Stories by Leon H Wolf
Posted at 2:34am on Nov. 18, 2005 Hail the Majority
By Leon H Wolf
I'm noticing a trend that is emerging over on the left side of the blogosphere. Suddenly, ever since the defeatists have determined that the majority is on their side, the majority can be trusted to create reality. on and on and on about the fact that a majority of people believe that Bush misled the country into war. Apparently, this is supposed to be proof that Bush did in fact mislead the country into war.
Posted in War — Comments (29)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:34pm on Nov. 17, 2005 AADD
By Leon H Wolf
CBS News informs us that our elected officials are apparently suffering from some sort of disorder that is apparently affecting their ability to remember basic concepts, no matter how many times they are repeated:
The GOP-controlled Senate rejected a Democratic call Tuesday for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but urged President Bush to outline his plan for "the successful completion of the mission" in a bill reflecting a growing bipartisan unease with his Iraq policies.
To be sure, I have lost the ability to be surprised when any politician (of any party) engages in shameless grandstanding; and this resolution is shameless grandstanding of the highest order. However, I am nevertheless disappointed Senate Republicans (in particular) are willing to engage in such willful forgetting as part of a craven capitulation to public pressure.
In other words, I expect that the public will often forget what is presented to them in the absence of constant reminders. After all, their job is not to keep constant track of issues of national security. I expect (perhaps naively) better from our Senators.
Posted in War — Comments (36)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:13pm on Nov. 16, 2005 Weblog Awards 2005
By Leon H Wolf
The good folks at Wizbang have begun taking nominations for their 2005 Weblog awards. So, if you know any blogs that you'd like to nominate for, say, Best Group Blog or Best Conservative Blog or just plain old Best Blog, mosey on over and drop in a nomination.
This is an open thread.
[editor's note, by Erick] By the way, for those of you in New York City, be sure to check out RedHot.
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:34pm on Nov. 15, 2005 Tuesday Open Thread
By Leon H Wolf
It's been a couple days, time for some Open Thread.
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (42)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:28am on Nov. 15, 2005 The Bredesen Factor
By Leon H Wolf
Much hay has been made recently over Time's list of the best and worst Governors in America - including an interesting diary by our own StevenK. As for me? I am, as usual, with Ramesh Ponnuru: How in the world did Phil Bredesen get left off of this list?
The standard answer, of course, is that Governors who don't dramatically raise taxes don't make the list. And, if that is the criteria, then Bredesen was justifiably shunned. Still less, if Bill Clinton is the yardstick by which all Governors will be measured (as the article implies), then Bredesen doesn't approach the top for empty-suit charisma either.
However, if Time intended to seriously analyze Gubernatorial skill, as measured by being a successful Governor, Bredesen belongs at or near the top. And, as I've written before, Phil Bredesen is teaching some lessons that some Republicans would do well to learn.
Posted in Democrats — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:27am on Nov. 14, 2005 Actually, It's Just Like the Old McCarthyism
By Leon H Wolf
Every once in a while, some well-meaning liberal who is new to the site will demand to know why it is that we won't engage every one of their silly little talking points, as though we're missing out on what could be a very productive use of our time. What is at once painfully obvious about these liberals is that they've never had the displeasure of debating a liberal before.
Now, this site has got some high-class liberals who are generally given wide latitude. They bring fresh perspective, challenge us to "think outside the box" and question our perspective on the world. They are the exception to the rule. As a general rule of thumb, liberals instead try to win arguments by repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of its veracity. Eventually, through sheer exasperation, you concede what you consider to be a very minor point so that they will just! shut! up! and hopefully you can move the discussion forward. Sooner or later, however, you learn that any concession whatsoever is unwise, because that only tends to make them fixate on that issue even more, and thus a Known Fact™ is born.
There are two horrible things about Known Facts™. The first is that, in the mind of a liberal, they can never be killed. The second is that they have a tendency to rise uninvited to plague discussions with which they are wholly unrelated. You could be talking, for instance, about a Victims of Communism memorial, only to have the "Bush bungled the response to Katrina because he hates black people" Known Fact™ rear its ugly head.
And thus, I was not surprised at all to find that the Known Fact™ of McCarthyism (perhaps the all-time favorite liberal Known Fact™) has injected itself into a discussion of a newspaper article. (!)
Posted in Democrats — Comments (56)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:52pm on Nov. 11, 2005 Don't Blame Me - I Voted Conservative
By Leon H Wolf
First of all, to all five of my regular readers (Hi, Mom!), I apologize for not posting very much over the last few weeks. Apparently, there is actual work involved in getting a law degree, and I've been forced to participate in it. However, in the wake of the recent Republican collapses in the House and Senate on fiscal issues, I thought a few words for our concerned FisCon friends might be appropriate.
I've often wondered what Republicans like Adam C and John Cole must think at times like this - when their party fails an important test on an issue near to their hearts, and they hear the constant bleat of the Press-Democrat telling them that James Dobson is to blame for this phenomenon, and that the social conservatives are selling them down the river. I don't worry so much about Adam and John per se, but I do worry that this obfuscation technique might just be effective on some whose bitterness over spending has finally reached critical mass. It's tempting, when things are not going well, to want to affix blame on someone, and Dobson, et al make an easy target to some degree.
The only problem, of course, with blaming the SoCons for the pork in Congress is that the actual voting records on the bills in question tell a very different story.
More below the fold:
Posted in Republicans — Comments (67)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:37pm on Nov. 4, 2005 Abortion By the Numbers
By Leon H Wolf
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
-Josef Stalin
That is why the Constitution called us three-fifths human and then whites further dehumanized us by calling us 'n*****s'. It was part of the dehumanizing process. The first step was to distort the image of us as human beings in order to justify that which they wanted to do and not even feel like they had done anything wrong. Those advocates of taking life prior to birth do not call it killing or murder, they call it abortion. They further never talk about aborting a baby because that would imply something human. Rather they talk about aborting the fetus. Fetus sounds less than human and therefore abortion can be justified...
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Abortion is black genocide. What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?
-Jesse Jackson, 1977
Not surprisingly, given what is immediately at stake, I've been writing a lot about abortion this week. I think it's important to understand, as this issue comes to the spotlight in the way it always does when SCOTUS nominations are afoot, the lies that saddled us with Roe v. Wade and the lies that have sustained it. Next week, I'll take up an examination of the scientific lies the pro-abortion forces have embraced throughout time - but before I do so, I think it's important to discuss just what is at stake in this battle.
More below the fold:
Posted in Culture — Comments (93)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:40pm on Nov. 3, 2005 40,003,714* and Counting<br>More Shameless Pretense
By Leon H Wolf
They cooked the books. They invented intelligence. They distorted the historical picture. They silenced all dissenting voices ruthelessly and pressed relentlessly forward with a predetermined agenda. Put simply, they lied. Worse, their lie resulted in untold numbers of tragic deaths.
No, I'm not talking about the Bush administration. I'm talking about the pro-abortion lobby. Today, we continue our examination of the lies and distortions that have sustained a policy that has resulted in the deaths of some 40,000,000 (and counting) thus far.
Editor's note 1: If I were a pained liberal feigning concern for political gain, I'd have included a shock-value photograph that purported to show the disastrous effects of the lies in question, like this or this, instead of a live unborn human. However, I eschewed this approach because: (1) This is a family-oriented site, and (2) I don't want to be held responsible for anyone losing their lunch. However, if you need that sort of thing to drive the point home....
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EXTREMELY GRAPHIC LINK WARNING
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Click here.
Editor's note 2: Special thanks are due to the inestimable Ramesh Ponnuru, who did literally all the research legwork for this article in preparation for his upcoming book on life issues.
Posted in Elections — Comments (147)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:29pm on Nov. 2, 2005 Shameless Pretense
By Leon H Wolf
The left these days purports to care a lot about supposed lies and the hordes of people who have been killed as a result of them. On and on and on the refrain goes: “Bush lied! Kids died! (Insert total-to-date here)! Vote Democrat, they’d never sacrifice our kids for a lie!"
I know you’ll be shocked to discover this, but our “good friends” on the other side of the aisle are… well… lying. They’ve aggressively pushed a lie for thirty-two years that has resulted in the death of 20,000 kids for every one who has died in Iraq. One would presume that if they were honestly concerned about either truth or human life, they would have found time somewhere amidst the hundreds of posts reminding us exactly how many American soldiers have died in Iraq to date (2000! A grim milestone!) to at least briefly mention the lie that has killed over 40,000,000 million of our kids to date. Of course, they are not actually concerned about either truth OR human life, except insofar as the loss of these 2,000 lives can be exploited for their own political gain.
More below the fold:
UPDATE: A valuable lesson learned. When you first write your post in MS Word, you must replace all the quotation marks when you import it to HTML or all your links will not work. All the links should be fixed at this point.