Abby Normal Perspectives

George's W.'s War

2008-10-05T12:26:00Z

No one likes war. War is a horrific affair, bloody and expensive. Sending our men and women into battle to perhaps die or be maimed is an unconscionable thought.

Yet some wars need to be waged, and someone needs to lead. The citizenry and Congress are often ambivalent or largely opposed to any given war. It's up to our leader to convince them. That's why we call the leader "Commander in Chief."

George W.'s war was no different. There was lots of resistance to it. Many in Congress were vehemently against the idea. The Commander in Chief had to lobby for legislative approval.

Along with supporters, George W. Used the force of his convictions, the power of his title and every ounce of moral suasion he could muster to rally support. He had to assure Congress and the public that the war was morally justified, winnable and affordable.

Congress eventually came around and voted overwhelmingly to wage war.

George W. then lobbied foreign governments for support. But in the end, only one European nation helped us. The rest of the world sat on its hands and watched.

After a few quick victories, things started to go bad. There were many dark days when all the news was discouraging. Casualties began to mount. It became obvious that our forces were too small. Congress began to drag its feet about funding the effort.

Many who had voted to support the war just a few years earlier were beginning to speak against it and accuse the Commander in Chief of misleading them. Many critics began to call him incompetent, an idiot and even a liar. Journalists joined the negative chorus with a vengeance.

As the war entered its fourth year, the public began to grow weary of the conflict and the casualties. George W.'S popularity plummeted. Yet through it all, he stood firm, supporting the troops and endorsing the struggle.

Without his unwavering support, the war would have surely ended, then and there, in overwhelming and total defeat.

At this darkest of times, he began to make some changes. More troops were added and trained. Some advisers were shuffled, and new generals installed.

Then, unexpectedly and gradually, things began to improve. Now it was the enemy that appeared to be growing weary of the lengthy conflict and losing support. Victories began to come, and hope returned.

Many critics in Congress and the press said the improvements were just George W.'s good luck. The progress, they said, would be temporary. He knew, however, that in warfare good fortune counts.

Then, in the unlikeliest of circumstances and perhaps the most historic example of military luck, the enemy blundered and was resoundingly defeated. After six long years of war, the Commander in Chief basked in a most hard-fought victory.

So on that historic day, Oct. 19, 1781, in a place called Yorktown , a satisfied George Washington sat upon his beautiful white horse and accepted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, effectively ending the Revolutionary War.

George W.'s War
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT

"An Open Letter To The Hollywood Bunch," Chalie Daniels, 02/24/03

2008-02-12T14:15:00Z

Ok let’s just say for a moment you bunch of pampered, overpaid, unrealistic children had your way and the U.S.A. didn’t go into Iraq.

Let’s say that you really get your way and we destroy all our nuclear weapons and stick daisies in our gun barrels and sit around with some white wine and cheese and pat ourselves on the back, so proud of what we’ve done for world peace.

Let’s say that we cut the military budget to just enough to keep the National Guard on hand to help out with floods and fires.

Let’s say that we close down our military bases all over the world and bring the troops home, increase our foreign aid and drop all the trade sanctions against everybody.

I suppose that in your fantasy world this would create a utopian world where everybody would live in peace. After all, the great monster, the United States of America, the cause of all the world’s trouble would have disbanded its horrible military and certainly all the other countries of the world would follow suit.

After all, they only arm themselves to defend their countries from the mean old U.S.A.

Why you bunch of pitiful, hypocritical, idiotic, spoiled mugwumps get your head out of the sand and smell the Trade Towers burning. Do you think that a trip to Iraq by Sean Penn did anything but encourage a wanton murderer to think that the people of the U.S.A. didn’t have the nerve or the guts to fight him?

Barbra Streisand’s fanatical and hateful rantings about George Bush makes about as much sense as Michael Jackson hanging a baby over a railing.

You people need to get out of Hollywood once in a while and get out into the real world. You’d be surprised at the hostility you would find out here. Stop in at a truck stop and tell an overworked, long distance truck driver that you don’t think Saddam Hussein is doing anything wrong. Tell a farmer with a couple of sons in the military that you think the United States has no right to defend itself.

Go down to Baxley, Georgia and hold an anti-war rally and see what the folks down there think about you.

You people are some of the most disgusting examples of a waste of protoplasm I’ve ever had the displeasure to hear about.

Sean Penn, you’re a traitor to the United States of America. You gave aid and comfort to the enemy. How many American lives will your little, ”fact finding trip“ to Iraq cost? You encouraged Saddam to think that we didn’t have the stomach for war.

You people protect one of the most evil men on the face of this earth and won’t lift a finger to save the life of an unborn baby. Freedom of choice you say?

Well I’m going to exercise some freedom of choice of my own. If I see any of your names on a marquee, I’m going to boycott the movie. I will completely stop going to movies if I have to. In most cases it certainly wouldn’t be much of a loss.

You scoff at our military whose boots you’re not even worthy to shine. They go to battle and risk their lives so ingrates like you can live in luxury.

The day of reckoning is coming when you will be faced with the undeniable truth that the war against Saddam Hussein is the war on terrorism.

America is in imminent danger. You’re either for her or against her. There is no middle ground.

I think we all know where you stand.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

St Pete Times Politifact.com & Senator Clinton's boast of 35 years of Experience

2008-01-13T14:02:00Z

Once again the St Pete Times has deluded itself and its readers by claiming to provide an independent fact checking service of the candidate claims when in fact it actuality promotes a liberal democratic agenda.

I believe I have paid close attention to the political process this time around and I have been amazed that Senator Hillary Clinton has claimed she is ready to be president because of her 35 years of experience!

To my knowledge Senator Clinton has never held an elected office or run a business as chief executive officer, so how could she claim 35 years experience? Unquestionably she makes the boast in such a way to imply that she has some work experience which afforded her an opportunity to acquire and hone a skill set similar to the ones needed to run a country? She may well have 35 years experience as a lawyer and advocate for a variety of noble and ignoble causes such as children and Bill Clinton; but where did she actually manage something? Anything?

Looking after Bill Clinton was a tiresome, full time job primarily consisting of damage control arising from Bill's almost single minded pursuit of licentious affairs; but it really doesn't support her claim. And if we're to believe her statements that she really wasn't aware of, or believe Bill was actually dallying with trollops and cigars, then that is truly compelling evidence of her inability to deal with reality let alone manage a country. I concur with Dennis Miller's observation (and I paraphrase) that if Senator Clinton wasn't aware of Bill's sexual proclivities, she really doesn't have the chops or the intellectual capacity to be my president!!!

I e-mailed PolitiFact.com with my question. And while I didn't think they would be unbiased from my previous exchanges with them, I hoped that they would be at least candid.

Bill Adair, the St Pete Times Washington Bureau Chief and PolitiFact.com manager responded back that they had covered that issue before and he sent the following link: http://www.politifact.com/media/experience.html

That's right, no analysis, no pants on fire meter indicating Senator Clinton was perhaps embellishing just a bit. Nothing other then a page parroting back the candidates claims and stating that Senator Clinton had 8 years managerial / executive experience during her tenure as First Lady!

Previous e-mails from Mr. Adair had assured me that his pet project was not beholden to the St Pete Times or their clearly liberal bias; but, as the old saw goes, actions speak louder than words.

What a complete and utter disappointment! Worse, many readers who would and could otherwise be described as intelligent, concerned participants of the democratic process are lead astray by Mr. Adair's disingenuousness and biased reporting.

Voters will be going to the polls having based their decisions on the candidate's allegations of truth and deception based upon the deceitful rantings of Mr. Adair and PolitiFact.com, so shouldn't there be some recourse for the fraud they're committing?

Clearly, PolitiFact.com, the St Pete Times, Mr. Adair and his cronies have the Constitutionally protected freedom and right to indulge their liberal, or rather to avoid the negative connotation perhaps I should say "progressive" (LOL) propensities.

But as informed voters, we can vote with our pocketbooks and I heartily urge everyone to follow their convictions and support ventures that actually do report the news instead of those trying to obscure the truth!

Dimwitocrats

2007-10-14T13:05:00Z

Art Linkletter used to have a television show entitled "Kids say the Darndest Things." With the candidates filling the airwaves with every conceivable kind of trial balloons and lunacy to distinguish themselves from others of their particular ilk, I think its time to update Mr. Linkletter's show and to focus on the musings and ideas of Hillary and Harry and Howard and Nancy and many others who can be uniquely described as "Dimwitocrats."

Now I'm sure there is an equally vapid play on the other party's name and I'm sure someone will step up to the plate to point out the many useless and inane ideas of the other party, so to speak, but for me, the truly idiotic statements are more often than not made by the likes of the aforementioned Dimwitocrats.

As proof, I Shamelessly I offer the following for your consideration:

"The War Is Lost" Harry Reid, April 19, 2007

$5,000 Baby Bond, Hillary Clinton, September 28, 2007

And to memorialize these statements I found a CafePress site dedicated to their brilliant utterances and ideas!

So in keeping with the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great, please look for these and other great Dimwitocratic moments memorialized on various clothing and trinkets here: Dimwitocratic!

Enjoy!

General Petraeus & Dimwitocratic Blather, Coulter, 9/12/07

2007-10-14T12:49:00Z

re: From the Halls of Malibu to the Shores of Kennedy
Ann Coulter, Copyright 2007
Universal Press Syndicate

Democrats claim Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress on the surge was a put-up job with a pre-ordained conclusion. As if their response wasn't.

Democrats yearn for America to be defeated on the battlefield and oppose any use of the military -- except when they can find individual malcontents in the military willing to denounce the war and call for a humiliating retreat.

It's been the same nay saying from these people since before we even invaded Iraq -- despite the fact that their representatives in Congress voted in favor of that war.

Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down," warned Americans in the Aug. 30, 2002, Los Angeles Times of 60,000 to 100,000 dead American troops if we invaded Iraq -- comparing an Iraq war to Vietnam and a Russian battle in Chechnya. He said Iraqis would fight the Americans "tenaciously" and raised the prospect of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction against our troops, an attack on Israel "and possibly in the United States."

On Sept. 14, 2002, The New York Times' Frank Rich warned of another al-Qaida attack in the U.S. if we invaded Iraq, noting that since "major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough."

This week makes it six years since a major al-Qaida attack. I guess we weren't distracted. But it looks like al-Qaida has been.

Weeks before the invasion, in March 2003, the Times' Nicholas Kristof warned in a couple of columns that if we invaded Iraq, "the Turks, Kurds, Iraqis and Americans will all end up fighting over the oil fields of Kirkuk or Mosul." He said: "The world has turned its back on the Kurds more times than I can count, and there are signs that we're planning to betray them again." He announced that "the United States is perceived as the world's newest Libya."

The day after we invaded, Kristof cited a Muslim scholar for the proposition that if Iraqis felt defeated, they would embrace Islamic fundamentalism.

We took Baghdad in about 17 days flat with amazingly few casualties. There were no al-Qaida attacks in America, no attacks on Israel, no invasion by Turkey, no attacks on our troops with chemical weapons, no ayatollahs running Iraq. We didn't turn our back on the Kurds. There were certainly not 100,000 dead American troops.

But liberals soon began raising yet more pointless quibbles. For most of 2003, they said the war was a failure because we hadn't captured Saddam Hussein. Then we captured Saddam, and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean complained that "the capture of Saddam has not made America safer." (On the other hand, Howard Dean's failure to be elected president definitely made America safer.)

Next, liberals said the war was a failure because we hadn't captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Then we killed al-Zarqawi and a half-dozen of his aides in an air raid. Then they said the war was a failure because ... you get the picture.

The Democrats' current talking point is that "there can be no military solution in Iraq without a political solution." But back when we were imposing a political solution, Democrats' talking point was that there could be no political solution without a military solution.

They said the first Iraqi election, scheduled for January 2005, wouldn't happen because there was no "security."

Noted Middle East peace and security expert Jimmy Carter told NBC's "Today" show in September 2004 that he was confident the elections would not take place. "I personally do not believe they're going to be ready for the election in January ... because there's no security there," he said.

At the first presidential debate in September 2004, Sen. John Kerry used his closing statement to criticize the scheduled Iraqi elections saying: "They can't have an election right now. The president's not getting the job done."

About the same time, 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.

In October 2004, Nicholas Lemann wrote in The New Yorker that "it may not be safe enough there for the scheduled elections to be held in January."

Days before the first election in Iraq in January 2005, The New York Times began an article on the election this way:

"Hejaz Hazim, a computer engineer who could not find a job in computers and now cleans clothes, slammed his iron into a dress shirt the other day and let off a burst of steam about the coming election. "'This election is bogus,' Mr. Hazim said. 'There is no drinking water in this city. There is no security. Why should I vote?'"

If there's a more artful articulation of the time-honored linkage between drinking water and voting, I have yet to hear it.

And then, as scheduled, in January 2005, millions of citizens in a country that has never had a free election risked their lives to cast ballots in a free democratic election. They've voted twice more since then.

Now our forces are killing lots of al-Qaida jihadists, preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and giving democracy in Iraq a chance -- and Democrats say we are "losing" this war. I think that's a direct quote from their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, but it may have been the Osama bin Laden tape released this week. I always get those two confused.

OK, they knew what Petraeus was going to say. But we knew what the Democrats were going to say. If liberals are not traitors, their only fall back argument at this point is that they're really stupid.

Gone From My Sight

2007-10-10T14:46:00Z

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

Henry Van Dyke

re: A cagey way to keep voters from being counted, Blumner, 8/26/07

2007-09-02T22:00:00Z

Apparently no one at the Times has ever heard of provisional ballots; and that small bit of ignorance provides an opening for a bit of utterly biased editorial rubbish.

If a registered voter goes to the polls and finds that their name has been inadvertently removed from the voter registration lists they may ask for a provisional ballot, which will be verified and counted just like as any other vote cast. But ignorance of that fact turns an otherwise routine practice of removing invalid voter registrations into a sinister plot to disenfranchise thousands!

I have moved about a dozen times since I became a registered voter. And I have always made sure to update my registration for my new location, but I have never once gone back and asked that an old registration be removed. Now multiply that mind set by hundreds of millions of voters that have ever moved! The extra taxpayer burden to maintain erroneous registrations and to send out erroneous notices easily warrants that voter registration rolls should be periodically purged of invalid registrations. Must be a slow news day to take a public good and turn it into evil.

Caging is a direct mail term of art for maintaining mailing lists by sending out a first class mailing and updating the list of recipients as undeliverable pieces are returned. This only happens with first class mail, which was overlooked by Ms. Dumbner and proffered as evidence that of evil intent.

Perhaps if the Times and Ms. Dumbner were a bit more cagey or discerning in their thinking even they might be able to see the taxpayer benefit of periodic maintenance of voter registration rolls.

re: To win, Dems must fight, Blumner, 7/22/07

2007-07-22T12:07:00Z

Finally Ms. Dumbner and the Times print what I suspect are their true feelings; that we the people are emotional boobs incapable of rational thought when electing our leaders. What a churlish world view; since the people don’t agree with me they must be idiots.

People didn’t vote for Dukakis because he showed exceedingly poor judgment when he authorized a weekend furlough from prison for a convicted rapist and murderer, Willie Horton. And when Horton raped and murdered again, Dukakis and the Dems tried to turn criticism of his poor judgment into race bating!

And Gore didn’t counter Bush’s accusations about fund-raising improprieties at a Buddhist temple and his approval of selling the Lincoln bedroom to high dollar donors because they were true and Gore benefited from the dodgy affairs, how could he counter the facts? And who could forget that the man trying to be the nations leader needed an adviser to teach him how t be an “alpha male.”

So despite the clear and convincing facts suggesting that we the people analyzed the situation and found the Dems lacking, Ms. Blumner and the Times prefer their own Colbert-ian truthiness that the voters are too emotional and just not analytical enough?!?!

Well, in my opinion, I believe voters are turned off by the Dems elitism and this article lays bare the real true for everyone to see. Voters are just too stupid to know what’s in their own best interest so sit back and let the enlightened intellectuals tell you what you think!

re: Ignorance, fear take the stage, Maxwell, 6/17/07

2007-06-18T13:48:00Z

Speaking of truthiness, Mr. Maxwell should do a bit more reading about the Scope’s trial and evolution.

I don’t dispute that Inherit the Wind is a classic only that the Scope’s trial was a manufactured event and not the result of the religious right’s efforts in support of a political agenda to do away with evolution. And science is doing away with evolution, not religion or the belief in intelligent design.

First there’s the notion that evolution is based upon an incredible confluence of events that magically morphed basic elements into life. Ironically that sounds a lot like faith to me, but I digress.

Then there’s the lack of fossil record to support the evolution of any one animal into a more evolved species. And there is absolutely no clear convincing evidence to support the evolution of a family of animals like the famous monkey to man evolution. The fossil record just doesn’t support evolution in either case.

Amazingly Mr. Maxwell ridicules President Bush's faith based initiates, family values and other applications of his faith in his administration policies and yet he completely ignores Darwinism’s darker political track record. Survival of the fittest is clearly evident in the polices of Hitler, Stalin and the Klan and the application of its tenets produced incredibly horrific results.

All of which leaves me wondering how truthiness or the suspension in belief in facts is a liability in one’s point of view and an asset to another’s?

re: When 'enemy combatants' aren't, Blumner, 6/17/07

2007-06-17T14:18:00Z

It is simply wrong headed and dangerous of Ms. Blumner to celebrate a legal opinion that attempts to give greater legal status to treacherous vermin like Ali Al-Marri and would have given to Mohamed Atta then they deserve.

President Bush has stridently championed legislation and pro-active steps to enable our government to identify, detain and prosecute terrorists in military tribunals as they deserve and I for one continue to support his efforts to keep us all safe.

It’s a shame that two activist Clinton appointees, 4th Circuit Court Judges Diana Motz and Roger Gregory, were able to derail the President’s efforts by ignoring legal precedent based upon Bush legislation. Motz and Gregory prefer to follow the dangerous and convoluted logic of Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University, who writing in a New York Times op-ed piece states that it “… makes no sense to say we are at war with a group of terrorists.”

Well, it might not make sense, but I don’t think we can simply ignore militant Muslims and or multi-national Al Qaeda sycophants who have sworn an oath to wage jihad against American infidels!

Nor do I agree with Motz and Gregory’s decision limiting the term "enemy combatant" to citizens from particular nations or countries against whom the US has legally declared war! Hmmm, that’s a real clever distinction if ever I heard one.

Ironically Ms. Blumner says President Bush is the one with one with a semantic problem.

In contrast dissenting Judge Henry Hudson, a Bush appointee from the Eastern District of Virginia, correctly applied the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and voted to affirm the lower court's ruling that Al-Marri was indeed an enemy combatant and that his detention and prosecution was correct and proper.

Fortunately we don’t have to rely on them or on the ramblings of loons from the Times, New York or St Pete, to keep us safe. An en banc hearing of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals or a review by the Supreme Court will rectify this travesty.

Adult versus embryonic stem cells

2007-06-03T20:36:00Z

Based on all the hostile remarks, snide comments and plain old derision heaped on President Bush because of his position on embryonic stem cell research, you’d think Scrooge’s partner Bob Marley was a saint by comparison. Yet truth be told, his position is well reasoned, based upon scientific evidence. Yes, I really did just say that and further more, I believe it as well.

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are marvelously mysterious in that they appear to have the ability to become any type of cell the body needs. By comparison, adult stem (ASCs) are found in and around particular tissues and appear to be limited in some manner to replicating only those types and or classes of cells contained in the tissue wherein they are found. In theory, because ESCs are not limited, their potential should be greater than the type of class limited ASCs. However, in practice ESCs are substantially more likely to be rejected by their host, cause auto-immune problems and other severe negative side effects. Consequently no one has found a beneficial use or application for ESCs whereas many beneficial and successful applications have been developed utilizing ASCs!

So why don’t proponents of ESC research ever acknowledge this very important detail? Truthfully I can’t answer that question; but I think the problem may arise with the media because doing so is inconvenient to their point of view, and it may arise with ESC researchers because it is inconsistent with their goal to increase research contributions and it may arise with some people simply because they detest President Bush!

Note to Bill Maher: You could learn a lot from President Bush if you’d only open your ears and listen instead of ridiculing him all the time!

re: We're the boobs in front of the tube, Blumner, 6/3/07

2007-06-03T14:21:00Z

How ironic that Ms. Blumner starts her proposition with the notion that Al Gore is right about anything and then uses his latest ramblings to castigate the citizenry for being “under informed” and “over titillated” yet she cannot even employ the words properly to make her point. Amazingly she admonishes us to turn away from biased media, to use our intellect to investigate and reason and then, incredibly, she relies on a Gore quote from Dan Rather who was fired for failing to do just that! I note Ms. Blumner’s inconsistency and hypocrisy with some disdain because I believe Mr. Gore’s underlying assertion that television news has “dumbed down and tarted up” its coverage; but unlike Mr. Gore and Ms. Blumner I do not believe that the American people are to blame for viewing or believing the subjective tripe that is television news. No, I blame the likes of Dan Rather who was one of the first to disregard the public’s trust and cast aside his objectivity in favor of elaborating his personal views on Vietnam. Sadly Ms. Blumner continues and broadens Mr. Rather’s defection by publishing her own biased views.

re: Curtain up on Clintons' Act 2, Gailey, 6/3/07

2007-06-03T14:15:00Z

Mr. Gailey’s confession about not expecting the Clintons' “soap-opera lives” to figure into the 2008 presidential campaign is intellectually dishonest. The Clintons' extremely checkered past cannot be ignored and will most likely be the millstone that holds Hillary back from ever really contending. Especially when you consider that she lacks Bill’s ability to feign warmth, compassion and empathy. Hillary’s cold, calculating demeanor and move to the center has already caused her to lose support from the extremely left leaning netroot cabal; a rehash of her conduct during Bill’s presidency will only serve to cement the distrust and hatred many voters in the middle and on the right hold for the junior carpet bagging senator from New York who clearly never would have been elected to dog catcher in Arkansas.

"Vast right wing conspiracy" at it again!

2007-03-31T16:28:00Z

For those of you who may have forgotten, including Senator Clinton, in 1998 then First Lady Hillary Clinton claimed that a “vast right wing conspiracy” was to blame for rumors suggesting her husband was having an affair. Her husband President Clinton was an honorable man and the right, well, they were working in concert to slander and disgrace him.

Later as most everyone can bear witness and despite First Lady in Denial Clinton’s naivety, when the DNA on the Monica’s blue dress was tested, the rumors were confirmed and President Clinton confessed to America that he did indeed have a “relationship with that woman … Ms. Lewinsky.” The upshot here is that there was no vast right conspiracy perpetuating rumors. There were people, yeah probably from the right politically speaking, who were upset by the whole sordid affair but they were telling the truth about President Clinton’s infidelity.

Fast forward to 2007 and charges from First Lady now Senator Clinton that the vast right wing conspiracy is at it again, only this time the right is trying to cover-up election irregularities.

Hmmm, let’s take Senator Clinton’s statement at face value based upon historical facts. If people were simply telling the truth about President Clinton’s adultery in 1998, then now they are telling the truth that there were no election irregularities! Clearly Senator Clinton has no idea as to the meaning of her own statements!

I have often heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Someone should definitely pass that tidbit of advice on to Senator Clinton, and soon.

re: 67-5, WSJ, 3/12/07

2007-03-12T03:34:00Z

67-5
Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2007

From time to time these columns have noted the out-of-step jurisprudence of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Circuit, with headquarters in San Francisco and jurisdiction over nine Western states, is heavy on Democratic appointees: Of its 27 currently active judges, three were appointed by President Carter and 13 by President Clinton. They are frequently overruled by the Supreme Court, but this term may set a record.

So far the Justices have reviewed eight Ninth Circuit decisions, and the Circuit is 0-8. The High Court has reversed four decisions and vacated four more. In Ayers v. Belmontes, a 5-4 Court reinstated a death sentence that the Ninth Circuit had overturned. In U.S. v. Resendiz-Ponce, a criminal procedure case, Justice Antonin Scalia cast a lone dissenting vote in favor of the Circuit's position.

The six other cases were all unanimous. That means -- for those keeping score -- that the cumulative vote against the Ninth Circuit in Supreme Court reviews since October is 67-5. Keep in mind that this is an appellate court that is supposed to heed Supreme Court precedent.

In recent years, some of the Justices have been engaging in a public debate over the degree to which the Supreme Court should look to foreign courts for guidance. Meanwhile, the jurisprudence of the Ninth Circuit is apparently too foreign even for the most open-minded members of the High Court.

N.B. Somehow, I believe, this court should be restrained from wasting people's time, energy and efforts. Dissent is good and is needed, but each time the 9th Circuit goes off the deep end, justice is subverted or denied and real people's lives are impacted in so many different ways until rescued by the Supreme Court. But what about people who can't afford another appeal?

Remembering Mary Jo, Myrna Blyth, 07/20/04

2007-02-20T14:26:00Z

Remembering Mary Jo, 35 years later: Ted Kennedy’s under-investigated scandal.
By Myrna Blyth
Blyth Spirit, National Review Online, July 20,2004

This week we may hear a little about the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, but there is another anniversary that has already gone unnoticed. On July 18, 1969, a couple of nights before Armstrong took that "giant step for mankind," Ted Kennedy took a turn onto a narrow bridge in Chappaquiddick. The passenger in his car that night was Mary Jo Kopechne, a pretty, blond Capitol Hill secretary, just about to celebrate her 29th birthday. The two events are inextricably linked in my mind because my husband, who was a correspondent for a British newspaper, instead of reporting on our glorious odyssey into space, ended up at police headquarters on Martha's Vineyard covering that sordid story.

In case you have forgotten or never knew the details, Ted and five of his pals and six women known as the "Boiler Room Girls" who had worked in Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign, cut short by his assassination the year before, were weekending together. Afterward, the men claimed it was just a couple of days of innocent fun to thank the girls for their help, though the six guys were all married but partying without their wives, and the young women were all single. One of the "Boiler Room Girls" is now big-time New York literary agent Esther Newberg, who was Mary Jo's roommate for the weekend. Like everyone involved in the incident, Esther remains close-mouthed about what occurred.

What everyone testified at the time was that Kennedy and Mary Jo left the party before midnight. Kennedy said he was driving her back to the ferry to Edgartown, and took a wrong turn, though he was very familiar with the roads on the island. His car toppled off a narrow wooden-planked bridge, a bridge that is in the opposite direction to the road that led to the ferry but is on the way to the beach. The car landed upside-down in eight feet of water and, Kennedy claimed that after escaping, he tried unsuccessfully to rescue Mary Jo. He then staggered back to the party, called out his cousin Joe Gargan and his pal Paul Markham, to return to the scene. What he didn't do, inexplicably, was seek help in a lighted house only yards from the bridge or use the fire-alarm phone at a fire station he passed on the way back to the party.

Right from the start, the reporters who arrived at the scene were skeptical of his story, skeptical even of how he claimed he got back to Edgartown that night. Markham and Gargan said when they drove to the ferry landing — the ferry had stopped running by then — Kennedy took them by surprise by jumping in the water, and swimming across the channel towards Edgartown. They assumed, they said, he would report the accident that night to the police. Instead Kennedy went back to his hotel, ostensibly to change his clothes but instead, went downstairs to complain about a noisy party that was going on.

The next morning Markham and Gargan were waiting for Kennedy when he arrived at 9 A.M. on the first ferry. The ferry operator said Kennedy appeared to be in a jovial mood, but probably only until he was told that his car had been found. Only then did Kennedy return and report the accident.

Some reporters, primarily the foreign press, did ask tough questions. For example: Did Kennedy really swim back to Edgartown that night? No one saw him with wet clothes and my husband, for one, interviewed a young man who had tied up his rowboat at the Chappaquiddick dock on Saturday night. When he got there on Sunday morning, he said, it had been retied and with what he called a "land lubber's knot."

But the whole incident was overshadowed by the worldwide coverage of the moonwalk. Besides, all the people involved had, by midday, left Martha's Vineyard and headed home. When the police went to the cottage where the party had taken place, all they found were some washed Coca-Cola bottles. There was no one to interview and no one who would talk then — or ever. Besides, Kennedy was treated like Massachusetts royalty by the local police chief, Dominick Arena, who even gave up his office so that Kennedy could make telephone calls to advisers and lawyers in privacy.

It may have been the last time when a scandal was so under-investigated, so quickly dispatched — and the man involved seemed to get off so easily for what he had done. A week later, Kennedy, who arrived in court wearing a neck brace, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a two-month suspended sentence and a year's probation.

Next week Ted Kennedy will be center stage at the Democratic convention in Boston. "It will be a celebration...of the work of Ted Kennedy.... There will be a lot of appropriate attention paid to a person who has been at the center of national politics for the past forty years," his colleague Senator Christopher Dodd has enthused. And last year Boston Globe reporter Charles Pierce commented, "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age."

It would be funny — if it wasn't so sad.

re: The role of bloggers, editorial 02/26/05

2007-02-20T14:19:00Z

I applaud the St. Pete Times for commending bloggers and admitting the media’s credibility problem; but wonder at its sincerity when far more column inches were dedicated to the suggestion that journalism and mainstream media (MSM) have been victimized! It was incredibly irresponsible of Eason Jordan to suggest that US troops where “deliberately targeting” (read murdering) journalists and I commend those who published Jordan’s own words to bring about his resignation. And lets be truthful, James Guckert was not a journalistic victim, he didn’t exaggerate or deceive anyone. Liberal bloggers condemned him for agreeing with the President and being gay! The true victims are MSM readers who have endured the unfettered rants, screeds and vitamins (this is an obscure reference to Robyn Blumner whose column is advertised as "vitamins for the mind") of deposed MSM elitists like Eason Jordan or Howell Raines. In a society of majority rule, bloggers seem to be successful when their message resonates with the views of mainstream society (MSS). Long live MSS!

Spin Winds

2007-02-20T13:52:00Z

I hate spin. I thought it would end with the election cycle, but it continues almost unabated. My rant is not against the O’Reilly styled art of bloviating or anyone’s idiosyncratic discourse on an issue du jour. No, I am referring to political spin of the sort that utilizes half-truths and out-of-context snippets as an illegitimate premise or basis for their position. Merriam (I prefer first names…) defines deceit as the act of deceiving, deceiving as the “inflected form of the root verb deceive” and to deceive is “to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid.”

Someone I know and care about (I say this not to advertise the fact, but to suggest a foundation for my concern) recently told me that the situation in Iraq is worst than we thought because “more soldiers have already died in Iraq than the first five years of Vietnam!” Turning this statement over in my mind, I wondered if the facts supported his warning that the Iraq was on an accelerated pace of deterioration towards a Vietnam like quagmire that would ensnarl another generation and claim thousands more casualties. But then I recalled that US soldiers weren’t fighting in Vietnam during those early years. Their mission then was observation and education. We sent advisors to review the situation the French had created, stimulated and deserted. We provided consultants for training, logistics and strategic purposes. Our troops did NOT enter into combat with the North Vietnamese. My friend had tried to illustrate his point by equating apples to oranges and pointing to the obfuscated results as support for his position on Iraq. When questioned about the differences between the activities in Vietnam and the Iraq he acknowledged saying that it was a difference without a distinction! So I wondered, what was he trying to accomplish? What was the point of suggesting more casualties and dehumanizing events a la Senator John Kerry’s self-promoting, harsh, excoriating testimony of soldier’s atrocities? I suspect that he was trying to persuade me that President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration were fraudulently pursing war with Iraq and to promote ulterior or nefarious agendas. Unfortunately, his deception was so transparent and his goal to incite was so badly focused that his inspiration was successful at evoking repugnancy; but not his intended victim. No, I was offended by him, by his logic and the willingness to mislead me with his patently biased statement and to accept it as truth in support of his personal animosity and malignancy. His spin had become a hurricane of deception. And therein lays my angst.

I want discourse, I want to hear alternate views, I want to share ideas and I will accept the ideas of others where logic and veracity compels such results. But we can’t lose the truth or perspective when we debate, as both are integral necessities for persuasion. So, here I am, offering my own little contrivance and I wonder have I attempted my own deception or offered a bit of introspection?

re: Our politics have been drained of vitality

2007-02-20T13:07:00Z

Phillp Gailey 
St Petersberg Times, April 16, 2006 

I agree with the Mr. Gailey’s basic premise that Vice President Gore and Senator Kerry failed because they needed to evince leadership and character. And maybe political advisor and strategist Robert Shrum (0-8) just doesn’t have a clue, but more to the point Gore and Kerry failed because their leadership was clouded by their respective character of stolid insincerity and obfuscated indecision. Were it not for Moveon.org, the only things people understood either to stand for were their own imputed needs. I also believe elections should be about espousing lofty goals and ideals a la John F. Kennedy, but they must also, by necessity, be about what appeals to the middle of the road majority. Our political process has been hijacked by liberal idealism (especially in New Hampshire and Iowa) that permeates and colors the primary process to the detriment of open political discourse for far too long before any ballots are cast. And good candidates fail or withdraw based upon a segment of America that is clearly not mainstream in their views.

re: Marriage is tougher when it's 'for poorer,' Blumner, 1/28/07

2007-02-20T12:59:00Z

Throwing money at a problem rarely provides a workable long term solution and Ms. Blumner’s rant on the policies of the Bush Administration is similarly misplaced. Sweden and Finland, the most socialistic countries in the world when it comes to societal issues and whose policies on paychecks and health care more closely resemble the attitudes professed by Ms. Blumner, both have higher divorce rates then the U.S.

Increasing divorce rates have more to do with personal deficiencies of maturity, education and responsibility as supported by the two greatest predictors of divorce: age and education. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that simply increasing people’s income alone even combined with more sick days will somehow increase the maturity, respect and commitment two people need for a sustained relationship. DOH!

The elephant in the room is not the Bush administration policies, it is Ms. Blumner’s wrong headed hatred of President Bush. Don’t know why Ms. Blumner doesn’t simply publish a column that says I hate President Bush. It would be more economical, less hypocritical and, quite frankly, definitely more honest then the tripe she does publish.