The Sopranos

The McGreevey story is starting to sound like an episode from The Sopranos: McGreevey’s new pose as a gutsy, brutally honest politician seems absurd. He was named repeatedly last month in a 47-page federal indictment charging one of the governor’s pals with extorting $40,000 in bribes and campaign contributions from a dairy farmer in Middlesex … Continue reading “The Sopranos”

The McGreevey story is starting to sound like an episode from The Sopranos:

McGreevey’s new pose as a gutsy, brutally honest politician seems absurd. He was named repeatedly last month in a 47-page federal indictment charging one of the governor’s pals with extorting $40,000 in bribes and campaign contributions from a dairy farmer in Middlesex County, McGreevey’s home turf.

Charles Kushner, McGreevey’s largest contributor, was indicted last month on federal charges of fund-raising violations, as well as conspiracy and obstruction. William Watley, McGreevey’s commerce secretary, quit last month when it came to light that he steered state money to a company in which he had a stake.

Two of McGreevey’s top aides – his counsel, Paul Levinsohn, and his chief of staff, Gary Taffet – resigned last year under a cloud.

McGreevey’s undoing appears to have sprung from a sex-and-patronage deal gone bad: Apparently, a secret gay lover on the public payroll decided to sue and/or blackmail the governor.

Dirty politicians, sex, bribery, and blackmail: just another day in the life of the New Jersey Democratic Party machine.

John Kerry’s ever-changing memory

Kerry’s Cambodia Story is Changing Again: “On Christmas Eve he was near Cambodia; he was around 50 miles from the Cambodian border. There’s no indictment of Kerry to be made, but he was mistaken about Christmas in Cambodia,” said Douglas Brinkley, who has unique access to the candidate’s wartime journals. Indeed.

Kerry’s Cambodia Story is Changing Again:

“On Christmas Eve he was near Cambodia; he was around 50 miles from the Cambodian border. There’s no indictment of Kerry to be made, but he was mistaken about Christmas in Cambodia,” said Douglas Brinkley, who has unique access to the candidate’s wartime journals.

Indeed.

Fine example of delusional reasoning

The generally vitriolic anti-Bush blog Notes in Samsara (“samsara” is Sanskrit for “delusion”) cites an interesting lefty blog as a definitive source debunking the Swift Boat Vets charges against Senator Kerry. To check out its reliability, take a look at its treatment of the Cambodia charges here. You’ll find supporting evidence confined to generalities about … Continue reading “Fine example of delusional reasoning”

The generally vitriolic anti-Bush blog Notes in Samsara (“samsara” is Sanskrit for “delusion”) cites an interesting lefty blog as a definitive source debunking the Swift Boat Vets charges against Senator Kerry. To check out its reliability, take a look at its treatment of the Cambodia charges here. You’ll find supporting evidence confined to generalities about American presence in Cambodia, and no mention of the back-tracking the Kerry campaign is doing on the story, trying to re-write history to the effect that Kerry only said he was “close” to Cambodia, not that he was there:

The Kerry campaign first asserted that the Massachusetts senator never said that he was in Cambodia, only that he was near the country. But when presented with a copy of the Congressional Record and asked about Kerry’s letter in the Boston Herald, the campaign said it would come up with an explanation. After repeated phone calls, there was still no clarification.

It’s now becoming evident that Kerry made up his Cambodia story after seeing the movie Apocalypse Now, which makes Kerry look a little Reaganesque. I wonder how many of the Reagan Democrats he can win over with this strategy?

Who blew Khan’s cover?

Remember the Al Qaeda computer dude whose name was allegedly leaked by the Bush Administration to take the heat off Howard Dean’s clams that the recent terror alerts were cooled? Well it turns out that his name was most likely leaked by the Pakistani intelligence service: The American officials would say only that the Qaeda … Continue reading “Who blew Khan’s cover?”

Remember the Al Qaeda computer dude whose name was allegedly leaked by the Bush Administration to take the heat off Howard Dean’s clams that the recent terror alerts were cooled? Well it turns out that his name was most likely leaked by the Pakistani intelligence service:

The American officials would say only that the Qaeda figure whose capture had led to the discovery of the documentary evidence had been captured with the help of the C.I.A. Though Pakistan announced the arrest last week of a Qaeda member, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in connection with the bombings of American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the American officials suggested that he had not been the source of the new threat information.

An account provided by a Pakistani intelligence official made clear that the crucial capture in recent weeks had been that of Mr. Khan, who is also known as Abu Talha. The intelligence official provided information describing Mr. Khan as having assisted in evaluating potential American and Western targets for terrorist attacks, and as being representative of a ”new Al Qaeda.” [Emphasis added]

It’s all pretty speculative still, but it does appear that Reuters jumped the gun in blaming Bush for this fiasco.

Things are getting better in Iraq

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 … Continue reading “Things are getting better in Iraq”

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:

Injuries

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.

Total Destruction of Paul Krugman

There was a lovely debate between Bill O’Reilly and Paul Krugman on Tim Russert’s Saturday show this weekend (see transcript here), and I have to say that in my humble and unbiased opinion O’Reilly mopped the floor with the man Lying in Ponds consistently rates as the number one or two most partisan columnist in … Continue reading “Total Destruction of Paul Krugman”

There was a lovely debate between Bill O’Reilly and Paul Krugman on Tim Russert’s Saturday show this weekend (see transcript here), and I have to say that in my humble and unbiased opinion O’Reilly mopped the floor with the man Lying in Ponds consistently rates as the number one or two most partisan columnist in America. That’s not to say that O’Reilly wasn’t way over the top or that he didn’t come across as a loon and a bully, just that Krugman’s arguments were weak and his general personal demeanor was sad to the extreme – at several points his voice cracked and his hands were visibly shaking. I’ve seen Krugman on the air before, and he always has this weasly demeanor like a little kid who’s just learned that he can get attention by using big words, or cuss words, or by reciting obscure facts, but he was at a real extreme this time.

There’s a real nice account of the show over at Donald Luskin for your enjoyment:

This marks the first time that anyone has really stood up to America?s most dangerous liberal pundit on television. And Krugman simply didn?t know how to handle it. At several points in the show Krugman was practically in shock, with hands visibly trembling.

O?Reilly was masterful. He didn?t for one moment grant Krugman the undeserved respect that everyone else grants him, thanks to the prestigious aura of his Princeton professorship and his New York Times column. And O?Reilly didn?t let Krugman get away with any of his usual stunts.

O?Reilly uncompromisingly held Krugman to account for some of the outrageous (and outrageously wrong) things Krugman?s written in his Times columns.

Check it out.

‘Junk science’ a staple of Democratic Party policy

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 … Continue reading “‘Junk science’ a staple of Democratic Party policy”

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.