John Poderetz:

November 22, 2002 -- A SURVEY by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg asked the public which of the two parties does a better job keeping America strong. The Republicans prevailed - by 39 points.
Thirty-nine points.
...
Daschle, a politician, is used to being disagreed with. What he's not used to is losing. He and the Democrats lost in part because there is something childish about their obsession with finding scapegoats and bogeymen on which to blame their own failures.

Americans know that what they have seen since 9/11 has been a stunning elevation of American political discourse and a return to seriousness in American politics. But Daschle refused to climb out of the sandbox and become a fully functioning political adult during a time requiring the utmost seriousness from America's politicians.

He paid the price for it. And so will Gore, if he doesn't get out of the sandbox himself.

At-Swim-Two-Birds:

(Hi, Sally? Hi there, it's me, Sheila. LOOK AT ME. We're not talking about perfection, we're talking about thinking it would be funny and cool to dangle a baby over a 4 story drop...) She also says, "celebrities' mistakes are captured on film, (and) that sets them up to be a pariah.'' My response is: damn straight it does. But also I see that Ms. Lee is doing the opposite of setting him up to be a pariah. She is giving him a pass BECAUSE he is a celebrity. Nobody gave the "Irish traveler" who punched her four year old daughter on camera a pass. Or if they did, it's only because they are idiots.

Was the war in Afghanistan worth it?

Robin Goodfellow speaks truths to some Donkey Underground types, and gets kicked off the board for his efforts.

Goldberg on Gore:

Now, since Gore wants to get nominated by a party dominated by its liberal base, it only makes sense that he'd say all of these things — especially since he's not burdened by the demands of either conviction or consistency.

Big Brother is Watching Them

the Black left

If every black conservative in America disappeared tomorrow, absolutely nothing would change for the better in communities like that one in Milwaukee.
That's why blacks on the liberal/left side of the political spectrum need to find new targets for their ire. They can start by unzipping their lips and going to Milwaukee to confront the parents of the accused, to ask them just what kind of parents they are and to demand where they were the night of Sept. 29.

Short Strange Trip:

Around the same time, the corporate culture of the military was beginning to shift the emphasis to consideration of others and sensitivity as frontrunner issues of the training regimen. In my view these are important things. Definitely traits that you want to foster in the people you hire to find, fix, and destroy your enemies.

Vodkapundit:

Imagine there’s an arsonist in the neighborhood. He’s already burned down your garage, and he’s started several other fires around the block. Meanwhile, your old friends across the street, in as much danger as you – and without fire insurance – hinder your every effort to find and stop the terrorist. Er, arsonist. Adding insult to injury, they sometimes whisper that you’re the real pyromaniac.

These are not the actions of good neighbors. They are not the actions of friends. They aren’t even rational actions.

Kathy Fisks binLaden

L.Frank Baum and Genocide

Glenn, a pack not a herd (#1)
And the followup: True National Defense

Contest.

"Chechnya Peace May Be Casualty After Moscow Raid "
(Reuters headline fit for BotW's "You Don't Say")

Bush and multilateralism.

Sgt. Stryker

It's clear that to the Wa-Po editorial staff that the "rule of law" doesn't apply to the Democrats when Democratic power is at stake (the end justifies the means). For all the Democrats' rhetoric showing concern for the "voters," these actions show what it's really all about, power, pure naked lust for power. The DNC doesn't care about the "people" anymore; it only about cares power.

Krauthammer, Call their Bluff

I believe that the entire notion of "U.N. authority" is nonsense in the first place. But for those who feel that the United States may not defend itself without reference to some piece of U.N. paper, the paper is there. The case is clear -- even State Department lawyers should be able to make it.

So much for legal authority. Yet France insists that we need a fresh piece of U.N. paper. France "cannot accept an intervention . . . that would not follow the path of law," declared French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Now, when Louis XIV declared that something was unacceptable, it carried weight. Napoleon, too. And Clemenceau. What exactly does French non-acceptance mean today? A cheese embargo?

France's grandiosity is rivaled only by its hypocrisy. The NATO war on Serbia was conducted without any Security Council approval (because Russia would have blocked it). Kosovo being a bit closer to France, and with Balkan troubles threatening to destabilize its neighborhood, France appears to have manfully suppressed its scruples and supported, indeed participated in, a war unsanctioned by the Security Council.

No more dithering. Put the question to France.

Bill Quick on The Consequences of Clintonism:

I post this just to give the few Clinton worshippers who drive by Daily Pundit a chance to gnash their teeth about the unfairness of us "radical right wing fundamentalists" who refuse to see the beauty of liar, perjurer, and impeached former President BJ Clinton and his shining "legacy."

Heh.

And:

And nobody but us will care that it was the Clinton administration that permitted this to happen, because what others will see and remember is only that America reneged on its word, and left Japan, the second largest economy in the world, naked and defenseless to nuclear agression from a regime of madmen.

Why should anybody in that part of the world trust us ever again? To be honest, I don't have an answer to that. Thanks to precisely the sort of soft-headed liberal recklessness currently being forwarded to Saddam Hussein's benefit, we have placed hundreds of millions of allied citizens who depended on us in deadly danger - and all that the people who actually accomplished this can say is, "Oops."

And then they turn around and recommend exactly the same tactics to "contain" Saddam.

Madness.

[comment]
That's what the American people wanted in 1992. The main complaint was that Bush I paid too much attention to foreign problems and we had (gasp!) 7%(+) unemployment.

Boy, wouldn't France & Germany like 7% unemployment?

Posted by Sandy P. at October 18, 2002 10:22 PM

Matt Welch, the US Version of Adult Supervision:

This new balance is not between powers, but rather of a single power -- the U.S. military --presumably trying not to stumble while attempting to bestride the globe.

The rest of the world, free from the hassles of defence research and arms races, can get on with economic growth and political liberalization.
...
But kids don't learn how to take responsibility for themselves until after they're kicked out of the nest. Europeans and others enjoy complaining about U.S. military "hegemony," yet duck out when it comes time to boost their defence budgets. Meanwhile, the United States has discouraged the E.U. from developing any significant military capability outside the NATO framework. This U.S.-controlled body is still in charge of guaranteeing Western European security, 11 years after that last made any rational sense.

But people who are not given, and do not take responsibility, have a maddening tendency to act irresponsibly. This banal concept underpins much of the growing divide between Europe and America since Sept. 11.

And Then What? (Shiloh Bucher):

The Instapundit points out this idiotic cartoon equating the events of September Eleventh with the measured and moral US response in Afghanistan. It asks "And then what?" But apparently whoever wrote it didn't pay any attention to the news last year. So I thought to catch them up.
Let's see, the US waited a month to decide exactly how to respond, and then they carried out a campaign that was remarkable in its timing, precision, and concern for civilians on the ground, and then the little girls went back to school, and the women went back to work, and the rape houses were closed, and the "Friendship Bridge" to Uzbekistan was reopened, and the aid workers were able to bring in food, and the children were finally vaccinated, and the refugees returned home, and the US Army built hospitals, and Afghans could sing and fly kites again, and a Loya Jirga was finally convened after twenty years, and a president was chosen, and the Taliban stopped butchering 1,500 Afghans a month, and then movies were shown again, and the Sufis were allowed to practice their form of Islam once again without fear of torture, and they started playing soccer in the stadium again instead of blowing women's brains out there, and the terrorist camps were destroyed, and Al Queda plans to attack more civilians were disrupted, and America became a lot safer and so did Afghanistan.

Krauthammer (Oct.17), Call their Bluff:

I believe that the entire notion of "U.N. authority" is nonsense in the first place. But for those who feel that the United States may not defend itself without reference to some piece of U.N. paper, the paper is there. The case is clear -- even State Department lawyers should be able to make it.

So much for legal authority. Yet France insists that we need a fresh piece of U.N. paper. France "cannot accept an intervention . . . that would not follow the path of law," declared French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Now, when Louis XIV declared that something was unacceptable, it carried weight. Napoleon, too. And Clemenceau. What exactly does French non-acceptance mean today? A cheese embargo?

France's grandiosity is rivaled only by its hypocrisy. The NATO war on Serbia was conducted without any Security Council approval (because Russia would have blocked it). Kosovo being a bit closer to France, and with Balkan troubles threatening to destabilize its neighborhood, France appears to have manfully suppressed its scruples and supported, indeed participated in, a war unsanctioned by the Security Council.

No more dithering. Put the question to France.

The Dowd Rule

Goldblatt:

I would like to name the Dowd Rule. To wit: No one who thinks George W. Bush is stupid is as smart as George W. Bush.
...
There's no substance underneath except for Dowd's conviction that she can peer into the souls of her political adversaries in order to discern their true motivations. In this respect, she is simply Al Franken with a bigger vocabulary or Michael Moore with table manners.
...
Dowd, Franken, and Moore, taken together, represent the evolutionary spectrum of a new species of elitists. Elitism, to be sure, is as old as human society. But never in recorded history has a less cerebrally, morally, or spiritually elite Elite looked down their noses at the majority of their countrymen. The minimum requirement for membership in the intelligentsia used to be, well, intelligence.

And
Andrew Sullivan:

When will Bush's critics begin to realize that they're not smarter than he is; and they ocasionally say some really stupid things? It seems obvious that they shouldn't say stupid things in the future.

Oh, but they will.

Andrea Harris

Over and over, they have spelled it out for us, but we won't listen: convert or die. For the past -- oh, I don't know, thirty years or so the response of the learned and tolerant West has been: "Oh, you don't really mean that!" Then we quickly change the subject.
...
comment:

Exactly Andrea, e-fucking-xactly. The elite have been so brain-fucked by post modern new speak and double think that they actually believed that when a group of individuals began saying quite plainly that they intended to fight the west and kill westerners at every opportunity and then began to do so they delusionally believed that, rather, the Islamists were really just sending the west a "message" that they were unhappy with the inequity of global power relations, development, and wealth distribution.
Robin Goodfellow