Vote- like your children's lives depend on the outcome, because, they do.Seven Reasons Why Karl Rove Is Optimistic
Chance of a Lifetime...For the GOP!
"What is pathetic about this Bush hatred is its pathetic parochialism This pathetic idea that there aren't any questions is ludicrous. "
Mark Steyn Interview: Money quote (for Atlas) (minute 7:47, Part II)
Pamela: Hi this is Pamela from Atlas Shrugs.....
Mark Steyn: Hi Pamela. Big fan of yours
Pamela: YAY!
From Steyn? I can die and go to heaven now. My day, month, year is made. Totally.
Here's the audio in two parts, anyone who wants to convert to MP3?
Download mark_steyn_part_i.wav
Download mark_steyn_part_ii.wav
Mark Steyn (!) conducted an interview with a group of us - one of One Jerusalem.org's Newsmaker interviews. The sagacious Stein is one of the most important voices of our generation. His latest book America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It (if you haven't read it buy it.) His book and his writings are a warning to America and the free world. His message echos Paul Belien's exhortation against the welfare state.
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are.
And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"—while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn’t violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy.
The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West—wedded to a multiculturalism that undercuts its own confidence, a welfare state that nudges it toward sloth and self-indulgence, and a childlessness that consigns it to oblivion—is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization.
Europe, laments Steyn, is almost certainly a goner. The future, if the West has one, belongs to America alone—with maybe its cousins in brave Australia. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world’s last best hope.
Steyn argues that, contra the liberal cultural relativists, America should proclaim the obvious: we do have a better government, religion, and culture than our enemies, and we should spread America’s influence around the world—for our own sake as well as theirs.
On Iran, Stein has written;
If we’d understood Iran back in 1979, we’d understand better the challenges we face today. Come to that, we might not even be facing them. But, with hindsight, what strikes you about the birth of the Islamic Republic is the near total lack of interest by analysts in that adjective: Islamic. Iran was only the second Islamist state, after Saudi Arabia—and, in selecting as their own qualifying adjective the family name, the House of Saud at least indicated a conventional sense of priorities, as the legions of Saudi princes whoring and gambling in the fleshpots of the West have demonstrated exhaustively. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue—though, as the Royal Family has belatedly discovered vis-à-vis the Islamists, they’re somewhat overdrawn on that front. The difference in Iran is simple: with the mullahs, there are no London escort agencies on retainer to supply blondes only. When they say “Islamic Republic,” they mean it. And refusing to take their words at face value has bedeviled Western strategists for three decades.
According to Stein, it is the intersection of the East and West that is at issue. In his travels through Europe that he found the most hostile Muslims in ........ France.
In once homogeneous Western cultures they have become, in a generation, bi-cultural. History was on the march very quickly in Europe.
The Democrats were so condescending on Iraq somehow George W. has squandered the good will of France and Germany. But it wasn't so, if you were in Chirac's position with an enormous population of Muslims under 20 and unemployed, he had little choice.
Big government is a national security issue. The welfare state weakens the great
No responsible political party at this time should be proposing entitlements. Exactly what Paul Belien said in our VLOG interview here.
Rogue countries observe Kim Jong Il and think if he gets away with it, why can't I? So psycho states ...........
Even our friends in the world begins to doubt America's will. Reasonable countries will conclude America is not a reliable leader. America will not survive as a beacon of liberty.
He believes the current global conflict with Islam has its roots in history. We must contain its worst elements. Islam has changed dramatically over the last four decades. Jihadism has gone mainstream.
"Demography is a critical component to the fall of the West."
"How hard a nut multiculturalism to crack is a major problem."
I asked Steyn if he thought it was possible to get elected in America on an America is alone, no welfare state platform. I told him his warning echoed Belien against the welfare state but people vote with their wallets and could such a platform survive a jihad loving, welfare loving media. Condi Rice was vigorously pursuing a multilateral foreign policy which runs counter to what is necessary.
STEYN: " On that last point for example, I agree with you. There are certainly elements in the Bush administration that agree with you on that too. That in fact, the State Department, the sort of striped pants permanent bureaucracy has succeeded in miring the second term of this administration in generally pointless diplomacy. But I don't believe there isn't any downside to running against the the United Nations. Unless you happen to be on certain of the coastal regions of America and certain Ivy League college towns, you could run on an anti-UN platform and be elected almost anywhere in this country. You would be demonized by the New York Times as some Neanderthal but I don't think the American people would mind. I think they'd be broadly supportive of that.
But the point to understand here Pamela is that you can't suddenly introduce some these things six weeks before an election. You've got to .....some of these things need to be out there and you've got to be planting the seeds for them and changing the people's minds beyond the political process really.
You've got to be changing people's minds on a lot of the conventional wisdom on welfare, conventional wisdom on multi-culturalism wherever they raise their heads.
The advantage that America has is that a lot these countries are going to be going over the precipice before America and it's hard to argue that Europe is the way we ought to go when every time you switch on the evening news there's buildings in flames and "youths" as they call them hurling Molotov cocktails into police stations.
"What is pathetic about this Bush hatred is its pathetic parochialism This pathetic idea that there aren't any questions is ludicrous. "
Ann of Boker Tov Boulder asked a wonderful question because Steyn gave the most interesting and achievable objectives . She said that it was all so depressing and what did Steyn see as a best case scenario?
Best case scenario would look something like this; Certain European countries, mainly European countries, will see whats happening in other parts of the continent and take steps not to be sucked down with the European Union.
The best case scenario in the Middle East would be if we succeed in establishing a place for politics in the Middle East that is outside the mosque. At the moment, because of the repressiveness of the Mubarak sand the House of Saud, the only political space for politics is inside the mosque. If you can create some democratic space outside the mosque there's a chance you can midwife not perfect countries but more moderate countries that would greatly kind of lower the kind of jihad fever.
Best case scenario for Canada is it decides to get real and join the anglosphere and stop pretending to part of the European Union in the wrong hemisphere and decides to be more like Australia.
The best case in America is we accept that in a two party system it would be helpful to have two sane parties. And the Democratic party decides that the outmoded European ideas are absolutely useless. That is wants to take at the minimum a kind of Tony Blair line on national security but at the same it also wants to go to self reliance and traditional notions of American liberty when it comes to domestic issues.
Turn back the jihadists tide. Latin America which is being subverted by the jihad at the moment, becomes a beacon of restored Christendom. We effect regime change in Iran and we basically secure Israel in an environment in which we stop fetishizing the Palestinians in this death cult of depravity.
We are highly unlikely to win on all those fronts so one or two or four or more of those can be chipped away.
How fookin brilliant is that?
Other bloggers on the call included the IRIS blog, Avi Green of Tel Chai nation, Pastorius of Infidel Bloggers Alliance, American Thinker, Warren Cozak, Jerry Gordon of Israpundit, Wizbang, Tigerhawk, Rick of Jewish Current Issues, John Hawkins Right Wing News, Omri at Mere Rhetoric who wrote a great post here
His read of the emergence of European multiculturalism is casual: "we need more plumbers, but we're certainly not going to do that work... we'll bring in kind of violent unassimilated immigrants, and to make ourselves feel better about their violent unassimilated we'll celebrate our tolerance for it". The causality between demographics, cultural exhaustion, and the welfare state is probably impossible to untangle, but his description is certainly how it happened on the ground - and it's certainly why journalists and authors find it so hard to criticize the "youths" that are rioting now.
On the other hand, he's not trading on any simplistic nostalgia for a Europe that never existed. We're not dealing here with a simple Huns-at-the-gate scenario: political Islam is not just barbaric primitivism. Rather, it is the intersection of the East and West, the Muslim world and the Christian world. In several places he alluded to the standard academic trope for this, which is that it's the intersection between the developing world and modernity - people driven by an ancient ideology who now have access to planes. It seems like he's still marked by the shock of traveling to Europe and the Middle East after 9/11 and discovering that France's Muslims were far more hostile and alienated than the people that he met in the Arab world. Osama Bin Laden might have lived in a cave, but the Hamburg 9/11 terrorists and the French gangbanging rioters live in apartments and have televisions.
He's also quite skeptical about the potential for secular values or secular movements to form a bulwark against political Islam as it spreads across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He took time out to criticize the anti-theism of Chris Hitchens and the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins as empirical failures (he didn't use either of those labels, although that's what he was alluding to - Hitch's anti-theism is well-known, and Wired just posted an essential article on New Atheism). They might be sound in theory, but they're simply not appealing enough to form the basis for an ideology that can provide a backbone to the people who'll be fighting the good fight for the next two or three generations. As he said, "history is on the march very quickly in Europe"
Listen to it all.................
UPDATE: Ewin converts too MP3
Download steyn_20061026_1.mp3
Download steyn_20061026_2.mp3
Hillary stands a lot of her and her husband's history on its head in this report from the Gay City News:
In an appearance early Wednesday evening in front of roughly three-dozen LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered] leaders, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated that she would not oppose efforts by Eliot Spitzer, the odds-on favorite to become the new governor, to enact a same-sex marriage law in New York. She also suggested that language she used when she first ran for the Senate in 2000 explaining her opposition to marriage equality based on the institution's moral, religious, and traditional foundations had not reflected the "many long conversations" she's had since with "friends" and others, and that her advocacy on LGBT issues "has certainly evolved."
Gosh, what a burn. Especially from the co-President of the most ethical administration in history. From Wikipedia:
With a Democratic Congress, Clinton said, much more is possible...
How true.
And that's what makes it so scary.
24 Comments » "I am so sick and tired of hearing/reading about Shillary and what she “stands for”... And even more tired of hearing about the LGBT folk... How many of them are there really? 1-2% of the population?" -The question of why 1.51% of the population--
Bill and Hillary Clinton's Global Tax Man
What About the Children? [ 1, 2 ]
Michael J Fox epitomy of emotionalizing the right to murder [ 1, 2 ]
My Two Cents On Rush
The Anchoress filled in for me today, and admirably, in two excellent posts; if you haven't read them, then for goodness' sake, start scrolling immediately. On the latest of these, though, I have to take exception with one point, where I think she has inadvertently erred. She had this comment about Rush Limbaugh's commentary on Michael J. Fox:
Like Betsy Newmark, I basically think - from what I've read - that Limbaugh was very foolish in his initial response to the McCaskill ad by Fox. I'm not excusing his bloviating, but I do think I understand why Limbaugh lost it.
Several CQ readers objected to this characterization of Rush's commentary, and I think rightly so. The Anchoress relied on the media's reporting on his commentary, rather than the transcript. Here is what Rush said about Fox:
I must share this. I have gotten a plethora of e-mails from people saying Michael J. Fox has admitted in interviews that he goes off his medication for Parkinson's disease when he appears before Congress or other groups as a means of illustrating the ravages of the disease. So lest there be any misunderstanding, we talked about a half hour ago of the commercial that's running for Claire McCaskill featuring Michael J. Fox on what appears to be when he's off his meds. I have never seen him this way and I stated when I was commenting to you about it that he was either off his medication or acting. He is an actor after all, and started hearing from people, "Oh, no, I've seen him on TV this way, this is how the disease has affected him when he's not on his medications." Then the e-mails started coming in saying he's admitted not to taking them in certain circumstances so as to illustrate how the disease affects people. All of which I understand, and I'm not even critical of that. Parkinson's disease is hideous. Let me just stress once again in what I said in closing this out, that I think this is exploitative in a way that's unbecoming either Claire McCaskill or Michael J. Fox, because in this commercial for Claire McCaskill he's using his illness in a way to mislead voters that there's a cure for Parkinson's disease if only Claire McCaskill gets elected, if only Jim Talent is defeated. And of course it's all about stem cell research, which is a huge ballot initiative in Missouri anyway. I'm sorry, Missoura. He pronounced it Missoura. There are two ways to pronounce my home state, Missouri and Missoura. And Missoura, in certain sectors is the preferred pronunciation. It is a way to relate to certain Missourans. We never say Missourans, we say Missourians. But it's a way to reach out, "I understand you, I know your state" and so forth. There's a lot of politics in the commercial. But Mr. Fox was allowing his illness to be used as a tactic to trying to secure the election of a Democrat senator who is going to somehow, her election is going to lead to the cure for Parkinson disease via stem cell research because her opponent, Jim Talent, opposes it, which is not true. He may oppose embryonic stem cell research, does not oppose adult stem cell research or even cord blood, I don't believe, research, umbilical cord research.
In fact, today Fox revealed that he had taken too much medication, not withheld it, and Rush apologized for his speculation. He had said that either Fox stopped taking his medication or acted out the symptoms for the commercial, and corrected the record. However, that did not come from idle speculation -- Fox admitted to doing exactly that for his appearance before Congress in his book, Lucky Man (page 247):
I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling.
I don't even disagree with Fox's choice for his 1999 testimony. I think it probably provided a much-needed context for people unfamiliar with Parkinson's in younger sufferers, and Fox always had been an image of youthfulness. In fact, it was a courageous choice, and I'm sure very effective. However, with that in the open, speculation as to whether he has manipulated his symptoms for political purposes is fair game -- because he has done it in the past. If the First Mate testified to Congress to get them to publicly finance all kidney and pancreas transplants and juggled her medication to demonstrate the worst possible symptoms to make a bigger impression, speculation about her true status in other appearances would not be inappropriate in a political setting.
Rush had this to say to Katie Couric in advance of her interview with Fox today, when she asked him for a statement on the controversy:
I believe Democrats have a long history of using victims of various things as POLITICAL spokespeople because they believe they are untouchable, infallible. They are immune from criticism. But when anyone enters the POLITICAL arena of ideas they forfeit the right to be challenged on their participation and message. I have not met Mr. Fox, do not know him. I have admired his work in film and TV and his appearances on Letterman were howlers. I have nothing personal against him. But I believe his implication that only Democrats want to cure disease(s) is irresponsible (as I believed about John Edwards assuring voters Christopher Reeve would walk if only John Kerry were elected). I think this is ultimately cruel and gives people who suffer these terrible afflictions false hope. ...
He is stumping for Democrats, in the political arena, and is therefore open to analysis and criticism as we all are. His suffering is NOT fair game and I am sorry if people drew that conclusion about my comments, but I believe this happens precisely because NO criticism of victims is ever allowed, at all, which as I say is the Democrat strategy in putting them forward.
Fox wants to get federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hEsc) research. The Anchoress covered the futility of this research thus far, so I won't belabor that point. It's true that further research might find a way to use hEsc for a stable therapeutic use, but it's also true that private funding has not appeared because of the lack of results from hEsc. Other stem-cell types have produced much more concrete results. I believe that Fox is genuine in his concern and truly sees an opportunity for federal funding if the Democrats control Congress, and he is working towards that end. His motives are honorable, even if I strongly disagree with his point of view -- and my wife suffers from diseases that hEsc advocates claim they will cure with this research, so I'm not exactly a disinterested observer, either.
However, if Fox wants to enter politics, then he had better understand that his rhetoric and actions will come under criticism, especially when he has manipulated his symptoms for political purposes in the past. Rush provides pointed commentary, but his comments about Fox did not cross the line or even approach it. Rather than talk about Fox's supposed victimhood at the hands of Rush Limbaugh, we should be talking about the issue of hEsc research and its lack of any productive and practical therapies -- but that wasn't really the point of Fox's ads anyway.
Note: Two points. First, CQ readers know that Rush has been a gracious friend to me in the past, so I do take some of this personally. Second, as I mentioned in the post, the First Mate has a number of illnesses, chiefly renal failure, rejected transplants, and total blindness, all of which hEsc advocates believe can eventually be cured through this research. The FM will be the first to tell you that she would reject any therapy that came from destroyed embryos; she finds the prospect ghastly. Earlier commenters asked whether a conservative would eschew therapy if it would save their life, and you have the answer from at least one.
UPDATE: Scrappleface has weighed in on the controversy, and his premiere video is climbing the YouTube charts.
http://theanchoressonline.com/2006/10/26/fox-on-couric-tonight/
Posted by Anchoress at 01:52 PM | Comments (57)
I heard Limbaugh's original broadcast. Contrary to what the MSM and their democrat masters would have us believe, he didn't make fun of Michael J. Fox's medical condition. Rather, he made a few good points. This is from the transcript of Rush's monologue of Monday, October 23:
Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician. In the process of doing that, creating an impression like John Edwards tried to do [when he stated that stem cell research would have allowed Christopher Reeve to get out of his wheelchair and walk] that is not reality. Michael J. Fox is using his illness as a way to mislead voters into thinking that their vote for a single United States Senator has a direct impact on stem cell research in Missouri. It doesn't, and it won't. So Mr. Fox is using his illness as another tactic to try to secure the election of a Democrat senator by implying that with her election, that we'll be on the road to stem cell research her opponent opposes and people who suffer from Parkinson's disease as he does will have a cure. It's a negative ad, and negative ads work, and people criticize them all the time as I am doing to this one, but when you see it, there's something wrong about it in the get-go. It's the exploitation of someone's illness. I wonder if this would become a trend and all kinds of illness were being exploited how people would end up reacting to it and feeling about it. So if this was not an act, then I apologize. I've not seen this type of appearance by Michael J. Fox before and that's why it struck me the way it did. But despite all that, I mean it's pitiable and it's very sad anybody has this disease, because it is debilitating in ways that people that don't have it don't even understand. But to exploit it like this in misrepresenting the political agenda of a particular candidate, there's nothing admirable about that. [emphasis mine - dj505]
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102506/content/democrats_exploit.guest.html
In sum:
1. Fox is so grossly misstating Talent's position as to be lying about it. He implies that Talent doesn't want a cure for Parkinson's found, while the saintly McCaskill does.
2. Limbaugh doesn't "make fun" of Fox's disease.
3. Rush makes it clear that, whether Fox is being manipulated or if he's a willing shill for the dems, he isn't immune from questioning or criticism.
The dems have been doing this for the past few years: get a "victim" to pitch one of their idiot policies knowing that the Republicans can't rebut without opening themselves to attacks of being ol' meanies. Rush knew he'd be attacked for daring to question Fox, and (once again) Rush was right.
I have listened to Rush this entire week; Rush is absolutely right on target with his analysis; this was not an attempt by Fox to further along research he desperately believes in; this was a pure political ad stumping for a candidate and a party Fox wants desperately to win; pure and simple. Democrats roll out these people simply because of the "hands off" policy that the public demands with the handicapped and the underprivileged.
MICKEY KAUS has further thoughts on the New Jersey gay marriage decision.
MUCH MORE ON VOTER FRAUD IN MISSOURI, which is beginning to get national attention.
JOSH MANCHESTER looks at ten kilotons and the port of Long Beach.
(Via Austin Bay). Michael Wermuth, head of RAND’s Homeland Security Program, spoke with PajamasMedia and answered a few questions as to why Long Beach, and why this delivery method.
In a campaign filled with manufactured controversies, overhyped scandals, and mean-spirited personal attacks, this is without doubt today’s most idiotic lefty brouhaha: 
