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A Modest Dissent To The Citizen Of The World

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 2:43:12 PM
I don’t believe the world did anything to save Berlin. “It’s America, Obama”

Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in the eye of the beholder. So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I am troubled by his historical revisionism that, “The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love.”

I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons “destroying all we have built” — while the inverse would not have been true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed. We sleep too lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.
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Feeling The Love For Obama In Paris

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 2:34:46 PM
What reason could there possibly be for Barack Obama not to be the next president of the United States? “President of the World”

I’m having lunch with an Obama supporter at La Coupole, the venerable brasserie in Paris’s Montparnasse neighborhood. The woman who asked me that question, along with her fiance, has come to discuss something else, but the talk inevitably comes round to the U.S. presidential race. And the question here, as all across Europe, is:

What reason could there possibly be for Barack Obama not to be the next president of the United States?

Put another way, why would anyone vote for John McCain?

In the European mind, Guantanamo is one of the centers of evil in the world, a dungeon where George W. Bush commits unspeakable acts on innocent Muslims who just happened to be on a battlefield in Afghanistan or Pakistan when U.S. troops captured them.

She says the prisoners in Gitmo have been denied their constitutional rights.

I say they are enemy combatants; they have rights under international treaties, but not American constitutional rights.

But they have “global rights,” she insists.

What are “global rights”? I ask.

There’s no precise definition, but as far as I could tell, “global rights” appear to be American constitutional rights applied to the entire planet. It’s an astounding notion, given that American constitutional rights definitely do not apply across the entire planet — not even in places like, well, France.

She told me that in France there isn’t the racial segregation one finds in the United States.

And what about politics? A recent article in the New York Times discussed how there is “one black member representing continental France in the National Assembly among 555 members; no continental French senators out of some 300; only a handful of mayors out of some 36,000, and none from the poor Paris suburbs.”

So here in France they are very, very excited about Barack Obama, but have made it somewhat unlikely that an Obama of their own will emerge.

Whether Obama wins or loses, he will still be a hero here in France.

Just as long as he doesn’t try to run for office.
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Can't We All Just Get Along

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 2:20:23 PM
UN human rights chief to Britain: Be nicer to Muslims
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Priorities

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 12:35:19 PM

Why Obama snubbed the troops: no photo op allowed


NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube get the skinny on the abrupt cancellationreal problem.  When Obama found out he couldn’t use the visit as a photo op, he canceled
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This Was The End Of History

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 12:27:36 PM

David Brooks on Obama: This isn’t eloquence, it’s Disney


Obama’s unmemorable speech


Obama’s act has jumped the shark

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Promise Keepers

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 12:22:21 PM

Senate Republicans hold the line on energy; Update: Reid falls apart

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Cowering Is Not Leadership

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 12:19:31 PM

WSJ poll: It’s the energy, stupid — er, Pelosi

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Barack's Obama-isms

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 1:13:36 AM
The gaffes Barack Obama has committed would have crushed the typical Republican politician. But the reporters who can't get over Dan Quayle's misspelling of "potato" have little to say about their man's slip-ups.

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...As Well As Several Other Issues

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 1:11:27 AM

Here are some questions that Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson should be asking Barack Obama as they follow him on his trip: Before...

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Obama's Shifting Positions Leave Questions Unanswered On Guns...

Posted by On the Right on Friday, July 25, 2008 1:09:30 AM

Sen. Barack Obama claims there has been only a "shift in emphasis," not "wild shifts," in his political positions. Many already know the list: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, NAFTA, public financing of campaigns, abortion, gay marriage, Social Security taxes, the death penalty and negotiating with rogue nations.

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Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns Of Risk From Cell Phone Use

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 7:21:17 PM
Science on Speed "The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer," the Associated Press reports:
The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between increased tumors and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Another researcher likened cell-phone use to "play[ing] Russian roulette with your brain."
Herberman is basing his alarm on early, unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now--especially when it comes to children.

If Herberman thinks it takes too long to get answers from science, maybe he should go into astrology instead.

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It’s What We Didn’t Do, Not What He Didn’t Do

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:54:25 PM
Hamdan did a lot more than mindlessly drive bin Laden from place to place.“Missing the Point on Hamdan”

Not surprisingly, the story doesn’t bear out this preposterous premise. Inadvertently or not, Bravin ends up showing Hamdan did a lot more than mindlessly drive bin Laden from place to place.

We learn, for example, that he functioned as a trusted member of al-Qaeda’s inner circle. He provided security when bin Laden would rendezvous with his top deputies, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to discuss terror plots. Thus, the mere “driver” was on hand when bin Laden explained to Mohammed “that he had expected to kill 1,000 to 1,500 people in the [9/11] attacks, rather than the nearly 3,000 who died.”

Moreover, Hamdan helped prepare evacuations so that bin Laden could escape in the event — as it usually happened, the non-event — of any U.S. retaliatory operations. He was also one of the very few al-Qaeda members permitted to carry arms in close proximity to the world’s most wanted man (y’know, so he could, like, stay alive).

You have to tread deep into Bravin’s story to discover its most significant detail, rendered by the witness Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who interviewed Hamdan at length:
In advance of attacks, Mr. Soufan said, Mr. Hamdan would often be alerted to prepare vehicles for a rapid move, in case of an American retaliation. He added that Mr. Hamdan came to believe that Washington’s failure to launch massive retaliations after the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 Cole bombing emboldened Mr. bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader believed the U.S. would never send ground troops to pursue him in Afghanistan, Mr. Soufan said.
Barack Obama and the rest of the Left can continue telling themselves the civilian courtroom prosecutions of the 1990s, rather than the ongoing military approach, is the right model for dealing with international terrorists. But the blunt truth is that the failure to respond responsibly to the embassy bombings and the Cole bombing (as well as the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing) directly caused 9/11.

Sen. Obama might take note that bin Laden was under federal indictment when nearly 250 people (including 17 American sailors) were killed in the attacks on the embassies and the Cole. In fact, after the embassies were bombed, we even had a prosecution in which exactly five terrorists were “brought to justice.” It doesn’t seem to have helped much.
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Voodoo Climatology

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:46:44 PM
It seems Al Gore can’t help but make dramatic and fact-challenged claims on the slimmest of evidence. “The Grand Exaggerator”
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The Anti-Anti-Terrorists Push For Unilateral Disarmament.

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:42:25 PM
Neville Chamberlain was a hawk compared with America's antiwar Left. “Beyond Complacency”

It’s often said that the September 11 attacks were a “wake-up call’ — that they forced both the political class and the public to seriously (if belatedly) address a peril that for years had been minimized and marginalized.

. . . slumber persists; too many people still do not recognize that “in an age when weapons of mass destruction have become more accessible than ever before, militant Islam may actually pose an existential threat to the United States. At a minimum, it constitutes a formidable strategic threat.”

Advocates of a strong defense have been opposed at every turn by leftists who blame America first (“chickens coming home to roost”), paleo-conservatives who believe that Americans venturing abroad inevitably stir up hornets’ nests, and libertarians who see threats to civil liberties behind every counterterrorist initiative.

The fact that there has not been a catastrophic attack on American soil for nearly seven years has emboldened this anti-anti-terrorist coalition. They are certain that the reason we have not been hit recently — as have London, Madrid, Bali, Baghdad, Kabul etc. — has nothing to do with any actions taken by the Bush administration.

One might argue that the federal government’s primary obligation is to protect America. But that cuts no mustard with those who, as Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot writes, insist “we pull out of Iraq, repeal the Patriot Act, roll back the executive branch’s surveillance authority, force the release of Guantanamo’s detainees or remand them to the normal criminal-justice system, impose even greater restrictions on interrogations of terrorist suspects, and generally dissipate the sense of urgency that has animated American counterterrorism efforts since 9/11.
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Showdown

Posted by On the Right on Thursday, July 24, 2008 3:09:23 PM

Senate Republicans: None shall pass until drilling commences


Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has laid down the gauntlet to Majority Leader Harry Reid on energy, according to The Hill.  Following the efforts of Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, the Republican caucus has promised to obstruct any bills not pertaining to energy until the Senate votes on removing the remaining restrictions on off-shore drilling.  It promises to make the Senate the focus of high-profile political brinksmanship, and puts the Democrats in a tight spot with fuel prices impacting every aspect of the American economy

It’s not even clear that Reid can keep all of the Democrats on board. Coburn predicted that Reid would whip his caucus hard to keep all 51 Democrats behind him while he tried to bribe ten Republicans away, but fuel prices have made Reid’s obstructionism on drilling a losing cause.  No one wants to go back home in August to explain to constituents why they blocked drilling in the OCS and the interior while people are paying twice as much for gas as they did before Reid and Nancy Pelosi took control of Congress.  Democrats know that Republicans are poised to expose this on a national basis, and that the electorate is angry enough about Congressional inaction on energy policy to listen.

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