Era of Confusion

Is it self denial? Stupidity? Stubbornness? Fear of being wrong? . Just a few posts below, I wrote about a confused AP reporter who couldn't figure out how on earth crime rates were dropping when incarceration rates were rising. Keeping more criminals in jail longer and falling crime statistics were a "paradox" to him.

Recently I came across an article in Time Magazine that had the same theme:

In the past, Bratton had produced near miraculous results in Boston, paving the way for a steep drop in crime before he moved to New York City, where, as police commissioner from 1994 to 1996, he presided over a 50% drop in homicides. But his techniques of putting more cops on the street, making individual officers more accountable for offenses in their neighborhoods and shortening the civilian complaint process have been controversial... But even as cities across the nation hired more cops and jailed more young men, many academics disputed the idea that strong policing was the key to controlling crime. "It is still not clear what actually brings crime down," says Andrew Karmen, professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. (emphasis mine)


AP reporters and professors of sociology are not stupid people. What is it that makes them think this way?

Maybe I can make this clear for them.

Criminals in prison don't commit crimes in the street.
More police, more criminals in prison.

What's so tough about that?

Maybe Chief Bratton has the answer to this also - "The penicillin for dealing with crime is cops. I thought I had already proved this. Criminologists who say it is economics or the weather or some other thing are crazy."

Pat Tillman

In joining the Rangers, Pat Tillman gave up fame, fortune and his own freedom to protect our freedom. Now he's given up everything.

My great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that.... And so I have a great deal of respect for those that have and what the flag stands for.

I prefer Pat Tillman's sentiments about America to Democrat Congressman Charles Rangel's race and class diatribe or Andy Rooney's claim that soldiers like Pat Tillman "aren't' heroes".

What a shame men like Rooney and Rangal have the platform they do.

Liberal Mind

I know what they think, I just don't know why they think the way they do. This story is a perfect example:

"Maine's crime rate has fallen 19 percent in the past decade, but its prison and jail populations have jumped by 50 percent during the same period, according to a new report," the Associated Press reports:

That seeming paradox is among the dozens of findings in the 2003 Crime and Justice Data Book, an 80-page report that looks at statistics and trends about crime, arrests and incarceration in the state.

I think the New York Times ran a similar story a few years ago. They really think it's paradoxical that crime rates would drop if more people are arrested and kept in prison longer. These are well-educated, smart people...with sh*t for brains.

Waiting For The Other Shoes to Drop

Two stories are lingering out there about John Kerry that have the potential to derail his candidacy. What's interesting is that the mainstream press has known about these for months, but seems to have the attitude that if they ignore it, it will go away. They may yet be successful.

The first and more serious issue is his wife's tax records. Even if there's nothing there that is controversial, her taxes will likely seem small when compared to her wealth. That's because our tax structure taxes income not wealth. A woman worth $500 million paying "only" several hundred grand in taxes will not look good. There's a good chance she paid nothing. But it's her choice of charities that I'm waiting to see.

Second, and less volatile is Kerry's medical records. Everyone knows Kerry served in Vietnam. In fact, it's his campaign theme. Few realize he served only four months "in country" of a 12 month tour. After collecting his third Purple Heart, he was entitled to go home. It is the nature of his wounds then, that may injure him today.

Should this issue get any legs whatsoever, Kerry's "war hero" status will be badly damaged.

L.A. Times

Check out this story in the LA Times. Everyone who opposes same-sex marriages are identified as "social conservatives" (which itself is a lie). In case you missed it, it is done twice. At the same time, neither Mark Leno, Gavin Newsome, The National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Human Rights Campaign nor any gay marriage proponents are labeled as "liberal". Taking pains to mention one of the opponents of the bill hails from rural Calaveras County was a nice touch. Visions of "Deliverance".

Also check out this quote that is reported unchallenged:

Leno, and Shannon Minter, an attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said Proposition 22 concerned only the threat that out-of-state marriages would be forced upon California. Therefore, they said, the Legislature could amend the California family law without interfering with the proposition.

Decide for yourself. Prop. 22 (passed with 61.4% of the vote) reads simply: Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Of course Prop. 22 didn't garner 61.4% of the media vote, but that wouldn't cloud their objectivity. Would it?

Race, Class, Gender,Race, Class, Gender, Race, Class, Gender...

Sometimes as I flip through the San Francisco Chronicle, I glance at each news story they chose to report and classify them under Race, Class or Gender. Its astonishing how many stories fall into these three categories. They are the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of Liberalism. The Holy Trinity.

New York's Democrat representative, Charles Rangel who is getting increasingly obnoxious in his efforts to undermine the American war effort in Iraq, reminded me of this yesterday. The Associated Press reports from Washington on his latest harangue:

Speaking of military personnel serving in Iraq, Rangel said: "Where they're going, what a heavy tax is paid on their lives. . . . The real death tax is a tax on the poor."

The congressman said about a quarter of those killed in action so far have been black or Hispanic, and are drawn to the military as a way out of economic hardship.

According to the 2000 census, Hispanics make up 12.5% of the population and non-Hispanic blacks 12.1%, for a total of 24.6%. If about a quarter of the soldiers killed in Iraq belonged to one of these groups, that means blacks and Hispanics are dying at almost precisely proportionate numbers to their share of the population.

This was also a popular myth of the Vietnam War.

I also suspect there's a certain amount of what psychologists call "projection" in his mis-characterization of what motivates young people to volunteer. Interesting that a United States Congressman cannot imagine that our soldiers may have wanted to merely serve their country. Which party was he with again?

Congressman Rengal made no comment on the disproportionate number of male casualties to female.

William Hung

Out of pure luck, I happened to catch William Hung's rendition of "She Bangs" on Starseach a few weeks ago. My initial reaction was "He should be on Letterman tonight". I loved it. According to Emil Guillermo, writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, that makes me a racist. I wasn't aware of it, but William Hung's popularity is "driven by racism".

He writes:

With William Hung, is there any other reason to extend the joke on America except that it plays to a racist image of the ineffectual Asian-American male?

What is Hung but an infantilized, incompetent and impotent male image?


My explanation is a little different:


Dear Mr. Guillermo,

I hope I can explain Mr. Hung's appeal. A great many American's, myself
included, love nothing more than grateful immigrants. Mr. Hung has been
afflicted with the American "can do" spirit and, like many foreigners, believes that
"anything is possible in America". Even a singing career for a guy like himself.

That partially explains the appeal of our governor. If celebrity alone explains
his election, than any number of politically active performers (nearly all with
opposing views) could have become governor had they only run. They would not have.

Personally, I think you not only owe Mr. Hung an apology, but the millions
of people who admire and respect him for having the courage get in front of
the cameras and perform with less talent than they. We deserve better than
to be accused of racism. He deserves your respect.


Mr. Guillermo was kind enough to respond, simply asking if I really believed those who are "exploiting" Mr. Hung respected him. I wrote back "I think you'd find they adore him - polite, courteous, friendly, one take".

The irony is that it is Mr. Guillermo who so obviously doesn't respect him.

Dean & the Dems

I stated below that those who call the president a "liar" have an agenda and truth is not part of that agenda. Take a look at this exchange from Howard Dean as he's campaigning for Kerry in an interview on CNN:


Dean said the president Bush was not telling the truth when he said:

"There was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, which was not true."

In fact, it was true. Those connections have now been proven. Of course, keeping even this perception from the public is of utmost importance to Democrats for reasons I mentioned here and here.

"That Saddam Hussein had something to do with terrorism, which was not true."

Dean must think strapping bombs onto children and having them blow themselves up in school buses isn't terrorism (indeed, he may not). Saddam was very public with his $10,000 payments to the families of suicide bombers which were subsequently raised to $25,000. There is no longer any doubt (was there ever?) that Saddam was training and financing terrorists. He was harboring terrorists including Abu Nidal in Baghdad.

"When he said in the State of the Union that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Africa, which was not true."

George Bush never made that statement. Dean is flat out lying, and he knows he's lying. For starters, the statement was attributed to British intelligence, which to this day stands by it. Second, its utterly believable and the subject is not settled. Third, after Pakistan's revelations of their top scientist selling nuclear secrets to the North Koreans and Libyans the issue is mute to anyone who is remotely serious about national security.

"When the Vice President said that in Iraq they are accumulating nuclear weapons, which was not true."

Cheney never said that Iraq was accumulating nuclear weapons, only that Saddam was attempting to do so. Dean knows this. Dean also knows that Saddam's nuclear program was destroyed twice - once when the Israelis (thank God) blew up his French made nuclear reactor in 1982 and the second time after Gulf War I (which Kerry opposed) when we learned his program was far more advanced tha we previously thought. Anyone who wishes to believe that Saddam simply gave up on his nuclear ambitions has serious issues with judgment.

As I continually point out, this behavior is not coming from some obscure left-wing fringe spokesperson or web site. It's coming from the leaders of the party. The kooks are taking over.

Where the Votes Are

Mainstream Democrats must feel pretty strange about where the party is trying to mine voters. What does all this say about the direction and appeal of the party?

Pandering to MTV viewers is bad enough, but at least the voters they were courting were presumed to be of legal age, though intellectually stunted. Now, there's a bill co-sponsored by four Democrats that would allow 14 year olds to vote. Add to this the movement to get that much coveted demographic of convicted felons. Knowing this it should come of no surprise who goes after the mentally impaired?

Judgment

Is there any more disqualifying characteristic in a would-be president than a three decades old pattern of failing to detect or even remotely appreciate menace as it approaches, whether dressed as a Viet Cong, a Sandinista, a Soviet, or an Iraqi mullah scheming to kill American soldiers and Marines?

Of course this is the same man who said that the threat from terrorism was greatly exaggerated...after 9/11.

I trust him to wage the war on terror and defend Western Civilization. Don't you?

Saddam & 9/11 Revisited

I don't know whether or not Saddam had anything to do with September 11th. Nobody knows. However, those who opposed the liberation of Iraq, pretend to know. They are absolutely certain that Osama and Saddam would never work together to attack their mutual enemy. Osama being a fundamentalist Muslim and Saddam being secular (I guess they don't consider Hezbollah radical enough). Curious.

Oh, they have their theories. Its amusing how they've all become experts in Islam and Middle East politics and history, even though virtually every pre-war prediction they made was flat out wrong. The Muslim Street rising? Siege of Baghdad? Quagmire? Burning oil fields? Thousands of casualties? Millions of refugees? Missiles landing in Tel Aviv? Interesting at the fall of Baghdad no one was interested in how the American military in victory prevented all these catastrophes. No, for days they were consumed with the looting of the National Museum that turned out to never have happened.

Back to Saddam.

Further down, I discussed the panic that reverberated throughout the media when polls showed that a majority of Americans believed Saddam "may have been involved" in the attacks. Lots of coverage was given to the poll all so the mainstream media, which was almost unanimously anti-war, could point out that there was "no proof" of any connection. This claim of "no proof" was routinely made by talking heads even as more and more evidence was emerging of Iraqi links to al Qaeda.

To understand the hysteria, you have to realize that even circumstantial evidence of Saddam's involvement behind 9/11 would be as damaging to the Left in this country as finding huge stockpiles of WMD's. Evidence like the ringleader of the first World Trade Center bombing escaping to...Iraq. Of course, the Left has no interest in finding the truth about Saddam or WMD's. Their interest lies in damaging Bush politically.

Richard Clarke took special care to make the "no proof" point clear in his testimony and in his book even though he himself has acknowledged connections in the past. Richard Clarke was against the liberation of Iraq. Of course "no proof" means there's must be nothing connecting the two mad men and only a fool or a liar could make such a claim in this day. I don't think Richard Clarke is a fool.

Bad Bounces

Remember Gore's speech on Global Warming a few months back that happened to be on the coldest day in New York in decades? I love bad timing by the bad guys.

Today we were blessed with another example. From the AFL/CIO website: "The Show Us the Jobs™ tour arrives in Washington, D.C., today for a hero's welcome from the union movement and a day of telling lawmakers that America needs new policies that will create and retain good jobs".

From today's CNN/Money: U.S. Job Growth Soars. "U.S. payrolls grew at the fastest pace in nearly four years in March, the government said Friday, in a report that soared past Wall Street forecasts".

Payrolls outside the farm sector grew by 308,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department reported, compared with a revised gain of 46,000 in February.

Contrast this with my entry below on Bush's fortunate timing. This must be driving them crazy. May it continue. (knock on wood).

What's Their Team Mascot?

Why don't stories like this get more press?

At a soccer game in El Qamishliye, Syria, on March 12, the Kurds, cheering on their local team, chanted, "We love Bush."