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Well, this has been a whale of a month for the ol' blog. After a late September link by Instapundit, followed closely by a pointer from NRO's The Corner, I've had a couple of serious spikes in traffic and double the average daily visits all this month. Not to mention actual regular readers! The kind that come back more than once! Woo hoo! :)

Anyway, if you're one of those regulars, thanks so much for stopping by every so often. At least now I don't feel like I'm just talking to myself anymore. :) I appreciate your visits, even though I'm not nearly as prolific as other blogs you probably frequent. Hope you enjoy it, and, even more, hope the opinions expressed are worth mulling over in your head.

One last chance to ensure you have the correct page bookmarked. I think there's still a couple of stragglers for whom this will appear to be the last enter ever (since they've bookmarked the October, 2003 archive page). Anyway, just one last FYI.

See you in November!
posted at 4:28 PM

A senior member of Saddam Hussein's ousted government is believed to be helping coordinate attacks on American forces with members of an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, a senior defense official said Wednesday.

What, another Saddam-al Qaeda connection? But I thought the liberals knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was absolutely no connection at all.

Imagine my surprise. Or not.
posted at 5:38 PM

Back in August, I gave a slight fisking to an American Prospect article entitled "The Fruits of Bushonomics" by Robert Kuttner. It was only a slight fisking, because I'm not a professional economist, but Mr. Kuttner's points all seemed to defy history. Here's part of what he said:

Economic growth came in at 2.4 percent for the second quarter of 2003. That was better than expected, but it needs to hit 4 percent or higher to reduce unemployment. Bush's cheerleaders say that will happen, in well-choreographed fashion, in the election year.

I talked about how Bush inherited a sliding economy (complete with links to prove this), and said:

Further, the numbers for the past 3 quarters (1.4, 1.4, 2.4) do, in fact, point to an economy that is set to start making headway in the unemployment department. No "cheerleading" required.

Nope, no cheerleading necessary, just tax cuts. Today we find out that the economy in Q3 of this year grew at a "blistering" 7.2%. This runs completely counter to Kuttner's predictions.

Normally in this kind of downturn, Washington helps the states. This time Bush put tax cutting ahead of aid to states and communities. Congress grudgingly included an emergency $20 billion only because Democrats insisted on it. Even so, that sum is a small fraction of the state budget shortfall.

The more people make, and more importantly the more they keep, the more money comes in to the states' & fed's coffers (just like they did during the Reagan administration, when the federal income tax revenues increased by $160 billion in the 8 years after his tax cuts). I'm betting that the $20 billion will pale in comparison to the windfall states will find coming in due to increased consumer & business spending.

I remember watching the 1994 election coverage the night that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans won a majority in the House right under Clinton's nose. George Will called it "Reagan's Third Term". And George W. Bush is poised to start another Reagan-esque booming economy, if he keeps to conservative principles. The fruits of "Bushonomics" are ripening, and it's good news for all of us, even the Bush-haters.

Les Moonves and the cast of "The Reagans"; you'd better call your respective offices. Last-minute shooting starts this evening on the recently-written final scenes for the mini-series. Act 7: Reagan's Fourth Term.
posted at 5:21 PM

Global warming caused by...the sun? According to studies of sunspot activity, it's certainly a big factor.

For example, between 1645 and 1715 (a period astronomers call the "Maunder Minimum") the sunspot cycle stopped; the face of the Sun was nearly blank for 70 years. At the same time Europe was hit by an extraordinary cold spell: the Thames River in London froze, glaciers advanced in the Alps, and northern sea ice increased. An earlier centuries-long surge in solar activity (inferred from studies of tree rings) had the opposite effect: Vikings were able to settle the thawed-out coast of Greenland in the 980s, and even grow enough wheat there to export the surplus to Scandinavia.

And you thought glacial melting would destroy all life on earth, eh? Nope, it just allowed farming where it hadn't been done before, or since. And all without having fossil fuels to blame. How did the human race survive? Listening to the dire predictions of "global warming" scientists, if Greenland was warm enough to be farmed, we'd be goners for sure. Apparently not.
posted at 1:05 PM

Looks like the Republicans are finally finding their spine in the battle over judicial nominees. This story says that Majority Leader Bill Frist plans a 3-phased approach, culminating, if necessary, with the so-called "nuclear option"; changing the rules to require only a simply majority to confirm nominees.

But then, maybe it's not so much a return to principles, but more of a timing issue. Referring to when the vote on the "nuclear option" would take place,

At that time, President Bush would be in the midst of his re-election campaign, and as Novak reported, Republicans would be able to energize their conservative base around the issue.

It may just be timed to get better coverage of the tricks Democrats are playing with the judicial nomination process. Either way, I'm glad to see some movement on this.
posted at 1:42 PM

The Weekly Standard has further proof of the rather close connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Looks like the anti-war protestors are getting a leg knocked out from under them.
posted at 1:09 PM

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is all concerned about the arrest of law-breakers.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Friday police raids on dozens of U.S. Wal-Mart stores in the search for illegal immigrants this week amounted to "terrorizing" workers.

"It instills a great deal of fear in people who are only trying to earn a living and put food on the table for their family,"...

...and ought to be legitimately in fear of being discovered as criminals...

...Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters on a Congressional visit to Mexico.

Ah, pandering to Hispanics, buying their support by promising to ignore criminals. Worse, by promising them full benefits, including drivers licenses and health benefits. But why stop there? Let's fix all their traffic tickets, ignore any felonies, and forgive all income taxes. (Well, even Democrats couldn't stomach that last one.)

This is the politics of division; split us up into groups, pit us against each other, and derive power from playing both sides.
posted at 10:50 PM

I found the full CBS News story done by correspondent Vince Gonzales on the web. Entitled "A Dark Side to Home Schooling", it covers a handful of extreme examples of criminal behavior that occurred in homeschool families, although it's quite a leap of logic to suggest that homeschooling itself was the cause or even a factor in them.

Just for perspective, here's a page from a study done by the National Center for Education Statistics that shows that during the 1998-1999 school year there were 40 "school-associated violent deaths in the United States" of school-aged children. Of course, defenders of public schools would point out how small a percentage of the population that is, as would CBS News, and rightly so. It's not really a major, national news story. But then, CBS made a national news story out of a similar small percentage of homeschoolers.

The problem here is classic "guilt by association". Andrea Yates homeschooled, and, as CBS dutifully reports, killed all 5 of her children. No mention is made by CBS in this story, however, of her issues with postpartum depression. One might imagine Mrs. Yates might have done the same thing after her children came home from public school, but would CBS then have somehow associated public schools with those deaths in the same manner they have done with homeschooling? The answer is obviously "No", because domestic violence happens every day in this country in public-school-educated families, and no mainstream news organization is blaming public schools for it.

But here's how CBS words it, letting you make the link:

Andrea Yates gained national attention when she drowned her five children in a bathtub. Deanna Laney, told investigators she beat her three sons with rocks, killing two of them. Both mothers taught their children at home.

They might as well have added, "They also had brown hair, and had their car's oil changed within the last month", for all that last observation is worth.
posted at 3:24 PM

As I've said before, I'm not a really big fan of polls. And that's not really what this entry is about, so now that we have that out of the way... :)

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution conducted a poll on how Georgians rate Bush's performance in a number of areas. The full results are here, but let me summarize them:

How would you rate President Bush on:
The Environment
Excellent/Good/Fair	72.6%
Poor/Not Sure	27.4%
Taxes
Excellent/Good/Fair	75%
Poor/Not Sure	25%
Jobs & the economy
Excellent/Good/Fair	58.3%
Poor/Not Sure	41.7%
Foreign policy
Excellent/Good/Fair	70.7%
Poor/Not Sure	29.3%
Iraq
Excellent/Good/Fair	68%
Poor/Not Sure	32%
Education
Excellent/Good/Fair	80.8%
Poor/Not Sure	19.2%
Health care
Excellent/Good/Fair	66.4%
Poor/Not Sure	33.6%

The worst Bush does among those who give him positive results is about 60%, while over half the areas give him a 70+% mark.

So what's the AJC's headline over this? "Georgia leans to Bush, poll says." Where's this "lean" bit coming from? Well, another question in the poll asks how these likely Georgia voters would vote in a race between Bush and any Democratic candidate. Bush gets 51.8% while the Democrat gets 38.6. In that one sense, you can say that Georgians only "lean" towards Bush, but in most of the other questions Georgians seem to be pretty solidly on his side.

What liberal media? The liberal media that writes headlines to minimize good results for a Republican, hoping that those who read it will see that and move on to the next story. That liberal media.
posted at 11:50 AM

Just a reminder, in the waning days of October, that some of you still have the October archive page of Considerettes bookmarked instead of the main page. If, when you come here, the address ends with "2003_10_01_archive.html", then you need to change the bookmark to remove that part.

Wouldn't want you to miss anything. :)
posted at 2:05 PM

The myths about homeschooling keep being torn down, but not many folks are listening. WorldNetDaily reports on a new study by the National Home Education Research Institute. According to the study, homeschoolers, when they've grown up, demonstrate that not only are they well socialized, but they more often get into college, get good jobs, and demonstrate more community and civic involvement than the average.

So who's ignoring this good news? The mainstream media (same folks ignoring good news in Iraq) and CBS in particular. With all the studies showing how much better homeschoolers do than their public schooled counterparts, one has to wonder why CBS would present such a biased view of it. There's an agenda here, make no mistake about it.
posted at 11:29 AM

If someone says to you that the suicide bombings in Israel would stop if only the Palestinians were given the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, have them consider this:

Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad should continue their armed struggle against Israel even if Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Gaza, including East Jerusalem, and a Palestinian state is created, a new survey shows.

But wait, there's more.

Nintey-six percent of Israeli Jews say the people who piloted the planes on September 11 were terrorists, while 37 percent of Palestinians share that view.

Slightly more than one in four - 26 percent - of Palestinians believe Israelis planned the 9-11 attacks.

Forty-two percent of Palestinians and 61 percent of Israeli-Arabs stated that they support the people who are attacking Americans in Iraq. Zero percent of Israeli Jews said they did.

Much of the blame for this foolishness must rest on the Palestinian "government", as their indoctrination programs seem to still be working.
posted at 12:38 PM

The Rumsfeld memo is being defended by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in much in the way I concluded yesterday:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said the memo, which poses more questions than answers, was written to generate ideas on how to begin the secretary's long-term goal of transforming the Defense Department to meet new threats.

"The experts will tell you that if you talk to somebody about change or transformation of anything, they will tell you that the larger an organization and the older an organization, the more difficult it is to change it, and it's not going to happen unless you have a CEO bought into the need for change. So, what you're seeing in this memo, the way we do business, is that our boss is challenging us with a lot of questions on are we changing ourselves to deal with this 21st century threat environment we find ourselves in," Myers said.

Rumsfeld is challenging the status quo in the DoD because the status quo in the world changed on 9/11. He's not ducking the hard questions, he's got the courage to be asking them, and he wants answers.

Of course, the Democrats are willing to use anything at all for political gain:

``Secretary Rumsfeld's comments are an illustration of the concern that they have about the failure of their policies in Iraq so far. There can be no other description of those words than that,'' said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Rumsfeld is thinking outside the box. Daschle is still inside the box, criticizing anyone who leaves it, and hoping that criticism garners him and his party more votes. Never mind that these kinds of memos and questions and challenges are necessary, nay required, for this new warfare if we want to survive it. Nope, for Tom Daschle, power is the prime mover.

The good news is that not all Democrats think the same way.

Many members of Congress said it was critical the questions Rumsfeld raised be addressed.

"This is a far-reaching call for his advisers to think outside the box," said Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, who met with Rumsfeld Wednesday.

"Are we winning or losing the global war on terrorism? Those questions need to be answered," said Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

But there are still plenty of those that just don't get it.

Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., was more critical. He said the memo showed the administration has exaggerated its success in the war on terrorism.

Not so. These questions are ones about getting at the root of the terrorism weed, and we wouldn't even need to be asking them if we were still frightened, hunkered down behind our own borders, hoping that it wasn't our building that would be dive bombed next. Instead we're making progress in the war on terrorism. These questions highlight that we've made good progress and now need to look at the tougher issues.
posted at 10:19 AM

I finally got a real live blogroll set up. Blogrolling.com is up and running again, so I've got it all squared away, and now have an actual list of blogs I frequent. Enjoy!
posted at 4:43 PM

USA Today reports on a memo Rumsfeld sent out. Granted, it sounds more dour than his typical public pronouncements, but I would imagine part of the reason he is more upbeat outwardly is that he's got, not just the military's, but the entire nation's morale in his hands. Still, let's take a look at the 3 points USA Today notes:

• The United States is "just getting started" in fighting the Iraq-based terror group Ansar Al-Islam.
  Administration officials have been saying we're just getting started with terrorists in general. There has never been the illusion (even in Rumsfeld's "positive public comments") that this was going to be anything but a long, hard fight. No news here.
  
• The war is hugely expensive. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' cost of millions."
  What war isn't hugely expensive? Although, that's not exactly what Rumsfeld is saying. He's simply noting that terrorism costs less than protecting the citizens plus routing the terrorists from their holes/havens/palaces, and that this reality is something that should be taken into consideration. No news here.
  
• Postwar stabilization efforts are very difficult. "It is pretty clear the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."
  See the first item. Stabilizing Iraq means instituting a government of the people, not of the Ba'athists. This takes time. Another country you may be familiar with took about 7 years to go from post-war to constitution. The U.N. thinks Iraq should be ready to go it alone in less than 1. Rumsfeld is correct in saying that it will take more time than those in the ivory tower think it should. No news here.
  

So this is not really news at all. The three main topic pointed out by USA Today don't really give us any information we don't already have, or could figure out with the simplest knowledge of history.

That, of course, hasn't stopped others from trying to prove that, when things don't go precisely as planned, those plans were just trash talk to get the gullible citizenry on-board. The implication being that this never happens with plans laid by Democrats. Admitting that fighting terrorism is a new kind of war and that we may need radical changes in how we prosecute this war vs. those in the past is being portrayed by Bush-haters as a sign of stupidity or weakness, instead of what it really is; a bold, paradigm-shifting solution to a different kind of threat. Again, the implication is that a Democrat would have done the same ol' things in the same ol' ways because "we've always done it that way before". Is this the "progressive" thinking that liberals so highly tout?

Rumsfeld's memo shows he is a realist and a visionary. That's the kind of person we need in charge of our post-9/11 military.

UPDATE: A thanks to Mr. Preston at Junkyard Blog for linking to this entry from his in-depth commentary on the subject.
posted at 1:46 PM

Playing a little catch-up here, due to being on the road last week.

• Federal Takeover Dept.: This article should make you feel safer. I know I felt so much better while flying last week that box cutters and chemicals can still be smuggled onto airplanes. I would really like to see a study done on how much (if any) safer we are, now that airport security workers get their paychecks on federal paper stock instead of from private companies. It would have to be in an apples-to-apples way; whatever kind of tests they used to do.
  UPDATE: Apparently, the items had been smuggled on-board 5 weeks earlier.
  
• Truth in Labeling Dept.: The Congressional Black Caucus needs a name change--perhaps the Congressional Liberal Black Caucus--because it's clear they aren't concerned about all blacks in general. Here's a story that points this out. "The black Democrats said [nominee Janice] Brown's conservative credentials make her unfit for the D.C. judgeship. " Democrats continue to insist on conditions to judgeship that they'd be suing over if the shoe was on the other foot.
  
• "World Ends, Minorities Hit Hardest" Journalism Dept.: Sarah at the blog "Trying to Grok" is a military wife, and lends her perspective to the daily life of a military family, especially relating to Iraq. She had a post recently (and has had further follow-ups) showing how a mainstream news source like the Washington Post can take a perfectly balanced article (in this instance, a case study of both the good and bad from Iraq in "Stars and Stripes") and turn it into what amounts to another declaration of "Iraq is a quagmire!" Bias is busting out all over.
  
• Repackaging Dept.: Moderate Democrats (for liberal readers, that should be "reactionary, right-wing traitors") are suggesting that the party rethink its position on gun control. Now, I would rather they rethink it on constitutional grounds instead of simply being concerned about "alienating them[selves] from mainstream voters" (i.e. change what we say we're for, so they'll like us). And I'd rather it not be a simple change of terminology from "gun control" to "gun safety" (i.e. a thorn, by any other name, still hurts you). But still, it looks like there could be some movement in the right direction. We can only hope. And vote.
  

posted at 12:53 PM

Another content-free U.N. resolution passed unanimously today.

The U.N. Security Council Thursday unanimously adopted a U.S.-sponsored resolution that calls for the establishment of a U.S.-led multinational force and appeals to U.N. members to provide troops and money to help support the struggling U.S. occupation of Iraq.

So what does this mean in concrete terms? When the resolution said that members would provide troops and money, what does that actually mean?

But France, Russia, Germany and Pakistan said after the vote that they would not make any new military or financial contributions to support the resolution.

So just like resolution 1441, which threatened violence while most of the Security Council members didn't have the will to follow through, we now have another resolution not worth the paper it's written on.

How nice; we got a raised hand by some rather rich countries (at least in the case of France and Germany), but nothing else. Thanks for nuthin', fellas. Why in the world do people put any stock in this useless organization?
posted at 9:41 PM

Two clips from the same news story.

Clip #1: Democrat Joe Lieberman...is promising to ensure that upper-income Americans pay more taxes than they did before President Bush's record-breaking tax cuts.

Clip #2: "That's class warfare...."

Question: Who gave the quote in clip #2? Karl Rove? Bill O'Reilly? Some Republican deriding Lieberman's proposal as yet another "soak the rich" scheme?

Nope. Joe Lieberman said it, interestingly enough. But, in spite of the fact that his own proposal feeds on that very class warfare, he doesn't call it that. Instead, he decries the idea of giving you back some of your own hard-earned money "class warfare". Talk about your double-speak! Lieberman calls tax refunds "class warfare", and then turns around and promises the middle class that he's gonna get those rich folks.

It's just the same, tired rhetoric from another Democrat. The headline for this AP story is, "Lieberman Proposes Tax Boost for Wealthy". This is news? You could replace "Lieberman" with virtually every Democrat politician in Washington, D.C. and it would be true.

The article says that Joe is "hoping to jump-start his presidential campaign" with this allegedly "fresh attack on White House policy". It's about as stale as you can get, and the folks who will be energized by it are those who have declared war on those who make more money than they do. The same policies appealing to the same envious contingent. >yawn<
posted at 11:53 PM

I'm out of town on business this week, so blogging may be light.

It's interesting that one of the first changes for the better that comes from the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger happens Germany. Almost ironic.

"The more confused we are by what they [German politicians] say, the greater our longing for a man or woman with simple words," wrote Bild newspaper columnist Franz Josef Wagner. "The only problem is that it's the wrong ones who usually master simple language."
...
"Germany urgently needs something Schwarzenegger-like: a can-do spirit, unconventional thinking, courage, strength and vision. We're facing the worst crisis since the war," he wrote.

posted at 11:25 PM

The sabotaging of the Schwarzenegger governorship has begun.

Aides to Sen. John Vasconcellos confirmed the liberal San Jose Democrat called Republican Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger "a boob," said voters "made a mistake," and announced that when the Legislature reconvenes in January, "I'm not sure I'll go back."

Other liberal legislators, from the Bay Area and elsewhere, apparently are thinking about skipping Schwarzenegger's January State of the State address -- his blueprint for working with the Legislature to tackle California's deficit and other woes -- because they believe he will have nothing to tell them.

How open-minded of them.

But even while saying they would try to work with Schwarzenegger, liberals among the Democrats who dominate the Legislature wound up talking about potential deadlocks with the moderate Republican.

"It depends on what the hell he wants to do," Senate Majority Leader John Burton, D-San Francisco, said during a Capitol news conference.

"If he wants to take money away from aged, blind and disabled, or if he wants to take money away from poor women and children, I don't think so," Burton said. "Not while I'm around."

Translation: "If he doesn't tow the Democrat line, we'll obstruct him at every turn."

The liberal blogger Kos is trying to have it both ways, though. While he's ignored the slings and arrows already being thrown at Arnold even before he's sitting in the big chair, he yawns, "Expect Arnold to whine about Democratic 'obstructionism' in the state legislature." Whaddya mean? If he complains about it, it'll be perfectly justified. He's having to face it already! Kos is displaying pure liberal partisanship; ignoring the behavior of the folks in his party while (pre-emptively) dismissing reaction to it.


He goes on to say, "Arnold has 100 days, starting the second he takes his oath." How thoughtful of him. It took Davis 5 years to dig this hole, and he's generously giving Schwarzenegger a liitle over 3 months to fix it all, while a blantantly obvious plan of obstruction is already being laid. California Democrat Party state spokesman Bob Mulholland said that a new recall push would begin at the end of those 100 days. Now ain't this a classic! The recall of Davis was a grass roots effort based on performance, or lack thereof. Democrats, however, are poised to keep Schwarzenegger from getting anything done, while at the same time preparing to recall him over that very lack of progress. The former is what a recall is for, the latter is simple revenge of the sour grapes variety. That's not public service, that's power mongering.
posted at 5:06 PM

Israeli forces are trying to shut down weapon-smuggling tunnels from a Palestinian refugee camp to Egypt, and it apparently didn't go the way they planned. There were casualties, but all the numbers I've heard have come from Palestinian sources. These should all be taken with a grain (nay, pillar) of salt after they admitted (3 months after the fact) that Jenin was not a massacre (as they'd originally claimed) and that most of the casualties were fighters (unlike what they'd originally claimed). Always keep that in mind.
posted at 12:03 PM

I'm a geek at heart and I peruse all my web server log files because of that. :) I have been noticing that some of y'all are coming here from having bookmarked my site after visiting it via the link from NRO's "The Corner" blog. I know that because you're coming in to the October-2003-only archive page, which is where the link from NRO pointed you (which is how Blogger created permalinks; via the archive page since entries don't scroll off of there vs the main page where they do).

All this to say that if you bookmarked me after coming from NRO, check your bookmark. If it says:
http://www.thepaytons.org/essays/considerettes/2003_10_01_archive.html
change it to
http://www.thepaytons.org/essays/considerettes/

And then you'll keep seeing new posts when November comes.

(A public service announcement from Considerettes. Tax, tag, title and dealer prep extra. No log entries were harmed in the making of this blog entry. Percentage are APR with approved credit.)
posted at 10:06 AM

Great column by Kathleen Parker today, which is a primer for folks who still insist that David Kay's report said they've found nothing in Iraq, but haven't read the actual report itself. Also Neal Boortz has a good analogy for considering what Kay did find, comparing it to raiding the home of a counterfeiter and finding all the wares of a counterfeiter (press, plates, paper, inks) but not one single fake $100 bill. Does that mean you failed?

No, and neither did Kay. And Kay's not done yet.
posted at 2:02 PM

Some random thoughts on the California recall:

• The influence of the Clintons is seriously waning, if it ever was all it was hyped up to be.
  
• It's amazing how a law can be on the books for 92 years, and all of a sudden folks are coming out of the woodwork proclaiming it a bad law. I saw 3 people last night, as I occasionally popped over to CNBC, complain that the recall law would make America's founding fathers roll over in their graves and that it was bad for political stability. If it was so bad, why have none of these concerned folks done anything about it, except complain once it's used on their guy? And for concerns that this will bring about all sorts of recalls now, one merely has to remember that recalls in California has been tried before, but failed, and this is the first on in almost a century to even come to a vote. That's pretty stable (and it doesn't reflect well on Davis).
  
• In addition, a talked-about recall of Governor Schwarzenegger would be made much harder than the Davis one, thanks to Davis himself. The number of signatures required is 12% of the turnout at the last statewide election, and Davis' governing got so many folks upset that this recall garnered record turnout. Thus the number of signatures required for a recall vote on Arnold will be significantly more.
  
• Spinmeister Terry McAuliffe was on FOX News Channel (and, I imagine, all the other news stations) suggesting that the success of the recall reflected poorly on Bush, and that the anger felt by Californians was due to the national economy and thus the recall of Gray Davis is not Davis' fault. Of course, if the recall had failed, he'd be saying that reflected poorly on Bush, too. So why does anyone bother interviewing this guy? Sure he's a cheerleader for the Democrats, but he's got a history of utterly ignoring reality. He needs one of those captions that the ficticious Joe Isuzu used to have:

  Terry McAuliffe: DNC Chairman
  (He's lying)

  
  
• It was most interesting to hear Democrats who defended Clinton in the Lewinsky matter go after Schwarzenegger. Maureen Dowd put it this way
  

  Now Republicans who thundered against Bill - not Arnold, who scorned impeachment as a waste of time and money - argue that peccadilloes are not relevant to governing. And feminists who backed Bill are ushering Arnold gropees up to the Democratic microphones.

  
  Let's compare the two:
  
  • Arnold's "peccadilloes" did not occur while he was in office, any office, and certainly not as the most powerful person on the planet (who just might be subject to a bit of blackmail should he not want news of said peccadillo to get out).
    
  • Clinton lied to the American people and the courts about his behavior. (Memo to Dowd: That's what the impeachment was about.) Arnold has taken responsibility for his actions without being forced into a corner first and without having to parse the word "is". That, I think, is the major difference between the two situations, and why people are more forgiving of Arnold than they were about Clinton.
  
  This is not to say that what Arnold did is "OK". It's just that what he did is quite a bit down the scale from what Clinton did, it didn't happen in a situation where the power of his position might compromise a state or a nation, and he freely admitted it when confronted, asked for forgiveness, and didn't try to brush it aside. This is why I see the change of behavior noted by Dowd differently than she sees it. For Republicans, it's reasonable and compassionate. For Democrats, I see the change of behavior as hypocritical and as partisan as they come.

OK, Arnold. You have the power now. Use it for good.
posted at 10:53 AM

Taranto used something I sent to him again. On today's list of Best of the Web, the last item is entitled "The MoveOn Mob--II". I forwarded him the column by the NY Post's Bob McManus talking about him getting "swarmed" by calls from the group. (This time it wasn't just a funny heading. >grin<)
posted at 5:46 PM

posted at 12:41 PM

After David Kay gave his preliminary report on the search for WMDs in Iraq, a number of liberal pundits asked, "So where are the WMDs?" David Kay has been responding that they're finding them all along. As Andrew Sullivan has been saying, "read the report!" Given that the report covers only the first three months of searching for things Saddam had 10 years to hide, you'd think the same folks who thought he should have more time in power would give just a tad more time for our guys to uncover it.
posted at 1:39 PM

From Reuters:

Wilson said it now appeared his wife's name was actually leaked by someone outside the White House, as an act of revenge to stop him and others from questioning the intelligence used to go to war with Iraq.

"This administration apparently decided the way to do that was to leak the name of my wife," he told NBC's "Meet The Press."

Are these, too, "measured words"? Is the yardstick really that flexible?
posted at 8:54 PM

In response to those who have been saying, “See, David Kay’s report shows no WMDs in Iraq, so Bush lied”, please head on over to Snopes.com for others who have “lied” to us in the past. Snopes is a great source for checking out hoaxes or urban legends before you forward something on in E-mail, but while it usually debunks things, sometimes it...um...”bunks” them. The link goes to a page that describes an E-mail apparently making the rounds listing a host of Democrats who insisted that Hussein did in fact have WMDs (a number of whom are now saying that he didn’t). Barbara Mikkelson puts each quote in context within the speech it was given, but the quotes themselves are gems.
posted at 2:41 PM

I’ve always known that the Ten Commandments were featured prominently at the Supreme Court, but this article from the Cybercast News Service does a good job of detailing what and where. I’ve considered the Supremes cowards for not dealing with this issue head-on. Part of that I imagine is that they’re up to their hips in religious images, and trying to say that all that they are surrounded with is unconstitutional would be ludicrous on its face.
posted at 2:26 PM

I found a couple of other places that carries the story about Kuwait catching biochem arms smugglers: the DowJones Newswires and NASDAQ. They, and the report in the Hindustan Times, are all pretty much the same thing, but they all credit AP with the story, not each other or some other news service. This was truly a strange situation for a potentially explosive news story. Wonder if we’ll ever hear what the deal was.
posted at 1:00 PM

Another reason to dismiss polls: Wednesday’s Washington Post-ABC News poll asked this question (boldface mine):

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether someone in the White House broke the law by identifying a former diplomat's wife as an undercover CIA agent. The former diplomat claims this was done to punish him for criticizing U.S. policy on Iraq. Have you heard or read anything about this situation, or not?

Later questions asked if folks thought this was a serious matter or not. But, if she’s not an undercover CIA agent, those answers would most likely change, would they not? Yet there is still no clear indication what her job was except from Novak who quotes someone from the CIA who says she wasn’t undercover. Officially, the CIA won’t answer that question, and Wilson won’t say himself.

Leading questions to push liberal bias. Thank you, “unbiased” mainstream media.
posted at 11:50 AM

A big thanks goes out to Marc whose blog, I think, is the first person to put me on his blogroll. (I gotta get something automated for that. Manually messing with my Blogger template stinks.)

UPDATE: My timing is peccable (as opposed to "impeccable"). Blogrolling.com is down for now, doing “systemwide upgrades”. Sounds like it’s been down a while because of this part of the notice: “DO NOT EMAIL ME ASKING WHEN SIGN-UPS WILL BE BACK ON!” Reading his news, looks like it won’t be up until at least Saturday, but after that, I promise to have an actual blogroll.
posted at 10:37 AM

Looks like I got noticed by The National Review's blog The Corner. Kathryn Jean Lopez was apparently the recipient of my shameless self-promotion >grin< with respect to my posting on the Limbaugh ESPN thing. All her comment said was, "More on the Rush ESPN thing; This blogger makes sense" and *bam* I got more than twice the number of folks here than I got from the Instapundit mention. (Actually, my notice on Reynold's place was about the 8th or 9th thing in the post, which he's updated 2 or 3 times already, so not only was it down a bit within the post, but posts on other topics had scrolled it down a bit, so the NRO placement was technically better.) So the "Instalanche" got beat by a ... Cornerlanche? NRO-lanche? Hmm, need a better term.

This has been a good week. :)
posted at 9:30 PM

Taranto used another one of the headlines I sent him in "Best of the Web Today". Scroll down to "Zoo Knew?"
posted at 4:22 PM

Why isn't this getting reported as incredible good news by the American press, or hardly anybody at all?

Kuwaiti security authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle $60 million worth of chemical weapons and biological warheads from Iraq to an unnamed European country, a Kuwaiti newspaper said on Wednesday.

As of right now (noon, October 2nd), there is only 1 web news site reporting this story: The Hindustan Times in India, and it was posted 19 hours ago. The Associated Press sent this out on the wires to all major, medium and even minor news organizations, but the silence is deafening. Here is major potential evidence of WMDs in Iraq, and while the blogosphere is all over this, there's a mainstream news blackout on it. This is truly amazing.

Of course, when it's a conservative (like, oh, Rush Limbaugh) saying things that knee-jerkers so desperately want to construe as racist, CNN gives it hourly updates.

UPDATE: Speculation around the blogosphere now is that this is rumor, as some folks with AP feeds aren't seeing this story. So perhaps I ought to calm down a bit, eh, because, as we all know, the press never reports on rumors. Right?

UPDATE #2: Reuters is running a report where Kuwaiti security sources deny that weapons were siezed; only that archaeological artifacts and "other items" were intercepted. Ah well, you'd think I would have learned when the reports that came out during the war of WMD discoveries turned out to be either false alarms or just rumors. Yup, time to calm down.
posted at 1:03 PM

I obviously went for the grins when I suggested that perhaps Larry Johnson was implying that Mrs. Wilson had been undercover at the CIA since she was 10. But perhaps that wasn't completely obvious, since I didn't append a smiley or something after my rhetorical question. When Johnson said she'd been there for "three decades", he could've meant the 80s, 90s and 00s. However, he had 2 opportunities to be clear but he didn't take those opportunities.

In addition, his characterization of her job as "undercover" doesn't mesh with Novak's CIA connection. So Mr. Johnson, for all his bluster, still has some outstanding issues with his story. His use of hyperbole to make a point, when the facts in this case are paramount, don't help his case at all.
posted at 11:13 AM

I just listened to Rush Limbaugh's keynote speech at the National Association of Broadcasters convention. His description of his comment on ESPN, about how he thinks the media has been hyping Donovan McNabb because they wanted a black quarterback to succeed, is exactly how I took it; an indictment of the media for racism. And it was an opinion, and clearly stated as such. Instead, Rush is getting tarred with the same "racist" brush that knee-jerk reactors have been painting him with for years.

If you want to hear it for yourself, click here. Oh...wait. I'm sorry, that was a link to a sound bite, 3 weeks earlier, when Rush defended black coaches. Of course, that doesn't get noticed by those who hate Limbaugh; they simply hear what they want to hear and no amount of evidence to the contrary will deter them.

(By the way, the actual McNabb soundbite is here.)

And did these same people react with outrage when Limbaugh said that the media was hyping Vinny Testaverde or Kurt Warner? No. Could it be because those players are white? So, according to these people based on their reactions, Rush can criticize white players but not black ones. Now who's racist?

In any event, for those who are indeed willing to listen to both sides, and if you missed it on his radio show, Rush has a very detailed response those the whole tempest-in-a-teapot (gee, we're seeing a lot of these from liberals lately) on his website.

UPDATE: JunkYardBlog has a great commentary on this as well.

UPDATE #2: Amy Ridenour, president of The National Center for Public Policy Research (a conservative group) has some great examples of hypocrisy in the Limbaugh-McNabb issue.

"An ESPN spokesman said ESPN didn't think Limbaugh's comments were racially biased, yet ESPN released a statement saying Limbaugh's comments were 'insensitive and inappropriate' and George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN Sports, says Limbaugh's subsequent resignation from ESPN was 'the appropriate action to resolve this matter expeditiously.' Yet ESPN has posted on its website a poll asking visitors if McNabb has been overrated because of his race. Why is it inappropriate for Limbaugh to discuss media coverage of McNabb but not inappropriate when ESPN does it?"

Ridenour cited other instances of hypocrisy, such as the Washington Post's Leonard Shapiro using the beginning of an October 1 column to approvingly discuss the importance of having more black coaches in the NFL and then editorializing against Limbaugh for noting that the news media wants blacks to succeed in football. Said Ridenour: "Shapiro's article reads almost like a parody."

Ridenour added:

"Several sports reporters went out of their way to attack millions of conservatives in columns ostensibly complaining that Limbaugh had injected politics into sports. NBCSports.com's Mike Celizic complained that Limbaugh's 'fun isn't in the game. It's in inflicting his political agenda on a gullible public willing to subcontract their thinking to him. Part of that agenda is based on the basest xenophobic instincts of the human species. It's about 'them' and 'us,' and the bad guys just happen to be foreigners and minorities.'"

"Compared to Celizic's comments about conservatives," Ridenour said, "Limbaugh's comments were almost non-political, and certainly less intentionally offensive."

There's more, but you get the idea.
posted at 10:47 AM

Well, I've hit the big time. None other than Instapundit himself linked to my original weighing in on the Plame affair. Thanks a bundle, Glenn. And welcome, all you new visitors to Considerettes.

UPDATE: ...and wouldn't you know that today winds up being the day that DNS pointers for my domain get fouled up. OK, my fault that I renewed at the absolute last second, but still....
posted at 10:27 AM

Robert Novak's column today is a must-read. It provides further correction of many errors the media is continuing to broadcast.

To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

He also explains why he felt he needed to use her name in the story.

He [the CIA official who spoke to Novak] never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.

It was an "incredible choice" because Wilson was "a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council" and was "a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one".

And why kind of CIA employee is she?

A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is "covered" -- working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the Agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.

But there are folks still insisting that Mrs. Wilson is undercover. Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department, said this:

I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst.

Novak is suggesting nothing. He is plainly stating that the CIA told him she was not undercover. Secondly, is Mr. Johnson sure she's undercover. A later quote:

So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons.

Yup, seems he's positive. Jive that with this Washington Post story:

As the world now knows, Wilson is married to Valerie Wilson, nee Plame. She is his third wife. She is 40, slim, blonde and the mother of their 3-year-old twins. In the photos in his office, she has the looks of a film star.

The CIA is hiring 10-year-olds as covert, undercover agents?
posted at 9:42 AM