More mainstream media lies: Bush's budget is hardly cutting Medicare spending

I'm the first to say that Medicare and other socialist (not to mention unconstitutional) programs should be abolished completely, but let's continue debunking a common lie since the start of Bush's administration. My blogfather Don Luskin has pointed out for a long time that, regardless of whether you think the programs are right or Constitutional, Bush has increased spending so much that it ought to make any liberal happy. I'm still trying to find his very detailed analysis that proves my point here, that Bush is hardly cutting funding from health care to childrens' programs -- his proposals are to cut only the increase in spending, so spending still increases.

Update: check this.

To continue this tired old lie, HealthDay News, a socialist propaganda group masquerading as a news source (like pushing a survey claiming Canadians are healthier than Americans, ergo Americans need socialist medicine), "reported" today:

MONDAY, Feb. 4 (HealthDay News) -- President Bush's new budget proposal would cut $196 billion over five years from both Medicare and Medicaid -- programs that provide health care to millions of poor and elderly, federal officials announced Monday.

The proposed cuts are part of a plan to stop Medicare from running out of money in little more than a decade, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Mike Leavitt told reporters during a press conference. He said the savings would help keep premiums affordable, maintain the Medicare/Medicaid system, and balance the current Medicare budget.

"The Medicare portion of the budget should be viewed as a stark warning," Leavitt said. "Medicare on its current course is 11 years from going broke. Americans have become numbed to entitlement warnings as a repeated cycle of alarms and inaction," he said.

But President Bush and Leavitt are sure to face a Congressional showdown over the budget proposals.

"This administration ought to know that five years' worth of Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling $200 billion are dead on arrival with me and with most of the Congress," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told the Associated Press.

But if you want the truth, read further into the article:

Under the president's plan, the annual growth of Medicare spending would slow to 5 percent instead of the 7 percent currently projected. Similarly, spending growth would slow from 7.3 percent to 7 percent for Medicaid.

If a spendthrift family were going to spend 7% more, but instead spent only 5% more, is it accurate to say they "cut" their spending? Of course not. The fact is, spending will continue at a record pace. Even at 5%,

Well, why not accuse Bush of cutting the programs by 10%, or 20%, or 100%? Why don't Democrats just accuse Bush of cutting $1 trillion from the programs next year, because he wouldn't go along with a plan to increase taxes by $1 trillion? After all, the federal government could have increased spending the money as much as tax revenues and borrowing permit, by their warped logic.

Again, this is regardless of what you think about the programs. My initial point is that the MSM is so rabidly infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome that reducing a proposed 7% increase to 5% is a "cut" to them, and they've always seized on that as a lie. The very purpose is to rile up voters who live off taxes the rest of us pay, of course, and the sad thing is that it works. People believe the half-truths and outright lies that the news throws at them, like in this article. It's correct to point out the huge deficits under Bush, but it's completely dishonest to imply that things were great under Clinton:

Seven years ago, Bush took over a government predicted to generate $5.6 trillion in surpluses over 10 years.

Such predictions were overly optimistic, it turned out, being based on the unsustainable economic growth of the very late 1990s. Furthermore, let's say the $5.6 trillion in surpluses was realized somehow -- that wouldn't have been because of any spending cuts, but because Congress taxed us $5.6 trillion more than what they spent.

Now, if we want to talk about whether the programs should exist, the bottom line is that they're morally wrong. It's not morally wrong to help people, but it's morally wrong to steal from one unwilling group of people, no matter how benevolent the intentions may be. People like Paul Krugman would have you think that not funding these programs from the poor, because you're giving tax cuts to the rich, is "Dooh Nibor" economics, "Robin Hood" backwards, i.e. what they claim is theft from the poor to give to the rich. As Don Luskin explained, that couldn't be less true:

In other words, by cutting taxes that robbed high-income earners of their income -- and cutting government spending that transferred that stolen income to low-income earners -- we have a "transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent"? If we simply reduce the rate at which we are stealing from the rich, are we therefore stealing from the poor? We can certainly have an argument about whether there ought to be redistributive taxes. But it's nothing but sophistry to suggest that a move toward less redistribution in the future constitutes robbery.

But this feeling of "entitlement" will persist so long as people think that majority voting somehow gives them a right to other people's property. I was thinking about this "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" quote the other day: "Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

But is the second any less absurd, when your neighbors band together, call themselves a "government," and as "the masses" proclaim their inviolate right to seize your property against your will?

Federal "fiscal responsibility" nonsense

"Bush Warns He'll Veto Runaway Spending" proclaims the headline.

Let's see. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush couldn't wait to hand out $62 billion of other people's money. It didn't matter if they were able to work or if they weren't really victims in the first place: all Bush, Congress and the bureaucrats cared about was buying support from half of the voters who don't pay taxes, hoping more of them will vote than from the other half who do pay taxes.

Bush had no resistance whatsoever to signing "The Energy Policy Act of 2005". It had a price tag of "only" several billion dollars, depending on the extent of the "tax breaks": such "incentives" for specific people mean the rest of us just pay more taxes to compensate, and who knows how much government would give energy companies in the end? The problem with government spending is that it's almost always just an estimate, whereas the rest of us budget our lives within the confines of definite incomes.

Bush likewise was too eager to sign the 2005 transportation bill, which delivered pork to just about every Congressional district, not just "for [Bush's] right wing buddies" as certain morons believe. Bush initially said he'd veto anything over $284 billion, so what did he do? He signed one that's $286 billion. What's $2 billion? A lot. What's $2 billion of other people's money? Not a lot.

Lest you think I'm cherry-picking only specific examples, I'll remind you that Bush's only two vetoes were a stem-cell bill, not because of the spending but because of his "moral" opposition, and a military spending bill pushed by Democrats, not because of the spending but because it included a timetable withdrawal from Iraq. As one of my friends said when I sent him the link to the article, "What's he been doing the last fucking 7 years?!"

My blogfather and friend Don Luskin has said for a long time that we knew all along Bush is a "compassionate conservative" who isn't for limited government. Be that as it may, it doesn't mean we have to believe Bush when he starts talking like a limited-government conservative. Today's Day By Day is pretty accurate, and it would be completely spot-on if "on immigration" were excised.

Islamofascists and their apologists

Charles Evans asks "Who is the Fascist Here?" but is unqualified to answer his own question, as we'll see. Like most political science professors I've talked to or whose writings I've read, he either doesn't know what real fascism is or redefines it to suit his purpose. Let there be no mistake: his agenda as an apologist for "radical Islam" ("only" 10% of a billion-plus people who want to see the West go down in literal flames) is to paint George W. Bush as a fascist while whitewashing the religious tyranny of a major religion's "fringe element."

I'm far from a GWB apologist, but this retired professor just doesn't know what he's talking about. Let's take his claims one by one.

First, it is untrue that "Calling one's opponents unpleasant names is known in philosophy as an ad hominem argument, and it is recognized as a logical fallacy." Evans should know better, if he really is so acquainted with logical fallacies. He's making one himself, asserting a ludicrous absolute that because ad hominem arguments involve "unpleasant names," therefore all usage of "unpleasant names" are ad hominem. It would have been proper for him to say, "An ad hominem argument in philosophy includes calling one's opponents unpleasant names." By reversing the statement, Evans immediately discounts the possibility that an "unpleasant name" could be very true and appropriate. Is it ad hominem to call Hitler and Mussolini "fascists" despite the universal opinion that they were?

In fact, an ad hominem (literally "to the man" in Latin) argument is to refute someone's statement by personally attacking him and declaring that his statement therefore cannot be true. It is not necessarily ad hominem just because you happen to define someone with a term that happens to offend him. A perfect example is from a little while ago, when our friend Keith Burgess-Jackson called Brian Leiter's anonymous lackey a "jock-sniffer." While derisive, the term aptly described Leiter's sycophant, and moreover, KBJ did far more than attack the "jock-sniffer" personally. Similarly, if certain Muslims are indeed fascist in their beliefs and actions, then Bush, I and many others are perfectly proper to call them the "Islamofascist" neologism.

Of course, I'm calling Evans an "Islamofascism apologist," which I'm certain he'd find "unpleasant," and no doubt he and his supporters would accuse me of hypocrisy by making my own ad hominem attack. However, the difference is that calling him an "unpleasant name" is hardly the crux of my argument.

"Sound logic requires us to understand that bad people and bad ideas are not synonymous, and in the same way, good people do not always have sound ideas. But, bad logic often makes for good propaganda." A student of logic will see another fallacy here: an obviously true, extremely general statement near the end is insufficient to validate the preceding arguments. After all, to disagree with those two sentences is on par with opposing motherhood and favoring sin.

Evans' is already up to his third logical fallacy in the second paragraph. He makes an "appeal to authority" by referencing Georgie Ann Geyer, a noted liberal op-ed writer who has a anti-Republican (not necessarily anti-conservative) axe to grind. But how much can we regard Geyer's cited op-ed, when she waves off George W. Bush's use of "Islamic fascist" as merely "his way of signaling that any young Muslim who doesn't like him (or freedom, for goodness's sake) is almost certainly a fascist"? Geyer is making her own logical fallacy, a straw man argument, by distorting who Bush is calling an "Islamic fascist."

After rambling on about the "imprecise" definitions of fascism, Evans presents his own 14-point amalgam of two others' 14-point definitions of fascism. And who is to say that any of those three are correct? If anything, Old American Century's attempt to "prove" GWB is a fascist falls more than flat, and not just because it distorts news headlines and presents them out of context:

1. Nationalism is hardly a unique trait of fascism. "Mother Russia," anyone? And what is so wrong with having pride in your country, particularly this one with its traditions of freedom and self-determination?

2. "Disregard for human rights" is likewise not confined to fascism, as Lenin and his successors proved. Also, how is it violating anyone's "human rights" for the U.S. to oppose the International Criminal Court, which is deliberately anti-American and whose claimed authority violates our U.S. Constitution?

3. "Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause" is a logical fallacy. "Identification of Scapegoats" would have been correct about tyrants in general, but Britt refused to admit that an enemy can be very real. September 11, 2001, proved that we are fighting a very, very real enemy.

4. "Supremacy of the military." Military spending in the United States, as a percentage of GDP, is far less than historical fascist regimes. The characteristic of the federal government, as it has been for the last seven decades, is the supremacy of the welfare state. The forced redistribution of wealth at the hands of government is socialism, not fascism.

5. "Rampant sexism." Is sexism why GWB chose Condoleeza Rice for National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State? Is sexism the reason Cynthia McKinney was all but given a free pass by mainstream media when she shouted "Do you know who I am?" and struck a Capitol Hill police officer?

However, sexism has never been a historical characteristic of fascist regimes because it never really mattered. Women could be just as important to the state.

6. "Controlled mass media" is the stupidest claim of all these. Is GWB so in control of all mass media outlets that he allows them to spend most of their time attacking his administration, either directly (e.g. RatherGate) or by giving time to his opponents? There are a few links to allegations, but let's "get real" here: I'm not excusing any criminal wrongdoing now, but "dirty tricks" have been happening for decades under both Republicans and Democrats. If you're going to point the finger at Bush, let's also talk about how Clinton sicced the IRS on his enemies.

7. "Obsession with national security." So what about every Democratic candidate accusing Bush of not doing enough, or doing the wrong things, for "national security"? When the White House (not really Bush himself) approved the handover of six U.S. ports' administration to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, Democrats were the first to accuse him of ignoring the potential threat to "national security." So just who is obsessed?

8. "Religion and government are intertwined." When Barack Obama made very pro-religion statements, did those make him a fascist? It's not ok for Republicans to appeal to a majority of their base, and it's not ok for a North Carolina lawmaker to propose allowing a preacher to talk about politics, but it's ok for Hillary to attend a black church and accuse Bush of running the White House "like a plantation"?

I'm a fundamentalist Christian, but I still have a problem with religious conservatives who use the force of government to impose their values on others. However, there are so many activist courts that nullify conservatives' endeavors, and in fact, the courts often tip things toward liberals.

9. "Corporate Power is Protected." This is wholly incorrect, because fascism seeks to exert its power through controlling business, while preventing business from wielding its own influence. I wrote "influence" because even the largest corporation has no inherent "power." Its only "power" is what customers give it through their patronage, and/or what government gives it via charters/monopolies and other preferential treatment.

10. Fascism suppresses labor no more than socialism and communism: whether a tyrant is fascist or socialist, he will try to destroy any form of organized resistance. What was Lech Wałęsa doing in Poland but organizing a trade union not permitted by the government?

And by the way, how is it bad that GWB "suppressed labor power" by removing their government-protected abilities to coerce campaign money from others? It's not just union members who disagree with their leadership, but the taxpayers who must indirectly hire union workers. If labor unions lose power because they cannot use government to coerce money from me, then that's too bad for them.

11. How is it "disdain for intellectuals and the arts" when government stops taking money from people to give to others? I think science and art are great, but I think it's immoral that money is taken from me to pay for others' enjoyment.

One of the links alleges conservatives' suppression of freedom of speech, but if you check the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, you'll see that the real threat is from the liberal PC crowd.

12. "Obsession with crime and punishment" is in what way restricted to fascism? Wasn't the USSR even more obsessed with definining as many crimes as possible so it could punish/banish dissidents to Siberia? Isn't the "People's Republic of China" still doing the same? Are they fascist?

13. Likewise, "cronyism and corruption" are not only a trademark of fascism, but any other regime based on absolutism. Ferdinand Marcos was not really a fascist, but his dictatorship in the Philippines was marked by "cronyism and corruption" -- then again, it wasn't to any further degree than the rest of Philippine politics.

14. Here we go again with the "fraudulent elections" schtick, which liberals haven't been able to shake since the 2000 presidential election. As usual, there are a lot of links to sites and people with only allegations, but nothing concrete. And there's no mention of Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold, which reportedly received more ballots on Election Day 2004 than were registered voters.

Now let's play Evans' own game and go through his points.

1. "Tradition" is a hallmark of conservatism, which is often confused with fascism. But if you want to talk about a true "cult of tradition," most Muslim nations are far more steeped in their homogenous traditions (often at the point of a gun scimitar) than the extraordinarily heterogenous United States.

And if we're wrong to believe the U.S. is a great nation, the first to be founded directly on the principle of liberty, and that it deserves a special place in history, then who is right? Should we go the Noam Chomsky route and beat ourselves over the head, because we're so evil to be proud of the ideals and innovations we've brought to the rest of the world?

Score: Islamofascists 1, Bush 0.

2. "Fascist governments reject modernism and rationality, although they embrace the instrumentality of technology. Fascist regimes are marked by irrationality, anti-intellectualism, and emotion." How is George W. Bush "reject[ing] modernism and rationality," and is he "anti-intellectual" just because he disagrees with liberal intellectuals? I disagree with them too, so does that make me a fascist?

As a perfect example of how Islam has embraced intellectuals, look at what Muslim rulers did to suppress the great Muslim scholars and authors. While Europe languished in the Dark Ages, Muslim intellectuals advanced human knowledge of mathematics and science (especially algebra and astronomy) and produced wondrous literature. That reversed itself by the Renaissance.

Score: Islamofascists 2, Bush 0.

3. Here Evans is doing nothing more than redefining fascism to suit his own agenda. Fascist leaders have generally favored military conflict because they don't want peaceful solutions, but so have tyrants of all political persuasions. That is simply the nature of absolute rule.

Score: Islamofascists 2, Bush 0.

4. It's nothing new that Democrats and Republicans accuse each other of treason (with libertarians like me accusing both of them), but it's nothing new: the Federalists and Democrat-Republicans did the same to each other in the late 1700s. Fortunately, our Founding Fathers had the foresight to include a very narrow definition of "treason" in the Constitution. And unlike what occurs regularly in a true fascist regime, no one in the United States has yet to be convicted of treason during GWB's presidency. John Walker Lindh could easily have (and should have IMO) but wasn't.

Was George III a fascist? No, he was an absolute ruler but not a fascist, although it was certainly "treason" (and often punishable by death) to oppose him. So Evans is employing a logical fallacy again: fascists consider it "treason" to dissent, but a government that quashes dissent and considers it "treason" is not necessarily fascist.

On the other hand, try dissenting in "secular" Egypt or "moderate" Saudi Arabia, let alone Iran or Syria, and see where that gets you.

Score: Islamofascists 3, Bush 0.

5. GWB must have a strange brand of "fear of diversity or difference" that prompted him to appoint more minorities to prominent positions, and support a guest worker program. On the other hand, how well do Christians fare in "moderate" Saudi Arabia? How respected are their "differences"?

Score: Islamofascists 4, Bush 0.

6. Evans should have stopped at "social frustration of groups or classes of citizens." The rest could have been eliminated entirely, because it refers to everyone: internal, external, above or below. It's akin to saying, "The answer could be a positive number, a negative number, zero, or imaginary."

That said, Bush has no more drawn on voters' emotions than anyone else, whether American politicians or Muslim rulers. Are any particularly bad, though? Though GWB has led the United States into a war, I have yet to hear him call for wiping any nation off the map, unlike certain Muslim leaders. Now that is preying on a people's "social frustration" of others.

Score: Islamofascists 5, Bush 0.

7. Ah yes, there's such hyper-nationalism in the United States that Noam Chomsky was sent off to a concentration camp long ago, right? And Madman Mahmoud is rallying his entire nation against Israel for humanitarian purposes?

Score: Islamofascists 6, Bush 0.

8. This is nothing unique to fascist regimes. Look at Cuba or any other Third World nation that tried socialism. Look at the Muslim nations who attacked Israel three times, and each time got their asses kicked harder than the previous conflict.

Score: Islamofascists 7, Bush 0.

9. Finally Evans stated a somewhat true characteristic of fascism. Fascism views history as purely a struggle of the state, with the individual seen as but a small component. Also, war is not essential, but justified if necessary to preserve the state. Unfortunately for Evans, there just isn't anything in GWB's presidency to prove that he believes this, but the Islamofascists are all about jihad -- literally "struggle" -- to effect Muslim domination across the world.

Score: Islamofascists 8, Bush 0.

10. Politican "elitism" in the United States is not unique to GWB; it's the nature of American politics. However, cultural elitism is a major part of Islamofascism (see #9), and Arabs are well-known for disdain of anyone they perceive as "weak."

Score: Islamofascists 9, Bush 0.

11. Evans is really stretching it here. According to him, the Greeks were fascists? After all, they venerated their heroes and promoted the ideal. Are the people of New York fascist to mourn the loss of firefighters, recently as well as on 9/11, as "the passing of heroes"?

On the other hand, which culture promotes the glorious, heroic martyrdom of young men blowing themselves up to kill the infidels, with the promise of 72 virgins in paradise?

Score: Islamofascists 10, Bush 0.

12. Stretching it again, Evans ascribes qualities to fascism that aren't necessarily so. Nazi Germany was in fact noted for sexual depravities of its own, not counting the "experiments" that its doctors performed on women in concentration camps. Also, if fascism is so "conservative" in its sexual convictions, then why have so many fascist leaders had mistresses? Hint: Hitler didn't die with his wife.

Evans can't even get his list straight, throwing "chastity" in with homosexuality, abortion, promiscuity, and extramarital sex. He was probably rushing too much in making his stuff up.

As far as I'm aware, the United States doesn't execute people for these crimes. On the other hand, Allah help you if you're convicted of homosexuality in Saudi Arabia or Iran...

Score: Islamofascists 11, Bush 0.

13. So modern-day Germany is still fascist, because the children of foreigners born in Germany are themselves considered foreigners? On the other hand, the United States under any administration is very welcoming of virtually all peoples and cultures, regardless of who the President and Congress are. As stated before, Bush is the one pushing for a guest worker program (bucking his own party). Also, he's the one who has defended Islam as "a peaceful religion." When has Madman Mahmoud defended Judaism and Christianity as peaceful religions? And when are the people of these hardline Muslim countries ever permitted to live according to their own consciences?

Score: Islamofascists 12, Bush 0.

14. It would be nice if Evans gave specifics here, instead of making a blanket accusation. But if you want to talk about Newspeak, how about Madman Mahmoud claiming that Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes? There are some terms that just don't belong together, especially "Muslim nation" and "nuclear capability."

Score: Islamofascists 13, Bush 0.

So in the end, by Evans' own standards, "Islamofascist" is a very appropriate term for these nations and their leaders, but Bush really isn't a fascist. Nonetheless, I have very serious problems with him and his administration, not the least of which is the unconstitutional, sans-warrant spying on American citizens. I personally am forgiving about Iraq, because war is unpredictable, and I think most Americans are too optimistic about how effective we -- even we -- can be in combat. Perhaps my biggest problem with GWB is his rubber-stamp on the biggest growth of government spending since LBJ, based on his modern liberal belief (uttered post-Katrina) that "When someone is hurting, government must move." That's the redistribution of wealth, i.e. socialism, and it can't be balanced out by any quantity of tax cuts.

Bush isn't (yet?) really authoritarian, despite his centralization and expansion of government police powers, and despite his trampling of individual rights for the sake of effecting greater "national security." (On the other hand, Rudy Giuliani and Rick Santorum are authoritarians.) Most fundamentally, Bush is a party man: he'll do whatever it takes to keep his party in power. I don't think he's inherently a fan of big government, but he'll (ab)use it if it will advance fellow Republicans. Either way, he's definitely not a "true" conservative, but most Republicans aren't either. The party began with big government traditions, so it's not a post-1994 phenomenon that they turned out to be "big-government conservatives." They adhere to some conservative values, but not to the core value of limited government. Just like the scripture says, "Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof."

Do Democrats have no shame?

Note what's said in this article about President Bush:

"They had a candidate who dodged the draft, dodged the ...National Guard... And they made that candidate look strong against a guy who was shot three times and won the Bronze Star and the Silver Star for valor. That is incredible."

What's incredible is that the Democrats just can't get over the fact that their candidates in 2000 and 2004 should have been unbeatable, but they beat themselves with their own liberalism, vagueness and inconsistencies. Until Democrats learn to field a real candidate, someone who won't concern enough people to vote against him, they'll have to keep deluding themselves: "Oh, that election was stolen from us at the Supreme Court...the next one was because all the right-wing Christians came out and voted."

If the quote were truthful, the first candidate mentioned would be Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush. President Bush went into the Texas Air National Guard and trained as a fighter pilot. This was hardly dodging the draft, especially with the hazards of flying the dangerous F-102s (several pilots were killed in training accidents during Bush's TexANG service). Regarding the main controversy about the quality of his service, I'm sure we all remember the "fake, but accurate" memos that the blogosphere proved to be forgeries. Does anyone know if Mary Mapes still insists today that they're genuine?

Yes, many young men's families pulled strings, like Clinton's so that he could keep postponing induction. Others got their sons into the National Guard to hopefully avoid active combat in Vietnam (it was no guarantee, because Johnson decided not to use the Guard but could have reversed that decision). There were other options, however, even to young men without means or influence. I knew a putz who liked to remind people how he "served his country," as if somehow that always made him right or wise, but all he did was enlist in the Air Force and hang around a stateside base. I think he was just a technician, an occupation far safer than flying a jet, and he had no one to pull strings for him.

On the other hand, John Kerry's Vietnam duty, as many conservative blogs pointed out during the election, involved things like ordering his Swift Boat to shore (placing it and the crew at grave risk) so he could hunt down a wounded VC and kill him in cold blood, and Purple Hearts for wounds so severe that he didn't miss any significant duty. I'm still trying to figure out his claim of hearing South Vietnamese firing their guns to celebrate Christmas, and that it happened in 1968 while Nixon was president. Then Kerry claimed he threw his "medals" over the White House fence as a protest, but they turned out to be someone else's; his explanation was that he threw away his ribbons, which are technically medals, but that's some rationalization. Can we say that he threw his medals away before he kept them?

But what I always found most hypocritical is his immediately post-Vietnam testimony before Congress. He accused his fellow servicemen of committing atrocities (when the VC were doing far, far worse to our POWs -- ask John McCain), and his use of "we" effectively made it his own confession. Yet years later, he continually harped on his Vietnam service to give himself an aura of honor, when by his own admission he himself had acted brutally. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth exposed this and much more, and they're still the best resource for what Kerry really did.

Heaven knows I disagree with more than one thing Bush has done, but he wasn't the candidate who looked like a slimy opportunist.

A tale of two hypocrites

It was the best of wartimes; it was the worst of wartimes. It was the age of bloggers; it was the age of mainstream media becoming the New Media. It was the epoch of voter gullibility; it was the epoch of voter cynicism. It was the season of economic growth; it was the season of foreboding recession. It was the spring of prosperity; it was the winter of the "unsustainable" and "bubbles." We had continued good fortune before us; we had civilization's collapse before us. Muslim terrorists believed they were going to heaven; Pat Robertson believed a lot of Americans were going to hell.

And to directly quote Charles Dickens, "in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." Nothing ever changes, in other words, and as politics' biggest loudmouths continually talk about the present relative to the past, they do so only in the most exaggerated manner. When dealing with typical Democratic hypocrisy, however, only mild comparisons to their past actions are needed.

On Monday, Al Gore criticized President Bush's NSA wiretapping policies: "What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law [rising applause] repeatedly and insistently... A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government." He also said he wants Congressional members to "start acting like the independent and coequal branch of government you're supposed to be."

Gore's former boss, the one for whom he worked from 1993 through 2001, could have used a dose of that advice. Byron York detailed last month how Bill Clinton did largely the same type of wiretapping, except that he did it without warrants. Initially, Clinton refused to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, eventually acquiescing to Congressional demands. I'm not saying obtaining warrants from the secretive FISA court is any better than none at all, but this is another example of Democrats' double standard. Though I think the wiretapping of American citizens is unconstitutional, I'm glad the White House isn't just taking it. It fired back with quite strong language for the realm of politics. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said, "I think [Gore's] hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Indeed. Gore also stated, "The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to Americans in both political parties." Somehow I don't think he referred to Bill and Hillary's unconstitutional plan for universal "Hillarycare," their support of other unconstitutional federal spending, or the Clinton White House's push for unconstitutional infringements of the Second Amendment. Clearly President Bush himself has pushed for much unconstitutional spending, but how can Democrats pick up stones when they themselves are full of the same sin?

What really irks me is Gore's perenially minimal understanding of the Constitution: it sets up the executive, legislative and judicial branches as checks on each other, but that does not make them equal or coequal. I may not have the Robert Byrd edition of the Constitution that most Democrats (and too many Republicans) seem to use, but reading through mine, I fail to see any "equality" between the branches. This may seem like semantics, but because each branch is given different powers so it may serve different functions, there's no common basis of measurement by which to call them "coequal." The only equality they share is that they're all subject to the limitations of their Constitution authority.

And now Hillary Clinton, queen of state-worshippers and my junior senator, said the House of Representatives "has been run like a plantation," where was the outcry? After all, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was called "racist" simply for calling the 70%-minority NYC transit union "thugs," so Hillary Clinton should be called "racist" for her insult to all black Congressmen. Why doesn't she follow up by applying the same demented phrasing to the White House, so she can become an honorary member of the Ted Rall Club?

Let's never mind that Hillary's "apology" for the federal government's post-Katrina response is a testament to her worship of the nanny state, which takes care of people at everyone else's expense. And as I said Monday, the plantation really didn't go away -- it's transformed into servile dependency on big government. Hillary, though, took it as far as she ever has: she declared that the House of Representatives "has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."

That's a strong accusation she made without citing specific examples. The stifling of presenting legislation isn't altogether a bad thing. Perhaps if we'd had a little, things like the monstrous transportation bill wouldn't have been filled with so much pork. And is Hillary claiming any personal knowledge of how the House is being run? After all, she's a Senator. In fact, if anyone is threatening to block others from being heard on the floor, it's her fellow Democrats in the Senate who mumble threats of filibustering Samuel Alito.

"We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence...I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." The latter is a matter of opinion, but regarding the first, let's not forget the Clinton Administrations own "shortcomings." Beyond Bill's escapades and perjury, if you want examples of corruption, cronyism and incompetence, look no further than Ron Brown and Henry Cisneros. Unlike Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby, Brown and Cisneros were not just advisors, but Cabinet members who wielded direct political authority in the executive branch.

As I said to a friend last night, Gore may have been correct in some things. Hillary can even be correct...once in a very great while. I just pray the American people can see past this Democratic opportunism and not elect them into office just for a bit of appealing rhetoric.

Where was George?

Revisiting Ann Richard's inane question in 1988 about his father, this George Bush hasn't been around since sometime in the first half of 2003. From the whitehouse.gov transcript of his Veterans Day speech:

In the four years since September the 11th, the evil that reached our shores has reappeared on other days, in other places -- in Mombasa and Casablanca and Riyadh and Jakarta and Istanbul and Madrid and Beslan and Taba and Netanya and Baghdad, and elsewhere....

All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random, isolated acts of madness -- innocent men and women and children who have died simply because they boarded the wrong train, or worked in the wrong building, or checked into the wrong hotel. Yet, while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology -- a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane.

Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; and still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it's called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Hindus and Jews -- and against Muslims, themselves, who do not share their radical vision....

We know the vision of the radicals because they have openly stated it -- in videos and audiotapes and letters and declarations and on websites.

First, these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions. Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, has called on Muslims to dedicate, their "resources, their sons and money to driving the infidels out of our lands." The tactics of al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists have been consistent for a quarter of a century: They hit us, and expect us to run....

With the greater economic, military and political power they seek, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction; to destroy Israel; to intimidate Europe; to assault the American people; and to blackmail our government into isolation....

Good, very good. He reiterated why we must struggle against the terrorists, and not just hope they'll leave us alone. He pointed to what Zarqawi and Zawahiri have said, specific examples of why they really hate us.

The terrorists did not leave innocent Jordanians alone. The victims were fellow Muslims, and hardly collaborators with Israel. If the terrorists killed them, why should we think the terrorists will leave Westerners and Western nations alone if we tuck tail and run?

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. And many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: "When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." That's why more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate -- who had access to the same intelligence -- voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.

The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important, for politicians to throw out false charges. These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory.

Bush said what he ought to have said in the debate: "Look, Senator Kerry, even you and other top Democrats said Saddam was dangerous and needed to be disarmed!"

His speechwriters wrote a brilliant neo-conservative speech that exposed the now anti-war Democrats for the hypocrites they are. Michelle Malkin has a roundup of the speech's effect, namely, giving courage to those who supported removing Saddam from power but who seem to have lost their fortitude in the last couple of years.

And from President Bush's speech tonight at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage:

On September the 11th, 2001, history called on our nation to defend freedom once again. On that morning more than four years ago, Americans witnessed the violence and the hatred of a new enemy. We saw the terrorists' destructive vision for us and for all who love freedom. And in the face of this threat, our nation has made a clear choice: We will confront this mortal danger. We will stay on the offensive, we will not wait to be attacked again, and we will press on until this war is won....

Some might be tempted to dismiss the terrorist goals as fanatical or extreme. They are fanatical and extreme -- but we cannot afford to dismiss them. Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory....

First, we are determined to prevent attacks by terrorist networks -- by protecting the homeland, and working with our allies to destroy the terrorist networks and incapacitate their leadership....

Second, we are determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes, and to their terrorist allies who would use them without hesitation....

Third, we're determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes....

Fourth, we're determined to deny the militants control of any nation, which they would use as a home base and a launching pad for terror....

The fifth element of our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. If the Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger. If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and participation as free men and free women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow and eventually end. History has proven that free nations are peaceful nations, and that democracies do not fight their neighbors. By advancing the hope of freedom and democracy for others, we make our own freedom more secure....

The outcome of this war will affect every single American. And that makes it a subject of vital debate. And it's important to be clear about the facts. When our nation was attacked on September the 11th, leaders of both political parties recognized a new reality: If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We had to take a hard look at every threat to America after September the 11th, and when we did, one stood apart: Saddam Hussein.

Under Saddam's dictatorship, Iraq was the only country in the world where American military pilots faced regular attack. Iraq was the only country that had used chemical weapons on its own people, invaded its neighbors, and fought a war against the United States and a great coalition. Iraq was only one of seven countries listed as a state sponsor of terror, and it was judged by intelligence agencies around the globe to possess weapons of mass destruction. After more than a decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam Hussein a final chance to comply with the United Nations Security Council resolutions, ordering him to disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. When he refused, we had a choice: Do we take the word of a madman and forget the lessons of September the 11th, or do we take action to defend our country? Given that choice, I will defend America every time....

Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war, but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people. Leaders in my administration and members of the United States Congress from both political parties looked at the same intelligence on Iraq, and reached the same conclusion: Saddam Hussein was a threat.

Let me give you some quotes from three senior Democrat leaders: First, and I quote, "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons." Another senior Democrat leader said, "The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." Here's another quote from a senior Democrat leader: "Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion."

They spoke the truth then, and they're speaking politics now.

Snopes has the best collection of various Democrat leaders' statements on Saddam and denying him the capacity for WMDs. My favorite:

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

Right behind:

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

Perhaps Democrats would like to sacrifice one of their own, and dismiss "unmistakable evidence" as just like Dan Rather's "unimpeachable source"?

I, for one, am glad to have the September 12th George W. Bush back. The next step is using the power of the "bully pulpit" -- which Arnold Schwarzenegger has failed to do in California -- and tell Americans the truth about our economy. The fact is that it's doing great. Katrina and the loss of much of New Orleans put hardly a dent into the total economic output. Oil and gasoline prices are dropping, and even when pump prices were over $3 per gallon, we found ways to cope.

Another thing the White House should do, but it can't because most Americans would not understand, is expose the myth that the trade deficit (particularly with China) is bad. The first step is a gag order on its economically illiterate staff (who admittedly are just trying to put the administration in a better light). I've covered this topic before, also offering some thoughts on one of Walter Williams' columns.