your knee to any man in fear; free to be you, so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others. That's what we're fighting for, and it's a battle worth fighting. And I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to but always wanted to go -- (laughter) -- I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do. And our job -- my nation, that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond -- our job is to be there with you. You're not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and our courage firm, the world will be with us."
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2003-06-19 11:00:00; Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy!
When the US liberated Iraq, one of the local chants yelled at US soldiers was "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!". The Iraqi's of that village only knew those words in English. (Which says a lot of how they must view American. :>) The image below was created by some Iranians during the current round of massive protests against the mullahs. They say the same thing but in Farsi.
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2003-06-19 07:47:00; Closer and Closer....
From the Daily Telegraph (of London)
"No details of Abid Hamid's (#4 most wanted, and former Saddam secretary) capture were released by the Pentagon. But yesterday a huge operation was launched. American troops raided two farmhouses and found £5.3 million in US dollars, up to £250 million in Iraqi dinars, quantities of British pounds and euros and £600,000 in gems. Up to 50 people believed to be part of Saddam's security or intelligence apparatus or members of paramilitary groups were taken prisoner. "I believe over the next three to four days, you will hear much more about the number of senior Iraqi individuals we have detained here over the last couple of days," said Maj Gen Ray Odierno, commander of the US 4th Infantry Division. He said it was believed that part of the money was intended for funding bounties to be paid for killing American soldiers."
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/19/wirq19.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/19/ixnewstop.html
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2003-06-13 14:11:00; Quote of the Day:
"We want more freedom. For 25 years we have lived without any freedom. We want social freedom, economic freedom and political freedom"
- an Iranian protestor speaking to the New York Times.
The news from Tehran is exhilarating. Why it isn't on the front pages of the papers I don't know. Here we have the possibility of a full-scale revolt against the Islamo-fascist dictatorship in Tehran, one brewing for a long time and given momentum by the liberation of Iraq. If the revolution can happen before the regime acquires nuclear weapons, we have a chance to avert a catastrophe for the West and the people of the Middle East. We need now to keep the pressure on, send money and support to the protestors, fund aggressive Persian-language media, and generally let the people of Iran know whose side we're on.
- Andrew Sullivan
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2003-06-11 22:35:00; British Humor, at it's Best:
From http://www.private-eye.co.uk/diary.htm:
"As I gasped for breath, he just stood there saying over and over again, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”. Then he glanced down and added, “Look, honey! -- my little pal wants to say he’s sorry too!”
What was Bill talking about? Did he honestly think I could go on being amused by his ‘little pal’ -- after all it had had put me through?
I started crying and yelling at him. “From now on, you’re going to have to get someone else to do that for you, Bill Clinton!” He just stood there saying over and over again, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged. I had the future of our great country in my hands. The men, women and children of our nation had come to value my counsel, my compassion, my fierce belief in fighting to improve the delivery of hair care for one and all -- but at this crucial point in our history my husband seemed to have just one thing on his mind.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he kept repeating. Then he brushed away the tears and looked me sincerely in the face.
“You know what my little pal is saying, Hillary? You know what he’s saying? He’s saying ‘Howsabout a quickie, hon?’”
I was left with nothing but profound sadness, disappointment and unresolved anger."
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2003-06-11 22:33:00; Yet another Quote of the Day:
"I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at Donald and Dick and Condoleezza: 'What are you saying? Why did you lie to me? What do you mean, there were no weapons of mass destruction?'"
- President George W. Bush, as imagined by Francine Prose. http://www.newyorkobserver.com/pages/frontpage5.asp
(Scroll down to check out her piece)
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2003-06-11 19:18:00; Didn't see this one coming....
You are The Merovingian, from "The
Matrix." Wit and danger, with a French
twist. You are adamant about the slightly
materialistic things- power, wealth, posession.
Dominating, aren't we?
What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
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2003-06-11 09:30:00; Quote of the Day
Hillary said that when she first set eyes on Bill Clinton back in college he had a beard and he reminded her of a Viking - which is perfect because she reminded him of Iceland
- Jay Leno, the Tonight Show.
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2003-06-09 19:50:00; I'm the "Translator"
| You are 50% geek | You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.
|
Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com
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2003-06-07 12:21:00; Why the Use of Force is a "Good Thing"
From the Wall Street Journal:
We may now be witnessing the most radical reshaping of the Middle East since it acquired its modern form (and many of its modern problems) in the wake of World War I. What the British Empire began, the American Empire may be about to finish.
Most of us are compulsively pessimistic about the Middle East; too many "road maps" have led over cliffs. But this time there's a real chance it could be different. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been the mother of all wake-up calls. Unlike his predecessors, who thought peace could be brought by touchy-feely peace talks, Mr. Bush has grasped that military power is key: the magical spear that heals even as it wounds. By showing them just how easily Saddam could be overthrown, Mr. Bush has made it transparent to Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia that Saddam's fate could befall them too.
I don't believe anyone in the Pentagon wants to stage another invasion soon; their hands are full. The aim is to put the frighteners on the region's Muslim powers. And it's working. When five Arab leaders met Mr. Bush on Tuesday, they pledged, with manifest penitence, that they would henceforth actively fight "the culture of extremism and violence." Not just al Qaeda: Hamas and Hezbollah too. And that is precisely why, to the astonishment of many, Ariel Sharon seems ready to make the concessions without which no peace is conceivable. For the first time in his life, he has acknowledged that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been under Israeli "occupation." He has pledged to "evacuate unauthorized outposts." And he has agreed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state with "territorial contiguity" (the week's key word). None of this would be happening if Mr. Bush had not established his credibility in the region by force.
See the rest here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003596
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2003-06-04 18:25:00; More Than Meets the Eye....
Thanks go to my buddy John for giving me this link. He's teh bomb: http://members.cox.net/michaelsstorage/VWMPG.mpg
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2003-06-03 22:55:00; The British House of Lords on Email Spam
Lord Renton asked: "Will the Minister explain how it is that an inedible tinned food can become an unsolicited email, bearing in mind that some of us wish to be protected from having an email?"
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2003-05-31 23:33:00; I made it!
The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Extreme |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Low |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | Moderate |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Moderate |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Moderate |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | High |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Very Low |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Moderate |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | High |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Very Low |
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test
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2003-05-30 12:48:00; Different Coast, same feelings
It's amazing how this guy nails it. Growing up in LA, being a gamer, *and* being a card-carrying Republican, I get this all of the time. Like him you learn to let it slide most of the time, but it's still annoying as hell.
Socially Accepted Bigotry: A primer in discrimination against us GOPers
by: Willy Stern
http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2003/1322/t_gamut.html
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2003-05-29 12:51:00; W's Tax-Cut Catch-22 for the Democrats
Taken from todays' New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/76936.htm
May 29, 2003 -- The hazard of passing a landmark bill is that you lose the use of the associated issue in the next election: A president in his first term is banking the achievement, at the risk of making it harder to campaign for a second term. Since gratitude is a slender basis for winning re-election, most politicians would rather leave their agenda at least partially unfulfilled to run on it for another term.
But President Bush, in an unparalleled act of political brilliance, has managed to figure out how to have his cake and eat it too: Pocket the accomplishment of a tax cut, while preserving it as an issue for the next election.
He did it by letting himself be "defeated" in his demand for a $750 billion tax cut stretching over the next 10 years. Instead, he accepted what appeared to be less than half a loaf, agreeing to a $320 billion cut that sunsets in 2006.
That deal -with the Democrats and moderates in his own party - looks like typical legislative compromise, but is actually a move of incredible political acumen: The "sunset" provision, under which the tax cut automatically lapses unless expressly extended by new legislation, makes taxes a front-and-center issue of the 2004 election.
Now Bush can send refund checks of $400 for each child to 25 million households this summer, slash the tax on dividends and capital gains to 15 percent and reduce tax rates on all three brackets - all effective immediately - and still be able to base his re-election campaign on the need to preserve his tax cuts.
The president can run for re-election with an economy stimulated by his tax cuts and still have the issue to use in the '04 contest.
With the tax cuts slated to expire in the opening years of the next presidential term, every Democratic candidate will have to answer the question: "Will you support extending the Bush tax cut?"
A "no" will be required to win enough primary votes to get the nomination. But a "yes" will be necessary to prevail in the general election. Bush has put the Democrats in an impossible position.
But the maneuver is even more impressive: It shows a really sophisticated appreciation of how the tax-cut issue works on a political level.
The constituency for a tax cut is always limited. Bush has never had much of a majority - if any - behind him on his tax cuts. After basing his campaign for the Republican nomination on tax cuts, he wisely stopped talking much about them and stressed an increased commitment to education and "compassionate conservatism" in his general-election platform.
Asked on a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll if they wanted a tax cut and how large it should be, only 20 percent of the sample opted for the full $750 billion recommended by the president.
But the issue in 2004 won't be whether to cut taxes - it will be whether to raise them, by letting the cut expire. And any poll asking if voters want a tax increase will find huge majorities saying, "No way!"
Accordingly, Bush won't accuse his rivals of opposing the tax cut. Rather, he'll charge that they want a tax hike.
In the language of electoral politics, that is the equivalent of supporting murder, rape and arson. The last candidate who ran promising to raise taxes was Walter Mondale in 1984 - who lost in a landslide.
Bush will happily tick off the tax "increases" his rival supports by refusing to extend the tax cuts past the sunset.
How can a Democrat oppose expanding the child-tax credit, lowering the tax rates on the two lowest brackets and repealing of the marriage penalty?
You can't win on that platform in November. But a candidate who doesn't embrace it in the primaries won't get nominated.
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2003-05-23 11:01:00; Pygmies beg UN for aid to save them from Congo cannibals
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-689516,00.html
The things we humans do to each other sometimes still freaks me out. The sad thing is, I doubt the UN will do anything about this. One of the quotes that really grabbed me was this one:
"Mr Makelo (The Mbuti pygmi representative) called on the forum to ask the UN Security Council to recognise cannibalism as a crime against humanity and an act of genocide."
Call me an idiot, but here I thought cannibalism was already a crime against humanity.
The UN is a joke that's been going on for too long. It needs to be dropped like a bad habit and replaced with an organization that's actually effective.
