Since the LA Times fired Robert Sheer, I have marveled at Paul Krugman’s shameless skill to promote THE LEFT’s hallucinogenic logic.

In this week’s column, Krugman juxtaposes Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s urge not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” during wartime, against what he calls “the Bushies” imaginary fear of non-existent Islamofascism during peacetime.

Krugman writes:

In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Although he implies that Roosevelt’s quote was made by a resolute wartime president, Krugman actually drew it from FDR’s first inaugural address on March 4th, 1933, a date that coincides with Hitler’s rise to power and American isolationism. Six years before the Nazi invasion of Poland and eight years before Pearl Harbor, FDR’s address never mentions Germany, Japan, Nazis, or rising fascism, focusing instead on the economy and social policy.

But failing regimes need men like Baghdad Bob and Paul Krugman, which may be why the New York Times hasn’t fired him yet.

Like FDR, George Bush inherited a struggling economy from his predecessor. But his administration’s record six years of economic growth never distracted thoughtful Americans from the growing threats that FDR ignored, but history now demands, that we confront.

Krugman writes:

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

Consider how different the world would be today if Poland, England, and the United States had taken such steps against the Nazi regime in 1933.

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

Like FDR’s Nazi enemy, Islam’s leadership doesn’t rely on sense.

For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t.

Fascism was also academic before Germany, Italy, and Japan redefined it.

One month after 9/11, NPR’s Scott Simon wrote of a famous debate held in 1933 by the Oxford Student Union whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country:

The exquisite intellects of that leading university reviewed the many ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the world. They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of Germany in the wake of World War I had helped to kindle nationalism and fascism. They saw no moral difference between Western colonialism and world fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous proclamation: “Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight for king and country.”

(Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop) sent back the good news to Germany’s new chancellor, Hitler: The West will not fight for its own survival. Its finest minds will justify a silent surrender.

In short, the best-educated young people of their time could not tell the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in which liberty and democracy were cornerstones, and a dictatorship founded on racism, tyranny and fear.

Krugman is one such man. He continues:

And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Germany wasn’t directly hostile to the US or Europe in 1933 either. Hitler had no direct connection to Pearl Harbor, except to embolden the Japanese.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.

Connecticut doesn’t call for the destruction of Israel or the United States. Connecticut doesn’t build and deliver missiles that kill innocent civilians or American soldiers. Connecticut doesn’t control trillions of dollars in oil reserves from which to fund terrorism, nor does it affect the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees — and bombing is the only option, since we’ve run out of troops — is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. There’s every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.

Krugman forgets the Israeli jets flew past 50 Russian-made Pantsyr S1E short-range air defense systems to bomb a suspected nuclear target in Syria last August. Iran uses the same system to protect its nuclear facilities. And although airstrikes may not interrupt Iran’s nuclear plans, they seemed to work well against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981.

Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk.

Why are we not surprised by the Krugman Family’s familiarity with crazy talk?

Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz’s rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we’ve been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani’s rivals.

Which may explain why the ascendant Giuliani and Pohoretz enjoy far more respect than the incredibly shrinking New York Times.

Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a struggle with people who aim “to unite the world under a single jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us.” He doesn’t say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably he’s referring to Al Qaeda — an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.

While Al Qaeda may not be able to collapse the Western World without Krugman’s help, they’ve proven their willingness to make life painful for citizens throughout the world, as 9/11 and ordinary former Muslims like Aayan Ali Hirsi and Walid Shoebat can attest. With millions of Muslim children now begging to explode themselves to kill Jews and Americans for Allah, Iran’s mullahs don’t need large military complexes to erode a country’s will to protect itself. A tiny investment of bombers in Madrid affected Spain’s national elections, resulting in their military’s immediate departure from Iraq. Like termites, Islam’s viral fascists don’t require a centralized military complex to defeat the West – especially when so many pro-fascists like Krugman are willing to facilitate them.

And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, “I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism.” Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.

There were no panzers or nuclear arsenals in 1933 either. But if we consider that Muhammad Atta and his buddies killed thousands of Americans and caused billions of dollars in economic losses on one Tuesday using nothing more than our freedoms and technology against us, one can only imagine what someone like Atta would do with a nuclear device. What would Islam’s mullahs do with tanks when millions of Muslim mothers and children are begging to do the same?

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration adopted fear-mongering as a political strategy. Instead of treating the attack as what it was — an atrocity committed by a fundamentally weak, though ruthless adversary — the administration portrayed America as a nation under threat from every direction.

Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican base, which lapped up the administration’s rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up — perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the base’s older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.

Like many Democrats, Krugman confuses behavior with skin color. Three thousand Americans didn’t die on 9/11 because hijackers were brown. As for Krugman’s contempt for dark-skinned people in general, America’s preoccupation with race should have ended after Republican volunteers made war against Democrats to free their slaves. Indeed, it is the Democrats who don’t think Iraqis are civilized enough to appreciate freedom, while Republicans and soldiers of all colors risk their lives to give the Iraqi people a chance to be as free as the German, Japanese, and the progeny of slaves are today.

And the base is looking for a candidate who shares this fear.

Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian nuclear program. But neither of these threats frightens me as much as fear itself — the unreasoning fear that has taken over one of America’s two great political parties.

Here’s what Krugman could have quoted from FDR’s Final Inaugural Address:

And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons—at a fearful cost—and we shall profit by them.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away.

We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.

We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that “The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.

The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world.

So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly—to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men—to the achievement of

His will to peace on earth.

Words far different from those uttered by the new president of 1933.

During last night’s debate, Hillary was asked whether she supported Eliot Spitzer’s plan to give drivers licenses to illegal aliens. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Hillary launched into a tirade blaming everything on President Bush. According to this article in Politico.com, her rivals jumped all over her answer, as did Tim Russert:

It was not just that her answer about whether illegal immigrants should be issued drivers’ licenses was at best incomprehensible and at worst misleading.

It was that for two hours she dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled.

And when it was over, both the Barack Obama and John Edwards campaigns signaled that in the weeks ahead they intend to hammer home a simple message: Hillary Clinton does not say what she means or mean what she says.

And she gave them plenty of ammunition Tuesday night.

Asked whether she still agrees with New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s plan to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, Clinton launched into a long, complicated defense of it.

But when Chris Dodd attacked the idea a moment later, Clinton quickly said: “I did not say that it should be done.”

NBC’s Tim Russert, one of the debate moderators, jumped in and said to her: “You told (a) New Hampshire paper that it made a lot of sense. Do you support his plan?”

”You know, Tim,” Clinton replied, “this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’” (continue reading post »)

Contrary to Harry Reid’s and Nancy Pelosi’s letter to President Bush, the surge hasn’t failed. We have additional proof thanks to this Financial Times article. First, here’s what Reid’s and Pelosi’s letter said:

“As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results,” the two leaders wrote. “The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation. It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased. In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.”

Let’s compare that with the Financial Times’ article:

The Iraqi government reported on Monday that civilian casualties dropped by more than 50 per cent in September, a month in which US casualties also declined to their lowest level in 14 months.

All estimates of civilian casualties are contentious, due to the difficulty of obtaining complete data from conflict zones scattered across the country as well as the danger that statistics will be politically manipulated.

But September’s drop is one of the most dramatic since the Iraqi government began releasing figures, and is in rough accordance with other data suggesting levels of violence may be dropping.

I’m more apt to believe that Iraqi civilian deaths are dropping thanks to this Powerline article: (continue reading post »)

One Media Matters-like organization is already too many. It appears as though there’s another liberal apologist blog out there. Their name is News Hounds. The post that caught my attention dealt with last weekend’s interview of Justin and Darryl Sharraltt on Hannity’s America. To say that their post didn’t attempt to refute Justin’s story is understatement. In fact, they jump right into criticizing Mr. Hannity:

Last night’s (October 27th) Hannity’s America was a strange magazine format which combined stories about mediums and haunted houses with a lead off interview that was billed as “The Truth About Haditha.” Hannity is a college drop out with no professional journalism credentials and this lack of professional journalistic acumen was well reflected in Hannity’s “leading questions” which served a political agenda. (Comment: Although Fox’s Chris Wallace can be partisan, he looks like Cronkite compared to Sean Hannity!)

Hannity billed his interview with Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, his lawyer, and his father as “exclusive.” He began by noting that this interview would be a response to Congressman John Murtha and military officials who are “trying to paint the story with a different brush.” Before the interview began, Hannity set up the Fox/right wing premise by asking the not so rhetorical question “have politics gotten in the way of patriotism?” Without doing an overview of the Haditha story, he asked Sharratt to explain what happened on that fateful day. Hannity asked Sharratt if he saw any of his fellow Marines doing anything that they weren’t supposed to do. Not surprisingly, Sharratt said that he didn’t. Hannity mentioned the article in Time Magazine which reported that the Haditha civilians claimed they were attacked by the Marines. Hannity asked Sharratt why Time would report that and Sharratt said he didn’t know.

You’ll notice that Newshounds doesn’t mention Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore’s sworn testimony. I posted about Capt. Dinsmore’s testimony in a post titled A Timline Emerges back in July. Here’s what I posted then:

As previously reported by NewsMax, the battalion S2 officer made a full and complete report based on his monitoring of the day’s events and the intelligence he and others had amassed then and previous days. As we wrote at the time, the PowerPoint after-action report he sent up the command ladder proved to all the higher officers that the incident warranted no further investigation.

I also mentioned these important details that should’ve been included in NewsHounds’s post: (continue reading post »)

When the WSJ hits you, you’re hit. This morning, they hit John Murtha. That’s the good news. The bad news for America is that it doesn’t guarantee PA-12 voters retiring Murtha. Here’s what the WSJ said about Mr. Murtha’s ‘employment record’:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — If John Murtha were a businessman, he’d be the biggest employer in this town.

Then they dive into the ’sausage-making’ part of his ‘business’:

The powerful U.S. congressman has used his clout on Capitol Hill to create thousands of jobs and steer billions of dollars in federal spending to help his hometown in western Pennsylvania recover from devastating floods and the flight of its steelmakers.

In the massive 2008 military-spending bill now before Congress, which could go to a House-Senate conference as soon as Thursday, Mr. Murtha has steered more taxpayer funds to his congressional district than any other member. The Democratic lawmaker is chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which will oversee more than $459 billion in military spending this year.

This isn’t a well kept secret. Everyone living in PA-12 knows this. I suspect that that’s why they keep voting for him. Things are changing in Mr. Murtha’s kingdom, though: (continue reading post »)

Well, we’ve been listening to you for months now—Ms. Clinton, John Edwards, Obama, Reid and Pelosi, Murtha, Kennedy and all the rest—about how bad President Bush is, the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan and how wonderful each of you are. And how great it will be for us when you win it all.

Let’s see. You’re going to socialize medicine with Ms. Clinton’s schemes, give every “poor” kid who’s daddy makes 80 grand a year free insurance, end the “wars” in central Asia and Middle East, quit fighting and bring the troops home, but support the troops anyway and give them all new battle gear. You intend to appoint a new Attorney General who will close ol’ Gitmo, give all the bad boys there new ditty bags to get them back home without punishment for attacking and killing American G.I’s.

Am I right so far?

You’re going to “fix” everything the current administration (and VP Cheney and AG Gonzales) did wrong, bring “spy” Valerie Plame in from the cold, raise taxes and fund a bundle of new “programs”. You’re going to stop the slide of new home sales, make the dollar good again and send all government contracts for equipment and weapons to the good ol’ boys in China to build for us (and outlaw recalls).

Immigration and illegal aliens will no longer be a problem because you’ll open the borders and give the folks already here citizenship and free social, legal and food services. Bring everybody up here for free goodies if they want to be Yankees.

Besa ma Mucho!

Castro and Hugo will be big brothers to us all, the ding in N. Korea will get a free ride, and the dong in Iran will get his, er, nukes. And you’ll see to it Mr. Putin will never again get his feelings hurt by mean Americans who want to protect Europeans and themselves from the bad boys in Iran by building new missile defenses there. (continue reading post »)

Despite the fact that US citizens have repeatedly told both states and federal governments not to do it, illegals are now to be given a huge step towards US citizenship. Illegals are to be given drivers licenses in New York State. In a joint Saturday news conference, Democrat NY Governor Eliot Spitzer and Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff were all smiles. It appears that Congressional Democrats and the pro-illegals Bush administration have found yet another way to bypass We-the-People.

Although federal law provisions are quoted in order to stop states from enforcing illegal immigration laws (you know—the ‘only the feds have the right to enforce stopping illegals’), now Chertoff is saying that he can (or will) do nothing to stop any US State from issuing drivers licenses to anyone—which essentially make illegals legal. Apparently, issuing said licenses to illegals, gang-bangers and terrorists is also not an issue for our US government “leaders.” This way the pro-illegals/pro-North American Union contingents can have their cakes and eat them too!

US citizens told their Senators and Representatives they didn’t want and wouldn’t accept any illegals’ amnesty bill. So, our state and federal leaders have apparently decided to avoid passing any laws, in order to bypass the US legal electorate, and just do it! Note: It would strongly appear that members of our government have learned a great deal from Venezuelan Dictator Hugo Chavez. Or, perhaps they were the ones who taught him. (continue reading post »)

This Congress made history when Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House. They also made history when Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives. Not all of their firsts have been positive achievements, though. According to Minority Whip Roy Blunt’s statement, I’d call the 110th Congress an embarassment of historic proportions. Here’s the text of Rep. Blunt’s statement:

“Not since Jim Wright was the speaker of the House has Congress failed to send even one spending bill, not even the critically important veterans’ spending bill, to the president this late in the year. While a milestone in and of itself, it’s hardly an accomplishment to be proud of, especially since it didn’t have to be this way. The Senate has appointed conferees to every single spending measure it has passed. It’s anyone’s guess as to why the speaker hasn’t followed suit, but it seems more than apparent that politics might have something to do with it.

“It’s time for the majority to live up to the promise it made earlier this year and stop politicizing our troops. It can do that by finishing the veterans funding bill immediately, and then moving on to the other six that have secured the support of both chambers, but not the support, apparently, of Democratic leadership. All Republicans are asking is that Congress actually do its job. Is that too much to ask?”

NOTE: The House passed the veterans’ appropriations bill on June 15, 2007 by a margin of 409-2, with the Senate passing its own version and naming conferees on September 6th. Blunt joined Mr. Boehner and other Republican leaders in August in sending a letter to the speaker urging her to agree to a conference, appoint conferees, and reconcile a final bill. She has not yet complied.

This afternoon, I called into the Final Word while they talked about Jim Oberstar not helping getting the emergency appropriation bill passed and signed for rebuilding the I-35 Bridge. I said that we’d all heard the Democrats “6 for ‘06″ campaign slogan but little did we think that that’s all that they’d accomplish this year.

I’ve called them the “Congress That Wouldn’t Govern“. Rep. Blunt’s statement re-inforces that opinion. It’s long past time to get these spending bills finished. While I’ll readily admit that it isn’t common to get all thirteen bills done in time, it’s unheard of to see Congress not pass a single bill for the president to sign. (continue reading post »)

According to this NY Times article, Steny Hoyer announced that the House will return to a 4 day work week next year:

The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, told fellow Democrats this week that the House would not be in session next year on Fridays, except in June for work on appropriations bills.

Explaining that decision to reporters, Mr. Hoyer said, “I do intend to have more time for members to work in their districts and to be close to their families.”

Minority Whip Roy Blunt quickly gave him a jab:

“Is this a reward for our accomplishments in 2007?” asked Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip.

Democrats campaigned that they’d work 5 days a week and get more done for the American people. Their record doesn’t indicate that they’ve gotten much done, though. This congress hasn’t gotten much of anything done. They’ve earned the title of The Congress that Wouldn’t Govern. (continue reading post »)

Rudy Giuliani didn’t waste time in blasting Charlie Rangel’s tax increase proposal yesterday. Here’s what Mr. Giuliani said:

In a radio interview, Giuliani said Rangel’s plan would be “devastating” to the economy.

“It makes no sense to be raising the rate on capital gains when we want more investment in this country,” Giuliani said on WHO-AM in Des Moines, Iowa. “All we’re saying to people is go find some place else to invest. The corporate tax rate in America is the second highest in the world. The President of France wants to lower the corporate tax rate in France because France is losing money, and their rate is lower than ours. So we’ve got a group of Democrats who want to go to the left of France in our economic policy. It doesn’t make any sense.”

It’s important to recognize that this isn’t Rangel’s bill. This is what Mrs. Clinton’s tax policy would look like if elected. It isn’t a stretch to think that Rangel is just Mrs. Clinton’s messenger. There’s no doubt that Rangel agrees with Mrs. Clinton in raising taxes. There also isn’t any doubt that this tax increase will cause the economy to falter if it became law. (continue reading post »)