HAPPY BIRTHDAY RONALD REAGAN



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PEOPLE VERSUS THE PRIVILEGED: WHO'S THE BEST MESSENGER?
A sign of the stupidty of the Democrat primary voter is that she wants to pick John Kerry to deliver the message of populism and against special interests. Why in the world wouldn't they prefer to have Johnny Edwards deliver that message? Edwards doesn't take lobbyist money, while Kerry is the Senate leader. I bet Edwards never got the city to move a fire hydrant from in front of his house. And he probably doesn't rent port-a-pottie's to keep his prol supporters off his orientals or sail in his $700,000 yacht up at Nantucket Sound. And if he did, at least he'd have earned it himself. More, from the people who know Kerry best.

"WHO DO YOU THINK AL QAEDA WANTS TO WIN THE ELECTION?"
My eyes are still burning from the heat of James Lilek's firey screed today -- pummeling Patrick Stewart for thinking we can't go to space until there's a chicken in every pot, to a sound thrashing of the Democrats who are worked up because their guy was a war hero and our guy joined the National Guard -- with clearly no real sense of juicy irony or any memory of the Bush/Clinton election in 1992. Here's a sample -- but you must go enjoy the whole thing:

What's the message here? John Kerry is best suited to lead us in the present war because he was a prominent opponant of the last one, which we lost. John Kerry led the fight to leave South Vietnam to the mercies of the North. John Kerry would rather lose a theater for the right reasons than win it for reasons the critics derided. Dress it up however you like, but that’s what it came down to; college students marched not against the Vietnamese war but the American participation in that conflict. Anyone fill the Mall in DC to protest the reeducation camps? Any Solidarity with the Boat People committees formed on campuses after the fall of the south? The privations of the vanquished South Vietnamese were an uncomfortable consequence of their goals – but of course it didn’t detract a jot from the nobility of the cause.

Ouch. So much more goodness. Go read it.

FECKLESS CRAPWEASEL AT THE AP
Here's how the AP starts its story:

In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday that U.S. analysts had never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat, the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.

Here's what Bush said:

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

So, the AP does not care about facts. No big surprise. Can you trust them to report anything right? The reporter's name is Katherine Pfleger. Beware of her shoddy, biased reporting.

**UPDATE: Looks like Katherine the "journalist" got a call from her boss. She's changed her copy a little. Looks like Bill Clinton-style editing, too: Director George Tenet said Thursday that U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq was an imminent threat. The urgency of such a threat was the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.

I still don't think "urgency of such a threat" quite gets it, Kat. Let me try to help you out. Try this: Director George Tenet said Thursday that U.S. analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq was an imminent threat, consistent with statements from President Bush that war was required before the threat became imminent. Of course, that doesn't read well because it's not news. It would be news if Tenet said the threat was indeed imminent. The correct response from any journalist with a mind would be "so?" In fact, the real story is that Tenet said that there was no political pressure at all to describe the situation in Iraq in any way other than it was. But wait, that shows the Democrats were wrong and Kathy The Reporter is blind to it.

TALK ABOUT "ENTRAPMENT"

A few years ago, New York State passed a largely unenforced ban on using cell phones while driving.

Apparently, however, at least one (most likely) fine-hungry politician wants to see the law enforced. The Associated Press is reporting that:

A Brooklyn state assemblyman wants a special hotline to report drivers who are talking on hand-held cell phones. Assemblyman Feliz Ortiz says the hotline would connect to the State Department of Motor Vehicles. The caller would report the time, date, location and license plate number of the car being driven by the talker.

Think about this for more than two seconds and it becomes obvious that this plan is flawed. The only people who are going see a person using a cell phone while driving would be other drivers. And how are those other drivers going to call the hotline unless they use their own cell phones while driving?

On the other hand, maybe this is part of the plan. Maybe everyone who calls the hotline to report a "driving while phoning" offense will also be prosecuted, resulting in two fines for the price of one?

This is New York, after all. When it comes to government spending and taxes anything is possible.

GAY MARRIAGE TO BE FORCED ON MASSACHUSETTS
The Massachusetts Supreme Court has decided that people of the same sex can marry, saying "The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal." Do they really want to open this up to what the history of our nation has demonstrated? How about the last 5,000 years of human history? If that's the standard, there can be no gay marriage, and their most certainly is no right to gay marriage in the Constitution and you can't graft one onto the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which were written by men who would have been horrified by the notion that the government should recognize marriage between people of the same sex.

Maybe they were wrong, like they were about slavery and women's suffrage. But these are questions that should be put to the people in a Democracy and not magically divined from dusty old documents. We amended these old instruments to end slavery and to allow women the right to vote. Governor Romney explains: "We've heard from the court, but not from the people. The people of Massachusetts should not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to our society as the definition of marriage."

Have we so divorced ourselves from both reality and democracy not to realize such basic principles?

HOW MANY WAYS CAN THEY HAVE IT?
Democrats critics of George W are hitting him from every position. Bush’s deficit is killing our nation. Bush isn’t spending enough on the people. Bush isn’t defending the homeland enough. Bush is violating the civil liberties of Americans. And so on. This is what Bush gets for trying to appease Democrat politicians with spending programs. He should learn from his excellent foreign policy that you cannot appease the enemy. From the criticism of Bush and the campaign promises I’ve heard from the candidates I have compiled the promises that we can expect from a Democrat President-

There will be no terrorist acts in the US.
I will personally catch Osama Bin Laden and try him in court
No person of Middle Eastern Appearance will ever be looked at funny when they board an airliner.
The Government will inspect every single ship and every single container on those ships no matter what it costs.
We will provide healthcare for every American and every illegal, I mean undocumented individual, in the US no matter what it costs.
We will provide more prescription drug benefits
We will leave less children behind with more education spending
We will spend more on the Defense of the United States in the War on Terror.
We will not raise taxes on the middle class.
We will balance the budget (said with a straight face, a LONG straight face)

If you believe all this can be achieved with the measly repeal of the Bush’s tax cuts on the “Rich” you, of course, will vote Democrat. You are also an idiot.

DEMOCRATS AND THE SOUTH
Over at Pendagon, you'll find an argument that Zell Miller is right about one thing (of course, this is all they think he's right about): That Democrats must not write off the South if they want to be a national party.

You may remember that Bush did a bit of campaigning in California in 2000. Now, we all know he didn't really have any chance to win there, but the point was to get it close enough that Gore would have to spend money there. That's part of what the Democrats should try to do in the South. A John Edwards nomination alone would force the Republicans to spend money in NC and SC and GA and VA when they'd rather be spending it in WV, LA, NH, PA, WI, NM and other close 2000 states.

If Kerry gets nominated, I don't know when it will happen, but the Democratic Party will eventually realize that they nominated another Northeastern liberal, the lieutenant governor to Michael Dukakis no less, who will be unable to compete on Republican territory and will have to defend blue states rather than try to win red states.

Democrats may start down the path to that realization if Edwards gets some momentum from expected wins in SC and OK and then picks up TN and VA in the next contests.

INTELLIGENCE FAILURE
And I'm not talking about the CIA, but the Democrats who are all excited that there are no WMD and think it proves that Bush was wrong and they are right. Well, that would be true if they had argued against the war by saying Saddam didn't actually have WMD and he wasn't a danger. By they didn't say that. Their anti-war argument was that we shouldn't do it without the OK of the UN and France. Even opponents of the war agreed that Saddam had WMD and was a threat to his neighbors, hence UN Resolution 1441, statements by Clinton and his administration and the 1998 overwhelming vote in favor of regime change in Congress.

And as for the other alleged intelligence failure on the part of the international intelligence community, whether from the CIA, the British, the Germans or whoever, I'm not convinced it was a failure. Not because I think that there really were WMDs (although there may be), but because it is unreasonable to expect foreign intelligence agents to know more about the inner workings of highly secretive programs of a police state than the chief of that police state himself knew. Saddam thought he had WMDs, how would we possibly get better information than the tyrant who could threaten the liars with death by shredding?

Christopher Hitchens tells us that we should be happy with the actions we took, in Slate:

This highly pertinent and useful discovery could only be made by way of regime change. And the knowledge that Iraq can be finally and fully certified as disarmed, and that it won't be able to rearm under a Caligula regime, is surely a piece of knowledge worth having in its own right and for its own sake.

RICIN?
I guess this sort of incident wouldn't happen under a Clark Administration. And if we have any intelligence related to this, I guess we shouldn't act on it either, despite the potential danger.

ONE AMERICA FOR THE PRIVILEGED
John Edwards has adopted a more populist tone, saying:

There are two different Americas. One is for people in positions of privilege and power who never have to worry about anything, who can get anything they want, any time they want it. And then there's the one for everybody else, most of America, people who struggle every day just to get by.

He's talking about John Kerry, or at least the John Kerry that people have met outside of New Hampshire diners or Iowa town hall meetings. To judge from the anecdotes, it seems his favorite sentence when not be treated like spoiled royalty is "Do you know who I am?"

Here he is at a Barnes & Noble.

And berating a Delta ticket agent.

And getting another diner's order at a restaurant.

Being irritable because some prols were sitting in first class.

If true, what an ass.

As you can see, Jonah Goldberg is on the case.

UPDATE: And then there's this, from Kerry's New Hampshire speech: Thank you, New Hampshire, for lifting up this campaign and the cause of an America that belongs not to the privileged, not to the few, but to all of our people.

Whatta guy.

LAST CHANCE EVE
If Drudge's headline is right and Time magazine is saying that "Ted Kennedy Closest Personally to John Edwards..." (gotta subscribe to read it), that's not good news for the candidate trying to position himself as the moderate southern alternative to the Northeast liberal establishment -- on the day before the South Carolina primary. And it gets worse for Edwards. As the alleged "moderate," he hoped to appeal to independents and Republicans who may vote in SC's primary, but now the SC Democratic Party -- you know, the party of pluralism and diversity -- wants to require voters to sign a loyalty oath before voting. That will keep independents and Republicans away.

And still worse for Democrats, Time's cover coronates Kerry as the nominee, proceeding to the next step and asking "What kind of president would JOHN KERRY be", with typical black&white dignity and drama. This has got to piss off the Edwards camp.