Say Anything Blog

Lynn Davidson

Howard Zinn’s Revisionist ‘A People’s History’ Comes to TV

Hollywood doesn’t learn. Even though the latest round of America-hating movies flopped, Project Greenlight producer Chris Moore will turn “A People’s History of the United States” by pop historian and Karl Marx fanboy Howard Zinn into a TV miniseries and a feature-length documentary.

Zinn’s 1980 book influenced a generation of students with its negatively-framed distortions of American history which minimized successes like WWII. It exchanged traditional history for marginal topics such as Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Joan Baez and Angela Davis while omitting Washington’s Farewell Address, the Wright Brothers and the Normandy Invasion.

The December 10 Variety stated production begins in Boston this January. Ironically, it will use wealthy celebrities like Matt Damon, Danny Glover and Josh Brolin to convey the book’s Marxist theory (bold mine):

  Miniseries will center on the actors and musicians as they read from the books or perform music related to their themes: the struggles of women, war, class and race. (...) 

  “This project is about Howard Zinn, his books and using that body of work to remind and inspire us all that this is a country built on dissidence,” Moore said. “Howard’s work deserves to be on film, and it is time that we paid tribute and captured the struggles of the people.”

  Zinn, whose books chronicle the struggles of Native Americans, women, workers and other Americans, said…“Our hope is that these words from the past will speak passionately and clearly to the needs of the present.”

How about just getting the facts right? Writer Dan Flynn wrote that Zinn called George Washington the “richest man in America” and claimed “unemployment grew in the Reagan years.” Robert Morris is generally seen as that era’s wealthiest man and Bureau of Labor statistics show the unemployment rate fell from 7.6 to 5.5 for Reagan, who created nearly 20 million jobs.

Communism was more favorably portrayed. Castro’s Cuba “had no bloody record of suppression” and Maoist China was “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control.”

[...]

American history shouldn’t be whitewashed, but Zinn went to the other extreme and favored embarrassing parts. Sounds perfect for Hollywood.

More commie propaganda dispensed by Hollywood.

Michelle Malkin

John Rosenthal has an important piece in Policy Review that reveals the hidden truths about the Zacarias Moussaoui trial gleaned from never-before-published transcripts of his testimony. Rosenthal e-mails: “The transcripts reveal that on numerous issues — charges of prosecutorial misconduct, Moussaoui’s supposedly “troubled” childhood, and above all his supposed “desire for martyrdom” — the media completely distorted the evidence that was available to the jury in the courtroom. The actual record of the case provides clear insights into the 9/11 attacks and the nature of Jihadism more generally that were obscured in the sort of “parallel reality” created by the coverage in the major media.”

Here’s a choice excerpt. Read the whole thing:

  …the most fundamental lesson to be learned from Moussaoui’s testimony is one that ought to have been perfectly obvious even without it: The 9/11 attacks were precisely attacks. They were not banal crimes actuated by banal criminal motives, as the trying of Moussaoui before an ordinary civilian jurisdiction would suggest. They were acts of war undertaken with the express purpose of inflicting damage upon a designated enemy: the United States.

  Moussaoui laid out numerous particular grounds for accusing the court-appointed defense lawyers of what he styled “criminal non-assistance” (April 13, 2006; 3602), but the fundamental fact of his being at war with the United States was, as he made unmistakably clear, the single overriding reason for his refusing their representation. “What on earth is the problem for the jurors to know that this defense doesn’t belong to me?” he exclaimed, in defending his attempts to alert them to this fact during jury selection. “You own everything. You are America — the defense, the judge, the attackers. These people are American. I’m al Qaeda. I’m a sworn enemy of you. You, you, you, you, for me you are enemy” (February 14, 2006; 6). Apparently hoping to convince the jury that his client was delusional, Zerkin repeatedly asked Moussaoui whether he thought that Zerkin himself and the other defense lawyers were part of a “conspiracy” to kill him. “In a broad sense, yes,” Moussaoui responded during his March testimony, “because you are American, and I consider every American to be my enemy, so for me any American is meant to want my death because I want their death ” ( 2377–78). When Zerkin attempted to press the point, asking whether the judge and jury were also part of the “conspiracy,” Moussaoui interrupted him and insisted that he did not mean to refer to a conspiracy in the literal legal sense in which he himself had been charged. “When I refer to your conspiracy,” he explained, “it refer to you being an American . . . so, therefore, people like me are your enemy. I ’m an enemy combatant. So, in the broad sense, you are a part of this nation, so I assume that you are an enemy to me ” ( 2379). “I want to kill American people,” Moussaoui noted matter-of-factly when he took the stand again on April 13. “I believe that every American want to kill me, somehow. . . . You don’t like people like me out in the street. You can’t say that. You don’t want somebody like me out in the street. You want me either in jail or dead” (3654).

[...]
 
  Asked by prosecutor Robert Spencer on cross-examination whether he remained prepared to kill Americans even in prison, Moussaoui answered “any time, anywhere” (3689). “No regret, no remorse, right, Mr. Moussaoui?” Spencer asked, alluding to his earlier reply to Zerkin. “No regret, no remorse,” Moussaoui confirmed. “Like it all to happen again, right?” Spencer asked. “Every day until we get here to you,” Moussaoui replied (3693). Having explained that according to chapter 9, verse 29 of the Quran, Muslims, as he put it, “have the obligation to be the super power” (3657) and hence to “subdue” the United States, Moussaoui also managed to invoke what the consequences for Americans would be if this goal was ever reached. “For the . . . American Jewish, we will exterminate them,” he specified. “For the Christian, it is different. . . . We have a way to accommodate them if they don ’t fight us” (3661).

[...] 

  Criminal prosecution of al Qaeda leaders or operatives before civilian jurisdictions is clearly not effective action in this connection. Al Qaeda members are sworn to fight against America literally to the death. As Moussaoui explained, the preparedness to die in service to one ’s “emir” is the very meaning of the oath of allegiance or bayat that al Qaeda members have sworn to Osama bin Laden. It is, he said, a “death allegiance” (3672). Criminal prosecutions, even on death penalty charges, can have no dissuasive impact in this context. Especially if they are to be conducted according to the normal due process safeguards of American law, moreover, such trials involve major national security risks, the most obvious being that sworn enemies of the United States — “enemy combatants,” as Moussaoui called them, willingly assuming the mantle — will go free.

  If there is a category of crime under which atrocities like the 9/11 attacks could be meaningfully prosecuted, it is precisely that of war crimes or — per the specification for mass crimes against a civilian population introduced by the Nuremburg Tribunal — “crimes against humanity”…

Read the whole thing.
This is why fighting the terrorists, wherever they are, is vitally important.  Our President should be admired and praised for finally taking action against these sworn enemies, after almost a decade of inaction.

An opinion piece.

If we really want a Conservative President more than anything else, here’s how to do it:

Put aside our petty differences and unite behind a candidate, the most conservative one. My suggestion is Fred.

Start a full-court press on the less conservative Republicans to do the same. Presenting a united front like this will force the Dems farther to the left, in the same way that George Bush, although only partly conservative, has brought all the Dems out of the commie closet in order to oppose him as much as possible. Use their BDS against them.

Stay focused on our issues, and ignore the Dems for the most part. As with all bullies, not reacting to them makes them crazy, and they are much more likely to self-destruct.

We have to go around the MSM, since they will never do anything other than try their best to destroy any likely Republican candidate, especially one they think might win. The more unified we are, the more desperate the MSM will become, which is also to our advantage.

Stay on message, relentlessly, and ignore the leftie propaganda. We have enough media to push our message, and we need to do it unstintingly.

I truly believe this will give us the very best chance. Even if the Dems happen to win, this strategy will make it necessary for them to respect our agenda, at least to some extent. The more unified and powerful we are, the more they will respect us; power is the only thing they respect, again, just like all bullies.

Never give up.

As far as election strategy is concerned, after the primaries, refrain from personal attack; instead, relentlessly question every statement the Dem candidate has ever made, asking how they would implement such a policy, and question the Constitutionality of their policies. In the case of Hillary, for instance, we might ask her what she meant by "I want to take those profits, and use them for the common good" by asking how exactly she would take profits from a private company, and to define what she means by "the common good". She will either lie, deny, or explain her socialism; either way we win. We should also ask them about the real-life consequences of their suggested policies, like universal healthcare, for instance. Not just the superficial "It will give everyone free medical treatment", but the deeper aspects, like, "Who will really pay for it?", and "What would be the long term effects on the medical industry?", stuff like that.

Find it here

Friends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab.

Police said in a statement they received an emergency call at 7:55 am local time Monday from “a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter.”

The victim, Aqsa Parvez, was “rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but tragically passed away late last night.”

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested at the scene and will be formally charged with murder when he appears in court Wednesday, said police.

The girl’s friends, meanwhile, told local media she was having trouble at home because she did not conform to the family’s religious beliefs and refused to wear a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

“She wanted to go different ways than her family wanted to go, and she wanted to make her own path, but he (her father) wouldn’t let her,” one of her classmates told public broadcaster CBC.

“She loved clothes,” another of her friends, Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, told the daily Toronto Star. “She just wanted to show her beauty ... She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person.”

According to her friends, Aqsa had worn the hijab at school last year, but rebelled in recent months.

They said she would leave home wearing a hijab and loose-fitting clothes, but would take off her head scarf and change into tighter garments at school, then change back before going home at the end of the day.

The victim’s 26 year-old brother was also charged with obstructing police in the investigation.

The religion of peace strikes again, this time in Canada. There is no evidence that the killer is a jihadi, either.

Jonathan David Carson, PhD

The next iteration of leftie insanity

Animal rights was bad enough, with its implicit equation of animals and people, but now we have robot rights.  Instead of the Animal Liberation Front equating us with rats, we have the American Association for the Advancement of Science equating us with robots.

“Robot Ethics,” an editorial in the November 16 issue of Science, its flagship publication, calls for “science fiction” to “be our guide as we sort out what laws, if any, to impose on robots and as we explore whether biological and artificial beings can share this world as equals.”  The American Association for the Advancement of Science looks forward to “a man marrying a robot woman, and living, as one day all humans and robots might, happily ever after.”

Why is the United States so far behind its European and Asian allies in robot ethics?  Because “many U. S. robots are created for the military.”  Apparently, killing terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan with robots is unethical, but having sex with them is not.  Make love, not war.

How is this sick and soulless future to be brought about?  Through “interesting litigation defining robot responsibilities and rights.”  For the scientific establishment and the courts, people have no more rights than machines.

Not only has the American Association for the Advancement of Science lost what little mind it had left, but the South Korean government has promulgated a Robot Ethics Charter, and the Japanese foresee “robots in many homes and have issued policies for how they should behave and be treated.”

Science fiction was once far ahead of science on the road to insanity, but no longer.  Science fiction long ago considered “how much freedom to accord robots”; now it is government’s turn.  Scientists go to the movies and come back and instruct the government in “roboethics.”

One of the staples of bad science fiction, which seems to be the only kind there is lately, is the suggestion that computers are actually alive.  Behind this juvenile theme is the unsubstantiated belief that human beings are actually just very complicated machines.  So the ultimate purpose-and effect-of endowing computers with life is robbing people of it.

[...]

Don’t kid yourself.  Science is dead.  Technology is thriving in the private sector; science has died in the government.  Technology makes gadgets; science seeks the truth about things.  “What is truth?” says Pilate.  “What is truth?” say the universities.  When the establishment questions the existence of truth, we can only blame ourselves if we believe what is says.

Forget about so-called “gay marriage”; we need “robot marriage”.  Why not?

Find it here

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.

An inconvenient new peer-reviewed study published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology.

Climate warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence:

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is ‘unstoppable’ and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

These results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data. However, they are supported by the results of the US-sponsored Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).

[...]

Co-author S. Fred Singer said: “The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc., and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals. The mechanism for producing such cyclical climate changes is still under discussion; but they are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on the earth’s atmosphere. In turn, such cosmic rays are believed to influence cloudiness and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface and thus the climate.” Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless. – but very costly.

The truth keeps coming out, despite the efforts of the global warming fascists to keep it hidden.

TAIMOOR SHAH and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

From the NYT, of all places!

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 — Afghan and NATO troops retook the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan on Monday, forcing the Taliban to withdraw from the only sizable town they hold in the country, Afghan and NATO officials said. There was no clear picture of casualties, but the Taliban and civilians said there had been heavy bombardment overnight.

The news came as Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and met with President Hamid Karzai. About 7,000 British troops are deployed in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan. Retaking Musa Qala, which they abandoned more than a year ago, has been one of their main objectives in the province, which has the highest level of Taliban activity as well as illicit opium production.

Wali Muhammad, police chief of the neighboring district, Sangin, said Afghan and NATO forces entered the town at 2 p.m. after heavy fighting. “The Taliban are gone,” he said. “They faced humiliation and heavy casualties.”

A large Taliban force attacked Sangin just before dawn Monday, apparently as a diversionary tactic, but the Afghans fought them off and suffered no casualties, he said.

The Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, Gen. Zaher Azimi, confirmed that Musa Qala was in government hands again but said fighting was still continuing on the outskirts of the town.

Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said, “Afghan and NATO forces have reached the center, but at this point they are consolidating their position.”

A NATO statement said “progress will be deliberate, appropriate and measured” because of concern about the possibility of mines and roadside bombs.

The Taliban conceded that their fighters had pulled out at 2 p.m., saying it was a tactical withdrawal to avoid their own and civilian casualties. A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who said he was with the Musa Qala force, said the Taliban had pulled out but were not far away.

“We will carry out a hit-and-run war,” he said. “Losing Musa Qala doesn’t mean that we will stop fighting.”

He said the Taliban had lost eight fighters over the three days of fighting. He added that heavy fighting in Landy Nawa, near Musa Qala, on Sunday night had killed civilians. It was not possible to verify his assertions.

[...]

More good news in the war against worldwide Islamic terrorism.

Thomas Lifson

Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s former foreign minister, writes in Newsweek online that Hugo Chavez attrempted to overturn the vote on his dictator-for-life constitutional “reforms” in Venezuela.

  ... by midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d’état if he insisted on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president conceded-but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world. So after this purportedly narrow loss Chávez did not even request a recount, and nearly every Latin American colleague of Chávez’s congratulated him for his “democratic” behavior

[...]

For those who still think Chavez is some kind of hero.

Laurie Mylroie

The controversial National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program has finally precipitated a discussion about the fallibility of U.S. intelligence. Until now, the intelligence community might have one view one year and the opposite view a year or two later, but whatever view it had, that view was supposed to be the authoritative understanding—as if this country were a nation of bobble-heads.

Thus, CIA Director George Tenet famously assured President George W. Bush that Iraq’s proscribed weapons constituted a “slam dunk” case for war. When those weapons could not be found, we were all supposed to believe they never existed—and not, as former U.N. weapons inspectors who long worked in Iraq have suggested: those involved in that search did not know enough and did not stay long enough to do the job competently.

Indeed, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper (Ret.), who headed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency during Operation Iraqi Freedom and is now Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, explained in the fall of 2003 that “satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ‘unquestionably’ had been moved out of Iraq.” Even the White House did not challenge the CIA’s conclusion that Iraq’s banned weapons were destroyed in 1991.

Now prompted by the latest NIE, the Washington Post recounts some of the CIA’s “biggest bloopers,” while the National Interest relates others. Maybe, the failed hunt for Iraq’s weapons will eventually be added to those lists?

Meanwhile, if we can now challenge an intelligence conclusion, America should know that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had extensive dealings with terrorists—including Islamic terrorists—as captured Iraqi documents reveal. One analyst recalls walking into a Pentagon meeting in 2004 with a stack of papers, explaining that the documents in his hand would justify the war. He was astonished when a senior aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed them as “history.” A battle followed about releasing them, but Rumsfeld ultimately sided with those who argued that “intelligence” should not be used for “public diplomacy.”

[...]

Most Americans, including perhaps, the president himself, would be astonished to learn that Iraq was involved in 9/11 and that could be demonstrated—if the administration were willing to take on the intelligence community. Such a demonstration would focus on the extraordinary “family” of terrorist masterminds (pdf) behind the major attacks, starting with the first assault on the Trade Center, culminating in 9/11, and even continuing afterwards.

Might those who want a tough policy toward Iran be ready to help correct the intelligence failure that emerged in the 1990s, when shadowy groups supplanted hostile states as the focus of America’s national security policy? Even to take another look at the information suggesting Iraq’s role in terrorism, including 9/11? The decision to remove Saddam was entirely justified, but their failure to offer it adequate support now undermines their own cause.

Interesting stuff.

James Lewis

One madman with a gun can hold off a hundred soldiers. The difference is who is more willing to risk his life. Such is the situation between the Khomeini regime and those it has directly threatened. Beginning with Khomeini’s rise to power after 1979, the regime has constantly threatened others, and celebrated its own readiness for martyrdom—- which it amply proved in the war with Saddam Hussein. Today Tehran’s mortal enemies’ list goes far beyond Israel to include Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Jordan, Lebanon, France, Britain, and the United States.

Yet Max Boot points out in the Wall Street Journal that the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia together have

  “... 627 combat-capable aircraft vs. only 286 for Iran, and most of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) aircraft are much more advanced. The GCC is well-supplied with modern American fighter-bombers—F-15s, F-16s, F-18s—and they are buying more top-of-the-line hardware all the time. Iran, by contrast, is still reliant on F-4s and F-5s acquired by the shah three decades ago, supplemented by a few more modern Russian and Chinese fighters.” 

Add American combat aircraft available in the region, and the advantage over Tehran is well more than doubled again. Add Israel’s air force, and it is tripled. Add the Europeans, who are also threatened, and it would be quadrupled.  In total, there is at least a four-to-one advantage in air power. But just like that one madman holding off a hundred soldiers, the difference is in the willingness to take a risk.

That is presumably why Ayatollah Khamenei selected Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to become the public face of the regime, after a dubious election. A’jad is just the scariest guy imaginable, who can keep Tehran’s enemies paralyzed until it reaches its long-term goal of nukes. (No serious person believes Tehran isn’t going for nuclear weapons; not even the drafters of the risible NIE).

Obviously, the massive military advantage for Iran’s potential victims disappears with Tehran’s first nuclear weapon.  A single nuke would make the Khomeini revolution invulnerable, no matter how much its own people hate it.

As much as the wishful Left tries to evade that simple reality, it will not go away. Even Hillary and Obama know that, and it is near-criminal that the media are not asking them what they intend to do about Ahmadi-Nejad’s snakepit. If any of our current candidates reaches the White House, Tehran’s nukes will be at the very top of the urgent agenda; by that time it may in fact be too late. But the media seem only interested in what Obama wanted to be in 5th grade, and what Hillary will do with the Bill Problem. All that is childish nonsense. It is not the way adults choose a president in dangerous times.

[...]

At the beginning of the American Revolution Benjamin Franklin famously warned the rebels that “We must hang together, or we will assuredly hang separately.”  The new NIE, downplaying the visible danger, can be taken as a signal from the United States to the rest of the world: Don’t just rely on us. What are you going to do? Because the rest of the world has plenty of military and economic power to forestall the danger—- but does it have the will to act in concert?

An interesting analysis.  Once the one-two punch of taking out Saddam and Mahmoud is accomplished, we just might have a chance for a peaceful world in the ME.

Larry Kudlow

Bush Boom Continues  

There is no recession. Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead—quarter after quarter, year after year—defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth. In fact, we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.

The pessimistas are a persistent bunch. In 2006, they were certain a recession was just around the corner. They were wrong. Instead, the economy posted two consecutive quarters of near or above four-percent growth.

Earlier today, a doom and gloom economic forecast from Macro Economic Advisors was released predicting zero percent growth in the fourth quarter. This report is off by at least two percentage points. These guys are going to wind up with egg on their faces.

Here are the facts: Americans are working. The 4.7 percent unemployment number remains at an historical low. On a three-month rolling basis, the U.S. economy has added over 100,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the household job count shows that an average of 303,000 jobs have been added in the last three months. This is noteworthy because it suggests that the job market is turning around.

Hours worked are growing more than 1-percent annually, while workers’ wages are running 3.8 percent, a full percentage point ahead of inflation. As for this week’s productivity report, it was nothing short of spectacular: the 6.3 percent productivity gain was the best in four years. A rise in productivity is good for growth. It’s good for profits. And it’s good for low inflation.

Speaking of inflation, business inflation is down from 3.5 percent just over a year ago to 1.5 percent today. Meanwhile, oil prices have retreated to $88. And, to top it all off, last night we received a tremendous new number showing household net wealth has headed even higher. It stands at a record $59 trillion dollars. That’s more than seven percent above a year ago.

Another factoid worth considering is that mortgage refinancings are soaring at lower rates. Since June, they are up nearly 70 percent, while mortgage rates on 15 and 30-year loans are down nearly a 100 basis points. That is a very positive, very welcome development that ought to cushion the plunge in home sales, and maybe even prices.

Down in Washington, Democrats are stuck with a Keynesian message of economic pessimism, spending increases, and tax hikes to finance their big government proposals. Unfortunately, they still refuse to acknowledge that tax rates have a profound effect on behavior. This kind of tax and spend, big government, Walter Mondale approach may come back to haunt them at the polls next year.

[...]

The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.

Interesting; the Dems pray for recession/depression, while Conservatives tout the reality of prosperity and economic growth.  Who do you want running our country?

Mark Finkelstein

Another leftie spouting Marxist economic ideology

Steve Fraser might look mild-mannered, but when it comes to economic doomsaying, he is the Rocky Marciano of recession, the Tiger Woods of turndown, the David Beckham of depression.

Speaking of bending one, Fraser’s LA Times column of today, “Symptoms of an Economic Depression,” twists U.S. economic data into a harbinger of impending doom. Fraser begins by falsely claiming that “no one wants to utter the word ‘depression.’” In fact, Fraser himself, a left-wing labor historian, wants not merely to utter the word, but to bellow it with a 10,000 megawatt bullhorn. Why? Because, as he predicts in that same column:

This perfect storm [of a bad economy] will be upon us just as the election season heats up, and it will inevitably hasten the already well-advanced implosion of the Republican Party.



I’m setting forth below excerpts from Fraser’s breathless jeremiad. Hide the sharp objects, but note how he writes largely in generalities and conclusions largely devoid of supporting data.

* It is not only a matter of mass foreclosures. It is not merely a question of collapsing home prices. It is not simply the shutting down of large portions of the construction industry (which is inspiring some of the doom-and-gloom prognostications). It is not just the born-again skittishness of financial institutions that have, all of a sudden, gotten religion, rediscovered the word “prudence” and won’t lend to anybody. It is all of this, taken together, that points ominously to a general collapse of the credit structure that has shored up consumer capitalism for decades.

* The equity built up during the long housing boom has been the main fallback position for ordinary people financing their big-ticket-item expenses, from college educations to consumer durables, from trading up in the housing market to vacationing abroad. Much of that equity has suddenly vanished, and more of it soon will. Also drying up fast are the lifelines of credit that allow all sorts of small and medium-size businesses to function and hire people. Whole communities, industries and regional economies are in jeopardy.

* All of that might be considered enough, but there’s more. Oil, of course. Here the connection to Iraq is clear; but, arguably, the wild escalation of petroleum prices might have happened anyway. Certainly the energy price explosion exacerbates the general economic crisis, in part by raising the costs of production all across the economy and so abetting the forces of economic contraction. In the same way, each increase in the price of oil further contributes to what most now agree is a nearly insupportable level in the U.S. balance-of-payments deficit. That, in turn, is contributing to the steady withering away of the value of the dollar.

* Finally, it is vital to recall that this tsunami of bad business is about to wash over an already very sick economy. While the old regime, the Reagan-Bush counterrevolution, has lived off the heady vapors of the FIRE sector, it has left in its wake a deindustrialized nation, full of super-exploited immigrants and millions of families whose earnings have suffered steady erosion. Two wage-earners, working longer hours, are now needed to (barely) sustain a standard of living once earned by one. And that doesn’t count the melting away of health insurance, pensions and other forms of protection against the vicissitudes of the free market or natural calamities.

[...]

Read the whole thing.

This American leftie continues to illustrate the fact that what’s bad for America is good for the lefties.

They are praying for economic disaster, along with losing to the terrorists. Not the right bunch to run our country at all.

John Hawkins

If only!

Few politicians in America have as much scandal, sleaze, and controversy surrounding them as Hillary Clinton and perhaps none of them, with the exception of her husband, has been given a bigger free pass.

As Peggy Noonan once said, “People have pointed out (Hillary’s) ethical lapses for so long that they seem boring, or impossible to believe. ‘That couldn’t be true or she wouldn’t be running for president.’ This thought collides with ‘And we already know all this anyway.’ Her campaign uses the latter to squash the latest: ‘old news,’ ‘cash for rehash.’

With that in mind, here are 14 yes or no questions I’d like to ask Hillary after I hooked her up to a polygraph machine, assuming that she hasn’t gotten so good at lying that she could beat the machine.

A Culture Of Corruption

1) Your former friend and business partner, James McDougal, claimed that “he and a longtime businessman at McDougal’s S&L, Henry Hamilton, ‘developed a system to pass money to Clinton.’ Did you or your husband ever take payoffs from your friend James McDougal?

2) While you were with the Rose Law Firm, you personally worked on a document that was used to “obfuscate and hide the fraudulent nature” of a piece of the Whitewater land swindle. Did you know that the document you were working on was going to be used for illegal purposes?

3) Your Rose Law Firm billing records were removed from Vince Foster’s office after his death. Those records were “(m)issing and under subpoena for two years (and) they turned up in January 1996 in the Clintons’ private quarters at the White House.” Whoever took those records committed a crime by obstructing justice. Despite the fact that your records were taken and eventually turned up in your private quarters, you have denied taking the records or having anyone take them for you. Is that true?

4) Clinton supporter David Hale claimed that your husband pressured him into making a “fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan to Susan McDougal, some of which went into Whitewater Development Corp.” Did your husband pressure David Hale into making that fraudulent loan?

5) You once turned $1,000 into $100,000 in less than a year in the cattle futures market. The odds that this was done legitimately have been put, in some estimates, as high as 250 million to 1. It has been alleged, and seems likely, that the $100,000 was actually bribe money that was paid to you while the cattle futures market was merely used as cover for the payout. With that in mind, were your cattle futures winnings actually bribe money?

[...]

14) According to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who’s certainly no conservative, “Hillary negotiated nothing and was present at no major meetings on foreign policy and national security after 1994. ...On domestic policy, Hillary was essentially sidelined after her disastrous 1994 health-care plan.” Is that true?

Hillary needs to be completely exposed, which would save us from being taken down her Stalinist road.

Read the whole thing.

Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer

I guess the Dems will have to wait a little longer for their hoped-for “recession”.

Employers Boost Payrolls by 94,000; Jobless Rate Holds Steady at 4.7 Percent

WASHINGTON (AP)—Employers added a modest 94,000 jobs to their payrolls in November, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.7 percent and wages grew briskly, encouraging signs the nation’s employment climate is holding up in the face of turbulence in the housing and credit markets.

The fresh snapshot of the labor market, released by the Labor Department on Friday, showed that hiring was brisk in education and health services, retail, professional services, the government and elsewhere. That helped to offset job losses in construction, manufacturing and financial services—casualties of the housing slump and credit crunch.

The 94,000 new jobs in November came after a surprisingly strong payroll gain of 170,000 in October. The unemployment rate stayed at a relatively low 4.7 percent for the third straight month.

“This is reassuring. The pillar continuing to support the economy is job creation,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at LaSalle Bank. “This should provide reassurance to those who worry that a recession is imminent,” he said.

The performance was better than economists were expecting. They were forecasting that the unemployment rate would nudge up to 4.8 percent and they also said they thought employers would boost payrolls by around 70,000.

The health of the nation’s job market is a key factor determining whether the economy will survive stresses from the housing collapse and credit crunch.

Job and wage growth have been shock absorbers, helping individuals to cope with all the negative forces in the economy. The mostly sturdy employment climate has helped to support spending by individuals, a major shaper of overall economic activity.

[...]

Read the whole thing.  AP can’t resist looking for bad news, but the reality is unmistakeable.  Even though there are negatives, the positives outweigh them.  This is the nature of the free enterprise system: it is self-adjusting.

Rick Moran

StrategyPage.Com points us to a poll taken in Afghanistan that shows widespread support for the presence of US troops but disappointment in the performance of NATO forces overall:

  A poll conducted by foreign news organizations found that 72 percent of Afghans approve presence of 55,000 U.S. and NATO troops. But only 68 percent believed the foreign troops were doing a good job.

  Not surprisingly, 92 percent of the population opposed the Taliban. Foreign terrorists are opposed by 83 percent of Afghans. About twenty percent of the population is believed to be very conservative, especially in terms of religion. The majority of the population is socially and religiously conservative by Western standards. These is a sharp divide between urban and rural Afghans, and most of the population is still rural.

There are conflicting views on how much progress the Taliban are making in retaking Afghanistan. Some observers may be confusing the drug gangs - who hire Taliban soldiers for security - with Taliban military operations.

The fact is, the Taliban are getting slaughtered on the battlefield wherever they show themselves in any numbers at all:

  This year, about 6,000 people died because of the Taliban and al Qaeda violence. That’s actually about the same number as were killed last year. The 55,000 foreign troops suffered 210 dead, while the 100,000 Afghan soldiers and police lost 700 so far this year. Over 4,000 Taliban were killed, plus nearly a thousand civilians. There were also over a thousand people killed because of criminal violence (drug gangs, bandits and warlord or tribal feuds).

  The Taliban take heart from the growing reluctance of NATO countries to remain in Afghanistan, partly because of the number of their soldiers killed. To the Taliban, it is a source of pride that, although they lose over ten men for every NATO soldier killed, it is the NATO countries that are likely to falter and flee the battlefield first. The Taliban believe they are carrying out God’s Will, while the NATO nations are a bunch of weak unbelievers.

[...]

Of course, the poll results are only “surprising” because of the lies, half-truths and outright fabrications spewed out by our MSM on a daily basis.  Common sense would yield the same conclusion as this poll.