Joe Politic
Always playing politics
Senators
Hillary Clinton and
Jack Reed, Democrats from New York and Rhode Island, returned from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday and both
were critical of the Bush Administration.
"We can't forget that death and destruction to America came from Afghanistan," Clinton said, speaking about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "That is where the face of international terrorism resides."
That's what we've heard from Democrats since before the war. What's interesting is that Clinton is saying this now. Did she not feel that way before she took the trip? Did she learn that Bin Laden lived in Afghanistan while she was on the trip? She knew all these things before the war, but that didn't deter her from granting President Bush the authority to go to war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is the same double-speak that we always hear from Clinton. She needs to support her base but doesn't want to turn off everyone else. What does her comment mean. Is she opposed to the war in Iraq? If she was, why did she vote in favor of it? And if she is in favor of the war, why would she say what she said?
It's obvious that she is nothing more than a conniving politician who cares more about gaining power than standing up for her beliefs. Clinton also said she worries "the election timetable [in Iraq] is being driven by our election" and that may be raising false expectations.
We must interpret that as meaning she wants the troops to stay longer, which again shows how her opinion changes. If President Bush said the troops must stay longer, she would say that he must get them home.
Hillary Clinton is scum, and anyone who cannot realize that she does not stand for principle is naive. If people want a two-faced, conniving politican, that's their choice. Most people don't want that though, and that's why Hillary will not run against an honest man in Geoirge W. Bush.
Clark at it again
Trailing Howard Dean in the polls, Gen. Wesley Clark has decided to court the wing of the Democratic Party that cares more about
hating Bush than about policy. As a way of doing this,
Clark said that Bush has a plan to attack Syria and Lebanon after Iraq, emphasizing that the Bush Administration has not denied this allegation.
Once again though, Clark is wrong. The administration has denied this, most recently when Secretary of State Colin Powell took a trip to Damascus shortly after major combat operations in Iraq ended. Powell said he went there in order "to pursue diplomacy and mutual political efforts that both sides can be taking," adding that they talked "so the issue of war hostilities is not on the table."
If Clark does not consider that a denial, he’s either not smart enough to be president, misinformed or is simply lying.
I think it has to be lying. Clark is definitely smart. He finished first in his class at West Point, one of the toughest institutions to get into in the United States. Its also highly unlikely that he is misinformed. He knows people in the U.S. Army and the news business and has people working for him who are responsible for keeping him informed.
That leaves lying, something that Clark has become accustomed to since deciding to run for president. As reported on this blog, Clark lied about a call he got from the White House after Sept 11. Then he lied about Karl Rove not returning his phone class. Then he
lied again several weeks ago, and now this. One would think such a blatant liar would not have a chance to win the White House, but look what happened before the younger Bush came to office.
Judicial activism of the worst kind
The Supreme Court of the state of Massachusetts last week voted
to legalize gay marriage in that state. The polls show that most people in Massachusetts, a liberal state, do not support gay marriage. Many believe this was a
terrible decision made by liberal judges trying to override the publics beliefs. The governor of that state is considering creating a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. If this amendment passed, the activists on the bench could do nothing.
But some think the amendment is a
bad idea, not because they disagree with the amendment but because they situation could be better handled by the legislature.
With the ruling, the government cannot make it illegal for states to marry same-sex couples, but it can, Dennis Teti writes, “instead of directly forbidding same-sex partners to marry, a federal marriage privilege protection measure would make it a criminal offense for state or local officials acting ‘under color of law’ to issue a marriage license to persons of the same sex. Constitutional authority to pass this measure comes from the Fourteenth Amendment, buttressed by the Republican Guarantee clause (S. 4 of Art. IV) and the Necessary and Proper clause (par. 18, S. 8 of Art. I). "
That may be a better way of solving the problem. But either way, something must be done. The will of the people cannot continue to be thwarted by activist judges. Most Americans feel that a marriage is between a man and a woman. What people do in their bedroom is up to them, and nobody has a right to discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation. However, society as a whole does not have to legally accept deviant sexual behavior and lifestyles. This ruling has gone too far, and the people will put an end to it one way or another.
Life vs. death, not men vs. women
When President George W. Bush signed the new bill banning partial birth abortion, he did it surrounded by a bunch of men. Anne Quindlen of
Newsweek and Ellen Goodman of the
Boston Globe, both liberal writers for liberal publications, pointed this out, insinuating that this is a battle of the sexes-- old men versus young women.
This is the argument that feminists have been making. Unfortunately for them, their
argument is wrong. Seventy percent of women in the United States agree with President Bush that partial-birth abortion is inhumane and should be stopped. What difference does it make that no woman was on stage with him when he signed it? This bill speaks for most of the women in this country. Most agree with what he did, and therefore, it should make no difference whether zero or a hundred women went on stage with him.
The fact that this is even a story shows that people like Quindlen and Goodman and the rest of the feminists don't think of women as individuals, but as a group. They think that they can speak for them, which is not true. They speak for themselves only. Most people realize that and that is why their tactics will not work.
This is not a debate that’s pits men versus women. Its a debate between those who cherish life and those who don't, between people who believe in personal responsibility and those who don't. Goodman and Quindlen are on the wrong side of this debate and no matter how much they try to polarize women against men, it will not work.
Media won't show their own stupidity
Certain issues are supposed to be above partisanship. National security is one of those issues. Unfortunately, Democrats don't see it that way. Conservative commentator Sean Hannity has discovered a
memo sent to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Agency, telling them how to make Republicans look bad by investigating prewar intelligence.
The contents are so disturbing that Democratic Sen. Zell Miller called them the "first cousin of treason."
As disturbing as the memo is though, the media coverage of its discovery may be even more disturbing. The mainstream media (New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) has
hardly covered the story.
Interestingly, this comes only weeks after the news organizations gave heavy coverage to
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memo outlining his concerns about the war on terror.
Seeing Rumsfeld's memo was refreshing. It shows that he has the same concerns as the rest of us. The Democrats memo was the opposite. It shows that Democrats are more concerned about making Republicans look bad than they are serving the people.
Why would the media focus on one memo and hardly mention the other? Huge Hewitt has three theories. First is that the mainstream media is full of left-leaning reporters and editors. Second is that reporters don't like being upstaged by television and radio commentators like Hannity. Both of those are possible but not likely.
Hewitt's third theory makes the most sense. By acknowledging the memo, the press is acknowledging that what they have been reporting in recent months is a set-up job. We keep hearing about the administration’s bad motives and misleading comments. This memo makes the reporters who covered this story look like manipulated amateurs. It highlights their gullibly, and shows that they can get conned into saying exactly what the Democrats want them to.
Its pretty funny when you think about it. But honest reporters should swallow their pride and give the Democrats memo the coverage it deserves.
Pro-Choice? You must support vouchers then
I don't like the term pro-choice when it refers to abortion. Its simply a nicer way of saying anti-life. The term implies that without abortion, there is no choice. That is completely false. First, there is the choice to have sex when you know you cannot support a child. Then there is the choice to put the baby up for adoption, and finally there is the choice to become a responsible person and raise the child responsibly. So when people label abortion foes as anti-choice, that doesn't make much sense. There are plenty of choices other than terminating a potential human being.
But what really bothers me about the term is that most people who claim to be pro-choice are anti-choice when it comes to everything else. Take vouchers for example. The left
hates vouchers because the teachers' unions contribute large amounts of money to the Democratic party.
Howard Dean has already come out against them, while President Bush
supports school choice. Teachers hate vouchers because with them in place, they, like everybody else in the population, will actually be held accountable for their work.
Without vouchers, poor children in failing schools are stuck. They have no choice. Private schools, which are better than public schools, are too expensive for them. The poor schools, since they have to employ the same teachers and receive the same amount of money, do not improve. Its a vicious cycle that does more to keep poor children poor for the rest of their lives than anything else. Education is the key to upward mobility, and by preventing vouchers, the liberals are preventing poor students, especially minorities, from moving up the social and economic ladder.
The left's argument is that taking money away from public schools hurt the public schools. This argument sounds good, but its based on a false premise, that money is the problem with public schools. Its not. In Florida, the cost per year per public school student in $5,600. Private schools charge about half that, but get much better results. That's because their teachers are held accountable. If children consistently fail, someone has to answer to it. The same is not true in public schools. The left does not even want to test students, which shows they do not even care if students consistently fail. Teachers pass students on because they are old, even though they know the child is not qualified.
Students have no choice but to move on, and when they get out they are not prepared for life on their own. They usually end up in poverty or in jail, and produce more children who will do the same. There is only one way that this can be stopped, and that is by giving these poor students a choice. Anyone opposed to that is truly anti-choice, because the students (children who are not responsible for being in that position in the first place) actually have no other choices.
Last week, President Bush signed into law a ban on partial birth abortion, also called late term abortions, after the U.S. Senate passed the bill 64-34 and the House passed it 281-142.
For those of you who follow national politics, that was a landslide passage in the Senate, which won’t even let Bush's judicial nominees get a vote without a filibuster.
The country feels the same way. About 80 percent of those polled agreed with the ban. If the mother is in serious danger of health complications she can still get a partial birth abortion under the ban, and most children naturally born prematurely at that point in the pregnancy usually survive. Most people, regardless of how they feel about abortion, know this is a grotesque procedure, and know the line must be drawn somewhere.
Unfortunately, the Democratic presidential candidates don't agree. None voted in favor of the ban. This is no surprise, considering that all nine are fighting to pander to the extreme left. That is what Howard Dean has done and its worked well. The candidates will do whatever it takes to win the nomination and will try to appear more mainstream when the general election draws near.
But this hurts their chances. People don't want a president that does not respect life. Most Democratic presidents in the past have agreed that abortion should be rare and done early. These Democrats think there should be abortion on demand, regardless of how far along the pregnancy is or whether its needed for health reasons.
This is just another example of the Democratic party killing itself by moving too far to the left, and its another example of it pandering to special interest groups like the feminists. As a Republican who respects all human life I could not be happier. A gruesome procedure has been stopped and the Democratic presidential candidates look bad in the process.
