The Rant

By George F. Will Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A27 It took exactly one month -- until the president's prime-time news conference of Oct. 11, 2001 -- to refute the notion that Sept. 11 "changed everything." When a reporter said, "You haven't called for any sacrifices from the American people," he replied, "Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before." And that was before the sacrificing became really hellacious with the requirement that passengers remove their shoes at security checkpoints. The idea that Hurricane Katrina would change the only thing that matters -- thinking -- perished even more quickly, at about the time Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a suitable symbol of congressional narcissism, dramatized the severity of the tragedy by taking a television interviewer on a helicopter flight over her destroyed beach house. "Washington...

Assigning blame Charles Krauthammer (archive) September 9, 2005 WASHINGTON -- In less enlightened times, there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews). A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush. This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph. There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period. The problem with the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq could not get to New Orleans, but that National Gu...

Mark Steyn Terror war all but forgotten on home front BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Sept. 11, 2005 -- the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. That is, if you believe it's a ''war'' A lot of people didn't want to, even in those first days. About a week after, one of my local radio stations held a fund-raiser and this is how their trailer for it opened. Cue the terminal-illness-movie-of-the-week soupy piano. Then: ''After the tragic events of Sept. 11 . . .'' And, by the time I'd heard it half-a-dozen times, I retuned the dial and never listened to the station again. It wasn't a "tragic event" or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an "attack," an "act of war." I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who'd tuned out the same station on the grounds that "I never heard my grampa talk about 'the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.' " But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effo...

Hurricane Katrina-Our ExperiencesHurricane Katrina-Our ExperiencesLarry BradshawLorrie Beth SlonskyTwo days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store atthe corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy displaycase was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours withoutelectricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginningto spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up thefood, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen'swindows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and thewindows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. Thecops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices,and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not.Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily cha...

By CORNELIA DEAN Published: August 30, 2005 NY Times CHICAGO - When Jon D. Miller looks out across America, which he can almost do from his 18th-floor office at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, he sees a landscape of haves and have-nots - in terms not of money, but of knowledge. While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process. Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 1...

For some time, the central mystery in the Valerie Plame saga was which members of the White House staff leaked the undercover CIA operative's identity to reporters. Although there are still many unanswered questions, at least part of the mystery has been solved: Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper has testified that he was told about Plame by White House senior adviser Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Yet while Cooper and his editors at Time spent two years keeping Rove and Libby's -- and their own -- role a secret, they published articles that reported, without challenge, a statement from the White House that they knew to be false. The issue of Time's actions over the past two years was revived by an August 25 Los Angeles Times article stating that the magazine did not pursue a waiver from Rove allowing Cooper to testify in part because "Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an...

Sad . . . Moody's Cuts GM, Ford Debt to Junk Status Thursday, August 25, 2005 • GM Posts $1.10B Loss — Worst Since 1992 NEW YORK — Moody's Investors Service Wednesday cut General Motors Corp.'s (GM) and Ford Motor Co.'s (F) debt ratings to junk status, citing continued operating losses, global competition and challenges to restructuring for long-term viability. Moody's also cut GM's finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp. (search) , to junk status. The cuts affect about $170 billion of outstanding debt, Moody's said. Moody's was the last of the three major rating services to cut the auto giant to junk status. Moody's cut GM's senior unsecured debt rating to "Ba2" from "Baa3," and GMAC's senior unsecured rating to "Ba1" from "Baa2." The outlook is negative on the new ratings. Moody's also cut Ford's debt ratings, the second cut to junk for the No. 2 automaker. Moody's cut its ratings ...

by Lawrence Kudlow Permit me to take a contrarian view on the oil price shock. I say three cheers for higher energy prices. Why? Because I believe in markets. When the price of something goes up, demand falls off (call it conservation) and supply increases (call it new production). We're seeing a tectonic shift. As Dan Yergin has advised us, energy supplies in the next few years will explode. Now the public is even favoring nuclear power. And the government is stepping out of the way by giving FERC the authority to override localities who oppose nuclear power, liquefied natural gas or other forms of energy. Meanwhile the impact on the economy has been negligible, at least so far. And the Fed has prevented oil inflation from spreading to the rest of the economy. So much so that I think they should quit raising rates while they're ahead. Meanwhile the spread of global capitalism to places like China, India, eastern Europe and elsewhere (which is a very good thing for world prospe...

August 23, 2005 An Oil "Crisis"? By Thomas Sowell With oil prices passing the record-breaking $60 a barrel level and heading even higher, the word "crisis" is now being used and all sorts of political "solutions" are being proposed. Is there really a crisis? One of the dictionary definitions of a crisis is "the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death." Is that where we are when it comes to oil? Are we either going to solve the problem of oil or see it destroy us economically? Political and media definitions of "crisis" are much looser than the dictionary's definition. In political semantics, the word "crisis" has come to mean any situation that someone wants to use to justify doing something that will be called a "solution." Crises are a dime a dozen by political and media definitions. Almost as common as crises are conspiracy theories. Wh...

8/29/05 By Michael Barone . . . the most important changes occurring, not just in Iraq but across the Muslim world, are changes in people's minds. . . . . Now comes the Pew Global Attitudes Project's recent survey of opinion in six Muslim countries to tell us that progress is being made in achieving that goal. Most important, support for terrorism in defense of Islam has "declined dramatically," in the Pew report's words, in Muslim countries, except in Jordan (which has a Palestinian majority) and Turkey, where support has remained a low 14 percent. It has fallen in Indonesia (from 27 to 15 percent since 2002), Pakistan (from 41 to 25 percent since 2004), Morocco (from 40 to 13 percent since 2004), and among Muslims in Lebanon (from 73 to 26 percent since 2002). Support for suicide bombings against Americans in Iraq has also declined. The percentage reporting some confidence in Osama bin Laden is now under 10 percent in Lebanon and Turkey and has fallen sharply i...

by Mark Steyn It's one thing to mourn a son's death and even to question the cause for which he died, but quite another to roar that he was "murdered by the Bush crime family." Also: "You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana . . . You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine." And how about this? "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for." That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the "activist" lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Casey's father Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's "separation," "Although she and her estranged husband are...

by Mamoun Fandy For Muslims, a role in the war on terror The time has come to issue a fatwa to excommunicate Osama bin Laden and his followers from the world of Islam. In fact, as terrorism rages, we need a stream of solid counter-fatwas - legal pronouncements in Islam — from the Muslim community. Thus far we have heard fatwas, such as the one issued last month by the Fiqh Council of North America, telling us that Islam does not condone violence or that Islam condemns these actions. These types of words are not enough. We need to move beyond abstract condemnations and actually exclude those who give Islam a bad name. In the same spirit that bin Laden and his group label moderate Muslims as Western lackeys, it is time Muslim leaders pronounce bin Laden by name as non-Muslim. That's right, excommunicate him. A clear fatwa should come from the centers of theology in the Muslim world — from al-Azhar University, a prestigious school of Islamic law in Cairo, and from Mecca. And if a mosq...

Officer Says Pentagon Barred Sharing Pre-9/11 Qaeda Data With F.B.I. By PHILIP SHENON Published: August 16, 2005 WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I. Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.'s Washington field office to share the information. But he said military lawyers forced members...

If you get your news from the Mainstream Media one would learn that all that has happened in Iraq lately is that a lot of car bombs have gone off killing many people. Thaks to the internet, it is possible to learn of some of the good things that are also happening. http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007358.php

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional forecasters said Monday the federal deficit this year, though still huge, won't be as bad as originally projected -- a welcome turn for President Bush who inherited healthy surpluses four years ago and saw them disappear in a sea of red ink. At the same time, the fiscal outlook remains troubled for years to come, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said. The CBO predicted a $331 billion deficit for the budget year ending Sept. 30 and a $314 billion deficit for next year. Last year's deficit was a record $412 billion. In February, the White House had predicted this year's shortfall would set a higher record of $427 billion. The short-term improvement was attributed to an $84 billion surge in estimated tax receipts, including a 42 percent increase in revenues from corporate profits. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Budget-Deficit.html?oref=login&oref=login

by Dennis Prager ". . . every person who believes in God and every God-based religion is hurt by the epidemic of Muslims murdering in the name of God. It reinforces every anti-religious stereotype and thus further alienates people from taking seriously any God-based religion. Bad religious people are far more destructive to the cause of religion than are atheists." Read the whole thing: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-prager14aug14,0,4727027.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary

Sunday, August 14, 2005 Defend Free Speech, Not Treason - Some Advice to the West Speech that incites riot is prohibited. Speech motivating enemy soldiers must be stopped. Speech costs the most when humans must pay for it with their lives. If Abu Hamza al Masri urges Muslims to commit acts of terror, and they do, he must be silenced. If he believes Islam is at war with the West, regardless of whether the West believes this notion, he is no longer a free citizen. He is committing treason and must be tried, not just deported. In Lebanon, speech that promotes sectarian violence is banned completely. There are 18 different religious groups living side by side in a country slightly larger than Puerto Rico (three times the size of Rhode Island), and without a dominant religious group. A fanatic Sunni might believe that the Shia are heretics and that the Bahai and Druze should be killed, but he's not allowed to say it. Taken to an extreme, this is a country where a Protestant could quite ...

By Christopher Hitchens is one of America's and the English speaking world's leading public intellectuals. He is the author of more than ten books, including, most recently, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq (2003), Why Orwell Matters (2002), The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), and Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001). He writes for leading American and British publications, including The London Review of Books, The New Left Review, Slate, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek International, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Washington Post. He is also a regular television and radio commentator. For many years, Hitchens was seen as one of America's leading leftist commentators. Shortly after the September 11 attacks in the United States, he began publicly criticizing fellow leftist intellectuals for what he viewed as their "moral and political collapse" in their failure to stand up to what he saw as "Islamo-fascism". He publicly f...

See link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts_Jr#Early_life_and_education

KIM JONG-IL DEMANDS IPOD Latest Twist in Nuke Talks Raises Eyebrows, Concerns Mercurial North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il threw a monkey wrench into the six-party talks about North Korea’s nuclear program today by demanding that the other five nations give him an Apple iPod Shuffle™. In a morning session of the Beijing talks, the reclusive Kim told representatives of the United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea that if he did not receive an iPod by the end of the day he would test-launch a missile into the Sea of Japan. Kim’s latest demand took most of the diplomats by surprise, since many had expected North Korea to demand diplomatic recognition and a security arrangement with the United States in exchange for denuclearization, rather than a portable music device that retails for under $150. At Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple CEO Steven Jobs hailed the development: “This just goes to show that everybody wants an iPod, even one of the most insane, brutal d...