WARNING: The following was penned by Ann Coulter. You've been warned ....
Quote:Reagan's biggest mistake finally retires
Ann Coulter (archive)
July 6, 2005
The fundamental goal of the next Supreme Court justice should be to create a record that would not inspire Sen. Chuck Schumer to say, as he did of Justice O'Connor last week: "We hope the president chooses someone thoughtful, mainstream, pragmatic - someone just like Sandra Day O'Connor." That's our litmus test: We will accept only judicial nominees violently opposed by Chuck Schumer.
Showing what a tough job it is to be president, when Bush announced O'Connor's resignation, he called her "a discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity." I assume he was reading from the script originally drafted for Justice Rehnquist's anticipated resignation, but still, he said it.
Cleverly, Bush also made a big point of noting that Reagan appointed O'Connor, reminding people that whatever mistakes Bush may have made, at least he didn't appoint O'Connor.
It's hard to say which of O'Connor's decisions was the worst. It's like asking people to name their favorite Beatle or favorite (unaborted) child.
Of course, it was often hard to say what her decision was, period. In lieu of clear rules, or what we used to call "law," O'Connor preferred conjuring up five-part balancing tests that settled nothing. That woman could never make up her mind!
In a quarter-century on the highest court in the land, O'Connor will have left no discernible mark on the law, other than littering the U.S. Reports with a lot of long-winded versions of the legal proposition: "It depends."
Some say her worst opinion was Grutter v. Bollinger, which introduced a constitutional rule with a "DO NOT USE AFTER XXXX DATE." After delivering a four-part test for when universities are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race (a culturally biased test if ever there was one), O'Connor incomprehensibly added: "The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."
So now constitutional rules come with expiration dates, bringing to mind the image of O'Connor proffering one of her written opinions to Justice Scalia and asking, "Does this smell bad to you?" Strangely enough, she failed to specify which month and day in the year 2028 that affirmative action would no longer be justifiable under the Constitution.
Others say her worst decisions came in the area of religion. In determining the constitutionality of religious displays on public property and government aid to religion, Justice O'Connor evidently decided she preferred her own words, "entanglement" and "endorsement," to the Constitution's word "establishment."
No one could ever understand O'Connor's special two-prong entanglement/endorsement test - including Justice O'Connor. Over the years, she struggled to resuscitate her own test by continually adding more tines to the prongs.
Among the tines to the "endorsement" prong is the "outsider" test, requiring that the government not make a nonbeliever feel like an "outsider." But wait! There are spikes on those tines!
O'Connor discovered a spike off the Feelings tine of the Endorsement prong, which requires the court's evaluation of the feelings of the nonbeliever to be based on a "reasonable observer" who embodies "a community ideal of social judgment, as well as rational judgment."
It's often said that O'Connor's problem is that she is not a judge, but a legislator. On the basis of her bright idea to replace 10 blindingly clear words in the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") with a 40-page manual of flow charts and two-pronged, four-tined, six-spiked tests, she wouldn't have made much of legislator, either. O'Connor's real calling was as a schoolyard bully, maliciously making up rules willy-nilly as she went along.
Processing the religion cases through the meat grinder of her own multipart tests, O'Connor found it was unconstitutional for a Reform rabbi to give a nonsectarian prayer at a high school graduation. It was also unconstitutional for a courthouse in Kentucky to display a framed Ten Commandments along with other historical documents.
In the latter case, McCreary v. ACLU, O'Connor haughtily added this bit of advice to religious believers: Visionaries "held their faith 'with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.'"
Religion may be able to get along without the government, but apparently sodomy and abortion cannot. Those, O'Connor found, were special rights protected by the Constitution.
O'Connor took sadistic glee in refusing to overturn Roe v. Wade in the face of the unending strife it has caused the nation. (And it hasn't been easy on 30 million aborted babies either.)
She co-authored the opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which upheld Roe v. Wade, gloating: "[T]o overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason ... would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question." Yes, the court has really crowned itself in glory with those abortion decisions.
At least she would not overrule a precedent for something as trivial as a human life. Overruling a precedent would require a really, really compelling value like our right to sodomize one another.
Thus, in the recent sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas, which overruled an earlier case that had found no constitutional right to sodomy (risibly titled Bowers v. Hardwick), O'Connor specifically cited criticism of Bowers as a reason to overrule it. "[C]riticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing," O'Connor explained in her concurrence. When "a case's foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance."
Mercifully, O'Connor was concurring only in Lawrence, so there is no multipronged test for sodomy under the Constitution.
For all the blather about O'Connor's moderation and pragmatism and motherly instincts, Mommie Dearest signed on to the most monstrous opinion in the history of the court, Stenberg v. Carhart, which proclaimed a heretofore unnoticed constitutional right to puncture the skull of a half-delivered baby and suction its brains out - just as the framers so clearly intended.
In her 2003 memoir, Miss Pragmatic-Consensus wrote, "Humility is the most difficult virtue," which perhaps explains why she never attempted it.
Every human being on the globe has heard the lachrymose tale of O'Connor being offered the job of secretary after her graduation from Stanford Law School. Bushmen in Africa weep at the unfairness of it all - though not as bitterly as O'Connor does.
O'Connor spent the last quarter-century paying America back. With no offense intended to the nonbelievers who are "reasonable observers" embodying "a community ideal of social judgment, as well as rational judgment," thank God the punishment is finally over.
Quote:Losing their heads over Gitmo
Ann Coulter
June 15, 2005
I guess Bush should have backed Katherine Harris, after all. Sen. Mel Martinez, the Senate candidate Bush backed instead of Harris, has become the first Republican to call for shutting down Guantanamo. Martinez hasn't said where the 500 or so suspected al-Qaida operatives currently at Gitmo should be transferred to, but I understand the Neverland Ranch might soon be available.
Maybe Sen. Arlen Specter - the liberal Republican Bush backed instead of conservative Pat Toomey, which still didn't help Bush in Pennsylvania - will step forward to defend the Bush administration. That Karl Rove is a genius.
Martinez explained his nonsensical call for the closing of Guantanamo by asking: "Is it serving all the purposes you thought it would serve when initially you began it, or can this be done some other way a little better?"
There are Arabs locked up at Guantanamo, no? Admittedly, not enough. (And not under what any frequent flier would describe as "harsh conditions.") Still and all, Arabs are locked up there. That is what we call a "purpose."
By becoming a focus of evil for human-rights groups, Martinez suggested, Guantanamo has become a recruiting tool for al-Qaida: "It's become an icon for bad stories," Martinez said, "and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio." (I've been wondering the same thing about Mel Martinez.)
This is preposterous. NBC's "The West Wing" is an icon for bad stories; Gitmo is a place where we keep an eye on evil, dangerous people who want to kill us.
Martinez was borrowing a point from Sen. Joe Biden - which is always a dangerous gambit because you never know who said it originally. The "Biden" version was: "I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no Gitmo."
So if people around the world believe that if they try to kill Americans they might go to a bad, scary place called Guantanamo, that will make them more likely to kill Americans? How about doing a cost-benefit ratio on that analysis?
Let's also pause to ponder the image of the middle-of-the-road, "centrist" jihadist who could be "recruited" to jihad by reports about abuse at Guantanamo. You know - the kind of guy who just watches al-Jazeera for the sports and hits the "mute" button whenever they start in about the Jews again, already.
Liberals want us to believe such a person exists and that he is perusing newspaper articles about Guantanamo trying to decide whether to finish his coffee and head off to work or to place a backpack filled with dynamite near a preschool.
Note to liberals: That doesn't happen.
What happens is this: There are thousands of Muslim extremists literally dying to slaughter Americans, and only three proven ways to stop them: (1) Kill them (the recommended method), (2) capture them and keep them locked up, or (3) convince them that their cause is lost. Guantanamo is useless for No. 1, but really pulls ahead on No. 2 and No. 3 (i.e., a "purpose").
Let's just hope aspiring jihadists are not reading past the headlines and discovering that what Amnesty International means by "the gulag of our time" is: No Twinkie rewards for detainees!
That's not a joke. As described in infuriating detail by Heather MacDonald in the Winter, 2005, City Journal, interrogators at Guantanamo are not allowed to:
* yell at the detainees, except in extreme circumstances and only after alerting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - and never in the ears;
* serve the detainees cold meals, except in extreme circumstances;
* poke the detainees in the chest or engage in "light pushing" without careful monitoring and approval from the commander of the U.S. Southern Central Command in Miami;
* reward detainees (for example, for not throwing feces at the guards that day) with a Twinkie or a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwich in the absence of express approval from the secretary of defense. (I suppose it goes without saying, "supersizing" their order is strictly forbidden under any circumstances.)
Without careful monitoring, interrogators aren't even allowed to subject the detainees to temperature changes, unpleasant odors or sleep cycle disruptions. But on the bright side, they are allowed to play Christina Aguilera music and feed the savages the same food our soldiers eat rather than their usual orange-glazed chicken. That isn't sarcasm; these are the rules.
No cold meals, sleep deprivation or uncomfortable positions? Obviously, what we need to do is get the U.S. Army to serve drinks on commercial airlines and get the airlines to start supervising the detainees in Guantanamo.
American soldiers make do with C-rations. Dinner on an America West flight from New York to Las Vegas consists of one small bag of peanuts. Meanwhile, one recent menu for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo consisted of orange-glazed chicken, fresh fruit crepe, steamed peas and mushrooms, and rice pilaf. Sounds like the sort of thing you'd get at Windows on the World - if it still existed.
Quote:Newsweek dissembled, Muslims dismembered!
Ann Coulter (archive)
May 18, 2005
When ace reporter Michael Isikoff had the scoop of the decade, a thoroughly sourced story about the president of the United States having an affair with an intern and then pressuring her to lie about it under oath, Newsweek decided not to run the story. Matt Drudge scooped Newsweek, followed by The Washington Post.
When Isikoff had a detailed account of Kathleen Willey's nasty sexual encounter with the president in the Oval Office, backed up with eyewitness and documentary evidence, Newsweek decided not to run it. Again, Matt Drudge got the story.
When Isikoff was the first with detailed reporting on Paula Jones' accusations against a sitting president, Isikoff's then-employer The Washington Post -- which owns Newsweek -- decided not to run it. The American Spectator got the story, followed by the Los Angeles Times.
So apparently it's possible for Michael Isikoff to have a story that actually is true, but for his editors not to run it.
Why no pause for reflection when Isikoff had a story about American interrogators at Guantanamo flushing the Quran down the toilet? Why not sit on this story for, say, even half as long as NBC News sat on Lisa Meyers' highly credible account of Bill Clinton raping Juanita Broaddrick?
Newsweek seems to have very different responses to the same reporter's scoops. Who's deciding which of Isikoff's stories to run and which to hold? I note that the ones that Matt Drudge runs have turned out to be more accurate -- and interesting! -- than the ones Newsweek runs. Maybe Newsweek should start running everything past Matt Drudge.
Somehow Newsweek missed the story a few weeks ago about Saudi Arabia arresting 40 Christians for "trying to spread their poisonous religious beliefs." But give the American media a story about American interrogators defacing the Quran, and journalists are so appalled there's no time for fact-checking -- before they dash off to see the latest exhibition of "Piss Christ."
Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas justified Newsweek's decision to run the incendiary anti-U.S. story about the Quran, saying that "similar reports from released detainees" had already run in the foreign press -- "and in the Arab news agency al-Jazeera."
Is there an adult on the editorial board of Newsweek? Al-Jazeera also broadcast a TV miniseries last year based on the "Protocols of the Elders Of Zion." (I didn't see it, but I hear James Brolin was great!) Al-Jazeera has run programs on the intriguing question, "Is Zionism worse than Nazism?" (Take a wild guess where the consensus was on this one.) It runs viewer comments about Jews being descended from pigs and apes. How about that for a Newsweek cover story, Evan? You're covered -- al-Jazeera has already run similar reports!
Ironically, among the reasons Newsweek gave for killing Isikoff's Lewinsky bombshell was that Evan Thomas was worried someone might get hurt. It seems that Lewinsky could be heard on tape saying that if the story came out, "I'll (expletive) kill myself."
But Newsweek couldn't wait a moment to run a story that predictably ginned up Islamic savages into murderous riots in Afghanistan, leaving hundreds injured and 16 dead. Who could have seen that coming? These are people who stone rape victims to death because the family "honor" has been violated and who fly planes into American skyscrapers because -- wait, why did they do that again?
Come to think of it, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to hold Newsweek responsible for inciting violence among people who view ancient Buddhist statues as outrageous provocation -- though I was really looking forward to finally agreeing with Islamic loonies about something. (Bumper sticker idea for liberals: News magazines don't kill people, Muslims do.) But then I wouldn't have sat on the story of the decade because of the empty threats of a drama queen gas-bagging with her friend on the telephone between spoonfuls of Haagen-Dazs.
No matter how I look at it, I can't grasp the editorial judgment that kills Isikoff's stories about a sitting president molesting the help and obstructing justice, while running Isikoff's not particularly newsworthy (or well-sourced) story about Americans desecrating a Quran at Guantanamo.
Even if it were true, why not sit on it? There are a lot of reasons the media withhold even true facts from readers. These include:
* A drama queen nitwit exclaimed she'd kill herself. (Evan Thomas' reason for holding the Lewinsky story.)
* The need for "more independent reporting." (Newsweek President Richard Smith explaining why Newsweek sat on the Lewinsky story even though the magazine had Lewinsky on tape describing the affair.)
* "We were in Havana." (ABC president David Westin explaining why "Nightline" held the Lewinsky story.)
* Unavailable for comment. (Michael Oreskes, New York Times Washington bureau chief, in response to why, the day The Washington Post ran the Lewinsky story, the Times ran a staged photo of Clinton meeting with the Israeli president on its front page.)
* Protecting the privacy of an alleged rape victim even when the accusation turns out to be false.
* Protecting an accused rapist even when the accusation turns out to be true if the perp is a Democratic president most journalists voted for.
* Protecting a reporter's source.
How about the media adding to the list of reasons not to run a news item: "Protecting the national interest"? If journalists don't like the ring of that, how about this one: "Protecting ourselves before the American people rise up and lynch us for our relentless anti-American stories."
Quote:The emperor's new robes
Ann Coulter
March 31, 2005
On the bright side, after two weeks of TV coverage of the Terri Schiavo case, I think we have almost all liberals in America on record saying we can pull the plug on them. Of course, if my only means of entertainment were Air America radio, Barbra Streisand albums and reruns of "The West Wing," I too would be asking: "What kind of quality of life is this?"
There are a few glaring exceptions. On the anti-killing side, to one extent or another, are: former Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis, former Gore lawyer David Boies, former O.J. lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, McGovern and Carter strategist Pat Caddell, liberal blogger Mickey Kaus, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Rainbow Coalition leader Jesse Jackson, as well as several of my friends who are pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage but not Pro-Adulterous Husbands Who, After Taking Up With Another Woman, Suddenly Recall Their Wives' Clearly Stated Wish to Die.
Opinions about the Schiavo case seem to break down less on morals than on basic knowledge of the facts of the case.
There are a lot of telling facts, but two big ones are:
* The only family member lobbying for Terri's death is her husband, who is affianced to a woman he's been living with for several years and with whom he already has two children. (Today's brain twister: Would you rather be O.J.'s girlfriend or Michael Schiavo's fiancee?)
* Terri's husband has refused to allow her to be given either an MRI or a PET scan, which are also known as: "The tests that could determine whether Terri is even in a permanent vegetative state." (I believe his exact words were, "PET scan? MRI? What do I look like, a guy who just won a $1 million malpractice settlement?")
On the basis of these facts, Pinellas County Judge George Greer found that it was Terri's wish to be starved to death. She requires no life support; all she needs is food and water. If being (a) on a liquid diet, and (b) unresponsive to one's estranged husband are now considered grounds for a woman's execution, wait until this news hits Beverly Hills!
Despite the media's idiotic claims that scores of courts have made painstaking findings of fact over 15 years that Terri is in a permanent vegetative state and would have wanted to die, only one judge made such a finding. Other courts have not made any factual findings whatsoever. They simply refused to overturn Greer's findings of fact as an abuse of discretion.
Greer made his finding based on the testimony of Terri's husband that Terri said she wouldn't want to live like this - a rather important fact the husband only remembered many years after Terri was first injured, but one year after he won a million-dollar malpractice award and began living with another woman. (Maybe when Terri said, "I wouldn't want to live like that" she was referring to being married to Michael Schiavo.)
Supporting the idea that positions on the Schiavo case are correlated with IQ, on the pro-killing side is Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who denounced the legislation granting federal courts jurisdiction over Terri's case, saying the Republican Party "has become a party of theocracy." Yes, you remembered correctly: The House passed the bill overwhelmingly in a 203-58 vote, and the Senate passed it in a voice vote also with overwhelming support. (Surely, if anyone would defend the practice of being on a liquid diet, you'd think Ted Kennedy would.)
Also on the pro-killing side are conservatives still pissed off about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 who are desperately hoping to be elected "most consistent constitutionalist" by their local Federalist Society chapters.
You can't grow peanuts on your own land or install a toilet capable of disposing two tissues in one flush because of federal government intervention. But Congress demands a review of the process that goes into a governmental determination to kill an innocent American woman - and that goes too far!
It's not a radical extension of current constitutional doctrines - even the legitimate ones! - for the federal government to assert a constitutional right to life that cannot be denied without due process of law under the Fifth and 14th Amendments. Congress didn't ask for much, just the same due process John Wayne Gacy got.
But people even stupider than lawyers have picked up on the vague rumblings from "most consistent constitutionalist" aspirants and begun to claim that Congress' action is an affront to "limited government."
Of course, the most limited of all possible governments is a king. We don't have that sort of "limited government." What we have is divided government: three branches of government at the federal level and 50 states with their own versions of checks and balances.
Or at least that was the government designed for us by men smarter than we are. We haven't had that sort of government for decades.
Alexander Hamilton's famous last words in "The Federalist" described the judiciary as the "least dangerous branch," because it had neither force nor will. Now the judiciary is the most dangerous branch. It doesn't need force because it has smoke and mirrors and a lot of people defending the moronic scribblings of any judge as the perfect efflorescence of "the rule of law."
This week, an indisputably innocent woman will be killed by the government for one reason: Judge Greer of Pinellas County, Fla., ordered it.
Polls claim that a majority of Americans objected to action by the U.S. Congress in the Schiavo case as "government intrusion" into a "private family matter" - as if Judge Greer is not also the government. So twisted is our view of the judiciary that a judicial decree is treated like a naturally occurring phenomenon, like a rainbow or an act of God.
Here's that Coulter article you pointed us to .....
Quote:CALLING THE KETTLE GAY
Wed Mar 2, 6:41 PM ET
By Ann Coulter
It's been a tough year for Democrats. They lost the presidential election, their favorite news outlets have been abjectly humiliated, they had to sit through a smashingly successful election in Iraq (news - web sites), and most painfully, they had to endure unwarranted attacks on a cartoon sponge. So I understand liberals are upset. Let go, let God ... Oops -- I'm talking to liberals! Let go, let Spongebob ...
Democrats tried working out their frustrations on blacks for a while, but someone -- I can't remember who, but it probably wasn't Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record) -- must have finally told them it really wasn't helping to keep disparaging every single black person in a position of authority in this Republican administration.
So now liberals are lashing out at the gays. Two weeks ago, The New York Times turned over half of its op-ed page to outing gays with some connection to Republicans. There is no principled or intellectual basis for these outings. Conservatives don't want gays to die; we just don't want to transform the Pentagon (news - web sites) into the Office of Gay Studies.
By contrast, liberals say: "We love gay people! Gay people are awesome! Being gay is awesome! Gay marriage is awesome! Gay cartoon characters are awesome! And if you don't agree with us, we'll punish you by telling everyone that you're gay!"
In addition to an attack on a Web site reporter for supposedly operating a gay escort service and thereby cutting into the business of the Village Voice, another Times op-ed article the same day gratuitously outed the children of prominent conservatives.
These are not public figures. No one knows who they are apart from their famous parents. I didn't even know most of these conservatives had children until the Times outed them.
Liberals can't even cite their usual "hypocrisy" fig leaf to justify the public outings of conservatives' family members. No outsider can know what goes on inside a family, but according to the public version of one family matter being leered over by liberals, a prominent conservative threw his daughter out of the house when he found out she was gay.
Stipulating for purposes of argument that that's the whole story -- which is absurd -- isn't that the opposite of hypocrisy? Wouldn't that be an example of someone sacrificing other values on the mantle of consistency?
Outing relatives of conservatives is nothing but ruthless intimidation: Stop opposing our agenda -- or your kids will get it. This is a behavioral trope of all totalitarians: Force children to testify against their parents to gain control by fear.
It's bad enough when liberals respond to a conservative argument by digging through the conservative's garbage cans; it's another thing entirely when they start digging through the garbage cans of the conservative's family members. (On behalf of conservatives everywhere, I say: Stay out of our gay relatives' cans.)
Liberals use these people and then discard them. Has John Kerry (news - web sites) had lunch with his pal Mary Cheney lately? What ever happened to Newt Gingrich's gay half-sister? Did she have any further insights to impart other than that she was gay?
Already this year, the glorious story of one conservative's gay child has gotten 58 mentions on Lexis-Nexis, including seven shows on CNN (eight if you include "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren") -- and none on Fox News (unless you include "On the Record With Greta Van Susteren").
The 2004 Gay Conservative Offspring story got 29 mentions on Lexis-Nexis, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, The International Herald Tribune and five shows on CNN. (This story wasn't as much fun for liberals inasmuch as they were forced to mention that the conservative had adopted the troubled, mixed-race child at age 15, contradicting their earlier claims that the conservative was a racist.) There is not a single mention of this gay poster boy in the Lexis-Nexis archives since the last sadistic mention of him in an article from October 2004. Liberals ruin a family and then moveon.org.
Meanwhile, William J. Murray, the son of prominent atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (news - web sites) -- and the named plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that banned school prayer -- came out as a Christian in 1980. There are only two mentions of it in the Lexis-Nexis archives: Facts on File and The Washington Post.
The Lexis-Nexis library for 1980 may be smaller than it is today, but it has articles from major newspapers, which the New York Times was still considered in 1980. (There are, for example, two Times stories mentioning the rumor that Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) dyed his hair in the Lexis-Nexis archives for 1980.) No mention of the son of America's most notorious atheist becoming a Christian.
Two years later, Murray wrote a riveting book about his spiritual transformation from the sordid misery of atheism to Christianity, "My Life Without God." There were only five articles mentioning the book on Lexis-Nexis: four wire services and one article in The Washington Post. None in the Times.
Unlike the gay children of conservatives, who are used as liberal props and then dropped, Murray has remained in the news for decades as a powerful Christian spokesman. Perhaps this is because a spiritual journey from atheism to Christianity is of more intellectual interest than an announcement of one's sexual preference. It's just not as likely to be gloated over in purportedly serious news outlets like CNN or The New York Times. BEGIN ITAL) Let go, let Spongebob ...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=108&ncid=742&e=10&u=/ucac/20050302/cm_ucac/callingthekettlegay
Quote:Iraq the vote
Ann Coulter
February 3, 2005
In one of the grandest events in the history of the world, millions of Iraqis risked death on Sunday to vote in a free, democratic election. There were more than 100 attacks on polling stations by the "insurgents" (or "Islamic fascists," as authentic Americans call them). But the Iraqis voted - Shia, Sunnis, women and an estimated 2,000 dead felons in Washington state.
Democrats haven't been this depressed since we captured Saddam Hussein.
On "Meet the Press," the Democrats' erstwhile presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, questioned the legitimacy of the election, saying, "t's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote."
Kerry warned Americans not to "overhype this election" - and if there's one guy who's good at calming down excited voters, it's John Kerry. Apparently, word didn't get out to the Iraqis, who were dancing and singing in the streets. (Isn't it great to see Muslims celebrating something other than the slaughter of Americans?)
Kerry's main advice to Bush was to reach out to the French. Curiously, this is also the Democrats' plan for fixing Social Security, dealing with North Korea and controlling the budget deficit: Reach out to the French!
Most amusingly, Kerry repeatedly quoted himself, as if he had called this one ball, shot and pocket: "You may recall that back in - well, there's no reason you would --but back in Fulton, Mo., during the campaign, I laid out four steps ..." (at that point the cameraman nodded off and NBC abruptly cut to color bars).
I remember what Kerry said during the campaign! What he and his fellow Democratic towel-biters said was that this election wasn't going to happen.
Kerry specifically addressed the scheduled Iraqi elections in his closing statement at the first presidential debate, saying: "They can't have an election right now. The president's not getting the job done." (Kerry's a genius! He won the debate!)
A few weeks later, his campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said: "It's not safe enough to have elections, which are scheduled in January. There is no way that people could go to the polls in that country right now."
In order to have free elections, apparently we would have to ... reach out to the French! "The Kerry plan," Cahill said, "would be to have an international consensus, not to go it alone, to get other countries into Iraq with us, so that we could carry out elections and we could move Iraq to be a free nation."
And yet we somehow managed to have a free election in Iraq without the French.
In September, former president and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter said on NBC's "Today": "I personally do not believe they're going to be ready for the election in January ... because there's no security there."
Democrat moneyman George Soros said in a speech to the National Press Club last fall: "All my experience ... has taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military means." (But see: Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and El Salvador.) Of course Soros' "experience" consists mostly of liberating billions of dollars from the captivity of other people's bank accounts. He's a regular Douglas MacArthur, that Soros guy.
Expressing his faith in the Iraqi people, Soros continued: "Iraq would be the last place I would choose for an experiment in introducing democracy." All those blue-inked fingers were the Iraqi people giving Soros the finger.
Also taking his cue on world politics from Janeane Garofalo, last September U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he doubted there would be elections in January, saying, "You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now" - although he may have been referring here to a possible vote of the U.N. Security Council.
Robert Fisk of the Independent (U.K.) told an audience in October 2004: "The chances of [January] elections are fading faster than water running into the desert." He said it was a "lie" that the allies were creating "an oasis of democracy with its center in Iraq." Remind me not to ask Fisk who he likes in the Super Bowl.
The Economist magazine said that until security in Iraq improves, "reconstruction will stall - and the hopes of Messrs. Allawi and Bush for a decent election, enabling a strong and legitimate government to take over, will continue to look uncertain to be fulfilled."
In October, Nicholas Lemann was a whirlwind of bad news about Iraq, writing in the New Yorker: "The U.S. military in Iraq has started trying to take back areas of the country now controlled by insurgents, and it may not be safe enough there for the scheduled elections to be held in January." Somehow he failed to add, "Also, by mid-March live rhesus monkeys may be flying out of my butt."
Amid his litany of bad news, Lemann said: "It is difficult to find anybody in Washington, in either party, who will seriously defend Bush's management of Iraq." Fortunately, last Sunday, President Bush found 8 million people - outside of Washington - to seriously defend his management of Iraq.
Quote:Liberals Love America Like O.J. Loved Nicole
By Ann Coulter
January 6, 2005
Even the United Nations sponge who called the United States "stingy" immediately retracted the insult, saying he had been misinterpreted and that the U.S. was "most generous." But the New York Times was sticking with "stingy." In an editorial subtly titled "Are We Stingy? Yes," the Times said the U.N. sponge "was right on target." This followed up a patriotic editorial a few days earlier titled "America, the Indifferent."
America's stinginess is a long-standing leitmotif for liberals - which is getting hard to square with their love for America. When it comes to heaping insults on America, U.S. liberals are the nation's leading donors.
In 2003, the Center for Global Development - funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, despite the fact that it could have used that money on future tsunami victims - concluded that the U.S. ranked 20th out of 21 nations in helping poorer nations. This came as a surprise, inasmuch as the U.S. gives the highest absolute amounts of foreign aid to the developing world.
But as the study explained, the center "assesses policy effort rather than impact." As any liberal can tell you, it's not results that count, it's intentions! In other words, the CGD discounted some countries' foreign aid because the CGD decided it was the sort of aid that wouldn't work - even if, in the end, it did work.
The CGD's evaluation of "effort" somehow managed to bump U.S. contributions from the No. 1 spot to second-to-last. Sending the military to liberate millions of people from ruthless dictators, for example, did not count as "aid," whereas sending in peacekeepers afterward did.
The U.S. did not merely write a check to help the oppressed people of Afghanistan and Iraq: The U.S. did most of the fighting and liberating as well as a significant share of the dying. Where's Michael Moore with that up-to-the-minute body count of U.S. soldiers when you need him?
But in the words of the CGD, military aid doesn't count because "one country's security enhancement is another's destabilizing intervention" - you know, the way U.S. soldiers "destabilized" France in 1944. (My guess is, Presbyterian missionaries in the jungle don't get as many points as U.N. seminars on condom use either.)
Consequently, in 2003, Norway got 7.1 points for "peacekeeping." Denmark got 7.4 points. France got 5.2. The country that dispatched the Taliban and Saddam Hussein ñ- and, before that, ensured that the above countries would not be speaking German or Russian - got 1.5 points for "peacekeeping."
But at least we beat Japan! Except in other studies by liberals - who certainly do love their country - that claim Japan beats the U.S. in foreign aid donations.
Among Al Franken's proofs that Bill O'Reilly is a "liar" - in addition to his jaw-dropping revelation that O'Reilly's former TV show won a "Polk" and not a "Periwinkle" Award ñ- Franken attacked O'Reilly for having the audacity to say the U.S. gives more foreign aid than any other country in the world.
Responding to this outrage, Franken writes: "Japan gives more. Not per capita. More." (And Franken is the world's largest donor of mentions of his own USO tours.)
I guess there are as many ways to calculate "aid" as there are to calculate "love of country." According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2003, the U.S. gave $37.8 billion out of a total $108.5 billion in foreign aid from the world's major countries ñ- notable for being more than three times the amount from the next largest donor, the Netherlands, clocking in at $12.2 billion. Americans make up about 5 percent of the world's population and give about 35 percent of the aid.
So it's interesting that a great patriot like Al Franken - who goes on USO tours regularly, in case he hasn't called you at home in the last 10 minutes to remind you - would choose the method of calculating foreign aid most disparaging to his country and call O'Reilly a "liar" for using a different calculus.
At a minimum, in order to discount the largesse of the United States, one must carefully exclude gigantic categories of aid, such as military aid, food aid, trade policies, refugee policies, religious aid, private charities and individual giving.
However "aid" is calculated, it is not that hard to calculate someone's affection for their country based on their propensity to tell slanderous lies about it.
Let's review.
The New York Times calls the U.S. "stingy" and runs letters to the editor redoubling the insult, saying: "The word 'stingy' doesn't even come close to accurately describing the administration's pathetic initial offer of aid. ... I am embarrassed for our country."
Al Franken flies into a rage upon discovering that O'Reilly imagines the U.S. is the most generous nation in the world.
The Washington Post criticizes Bush for not rushing back to Washington in response to the tsunami - amid unfavorable comparisons to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who immediately cut short his vacation and returned to Berlin. (Nothing snaps a German to attention like news of mass death!)
The prestigious Princeton "ethicist" Peter Singer, who endorses sex with animals and killing children with birth defects, says "when it comes to foreign aid, America is the most stingy nation on Earth."
And has some enterprising reporter asked Sen. Patty Murray what she thinks about the U.S.'s efforts on the tsunami? How about compared to famed philanthropist Osama bin Laden?
In December 2002, Murray was extolling Osama bin Laden's good works in the Middle East, informing a classroom of students: "He's been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. It made their lives better." What does Murray say about bin Laden's charity toward the (mostly Muslim) tsunami victims?
Speaking of world leaders admired by liberals, why isn't Fidel Castro giving the tsunami victims some of that terrific medical care liberals tell us he has been providing the people of Cuba?
Stipulating that liberals love America - which apparently depends on what the meaning of "love" is - do they love America as much as they love bin Laden and Castro?
AC's not angry. (Note: if you don't like Ann, I already know it, so you don't have to tell me how "unreliable" she is, how full of "hate," etc. Thanks in advance.)
Quote:It's Dr. Rice, not Dr. Dre
Ann Coulter
December 2, 2004
In light of their reaction to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, I gather liberals have gotten over their enthusiasm for multiculturalist milestones. It's interesting that they dropped their celebrations of the "first woman!" "first black!" "first Asian!" designations at the precise moment that we are about to get our first black female secretary of state.
When Madeline Albright was appointed the FIRST WOMAN secretary of state, the media was euphoric. (And if memory serves, Monica Lewinsky was the first Jewish female to occupy her various positions on the president's, uh, staff.)
With Albright at the helm of the State Department, Osama bin Laden ran wild throughout the Middle East, the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes under her nose, and we staged a pre-emptive attack solely for purposes of regime change based on false information presented to the American people by Albright about a world leader who was not an imminent threat to the United States. Slobodan Milosevic wasn't even a latent, long-term, hypothetical threat.
But the girls in the mainstream media were too smitten with Albright's brooch collection and high heels to notice the shambles she was making of foreign policy.
The New York Times raved about Albright's brooches in an article titled, "A Diplomat Who Says 'Read My Pins.'" In the San Francisco Chronicle, Leah Garchik was amazed by Albright's "jewel-encrusted flag" pin - Albright's clever ruse to prove that Republicans did not have "dibs on patriotic jewelry." Perhaps Rice could impress American journalists if she talked more about her accessorizing.
People magazine quoted an aide gushing that Albright "stays in her heels all day." Albright herself told Harper's Bazaar, "I've kidded that the advantage of being a woman secretary of state is makeup." This was a great leap forward for feminism? At this point even Paris Hilton was rolling her eyes and saying, "Oh, come on now!"
But Bush nominates a brilliant geopolitical thinker who happens to be black and female and all of a sudden she's Butterfly McQueen, who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no Middle Eastern democracies.
Earlier this year, the flamboyant Richard Clarke claimed that when he briefed Rice in early 2001 about al-Qaida, her "facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before." It's good to know that Clinton's chief terrorism "expert" believes himself to possess paranormal abilities such as ESP.
Why couldn't Dick Clarke have used some of those mind-reading skills on Osama before al-Qaida blew up the USS Cole in October 2000? Or after? To the bitter end, the official position of the Clinton administration was that it couldn't say for sure who was responsible for the Cole attack.
Apparently, liberals believe Rice compares unfavorably to Madeline Albright, whose principle accomplishment before becoming secretary of state was managing to attain the age of 60 without realizing she was Jewish. That was raw competence.
I take that back: Albright also taught at Georgetown University. Of course, American universities make professors of people like Eldridge Cleaver's wife. (Kathleen Cleaver is currently at Yale law school; Susan Rosenberg, a participant in a Brinks car robbery, teaches at Hamilton College; former Weatherman Bill Ayers is a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago; and former Weatherman Bernardine Dohrn is the director of a legal clinic at Northwestern University.)
Or how about Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, a lawyer whose dazzling foreign policy experience consisted of being President Carter's chief negotiator for the hostages in Iran? That's almost as impressive a resume entry as "Chief Iceberg Lookout, the Titanic," "Senior Design Engineer, the Edsel," "Navigator, Exxon Valdez," or "Writer/Executive Producer, 'Alexander.'"
The closest black woman to Bill Clinton was his secretary, Betty Currie - whose principal function was penciling in "Monica" on Clinton's "To Do" list every morning. The closest black woman to most of the liberals accusing Rice of being incompetent is the maid they periodically accuse of stealing from the liquor cabinet.
George Bush chose a black woman to be his top adviser on national security. Now he wants her as his secretary of state. And when she becomes the first black female secretary of state, Rice will replace the first black secretary of state - both appointed by right-wing Republican George Bush. The entire Bush Cabinet is starting to look like an Image Awards telecast minus the fisticuffs and gunplay.
Democrats are terrified that black people might start to notice.
Say, there's a black woman standing next to President Bush ... who is that?
Never mind! It's probably somebody he's arresting!
It's extremely valuable for Democrats to be able to campaign in black neighborhoods while talking about the "white boys" running the Republican Party. When she was managing Al Gore's 2000 campaign, Donna Brazile said she was not going to "let the white boys win in this election." (If I had a nickel for every time I've confused Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, Terry McAuliffe, Paul Begala and James Carville for the Jackson Five ...)
Sure enough, Brazile was instrumental in not letting a couple of white boys - named Al and Joe - win the election. I guess that's liberals' idea of a "competent" black woman.
That's it. Those are the 15 Ann Coulter articles I could find that I've previously posted at A2K. Hope you enjoy them.
Ticomaya wrote:That's it. Those are the 15 Ann Coulter articles I could find that I've previously posted at A2K. Hope you enjoy them.
What would the purpose of that thorn in the flesh be?
May I just say at this point, I have never seen a blatham post which was not correct, insightful and praiseworthy.
Unless he was pulling someone's chain, which he seems to be able to do also very well.
That's it. Those are the 15 Ann Coulter articles I could find that I've previously posted at A2K. Hope you enjoy them.
Ticomaya wrote:That's it. Those are the 15 Ann Coulter articles I could find that I've previously posted at A2K. Hope you enjoy them.
Ah, good times, good times.
And to think that people that can't understand Coulter's wit find Fisk and Chomsky intriguing... truly boggles the mind.
Chomsky is a hate-filled, anti-American spouting venom that would NEVER be accepted were it coming from a conservative.
Foxfyre wrote:Chomsky is a hate-filled, anti-American spouting venom that would NEVER be accepted were it coming from a conservative.
I agree. Noam Chomsky is Anne Coulter with a Ph.D and a tenured position at MIT. Which liberal posters on A2K quote his screeds approvingly on a regular basis?
Out of curiosity, do you find everything Coulter writes to be offensive and/or disgusting and/or hate filled?
