A Plan for Victory?

This is the most heartening thing I've read in two months:

We're Going to Win'
The president finally has a plan for victory.
by Fred Barnes
12/25/2006, Volume 012, Issue 15

It turns out you only have to attend a White House Christmas party to find out where President Bush is headed on Iraq. One guest who shook hands with Bush in the receiving line told him, "Don't let the bastards get you down." Bush, slightly startled but cheerful, replied, "Don't worry. I'm not." The guest followed up: "I think we can win in Iraq." The president's reply was emphatic: "We're going to win." Another guest informed Bush he'd given some advice to the Iraq Study Group, and said its report should be ignored. The president chuckled and said he'd made his position clear when he appeared with British prime minister Tony Blair. The report had never mentioned the possibility of American victory. Bush's goal in Iraq, he said at the photo-op with Blair, is "victory." Now Bush is ready to gamble his presidency on a last-ditch effort to defeat the Sunni insurgency and establish a sustainable democracy in Iraq. He is prepared to defy the weary wisdom of Washington that it's too late, that the war in Iraq is lost, and that Bush's lone option is to retreat from Iraq as gracefully and with as little loss of face as possible. Bush only needed what his press secretary, Tony Snow, called a "plan for winning." Now he has one. It's not to be found among the 79 recommendations of Jim Baker's Iraq Study Group. The ISG report was tossed aside by the White House. Nor was the scheme leaked by the Pentagon last week ever close to being adopted. That plan would pull thousands of American troops out of a combat role and turn them into trainers of the Iraqi army. The result would be increased sectarian violence and an Iraqi army not yet equipped to quash the swelling insurgency-leading to a gap of time in which there would likely be a further--probably fatal--collapse of civic order in Baghdad, and then elsewhere in Iraq. Last Monday Bush was, at last, briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, gave him a thumbnail sketch of it during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House. The president's reaction, according to a senior adviser, was "very positive." Authored by Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the plan (which can be read at aei.org/publication25292) is well thought-out and detailed, but fundamentally quite simple. It is based on the idea--all but indisputable at this point--that no political solution is possible in Iraq until security is established, starting in Baghdad. The reverse--a bid to forge reconciliation between majority Shia and minority Sunni--is a nonstarter in a political environment drenched in the blood of sectarian killings. Why would the Keane-Kagan plan succeed where earlier efforts failed? It envisions a temporary addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. The initial mission would be to secure and hold the mixed Baghdad neighborhoods of Shia and Sunni residents where most of the violence occurs. Earlier efforts had cleared many of those sections of the city without holding them. After which, the mass killings resumed. Once neighborhoods are cleared, American and Iraqi troops in this plan would remain behind, living day-to-day among the population. Local government leaders would receive protection and rewards if they stepped in to provide basic services. Safe from retaliation by terrorists, residents would begin to cooperate with the Iraqi government. The securing of Baghdad would be followed by a full-scale drive to pacify the Sunni-majority Anbar province. The truth is that not all of Iraq needs to be addressed by an increased American presence. Most of southern Iraq and all of the Kurdish north are close to being free of sectarian violence. It's Baghdad that has become the "center of gravity" for the insurgency, according to Keane. And it could be brought under control by the end of 2007. The Keane-Kagan plan is not revolutionary. Rather, it is an application of a counterinsurgency approach that has proved to be effective elsewhere, notably in Vietnam. There, Gen. Creighton Abrams cleared out the Viet Cong so successfully that the South Vietnamese government took control of the country. Only when Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1974 were the North Vietnamese able to win. Before Bush announces his "new way forward" in Iraq in early January, he wants to be assured of two things. The first is that his plan can succeed. Initial evaluations of the Keane-Kagan plan at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the government have been positive. Alone among proposals for Iraq, the new Keane-Kagan strategy has a chance to succeed. Bush's second concern is to avert an explosion of opposition on Capitol Hill. Because this plan offers a credible prospect of winning in Iraq, moderate Democrats and queasy Republicans, the White House thinks, will be inclined to stand back and let Bush give it a shot. The sooner Bush orders the plan into action, the better chances are that next Christmas he'll be telling White House guests that winning in Iraq is not just a goal. It could actually be happening. --Fred Barnes, for the Editors

Iraq Surrender Group

A Commission’s Folly
By Sean Daniels

Headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the Iraq Study Group issued its highly anticipated report yesterday, stating that the “situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating” and “violence is increasing in scope and lethality.” So far, the obvious. While not an absolute failure, as some analysts assert, the ISG report is nonetheless a self-contradictory mix of recommendations that affirms some of President Bush’s Iraq policy in the short term, while threatening to undermine the War on Terror by calling for a “new diplomatic offensive” [1] that will only empower Iran, Syria and, by extension, their terrorist proxies who are responsible for the “scope and lethality” of Iraqi violence. It suggests American troops may begin redeploying, setting an estimated date of early 2008. This will only add credence to leftist demands that Bush withdrawal troops even sooner, leading to the fall of Baghdad, a terrorist rampage, new fodder for terrorist recruitment, and a low point for American prestige unmatched since Vietnam.

Already, terrorists are rejoicing at the report, calling the new plan a victory for “Islamic resistance.” Hamas asset Abu Abdullah exclaimed, “The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen. Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier?” In this, he sounds very much like Osama bin Laden's assessment of Vietnam, Beirut, and Mogadishu.

Pro-American Iraqi politicians, working to establish a non-sectarian democracy in the midst of the Muslim world, expressed their dismay at the plan. Kurdish parliamentarian Mahmud Othman responded with outrage: “They have no right to do this. This is unfair.” A leading advisor to Prime Minister al-Maliki said the U.S. has an obligation to support Iraq “all the way,” adding, “We need their support to go forward.”

Ironically, the ISG affirms its support of the Iraqi democracy: “We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq.” [2] Elsewhere, the authors reject an immediate troop withdrawal, [3] which in itself rebuffs the antiwar Left and much of the Democratic leadership (Murtha, Pelosi, Kerry, and others).

Although the report avoids confirming the prejudices of the antiwar Left in terms of withdrawal, its recommendation that the Bush administration reverse policy in regard to Iran and Syria mistakes the nature and interests of the enemy we face. On this count, moreover, the study actually contradicts itself, since it says at another point that promoting unrest in Iraq allows Iran to frustrate American aims in the region. The report calls for the immediate launch of a “diplomatic offensive” to engage Iran and Syria by appealing to “their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” [4] However, bogging our forces down in Iraq and focusing international attention on the supposed failure of U.S. foreign policy particularly suits Iranian and Syrian interests. Chaos in Iraq only deflects international attention from Iran’s nuclear program as well as Iran and Syria’s covert war against Lebanon and Israel, through its terror proxy Hezbollah. For these reasons, Iran has worked so diligently to further chaos in Iraq; why anyone would anyone presume that they would suddenly change their ways when they are beginning to pay off?

The other option that the report gives for engaging these two terror regimes is the use of incentives. But we have already offered both countries various economic incentives, which they have spurned. On top of this, believing that “incentives” or “disincentives” can influence Islamist fanatics like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who avow that the United States must submit to Islam or be destroyed, is folly. Rewarding the leading state sponsors of terrorism for facilitating the killing of Americans is a recipe for increased militancy, as the terrorsts' reactions demonstrate.

The report also ridiculously demands a “sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Israeli peace,” including a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. [5] How settling a sixty-year-old Arab-Jewish dispute will settle a civil war between Muslim sectarians, fueled by Iran and Syria, defies comprehension. Nor does it make sense to push for a two-state solution at a time when the Palestinians have so clearly demonstrated, in Gaza in particular, that they will merely convert any acquired territory into a staging ground for their own terrorist war against Israel. There have, in fact, been reports of al-Qaeda assets in “Palestine.”

The Left’s unremitting criticism of a war its elected officials voted to launch, fueled by its hatred of President Bush personally, has spread dissatisfaction throughout the nation and amplified the calls of those who demand we get out. Their rhetorical success has forced the president to consider quick solutions in Iraq. President Bush has repeatedly told the American public that Iraq is part of a long War on Terror, requiring sacrifice and patience. It will take time to stabilize Iraq and fend off our enemies. To declare failure and urge a significant retreat by 2008 when Iraq’s present government has only been six months in office will only embolden our enemy and hand Iraqis into the hands of those who seek to perpetrate a massive bloodbath before establishing a new Caliphate, from whence they may export terrorism to new vistas. At this stage, it will be the greatest folly for us to abandon this central front in the War on Terror and, along with it, the hope for democracy in the Middle East.

and

Incoming Congress Prepares to Launch "Operation Surrender"
By Ann Coulter

The "bipartisan" Iraq panel has recommended that Iran and Syria can help stabilize Iraq. You know, the way Germany and Russia helped stabilize Poland in '39.

Now that Democrats have won the House, they can concentrate on losing the war. Despite all the phony conservative Democrats who got elected as gun-totin' hawks, the Democrats will uniformly vote to dismantle every aspect of the war on terrorism. They've started a runaway train and can't stop it now.

The Democratic base is at a fever pitch with visions of storm troopers listening to their phone calls and ruthlessly torturing innocent accountants at Guantanamo, where the average inmate has his own lawyer, his own prayer rug, and is wondering what to do about that extra weight – known as the "Gitmo 20" – he's put on since being captured. They are oddly copacetic about actual storm troopers' daily harassment of actual citizens at airport security checkpoints. Leftists have no problem with government oppression as long as it's mandatory and applied equally to all Americans.

In a broadcast on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, NBC's Matt Lauer tried to nail down the Manhattan portion of his audience by aggressively questioning President Bush about the possible use of "waterboarding" against terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lauer said ominously, "It's been reported that with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was what they call 'waterboarded.'"

At NBC, they apparently expected most Americans to react to this fact by exclaiming: They did WHAT to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Wait – are you sure about that? OK, that's it. I will never vote Republican again!

President Bush refused to discuss techniques used on terrorists, saying, "We don't want the enemy to adjust." But Americans "need to know," he said, "we're using techniques within the law to protect them."

While normal people would be happy if we were using cattle prods on the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Lauer was testy about the possible use of waterboarding against him. "I don't want to let this 'within the law' issue slip," he said.

"I mean, if, in fact, there was waterboarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – and for the viewers, that's basically you strap someone to a board, and you make them feel as if they're going to drown. You put them under water. If that was legal and within the law, why couldn't you do it at Guantanamo? Why'd you have to go to a secret location around the world?"

In point of fact, we strap people to wooden boards and make them feel like they're drowning all the time in this country. Mostly at theme parks like Six Flags.

Bush again said he wasn't going to talk about techniques. But Lauer's relentless grilling was getting to him. If he'd been at Gitmo, at this point Bush would have demanded a lawyer, another copy of the Quran, and a couple of chocolate eclairs.

Lauer continued to pester the president, demanding to know whether these "alternative techniques you use...if they are used, are you at all concerned that at some point, even if you get results, there's a blurring the lines of – between ourselves and the people we're trying to protect us against?"

Hey, I forget: When did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed use aggressive interrogation techniques against a known mass murderer in an effort to thwart another 9/11-style attack on thousands of innocent civilians?

There are few better examples of how out of touch leftists are. They go right to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and expect Americans to be outraged that he may have been waterboarded.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks and is believed to have played a role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Bali nightclub bombings, the filmed beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, a thwarted 2002 attack on a bank tower in Los Angeles, and Operation Bojinka, a plot to blow up 11 commercial airliners simultaneously. Oh, and he took home the coveted "world's craziest terrorist" prize at al-Qaeda's end-of-season office party last year.

I think waterboarding should be a reward for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: OK, you've been good, Mohammed, we're only going to waterboard you today. Let's get you out of those cold electrodes and onto a nice, warm waterboard, OK?

Now that they're our new best friends, how about we turn to Iran and Syria for help on our interrogation techniques?

More to come later.

Apologize for the War

A recent Time magazine article ran the following: "Would it really kill the neocons to apologize for the Iraq War?"

Of course, such idiocy got my blood boiling. Apologize for the war? Yeah, Saddam wasn't really so bad, was he? They stop just sort of going all glazed-over nastalgic, but only just.

Honestly, the idea is moronic. I don't know if I'm really a neocon, though I suppose when it comes to the war I am. And I am not going to apologize, because I see no reason to. I'm not an ends justify the means kind of guy. Saddam was a brutal dictator who deserves what hes going to get, and it should've been 12 years ago.

Oh, but the violence and death, right? So I guess Saddam's torture chambers were better, eh? Well, at least we didn't see them every day on the news, so what you don't know can't hurt you. Right? Sure thing. And as Christopher Hitchens said just the other day, the violence we see today is really just a part of the lingering effects of Saddam's rule. We waited 12 years too long to take this guy out.

The entire issue is basically devoted to the coming to power of "moderates" and more importantly the return of realists (who, as the WSJ has noted here, "deny reality, and embrace an ideology where talk is productive and governments are sincere"; see also this article). Of course, realists want "stability". Well, I'm a neocon, and I think stability is overrated. I happen to think it was right to take out Saddam and his murderous regime. Here is, again (I don't know how many times I've pointed this article out) perhaps the best column of the year, by Mark Steyn, worth quoting at length for the sheer brilliance it is:

Three years ago, in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it fell to the then prime minister of Canada to make the most witless public statement on the subject by any G7 leader.

"Your president has won," Jean Chretien told ABC News in early March 2003. So there was no need to have a big ol' war because, with 250,000 American and British troops on his borders, Saddam was "in a box." "He won," said Mr. Chretien of Bush. "He has created a situation where Saddam cannot do anything anymore. He has troops at the door and inspectors on the ground... You're winning it big."

That's easy for him to say, and committing other countries' armies to "contain" Iraq is easy for him to do. A quarter million soldiers cannot sit in the sands of Araby twiddling their thumbs indefinitely. "Containment" is not a strategy but the absence of strategy - and thug states understand it as such. In Saddam's case, he'd supposedly been "contained" since the first Gulf War in 1991, when Bush Sr. balked at finishing what he'd started. "Mr. President," Joe Biden, the Democrat Senator and beloved comic figure, condescendingly explained to Bush Jr. in 2002, "there is a reason your father stopped and did not go to Baghdad. The reason he stopped is he didn't want to be there for five years."

By my math, that means the Americans would have been out in spring of 1996. Instead, 12 years on, in the spring of 2003 the USAF and RAF were still policing the no-fly zone, ineffectually bombing Iraq every other week. And, in place of congratulations for their brilliant "containment" of Saddam, Washington was blamed for UN sanctions and systematically starving to death a million Iraqi kids - or two million, according to which "humanitarian" agency you believe. The few Iraqi moppets who weren't deceased suffered, according to the Nobel-winning playwright and thinker Harold Pinter, from missing genitals and/or rectums that leaked blood contaminated by depleted uranium from Anglo-American ordnance. Touring Iraq a few weeks after the war, I made a point of stopping in every hospital and enquiring about this pandemic of genital-less Iraqis: not a single doctor or nurse had heard about it. Whether or not BUSH LIED!! PEOPLE DIED!!!, it seems that THE ANTI-WAR CROWDS SQUEAK!!! BUT NO RECTUMS LEAK!!!!

A NEW study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that, aside from the terrific press, continuing this policy would not have come cheap for America: if you object (as John Kerry did) to the $400-600 billion price tag since the war, another three years of "containment" would have cost around $300 billion - and with no end in sight, and the alleged death toll of Iraqi infants no doubt up around six million. It would also have cost more real lives of real Iraqis: Despite the mosque bombings, there's a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shoveled into unmarked graves had Ba'athist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through the Oil-for-Food program, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines.

So three years on, unlike Francis Fukuyama and the other moulting hawks, my only regret is that America didn't invade earlier. Yeah yeah, you sneer, what about the only WMD? Sorry. Don't care. Never did. My argument for whacking Saddam was always that the price of leaving him unwhacked was too high. He was the preeminent symbol of the September 10th world; his continuation in office testified to America's lack of will, and was seen as such by, among others, Osama bin Laden: In Donald Rumsfeld's words, weakness is a provocation. So the immediate objective was to show neighboring thugs that the price of catching America's eye was too high. The long term strategic goal was to begin the difficult but necessary transformation of the region that the British funked when they cobbled together the modern Middle East in 1922.

Realism isn't really a strategy, its more like an absence of one. Let's cross out fingers and close our eyes and hope nothing bad happens. We can sit down with our enemies and settle things by conducting studies and setting up commisions. We can talk rationaly with murders and thugs, and those whose only objective is to kill us.

Spreading democracy may be like "making ice cream out of sand" to Time, but it is really the only solution. And if it doesn't work, nothing really will. Everything else is just short-sighted "realism".

Apologize? Ridiculous. The only thing to apologize for is waiting 12 years to do it.

Give Thanks

To those who keep us safe from tyranny and evil.

WeSupportU

Rumsfeld and the Realists

This is a fantastic article from the Wall Street Journal several days ago.

Rumsfeld and the Realists
Consistency is irrelevant to progressives.

BY MICHAEL RUBIN
Monday, November 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

On Dec. 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy, met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. According to declassified documents, the Reagan administration sought to re-establish long-severed relations with Baghdad amid concern about growing Iranian influence. While U.S. intelligence had earlier confirmed Saddam's use of chemical weapons, Mr. Rumsfeld did not broach the subject. His handshake with Saddam, caught on film by Iraqi television, represented a triumph for diplomatic realism.

Iran and Iraq would fight for five more years, leaving hundreds of thousands dead on the battlefield. Then, two years after a ceasefire ended the war, Saddam invaded Kuwait. In subsequent years, he would subsidize waves of Palestinian suicide-bombers, effectively ending the Oslo peace process. Saddam's career is a model of realist blowback.

On Sept. 23, 2002, as Saddam defied international inspectors and U.N. sanctions crumbled under the greed of Paris, Moscow and Iraq's neighbors, Newsweek published a cover story, "How we Helped Create Saddam," that once again thrust the forgotten handshake into public consciousness. Across both the U.S. and Britain, the story provoked press outrage. NPR conducted interviews outlining how the Reagan administration allowed Saddam to acquire dual-use equipment. Mr. Rumsfeld "helped Iraq get chemical weapons," headlined London's Daily Mail. British columnist Robert Fisk concluded that the handshake was evidence of Mr. Rumsfeld's disdain for human rights, and Amy and David Goodman of "Democracy Now!" condemned Mr. Rumsfeld for enabling Saddam's "lethal shopping spree." While 20 years too late, progressives decried the cold, realist calculations that sent people across the third world to their graves in the cause of U.S. national interest.

What a difference a war makes. Today, progressives and liberals celebrate not only Mr. Rumsfeld's departure, but the resurrection of realists like Secretary of Defense-nominee Robert Gates and James Baker. Mr. Gates was the CIA's deputy director for intelligence at the time of Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous handshake, deputy director of Central Intelligence when Saddam gassed the Kurds, and deputy national security advisor when Saddam crushed the Shiite uprising. Mr. Baker was as central. He was White House chief of staff when Reagan dispatched Mr. Rumsfeld to Baghdad and, as secretary of state, ensured Saddam's grip on power after Iraqis heeded President George H.W. Bush's Feb. 15, 1991, call for "the Iraqi people \[to\] take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside." In the months that followed, Saddam massacred tens of thousands of civilians.

While Mr. Rumsfeld worked to right past wrongs, Messrs. Gates and Baker winked at the Iraqi dictator's continuing grip on power. For progressives, this is irrelevant. Today, progressivism places personal vendetta above principle. Mr. Rumsfeld is bad, Mr. Baker is good, and consistency irrelevant.

***Progressive inconsistency will only increase with the unveiling of the Baker-Hamilton commission recommendations calling for reconciliation with both Syria and Iran. In effect, Mr. Baker's proposals are to have the White House replicate the Rumsfeld-Saddam handshake with both Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The parallels are striking. First, just as Saddam denied Kuwait's right to exist, Mr. Assad refuses to recognize Lebanese independence (Damascus has no embassy in Beirut) and Mr. Ahmadinejad calls for Israel's eradication. Washington realpolitik enabled Saddam to act out his fantasies; evidence suggests both Mr. Assad and Mr. Ahmadinejad aspire to do likewise.

Second, just as the Reagan-era Rumsfeld turned a blind eye toward Iraqi chemical weapons, so too does Mr. Baker now counsel ignoring their embrace by the Syrian and Iranian leadership. Tehran used chemical munitions in its war against Iraq, and senior Iranian officials have also threatened first-strike use of nuclear weapons. Syria is just as dangerous: On April 20, 2004, Jordanian security intercepted Syrian-based terrorists planning to target Amman with 20 tons of chemical weapons. Mr. Assad has yet to explain the incident.

And, third, there is the issue of detente enabling armament. Following his rapprochement with Washington, Saddam transformed investment into replenishment. The cost of ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait was far greater than any benefit borne of engagement.

Trade with Tehran has likewise backfired. Between 2000 and 2005, European Union trade with Iran almost tripled. During this same period, Iranian authorities used their hard currency windfall not to invest in schools and hospitals, but rather in uranium processing plants and anti-aircraft batteries. Mohammad Khatami, Mr. Ahmadinejad's predecessor and a man often labeled reformist by U.S. and European realists, showed the Islamic Republic's priorities when he spent two-thirds of his oil-boom windfall on the military. Said Mr. Khatami on April 18, 2002: "Today our army is one of the most powerful in the world. . . . It has become self-sufficient, and is on the road to further development." Subsequent discovery of Iran's covert nuclear facilities later that year clarified his boast. The Assad regime has shown its willingness to spend its discretionary income on a wide-range of weaponry and terror groups.

Realism promotes short-term gain, often at the expense of long-term security. With hindsight, it is clear that Mr. Rumsfeld's handshake with Saddam backfired. While it may have constrained Iran in the short-term, its blowback in terms of blood and treasure has been immense.

Why then do so many progressives then celebrate the return of realism? The reasons are multifold. First, having allowed personal animosities to dominate their ideology, they embrace change, regardless of how it impacts stated principles. Hatred of Mr. Rumsfeld became a principle in itself. Likewise, the same progressives who disparage John Bolton seldom explain why they feel forcing the U.N. to account for its inefficiencies or stick to its founding principles is bad. They complain not of his performance, but rather of his pedigree.

Second is a tendency to conflate analysis with advocacy. Progressives find themselves in a situation where they both embrace realism but deny reality. An Oct. 13 Chronicle of Higher Education article regarding a Columbia University professor's attacks on Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran," highlighted the issue: "The conundrum, say these \[Middle East studies\] scholars, is how to voice opposition to the actions of the Islamic Republic without being co-opted by those who seek external regime change in Iran through a military attack." By embracing a canard, intellectuals convinced themselves of the nobility of ignoring evidence. Thus, Western feminists march alongside Islamists who seek their subjection while progressive labor activists join with Republican realists to ignore Tehran's attacks on bus drivers seeking an independent union, even as a Gdansk-type movement offers the best hope for peaceful change in Iran.

Both realism and progressivism have become misnomers. Realists deny reality, and embrace an ideology where talk is productive and governments are sincere. While 9/11 showed the consequences of chardonnay diplomacy, deal-cutting with dictators and a band-aid approach to national security, realists continue to discount the importance of adversaries' ideologies and the need for long-term strategies. And by embracing such realism, progressives sacrifice their core liberalism. Both may celebrate Mr. Rumsfeld's departure and the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, but at some point, it is fair to ask what are the lessons of history and what is the cost of abandoning principle.

Lets not Jump to Conclusions

As Rich Lowry points out:

One myth of the elction:

—President Bush now must give up on the Iraq War. The rebuke to Bush was unquestionably an expression of voters’ frustration with the progress of the war, but they are not ready to give up yet. According to pollster Whit Ayers, less than one-third of voters favor withdrawal. A late-October New York Times poll found that 55 percent of the public favors sending more troops to Iraq, a position now endorsed by the paper’s liberal editorial board. Bush still has a window to take decisive action to reverse the downward slide in Iraq.

Just because people are upset with how its going, doesn't mean they favor retreat.

Lest We Forget

And apparently some people have. The media show terrorist propaganda videos but won't show the WTC getting hit.

CLICK HERE

Media Bias

After the election, this topic was on my mind the most, by far, because (mostly) of the war. This does no make me feel any better, but it hits the nail right on the head and amounted to almost exactly what was going through my mind:

The Media's Dark Role
By: Douglas MacKinnon

Nov. 7, 2006, will be remembered as the day the Democratic Party took back control of Congress for three distinct and critically important reasons.

First and foremost was the series of Republican missteps -- such as corruption, the leadership turning a blind eye to the corruption, budget-busting earmarks and a lack of real action on illegal immigration. These actions not only suppressed the vote for the Republican Party, but actually energized a number of Democratic voters.

Second was the number of incredibly well-run Democratic campaigns and their own very impressive get-out-the-vote machine. This was great stuff by any honest assessment.

Third, Nov. 7 needs to be remembered for something even Republicans don't have the stomach to address at the moment: that the remnants of objectivity in the mainstream media were all but exterminated by some on the left. A chilling and ominous development that played some role in the Democratic wave that is still splashing around the red states.

Make no mistake. Along with the multitude of Republican gaffes, and the hard work of the Democrats, there can be no doubt that the left-of-center mainstream media helped to manufacture this election victory for the Democratic Party. For parts of the last two years, many in the media have worked in concert with the Democratic spin doctors to indoctrinate the American voter into believing this election had to be a referendum on President Bush and the "failed" war in Iraq.

Horrified by Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004, as well as the historic Republican gains in the House and the Senate that year, some liberals in the media were determined to do everything in their power to ensure that there was no GOP celebration in 2006, even if that meant confirming to the world that they proudly abandon professionalism and ethics in the name of partisanship and ideology.

To make the election of 2006 a referendum on Mr. Bush and "his" war, the media knew full well they had to present that conflict in the worst possible light for as long as possible on their nightly newscasts, cable programs and front pages. Then, after force-feeding the American people a steady diet of this carnage for weeks at a time, the same media outlets would then "poll" the voters to get their impressions of Iraq and Mr. Bush.

Amazingly, against the protests of soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, the mainstream media stuck with this partisan plan to only showcase the negative, the misery and the gore. They ignored the pleas of these soldiers to show that not only did they liberate a nation from a genocidal tyrant, but with compassion and great decency (often at the cost of their own lives), they helped to rebuild the country and connect with its people on a much-needed human level. The good far out-numbers the bad in Iraq, but the good was the enemy of a Democratic victory on Nov. 7.

Worse than becoming a public-relations arm for the Democrats, did some in the media actually aid and abet al Qaeda with their biased coverage? It has been fully documented that al Qaeda and the insurgents believe that if you kill enough American soldiers and have those deaths played on a loop by the American media, then the American people and their politicians will grow weak in the knee and call for a withdrawal.

Knowing that to be a stated goal of al Qaeda, and just before the election, CNN still decided to take a horrific video given to them by the insurgents, and put it on the air for the world to see. And just what was on this video? Only heroic American soldiers being murdered in cold blood by al Qaeda snipers. Other than to damage the administration or advance a partisan agenda, why would CNN air such disgusting footage?

Next, to all but ensure the desired outcome, a number of left-of-center "journalists" decided it was necessary to prematurely crown the Democrats the victors. Their thinking was that if you tell a lie or predetermine the results often enough, it becomes fact. So, months before the election, on the front page of the top one hundred left-of-center newspapers in the United States -- with a readership well north of 70 million people -- banner headlines proclaimed that the Democrats were all but certain to take both houses of Congress. Day after day, week after week, these liberal papers foretold a future beneficial to the Democrats.

This is a future that has now come true. To be sure, the majority of the blame rests with the Republican Party and its lemming-like march to become what it defeated in 1994. That said, it is not partisan, nor out of line, to ask if some in the media carried water for the Democrats in this election.

While it is certainly true that left-of-center media outlets continue to hemorrhage readers and viewers in search of fairness and balance, for the moment they don't seem to care. Because of the unethical actions of some within their industry, they helped determine an election.

The Democrats won, but democracy has paid a price. Who in the media is willing to address that?

Immigration

I got this in my email, worth quoting at length:

AMERICAN VOTERS DID not TURN AGAINST TOUGHER ENFORCEMENT OR LOWER IMMIGRATION.

I have some important new statistics that should give you comfort -- and that you may want to share with a lot of others. Oh, I'm sure you've seen or read discouraging claims from Fred Barnes, Michael Barone, the Wall Street Journal, the L.A. Times, Tamar Jacoby or dozens of ivory tower newspaper editorial writers since the congressional election returns this week. Their spin is everywhere. According to them, the Republicans' loss of the House of Representatives -- and particularly the loss of Randy Graf and J.D. Hayworth in Arizona -- proves that getting tough on illegal immigration is a political loser.
But consider this:

11.5% of all Republican seats in Congress were lost as Democrats took back control of Congress
But only 6.7% of the Members of Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus lost their seats.

I've seen various open-borders organizations even talk about Tancredo's Caucus being decimated! It just wasn't true. Members of the get-tough Caucus fared quite a bit better than Republicans in general. Caroline Espinosa, our NumbersUSA Media Coordinator, tells me most of the journalists to whom she has spoken understand that Republicans were swept from office because of high voter disgust at Republican scandals and frustration with Pres. Bush and particularly the war -- not because most Republican Members of Congress were the only force that stopped Pres. Bush and the Democrats from passing a massive amnesty. Unfortunately, many other journalists are not bothering to seek balanced information, do not call us and then rush out with the most ridiculous analysis of the election results. I hope you will help get the real story out to your friends, colleagues, neighbors and family as the subject comes up -- and to the public through letters to the editor of newspapers and by phoning radio talk shows (both local and national). Take a look at these additional percentages of Republicans who lost their elections:

Loss of Election by Republicans Based on Their Immigration-Reduction Grade of This Congress 9.6% with an A grade lost
25.0% with an F grade lost
9.2% with a B grade lost
6.4% with a C grade lost
9.5% with a D grade lost

There simply was no evidence that Members lost support because they were tougher on illegal immigration and on importing foreign workers. Exit polling failed to show any sign that voters disliked the immigration-reduction positions of the Republicans they were turning out of office. Rather, the polling found they were voting primarily on the basis of scandals and the war.

WHAT DID ARIZONA REALLY SHOW? Not a victory for the McCain AmnestyA number of commentators said the voting by Arizonans proved the lack of popularity of tough enforcement, even in a state with extreme levels of illegal immigration. And they say that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the clear winner as voters showed they preferred his amnesty plan to enforcement-only. They say that because of the defeats of Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf and incumbent Rep. J.D. Hayworth who campaigned against McCain's amnesty and were beaten by Democrats who said they favored the Republican senator's amnesty (although their ads and public speeches obscured that behind a lot of tough talk about borders). But here is the counter evidence:

Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) was re-elected easily in the statewide race in which he clearly opposed McCain's amnesty and the (extremely well-funded) Democrat clearly supported McCain's amnesty. Kyl was particularly vulnerable because he has been a loyal supporter of Bush's war effort which Arizonans apparently hate. But voters there apparently gave him a pass on his Bush ties because of his other qualities, one of the most known of which is his law and order approach to immigration.

In another statewide show of support for the immigration-reduction position, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved ballot referenda that further toughen some already tough state laws against illegal aliens. The approved referenda will deny some state benefits to illegal immigrants, declare English the state's official language and bar illegal aliens from collecting punitive damages in civil lawsuits and from getting out of jail on bail if they commit serious crimes.

Polling of likely voters in Arizona and other battleground states and congressional districts found that large majorities of not only Republicans but of Independents and Democrats in all of them share our NumbersUSA desires for Attrition Through Enforcement on illegal immigration and reduced legal immigration.

So, what happened to Graf and Hayworth?

Some independent commentators say their loss was not due to their taking strong positions against illegal aliens but to their not talking enough about other issues. There was a sense among many voters that the two didn't have a broad enough agenda, the commentators said.

But Graf was also severely damaged by the fact that the retiring Republican Congressman (Kolbe) refused to endorse him and that huge amounts of national Republican money was used to advertise against him in the primary (which he won) as an extremist who had no chance to win. Then, when he won, the national Republicans refused to help him defeat the Democrat.

The treatment of Graf was one of the developments that has caused many people to contact me with their suspicion that the Bush political machine actually wanted House Republicans to lose their majority so he could work with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to push through his amnesty.

It is difficult for me to go that far on a Bush Team conspiracy. But there is no doubt that many of that Team are happy that the Republicans' losses have caused so many in the media to suggest that Bush can now get some cooperation on his amnesty.

Graf and Hayworth have been the most talked about election losers because the extravagantly funded open borders media machine pushed their story as being the one that would explain everything about voters' opinions about immigration.

But my statistics at the top of this Alert show that one could just as easily have focused on the losses of Republicans who support McCain's amnesty.

For example, Sen. DeWine (R-OH) was defeated, a tremendous victory for our side, as he has been one of McCain's chief tools on the Senate Judiciary Committee in pushing the open borders agenda. I will not claim that his horribly anti-Ohio-worker immigration stance was the reason he lost. But the somewhat higher incidence of McCain-type Republicans losing than Tom Tancredo-type Republicans losing ought to put a stop to claims that tough immigration positions were behind the Republicans losses.

We also know that in some races, the tough immigration stance helped stave off the anti-Bush tide and allowed a Republican to win. A key example would be the Roskam (R) & Duckworth (D) race for an open seat in Illinois' 6th District. The two traded aggressive charges on each other over the immigration issue, with Roskam pledging immigration toughness and charging Duckworth with supporting an amnesty. That brought Sen. Obama (D-IL) into the fray, saying that both Duckworth and he oppose an amnesty but support Republican Sen. McCain's "comprehensive" legislation. But McCain's bill was defined well enough in the campaign that most voters understood that it would give permanent residence to some 12 million illegal aliens.

Republican Roskam's immigration toughness approach won.

Democrat Duckworth's McCain amnesty approach lost.

Yet, the Washington Post analysis on immigration in the election states that the get-tough approach failed virtually everywhere.
ARE THE NEW DEMOCRATS REALLY CONSERVATIVES WHO WILL VOTE OUR IMMIGRATION-REDUCTION AGENDA?

There was a lot of press before the election and TV commentary the night of the returns suggesting that many of the Democrats who beat Republicans were really pretty conservative and not that different from the Republicans they are replacing.

Then there was a rush of commentary since the election that the new Democrats in Congress may be pro-guns and anti-gay-marriage but that they are really typical economic liberals.

I still owe you a more detailed look at the new Democratic Members of Congress. But my assessment thus far is that most of these three dozen have indeed taken some conservative positions on hot-button social issues and more liberal positions on helping the working classes. But they aren't so much liberal or conservative as they are populist.

If they have some strong populist streaks, we've got a good shot at helping them truly help the working classes on immigration.

Liberal politics' most venerable magazine, The Nation, seems to have confirmed my optimism with an editorial this week that started with the paradox of Hayworth and Graf's defeats and the passage of the statewide anti-illegal alien referenda and then stated:

"It seems voters rejected anti-immigrant vitriol when it spewed from the mouths of candidates, but when that same rhetoric came in the faceless form of citizen's initiatives that mixed fiscal austerity with xenophobia -- voters swallowed the bait. Why should your tax dollars go to services for illegal immigrants? This was the message that anti-immigrant forces took to Arizonans. It was classic Lou Dobbs, class vs. race, and it worked.

"The apparent appeal of this message is what makes me nervous about the rising blue tide of economic populism in the Democratic Party. Raising the minimum wage and beating back the worst of free-market capitalism are all good things, of course. But Democrats have a long history of pandering to white, working-class 'Reagan Democrats' while cutting and running on racial minorities. Most recently, a raft of Democrats voted to build a fence along the US-Mexico border, including Prez. hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It was a do-nothing, symbolic vote, but it doesn't bode well for what will happen next on the "common ground" Bush and Dems hope to find on immigration issues.

"As Roberto Lovato points out, 'The crop of House and Senate members-elect includes many Democrats whose positions on immigration hardly differ from the border first Republicans they ousted.' "

I wish I could be quite so optimistic, but I think the three dozen new Democrats are closer to Graf's and Hayworth's immigration positions than they are to the presumed new Speaker of the House Pelosi's.

It will be up to all of our activism whether they end up voting on their constituents (and our) behalf or on Pelosi's (and The Nation's).

And I have hope that most of these new Democrats will join up with genuine Democratic populists who already are championing our cause -- Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Byrd (D-WV), Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), as examples. It is possible that a revved up core of Democratic populists could become what The Nation fears most and avoid racial polarization in favor of helping Americans of all ethnicities who are economically harmed by massive foreign labor flows. And if that happens, these Democrats could actually improve the "political soul" of the Republicans who are solidly on the side of immigration reduction.

It is around this kind of populist morality that we may see a middle-ground meeting of Republicans and Democrats that will show the true bi-partisanship that the media so desperately seems to covet.

It is also possible that the much larger role of Democrats in the still-Republican dominated immigration-reduction coalition will cause the media and many others to stop thinking of our immigration problems and solutions in terms of "conservative" or "liberal," much broadening the appeal of the solutions as being also "mainstream."

In my time on Capitol Hill after the elections, I got strong assurance from people who work regularly with the Blue Dog Democrat Coalition (most of whom vote with us on immigration) that most of the New Democrats should be inclined to join the Blue Dogs -- and that we will fail to get most of the new votes only if we fail to increase our level of activism.
A WORD ABOUT WHAT THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS FAILED TO DO RIGHT
The media are having a great time wagging their fingers at House Republicans and saying they were fools to think that standing tough against Bush's amnesty would save their majority.

They say that the House Republicans tried to sell the voters a fence when what the voters wanted was "comprehensive" answers to our immigration crisis.

That assessment is both wrong and right.

In fact, the House Republicans (with nearly 40 Democrats) last December passed "comprehensive" legislation (H.R. 4437) that dealt (a) with the border, (b) with workplace enforcement, (c) with interior enforcement, (d) with what to do with the illegal aliens already here (arrest somewhat more of them but mainly make life worse for them to cause them to go home on their own -- ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT) and to (e)deal with the labor needs of this country by beginning to REDUCE the annual number of new legal immigrants.

But when the Senate (primarily Democrats, plus McCain and his minority GOP team) and the President indicated they would not budge in September, House Republican leaders timidly forced through only the fence and a couple of other technicalities.

Those of us representing NumbersUSA (and you) on Capitol Hill met in late August and early September with top GOP leadership offices. We warned them that voters would not give Republicans credit -- and would not really trust their sincerity -- if they did not try to force through a substantial part of the workplace enforcement they had passed last December in the comprehensive bill.

We told them that the fence alone would likely not get them any political mileage -- just as the fence alone will not likely do much to deter illegal immigration (especially if we don't have mandatory workplace verification).

And then, Republican national leaders who assembled ads to try to help Republican candidates on the basis of their toughness on immigration tended to miss the powerful populist, pro-worker message.
OPTIMISM FOR IMMIGRATION REDUCTION FROM A DEMOCRATJoe Guzzardi ran as a Democrat for Governor of California during the recall election a few years ago. He teaches English to immigrants and writes columns in newspapers and on the internet. You can read his entire column at: http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/061110_chide.htm

Here are a few excerpts: To all my Republican immigration reform friends and colleagues, I have two words for you—“Chill out!”

During our movement’s moment of greatest triumph—the complete electoral humiliation of President George W. Bush, we should be basking in our glory at our collective victory.

Instead, most of you are wringing your hands and speculating on a worst-case scenario that would include amnesty for illegal aliens and various guest worker programs that will add greatly to the legal immigrant population.

But amnesty ain’t happening today, tomorrow or anytime soon.

Here’s why.

If we mount our typical fierce counter-insurgent assault on Congressional sensibilities by focusing on proving that amnesty would reduce to almost zero most incumbent’s Congressional 2008 re-election chances and therefore (in the broader picture) on retaining Democratic House control, we can cut the traitors off at the pass.

The election was not so much a triumph for the Democrats—remember, I am one—as it was a mandate for responsible, responsive government.

And if the Democrats should decide to ram through an amnesty in either the waning days 109th Congress or anytime during the 110th, they will rue the day.

If Bush bucks GOP sentiment by double-dealing with Pelosi, he can write off Republican support for prospective legislation during his remaining two years.

And if you are fretting about what might happen when the new Congress takes office in January 2007, consider that these Democratic representatives are only just months off the campaign trail—where they got an earful about amnesty—but within a few months of embarking on their re-election tour where voters will be harshly assessing their progress in the illegal immigration wars.

Do you really think that these new Congressmen—many of whom will face their same 2006 opponents—are going to vote for amnesty? Can you think of any surer way to lose in 2008?
FROM A CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE: OPTIMISM FOR IMMIGRATION REDUCTIONI've quote from the liberal magazine The Nation, the following came from National Review, written by Mark Krikiorian, the head of the Center for Immigration Studies. You can read all of it at: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjM1YmEwZmNiMDBiOGIwOTQ3NDc3N2Q4MWEwMDViM2Q=
Here are some excerpts that I think will add to your understanding of our political situation and hopefully encourage you to be of good cheer and of great engagement in the fight:

Before election night was even over, White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Democratic takeover of the House presented “interesting opportunities,” including a chance to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” — i.e., the president’s plan for an illegal-alien amnesty and enormous increases in legal immigration, which failed only because of House Republican opposition.

At his press conference Wednesday, the president repeated this sentiment ...

Tamar Jacoby, the tireless amnesty supporter at the otherwise conservative Manhattan Institute, in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs eagerly anticipated a Republican defeat ...

In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria shares Jacoby’s cluelessness about Flyover Land: “The great obstacle to immigration reform has been a noisy minority. … Come Tuesday, the party will be over. CNN’s Lou Dobbs and his angry band of xenophobes will continue to rail, but a new Congress, with fewer Republicans and no impending primary elections, would make the climate much less vulnerable to the tyranny of the minority.”

And fellow immigration enthusiast Fred Barnes earlier this week blamed the coming Republican defeat in part on the failure to pass an amnesty and increase legal immigration: “But imagine if Republicans had agreed on a compromise and enacted a ‘comprehensive’ — Mr. Bush’s word — immigration bill, dealing with both legal and illegal immigrants. They’d be justifiably basking in their accomplishment. The American public, except for nativist diehards, would be thrilled.”

“Emerging consensus”? “Nativist diehards”? Jacoby and her fellow-travelers seem to actually believe the results from her hilariously skewed polling questions, and those of the mainstream media, all larded with pro-amnesty codewords like “comprehensive reform” and “earned legalization,” and offering respondents the false choice of mass deportations or amnesty.

More responsible polling employing neutral language (avoiding accurate but potentially provocative terminology like “amnesty” and “illegal alien”) finds something very different. In a recent national survey by Kellyanne Conway, when told the level of immigration, 68 percent of likely voters said it was too high and only 2 percent said it was too low. Also, when offered the full range of choices of what to do about the existing illegal population, voters rejected both the extremes of legalization (“amnesty” to you and me) and mass deportations; instead, they preferred the approach of this year’s House bill, which sought attrition of the illegal population through consistent immigration law enforcement. Finally, three fourths of likely voters agreed that we have an illegal immigration problem because past enforcement efforts have been “grossly inadequate,” as opposed to the open-borders crowd’s contention that illegal immigration is caused by overly restrictive immigration rules.

...

What’s more, if legalizing illegals is so widely supported by the electorate, how come no Democrats campaigned on it? Not all were as tough as Brad Ellsworth, the Indiana sheriff who defeated House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Hostettler, or John Spratt of South Carolina, whose immigration web pages might as well have been written by Tom Tancredo. But even those nominally committed to “comprehensive” reform stressed enforcement as job one. And the national party’s “Six for 06” rip-off of the Contract with America said not a word about immigration reform, “comprehensive” or otherwise.

The only exception to this “Whatever you do, don’t mention the amnesty” approach appears to have been Jim Pederson, the Democrat who challenged Sen. Jon Kyl (a grade of B) by touting a Bush-McCain-Kennedy-style amnesty and foreign-worker program and even praised the 1986 amnesty, which pretty much everyone now agrees was a catastrophe.

Pederson lost.

Speaker Pelosi has a single mission for the next two years — to get her majority reelected in 2008. She may be a loony leftist (F- on immigration), but she and Rahm Emanuel (F) seem to be serious about trying to create a bigger tent in order to keep power, and adopting the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty would torpedo those efforts. Sure, it’s likely that they’ll try to move piecemeal amnesties like the DREAM Act (HR 5131 in the current Congress), or increase H-1B visas (the indentured-servitude program for low-wage Indian computer programmers). They might also push the AgJobs bill, which is a sizable amnesty limited to illegal-alien farmworkers. None of these measures is a good idea, and Republicans might still be able to delay or kill them, but they aren’t the “comprehensive” disaster the president and the Democrats really want.

Any mass-amnesty and worker-importation scheme would take a while to get started, and its effects would begin showing up in the newspapers and in people’s workplaces right about the time the next election season gets under way. And despite the sophistries of open-borders

A Referendum on the War?

No, not really. Here's why:

It was not a referendum on Iraq. One of the most pro-Iraq lawmakers in Congress, Sen. Joe Lieberman, ran as an independent and trounced anti-Iraq Democratic nominee Ned Lamont. Meanwhile, of the five remaining Republican members of Congress who voted against Iraq's liberation, three lost: Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) and Rep. Jim Leach (Iowa). Only two anti-Iraq Republicans will return to the 110th Congress: Reps. Jimmy Duncan (Tenn.) and Ron Paul (Texas).

The Associated Press reports that while "three-fourths of voters said corruption and scandal were important to their votes, . . . Iraq was important for just two-thirds." Both groups tended to favor Democrats. (LINK)

And as Mona Charen points out:

The war in Iraq was cited as an “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” important factor in the votes of 89 percent of the electorate according to exit polls. But the war on terror was cited by 92 percent voters as important to their votes. These nearly cancel each other out, as those who cited Iraq as crucial tended to vote Democrat and those who cited terror tended to vote Republican.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of voters said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” disapproved of the job George Bush was doing as president, but more (61 percent) said they disapproved of Congress. Why Congress? Other polling, conducted before Election Day, found that 75 percent of voters were concerned about political corruption.

Really, it had more to do with politicians. (and I can't really blame anyone for that. The republicans stopped being conservatives and were content being politicians)

In Jonah Goldberg's words:

In other words, just as Democrats insisted, the GOP's drubbing had more to do with incompetence and scandal than program and ideology.

Indeed, if the conservative base hadn't been disgusted with Republican management, and if so many Democrats hadn't run as social conservatives, the GOP might have done just fine in this election.

Republicans lost because they behaved like self-indulgent politicians, not purists. Conservatives care a lot about ideas, so that's where we'll try to assign blame. But the ideologues aren't to blame. The Republicans are.

So, what do the Dems want to do?

A 25 point manifesto:

1. Mandatory homosexuality

2. Drug-filled condoms in schools

3. Introduce the new Destruction of Marriage Act

4. Border fence replaced with free shuttle buses

5. Osama Bin Laden to be Secretary of State

6. Withdraw from Iraq, apologize, reinstate Hussein

7. English language banned from all Federal buildings

8. Math classes replaced by encounter groups

9. All taxes to be tripled

10. All fortunes over $250,000 to be confiscated

11. On-demand welfare

12. Tofurkey to be named official Thanksgiving dish

13. Freeways to be removed, replaced with light rail systems

14. Pledge of Allegiance in schools replaced with morning flag-burning

15. Stem cells allowed to be harvested from any child under the age of 8

16. Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor

17. Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery

18. God to be mocked roundly

19. Dissolve Executive Branch: reassign responsibilities to UN

20. Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement

21. Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy

22. Texas returned to Mexico

23. Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

24. Carter added to Mount Rushmore

25. Modify USA's motto to "Land of the French and the home of the brave"

Election 2006

This is pretty much what I've been mulling over all day: The ridiculous number of Democrats who ran as conservatives, in what Thomas Sowell calls a New Voter Fraud:

There is no real question that Democrats are more skilled at politics than the Republicans are. Democrats are more articulate, not to say glib, and they know how to stick together.

You don't see individual Democrats in the Senate going off to do their own thing in concert with the opposition and against the interest of their own party, as Senator John McCain has done with so-called "campaign finance reform" co-sponsored with ultra-liberal Senator Russ Feingold, and as he attempted to do on immigration with liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

Democrats know better than to betray their base of supporters — welfare state beneficiaries, the teachers' unions, environmental zealots, the ACLU and tort lawyers — the way the elder President Bush betrayed his supporters who relied on his "no new taxes" pledge and the way the current President Bush betrayed them by attempting to create amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

Republicans have too often forgotten the old-time admonition to the girl going to a party, to always remember to "dance with the one who brung you."

Even some Republicans have said privately that the Democrats have the edge in playing the game of politics. Given the greater political shrewdness of the Democrats and the overwhelming bias of the media in their favor, it is remarkable that Republicans have had any political success at all.

That the Republicans are still a viable party is one measure of how far the Democrats' policies and values differ from those of most Americans.

Nowhere is that difference greater than when it comes to defending the American people against crime at home and against military and terrorist threats from abroad. Liberal Democrats — which is to say, most Democratic politicians and all of their leaders — are ready to try almost any "alternatives to incarceration" of criminals and almost any alternative to maintaining military strength as a deterrent to enemy nations.

More is involved than an unwillingness to face unpleasant facts of life. There is a coherent ideology behind these positions. That ideology goes back more than two centuries — and has failed in country after country over those centuries. But it is an ideology that sounds good and flatters the vanity of those who consider themselves part of a wise and compassionate elite. Republicans have too eclectic a collection of beliefs to beat the Democrats on a purely ideological basis. Moreover, the liberal vision is a more attractive vision because it assumes away many of the painful and even brutal aspects of human life, especially the fatal dangers of relying on words when dealing with people who only respect force that is backed up by a willingness to use it.

Facts are the only real antidote to a seductive vision. But facts do not "speak for themselves." Somebody has to articulate those facts and explain their implications. The liberal media will certainly not do it and too often the Republicans do it badly or not at all.

How many people are aware that the black-white income difference and the male-female income difference both narrowed during the 1980s — that is, during the Reagan administration? Democrats talked a better game on both fronts and to this day are widely regarded as the best hope, if not the only hope, for minorities and women.

How many people are aware that crime rates soared when liberal ideas became part of the criminal justice system in the 1960s and only began declining in the 1980s after more criminals were put behind bars and kept there a longer time?

Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates.

If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions — and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate.

Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud.

I think this blog might see more regular updates....

Pre-Election Reading

There have been a ton of good articles leading up to the election. In case you need a reminder on who to vote for, check these stories out:

Eye of the beholder

The Enemy Fails in Iraq's Bloody Ramadan, the Forces of Chaos Lose

Some Dems want to Raise SS Tax

Health Insurance More Expensive? Perhaps thats by Design!

And I forgot the others...

And to put what you hear in perspective:

Study: Big Three Tilt vs. GOP

And a little humor from those poor morons in Iraq:

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

So, here are some excellent cartoons:






and because dilbert is freaking hillarious

Senate Intelligence...an Oxymoron?

Actually, that should be a statement.

In reading up on the latest rubbish to come from the dunces in the Senate in the form of a Senate Intelligence Report claiming no Saddam al Qaeda connection, I was struck by just how bad it really is. The best break down of the report I have seen is done by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard (also the best terrorism/Iraq War/etc. reporter I have come across). It can be read here. And I suggest you do. As I was reading through it, several passages really struck me. When I read some of them, I had to shake my head and smile. These people really are dolts, and the report is worthless. Here are said passages:

The Senate report concedes that the document exploitation process in Iraq is incomplete, but it cavalierly assures readers that nothing significant will be found. "While document exploitation continues, additional reviews of documents recovered in Iraq are unlikely to provide information that would contradict the Committee's findings or conclusions."

Such an assessment is at best premature according to intelligence officials familiar with the document exploitation project. "Given my past participation in this realm and my current status it would be imprudent to get into detail," writes Michael Tanji, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "Suffice it to say that when you are counting sheets of paper by hundreds-of-millions (not to mention other forms of media that have been obtained that threaten to dwarf paper holdings) and your methodology is somewhere between inadequate and woeful, saying that you have a strong grasp on what was and wasn't going on in Iraq based on an 'initial review' is akin to saying that you don't need to read the bible because you've memorized the ten commandments . . . in pig Latin."

As of March 2006, three years after the start of the Iraq War, the document exploitation project run by the Defense Intelligence Agency had fully translated fewer than 5 percent of the documents captured in postwar Iraq. The Senate report, in an apparent effort to appear more authoritative, uses a different measurement. The authors tell us that 34 million pages out of some 120 million have been "translated and summarized to some extent." Thirty-four millions pages seems like an impressive number. But think about it. Just 28 percent of captured Iraqi documents have been "translated and summarized to some extent." That is hardly the kind of exhaustive analysis that would permit meaningful conclusions.

And, in any case, there are reasons to be skeptical of those estimates. Intelligence officials familiar with the DOCEX project say that the numbers in the report are inflated in an effort to impress congressional overseers. If just the cover sheet on a 200-page document has been read once and summarized, for example, all 200 pages are counted toward the total number of documents that have been exploited "to some extent." A translator who read only the cover sheet on the eight-page fax from Manila to Baghdad would have missed the revelation that Iraq had been providing money and arms to Abu Sayyaf. But for the purposes of the Senate report, that important document would have made the list of documents "translated and summarized to some extent." The real number of fully exploited documents, according to those familiar with the DOCEX project, remains in the single digits. The report's oracular assurances--that further exploitation is "unlikely" to change our understanding of Iraqi links to al Qaeda--is both deeply revealing and deeply troubling.

Where the report isn't tendentious, it is sloppy. Key names are misspelled; it's "Shakir" on one page, and "Shakhir" on another, which might be thought trivial. But consider: The writers of the report seem not to understand that "Shaykh Salman al-Awdah" and "Shaikh Sulayman al-Udah" is the same person and that he was an important spiritual mentor to al Qaeda and its leadership. At another point, the report claims that Saddam Hussein considered al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi an "outlaw." In the body of the report, the claim is attributed to a senior Iraqi official; in its conclusions the same information is attributed to an "al Qaeda detainee."

Where the report isn't tendentious and sloppy, it's confused. Saddam Hussein and his cronies disclaim any relationship and yet the Senate report itself cites two authenticated documents in which the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) itself discussed the "relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. A 1992 document notes that bin Laden is "a Saudi opposition official in Afghanistan" and claims "the Syria [IIS] section has a relationship with him." An Iraqi Intelligence document describing the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda in 1997 notes that "through dialogue and agreements we will leave the door open to further develop the relationship and cooperation between both sides."

And it goes on.

The report is simply Bush-bashing ammo.

We're Not Biased...No Really, We're Not...

Get a load of these stories:

Story 1
Story 2

MSM running doctored photos.

Also, check out this remarkable series:

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine

"I'm Tired"

"I'm Tired"

Two weeks ago, as I was starting my sixth month of duty in Iraq, I wasforced to return to the USA for surgery for an injury I sustained prior to my deployment. With luck, I'll return to Iraq to finish my tour.

I left Baghdad and a war that has every indication that we are winning,to return to a demoralized country much like the one I returned to in1971 after my tour in Vietnam. Maybe it's because I'll turn 60 years old in just four months, but I'm tired:

I'm tired of spineless politicians, both Democrat and Republican who lackthe courage, fortitude, and character to see these difficult tasks through.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy of politicians who want to rewrite history when the going gets tough.

I'm tired of the disingenuous clamor from those that claim they 'Support the Troops' by wanting them to 'Cut and Run' before victory is achieved.

I'm tired of a mainstream media that can only focus on car bombs and casualty reports because they are too afraid to leave the safety of their hotels to report on the courage and success our brave men and women are having on the battlefield.

I'm tired that so many Americans think you can rebuild a dictatorship into a democracy over night.

I'm tired that so many ignore the bravery of the Iraqi people to go to the voting booth and freely elect a Constitution and soon a permanentParliament.

I'm tired of the so called 'Elite Left' that prolongs this war by giving aid and comfort to our enemy, just as they did during the Vietnam War.

I'm tired of antiwar protesters showing up at the funerals of our fallen soldiers. A family who's loved ones gave their life in a just and noble cause, only to be cruelly tormented on the funeral day by cowardly protesters is beyond shameful.

I'm tired that my generation, the Baby Boom - Vietnam generation, who have such a weak backbone that they can't stomach seeing the difficult tasks through to victory.

I'm tired that some are more concerned about the treatment of captives than they are the slaughter and beheading of our citizens and allies.

I'm tired that when we find mass graves it is seldom reported by the press, but mistreat a prisoner and it is front page news.

Mostly, I'm tired that the people of this great nation didn't learn from history that there is no substitute for Victory.

Sincerely,
Joe Repya,
Lieutenant Colonel,
U. S. Army,
101st Airborne Division

Da Link

"We're All Going to Die!" - Algore

Well, yes, that is true enough, but not in the way that climatologist Gore wants you to think.

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe

"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

So we have a smaller fraction.

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But Karlén clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlén concludes.

The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlén

Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."

Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.

The Link

Criminal Immigrant Invasion Roundup Part IV

Some people seem to hate the term "Illegal Alien" and even simply "Illegal Immigrant", so I propose a name change. Let's just call them criminal immigrants, yes? Sounds good enough to me, and much more accurate than "undocumented worker." Or I suppose we could just go the other direction and assign a bunch of euphemisms for all sorts of criminal behavior. People don't rob banks, they just make "unauthorized currency transfers." Whatever. On with the point.

First lets address the Illegal issue in general.

Let's take some lessons from Europe, shall we? I know not everyone likes the whole "learn from history or repeat it" line, but well, I'd say its a pretty good one.

Amnesty in Europe. Glowing success story? Uh, no:

As in the U.S., every amnesty is accompanied by earnest assurances that it is the very last one and by promises of a severe crackdown on illegal immigration that will solve the problem once and for all. Invariably, the argument is also made that legalizing the undocumented will bring them into the mainstream economy, providing much needed labor and a major boost in tax revenues for the state. The reality is the exact opposite.

European Union countries legalized approximately 1.75 million immigrants up through 2000, and between 3.5 and 4 million since then. Despite that, illegal immigration is increasing dramatically. Spain carried out four amnesties between 1985 and 2000, and yet, in 2003 it had 1.3 million legal immigrants and more than twice as many illegal ones. A year ago it amnestied yet another 700,000 to no visible reduction of illegal entries. In December, thousands of would-be immigrants stormed the ten-foot-tall, razorblade-wire fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco. Similarly, between 1986 and 2002, Italy legalized a million and a half immigrants in five separate amnesties without stemming at all the yearly inflow of well over 500,000 illegal immigrants. The same is the case in Portugal, Greece, France, and every other country that practices amnesties. And there is no reason to expect anything different if fully two-thirds of illegal entrants eventually obtain legalization, the odds of deportation are negligible, and the wait for legalization can be spent in the relative comfort of the European welfare system or its illegal economy.

The last point is worth pondering, because it is simply not the case that amnesties bring millions from the underground economy eager to pay the exorbitant taxes the nanny state collects from those working in order to nanny those that are not. The reason there is an underground economy to begin with is because neither employers nor employees are eager to cough up payroll taxes that average 36 percent in the EU. Indeed, with these kinds of confiscatory levies, the often unskilled and uneducated illegal immigrant becomes unemployable in the regular economy. The result is a huge influx of illegal workers in the now-depleted shadow economy, which is one reason it is rapidly growing both in Europe and North America. According to expert estimates, it has more than doubled in the past 20 years and currently ranges from 8.4 percent of GDP in the U.S. to 14.5 percent in France, 16.8 percent in Germany, and nearly one-third of GDP in high immigration countries like Italy.

Now, on to some of the ugly myths, yet again:

The first myth is that illegal aliens live in the shadows. The “shadows” claim then becomes an urgent reason why Congress must pass a legalization plan: so that 11 million people can come out of hiding. In fact, illegal aliens live in the full blaze of day. Only when confronted with the merest hint that immigration enforcement is even possible do they curtail their movements—and then elite thinking immediately declares such curtailment a gross injustice.

But even if it were true that illegals lived in the shadows, why is that unfair? The bargain they chose was clear: if you come here illegally, the law says that you should face deportation. It is a measure of how surreal our immigration practice has become that it is now “mean-spirited” simply to raise the possibility in an illegal’s mind that his deportation risk is real, much less actually to deport him.

The second myth is that the only way to reduce the illegal alien population is through “mass deportations”—assumed by the enlightened to be patently cruel. The fear stories make clear, however, that the illegal alien population has burgeoned precisely because illegals assume that they face no risk of enforcement. As soon as there is any move toward upholding the law, calculations change. Were enforcement actions to continue, the calculations made by illegals already here and those planning to come would change even more radically: many illegals would go home and many fewer would enter. As Jessica Vaughan points out in a recent report for the Center for Immigration Studies, after the Department of Homeland Security deported 1,500 illegal Pakistanis after 9/11, 15,000 more illegal Pakistanis left the country on their own. We have no reason to believe that illegal Hispanics and other populations would not follow a similar course.

And now moving more to the mayday marches. (No, its not just a coincidence that the rallies were held on the big Communist holiday of Mayday.) The whole purpose was to show that the economy desperately depends on illegal labor. That entire position is purely fiction. (for starters, see the other roundups) But further, consider this: Illegals are costing the government 10.4 billion

The study is called "The High Cost of Cheap Labor" and was conducted by the Center of Immigration Studies.

In 2002, households headed by undocumented workers accounted cost the federal government more than $26 billion in services. Those households paid $16 billion in taxes and created a net fiscal deficit for the government of almost $10.4 billion or about $2700 per household.

And cosider this about those "jobs Americans won't do." (which I gladly would, at this point in my life):

"The meat packers are confirming what we know," says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, "and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training."

In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That's entirely consistent with what we've been reporting -- that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.

Gee, thanks Illegals. I guess the whole refusal of Americans to do certain jobs must have someting to do with Slave Wages.

Ah yes, a day (how about 365?) without an illegal. What would this mean? Well, lets see:

Hospital emergency rooms across the southwest would have about 20-percent fewer patients, and there would be 183,000 fewer people in Colorado without health insurance.

OBGYN wards in Denver would have 24-percent fewer deliveries and Los Angeles’s maternity-ward deliveries would drop by 40 percent and maternity billings to Medi-Cal would drop by 66 percent.

Youth gangs would see their membership drop by 50 percent in many states, and in Phoenix, child-molestation cases would drop by 34 percent and auto theft by 40 percent.

In Durango, Colorado, and the Four Corners area and the surrounding Indian reservations, the methamphetamine epidemic would slow for one day, as the 90 percent of that drug now being brought in from Mexico was held in Albuquerque and Farmington a few hours longer. According to the sheriff of La Plata County, Colorado, meth is now being brought in by ordinary illegal aliens as well as professional drug dealers.

If the “Day-Without-an-Immigrant Boycott” had been held a year earlier on May 8, 2005, and illegal alien Raul Garcia-Gomez had stayed home and did not work or go to a party that day, Denver police officer Donnie Young would still be alive and Garcia-Gomez would not be sitting in a Denver jail awaiting trial.

If the boycott had been held on July 1, 2004, Justin Goodman of Thornton, Colorado, would still be riding his motorcycle and Roberto Martinez-Ruiz would not be in prison for killing him and then fleeing the scene while driving on a suspended license.

If illegal aliens stayed home—in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and 100 other countries—the Border Patrol would have 3,500 fewer apprehensions (of the 12,000 who try each day).

Colorado taxpayers would save almost $3,000,000 in one day if illegals do not access any public services, because illegal aliens cost the state over $1 billion annually according to the best estimates.

Colorado’s K-12 school classrooms would have 131,000 fewer students if illegal aliens and the children of illegals were to stay home, and Denver high schools’ dropout rate would once again approach the national norm.

Colorado’s jails and prisons would have 10-percent fewer inmates, and Denver and many other towns would not need to build so many new jails to accommodate the overcrowding.

Our highway patrol and county sheriffs would have about far fewer DUI arrests and there would be a dramatic decline in rollovers of vanloads of illegal aliens on I-70 and other highways.

On a Day Without an Illegal Immigrant, thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits.

Well, the economy didn't grind to a halt as some seemed to actually believe, but still they "made their point", yes? Oh, I think a point has been made, but not the one they wanted. Believe it or not, the marches are actually making me feel a little better (if at the same time increasingly angry). Why? Well, as Krikorian says, Backlash. I'm seeing it all over the place right now. Maybe something will get done? One can only hope.

And on a side note, I consider it an insult on my intelligence to say that "we're taking back our ancestral homeland." That is no rationalization at all, all it does is confuse people while making a mockery of history. It's no more "your" homeland than it is ours. After all, most Mexicans today are not exactly direct decendants of the Aztec tribe. The land was "stolen" by invaders, largely Spainish, and the Aztec civilization destroyed. (not to mention all of the others, Mayans, Incas, etc, throughout the continent.) We won in war, you lost. That does not mean you are owed the land back, especially now, when no one living had anything to do with it, including illegals who are "taking it back". Just stop already. The world was founded on such territorial grabbing and struggle, including the Mexico which is merely "taking back" what "belongs to it".

That is all for now.