Say Anything Blog

I recently read an opinion piece in which the author ridiculed the very concept of a “war on terror,” saying that it makes as much sense as if, after Pearl Harbor, FDR had declared a “war on aviation.”

Without belaboring the obvious shortcomings of the analogy, I will agree with the central premise. The name “War on Terror” clearly conceals the fact that we are really at war with specific groups and specific nations; we can no more make war on a methodology than we can make war on nitrogen.

However, there are several excellent reasons why “War on Terror” is the only possible name for this war.

1. This is not a war that can be named for any particular nation or region. To call it the “Iraq War” or the “Afghanistan War” would lead to the horrible mistake of thinking that victory would consist of toppling certain governments and then going home.

In fact, it is precisely the name “War in Iraq” that is leading to the deep misconceptions that drive the Democratic position on the war. If this were in fact a war on Iraq, then in one sense we won precisely when President Bush declared victory right after we occupied Baghdad. And in another sense, we might not see victory for another five years, or even a decade – a decade in which Americans will be dying alongside Iraqis. For a “War in Iraq” to linger this way is almost too painful to contemplate.

But we are not waging a “War in Iraq.” We are waging a world war, in which the campaigns to topple the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan were brilliantly successful, and the current “lukewarm” war demands great patience and determination from the American people as we ready ourselves for the next phase.

2. We cannot name this war for our actual enemies, either, because there is no way to name them accurately without including some form of the word “Islam” or “Muslim.”

It is our enemies who want to identify this as a war between Islam and the West. If we allow this to happen, we run the risk of achieving the worst of all possible outcomes: The unification of one or both of the great factions of worldwide Islam under a single banner.

President Bush and his administration have shown their grasp of our present danger by stoutly resisting all attempts to rename this war. We call it a “War on Terror” because that allows us to cast it, not as a war against the Muslim people, with all their frustrations and hopes, but a war in which most Muslims are not our enemies at all.

That can be galling for many Americans. When, after the fall of the towers on 9/11, Palestinians and others poured into the streets, rejoicing, it was tempting to say, A plague on all of them!

But it is precisely those people – the common people of the Muslim world, most of whom hate us (or claim to hate us, when asked by pollsters in police states) – whom we must treat as if they were not our enemies. They are the ones we must win over for us to have any hope of victory without a bloodbath poured out on most of the nations of the world.

Sourced but too important not to post.

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has posted most interesting study called The Militant Ideology Atlas. The data base identifies key intellectuals in the jihadist movement and presents the texts and sources commonly cited in jihadist circles. The main report is more than 4 MB but the Executive Report is just under a meg…I’m sure it will make for interesting reading on a rainy day.

Government admits improper farm payments

WASHINGTON - The Agriculture Department on Wednesday acknowledged making improper payments to farmers worth more than $2.8 billion last year.

Officials explained that most of the payments involved missing or incomplete paperwork.

“We take this very seriously,” said Chuck Christopherson, the department’s chief financial officer. “We know this is something that we can address and that we can fix.”

Federal law requires agencies to track erroneous payments, such as checks sent to farmers who were not eligible for a particular program, or payments for the wrong amount of money.

The amount of improper payments in fiscal 2006 was about 11 percent of farm program payments, the department said. The fiscal year ended on Sept. 30.

[...]

Separately, the department found $1.6 billion in improper payments made through the food stamp program. That amount was about 5.84 percent of all payments, Christopherson said, down from 5.88 percent a year before.

If we can track erroneous payments, why not just make the process a little more stringent?

Dorgan and Conrad will shut down the Senate to get more money for farmers, will they shut down this waste of money?

Not very civil of her...would this constitute an act of treason in American law?

Noel Sheppard, in The American Thinker:

At roughly 11:00AM Eastern Time Wednesday, the National Ocean & Atmospheric Administration announced that for the second straight month, America saw below-average temperatures. As a result, regardless of how warm July was, it now appears unlikely that 2006 will surpass 1934 as the hottest year on record. Yet, a Google News search suggested that not one news agency bothered to report this announcement. Not one.

For those not in the media who might be interested (emphasis mine throughout):

  For the second consecutive month, temperatures across the continental United States were cooler-than-average, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Drought conditions improved in some areas, but large parts of the nation remained in moderate to extreme drought. October ranked as the 12th wettest October when compared with historical precipitation records for the month.

The announcement continued:

  The October 2006 temperature for the contiguous United States (based on preliminary data) was 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C) below the 20th century average of 54.8 degrees F (12.7 degrees C). After a record warm January through August period, this was the second consecutive month of below average temperatures.

  The combination of a cooler-than-average September and October dropped the year-to-date national temperature from record warmest to third warmest for the January through October 2006 period. The record warmest January through October occurred in 1934.

Hmmm. So, let me get this straight. The globe supposedly has been warming for decades as a result of man-made greenhouse gases. Yet, the warmest year on record is still 72 years ago. That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it?

[...]

Alas, this shouldn’t surprise us, for it has always seemed obvious that the same people that buy into global warming are the ones that also believe the economy is just as bad today as during the Great Depression. What is it about radical liberalism that destroys a person’s math and science skills?

The NOAA report is here.

More “Y2K” global warmingist thinking:  When the facts don’t agree with your hypothesis, just ignore them and keep preaching your scareology.

Now that the elections are over, there is still one major task that the citizens and voters of this state must undertake.  We must tell our representatives that we will not accept a 12.7% increase of the total state budget again; and that we will not accept such a large overall increase while the education budget is increased by only 3.5%. 

During the last legislative session spending on quote “general government” increased by 26.3% ($79million) while funding for education increased by 3.5% ($31 million).  While the document these figures are cited from does not define “general government,” it is certainly not a stretch to say these numbers are a little lopsided and should probably have been reversed. 

If the current majority wants to prove that it still is a vehicle for fiscal conservatism it will make actual cuts in the cost of “general government;” actual cuts, not just cuts in the rate of growth.  These cuts can then be added to the governors plan to increase education funding without a tax increase and without tapping the surplus.

There are still reasons that North Dakota votes for Republicans, and it is not to increase spending by 12.7%.  The voters of this state must not allow their elected representatives to squander their money.  It is bad enough that the taxpayers of this state were overcharged in the first place, but the surplus must not be used to pump up the ongoing budget outlays for the state, in turn causing future increases in taxation to be needed.

One priority for the surplus must be used to relieve property taxes by increasing funding to education. That increased state funding must be tied to local subdivisions either cutting property taxes or developing their own rainy-day fund.  Any state relief must be tied to the understanding that the funding is not for new spending.

A portion of the surplus must also be used to stem the skyrocketing cost of college tuition.  If the rate of tuition is not restrained the state will lose the competitive advantage of cost over schools in Minnesota and elsewhere.

No matter what the surplus is spent on, our representatives must be held responsible.  If the surplus is squandered on pet projects and obscene increases of spending, it can be assured that the current majority party will lose even more seats than it did last Tuesday.  The people elected them as conservatives, now it is time for them to be conservative.

Michael Rule, in NewsBusters:

On Tuesday’s “Imus in the Morning,” Newsweek editor Jon Meacham opined that George H.W. Bush, the 41st president, had been vindicated by history. He suggested that Newsweek runs stories based on partisan preferences, i.e. we helped defeat President Bush in 1992, but in hindsight, George H.W. Bush was right. Meacham also revealed that journalists often make hasty judgements and treat those judgements as “infallible.” In the same segment, Meacham admitted that journalists are wrong. Meacham offers as an example the coverage of President Bush 41 during the 1992 campaign and before:

  “What’s important is journalistically, one of the mistakes we make is we kick people in the shins and we tend to make instant judgements and act as though our judgment is infallible and absolute. It’s not. See ‘wimp factor,’ see the mistakes and the misperceptions of the first Bush at the time when everybody was saying he was out of touch and was no good. Now we see with hindsight that he’d done pretty well.”

[...]

  “I think that everything he did that got him beaten in 1992, that only got him 37% of the vote, only slightly more than you or I would have gotten that year, has been proven in the light of history to have been the right thing to do.”

In January 1992, Newsweek contributor Howard Fineman suggested that Bush 41 ought to run on a platform of higher taxes and of asking the American people to sacrifice. In the August 24, 1992 issue Fineman portrayed Bush as out of touch with the American public on domestic issues. A look at the Bush 41record suggests he was out of touch with conservative voters. Bush 41 raised taxes and the economy soured. Bush 41 refused to topple Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, and let the problem fester for future administrations. And Bush 41 gave David Souter a seat on the Supreme Court, and he has turned out to be one of the most liberal justices. So by whose historic standards is Bush 41 vindicated? Apparently the standards of liberals.

Bush 41 was attacked by Newsweek in 1992 not because he was a conservative. He was attacked to elect Bill Clinton. An objective look at the Bush record show’s the Newsweek attacks to be politically motivated.

Read the whole thing.

Well, Duh!  After 14 years of this kind of crap, he admits one of his many mistakes.
Justice delayed is justice denied.

My career as a political commentator resumes tonight at 7:30 PM Central, where I’ll be be participating in a debate on whether our troops should remain in Iraq. Readers on the eastern half of the state can listen live by tuning in to 105.5 KMAV; for everyone else, there’s a live webcast that you can access here. Enjoy!

By Jerry Kronenberg

Jesus doll’s not for Tots, charity says

Toys for Tots is taking the Christ doll out of Christmas.
    The charity has rejected a California toymaker’s gift of 4,000 talking Jesus dolls, arguing that the 12-inch action figures would offend non-Christian recipients.
    The decision has local pro-Christmas activists fuming.
  “This is just more proof that there’s a war on Christmas and Christianity in this country,” said Robert Marley of the Coalition to Save Christmas in Massachusetts.
  Toys for Tots, which is run by the Marine Corps Reserves, already bans toy guns and other gifts it believes promote violence.

  But the group has also decided to take a pass on Jesus dolls from Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co.
  “We can’t take a chance on sending a talking Jesus doll to a Jewish family or a Muslim family,” said Bill Grein of Toys for Tots, which gives poor kids of all faiths gifts for Christmas and other winter holidays.
  The dolls - which normally cost $20 - come complete with beards, long hair and hand-sewn cloth robes and sandals. They recite New Testament passages such as, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
  The decision doesn’t directly affect the Bay State, as each Toys for Tots chapter collects its own gifts.
  But Marine Sgt. Paul McCawley, who heads the charity in western Massachusetts, said his chapter would have “regretfully declined the offer” had it occurred here.
  Why? “Basically, political correctness,” McCawley said. “We can’t go out and give a Muslim child a Jesus doll. It’d be like giving a boy a makeup kit.”
    Toys for Tots’ move drew mixed local reactions yesterday.
  Bennie Becker of the Jewish War Veterans’ Braintree Post called the decision “a good thing.”
  An Air Force veteran who once had an offer to serve in Saudi Arabia withdrawn because he’s Jewish, Becker said he opposes mixing religion with the military.
  But Bilal Kaleem of the Muslim American Society’s Boston chapter said he had no objection to giving Jesus dolls to Christian kids. “There are many Christian children in need,” he said.

Every time they get away with this kind of discrimination, the anti-Christian lefties get bolder.  PC must go!

Last session, the legislature managed to increase the budget by 12.7%. That huge increase was during the Republican Super-Majority, and without knowing about the $527 million surplus.

What is going to happen now that the seats are a little tighter and they have the suplus to spend?

As you can see, “general government” (whatever that entails) increased 26.3% while education funding increased 3.5%.

Something is definately wrong with that picture.

Here is a chart of how the last legislature showed very little restraint on spending:





Original File Here

The thoughtful person can not be happy with the decline of American influence in the world, a development exposed and energised by the misadventure in Iraq. Anthony Giddens has some thoughts on what may lay ahead.

A few days ago women and girls were openly sexually assaulted on the streets of Cairo.

Punitive gang rapes for perceived moral violations are common.

Women are buried to the waist and stoned to death for adultery. This includes if they are a rape victim.

Women can’t drive. Women can’t vote. In some cases women can’t leave the house without a male escort.

Women must be covered head to toe at all times. To expose any part of the body or face can mean beatings, jail, or even death. A leading cleric justifies the rape of women who aren’t totally covered, calling them, “uncovered meat.”

A man may beat his wife if she needs it as long as he doesn’t get too carried away.

Welcome to the ultra-misogynistic world of Islam. In today’s world the attitude toward women in the Islamic culture is almost surreal. My question is: Where are the protests? Where are the feminist voices howling in protest over the brutal treatment - and make no mistake, it is brutal - of their sisters under the veil? After the well documented women’s struggles of the past century you would think that our enlightened feminists and liberals would be vociferously protesting what’s happening to those women.

Why aren’t they? Where are they?

My answer to that is simple. I don’t know. I can’t figure out why the usually screeching liberals aren’t baying at the moon over this issue. Is it because they may find themselves unwittingly allied with a perceived right wing cause (the war on terror) and they simply cannot have that, no matter what the cost? The two issues are very separate so that shoudn’t be the case.

We’re not shooting terrorists because they’re misogynistic neanderthals. We’re shooting terrorists because they want to shoot us.

Is it because there are just so many other abused women in the world that they just can’t find time, what with all the other protesting they’re doing. Nope. I haven’t seen any other protests concerning women’s rights lately, at least on any kind of medium-to-large scale. The only serious liberal protests I’ve seen have been against religion, ROTC, conservatives, the war in Iraq, Bush, gay rights, and anything else that doesn’t fit the liberal agenda.

Except this. Except that everyday in Islam women are abused on a scale not seen in centuries and nobody is uttering a peep about it. Not one little peep.

I guess maybe if the Islamists were to register as Republicans, then maybe they would get the kind of attention that they deserve for the brutality they mete out.

Until then our liberals and feminists apparently have better things to do.

hehe

..
Here are seven myths rapidly gaining acceptance among conservatives, liberals or both:

  — Republican losses were in keeping with typical setbacks for a party holding the White House in the sixth year of a presidency. Conservatives reassure themselves that the “six-year itch” has cost the party in power roughly 30 seats on average since World War II, so this year’s losses aren’t remarkable. But as liberal blogger Kevin Drum points out, most of the big “itches” came prior to the past 20 years when gerrymandering got more sophisticated. Reagan lost only five seats in his sixth year, and Clinton only five (although he had already suffered a wipeout in 1994). For Democrats to win 29 seats despite all the advantages of incumbency enjoyed by the GOP is a big deal.

  — The conservative base, discouraged by the GOP’s doctrinal impurity, didn’t show up at the polls. This is the bedtime story conservatives are telling themselves to show that whatever ails the party will be cured simply by becoming more conservative. In 2004, however, conservatives were 34 percent of the electorate and liberals 21 percent. In 2006, the numbers were almost indistinguishable — conservatives were 32 percent of the electorate and liberals 20 percent. The GOP didn’t lose the election with its base, but with independents, who broke against them 57 percent to 39 percent.

..
— The election was a great victory for conservative and moderate Democrats. If Democratic leaders gave their candidates leeway to take socially conservative positions, this year’s new crop of Democrats still isn’t a departure from the party’s overwhelming liberalism. A few attention-grabbing, successful Democratic House candidates, Health Shuler of North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth of Indiana, are truly conservative. But only about five of the 29 Democratic winners in the House can be considered social conservatives. They will be lonely.
..