Heh: Liberals, Free Speech & Journalism

I don't know who is making these videos, but they have a talent for observation and a wicked sense of humor. Enjoy.



(H/T Legal Insurrection)

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The Liberals Final Goal - The Dismantling Of America's Military

Thus Belial with words clothed in reason's garb
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth, not peace.

- Milton, Paradise Lost

FDR understood the need for a strong military - as did JFK and LBJ. But not today's modern left. They live in a world of suicidal fantasy, where the only threat to world peace is the U.S. and its military.

Between 1950 and 1994, spending on our military never fell below 4% of GDP and at times was a high as 14%. Eyeballing the numbers, it would appear that average spending on the military as a percentage of GDP for the period 1950 to 1994 easily exceeded 6%. That ended with Clinton who dropped military spending to a post WWII low of 3% of GDP. It rose under Bush to as we prosecuted two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but still stayed below 5%.

Enter that master of our national disaster, Barney Frank. Having already played a central role in destroying our economy through social engineering in our financial sector, he now portends to gut our military capacity in order to pay for Obama's profligate spending and to leave a vast pile of money for Democratic entitlements and union pay-offs.

Our budding Sun Tzu, Frank, has overseen the preparation of a 56 page report, Debt, Deficits, & Defense: A Way Forward. In it, he asserts that we have no enemies that can do us any harm. Indeed, for but one example, he describes Iran as a small, local threat offset by its own enemies in the region. Thus, Frank says, there is no need for a robust military. Frank recommends that we adopt what he names a "Strategy of Restraint." Actually, that name is disingenuous because, despite Franks use of the word "strategy," what he proposes is not a military strategy, but rather a political policy to unilaterally disarm to the point that our ability to project force would be extremely, if not fatally, compromised.

Frank would have America withdraw the vast majority of what would be left of our military to within our boarders, apparently leaving token forces in NATO and withdrawing from the vast majority of our commitments elsewhere. Frank would further forswear all foreign wars unless we are first attacked within our borders by an expeditionary force. The amount of military force Frank would leave us with might - just maybe - allow us to defend our borders.

Here are Frank's specific proposals, with his projected savings in red:

Strategic Capabilities

1. Reduce the US nuclear arsenal; adopt dyad; cancel Trident II - $113.5 billion
• 1000 deployed warheads
• 7 Ohio-class SSBNs
• 160 Minuteman missiles

2. Limit modernization of nuclear weapons infrastructure and research - $26 billion

3. Selectively curtail missile defense & space spending - $55 billion

Conventional Forces

4. Reduce troops in Europe and Asia, cut end strength by 50,000 - $80 billion

5. Roll back Army & USMC growth as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan end - $147 billion

6. Reduce US Navy fleet to 230 ships - $126.6 billion

7. Retire two Navy aircraft carriers and naval air wings $50 billion

8. Retire two Air Force fighter wings, reduce F-35 buy $40.3 billion

Procurement and R&D

9. Cancel USAF F-35, buy replacement $47.9 billion

10. Cancel USN & USMC F-35, buy replacement $9.85 billion

11. Cancel MV-22 Osprey, field alternatives $10 b. – $12 billion

12. Delay KC-X Tanker, interim upgrade of some KC-135s $9.9 billion

13. Cancel Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, field alternatives $8 b. – $9 billion

14. Reduce spending on research & development $50 billion

Personnel Costs

15. Military compensation reform $55 billion

16. Reform DoD’s health care system $60 billion

17. Reduce military recruiting expenditures as wars recede $5 billion

Maintenance and Supply Systems

18. Improve the efficiency of military depots, commissaries, and exchanges $13 billion

Command, Support, and Infrastructure

19. Require commensurate savings in command, support, and infrastructure $100 billion

What Frank proposes is a recipe for disaster. History teaches a brutal lesson - that peace is achieved only through superior military power. Europe has enjoyed only two extended periods of peace over the past two millennia. They were the Pax Romana and, most recently, the Pax Americana. The flip side of that coin is that weakness has always been an invitation to attack.

Frank states that we should maintain a small military core that we can then expand as the need arises. But the days when there was safely time to "ramp-up" military capability to meet a threat ended about World War I - and at least by World War II. Indeed, we were fortunate in WWII in having several years to prepare before we entered the war. But forgetting the lesson of preparedness, we were almost destroyed in Korea within a few weeks because we were there with forces unprepared for war and with second rate weaponry.

When we fought the Iraqi military in conventional war, we destroyed them in short order, less than 30 days of fighting combined, due to our vastly superior training and weaponry. Take away that training, take away that superior weaponry, and what you are left with is two roughly equal forces fighting it out. That is what Iran and Iraq did between 1980 and 1988. They fought to a stalemate for eight years and sustained a combined total of nearly 2.5 million casualties. That is what happens when equals fight. In contrast, in both of our wars with Iraq and inclusive of the post-war occupation, we suffered a sum total of less than 5,000 soldiers killed. It is the difference between minimal costs in blood and gold and disastrous costs.

Further, to maintain military superiority means that advanced weapons systems must be developed and fielded. That takes years, not months. If Frank thinks that Russia and China are not deeply engaged in trying to develop and field equipment superior to our own, he is supremely misguided. Fighting an enemy with a technological advantage is a sure ticket to defeat. Ask the Poles or the French from WWII.

Frank points to the relative expenditure between the U.S., China, Russia, and Iran as proof that we have no enemies capable of threatening U.S. military superiority. That is incredibly disingenuous. As to Russia and China, pay and benefits for the soldiers is not even a pittance of what we pay for our all volunteer military. As to budget devoted to equipment and R&D, just from the things I have read over the past several years, both China and Russia have been fielding very sophisticated military equipment. The Air Defense system Russia is preparing to send to Iran is sufficiently good as to worry both Israel and the U.S. China has begun to field a blue water navy - with much of their technology stolen from us.

In sum, what Barney Frank proposes is an end to the U.S. as a superpower and an end to the U.S. as a guarantor of peace in regions strategic to the United States and our allies. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Where we to adopt Frank's recommendations, it would take to the U.S. back to pre-WWII days to an isolationist America. And that worked out well, didn't it. We only lost a little over 400,000 men in WWII.

Where we to adopt Frank's recommendations, I could envision the fall of Taiwan and Israel within two decades, as well as the rapid expansion of China, Russia, Iran and whatever the successor to al Qaeda maybe. I could further envision problems in South America. How will our world - and our economy - be in two decades after Frank and Obama are done with our military? I would have to say that we would be in deep trouble indeed.

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Fun With Liberals / Progressives

One of my posts got picked up in a comment to a post on a leftie blog, Deleware Liberal. The post at Deleware Liberal is about an e-mail making the rounds where a liberal takes the right to task for getting mad now, yet not getting mad about "outrages" during the Bush years. It really is so over the top as to be worthy of a fisking.

This from Deleware Liberal with appended commentary:

This is a repost of an email forward making the rounds. Yeah, we liberals also have email forwards just like the conservatives, but with one major difference. Ours are not filled with lies.

LIES LIES LIES - ALL LIES, I TELL YOU, LIES . . . . lollll. If you can't win an argument, then demonize everyone who doesn't agree with you. I doubt this joker will win any debating contests.

We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad!

- Hmm, not really. I voted for them.

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

- Legal recount? Talk about denial. The NYT stayed in Florida and did the recount themselves - ultimately finding that Bush won even using all of the recount methods put forth by Gore. And besides that, all the Supreme Court did was make the Florida State Supreme Court adhere to FLORIDA STATE LAW and end the recount on Dec. 12. That was the day the recount ceased to be legal under Florida law. So no, didn't get mad at that one.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

- Oh, spare me. I damn well wish they dictated it. Given that over half of our annual trade deficit is spent importing foreign oil and given that we have completely shut ourselves out of exploiting our own massive oil and gas resources, you will have to tell me just what part of that "energy policy" they dictated.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative had her cover blown simply for contradicting Dick Cheney.

Lolllllllll . . . . this is so ridiculous. Plame's cover was blown because she was in the middle of sending her low life husband to Africa to investigate Iraq's quest for nuclear materials. When debriefed, he told the CIA that indeed Iraq had been seeking to purchase yellowcake uranium, then ostentatiously claimed in an NYT editorial that "Bush lied" about Iraq posing any sort of nuclear threat - leaving out of course that bit about them trying to buy yellow-cake. Now I am mad about that and have been for years. As to the person who "outed" her, that was Richard Armitage - and if you are claiming that he was acting on behalf of Bush and Cheney, you're nuts.

So let me ask you, are you mad about the John Adams project and the fact that our covert operatives are being exposed to Islamic terrorists? That really yanks my chain - as does the fact that they are being hailed as heros by Eric Holder.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

Are you talking about under President Bush or by the Democratic controlled Congress under Obama, or both? I have to ask since your question is a bit ambiguous.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

Poll any Democrat in Congress - or Bill Clinton or even Al Gore - back in 2002 and see if they felt Iraq posed no threat to us. If you want to rewrite history, at least make sure there's no public record that completely contradicts you're rewrite. And who is it to decide that a war authorized by Congress is illegal? You? The UN? Should we give the UN veto power over our foreign policy. Lolllllllllll . . . . these people really are a few McNuggets short of a Happy Meal.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

Every potential action has an opportunity cost. Thus, spending the money on the war once we were in it must be measured against the cost of surrendering and pulling out. And with that in mind, I got really mad when 2006 rolled around and the left did everything they could to surrender in Iraq, wholly ignoring the existential ramifications for America and solely for the purpose of taking political power. I got really mad when I listened to Harry Reid personally issue a surrender and then again when Obama said he didn't care if surrender would result in genocide. And once we were in the war. had we surrendered to al Qaeda in 2006, the cost to our nation in the long run would have made $600 billion seem paltry indeed.


You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

Ummmmm, yeah, I actually did about that.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

True, but I did get mad as hell when Obama, "in a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, . . . told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families." Actually I and the majority of Americans do not consider waterboarding torture. Certainly it is not "torture" as that word is defined by law. But by all means, thrill me with your acumen. Explain to me how waterboarding or any of the approved methods of enhanced interrogation met the legal definition of torture under U.S. law or the U.N. Convention Against Torture. And let me help you out here. Saying waterboard is "torture" simply because you call it "torture" is not a strong argument.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

Again, do you mean under Bush or under Obama?

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

So are you mad that Obama hasn't captured him yet?

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

Actually, that one did have me spitting blood.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.

Hah. You have to love the melodramatics here. So, what, it was Bush with flippers putting underwater charges around New Orleans? As to the flooding, build a city next to the ocean and on terrain below sea level . . . . . I think you need to take that one up with, one, God, and two, the city planners responsible for the dykes.

You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

Letting people keep the money they have earned tends not to upset me too much. Taking their money at the point of a gun and then redistributing it for political purposes, however, now that does set me off.

You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

Actually, we on the right were complaining about republicans spending like drunken Democrats for years. How does the left think they won so big in 2006 and 2008. Of couse, had we understood the alternative . . . . But everyone does now. We can talk about this some more in mid-November.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

I am a heartless bastard, aren't I.

Leaving aside for the moment the arguement as to whether health care is a "right," please tell me any person you know who is sick but goes untreated for lack of access to a doctor. Every emergency room in the US is by law required to treat whoever walks through the door. Every major city in our nation has public hospitals that attend to the poor. Hell, even in my little town, I go to a clinic that gives out health care at little cost to the indigent. I pay my fair share for it simply because I like that particular doctor.

There are two problems here that need to be addressed. One, how to make healthcare affordable for all, and two, how to make it fit within our economy. Obamacare fails miserably on both counts, but it does increase the size and power of the federal government exponentially. That is hitting the trifecta of disasters.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no.

AND NOW YOU’RE MAD !

Lolllll . . . . you have to hand it to these jokers. They may be more than a little thin on rationality and the ability to articulate an argument based on citation to fact, but when it comes to melodramatics and demonization, they are the best.

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The Abby-Normal Brain of Global Warming Realists

George Lakoff, apparently a modern day phrenologist, argues that it is the abnormal brain function of conservatives that makes them unable to acknowledge the settled science of global warming. Moreover, it apparently makes these same drooling idiots believe in free markets. Who knew?

This from CNS News:

Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that "cognitive" brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says "climate change" is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.

George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book "The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics," says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.

Lakoff told CNSNews.com that “metaphors” shape a person's understanding of the world, along with one’s values and political beliefs -- including what they think about global warming.

"It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong," Lakoff said.

"And what they try to do is show that the science is wrong and that the argument is wrong, based on the science. So when it comes back to science, they try to debunk the science," Lakoff said.

On the other hand, he added, liberals' cognitive process allows them to be "open-minded."

"Liberals say, 'Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’" Lakoff said.

In a Feb. 23 report on National Public Radio, reporter Christopher Joyce began his story by stating that recent polls show that fewer Americans believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite "a raft" of contradictory reports.

"This puzzles many climate scientists, but not social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one's beliefs," Joyce said.

. . . Lakoff, however, said that "99.999 percent of the science is final" on global warming and, in fact, the term "climate change" should be changed to "climate crisis" to more accurately describe the phenomenon.

"Climate crisis says we had something to do with it and we better act fast because that's the reality," Lakoff said

. . . In a February article on The Huffington Post, Lakoff praised recent media reports on the physiological and conceptual roots of political beliefs. He credited some of the movement to his 1996 book "Moral Politics," where he claims that these beliefs are rooted in the "two profoundly different models of the ideal family, a strict father family for conservatives and a nurturant family for liberals."

Lakoff writes, "In the ideal strict father family, the world is seen as a dangerous place and the father functions as protector from ‘others’ and the parent who teaches children absolute right from wrong by punishing them physically (painful spanking or worse) when they do wrong. The father is the ultimate authority, children are to obey, and immoral practices are seen as disgusting.

"Ideal liberal families are based on nurturance, which breaks down into empathy, responsibility (for oneself and others) and excellence -- doing well as one can to make oneself and one's family and community better." . . .

And this screaming idiot is a tenured professor? God help us but academia needs a high colonic - with a fire hose.

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The Iraq Effect

Johns Hopkins Professor Fouad Ajami takes stock of the war in Iraq and its larger effects in the war on terror as he ponders why anyone would think that anything from 2003 is relevant to the question of what we should do in the reality of 2008?
_____________________________________________________

This from Faoud Ajami in todays WSJ:

Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came."

It is odd, then, that critics have launched a new attack on the origins of the war at precisely the time a new order in Iraq is taking hold. But American liberal opinion is obsessive today. . . .

Mr. McClellan wades into the deep question of whether this war was a war of "necessity" or a war of "choice." He does so in the sixth year of the war, at a time when many have forgotten what was thought and said before its onset. The nation was gripped by legitimate concern over gathering dangers in the aftermath of 9/11. Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America's grief, taunted its power.

We don't need to overwork the stereotype that Arabs understand and respond to the logic of force, but this is a region sensitive to the wind, and to the will of outside powers. Before America struck into Iraq, a mere 18 months after 9/11, there had been glee in the Arab world, a sense that America had gotten its comeuppance. There were regimes hunkering down, feigning friendship with America while aiding and abetting the forces of terror.

Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.

Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the "charities" that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.

We should give the "theorists" of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.

There is no way of convincing a certain segment of opinion that there are indeed wars of "necessity." A case can always be made that an aggressor ought to be given what he seeks, that the costs of war are prohibitively high when measured against the murky ways of peace and of daily life.

. . . In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush's war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq's disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind.

With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.

It is also obtuse and willful to depict in dark colors the effort made to "sell" the war. Wars can't be waged in stealth, and making the moral case for them is an obligation incumbent on the leaders who launch them. If anything, there were stretches of time, and critical turning points, when the administration abdicated the fight for public opinion.

Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of "reform" in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an "original" war aim, and that the Emancipation Proclamation was, by Lincoln's own admission, a product of circumstances? A war for the Union had become a victory for abolitionism.

America had not been prepared for nation-building in Iraq; we had not known Iraq and Iraqis or understood the depth of Iraq's breakdown. But there was nothing so startling or unusual about the connection George W. Bush made between American security and the "reform" of the Arab condition. As America's pact with the Arab autocrats had hatched a monster, it was logical and prudent to look for a new way.

. . . It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003. The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?

Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways. There will be people who heed Ambassador Crocker's admonition. And there will be others keen on retelling how we made our way to Iraq.

Read the entire article.

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News(less) on Iraq

It is not surprising to note that, in a quick perusal of today’s major newspapers, there appears not a word about Veteran’s Day. Our nation’s premier journalists do not seem to want to have to think about the military today. Nor is it surprising to find no substantive news on Iraq. Were things different in Iraq, were the facts much more in line with the narrative and world view of the hard left, we would be reading much more on both topics.

The Vietnam Era that bred the emotion-over-reason mentality and narcissism of today’s neo-liberals and journalists is over. They bet the farm on defeat in Iraq, with the high water mark of their charge being Harry Reid’s declaration of defeat and capitulation in response to four suicide bombings by al Qaeda in April.

What we are witnessing now are the neo-liberals in a state of denial.

The left, whether it be in government or in the press, is in "full court denial" about success in Iraq, a success even Osama bin Laden acknowledged in his tape of last month, stating "the darkness [in Iraq] has become pitch black."

In our government, the far left is still pressing to legislate defeat in Iraq. In the press, what you see now is the lack of any substantive reporting from Iraq in the major newspapers unless it can somehow be given a negative headline. As Jules Crittenden put it so humorously a few days ago, they are desperately seeking a fly to put in the ointment.

Today’s Washington Post is a case in point. They are running an AP story that is trying to wring the very last possible bit of mileage out of something that can be cast negatively on our efforts in Iraq.

The headline is "Death Marks Grim Afghanistan, Iraq Milestones." The milestone is the one passed last week in Iraq. It was widely reported on November 6 that Americans had suffered 852 killed in Iraq for the year, marking it as the deadliest year for U.S. forces since operations in Iraq began. It now gets revived, though there is nothing in the article about Iraq beyond noting again the number dead. So sad have the neo-liberals of our nation become.

Update: In the time it has taken me to write the above, and before I could get the cite, the Washington Post has edited the story to take all mention of Iraq out of the headline and out of the article. The cite I have above is from a cache. Here is the edited article that now appears on the WaPo site.

Fascinating.

As a side note, I should note that the term I am using, neo-liberal, is my own construct. The liberals of old were principled and intellectual honesty. Daniel Patrick Moynihan epitomized true liberals. What we see of the hard left today is an entirely different animal. They have eschewed reason and intellectual honesty in favor of invective and pursuit of power at all costs. Thus, the only way I can describe the modern left of today is "neo-liberal."

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