Start A Revolution
January 26, 2005
Brain Terminal has a new video straight from the inauguration protests. It’s a must see.
The good news: the liberals hope there won’t be “blood in the streets.”
How comforting. . . .
See it here.
Sphere: Related ContentBush Says Social Security Shortchanges Black Seniors
January 26, 2005
Just when I get myself all in a tizzy over Hillary’s attempt to turn abortion politics on it’s head, here comes George Bush showing he can play the same game. Yet in his case, he’s got it right:
Buffalo News: Race became a significant factor in the debate over Social Security on Tuesday when President Bush told black leaders that the government retirement program shortchanged blacks, whose relatively shorter life span meant they paid more in payroll taxes than they eventually received in benefits.. . . The conversation demonstrated the White House’s determination to build on outreach efforts to blacks that proved effective in battleground states last year, adding Social Security to a list of moral issues - such as opposition to same-sex marriage and support for faith-based social programs - that Republicans see as providing common ground with black conservatives.
The President is absolutely correct to frame this issue in this manner. And Social Security is not the only area where Democrats have built discrimination into public policy. Inner city education is another place where Democrats implicitly effect a racist agenda. Most large cities are Democrat voting pockets and have been run by Democrats since at least the late 1950’s. Public education policy there continues to keep academic achievement at its worst and binds minorities into low “self-esteem” and poverty.
But I digress. . . .
The President now needs to take Larry Kudlow’s advice and shift the argument away from the difficult transition to private Social Security accounts and rather give the vision for changing the Social Security system to make it work for generations to come.
Sphere: Related ContentPrinciple
January 26, 2005
“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.”
–Thomas Jefferson
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Sphere: Related ContentCould Texts Lost for Millennia Be In Our Grasp?
January 25, 2005
This would be the most amazing find since the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Sunday Times: Even in our age of hyperbole it would be hard to exaggerate the significance of what is at stake here: nothing less than the lost intellectual inheritance of western civilisation. We have, for example, a mere seven plays by Sophocles, yet we know that he wrote 120; Euripides wrote 90 plays, of which only 19 survive; Aeschylus wrote between 70 and 90, of which we have just seven.We also know that at the time when Philodemus was teaching Virgil on the Bay of Naples, the lost dialogues of Aristotle were circulating in Rome (Cicero called them a golden river: the essence of ancient Greek philosophy); they, too, have vanished.
. . .When the great library at Alexandria caught fire 1,600 years ago, more than half a million scrolls were destroyed: the greatest intellectual catastrophe in history. But the tightly rolled papyri caught in the eruption of AD79 — not only in Herculaneum but also in Pompeii — were first carbonised and then, when the pumice and ash moulded around them, effectively sealed in airtight stone vaults.
This bibliophile salivates at the possibilities for understanding better the underpinnings of Western philosophy through its Greek roots.
Hat tip to Confessions of a Political Junkie.
Sphere: Related ContentInsurgency Disruption Tactics
January 25, 2005
Captain’s Quarters has translated instructions given to the Iraq insurgency on how to disrupt an eleciton.
As the Captain says, this comes as no surprise. But note the reliance they place on the media to report the bad news as a way to delegitimize the election process. Note also that they published the instrucitons because, “since they have not witnessed the elections process before, here is a plan which will lead to the failure of these elections, or at least their disruption.”
Sphere: Related Content2008 Alert: Hillary to the Red States–Part I
January 25, 2005
I wonder if Hillary is running for President. Let’s take a peek:
NY Times: Mrs. Clinton, in a speech to about 1,000 abortion rights supporters at the state Capitol, firmly restated her support for the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, Roe v. Wade. But then she quickly shifted gears, offering warm words to opponents of abortion - particularly members of religious groups - asserting that there was “common ground” to be found after three decades of emotional and political warfare over abortion.In addition to her description of abortion as a “tragic choice” for many,” Mrs. Clinton said that faith and organized religion were the “primary” reasons that teenagers abstain from sexual relations, and reminded the audience that during the 1990’s, she promoted “teen celibacy” as a way to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
“The fact is, the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Shrewd move. It won’t fly with conservative activists, but if she is able to come across sincerely, it could neutralize those millions of extra votes which showed up for President Bush while allowing her to keep her base in the Democrat left. She and Bill know how to seem conservative “enough.”
This emphasizes the fact that conservatives cannot sit down after the great gains in 2004. Without continued, large-scale information campaigns, Democrat prevarication could cause the Bush base to crumble.
She’ll get the nomination I predict (unless she gets into legal trouble). And unless a strong, conservative Republican candidate emerges (no, I don’t mean Giuliani or McCain), she could eek out the Presidency. We’d better be on the top of our game.
Thank God for the blogsphere!
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UPDATE: Not only is Hillary trying to triangulate conservative politicians, voters and herself on the issue of abortion as described above, The Guardian reports that she is blaming George Bush’s family planning policy for increases in abortion
She said there could be a link between a decline in so-called “comprehensive” sexual education and an increased number of terminations.Speaking to a conference of family abortion rights supporters in New York, Mrs Clinton said that during her husband’s administration, family planning funding was a priority and “we saw the rate of abortion consistently fall.”
“The abortion rate fell by one quarter between 1990 and 1995, the steepest decline since Roe was decided in 1973,” Mrs Clinton said, referring to the Roe v Wade decision which legalised abortion.
“The rate fell another 11 percent between 1994 and 2000.”
And then the Bush administration, sadly, responded weakly after a good rally speech this past weekend. The administration responded thus:
White House spokesman Ken Lasaius said the president believed in co-operation on the abortion front.“He’s made it very clear that whether we agree or disagree on the issue of abortion, that we can all work together to take practical steps to reduce the number of abortions that occur,” Mr Lasaius said.
What kind of a response is this? Cooperation will accomplish nothing in this battle for life. The President should be de-legitimizing Hillary’s pro-death policies. Instead, he is responding in kind to her statements. This is the same trap that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich fell into when countering the statemens of then President Bill Clinton–by his own admission. If the President takes this approach, he will fare no better than Newt in the battle of ideas.
Sphere: Related ContentJanuary 24, 2005
Time for an afternoon M&M break!
Individual Rights
January 24, 2005
“The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. … [I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.”
–Albert Gallatin
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A Red State Voters’ Speech
January 20, 2005
Erick at Confessions of a Political Junkie blogs at MSNBC about the speech. Great comments!
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