“What up, ribs?”
We haven’t had any palate cleansers lately and, judging from our comment numbers, most of our readers have checked out for Christmas anyway, so let’s get festive. How manly is this dish? It’s manlier than a bunch of Marines watching football while smoking cigars. It’s manlier than a cowboy hunting lions with a knife. It’s […]
Wikileaks has been handed victory on a silver platter. The victory doesn’t have anything to do with what they published in leaked information out of the US State Department which turned out to be nothing but old women’s gossip. It is solely down to American politicians. They alone have manoeuvred Wikileaks into an unassailable position.
The catastrophe started off with a panicking Hilary Clinton warning the so called world leaders about the leaks and the havoc the revelations would cause. The free advertising for Wikileaks did all it could, and suddenly the site was on every screen, in every newspaper, and on every news bulletin. The leaks that should shake the world turned out to be silly jokes made by stupid old men with a warped and demented sense of humour. The question is how much was Clinton paid by Julian Assange for her publicity stunt?
Then the political free ride really took off. While the entire world was wondering what the fuss was all about and was ready to dismiss the whole episode as a media flop, self appointed leaders of opinion took over where Clinton had left off. Why they did it was obvious. Nobody likes to be the laughing stock of the world, and with one fell swoop all America’s great secrets were revealed to be nothing but the mindless mumblings of workshy pranksters. Their talks of shooting and revenge did what Wikileaks could not: Keep the attention on the site.
Coincidentally, Sweden opened a case against Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. They bungled it as badly as any American could have done which led people to believe that it was an American plot. With mindless stupidity, detractors of Wikileaks keep on repeating that Wikileaks is identical with Julian Assange. All they manage to do with this is keeping both in the news. Great work, no advertising company could do that for Wikileaks.
With mindless ferocity, politicians began blackmailing companies to take Wikileaks off the net. The result of their pains is a tangible backlash on Americans, on American websites, and that Wikileaks can be more easily accessed than ever before through countless mirror sites. Hilary Clinton claimed at the outset that lives would be at risk over the leaks. So far she still has to prove her empty claim. The behaviour of American politicians on the other hand puts American lives at risk in reality. But then, they are allowed to, they make it part of an afternoon’s work to throw away the lives of hundreds of soldiers in their greed for oil and money. How many sons of politicians have died in Iraq?
And this is only the story so far. The real losers will only be revealed in future. Assange was imprisoned in Britain; an upsurge of support for Wikileaks was the result. If England deports him to Sweden, Wikileaks will profit from a further surge of support, if he isn’t deported, Wikileaks has won an outright victory.
If the US government is stupid enough to charge him with espionage, Wikileaks wins because they will receive more support again; if they don’t Wikileaks has won an outright victory. The concerted efforts by American politicians are all that keeps Wikileaks in the news. The real question is what each of them is gaining out of their stunts personally? The whole thing is such a rigmarole no sane being could take it seriously.
And why are the real culprits not brought to accounts? Obviously, the CIA is not able to keep America secure. Its employees should have been removed from their desks by now without further salary, and their pensions scrapped. The same goes for each and every flunky in the State Department, and I mean all including the un-embarassable Mrs Bill Clinton. The Ambassadors mentioned in the leaks should already be back in the USA even though they paid a lot of money to buy their posts. They are better off than the rest of the floppy lot as they obviously have been trained for years as bad stand-up comedians.
Replace them? What for? The vacancy signs on their desks will do as much work in an hour as they did in a lifetime. Nobody needs an expensive security system that leaks like a rusty sieve or A State Department that is but an embarrassment.
Related articles
Julian Assange is Not Wikileaks
Wikileaks: German Government Likens US State Department to Stasi
US Government Will Boycott Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony
Wikileaks: Swiss Government Buckles Under US Pressure
Wikileaks’ Real Damage
Wikileaks and The Bible
Wikileaks Internet Address Taken Down
Originally proposed by a Georgetown law professor in 2009, the “Repeal Amendment” is getting a lot of press now. Some have reacted to the idea as a right-wing plot to try to return us to the age of slavery, but that is a severe misreading of what the Repeal Amendment idea is all about — federalism.
Both fed and reflected by a series of Supreme Court decisions over the last two decades, federalism has become a bit of a political football, with conservatives championing it as a limitation on 70 years of unchecked growth in the scope and reach of the federal government and liberals fighting it as a perceived threat to basic human rights.
Both sides have legitimate concerns. Many conservatives objected to the massive growth of federal power during Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, where the common sense power of Congress to regulate inter-state commerce was expanded to include even the power to prevent individual farmers from growing more than a detailed quota of wheat. With very few pauses, this expansion has continued unabated into the present age, with the Commerce Clause power of Congress being interpreted broadly enough to even trump state efforts to legalize the growth of marijuana for individual use. With Congress now attempting in the 2009 health care reform bill to expand the power to regulate economic activity to include the power to regulate economic inactivity as well, conservative legal scholars have expressed concern that the continuing growth in congressional power under the Commerce Clause could result in the de facto elimination of all constitutional constraints on Congress’ power to micromanage individual lives. But starkly, if Congress can force you to buy health insurance that conforms to government requirements, then Congress could also force you to buy at least 10 pounds of vegetables per week as well, and that’s even before we get to the individual fruit-consumption mandate…
A lot of liberals point to a different age, however, when the very same “state’s rights” that conservatives are championing as a necessary check on the growing monolith of federal power was used to blacks in the South the right to vote, the right to attend decent schools, and the right to even sit down on a bus or enter a public park. The use of federal power was a vital tool to protect individuals during the post-WWII civil rights era against the forces of racial hatred. Some liberals fear that any movement towards allowing states to limit (through the Tenth Amendment) or repeal (through the proposed Repeal Amendment) federal laws would endanger the gains made during the civil rights era.
This common liberal fear seems unfounded, though. There is no evidence that promoters of the Repeal Amendment would roll back civil rights, restore Jim Crow law, or embrace the long-discarded legacy of racial hatred. Looking to both the origin and current direction of the movement for the Repeal Amendment illustrates immediately that nearly the entirety of the movement is oriented on economic and financial issues related to the massive growth of the scope of the Commerce Clause. There is nary a single reference to racial segregation to be found. Moreover, there is exactly zero reason to believe that the 2/3 majority of the states required to repeal a federal law under the proposed Repeal Amendment would want to do so. Even if the Repeal Amendment were approved, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments would be safe and secure in the real world.
The Repeal Amendment is unlikely to be approved anyway. Since it would require acquiescence by both houses of Congress to a decrease of their own power combined with the agreement of 3/4 of the states, the probability that any such constitutional amendment is imminent approaches zero. But what the Repeal Amendment does accomplish is the initiation of a long-overdue debate about the continuing and seemingly endless expansion of federal government power over not only the traditional prerogatives of states, but also over the details of the daily lives of individuals.
And for that alone, it is an excellent idea.
by Patrick Appel
Jonathan Bernstein defends multiple-choice Mitt:
[H]ow can anyone know what Romney will actually do it elected? I think the answer is, basically, the same way you can know that about anyone. He'll follow party incentives, and institutional incentives, and other such things that have little or nothing to do with what he "really" thinks. And that's mostly a good thing! As I've said many times, our presidents are experts on practically none of the issues about which they must make decisions. If they fool themselves into thinking that they know more than anyone else about arms control, or the effects of economic stimulus, or farming, or 5th amendment jurisprudence, or what North Korea is up to, then there's a good chance they'll fail. Even worse, if they convince themselves (as Woodrow Wilson, and probably George W. Bush, did) that as a result of being elected they share some mystical bond with the American people that allows them, and only them, to understand what the American people "really" want…well, that's a recipe for disaster.
Responding to public opinion is one thing, but Romney constantly does 180s to follow miniscule political advantages. He's the reverse of Obama –Mitt takes the long-term political hit for the short-term gain; he campaigns as if political opportunity costs don't exist. Yglesias is correct that basic beliefs and temperament matter. And John Gardner is right to point out that public opinion has its limits:
[T]he next President will have many, many occasions to inform the “customers” that they cannot have what they want precisely how they want it – America simply cannot afford it. Does the next President have the courage to do so? What proof do we have? Customer service and management consulting is a good model to run a company, even a large government agency. (Business leaders work best in government at agencies that bear some similarity to business, such as Social Security or Medicare.) But President? No – the style of leadership we need in a President right now is very different than corporate leadership. It’s far more about negotiation and persuasion than command, control, and organization management, to say nothing of the need for principles beyond customer service during the 3:00 AM phone calls made famous in the last campaign.
(Image: Mandel Ngan/Getty)
Thanks to bungling American bureaucrats, a bevy of incompetents in the State Department and a basic weakness in American world-view, Wikileaks has become virtually unassailable. The US government and exponents of American politics have pushed and shoved the platform into a win-win situation it couldn’t get out of if it tried.
Newsflavor
More than meets the eye.
American Thinker Blog
Frum concedes: Based on Mitt Romney’s campaign book (quite good if you discard the first 1/3 and the final chapter) – and some of his speeches to business audiences – I think I know what Romney would like to do…
Frum compared Romney to a restaurant manager who thinks what “matters is satisfying each and every customer who walks through the door to the very best of the manager’s ability.” Ezra Klein semi-accepts this parallel: Frum is right that customer…
From Foreign Policy, by MK Moshe Ya’alon:
The Middle East peace process is once again stalled, while Palestinian leaders sadly continue to propagate the myth that Israeli construction impedes progress. Only last Friday, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in Washington that “the Israeli government had a choice between settlements and peace, and they chose settlements.”
Unfortunately, what stands between the Palestinians and eventual statehood is their insincerity when it comes to real peace. Israel has repeatedly proposed the independence that the Palestinians ostensibly desire. But instead of concluding a deal with Israel, they have demonstrated a total unwillingness to compromise, often favoring terrorism, as witnessed in the barrage of terrorist attacks that followed the Camp David negotiations of 2000. Is it any wonder Israelis find it ever more difficult to trust the Palestinians?
If there is to be a stable and lasting peace, Israel’s recognition of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination — which successive Israeli governments have affirmed — cannot go unreciprocated. The Jewish people are no less entitled to a state in their homeland, the land of Israel, or to their right to defend it.
The fundamental problem is that the Palestinians continue to reject these inherent rights of the Jewish people. That’s indeed why we do not yet have two states for two peoples: The Palestinians remain steadfast in their refusal to accept that there even exists a Jewish nation that lays legitimate claim to its land. They reject the entire premise of a state for the Jewish people — not only beyond the pre-1967 lines of the state of Israel, but even within its original 1948 boundaries. This, of course, explains why the Palestinians did not pursue independence prior to 1967, when Israel was within the 1949 Armistice lines.
Read the whole thing.
(h/t Silke)
Ross refuses to dismiss Romney’s chronic pandering: I believe that Mitt Romney is a more serious person, and would probably be a better president, than his campaign style suggests. But issue by issue, policy by policy, that same campaign style…
Building off Ross’s thoughts on Romney, Larison lists Mitt’s many reversals: My guess is that Romney doesn’t “really” have a stand on any of these issues, but what is annoying is not simply Romney’s lack of principle. Many and possibly…
Ireland’s abortion laws are now going to need to explain exactly how they define that term.
Islam and its un-just legal system of sharia are the ultimate political expressions of Apartheid.
Israellycool
Reuters India |
With Knicks Successful, Real Pro Basketball Returns to the Garden
New York Times Amar'e Stoudemire, center, has had a stellar season so far, scoring 26.2 points per game. By GEORGE VECSEY Sent an e-mail to somebody Wednesday afternoon that ended, “I'm at the Knicks game.” Keep up with the latest news, on the court and off, … Knicks Make a Strong Statement in Defeat Celtics edge Knicks on Pierce jumper with 0.4 left THIS CLOSE: Knicks fall to Boston, 118-116 |
