Category: Politics

Some folks will tell you that things aren’t getting better in Iraq, based on the Brookings survey. You can find this opinion on Kevin Drum’s lefty blog, and in a story he cites in the New York Times. The essence of the claim is that things are actually getting worse because the Army has revised its estimate of enemy combatants to 20,000 from 5,000. This doesn’t actually mean, of course, that 15,000 new combatants have entered the fray, just that the estimate (which was pulled out of somebody’s ass to begin with) has been adjusted. But rather than trying to wade through Kevin’s spin, why not just go to the Brookings web site and see the actual report? It’s not that hard to understand. Here’s one of the graphs that should be of some interest:

Now I’m not nearly as clever as Kevin Drum, but to me it does appear that things are getting better for our boys, and frankly that’s the only metric of much interest to me at this point.

Junk science can be hazardous to your health, but it’s long been a staple of Democratic Party policy. Consider the cases John Edwards won for parents of cerebral palsy victims:

But the cause of cerebral palsy long has been debated, and two new studies in 2003 further undermined the scientific premise of Edwards’ cases, CNSNews.com reported.

“There are some cases where the brain damage did occur at the time of delivery. But it’s really unusual. It’s really quite unusual,” Dr. Murray Goldstein, a neurologist and the medical director of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation, told the news agency.

“The overwhelming majority of children that are born with developmental brain damage, the ob/gyn could not have done anything about it, could not have, not at this stage of what we know,” Goldstein stated.

Along the same lines, we have the use of bogus social science to advance Democratic Party programs, such as Lenore Weitzman’s phony study of post-divorce living standards, Lenore Walker’s fanciful work on domestic violence, a vast array of crap on joint custody, made-up numbers on the costs of raising children, and polemics on gay child-rearing that correspond to nothing. On top of this, we have Democratic Party endorsement of junk anthropology coming out of the Kennewick Man debate, and it should become clear that Democrats are the anti-science party.

I really like Mark Steyn:

The one thing the Democratic Party owed America this campaign season was a candidate credible on the current war. The Democrats needed their own Tony Blair, a bloke who’s a big socialist pantywaist when it comes to health and education and the other nanny-state hooey but believes in robust projection of military force in the national interest. John Kerry fails that test.

Says it all, doesn’t it?

Link via Roger L. Simon, who thinks that Kerry’s lies about being in Cambodia are an “impeachable offense in advance.”

Hate plays an increasingly dominant role in American politics, and Jeff Jarvis doesn’t dig it:

This is why I try to give the administration at least a chance; I don’t want to pile on — and that’s a problem, too. There is plenty to criticize in this administration! But I fear that others who have wise and well-founded criticism are shying away from joining the mob. As Weiseltier puts it: “There are many good reasons to wish to be rid of George W. Bush, but there are no good reasons to wish to be rid of intelligence in our public life.”

But there’s good news: To go up against Bush, Democratic voters did not select an opposite — Alien v. Predator (Bush v. Dean); they selected a bore. There may be little to love in John Kerry but there is little to hate. It has been said that he’s another Carter (or, I’d say, Ford). Maybe what we really need is a president who bores us and that’s the choice we have this fall.

The descent of the radical left into unvarnished hate is one of the more disturbing trends in our politics, and sadly much of the right seems to be following them.

Swift Boat Vets for Truth aren’t taking the Kerry/Edwards lawsuit threats lying down. They’ve assembled a damning response to Kerry’s charges, which you can see at Captain’s Quarters. You should read it and make up your own mind, as I’ve done.

Now that Kerry’s following Michael Moore’s wishes and bashing the president for sitting still and thinking for a few minutes before rushing into action on 9/11, it’s appropriate to check into what Sen. Kerry did:

In an interview with Larry King on CNN, July 8, 2004, Sen. Kerry was asked where he was the morning of September 11th. Here is part of his response:

Kerry: “…And as I came in [to a meeting in Sen. Daschle’s office], Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon…” (emphasis added).

It should be noted that the second plane hit the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., and the plane hit the Pentagon at 9:43 a.m. By Kerry’s own words, he and his fellow senators sat there for forty minutes, realizing “nobody could think.”

So what’s good for the goose isn’t sauce for the gander, once again.

H/T Tim Blair, More Flopping from Mr. Flippy