Conservative commentary served up in bite-sized bits.

" Considerettes"?

"Warning: first examination of Considerettes suggests an excess of rational thought goes into that blog."
- Clayton Cramer

Comments, questions, cookie recipes? E-mail me! (frodo at thepaytons dot org)

Considerettes in the news:
UPI
Hugh Hewitt
Slate

<< Return to
"Consider This!"



Features
Georgia Marriage Amendment Rally
Considerettes Radio:

2004
2 /16/04 2 /23/04 3/ 5/04 3 /9/04 3 /10/04 3 /16/04 4 /1/04 4 /7/04 4 /21/04 5 /4/04 5 /6/04 6/ 1/04 6 /9/04 6 /16/04	7 /6/04 (1) 7 /6/04 (2) 7 /29/04 7 /30/04 8 /16/04 9 /1/04 9 /8/04 9 /13/04 9 /16/04 9 /24/04 1 0/6/04 1 1/9/04 1 2/9/04
2005
1 /11/05 1 /31/05 2 /28/05 3 /14/05 3 /21/05 5 /16/05 5 /23/05	8 /1/05 8 /10/05 9 /6/05

Considerettes for your PDA



Web Rings
p ? Atlanta Blogs # n
< GAwebloggers ? >

My other blog
Considerable Quotes
Contributor to
Stones Cry Out

My diaries at

(Commenting available)

I'm a reporter for BNN:
The Bloggers News Network





Ye Olde Blogroll

Join Fair Tax Fans

Linton Weeks of the Washington Post has a great column today dealing with Sidney Blumenthal's book "The Clinton Wars". He approaches his column from a "This is Your Life" perspective, comparing what Sid wrote in the book with how those he wrote about responded to it, giving it the classic TV show feel. Well executed, as well as rather interesting that so many that you'd consider on Sid's side are really panning the book.
posted at 11:57 AM

Fred Barnes has a great article in the current "Weekly Standard" entitled "The Commander". It describes the real story behind the creation of the Iraq war strategy; the personalities, the conflicting strategies, and how ultimately General Tommy Franks vision of modern warfare won and why. Very interesting reading.
posted at 2:19 PM

Is Bill Clinton going to be blogging? A Fox News summary of entertainment news quotes the former President:

Clinton told the audience that his Web site, which is now up and running, will soon offer his take on news events as they happen. "Now you'll know what's really going on," he promised. "Since you're not told that often these days."

Looks like a blog and quacks like a blog. This should be interesting.
posted at 4:32 PM

Be listening intently for the apologies from those who blamed sanctions for the deaths of Iraqi children. Iraqi doctors, who had to parrot the official line but can now speak freely, say that neither the US nor the UN were to blame for the deaths. There was plenty of money to pay for medicine, but Hussein spent it on palaces.

Again, listen closely for all those who blamed sanctions, and the US, for those deaths. Listen, but don't hold your breath.

(Pointer via InstaPundit.)
posted at 11:49 AM

Newsweek editor Michael Isikoff pulls no punches while reviewing Sidney Blumenthal's book "The Clinton Wars". Isikoff was right there in the heart of the news reporting process during that time (even if he did let Drudge scoop him on the Lewinsky story), so he knows what happened and what didn't. His summary paragraph reads:

"It is my serious intent to have written this as a history," Blumenthal recently told the New York Times, insisting that his book was written "dispassionately." But not to belabor the obvious, to write history, you have to have some basic respect for the historical record. You have to make at least some effort at understanding the motivations and thinking of political antagonists-including those you happen to strongly disagree with. Blumenthal has done none of this. His book isn't history; it's one big orgy of political spin.

Isikoff hits point after point where Blumenthal either ignores, gives short shrift to, or misrepresents a host of incidents that might shed any sort of negative light on Sid himself or the Clintons. These are not just differences of opinion, either. When, for example, Sidney said he had been "forced" to answer questions about conversations with specific news organizations, the transcripts that were released later showed no such thing happened. In fact, Blumenthal brought up the organizations' names himself. Another time, when he reported to have been asked a number of outlandish questions about Clinton, it turns out nothing of the kind was asked. He was even chided by the grand jury forewoman because of her concern over his misrepresentation of the proceedings. And of course, in his book, Sid snidely suggests she was put up to that by Ken Starr.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Clinton apologists who read this book to find solace and vindication should understand that neither are in there. It's only more of the culture of lies, deceit, and personal destruction that came from the Clinton White House. Anything at all emanating from there is highly suspect, and Isikoff shows quite plainly that this book is no different.
posted at 9:57 AM

When Ronald Reagan first proposed a missile defense system, Democrats dubbed it "Star Wars" and derided it to no end. The international community was concerned about it being the next rung of the ladder in arms escalation. The Soviet Union was dead-set against it. It was the brunt of jokes by late-night talk show hosts and scoffed at by Democrats all around the country.

Today, an unnamed senior administration official said "there really has been a sea change" with regards to this idea. Even Russia is on the bandwagon. There's no longer a concern about how nations with WMDs might interpret this; everyone wants it now (with the probable exception of Democrats that just can't stand seeing a Reagan idea vindicated). In fact, there's so much international support for it that the "National" is being dropped from the name "National Missile Defense". The Bush administration is accelerating the program's funding and is receiving support from Canada (who opposed the Iraq war), Poland and many other countries who are pouring billions into it.

What changed?

Not much, really. The world is just as, if not more, dangerous than it was during the Cold War. Nukes are still around, with some countries threatening to use them. Ideology is still turning nation against nation. What has changed is that the international community now realizes that they too--not just the US or Russia--are just as likely to be targets of a madman's bomb. The change in these country's stances is, I believe, more a heightened concern for their own neck than some humanitarian, globalist gesture.

It was Reagan who was the humanitarian. He wanted to save the world from nukes, and to prove it he promised to share the technology with the Soviet Union itself. Some Democrats even found fault in that! His goodwill, his concern for more than just himself and his people, and his forward thinking were never appreciated. When Bush proposed scrapping the 1972 ABM treaty and replacing it with a missile shield, he was criticized up and down for starting a new arms race and destroying US-Russian relations. Instead, both of us have agreed to slash our stashes of nukes by two-thirds. And this by the man liberal protestors called the biggest threat to world peace.

But now the debate on this topic is simply over the details of how to implement it. Reagan was right. Bush is right. Both had a good understanding of the world we live in, and of human nature, when they proposed their solutions. They also had in mind the good of, not just themselves and their own people, but of everyone in the international community, in spite of jeers from that peanut gallery when they thought they were safe enough.

Yes, they'll still be vilified by the far left. That's to be expected. But they're right, and that trumps all.
posted at 1:12 PM

Reciprocation: I did some vanity searching again today using a search engine called MyWay. I'd noticed some folks found my site on there so I checked it out. I found someone who'd linked to my smaller government essay. He goes by the handle "Doggo" and his site's a bit more philosophical in nature, but he has some pages devoted to "Federalism, Globalization, Decentralization, Regionalism, Internationalism", and he pointed to (and quoted from) my essay there. Needless to say, I'm honored. Pop on over to his site and take a look at all the other things he's got over there.
posted at 10:58 AM

Hey, James Taranto of the OpinionJournal's Best of the Web used one of the headlines I'd found and sent to him. Look down the page for "Flowers and Candlelight Might Be More Effective".
posted at 4:43 PM

I haven't said much about the Bush administration's Total Information Awareness program, partially because others have had so much to say about it that I agree with that I figured it wasn't worth adding a small "me too" to it all. I don't like the idea of the government gathering more and more data that they "promise" won't be misused, because they have such an awful record of keeping those promises. But now it's been released that the Pentagon has financed a project at the Georgia Institute of Technology to identify people by the way they walk. (Never mind that in Atlanta, everybody drives and almost nobody ever walks anymore.) This is getting (more) out of hand.

So why, one might ask, would a supposedly smaller-government Republican president unleash such a multi-tentacled beast on the country? That's an eminently good question, and I think I have a possible answer to this.

George Bush has surrounded himself with advisors who give their opinions on policy decisions. Unlike the previous administration, however, he didn't just chose yesmen/yeswomen. He has high-ranking members who have disagreed with him on a number of occasions (e.g. Sec. of State Colin Powell) and even has holdovers from the previous administration (e.g. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Commerce Secretary under President Clinton). Critics of Bush have pointed to dissention in the ranks as a sign of weakness in his administration, but in fact they show a strength that is often misunderstood and mislabelled. George Bush can handle critics and he doesn't need to be coddled. Further, he knows that opposing opinions, to differing extents, are useful in honing one's own views. Searching for the grains of truth in thoughts you otherwise disagree with can help you make better decisions.

Unfortunately, sometimes more than those grains are extracted. I believe this is what has brought us the TIA program. There is an element in this country that believes that any sort of adversity, great or small, requires a government response. Often, for this element, seeing the government doing something, anything, regardless of how effective or ineffective it is, is enough. It is this liberal element, the "bigger government is better government" crowd, that is, I believe, responsible for this runaway trampling of constitutional rights. Those on the "American street" find solace in a decree from Washington. Those in government find more power and money. Neither of these make us any safer, and in the buckshot approach to terrorism, more innocents will wind up hurt than those who are guilty.

I think Bush has listened to the wrong folks on this issue. I think he felt he had to do something after 9/11, and do it quickly, but took some bad advice on what to do. Conservatives want smaller government because what we have now is so out of hand and so intrusive. Our liberties are being curtailed, and this had been going on long before that awful day in 2001.

Dubya needs to get back to his conservative advisors and back to his own conservatism on this one before this new bureaucracy takes on a life of its own (if it hasn't done so already). We're giving up liberty for security, and as Ben Franklin said, in that trade, we'll lose them both.
posted at 1:16 PM

Jim Lacey at the National Review has a novel suggestion as to why we might not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Perhaps the henchmen were trying to fool the boss.

Instead, his henchmen did everything possible to obfuscate the true WMD picture and to thwart any inspection teams. If they had nothing to hide, they sure worked hard at trying to hide it. What if they were not just hiding a possible WMD program from inspectors, but also hiding from Saddam the fact that no such program existed?

Outlandish? Maybe not.

It's an interesting concept; the Iraqi government, having had so much money siphoned off by Hussein or used to pay off the Republican Guard or buy yet another palace, didn't have the cash. But knowing what Saddam did to those who failed, they couldn't say it wasn't working. It would also explain why the intercepted orders from Saddam to his generals to fire chemical weapons was never carried out, not to mention the years of sanctions Hussein endured when he could have played the Good Guy to the UN and showed that he had nothing.

It's all conjecture, of course, but Lacey shows how it would explain a lot of things. Worth a look.
posted at 4:16 PM

Looks like the floodgates are starting to open. First it was Peter Collins, and now Bob Zelnick, who spent 21 years at ABC News. What he terms the "Peter Factor" caused scripts to be rewritten for either stylistic or editorial reasons. The former's no big deal. The latter is bias.

Zelnick isn't as critical of Jennings as Collins was (he suggests that other reports had successfully resisted the changing of their scripts), but any sort of attempt by someone to change the story of a reporter on the scene which changes the editorial or factual content is guilty of bias. It can go both ways, to be sure, but if you listen to liberals who defend the mainstream media, you'd think that something like this would be nigh unto impossible. It ain't impossible, and I think we're just catching the tip of the iceberg.
posted at 4:01 PM

Judicial filibusters, then and now: Thomas Jipping has a telling article about Democrats who have, in the past, spoken out against filibustering the President's judicial nominees (during, of course, the Clinton administration) but who's actions these days are diametrically opposed to their words, allowing a minority to hijack a Constitutionally-mandated up-or-down vote on the nominees themselves.

This is, of course, no big news; Democrats have been the perennial overall winners in the Situational Ethics category (with Clinton being the "Best in Show"), but now we have (more) statistics.

It's this sort of behavior that has Republicans (and some Democrats) putting forth what they call the "nuclear" option; reducing the number of votes needed to break the filibuster for executive nominees. Democrats have upped the ante every time a Republican has been in the Oval Office, and now their stonewalling has brought us here; 2 years into the Bush administration, and many of his original nominees are still cooling their heels. Issue litmus tests, stalling in committee and other tactics have been used by them to prevent Republicans from putting people on the bench, and now they're going further than ever before to get their way, in spite of the will of the people of America who put them in the minority.

And this from Democrats who have (outwardly) eschewed litmus tests for judges in the past and who have been the biggest (outward) detractors of partisanship. Obviously, it's all been outward. As Jipping says, actions speak louder than words.
posted at 12:54 PM

Dennis Miller writing in the Wall Street Journal (yes, that Dennis Miller, the "Saturday Night Live" alum, and yes, that Wall Street Journal) has a brilliant deconstruction of Norman Mailer's general outlook on Bush and Baghdad.

His basic contention is that we went to war with Iraq because with the dominance of white American men in the boxing ring, the office and the home front eroded, George W. Bush thought they needed to know they were still good at something. Mr. Mailer has a degree in aeronautical engineering from Harvard so he had to know that argument wouldn't fly. But then again, maybe this claptrap is just a grand put-on. The fact that I and many others can't differentiate anymore does not augur well for Norm's legend.

Miller, in his typical brand of humor (minus the expletives; it is, after all that Wall Street Journal) gives many reasons, both general and specific, why Mailer and those like him are becoming irrelevant today; they've lost touch with reality.
posted at 11:49 AM

No liberal bias in the media? Not according to long-time journalist Peter Collins, whose career spanned 30 years and many news organizations. According to him:

"[Former ABC News executive producer] Bill Lord had supported me in my coverage of Central America, against the wishes of Peter Jennings," Collins said. "[Jennings] was unhappy with my coverage because I tried to tell both sides of the story," he added.

Imagine that; the anchor of a major media news show upset over balanced coverage. Well, no need to imagine, it continues on today.

"Because I presume that Peter Jennings felt that the Sandinista regime, which was a communist regime - no questions about it - were mere benign agrarian reformers ... [Jennings] was a believer, was and is," Collins explained.

Collins doesn't just cite ABC, but many other organizations, and as far back as the 1930s. But he does see hope in "breaking the monopoly of the establishment news media",

"If it were not for for Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times,and Fox News -- those organizations, entities, have finally managed to break the dam," Collins said. "Ph.D. pieces could be written about this subject, dozens of them."

As Limbaugh has often said, he doesn't need equal time, he is equal time. Collins would agree.
posted at 11:54 AM