The Democrats' desperation on health care reform

Byron York found a Democratic strategist (who preferred not to be named) who may have found the perfect characterization of the Democratic strategy on the health care reform jam-down:

(H)e compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."

I feel like a bit of a criminal myself for extracting that gem from York's journalistic jewelry. So please read the whole excellent story.

Tendrils from the Fever Swamp

PBCliberal stopped by this blog recently to weigh in on the fairness doctrine, which I suppose is only fair.

A follow up visit to PBC's homepage ("PBCliberal," aptly enough), seems to show him mired rather firmly in the dreaded Fever Swamp. Or maybe he just takes seriously the subtitle of his blog, which refers to "ravings & musings from a media junky (sic), programmer and media producer."

Ravings seems to cover the latest post, which deals with the wide-open vistas for Science that have opened with the Dawn of the Obama Administration. Pardon the excessive use of caps. I'm trying to convey the feeling. Here's a representative paragraph from PBC:

The election of President Obama has restored science and reason to public policy. It no longer must hold equal footing with the assertion that Adam & Eve rode dinosaurs. We are not afraid of stem cells. We’re not afraid to hope.

Time will judge whether the Obama adminstration will return science and reason to public policy. Given the economic and energy policy mumbo-jumbo coming from the president last night, I predict a harsh judgment in terms of its science if not in terms of the political history.

Afraid of stem cells? Is PBC unaware that President Bush was the first president to allow federal funds to go toward embryonic stem cell research? Clinton had the opportunity and passed. And the objection was not fear of stem cells but ethical caution. Privately funded stem cell research--even embryonic stem cell research--wasn't a focus of the Bush White House. And science has a poor history of serving as its own ethical watchdog (Nazi Germany, the Tuskegee experiment, and many others). Boy, I sure hope we're not afraid to use science to test the effects of mind-control drugs placed in a city's water supply ...

We can leverage technology to escape our predicaments. We can develop energy industries that can save us from paying oil rich countries while simultaneously giving us a valuable export.

Apparently we're afraid to hope that the private sector can leverage technology to escape our predicaments. We'll sell our freedoms for the, er, security of letting the government manage our technological future.

And apparently we have learned little from history.

Obama the Wilsonian demagogue

The backstory: I did not hear all of Obama's speech. I heard most of it, off and on. I intended to post my impression before reading other opinions. I slipped up and visited Power Line.

Woodrow Wilson is notable among presidents for helping strengthen what had hitherto been a notably weak office. It's tough to name notable presidents between Lincoln and Wilson. Wilson saw the presidency as a role which could serve to institute public policy by working through the populace to pressure Congress to implement presidential policy. Though Wilson feared the ills a demagogue could cause, he grabbed the demagogue's mantle and wore it with aplomb while he served as president.

Wilson set the stage for Roosevelt, who did more than any other president (I'll even count George W. Bush among the also-rans even if some liberals might disagree) to strengthen the office of the president.

Last night's speech I found profoundly within the paradigm of Wilsonian demagoguery.

Obama let on that he wants big changes. If we don't make those changes then bad things (such as recession without end) will happen. Are the American people uncertain about nationalized healthcare? Tough. Obama says we need to do the reform. Now. And the speech was a short laundry list of big issues like health care.

The Republicans are invited to help out. Aside from the fact that nearly everything Obama wants to do is historically against their principles, why not?

I found Tuesday's Obama unlikeable. I saw him in a type of (Bill) Clinton mode, spinning facts and bashing his opponents. I found him less sincere and more calculating, almost as if he took stock of his political position and decided "now or never"--time to shade the truth for the greater good.

The policies don't add up. We had this "emergency" stimulus and the Democrats used the urgency to implement liberal wish-lists. Now the president admits that shoring up banks' ability to lend is the critical element in our economy, and the "stimulus" package turns out to be a long-term plan to establish an economy molded in a more liberal, government controlled, image.

We'll "invest" in unproven "green" or renewable energy, apparently hoping to reap huge profits by selling our breakthroughs to other nations. I heard no admission that the course will hurt the U.S. economy as we force ourselves to use more expensive and less efficient energy sources during the transition to we-know-not-what.

This is bad, folks.

That Senate report saying (in effect) Bush lied, Part 2

In the first installment reviewing the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the administration's statements respecting Iraq, we saw that on the issue of nuclear weapons the administration's statements were generally in line with the understanding of the intelligence services.

Next in the report (page 17) is "Biological weapons."

Though this section lists nearly three full pages of quotations (17-19) from administration officials coming from speeches identified as important to making the public case for war along with about three times that space for subsequent commentary, this entry will be short in light of the report's conclusion:

(U) Conclusion 2: Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well as additional statements, regarding Iraq's possession of biological agent, weapons, production capability, and use of mobile biological laboratories were substantiated by intelligence information. Intelligence assessments from the late 1990s through early 2003 consistently stated that Iraq retained biological warfare agent and the capability to produce more. Assessments on the mobile facilities included the production capabilities of those labs, both in terms of type of agent and in amount. Prior to the October 2002 NIE, some intelligence assessments left open the question as to whether Iraq possessed biological weapons or that it was actively producing them, though some assessments did not present such uncertainties. Policymakers did not discuss intelligence gaps in Iraq's biological weapons programs, which were explicit in the October 2002 NIE.

Conclusion 2, as with Conclusion 1, only implicitly faults the Bush administration. Their supposed sin was in not specifically alluding to uncertainties in intelligence. For my part, I can't imagine why a government would want to spell out the gaps in its intelligence in public during a sensitive political moment. Unless it was to forestall subsequent politicized attacks, but that seems like a minor consideration overall when one is contemplating war against a dangerous entity.

That Senate report saying (in effect) Bush lied

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has summarized the appropriate incredulity that should be brought to bear on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report (warning: that's a large .pdf file) on the handling of intelligence information in the Bush administration's public statements.

I was curious about the content of the report so I figured I'd dig into it some and offer commentary.

The report goes on for pages listing administration statements, then purports to look into whether or not the statements had the support of the available intelligence. That portion starts on page 6 of the .pdf file.

For some reason the .pdf is protected from cut & paste, so I'll either have to copy images like the one above or transcribe the portions I wish to quote.

The Senate report proceeds to present information that might be taken by a careless reader to contradict Cheney's statement, such as the following (page 8): "According to a DIA report, the intelligence community continued to assess that it would take five to seven years to indigenously produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon." Note "indigenously."

The report then jumps to a statement from the president parallel to that of the vice-president (page 8-9):

(U) In the president's address to the United Nations General Assembly, he stated that Iraq continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, and indicated that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. Specifically, he referred to Iraqi efforts to purchase aluminum tubes, Iraqi efforts to conceal information about its pre-Gulf War nuclear program, and meetings between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nuclear scientists. He noted that Iraq possessed some of the intellectual capital and physical infrastructure that would be necessary for a nuclear weapons program, and said that if Iraq could "acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."

The Senate report then repeats the process described following the Cheney statement, without drawing conclusions about the president's remarks, though the final paragraph indicates that the intelligence community concurred (page 9) with the president's statement that Iraq could have built a nuclear weapon within a year given fissile material with which to work.

(U) In the president's speech on Iraq in Cincinnati, he stated that the Iraqi regime was "seeking nuclear weapons", and attempting to "purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges". He also said that Iraq was "rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past", and that "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

(U) The president also repeated his statement that if the Iraqi regime came to possess highly enriched uranium, "it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." Additionally, he suggested that there was clear evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon, declaring that "facing clear evidence of the peril we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." He concluded that "we could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I'm convinced that is a hope against all evidence."

Again the report provides a number of paragraphs that do not contradict the president.

(U) In the president's 2003 State of the Union Address, he stated that Iraq had pursued nuclear weapons even while weapons inspectors were in Iraq. He also said that the Iraqi regime had attempted to purchase aluminum tubes that could be used in a nuclear program, and that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The report notes that the consensus view in the intelligence community did not believe that Iraq started reconstituting its nuclear program until after UNSCOM inspectors left the country--but that does not directly address any Iraqi attempts to preserve and/or advance its program while inspectors were present.

On to Colin Powell:

(U) In the Secretary of State's February 2003 address to the United Nations Security Council, he stated that Saddam Hussein was determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and argued that Iraq had not abandoned its pre-Gulf War weapons program. He specifically referred to Iraqi attempts to procure dual-use technologies, including aluminum tubes, magnets, and high-speed balancing machines.

(U) The Secretary of State said that "most U.S. experts" believed that the aluminum tubes were intended to be part of a nuclear weapons program, and acknowledged that "other experts", as well as the Iraqi government, had argued that the tubes were intended for use in conventional rocket programs.

The comments following in the report reiterate points already made, and make special note of the fact that Powell did not use the British report of Iraq trying to procure yellowcake uranium nor the reconstruction at past potential nuclear-related facilities in his address (page 12).

The report then includes quite a number of quotation of Vice President Cheney, including one that references "irrefutable evidence" of a reconstituted nuclear program.

And then we get to the committee's conclusions:

(U) Conclusion 1: Statements by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.

That conclusion reflects a naive view of actionable intelligence, the type of naive view that paralyzes a nation until it is too late in the face of a threat. Case in point, U.S. intelligence far underestimated Iraqi capabilities at the time of the Gulf War, as the subsequent inspections brought to light. Hussein had been far more advanced with his nuclear program than we suspected. Firm proof is the exception rather than the rule in the intelligence game. It is more likely that the majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee knows that, but is playing this as a shameful political game.

Subsequent to the "Conclusion 1" the report offers a set of postwar findings, including the incredible claim (referenced to a 2006 Senate Intelligence Committee report) that there was no evidence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from a foreign source since 1991 (page 16). Why isn't it well known in the committee that Joe Wilson's Niger trips did, in fact, uncover that type of evidence in the form of a government official's statement that he understood that an Iraqi delegation had come to discuss the acquisition of uranium?

This section of the report offers little other than obscure insinuations that the intelligence was misrepresented. The best example of a misleading statement appears to come from Cheney in a speech that the committee did not identify as a key speech respecting the case for the Iraq War.

The next section is "Biological Weapons," which will keep for later.

Addendum:

Power Line now has an excellent post on the report.

Ironically, the Committee’s report itself consists of serious distortions and misrepresentations. In addition, leading Senate Democrats, with access to the same intelligence information the administration relied on, made the same kind of claims (or more sweeping ones) that the Committee now deems “exaggerated.” One of those Democrats is the chairman of the Committee, Senator Rockefeller. Not surprisingly, the Committee majority declined to include in its report the prewar statements of Senate Dems.

Paul Mirengoff goes on to point out that Democrats made statements far more misleading than that of the administration despite the presence of dissenting opinions in the NIE available to members of Congress.

Misappropriating the Great Seal of Florida?

clipped from a.abcnews.com

Pardon my levity.

Occasionally I get a reminder of Democrat unhingedness over the 2000 election, such as when I check search pages for folks who ended up at my sporadically-updated companion blog, Bad Blogs Blood. One visitor dropped by my page regarding the issue of who stopped the Florida vote recount in 2000. The person had used the Google search for "gop operatives" + "florida" + "recount" and I decided to see what the first result (from www.democrats.com) had to say.

There were a few complaints that I didn't recognize, and one of them in particular was interesting enough for me to research.

One thing first. At the top of the page, just before the laundry list, it says:

To comment on the crimes cited below, click here.

Crimes, eh? Here's the crime in question, apparently committed by Jeb Bush:

Abuse of State Seal

Letter sent by Florida Republican party with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots

(democrats.com)

As a lifelong Florida resident, I found it surprising that the action described might represent a crime. So I looked up the Florida Statues. As of 2007, we had this:

493.6124 Use of state seal; prohibited.--No person or licensee shall use any facsimile reproduction or pictorial portion of the Great Seal of the State of Florida on any badge, credentials, identification card, or other means of identification used in connection with any activities regulated under this chapter.
(The Florida Statutes don't link directly. Choose the appropriate year and then look it up by number)(I'm happy to report that the site now does link directly!--that's a welcome change)

Doesn't exactly sound like what Bush did, does it? But as the 2007 statutes might not represent the law in 2000 ... but actually they do.

I can't find any hint (other than that above) that using the state seal of Florida as described is unlawful.

Sent them a message, I did. Perhaps it goes in the vertical file once they note my party affiliation (they asked for it on the form). Maybe not. I guess we'll see. Here's the message:

What's this about the "crime" of using the state seal on a campaign letter? I can't find any evidence that the practice is criminal. If you can't either, then I suggest you re-word some aspects of your Web page.

Note:
I don't normally append a note for spelling fixes, but let's just say that there is only one "s" in "Misappropriating" when it is spelled correctly.

*****

November midpoint: casualty trend continues to dip, trial of Shiite former officials approved by Maliki

The numbers from Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, at the current pace, should trend lower for the fourth straight month.

Nov-07	251
Oct-07	679
Sep-07	848
Aug-07	1,674
Jul-07	1,690
Jun-07	1,345
May-07	1,980
Apr-07	1,821
Mar-07	2,977
Feb-07	3,014
Jan-07	1,802

(ICCC)

Captain's Quarters pointed to a new report by Michael Yon out of Baghdad indicating that the Muslims want their Christian neighbors to return to the old neighborhoods. Christians were some of the first to flee sectarian violence since al Qaeda tended to direct persecutions against them.

The willingness of the government to allow the prosecution to two former officials involved in sectarian violence through Iraq's health ministry makes for additional good news. The two Shiites used their position of authority to assist in violence against Sunnis. The move sends a message to Sunnis that Iraq will observe the rule of law--a critical step in the move toward a truly representative government.

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidates continued to paint Iraq as a lost cause to loud applause. Go figure.

*****

More stupidity from Democrats (I shouldn't be surprised)

The Democrat-controlled Congress is hands-down worse than I ever thought it would be. Very fortunately, part of its ineptitude includes an inability to meet its own legislative goals.

Fresh from their absolutely idiotic insistence of giving official recognition to the Armenian genocide from early last century (straining U.S. relations with Turkey at a critical juncture), Democrats continued to parade their stupidity via their questioning of Michael Mukasey.

Under sharp questioning about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, Mukasey said there may be occasions when the president's wartime powers would supersede legal requirements to obtain a warrant to conduct wiretaps.

In such a case, Mukasey said, "the president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law. . . . The president doesn't stand above the law. But the law emphatically includes the Constitution."

Judge Mukasey tried to give the Senate committee a lesson in constitutional law--the branches of government are equal, and therefore Congress can't take away the President's powers--but it was pearls before swine. Dim bulb Patrick Leahy didn't get the point:

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was "troubled by your answer. I see a loophole big enough to drive a truck through."

There you have it! The Constitution: it's a loophole!

(Powerline)(embedded material from the Washington Post)

Democratic leaders have been in full-on meltdown mode ever since their key strategic victory (losing in Iraq) began to slip away.

*****

Dean Barnett strikes close to the mark

While I do enjoy dropping in on liberal/progressive/leftist blogs to have a look around, it was far from my first impulse after the bridge collapse disaster in Minneapolis.

Dean Barnett took that step, and offered up a pithy observation as a result:

[T]he reason the Democrats have such an advantage in on-line organizing and energy is because they have hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people who angrily obsess about Iraq and George W. Bush on a 24/7 basis. Let’s face it – if a bridge collapsing in Minnesota makes you angry at George W. Bush, the results of your political Rorschach Test are conclusive. You’re a nut. But a useful nut; you’re the kind of nut who probably opens your heart and your wallet to the causes that strike your fancy.

LEST I BE ACCUSED OF suggesting that the left has the exclusive franchise in this sort of monomania, the right has its sliver of kooks and misfits who jam every event into a one-size-fits-all-events ideological prism. Blogger “Psycheout” at Blogs 4 Brownback (which I’m glad to say has nothing to do with the Brownback campaign) responded to the disaster by writing:

“Whether terrorism or a failure on the part of big government, it’s clear to anyone with eyes that government doesn’t work. Private enterprise always does better than the Feds. It’s time to cut the Federal Government down to size.”

(HughHewitt@townhall.com)

I frequently run into Bush-haters who appear to possess that type of dementia. As I survey political blogs, I run across blog after blog that posts bits of a news story and then finds some far-fetched way to link it to Bush (or somebody from the opposite side of the political spectrum--like Karl Rove).

As Barnett notes, the commentary for liberal blogs is the real indicator of the activist Democrat ("netroots") mindset. It's hard to imagine (though I suppose it's possible) that people with such a low grade of public political discourse have the capacity to defend their views reasonably.

It is important to note, as Barnett has done, that the left has no monopoly on nutty views. The distressing thing, for me, is the difficulty I've had in finding voices from the left who can engage in mature debate over the issues.

Ever the optimist, I'll continue to assume I'm just looking in the wrong places.

Hillary Clinton, military expert

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon told Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton that her questions about how the U.S. plans to eventually withdraw from Iraq boosts enemy propaganda.

In a stinging rebuke to a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman responded to questions Clinton raised in May in which she urged the Pentagon to start planning now for the withdrawal of American forces.
(AP, via Yahoo! News)

Naturally, Senator Clinton will refuse to acknowledge her gift-wrapped gift o' propaganda and accuse the administration of un-American stifling of debate.

Her staff seems to be on-message on her behalf already:

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called Edelman's answer "at once outrageous and dangerous," and said the senator would respond to his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

It's dangerous to criticize somebody for making a criticism that is dangerous for U.S. foreign policy goals. Got it?