We should get out of Iraq.

Bush lied; people died.

There were no WMD in Iraq.

2,000 + soldiers have died for nothing.

Iraq is worse off now than under Saddam Hussein.

The United States would be safer had we done nothing following 09-11-2001.

Islam is a religion of peace as are all its worshipers.

The war is all about oil profits.

Halliburton is profiting from the war in Iraq and Vice President Cheney is behind its war profiteering. Halliburton is running the Presidency and the nation.

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Sound like Talking Points from the Left?

Of course it does.

Joseph Goebbels said it best: “a lie, repeated often and forcibly, gains the legitimacy of truth.”

But wait; there’s more. Support recently comes from sides least expected: two venues representing the Democrats and the Left, Joe Lieberman and The Economist, believe that we need to continue on our current military path in Iraq.

First, Joe Lieberman wrote in last Tuesday’s 11-29 Wall Street Journal:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood–unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

The cover of the 11-26 – 12-02-2006 edition of The Economist declares in bold white letters at the bottom: “Why America must stay,” over a photo of a soldier behind sandbags in Iraq.

How can this be? And why would a left-leaning, Eurocentric, British publication print such tripe — unless there were something more than a semblance of a grain of truth?

To wit:

Mr (John) Murtha and millions of others maintain that America is doing more harm than good in Iraq, and that the troops should therefore come home. This newspaper strongly disagrees. In our opinion it would be disastrous for America to retreat hastily from Iraq. Yet it is also well past time for George Bush to spell out to the American people much more clearly and honestly than he has hitherto done why their sons and daughters fighting in Iraq should remain in harm’s way.

Every reasonable person should be able to agree on two things about America’s presence in Iraq. First, if the Iraqi government formally asks the troops to leave, they should do so. Second, the argument about whether America should quit Iraq is not the same as the one about whether it should have gone there in the first place.
It must be about the future.

_________________________________

Bestill my quaking heart that anyone from the Left should admit what lawyers commonly call “facts in evidence.”

The Economist further admits:

The cost to America of staying in Iraq may be high, but the cost of retreat would be higher. By fleeing, America would not buy itself peace.

Mr Zarqawi and his fellow fanatics have promised to hound America around the globe. Driving America out of Iraq would grant militant Islam a huge victory.

Arabs who want to modernise their region would know that they could not count on America to stand by its friends. If such reasoning sounds negative—America must stay because the consequences of leaving would be too awful—treat that as a sad reflection of how Mr Bush’s vision for the Middle East has soured. The road ahead looks bloody and costly. But this is not the time to retreat.

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You must be kidding me — how totally bizarre is this? But there is even more, involving a major American politician in a way that she could not in any way have envisioned:

Even Hillary Clinton is not supporting a pullout of troops, much to the chagrin of Cindy Sheehan:

“I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys,” Sheehan writes in an open letter posted on anti-Bush filmmaker Michael Moore’s website. “I would love to support Hillary for president if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don’t think she can speak out against the occupation, because she supports it. I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again: As I won’t support a pro-war Republican.”

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I feel a Moonbat Award coming on. . .

Here’s how it went down in Fornicalia:

On October 7th, 2003, Fornicalia’s first-ever gubernatorial recall election was held in an attempt to remove what I considered to be the emptiest of empty political suits, then-Governor Gray Davis. Election results were confirmed and certified on November 14th. Davis became the first governor in Fornicalia history to be recalled, and only the second in the entire history of the United States to be recalled.

Directly from the recall petition: [Governor Davis’s actions were a] “gross mismanagement of California Finances by overspending taxpayers’ money, threatening public safety by cutting funds to local governments, failing to account for the exorbitant cost of the energy, and failing in general to deal with the state’s major problems until they get to the crisis stage.”

Davis was so terribly ineffectual that even the sluggish, sloth-like and left-leaning blue electorate recognized his incompetence and voted him out. That in and of itself was one helluva statement.

After having announced his candidacy on the Jay Leno show, and saying he would make a sincere attempt to reduce the influence of special interests, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected by a large margin out of 135 candidates — essentially, a so-called mandate from the masses.

The results (top 12 candidates) were:

NAME – PARTY – VOTES – PERCENTILE OF VOTE

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rep, 4,203,596, 48.6
Cruz M. Bustamante, Dem, 2,723,768, 31.5
Tom McClintock, Rep, 1,160,182, 13.5
Peter Miguel Camejo, Grn, 242,169, 2.8
Arianna Huffington, Ind, 47,486, 0.6
Peter V. Ueberroth, Rep, 25,125, 0.3
Larry Flynt, Dem, 17,446, 0.3
Gary Coleman, Ind, 14,235, 0.2
George B. Schwartzman, Ind, 12,370, 0.2
Mary Cook, Ind, 11,174, 0.2
Bruce Martin Margolin, Dem, 9,177, 0.2
Bill Simon, Rep, 8,904, 0.2

With this mandate, Gov. Schwarzenegger repealed, within 24 hours it seemed, an incredibly unpopular vehicle license fee and overturned legislation that would have granted driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. He linked both parties to overhaul the workers’ compensation system, renegotiated gambling compacts with the state’s Indian tribes (not the most popular of measures), and linked both sides with a $15 billion borrowing measure that, some say, merely delayed the proverbial paying of the budgetary piper. He also vetoed gay marriage. All this in roughly one year.

He then went out on a limb and pushed for our November special election containing quite a number of excellent propositions that, in my estimation, would have placed our state firmly back on the path of normality — and was rewarded with a resounding electoral kick in the teeth.

Arnold did an amazing thing for a politician: he took a huge, huge step, an extraordinary step, and pushed for propositions that would have helped the greater masses, yielded budgetary control, and (as Arnold is wont to say) “all those things.”

I was fearing he would go centrist; now he certainly has and perhaps even centrist-left:

Susan Kennedy, a former head of the California branch of the National Abortion Rights Action League, a long-time gay rights activist (she married her partner Vicki Marti in 1999) was named yesterday to replace Patricia Clarey, the former aide to Republican Governor Pete Wilson.

Kennedy has, incidentally, joined Daniel Zingale as the second former Davis aide to join Schwarzenegger’s staff in (coincidentally?) the past month.

Arnold essentially tried to do too much too soon, created enemies and gored the oxen of too many two-faced, hypocritical voters — who happen to need oxen-holing.

So I suppose it shouldn’t shock us to discover, with a 2006 re-election campaign looming, he’s going for more bang for his buck.

He already knows he won’t get it from the Right.

I’ve been doing my so-called “day job” and getting nutted-up whilst others around me were obstructionists, I was under a time crunch, and subsequently not getting sleep at night because the mind wouldn’t shut down. I’m sure you’ve all been there. Therefore, the dearth of posts.

In the meantime, a friend sent me a wonderful quote from President Teddy Roosevelt, which bears repeating here:

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.

But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American . . . There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all.

We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile.

We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language . . . and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

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Even back in 1907, Teddy had it right.

Ever try to write whilst a cat refuses to get off the damn laptop keyboard?

My cat — eh, excuse me, kitten, Mose (after jazz/blues pianist Mose Allison) just won’t leave me alone tonight and has taken it upon himself to attempt to delete most of the train photos I’d taken earlier today by walking across a succession of seemingly-random keys primarily revolving around “delete.”23———-
Sorry. Cat across the keyboard again. I put him down and he came right back up again, not only onto my lap but thence onto my shoulders, where he is now, purring like crazy. I must admit that his motor, as issued by the factory, is without peer.

Simultaneously, I am listening to a wonderful jazz recording, recently reissued, only 3 days away from its original recording date (though 49, almost 50 years ago) of 11-29-1957. This is the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall. Some reissues are noteworthy for their performance but not the recording itself; this copy, on Blue Note, stands head and shoulders above others for the performance itself and the recording, which has great emphasis on the highs and midrange. You can hear Shadow Wilson really working the cymbals on “Epistrophy.”

In any event, I was reading over comments on a recent post and came across that of Rebecca’s where she said:

Blo,Great post, and yes it was a setback, not a catastrophe. The GOP nationally is not going down the tubes. I think we are regenerating, and the dems may even find a ‘further right’ conservative in office in 2008. In 2006 it is highly probable that the liberal republicans will get voted out of office.

For whatever wacky reason (if you can translate the rational linkage, please let me know), that made me think of a recent article I read in the 11-18-05 issue of The Week regarding population.

Yes, yes, I know, The Week can be said to be a large repository of the Left Wing though they would heartily disagree. But I subscribe to a number of what might be termed “left” leaning publications if for no other reason than to discover what the issues and topics of the week have become for a certain thrust of the culture. I receive The Nation, and the UK version of The Economist as well as The Guardian — though none of this stuff is cheap — the Economist subscription runs $100 a year (at a discount!) and the other very important magazine (though not leaning necessarily to port) I subscribe to, Janes Intelligence Review, is a paltry $450 a year.

“Go to the library!” I can hear you say now. “Stay away from publications beginning with the word ‘The’ ” (that would necessarily and rudely deal me out of my subscription to The Weekly Standard). Except the library won’t have what I want. Nice try, though. All they cover are the Left Leaning MSM and DEM papers. And I can easily crank them up over the internet via sophistry, lies and purposely-skewed demographics I’ve provided to acquire their passworded access. Depending on which website you choose, I range from a one-legged black lesbian UAW worker named Burt to a displaced transgender homemaker with “Paxil issues” generating less than $30,000 per year.

Go figure.

In any event, on page 15 of issue 234 of The Week, the magazine attempts to explain the difference between what Paul Ehrlich forecasted in his book The Population Bomb and what is occurring today and what may actually occur in the future.

Portrayed in what is a smarmy, “accepting,” yet clarion call to those on the left:

Why Are Whites Having Fewer Babies?
Actually, not all whites are. Whites in the West and the South have more babies than those in the Northeast. People who describe themselves as socially conservative are having far more babies than those who consier themselves liberal. The political implications of the phenomenon have already been felt.

Continuing:

In What Way?
The segments of the white population that are growing are in the “red” states, and lean heavily Republican. “Conservative, religious-minded Americans are putting far more of their genes into the future than their liberal and secular counterparts,” says Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle. “If Metros don’t start having more children, America’s future is Retro.”

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The clear but unstated conclusion here is that, unless the Left gets into the mix, an entire ideology is imperiled — as the Right will create nothing but future generations of genetic philosphic mutants.

But, my God, think of the conflicting implications: the Left, with its culture of death embracement, abortion, bereft of ideas, may actually have placed itself on the periphery due to something as simple as procreation.

Holy crap!

How ironic is that?

(If you were thinking something like “reap what you sow” — shame on you!)

My cat just put himself to bed — it’s almost 10 PM.

Following the November 8th Special Election in Fornicalia every major proposition went down to defeat with a resounding “no” from the electorate.

We as conservatives can either fold our tents and decamp, or we can regroup, coalesce and fight back. Tom McClintock is running for Lt. Governor of Fornicalia and, as such, I receive his campaign newsletter. Within this newsletter was an article that provided an absolutely sterling insight into the special election results and what it means for the GOP and the state.

I feel compelled to reprint a portion of the speech Mr. McClintock gave to the Los Angeles County Republican Central Committee on November 15, 2005:

Just days after leading England safely through World War II, Winston Churchill suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of British voters. As he watched the dismal results roll in, Clementine sat beside him, patted his knee and said, “Well, if you ask me, Winston, it’s a blessing in disguise.” Churchill growled, “Well at the moment, madam, it is very well disguised, indeed.”

Tonight I’d like to point out a few blessings in this election – however well disguised they might seem at the moment.

The first is that we didn’t lose any ground in this election. Propositions 73 through 77 were attempts to move us back in a conservative direction and although they failed, we’re not any the worse off. And don’t forget, the Left tried to move us in their direction with Propositions 79 and 80, which would have socialized the pharmaceutical and energy markets. Both of those measures were ALSO soundly defeated – and they were defeated by a greater margin overall than the Governor’s
measures. In fact, the two most conservative measures – 73 (parental abortion notification) and 75 (paycheck protection) did the best, and the two most liberal measures – 79 and 80 – did the worst.

The second blessing is the fact that to defeat the Governor’s initiatives, the Left had to outspend the Governor by well over $50 million. They can’t keep outspending us by that kind of margin, and when there’s a level playing field, the result will be dramatically different.

The third is that although the specific measures were all defeated, every poll that asked whether voters favored the general principles of the initiatives reported overwhelming public support. It was not the underlying philosophy that the people rejected. That’s why the left had to resort to a “Tsunami of lies and distortions,” as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Weintraub observed. For example, they attacked the redistricting reform for giving the final say over district lines to judges when in fact, that measure gave the final say TO THE VOTERS. Empires built on lies don’t last very long. My favorite was the last two days, after they had spent over $100 million on negative ads, they went back to voters and asked, “Tired of all the negative ads? Then just vote NO.”

Fourth, although the Governor’s approval rating has been forced down – there is one political institution that consistently fares even worse: the liberal Democratic state legislature.

And fifth, in San Diego, voters overwhelmingly elected the Republican candidate against the Liberal Democrat in that city’s mayoral election – beating her by six points in her own district.

I’m not going to pretend that Tuesday’s election was anything for us to celebrate. Voters rejected some of the most sensible propositions ever put to a vote: that government should live within its means; that politicians shouldn’t chose who gets to vote for them; that teachers should demonstrate sustained competence before they’re granted lifetime tenure; that public employees have a right to decide for themselves what candidates they’ll support with their own money; and that parents have a right to know if their teenaged daughter is being spirited out of school to have an abortion. The rejection of these measures was a major setback in the cause of reform and a major victory for the government unions that are now ascendant, emboldened and unchallenged in their domination of our political and legislative process.

But I do make these points to illustrate that the situation is far from hopeless. And as we review the election results and re-assess the political landscape, we need to keep things in perspective. In the grand scheme of things, this was a setback; not a cataclysm.

Tom is correct; this was not a cataclysm but a temporary setback. Doomsayers are predicting a total crash and burn of the GOP, in Fornicalia and nationally. I don’t believe this is true at all! There are already plans being made for 2006. And last Friday was a very bad day for the Democratic party when they indicated, en masse, their fear of alienating the voting public.

We’ve taken some body blows but we have not even come close to putting down a knee.