JPH's blog
Posted at 8:04pm on Nov. 4, 2006 Straight R No Matter Who
By JPH
I live in NY where there are few competitive races so I occasionally vote for a Democrat when it doesn't make a difference and on local issues they're okay, but not this year. I'm so absolutely, completely, 100% sick and disgusted by the daily, nonstop drumbeat from the MSM on how Republicans are going to lose 436 seats in the house and 101 seats in the Senate that I'm going to vote straight R no matter who and no matter what. Even for dogcatcher. And I suspect I'm not the only one out there who feels that way.
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Posted at 4:22pm on Aug. 2, 2006 Joe Lieberman: A Victim of Anti-Semitism?
By JPH
The Left loves to throw the "racism" charge at conservatives whenever it suits their political purposes.Whether it makes any sense or not, whatever the facts on the ground are, it is to no avail.Conservatives are by nature racist and bigoted in liberal eyes.The response to Hurrican Katrina? Racism against blacks.Opposition to gay marriage? Homophobia.Cynthia McKinney punches a cop? Racial profiling. And so on.It's about time that they began to be judged by their own standards.
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Posted at 5:02pm on Jul. 11, 2006 Another Missed Opportunity In The Middle East
By JPH
The stalemate continues.The Israelis continue their operations in Gaza. The Palestinian terror factions continue to fire rockets at Israel's population centers. There is no solution in sight. The Israelis cannot negotiate for the return of their kidnapped soldier as doing that would only lead to to more kidnappings. The terrorists cannot release the soldier without completely losing face.
So all we're left with is another war in the Middle East. Or so it would seem. But there is another solution. And the fact that it has not and will not be utilized reinforces Abba Eban's old maxim: The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Read on.
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Posted at 1:48pm on Jun. 21, 2006 IDF Not Guilty of Death on Gaza Beach
By JPH
From Arutz Sheva:
Physical proof exists that the seven members of the Rhalia family who died on a Gaza beach 12 days ago were not killed by an Israeli shell.
Maj.-Gen. Meir Kalifi, chief of the Israel Defense Forces inquiry commission, told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday that shrapnel taken from the body of a boy wounded in the incident did not match Israeli ammunition. The boy, 12-year-old Adham, is hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva in serious but stable condition.
"The examination of a second piece of shrapnel retrieved from the body of a boy who was wounded in the blast unequivocally shows that the explosion was not caused by a 155-mm artillery shell," announced Kalifi. The IDF was using 155-mm artillery shells in their bombardment of Gaza's rocket launching sites that day.
Officials at Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, meanwhile, released a statement on Tuesday that the body of a 21-year-old woman injured in the explosion seemed to have been tampered with.
But the damage has already been done. The picture of the girl wailing over the dead bodies of her parents has already exhibited to the the world the "cruel" nature of those "murderous" Israelis. I'm just waiting for the media uproar about the 20 Palestinians killed in fighting between Fatah and Hamas. Won't hold my breath.
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Posted at 9:44am on Jun. 1, 2006 "Murthaing" The Military
By JPH
To all the MSM talking heads and liberal "supporters of the troops" who are willing to indict the entire military based on the (possible) actions of a few in Haditha, take a look at this story.
Veteran returns winning lottery ticket found at Long Island store
A U.S. soldier and his girlfriend found a winning lottery ticket on the ground at a convenience store Monday and turned it in to police, who were able to find its owner _ a $2,500 winner with no idea her lucky ticket was missing.
Doerrbecker met the couple at the Third Precinct and offered them a reward, which they declined.
"He said, 'Absolutely not,"' Groneman said.
Boniberger said he told Doerrbecker she should donate something to charity instead.
If the left is going to murtha (judge many by the actions of a few) the military based on what happened in Haditha, the why not praise them all as high-minded, ethical people as evidenced by Sgt. Boniberger? But that doesn't fit the template, US military=bad. But remember, they do support the troops.
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Posted at 3:06am on May 14, 2006 A PR Turnaround For The Bush Administration?
By JPH
From the New York Times today:
Cheney Pushed U.S. to Widen Eavesdropping
In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.
But N.S.A. lawyers, trained in the agency's strict rules against domestic spying and reluctant to approve any eavesdropping without warrants, insisted that it should be limited to communications into and out of the country, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the debate inside the Bush administration late in 2001.
The N.S.A.'s position ultimately prevailed. But just how Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the agency at the time, designed the program, persuaded wary N.S.A. officers to accept it and sold the White House on its limits is not yet clear...
By several accounts, including those of the two officials, General Hayden, a 61-year-old Air Force officer who left the agency last year to become principal deputy director of national intelligence, was the man in the middle as President Bush demanded that intelligence agencies act urgently to stop future attacks.
"Hayden was no cowboy on this," said another former intelligence official who was granted anonymity because it was the only way he would talk about a program that remains classified. "He was a stickler for staying within the framework laid out and making sure it was legal, and I think he believed that it was."
The official said General Hayden appeared particularly concerned about ensuring that one end of each conversation was outside the United States. For his employees at the N.S.A., whose mission is foreign intelligence, avoiding purely domestic eavesdropping appears to have been crucial.
The media will naturally spin this (as is evidenced by the headline of this piece) as more of the Bush administrations desire to "rule as a dictatorship" and "restrict civil rights", but it would seem that the White House has finally learned the name of the game and is using the media for their own purposes. By painting General Hayden as the cool, level-headed hero who stopped those "cowboys" in the VP's office from "shredding the Constitution", it makes it hard for the blowhards in the Senate to go after him on the NSA program. Maybe this signals that the administration has finally realized that this media game can be played by both sides. It's about time.
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Posted at 3:16pm on Apr. 24, 2006 Bombing In Egypt Claims 17 Lives
By JPH
17 Dead at Just 1 Egypt Hotel After BlastsCAIRO, Egypt - Three explosions rocked the Egyptian resort city of Dahab at the height of the tourist season Monday night, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 150 at just one hotel, according to the doctor who runs the Sinai peninsula rescue squad.
Groups claiming links to al-Qaida took responsibility for those attacks. Egyptian authorities say new Islamic militant groups have arisen in the peninsula, but they are still trying to determine if they have any real connection to al-Qaida or other international terrorists.
This is high tourist season in the region, and hotels all along the Egyptian coasts could be expected to be at near capacity. Dahab is located on the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula.
Do you think the Egyptians are sitting around and moaning "why do people hate us"? Fat chance. I'd guess that Mubarak is telling his security people to remind the terrorists that his torture is not Abu Ghraib "torture", and they shouldn't forget that.
Crossposted at YankeeCon.blogspot.com
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Posted at 6:24pm on Apr. 21, 2006 The Culture Of Corruption? Bring It On
By JPH
The "culture of corruption" meme that the Democrats have introduced had little chance of being effective in the first place. The public is aware that politics is riddled with corruption, both direct and indirect. So in the face of voter apathy on this issue, to create a backlash was bound to be difficult enough for the Democrats. As it turns out, it is blowing up in their faces. Congressmen Jefferson, McDermott and Conyers, Congresswoman McKinney, Senator Schumer's aides, and now this.
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Posted at 2:57pm on Apr. 11, 2006 Iran: We've Done It
By JPH
Iran Hits Milestone in Nuclear Technology
Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark in its quest to develop nuclear fuel, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday. He insisted, however, that his country does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.
But don't you worry, help is on the way.
The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all uranium enrichment activity by April 28. Iran has rejected the demand, saying it has a right to develop the process. The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is due in Iran this week for talks to try to resolve the standoff.
Ah, talks, just what we need.
Separating fact from fiction is difficult in this situation, but things should get interesting in the near future.
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Posted at 2:27pm on Apr. 9, 2006 Fukuyama: Change of Mind or Change of Heart?
By JPH
Francis Fukuyama is upset.
Why shouldn't I change my mind?
SEVEN WEEKS AGO, I published my case against the Iraq war. I wrote that although I had originally advocated military intervention in Iraq, and had even signed a letter to that effect shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I had since changed my mind.
But apparently this kind of honest acknowledgment is verboten. In the weeks since my book came out, I've been challenged, attacked and vilified from both ends of the ideological spectrum.
Okay so let's see how the "right" has villified him.
From the right, columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused me of being an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause -- and a coward to boot.
Is that so? Let's see what Krauthammer actually wrote.
It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq War, nearing the end of its first year, as ``a virtually unqualified success.'' He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them.
And thus did Francis Fukuyama become the world's most celebrated ex-neoconservative, a well-timed metamorphosis that has brought him a piece of the fame that he once enjoyed 15 years ago as the man who declared, a mite prematurely, that history had ended....
Fukuyama now says that he had secretly opposed the Iraq War before it was launched. An unusual and convenient reticence, notes Irwin Stelzer, editor of ``The Neocon Reader,'' for such an inveterate pamphleteer, letter writer and essayist. After public opinion had turned against the war, Fukuyama then courageously came out against it. He has every right to change his mind at his convenience. He has no right to change what I said.
Does Krauthammer call him opportunistic? Maybe. Does he "villify" and "attack" him as a "traitor to the neoconservative cause" and a "coward"? Hardly.
The main thrust of Krauthammer's article is to defend himself from being misquoted by Fukuyama.
It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq War, nearing the end of its first year, as ``a virtually unqualified success.'' He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them...
I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed ``virtually unqualified success'' to the war is a fabrication.
Read on for details.Does Fukuyama address Krauthammer's charges? No. He's just busy making sure that he's "balanced" by attributing attacks on him to the right as well as the left.
So what we have here is selective hearing and a fair amount of classic liberal whining. Leads one to believe that Fukuyama might have changed a bit more then his opinion on Iraq. (h/t Powerline)
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Posted at 11:35pm on Apr. 8, 2006 Iran: Now We Know What Won't Happen
By JPH
Promoted with an update.
Bush 'is planning nuclear strikes on Iran's secret sites'The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.
Considering who's the source for this piece, we can safely assume that this is not what's going to happen.
CrossPosted at YankeeCon.blogspot.com
Update [2006-4-8 22:35:9 by Moe Lane]: The original Hersh article is here: as usual, it's backed by pretty much nothing in particular except Hersh's solemn promise that he isn't just guessing at random and making up suitable quotes. That being said, only an idiot would need to be told that we weren't doing serious contingency planning with regard to Iran... which probably explains the article, now that I think of it.
(Via OTB)
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Posted at 5:10pm on Apr. 3, 2006 A Study In Contrasts
By JPH
For those who worry that the President's NSA terrorist surveilance program will lead to spying on politcal opponents, I have news for you: it's already happened. But not the way you think.
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Posted at 10:34pm on Mar. 29, 2006 Gallup is a Fraud
By JPH
Todays big news is this headline from Gallup:
Democrats Gain Edge in Party Identification During Last Year
I have been arguing for a while (see here) that the polls the MSM constantly subjects us to are biased because they are weighted towards the Democrats.
Today I found proof.
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Posted at 1:27pm on Mar. 26, 2006 Suggestions for RedState's New Site
By JPH
In general, I'm reluctant to enter someone's house as a guest and offer home-improvment tips. But since RedState is undergoing renovations and the editors have given readers a forum to comment in the form of diaries, as an admirer and avid user of this site I'd like to offer some suggestions which I hope will be beneficial. Let them be understood in the vein of "suggestions from a friend", and I appreciate the opportunity to offer them.
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Posted at 1:48am on Mar. 21, 2006 Voting with their feet
By JPH
It is the third anniversary of the war in Iraq. Over 100,000 people have taken to the streets in Chicago in support of basic human rights. Half a million people demonstrated all over France to demand justice. They were joined by tens of thousands in Spain.There's just one thing that needs to be pointed out: these were NOT about the war.
The one in Chicago? In support of illegal immigrants. France? Hiring practices. Spain? Booze fests.
So where were the mass demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Answer:Nowhere. So if you want to know the American peoples' opinion of this war, this is the most reliable poll available (besides for elections).
Americans have voted with their feet (or lack thereof).
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