Crush Liberalism

Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

Hillary no longer invincible

This is not to suggest that she is done. However, she once had this aura of invincibility, and that aura is gone. From Donald Lambro:

Hillary Clinton’s negatives keep climbing, raising new questions about her electability and improving the prospects of her chief rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

The New York senator’s favorability ratings took a nosedive in mid-April, dropping from 58 percent in February to 45 percent, according to latest Gallup Poll. It was her lowest favorability score since 1993.

A 52 percent majority of the voters now say they have a negative view of her candidacy. That compares to her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama, who was rated favorably by 52 to 27 percent.

Clinton still held on to her front-runner status in most polls last week, but pollsters and political analysts tell me she is losing the support of strategic blocs in her party’s base, including women, liberals and independents, who feel she has waffled on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

“The recent decline in her image appears to be broad based” among most key voter subgroups, Gallup said.

Even more troubling for her campaign, the Gallup poll of registered voters (taken April 13 to April 15) also showed Clinton losing her double-digit lead over Obama, who now trails her by a slim 5 percentage points in the survey (31 percent to 26 percent). In other polls, the two are virtually tied.

Veteran campaign pollsters, and many Democratic strategists, shocked by her weak numbers, no longer consider her the unbeatable front-runner.

“It’s still early in the campaign and it’s hard to bet against a Clinton, they’re winners. However, the inevitability factor (in her candidacy) is no longer there,” independent (sic) pollster John Zogby told me.
…
“Hillary isn’t wearing well. It seems as if the more people see her, the less they like her,” former Bill Clinton campaign adviser Dick Morris wrote at the Townhall Web site. (Maybe because she’s a cold, calculating, phony, aloof, Marxist bitch? – Ed.)

“Now for the first time, her low likeability levels are costing her votes, as Democratic-party voters are abandoning her to support Barack Obama,” Morris said. “She is losing her base.”

Obviously, polls at this stage are meaningless. Kerry (who is rumored to have served in Vietnam) wasn’t the frontrunner in any polls until the weekend before the Iowa caucus in 2004, while Dean was virtually considered a lock. Didn’t happen that way. So while I wouldn’t read this as a sign that Hillary’s going to lose, it certainly shows that she’s not a shoo-in at this juncture.

April 30, 2007 Posted by | Hillary, polls | Leave a Comment

Consequences of losing in Iraq

OK, so I’m doing back-to-back posts dealing with defeatism and Iraq. So sue me. Besides, this is important. Thanks to Kanaka Girl for alerting me to this. Full column here (please read it), excerpts follow:

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is right, nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with him that the war in Iraq is already lost. And if he is correct in saying that losing the war will increase Democrat majorities in future elections, then it may be fair to conclude that Americans now love losers. I’m not buying any of it — and neither are the troops who are fighting this war.

In the days since Reid announced “this war is lost,” I have heard from dozens of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines that I have covered in eight trips to Iraq and two to Afghanistan for FOX News. Some of those who correspond with me are there now, others are home. Some are preparing to deploy again. None of them agree with Reid’s assessment.

Now I did go to Florida State, but if my remedial math class served me well, I infer that the “dozens” who disagreed with Reid’s defeatism outnumber the seven that Vince N. purportedly heard from who agree with Reid. To quote my liberal visitor: “I’ll take their word over any statistic I see any day.”

Continuing:

What would losing the war in Iraq mean? It’s a picture so dark and depressing that it makes the collapse in Vietnam, 32 years ago next week, look like a Sunday school picnic. The fall of Saigon was horrific for the people of Vietnam and their neighbors in Cambodia and Laos. More than 5 million became refugees and by the most conservative estimates at least a million others perished.

For most Americans, the consequences were minimal. The vast majority of the 2.8 million of us who had fought and bled there mourned the loss of 58,253 of our comrades, swallowed the bitterness of defeat and got on with our lives. Our nation spent a few hundred million tax dollars on refugee relief and resettlement, and tried to forget what people in Reid’s party called “the long nightmare of Vietnam.”

But classified U.S. intelligence assessments, military contingency plans and staff studies evaluating the consequences of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, coupled with the lack of funding for political reform measures, as contained in the legislation just passed by Reid’s party, paint a far more dismal picture than anything that happened after Vietnam.

(Intel’s retreat consequences here…READ IT! – Ed.)

Reid and his cohorts in Congress who believe “this war is lost” have acted to ensure that it will be. No one asked them: “If we lost, who won?” The answer should be obvious.

It’s a simple question, folks: If we lose in Iraq, then who wins? Answer: Al Qaeda…and the Democrats. That’s a damning testament as to whose best interests the Dems are serving.

April 30, 2007 Posted by | defeatism, Iraq | Leave a Comment

Lowry commends Reid’s honesty

As I mentioned before, and Rich Lowry echoes, Harry Reid didn’t say anything that his party doesn’t truly believe. From Lowry:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had a bright, shining moment of honesty when he said that the war in Iraq is lost.
He unburdened himself of what he and many of his colleagues have long believed about the war. Now if only Democrats saw fit to continue with their truthtelling. Then they would acknowledge that their mandate for a U.S. withdrawal beginning in October is a policy predicated on our defeat, and that they don’t think anything can or should be done about Iran and al Qaeda feasting on a prostrate Iraq and the country possibly descending into genocidal bloodletting.

This position would be unimpeachably logical. It would accept, in the words Reid has repeated a lot lately, “facts and reality,” as Democrats see them. One could strenuously disagree with this position but still see a certain honor in its frankness and internal consistency.

Democrats, of course, are doing nothing of the kind. Instead, after Reid’s “lost” comment, they retreated back into their fog of evasion, contradictions, and groan-inducing implausibilities. The party of defeat has a deep identity crisis because it can’t admit what it is, and thus lives a life of dishonesty and unconvincing denial. (Such dishonesty and deception isn’t unique to Iraq, since Dems are dishonest about their true feelings on a lot of issues they know are rejected by normal America. – Ed.)

Reid didn’t disavow his remark, but his spokesman said that in the future he will “couch it more.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that Reid had “more a problem of tone rather than of substance.” Democrats therefore have resolved themselves to find euphemisms for the word “lost.” Their current favorite is “there is no military solution in Iraq.”

Asked about his “lost” comment on CNN, Reid said, “I agree with Gen. Petraeus,” because Petraeus has said only part of the war is military. Saying that the war is multifaceted, however, bears no relation to the proposition that it is lost. Pressed on as to what message it sends to the troops to tell them the war is unwinnable, Reid said, “Gen. Petraeus has told them that.” Really? Reid apparently inhabits an alternate reality created by his need to weasel his way out of his own convictions on the war.

Reid doesn’t want to hear it if Petraeus has anything positive to say about the war. “I don’t believe him,” Reid said of Petraeus’s reports of progress. This is not surprising. Like many Democrats, Reid has a faith in defeat that is impervious to all contrary evidence. Acknowledging any fluidity in conditions in Iraq — say, how our position has improved in Anbar province in recent months — is to tacitly admit the folly of making final statements about defeat or victory. So Reid fixates on exactly the indicator that al Qaeda in Iraq wants him to — the spectacular suicide bombings meant to undermine our will.

To compensate for giving up on this war, Democrats conjure an imaginary Iraq War to which they will be utterly committed and which we will fight until glorious victory. That is the war we supposedly will fight against al Qaeda in Iraq — after, of course, we withdraw our troops and hand over the Anbar and Diyala provinces to it. Sen. Chuck Schumer, in Reid cleanup mode, says then we’ll be wondrously positioned to go “after an al-Qaida camp that might arise in Iraq.” Might? We already are engaged in a fight with al Qaeda in Iraq now — to keep it from stoking a full-scale sectarian war and from taking over swathes of Iraq — but the Democrats think that we’ve lost it.

“No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than the Democrats,” Reid maintains. What a pathetic canard. As if believing a war is lost has no effect on your will to succeed in it. Reid might have been right if he had said the past tense, “wanted.”

Democrats are under no obligation to think the war can be won. But they should feel obliged to their consciences and voters to be forthright about what they believe. Waiting for them to do that seems the real lost cause.

Notice that when Reid thinks he hears Gen. Petraeus say the war is lost, he believes him…but when the same Gen. Petraeus says there is progress in Iraq, Reid doesn’t believe him. Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that Reid is believing only what he wants to hear! I know, I know…that’s just crazy talk.

The left is just too heavily invested in defeat to concede progress or acknowledge victories that occur along the way. They’re like compulsive gamblers who keep pumping their coins into the same slot machine because they just know it’s going to pay off any minute now.

April 30, 2007 Posted by | defeatism, Iraq, Reid | Leave a Comment

Why Dean wants media re-regulation

Excellent column by George Will illustrating how totalitarian and condescending the left truly is. Excerpts follow (though read the whole thing, as it’s not long but is very informative):

Some illiberal liberals are trying to restore the luridly misnamed Fairness Doctrine, which until 1987 required broadcasters to devote a reasonable amount of time to presenting fairly each side of a controversial issue. The government was empowered to decide how many sides there were, how much time was reasonable and what was fair.

By trying to again empower the government to regulate broadcasting, illiberals reveal their lack of confidence in their ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and their disdain for consumer sovereignty—and hence for the public.

The illiberals’ transparent, and often proclaimed, objective is to silence talk radio. Liberals strenuously and unsuccessfully attempted to compete in that medium—witness the anemia of their Air America. Talk radio barely existed in 1980, when there were fewer than 100 talk shows nationwide. The Fairness Doctrine was scrapped in 1987, and today more than 1,400 stations are entirely devoted to talk formats. Conservatives dominate talk radio—although no more thoroughly than liberals dominate Hollywood, academia and much of the mainstream media.

(Examples of historical abuse of the Fairness Doctrine here.)…

Bill Ruder, a member of Kennedy’s subcabinet, said: “Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.” The Nixon administration frequently threatened the three networks and individual stations with expensive license challenges under the Fairness Doctrine. (See? Bipartisan abuse. – Ed.)
…
Adam Thierer, writing in the City Journal, notes that today’s “media cornucopia” has made America “as information-rich as any society in history.” In addition to the Internet’s uncountable sources of information, there are 14,000 radio stations—twice as many as in 1970—and satellite radio has nearly 14 million subscribers. Eighty-seven percent of households have either cable or satellite television with more than 500 channels to choose from. There are more than 19,000 magazines (up more than 5,000 since 1993). Thierer says, consider a black lesbian feminist who hunts and likes country music:

“Would the ‘mainstream media’ of 25 years ago represented any of her interests? Unlikely. Today, though, this woman can program her TiVo to record her favorite shows on Black Entertainment Television, Logo (a gay/lesbian-oriented cable channel), Oxygen (female-targeted programming), the Outdoor Life Network and Country Music Television.”

Some of today’s illiberals say that media abundance, not scarcity, justifies the Fairness Doctrine: Americans, the poor dears, are bewildered by too many choices. And the plenitude of information sources disperses “the national campfire,” the cozy communitarian experience of the good old days (for liberals), when everyone gathered around—and was dependent on—ABC, NBC and CBS.

“I believe we need to re-regulate the media,” says Howard Dean. Such illiberals argue that the paucity of liberal successes in today’s radio competition—and the success of Fox News—somehow represent “market failure.” That is the regularly recurring, all-purpose rationale for government intervention in markets. Market failure is defined as consumers’ not buying what liberals are selling.

Then again, markets aren’t exactly the left’s cup of tea. That whole “supply and demand” thingy elicits a deer-in-headlights look from the vast majority of leftards.

As I’ve asserted and demonstrated on many occasions, liberals think that you are too stupid to run your own lives and that you need their brilliance (which, of course, you’re too stupid to recognize or appreciate) to get you through your menial lives.

April 30, 2007 Posted by | economic ignorance, Fairness Doctrine, Fox News | Leave a Comment

Moonbat Murtha: Failure to compromise is an impeachable offense

Failure to compromise is a “high crime and misdemeanor”? I learn something new everyday, and from a moonbat no less! From Hot Air:

Video clip here

Rep. John Murtha suggested the possibility of impeachment to “influence” the President to “compromise” over funding for Iraq. Is it just me or does John Murtha sound like Vito Corleone? Does Murtha not know he is talking about impeaching the President of the United States because he is not compromising with the will of the far-left of Congress? That’s neither a high crime nor even a misdemeanor, which are the behaviors that are supposed to trigger impeachment. Murtha’s suggestion is outside the bounds of what Congress is supposed to do to influence the behavior of a sitting president, to say the least.

But then again, Jack “Abscam” Murtha has never been one to hold the law in high regard.

Earlier this month, Bryan wrote about Murtha receiving calls from his constituents telling him to impeach President Bush.

Transcript:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Are you seriously talking about contemplating an impeachment of this President?

MURTHA: What I’m saying is there are four ways to influence a President.

SCHIEFFER: — and that’s one of them?

MURTHA: [unintelligible] and the fourth one is –

SCHIEFFER: — that’s an option that’s on the table?

MURTHA: I’m just saying that’s one way to influence the President.

Sure, that will influence the prez: “Sir, go along with us or we’ll impeach you!” That would go over like a fart in church, I imagine.

April 30, 2007 Posted by | defeatism, Iraq, moonbats, Murtha | Leave a Comment

NY Post: VT shooter was Dateline’s fault

We don’t have nearly enough conspiracy theories, do we? From the NY Post:

The following are facts. Make of them what you choose.

On Sunday night, April 15th, 12 hours before Cho Seung-Hui began his killing spree on the Virginia Tech campus, “Dateline NBC” devoted its entire show to telling the story of psychotic murderer Robert Hyde.

Hyde was a bright young man from Albuquerque who began to suffer a steady mental deterioration until, one day, in 2005, at different locations, he shot and killed five people.

Beyond the murders, the NBC show stressed that Hyde was a time bomb who was released from police custody and hospital care despite frightening episodes and warnings from many, including his family, that eventually there would be hell to pay, that eventually he would kill.

Hyde’s story, it turned out, was roughly the same as Cho’s life story, except for the killing part. Cho hadn’t killed anyone, not yet.

The morning after NBC’s show aired, Cho, described by schoolmates as an all-night TV watcher, shot and killed two people.

He then returned to his dormitory to mail a parcel to NBC. It included a note from Cho that began, “You forced me into a corner.”

Then he traveled to a different section of the Virginia Tech campus, where he shot and murdered 30 more people.

Surely, Cho’s diseased mind was prepped and primed to commit mass murder, at some point. But did NBC’s show, the night before, serve as his prompt? In his afflicted state, did that “Dateline” installment push him over the edge? It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know.

Yet, the numerous similarities between the Hyde and Cho stories are inescapable. So is the timing. Cho’s rampage began fewer than 12 hours after NBC’s episode about Hyde ended. And Cho interrupted his rampage only to send NBC a you-pushed-me-to-do-this missive.

But even if it’s all just a matter of bizarre, chilling coincidences, those coincidences seem too great to ignore or dismiss. (Oh yeah? Watch me. – Ed.) They’re worthy of your attention.

No, they’re not “worthy of your attention”, Mushnik. The guy was a psycho, and he plotted the whole thing out and executed his plan…nothing more, nothing less.

April 30, 2007 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

   

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