Rich Galen’s MULLINGS cybercolumn returns Sept. 2nd
Laurie Morrow • August 28, 2008 15:22pm • Uncategorized
One of my favorite columns will be starting up agaon on September 2nd — Rich Galen’s political cybercolumn, MULLINGS: http://www.mullings.com/ Here’s a sample — a column about Reverend Wright, Rich posted in April: http://www.mullings.com/04-30-08.htm
If you like Rich’s work, you can have your FREE subscription sent automatically to your mailbox, whenever a new edition of MULLINGS appears.
P.S. If you don’t recall the “Putting on the Ritz” number from Young Frankenstein — well, you must not have seen the movie, a great Gene Wilder comedy. Grab some popcorn, and enjoy this clip from YouTube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH2nQHPs4aA
TOP 10 REASONS McCAIN’S VP SHOULD BE ALASKA GOVERNOR SARAH PALIN
Laurie Morrow • August 28, 2008 0:57am • Uncategorized
REASON #10: PALIN’S YOUTH COMPLEMENTS McCAIN’S EXPERIENCE
For months, Obama’s supporters have touted the Senator’s youthfulness as one of his qualifications for office (a strategy they’re apt to scale back on, given their selection of a Vice President nearly as old as McCain). If youth is seen as a plus by voters, then Alaska Governor Sarah Palin fits the bill. At 44, she is 3 years younger than Barack Obama, and the youngest person ever to be elected Governor of Alaska. Palin is also the state’s first Governor to have been born after Alaska achieved statehood, as well as Alaska’s first female Governor.
REASON #9: PALIN PUTS PRINCIPLE AND THE PEOPLE FIRST
After her initial, unsuccessful, run against him for the Governor’s office, former Alaska Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. If Murkowski figured this appointment would pressure Palin into overlooking misbehavior by her fellow Republicans, he figured wrong. Within a year, Palin resigned in a very public protest over the ethics displayed by Alaska’s Republican leadership, filing a formal complaint against Randy Ruedrich, who was not only a fellow Oil and Gas Commissioner, but also the chairman of Alaska’s Republican party.
If Senator McCain wants a running mate willing to be a maverick to Party, but never to Principle, he need look no further than Sarah Palin.
REASON #8: PALIN KNOWS HOW TO RUN, AND WIN, AGAINST TOUGH ODDS
To become Governor, Palin had to defeat both a former Democratic Governor and the incumbent Republican Governor – which she did, and won. Palin defeated Murkowski in the Republican primary, and then her Democratic opponent in the election. She knows how to campaign successfully, against seemingly impossible odds.
REASON #7: PALIN IS A REFORM GOVERNOR WITH BIPARTISAN APPEAL
Palin doesn’t just criticize pork-barrel spending – she slashes it. A few days after she assumed office as Governor, she put the Westwind II jet her predecessor had purchased up for sale, on eBay. The jet eventually sold, in 2007, for $2.7 million, slightly above its 2005 purchase price. Palin canceled roads and construction projects designed to benefit friends of the prior administration.
REASON #6: PALIN IS A FEMININE FEMINIST, WITH HOMETOWN, NOT HOLLYWOOD, VALUES
1960s feminists regarded men as oppressors, and considered marriage a state akin to slavery or rape. They struggled to convince each other, and often themselves, that “a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.” They treated with contempt women who married, had children, or violated their strict dress code (no heels, no makeup, no dresses, no color that mud doesn’t come in).
Palin’s is a feminism of a different, newer sort – call it ‘Feminism 2.0’ – a feminism that is not hostile to men, and that respects and honors women who work hard to balance a traditional home life with professional ambitions. Palin works hard to achieve such a balance: three days after giving birth to her fifth child, for example, she conducted a meeting concerning a proposed natural gas pipeline.
Palin met her husband, Alaska’s First Gentleman Todd Palin, at Wasilla High School, where she was point guard for her basketball team, the year they won the championship. A feminist who also enjoys being feminine, she ran for, and won, the “Miss Wasilla” beauty pageant, a race in which she also won “Miss Congeniality,” an award unlikely to be awarded to many feminists of earlier vintage. She is, similarly, a member of Feminists for Life, an organization whose mission would have been inconceivable twenty years ago.
REASON #5: PALIN IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY PRO-LIFE
As the mother of five children, ranging in age from 19 years to 4 months, Palin brings a kind of authority to her pro-life stance that will complement well Senator McCain’s pro-life position.
Palin has also risen courageously to the challenge of having a child diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Her commitment to the sanctity and value of every human life helps highlight concerns regarding Obama’s position on late-term (actually, post-natal) abortion.
REASON #4: PALIN IS COMFORTABLE WITH AND LOVED BY BLUE-COLLAR VOTERS
Though Joe Biden talks a great deal about his blue collar roots (and about pretty much every else), any claim he may have to being just one of the people fell away years ago. Biden’s been a Beltway insider since Nixon was President, having been first elected to office in 1972.
Palin, on the other hand, is blue collar to the core. A life member of the NRA, she hunts and fishes, and the man she loves is an oil rig worker and commercial fisherman, who races snowmobiles for fun.
REASON #3: PALIN IS UNASHAMEDLY PATRIOTIC
Palin loves this country, and has cultivated such a love in her children. Her eldest child, Track Palin, joined the Army last year, at 18. When this fine young man learned that his mother had given birth to a child with Down Syndrome, he sent her a text message, expressing his joy that he finally had a brother.
REASON #2: PALIN SUPPORTS TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE, BUT DEFENDS GAY RIGHTS
Palin supports the traditional definition of marriage, and opposes same-sex marriage. Unlike many conservatives, however, she is sensitive to gay concerns about discrimination. Palin’s is the first administration in Alaska’s history, to provide benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian employees.
AND THE #1 REASON SARAH PALIN WOULD BE THE IDEAL RUNNING MATE FOR SENATOR McCAIN?
TWO WORDS: RICK LAZIO
Joe Biden was chosen to be Obama’s VP, because of his “attack dog” reputation. Biden can get away with that kind of nonsense if his opponent is a man, but if he goes after a woman, especially a woman 20 years his junior, he’ll lose blue-collar men and every woman to the right of Nancy Pelosi.
Remember the Rick Lazio/Hillary Clinton senatorial debate, back in 2000, how outrage erupted among the Democrats, when Lazio stepped over to Mrs. Clinton’s podium, and tried to hand her a piece of paper? (“Brandished” was the verb used in Salon.) Lazio was accused, baselessly, of trying to intimidate Mrs. Clinton.
Biden has a history of getting himself into trouble by speaking without thinking, and is proud of – and knows he was chosen in large part for – his ability to treat his opponents with abuse, including those who, when convenient, he calls his friends. Biden is a one-trick pony – he’s a bully – and he lacks the intellectual detachment and self-discipline to keep his mouth shut, when the cameras are on him. If he tries to bully the small-town beauty queen young enough to be his daughter, the blowback in an age of Youtube will be impressive.
In 1980, many Democrats crossed party lines, and helped elect Ronald Reagan President. Palin would encourage such a move, on the part of disaffected Democratic feminists.
By selecting Joe Biden as his running mate, Obama energized rather than neutralized, Hillary Clinton. We can feel sure that, when “Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow” was played tonight at the Democratic Convention, Hillary hadn’t. She will almost certainly make another run for the Presidency, irrespective of the outcome of the 2008 race. We can expect to see Mrs. Clinton’s name on the ballot again.
Were John McCain to choose Sarah Palin for his Vice President, and were he to win the election, we could well soon witness the first Presidential race in American history between two women – between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, feminists of distinctly different generations, experiences, and values.
Thomas R. Marshall, who served as Vice President to Woodrow Wilson, once observed, “There once were two brothers. One ran away to sea. The other was elected Vice President, and neither was heard of again.”
If Sarah Palin were chosen to be John McCain’s running mate, she’d be a Vice President who didn’t disappear. One way or another, we’re sure to hear more from her in the future.
Kim Jong Il Grins as the West Shrugs
Michael Cecire • August 27, 2008 22:53pm • Uncategorized
As Brent points out, North Korea seems intent to restart its once-’dismantled’ nuclear program. The timing seems awfully suspicious - frightening, even, as it comes right off the heels of an apparently successful Russian foreign policy leap.
It’s truly unfortunate that such things have transpired, but with Russia’s brazen gamble in Georgia, the reputation of Western resolve has been sorely weakened worldwide. Could it be that North Korea’s decision was directly influenced by the West’s collective cowering? Maybe not, but the possibility seems eminently real and extremely frightening.
Let’s not forget that North Korea, along with Russia, had a direct hand in the Iranian (and Syrian!) nuclear programs. Was the Georgian invasion the turning point in global nuclear proliferation?
Either way, it’s time to re-add NoKo, alongside Russia, to the list of states in open revolt of the once seemingly inevitable march of the liberal democratic order. Truly, posterity will have much to ponder about August, 2008.
Most Presidents are Lefties
Brent Tantillo • August 27, 2008 14:30pm • Uncategorized
Interesting clip by MSNBC on why so many Presidents are southpaws.
North Korea Halts Nuke Program Dismantling
Brent Tantillo • August 27, 2008 14:05pm • Uncategorized
This is bad news, and is the reason why:
1) Regime change is the only way to stop Kim Jong Il from making nuclear weapons;
2) Why Barack Obama is so gravely mistaken when he and his Democratic cohorts say that diplomacy is the solution — look here it didn’t work…again.
3) Look who is not in power — the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. Which is not to say that war is the only answer to achieving effective results or regime change, because it isn’t. But the reality is that in order to achieve peaceful regime change, the United States must effectively implement legislation such as the North Korea Human Rights Act, which calls for a Helsinki-like process in which North Korea is held accountable for its treatment of its refugees. If South Korea, China, and other bordering nations would live up to their humanitarian obligations and take in North Korea refugees, the wind would begin to leave the sails of Kim’s regime, as tens of thousands of refugees expose the horrors of the North Korean regime.
Irony in the Air
Brent Tantillo • August 27, 2008 13:43pm • Uncategorized
Daniel Pipes notes the irony that Emirates Air in its maiden voyage from Dubai to New York City using the Airbus 380, serves bagels to its passengers.
Lt. Col. Allen West Stands for America
Phil Orenstein • August 26, 2008 23:36pm • Uncategorized
What will it take to rescue the legacy of America and Western Civilization and turn back the tide of socialism and the radical Islamic invasion? All that is needed, according to Lt. Col. Allen West is a core group of Spartans like the bold warriors who stood together with Leonidas in 480 BC, in the narrow passage at Thermopylae against the invading Persian Empire. The courage of 300 Spartans who held off the enormous Persian army of 200,000 gave ancient Greece the opportunity to prevail. One year later the Spartan forces regrouped and led an alliance of Greek city-states that defeated the Persians at the Battle of Plataea and halted the expansion of the Persian Empire into Europe, ensuring the legacy of Western Civilization. Now in the year 2008, Lt. Col. West is calling on Americans, to likewise stand for America.
LTC West, who was honored as FrontPage Magazine’s 2004 Man of the Year for his courage and heroism in battle and sacrifice of his rank and military career to protect the lives of his soldiers, is presently running for Congress in the 22nd District in Florida, to reclaim a seat that was lost to the Democrats in 2006, which previously was held by Republicans for 26 years.
In his more than twenty years of military service in the U.S. Army LTC West faced down the world’s most virulent terrorists in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In OIF, Col. West was commander of a battalion in the 4th Infantry Division, responsible for the lives of 700 men and women, who were constant targets of Sunni terrorists soon after the fall of Baghdad. When suspicions arose that an Iraqi policeman was hiding information about a planned attack on his men, LTC West interrogated him threatening to kill him if he didn’t talk. The ruse worked and the Iraqi divulged the plans of the ambush, which saved the lives of his men. But instead of receiving the highest honors and praise for protecting his soldiers, he was charged with assault and violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was discharged and fined for misconduct and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Never apologetic for his actions or bitter for being punished for the “crime” he never committed, he left his military career “with a sense of pride and honor,” that he sacrificed his career for his soldiers. “If it’s about the lives of my men and their safety, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can,” he said. Later he returned to Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan army. After finishing the assignment in November 2007, he returned home to Broward County, Florida where he began his Congressional campaign as his next assignment to serve his country, with the same dedication as a commissioned officer to protect and defend the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies foreign and domestic.
The campaign to elect LTC West to Florida’s District #22 Congressional seat is itself a battle to protect the legacy of America and Western Civilization against foreign and domestic enemies. Today our country is being destroyed by internal enemies as well as external ones, allowing destructive agendas to infiltrate our government and weaken our defenses. Nowhere is this more apparent than the state of affairs in Congress today. For instance, America is sitting on enough untapped oil reserves to achieve independence from Saudi, Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil and lower the cost of fuel for the foreseeable future. But House Speaker Pelosi has denied a floor vote for the key energy bills over the past year and sent Congress home for vacation, before a vote could be held on offshore drilling, when 70% of the American people say we have to drill for our own energy resources. This is where the battle lines must be drawn because no one should have that kind of power over the preferences of the American people.
LTC West, one of the most powerful Black Conservative voices in America today, recently delivered a stirring speech addressing this issue at the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’ and Airmen’s Club in Manhattan. He affirmed that the strength of our government is in the House of Representatives, where officials today who are elected to serve the public by making laws and appropriating tax dollars, are actually serving themselves, enjoying their 5-week vacation at the taxpayer’s expense. LTC West said many Americans couldn’t take a vacation because of the problems we have at the gas pump. We have to be energy independent now, because not only is oil being pumped out of Saudi Arabia, but so is Wahhabi Islamic ideology and one fuels the other.
He stated that we have to cut ourselves off and immediately start producing, consuming and even exporting our own vast untapped resources of oil, coal, natural gas, oil shale and nuclear energy. Whenever people start complaining that it’s going to take 10 years, how impossible the task is, and what we cannot do, he relates a simple story about World War II and the USS Yorktown. After sustaining heavy damages in the South Pacific battles to halt the Japanese advance, experts estimated six months were needed back in the repair yards at Pearl Harbor, before the aircraft carrier could be seaworthy again. However, yard workers labored around the clock performing what seemed to be a miracle. 72 hours later the USS Yorktown was ready for battle and shipped out to the island of Midway where she turned the tide in the Battle of Midway. This one carrier made the difference in winning the war in the Pacific Theater.
LTC West clarified the situation for the pessimists and naysayers, explaining that they have to understand the spirit of the people in America. If you give a clear vision to the American people and outline where we have to go, the American people will rise to the occasion, and they will make sure this country is energy independent. This goes for all the burning issues of the day including immigration, high taxes, wasteful government spending, ear marks, limiting our government, as well as national security and the battle to defend Western Civilization from the threat of radical Islam.
LTC West went on to explain that Western Civilization is under attack by an enemy no one wants to name. Terrorism is a tactic, but radical Islamic ideology and the states throughout the world that sponsor it are the enemies that we must fight. He said that we can do so if we free ourselves from the influence of the political correctness and the multiculturalists who say that Western Civilization is parallel to all other civilizations. It is not. It is better than the others. The vision that LTC West imparted was of an America, our Republic of freedom and individual rights, constitutional democracy and the rule of law, that is worthy of our courage and commitment to stand up and affirm this distinct difference.
The only way we can affirm this difference and stand up for our civilization, is with a core group of Spartans, who together with Leonidas, fought against the invading Persian army, and saved Western Civilization. We can stand up like Charles Martel in 732 at the Battle of Tours, who stopped the Islamic invaders and saved the legacy of Western Civilization. We can do the same as the Christian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, or the Polish and German Knights at Vienna in 1683, who saved Western Civilization. Or we can fall like the Byzantines at Constantinople in 1453 and lose our legacy and all that we have attained.
But LTC West predicts that the history books will look back at 2008 as the year that the American people took a stand and turned back the tide of socialism and radical Islam and rescued the future legacy of our Republic. That is what Lt. Col. Allen West is all about and why he often moves ordinary American people to action.
After hearing such a momentous speech at the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’ and Airmen’s Club in Manhattan, many in attendance determined that this man represents the leadership that America is yearning for and that he should be heard by a wider audience. So a group of friends and supporters started an online grassroots petition for LTC Allen West to speak at the Republican National Convention September 1-4 in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, to a prime time audience of millions of American voters, which is hosted on the Go West Blog. The petition, signed by supporters throughout America, will be delivered to John McCain, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, McCain 2008 Campaign Team and Republican Delegates at the RNC to assure that this rising star in the GOP is heard by all Americans.
The petition conveys the resolve that Lt. Col. Allen West “represents our voices, our core values, and our hopes for the future of the Republican Party.” Voters want to restore honor and dignity and bring back America’s core values to Washington. Who is better suited to accomplish this and serve our country than LTC West, the great American hero who devoted a lifetime to defending our nation on the battlefield? He will make us proud.
President Clinton on Who Delivers
Brent Tantillo • August 26, 2008 17:52pm • Uncategorized
The Hill newspaper reports that former President Bill Clinton posed the following hypothetical today while in Denver attending the Democratic Convention:
Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?”
Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: “This has nothing to do with what’s going on now.”
Really Bill? This has nothing to do with how you perceive Obama and McCain?
Times They Are a Changin’ in Zimbabwe
Brent Tantillo • August 26, 2008 16:03pm • Uncategorized
Robert Mugabe got quite a wake-up call when he opened parliament today, with the opposition party-led body jeering at the dictator through heckles and boos. But they even when further as the New York Sun explains:
Mr. Mugabe arrived in an open-topped vintage Rolls Royce escorted by mounted police wearing pith helmets and carrying lances. Legislators from the Movement for Democratic Change, who wrested control of the house from him for the first time since independence in 1980, refused to stand when Mr. Mugabe entered, and shouted his party “is rotten!”
The jeers occasionally drowned out his 30-minute speech that was broadcast live on national television. Mr. Mugabe had to raise his voice and, looking annoyed, raced through the final lines.
Mugabe during his speech blamed his country’s woes, not on his own mismanagement and autocratic rule, but of course, on Britain and America for imposing sanction on the country. The reality is very different as the Sun continues:
Mugabe ordered the seizure, at times violent of white-owned commercial farmland, saying it would be turned over to blacks, but in many cases handing farms to cronies, in the process destroying the country’s economic base.
Myths About the Russian Invasion
Michael Cecire • August 26, 2008 15:28pm • Uncategorized
Perusing the blogosphere, newspaper op-ed pages, and in customary discussions with an assortment of people, it seems that there is very little realization on the street level concerning the giant implications of the recent escalation of the Russo-Georgian conflict.
There are a few people who seem to really understand the nature of the conflict and the hard realities of its reverberations: Ralph Peters - who has written extensively for the NY Post on the topic, Robert Kagan, Paul Berman in his terrific New Republic piece, and recently, Michael Totten, who seems to have an innate ability to grasp the brutal truth anywhere and everywhere.
Beyond these people and a woefully small circle of others, stupid assumptions and misinformed assessments seem to abound. Certain things require redress:
1. Georgia Started the War. No.
The war has been popularly cited to have begun on August 7, which as I’ve mentioned before is Kremlin propaganda at worst or a regrettable misread at best. Michael Totten brilliantly fleshes out this very issue in his excellent, timely article.
Georgia didn’t start it on August 7, nor on any other date. The South Ossetian militia started it on August 6 when its fighters fired on Georgian peacekeepers and Georgian villages with weapons banned by the agreement hammered out between the two sides in 1994. At the same time, the Russian military sent its invasion force bearing down on Georgia from the north side of the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian side of the border through the Roki tunnel and into Georgia. This happened before Saakashvili sent additional troops to South Ossetia and allegedly started the war.
2. The Russo-Georgian conflict is just another border war. Hardly.
The idea that the conflict is merely a faraway battle in a faraway land with few implications for the world may be understandable, but exceedingly untrue. Consider that the Georgian energy pipeline is the only one supplying Europe that is not under the Kremlin’s control. Russian meddling surely has the propensity to severely affect supplies from said pipeline and even provide Moscow with an energy monopoly, which has been used to a crippling effect against its neighbors before.
Also consider the eerie similarity of the Georgian situation to other Western-leaning states in Russia’s near abroad, where as a matter of state policy, Russia has fueled ethnic tensions and promoted separatism. Western foot dragging in Georgia has only buttressed Putin’s power and the worldwide belief that the West no longer has the stomach to arrest aggression. Remember this the next time Russia, or any tyrant, resorts to force against less-powerful neighbors.
For more on this topic, I highly recommend Paul Berman’s piece on The New Republic.
3. Both Russia and Georgia are to blame. Not really.
Georgia can only be blamed for responding to repeated provocations, even attacks, against its interests within its own borders. In truth, Russia has been the principal instigator of the entire narrative, reaching all the way back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Saakashvili’s response might have been unwise, however justified, but the true source of the entire conflict runs straight on the road to Moscow. Russia took great pains to prepare its forces for a war against Georgia long before the initial clashes, which began with South Ossetian militias attacking Georgian villages in defiance to a Georgian-offered cease fire.
4. Both Georgian and Russian propaganda has been sensational and untruthful. Think again.
Although gross over-equivalence seems to be the professional occupation of many analysts and wonks, the Kremlin’s state-owned propaganda mills actually had its operation ready curiously in sync with the launch of the Russian invasion. As it turned out, much of what the Russian media outlets (not to mention official government releases) announced has thus-far turned out to be entirely fabricated and carefully designed to cast the Russian war machine as morally upright.
In contrast, Georgian media appeared to be reporting the truth as best they could. Although Saakashvili’s pleas to the West might seem sensational in retrospect, the unflinching advance of Russian forces were bound to excite a great deal of insecurity as to the Kremlin’s true intentions. At the time, there was a very real worry that Russia had no intention of halting their invasion.
While the Georgian media exhibited bouts of nationalism here & there and some bias for Georgian resistance, it’s a long way from equating their coverage to Russian propaganda. For the most part, Georgian reports did turn out to be mostly true in content, even if they did show partiality to Georgia’s territorial sovereignty - something I hope our own press would do in their shoes.
