http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/the_bush_legacy.html
An accurate account of the legacy of President George W. Bush - points out the shallowness of the media and the profound contributions that President Bush has made to the nation.
Also debunks common leftist myths while analyzing both the successes and errors of the 43rd President based on his track record and on lessons that have been shown to us throughout history.
The post is a long read, but provides a very thorough account of many key events of the Bush Presidency and should be disseminated to liberals in an effort to set the record straight.
See also our new President George W. Bush Legacy Preservation Project at The Bush Legacy.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Marion Thorpe for US Senate - The Only Way the GOP Can Keep its Florida Seat
Campaign Alert:
- The image of Obama rallying his base to support Meek in the midterm will be more than enough to get them going. But Obama cannot vilify Marion Thorpe, who is well known and liked in the areas that turned out heavily
- Marion Thorpe moots the impact of Kendrick Meek. He has a track record of bringing thousands of minority voters to the GOP, or of at least getting them to vote
- What you can do today to ensure that the Senate seat currently held by Republicans stays in GOP hands, with the great and proven conservative leadership of Dr. Marion Thorpe.
Dr. Marion Thorpe Jr. is a real conservative, one who is strong on moral values, national security and who understands the vital importance of small business and entrepreneurship. For the reasons outlined below, he is also the GOP’s' most electable candidate and one who can boost our numbers nationwide.
Two things stand out about a potential Marion Thorpe candidacy:
- As
- Over the past two years, Dr. Thorpe has worked with education advocates and small business leaders to start the Thorpe Youth Initiative. His priorities are jobs, education and health care. Unlike 90% of candidates, he has detailed specifics on each of these key issues that have been analyzed and vetted. He's ready to lead. At a time when people are fed up with both parties and their emphasis on doing everything to save large corporations, in Thorpe we have a chance to rally around a candidate who recognizes that small businesses are the bedrock of our job market and who puts families and individuals first. In fact, these issues are at the very core of his candidacy (see www.MarionThorpe.com and www.HealAmericaWithThorpe.com
Perhaps most importantly, the likely Democratic challenger will be Kendrick Meek. Obama can rally the same areas that turned out
Simply put,
Here's what you can do to keep this Senate seat in GOP hands:
- Invite your friends to join this facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44503786707
- Contact me if you are interested in blogging to promote this most needed candidacy
- Get involved as a precinct captain or as a Leader
- Host a party or a get together
- Tell all of your friends to get involved in this unique campaign and join the facebook group
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Media Bias: Are the Shameful Practices of the Toronto Star and Columnist Linda McQuaig the Natural Progressions of Liberal Dishonesty?
The leftist bias and activist drumbeating of today’s major media is as self-evident as it is plentiful. A look at how major media acts in North America’s most liberal cities gives us an indication of the true dangers that media bias poses here.
The examples below should serve as a vital wake up call to conservatives to relentlessly point out the biases of the media at every turn so as to prevent our voices from being wiped out of the public debate. Certainly, the lengths that the dominant media of left leaning cities goes to in trumpeting their point of view (while fervidly quashing out all others) gives us a prelude to the dangers of unopposed media bias anywhere.
Toronto is a major metropolitan, one that is home to a large number of hard working people, businesses and corporations. It has its own stock exchange. The city’s most widely read newspaper is the Toronto Star and anyone who is familiar with that paper knows one thing: The Toronto Star isn’t only biased. Its one sidedness rivals that of the Pravda of the 1970s. What makes it even more dangerous is its pretense of neutrality.
The Toronto Star takes great pleasure in playing fast and loose with the truth. While it purports to be a news service, the fact that it is no better than any propagandist journal that was ever printed in the Soviet Union is provable. You can point to it. Unlike most papers, this reality becomes obvious upon reading just a few issues. And the more you familiarize yourself with the paper, the greater your disgust at its dishonesty, its falsification of facts and the agenda driven manipulations that grace not only its op-eds, but also its front pages on a daily basis.
Years ago, when I lived in Toronto, I was a short time subscriber of the Star. Never before had I seen a paper in which the other side of any issue isn’t only attacked, its points are rendered non-existent. In the narrow minded and false world of the Star there are no conservatives. Unless, that is, there’s a need to incite hatred or disdain among readers. That’s where conservatives make for very useful fodder.
Attacks range from the comical to the obscene. Star columnist Richard Gwyn once opined an entire piece on how Canadian conservatives aren’t Canadian at all. That column, while audacious, was actually mild by the Star’s standards, by which Conservatives have routinely been maligned and falsely ascribed character traits that would be unkind if said of a vampire bat.
The reasons for conservative views are never published. All that the Star will tell its readers is that conservatives are “dangerous,” “extremists,” and so forth (and those are mild examples of what’s written in its pages). In doing so, they refer not to third world revolutionists, but rather to those who espouse opinions that are shared by the majority of Americans, Western Canadians and indeed many Eastern Canadians as well. Simply put, what the Star is doing isn’t just keeping their readers ignorant of any other point of view. Their tactics are fanning the flames of hatred against a large segment of Canadians on a daily basis.
If a conservative were to write of liberals with one iota of the smears, jears and slurs that regularly grace the Star’s hallowed pages, he or she would find themselves in front of a Human Rights Tribunal. Yet in the minds of the Star’s editors, their unending attacks on conservatives are just the way things are.
Liberals who get their opinions of conservatives from news sources such as the Star are as clueless to what we think as were citizens of the Soviet Union of the Western world and of the mechanics of a free market economy. (The Pravda, the Star’s East Block soul mate, routinely described Western countries as places where people are left dying on the street as others pass by and laugh.) And while such one sidedness is not the exclusive domain of the Star, the Star is alone in the viciousness, vindictiveness and obsessive drumbeat of its attacks. What’s more, it also plays fast and loose with hard facts.
One tactic the Star uses is page placement. When a poll, not matter how dubious or singular in nature, shows the Liberals leading in public opinion, you can expect to see it reported as a front page story. By contrast, Conservative leads are relegated much farther to the back. The same is true with regard to favorable and unfavorable news about the respective parties.
This juxtaposition was best seen when former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien famously offered up what he claimed to be a two year old napkin to show that he had no interest in a golf course that benefited from government funding (official records told a different story than the napkin). That story was sent to the inside pages of the Star. The fact that the then Canadian Alliance, the conservative opposition party, had accepted a perfectly legal anonymous donation was page one news. Yes, the party had passed a resolution that all donations be public, the only party to do so at the time, but an oversight by the opposition involving no impropriety hardly trumps a willfully effected prime ministerial scandal.
But that’s just how Liberals play politics. That’s no excuse, but it’s to be expected. What transpired only shows the Toronto Star to be a non-independent political mouthpiece, a spin paper, not a news source. What’s shocking about the Star is best illustrated by another example that happened in the same year.
When the 2000 intifada broke out among Palestinian militants, much of the world was appalled. It grew worse when innocent children were targeted for assassination by Islamic extremists. The Star, which had long been a ridiculously one sided advocate for the Palestinian side also condemned the baby slaughter, but said that it makes the world not care what happens to either side.
In the Star’s world, Israel’s self defense was as disdainful as the Palestinian targeting of children. And isn’t that the extent of how the radical left views the military, even with regard to measures needed for self defense? They view self protection with disdain and those who engage in it as second class (at best) to the supine quasi-Marxists that make up the so-called intelligentsia, a misnomer with no better meaning of the latter word. In the eyes of the Star, it does not matter that Israel only took possession of the territories in an unprovoked war in which enemies that had attacked it since the first day of its existence sought to wipe it off the face of the map. Nor did it matter that it was Israel, and only Israel, that initiated all peace measures in the hopes of securing a real peace and was the only party to ever give any concessions, wishful acts that were instead viewed as signs of weakness by the terrorists and therefore led to more attacks against the West’s only reliable ally in the Middle East. Israel did what it needed to in its defense.
Although Israel did not start the shootings, defensive actions taken by Western allies are typically viewed with condescension by the Star, that would instead have Israel host a big kumbaya for all sworn enemies surrounding it. This disdain of Western self preservation is also what leads the Star to largely ignore Chinese communist brutality, Chavez’ attacks on individual rights, acts of brutality that are par for the course in fundamentalist Iran and China and Iran’s overtures to Venezuela, which may well be the beginnings of a Cuban Missile Crisis-like situation.
Similarly, the Star has taken great liberties with its nonsensical portrayals of revisionist history. In the run up to the 2006 Canadian election, the Star featured an op-ed penned by a Toronto high school teacher that Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John. A. MacDonald, would be a Liberal if he were alive today. The fact that even the most cursory glance of policy and political philosophy shows that all prime ministers up until Louis St. Laurent were much to the right of today’s Conservatives (with Lester Pearson having the most in common with today’s Stephen Harper) was apparently lost on the Star. And par for the course, no opposing op-ed was allowed.
In another case of political spin disguised as journalism, the Star also offered up a pre-election whopper that the Conservative platform would reverse Canada’s social programs to pre 1919 levels. I may not have read all of the Conservative Party platform, but certainly doing away with Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, disability and unemployment benefits would have caught the attention of more than the Star’s hysterical op-ed page.
And it gets worse. Even fallen war heroes are not immune from the Star’s political skew. As Michael Petrou pointed out on Macleans’ blog, just a few weeks ago the Star ran a headline that highlighted the uncle of a fallen soldier’s claim that Afghanistan was a lost war. The Star had interviewed the soldier’s mother, who had mentioned that her son, Cpl. Thomas James Hamilton, believed strongly in the cause and had volunteered for three tours of duty. The Star buried those facts inside the story and ran with the politicized headline instead, giving readers an overall impression that stood in stark contrast to the fallen soldier’s beliefs. Fortunately their online editors had the decency to change the headline for the web.
The Star has also found a creative way to defend their bias. Years ago, after a few short months as a reader, I canceled my subscription due to their anti-conservative and anti-Israel bias. I told them as much. That got me a letter, supposedly from their publisher, stating that they have no bias as they regularly host a citizen advisory board. The fact that they had such a form letter available was a testament to the fact that more than one person had canceled their subscription for the same reason. But I found the cover/excuse to be an interesting one. To be sure, no one who cancelled their patronage of the paper was invited to take part in the advisory panel. The panel was filled with good likeminded leftists, brainwashed academics (another misnomer) and activists for groups that have little regard for the safety of the Western world. What the publisher was essentially saying was that a room full of leftists and radical activists is the Star’s idea of a diverse group. He didn’t need to send that letter. That much was already apparent from their op-eds (and unfortunately from their “news reporting” as well).
All of the above are pitiful examples of propaganda disguised as journalism. But the magnitude of the Star’s manipulations is most grotesquely displayed in the columns of featured writer Linda McQuaig.
McQuaig writes exclusively about leftist causes. That itself would be fine. But in her defense of logically indefensible positions, she reinvents the rules of math (and just about whatever else she can grasp at). Her end goal is for insane propositions to be taken as fact by readers who don’t care to follow her convoluted reasoning and simply accept her conclusions.
A prime example of this is her past assertion that Canada has, in essence, a flat tax. Despite all studies showing that Canadians pay an average of 50% of their revenues in some form of government taxation (income, sales, capital gains, etc.) and despite the even clearer fact that lower income earners pay less and those who earn more pay more, McQuaig single handedly reinvented the laws of arithmetic to argue that all Canadians really pay between 30-35% in taxes. If Canada does indeed have a flat rate, she argued (the point of her reinventing math in the first place), then any tax cuts would amount to the poor paying the greatest percentage. Of course, both a cursory glance and a substantive look at actual tax rates shows otherwise and even the EU has largely adopted tax cuts as a way to stimulate jobs and investment. But why write the truth when rubbish is a good substitute? After all, the Star won’t report the truth.
Similarly, in various columns, McQuaig has blamed former Ontario Premier Mike Harris for that province’s young offenders, written that Harper will cut social spending so drastically that, from the way she describes it, he’ll send Canada back to the middle ages (I guess the Prime Minister’s Office never got the note) and otherwise fills her columns with tales of vast and abundant conspiracies. Again, if it were a conservative making such claims of the opposite side, the outcry from the left would be audible 100 miles away. Either that or they’d be wholly ignored. No paper would print their unsubstantiated ramblings. No such luck with the Toronto Star.
McQuaig also has another trait. Like so many of the radical left, her sympathies lie with terrorists who she sides with, always, against Israel. There are simply no radical leftist fads or causes celebres that escape her narrow minded world view. Unlike many on her side, she tries to support these fancifully misbegotten notions with logic. As with math, when the logic or facts don’t fit, she invents them or quotes others who do it for her.
No where is there a better example of this than in her latest column, one in which she decries Canada’s support for Israel. (It should be of note that Canada’s support for Taiwan, India or any other allies fighting a dictatorial enemy may also not meet with McQuaig’s approval. But I assume she’ll have to confer with her “professors” before she issues a pronouncement on same one way or another.) Again, she does not find it sufficient to merely state her opinion and move on. In this case too, she must manipulate reality in a way that combines the talents of a communist propaganda minister with those of an acrobatic contortionist.
McQuaig does not once make mention of the 80 rockets that Hamas lobbed into populated areas of Israel. The fact that Israel and Hamas signed a six month truce, which Hamas refused to resign is also ignored. In fact, McQuaig quotes Richard Falk, a man she refers to as a “Jewish-American professor,” as saying that the situation was Israel’s fault for having entered into Gaza a month ago on a military incursion.
The truth is that intermittent attacks coming from Gaza were commonplace even after the ceasefire was signed. Hamas continually broke the terms and conditions throughout its six month duration. Last month, the Israeli Army found that Hamas supporters were digging a tunnel toward Israel that presented a clear security risk. Israel destroyed the tunnel and left.
As her column progresses, her other claims continue to decry incredulity. She blames Israel for sectioning off Gaza. The problem is that Gaza also has an equally long border with Egypt, so Israel could not unilaterally section it off. McQuaig knows this, so she again relies on Falk as the source of her seemingly (as well as actually) incredulous claim. To be sure, Israel did block off Gaza after rocket attacks persisted. But if Gaza was at all reasonable, why would both Israel and Egypt see the need to block it off? Israel still allowed food and vital supplies in, McQuaig’s reference to food shortages (for which she again quotes Falk, as only he and Hamas have made this claim) is unsubstantiated and probably countered by the mere fact that all Hamas fighters have clearly had ample strength and resources to continue fighting over the past few days.
What’s also missing from the picture is that Israel gave the Palestinian Authority in Gaza its autonomy in the hopes that a lasting peace could be cemented. Had they not done so, the Israelis would still be there and there’d be no argument over border crossings. So the argument that Israel has some kind of desire to reenter Gaza is scurrilous. They could have kept it in the first place.
But who is this Richard Falk who McQuaig so relies on, and whose singular claims are taken by McQuaig as fact? Well, a simple google search immediately exposes who Falk is and shows him to be little more than a Hamas mouthpiece, albeit one with other very interesting ties as well.
Falk is a professor emeritus. He is also a Special Rapporteur for the UN. But as Pajama Media’s Ron Radosh succinctly puts it: “Falk’s appointment was made, not surprisingly, by the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D’escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the Sandinista liberation theologian who was himself appointed by Daniel Ortega. Throughout D’escoto’s entire career, he has been a left-wing ideologue, whose anti-Americanism is legendary.”
Yes, Nicaragua is on the UN Human Rights Commission, as is Saudi Arabia. They do not designate all appointees, but one prominent Ortega ally found Falk to be just the man for a Special Rapporteur position. Perhaps Father D’escoto is a McQuaig fan too. But aside from being a pal to Ortega’s pals, Falk also has some opinions about Hamas that would shock even their Palestinian counterpart Fatah (which has also engaged in terror and has yet to renounce the “Jerusalem Martyrs Brigade” of suicide bombers with allegiance to Fatah).
Among Falk’s pronouncements is that Hamas should not be branded a terrorist organization (what a man who thinks that an unrenounced past history of targeting infants doesn’t qualify a group as terrorist is doing working for the UN Human Rights Commission is a question best left to them) and that Hamas’ legitimacy is recognized by other Palestinian groups. He also views the suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians as the “right of resistance.” By contrast, he compares the Israelis, (who have taken precaution after precaution not to target civilians, and seek to minimize casualties even when Hamas terrorists barricade themselves in civilian areas – Israel is, again, also the only side ever to have given real concessions) to Nazis.
Yes, Richard Falk may be Jewish, but he’s probably one of the only Jews aside from Meir Lansky to be denied entry into Israel. The reason he was turned back at Ben Gurion airport was due to the fact that even before he started his investigation, he was making the above listed pronouncements and blaming Israel once again for the current crisis. In the words of the Israeli foreign ministry, Falk’s mission was “profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israeli initiative.”
Falk has no first hand knowledge of the situation. In short, not only is a he a Hamas mouthpiece (who, again, makes statements that would even be countered by Abbas), he’s also a fraud. There’s no way he could have known what was happening on the ground. His ridiculous assertions and public statements were made before he arrived, and because of them, he was turned back. Israel has let in scores of international observers, just not elderly professors emeriti who call them Nazis and glorify Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters.” Even then, they’d have let him in if not for his statements of “fact” before he arrived.
Is that all? Unfortunately not. Falk is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who is sad that the issue did not receive prominence during the presidential election. According to Falk, not only did the US government quite possibly arrange 9/11, Barack Obama should have made it a campaign issue as well!
In other words, McQuaig and the Star (that prints her trash) may as well have used a guy who claims to get his information from a large bunny named Harvey who sits at his left side as their source.
As Falk, with no first hand knowledge of the situation, must have been getting his “information” from Hamas (unless he made it up himself – I’m discounting Harvey from the picture), McQuaig was more than likely quoting Hamas when quoting Falk. And of course, the fact checkers at the Star couldn’t be bothered to notice this. They were probably too busy rereading George Orwell’s 1984, or as the Star might call it “the Employee Training Manual.”
McQuaig ends off her column by sanctimoniously opining that Israel does have a right to defend itself. The only problem for McQuaig, seemingly, is that when it does, it should be mindful of the accusations of an indirectly Ortega appointed Hamas sympathizer. If he suspects impropriety then all defensive measures must stop.
It’s one thing to be a crazy leftist who fumbles with the truth on taxes and spending policy and who views math as her own personal lump of molding clay, ready to twist and contort at her leisure. It’s another thing entirely to print falsehoods in defense of avowed terror organizations that recruit young children to their causes and target infants for slaughter, while smearing those who were attacked and blaming them for it. Yet all those traits fit neatly into the package that is Linda McQuaig.
As for the Star’s consistent pounding of these same views, it’s finally time to call a spade a spade. The anti-Semitism that it and columnists like McQuaig engage in is covert. As in the most recent example: Find one lone radical professor who makes a false claim which decries incredulity and report it as the “statement of a Jewish-American professor,” instead of that of a Marxist and terrorist sympathizer whose views represent the same lunatic fringe that has turned Mideast Studies programs in universities such as Columbia into hotbeds of anti-Semitism.
Promotion of radically leftist myths at the expense of logic is the central mission of the Toronto Star. We get it. But if that’s the case then be upfront about it. There are many liberal and conservative publications that market themselves accordingly. They do not pretend to be unbiased conveyors of news. Their purpose is to share thoughts and opinions. That would be a hard task for an outfit like the Star that is short on facts and long on insults, diatribes and unsubstantiated pronouncements. But that’s no excuse for it to dress itself up as a news organization.
The examples below should serve as a vital wake up call to conservatives to relentlessly point out the biases of the media at every turn so as to prevent our voices from being wiped out of the public debate. Certainly, the lengths that the dominant media of left leaning cities goes to in trumpeting their point of view (while fervidly quashing out all others) gives us a prelude to the dangers of unopposed media bias anywhere.
Toronto is a major metropolitan, one that is home to a large number of hard working people, businesses and corporations. It has its own stock exchange. The city’s most widely read newspaper is the Toronto Star and anyone who is familiar with that paper knows one thing: The Toronto Star isn’t only biased. Its one sidedness rivals that of the Pravda of the 1970s. What makes it even more dangerous is its pretense of neutrality.
The Toronto Star takes great pleasure in playing fast and loose with the truth. While it purports to be a news service, the fact that it is no better than any propagandist journal that was ever printed in the Soviet Union is provable. You can point to it. Unlike most papers, this reality becomes obvious upon reading just a few issues. And the more you familiarize yourself with the paper, the greater your disgust at its dishonesty, its falsification of facts and the agenda driven manipulations that grace not only its op-eds, but also its front pages on a daily basis.
Years ago, when I lived in Toronto, I was a short time subscriber of the Star. Never before had I seen a paper in which the other side of any issue isn’t only attacked, its points are rendered non-existent. In the narrow minded and false world of the Star there are no conservatives. Unless, that is, there’s a need to incite hatred or disdain among readers. That’s where conservatives make for very useful fodder.
Attacks range from the comical to the obscene. Star columnist Richard Gwyn once opined an entire piece on how Canadian conservatives aren’t Canadian at all. That column, while audacious, was actually mild by the Star’s standards, by which Conservatives have routinely been maligned and falsely ascribed character traits that would be unkind if said of a vampire bat.
The reasons for conservative views are never published. All that the Star will tell its readers is that conservatives are “dangerous,” “extremists,” and so forth (and those are mild examples of what’s written in its pages). In doing so, they refer not to third world revolutionists, but rather to those who espouse opinions that are shared by the majority of Americans, Western Canadians and indeed many Eastern Canadians as well. Simply put, what the Star is doing isn’t just keeping their readers ignorant of any other point of view. Their tactics are fanning the flames of hatred against a large segment of Canadians on a daily basis.
If a conservative were to write of liberals with one iota of the smears, jears and slurs that regularly grace the Star’s hallowed pages, he or she would find themselves in front of a Human Rights Tribunal. Yet in the minds of the Star’s editors, their unending attacks on conservatives are just the way things are.
Liberals who get their opinions of conservatives from news sources such as the Star are as clueless to what we think as were citizens of the Soviet Union of the Western world and of the mechanics of a free market economy. (The Pravda, the Star’s East Block soul mate, routinely described Western countries as places where people are left dying on the street as others pass by and laugh.) And while such one sidedness is not the exclusive domain of the Star, the Star is alone in the viciousness, vindictiveness and obsessive drumbeat of its attacks. What’s more, it also plays fast and loose with hard facts.
One tactic the Star uses is page placement. When a poll, not matter how dubious or singular in nature, shows the Liberals leading in public opinion, you can expect to see it reported as a front page story. By contrast, Conservative leads are relegated much farther to the back. The same is true with regard to favorable and unfavorable news about the respective parties.
This juxtaposition was best seen when former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien famously offered up what he claimed to be a two year old napkin to show that he had no interest in a golf course that benefited from government funding (official records told a different story than the napkin). That story was sent to the inside pages of the Star. The fact that the then Canadian Alliance, the conservative opposition party, had accepted a perfectly legal anonymous donation was page one news. Yes, the party had passed a resolution that all donations be public, the only party to do so at the time, but an oversight by the opposition involving no impropriety hardly trumps a willfully effected prime ministerial scandal.
But that’s just how Liberals play politics. That’s no excuse, but it’s to be expected. What transpired only shows the Toronto Star to be a non-independent political mouthpiece, a spin paper, not a news source. What’s shocking about the Star is best illustrated by another example that happened in the same year.
When the 2000 intifada broke out among Palestinian militants, much of the world was appalled. It grew worse when innocent children were targeted for assassination by Islamic extremists. The Star, which had long been a ridiculously one sided advocate for the Palestinian side also condemned the baby slaughter, but said that it makes the world not care what happens to either side.
In the Star’s world, Israel’s self defense was as disdainful as the Palestinian targeting of children. And isn’t that the extent of how the radical left views the military, even with regard to measures needed for self defense? They view self protection with disdain and those who engage in it as second class (at best) to the supine quasi-Marxists that make up the so-called intelligentsia, a misnomer with no better meaning of the latter word. In the eyes of the Star, it does not matter that Israel only took possession of the territories in an unprovoked war in which enemies that had attacked it since the first day of its existence sought to wipe it off the face of the map. Nor did it matter that it was Israel, and only Israel, that initiated all peace measures in the hopes of securing a real peace and was the only party to ever give any concessions, wishful acts that were instead viewed as signs of weakness by the terrorists and therefore led to more attacks against the West’s only reliable ally in the Middle East. Israel did what it needed to in its defense.
Although Israel did not start the shootings, defensive actions taken by Western allies are typically viewed with condescension by the Star, that would instead have Israel host a big kumbaya for all sworn enemies surrounding it. This disdain of Western self preservation is also what leads the Star to largely ignore Chinese communist brutality, Chavez’ attacks on individual rights, acts of brutality that are par for the course in fundamentalist Iran and China and Iran’s overtures to Venezuela, which may well be the beginnings of a Cuban Missile Crisis-like situation.
Similarly, the Star has taken great liberties with its nonsensical portrayals of revisionist history. In the run up to the 2006 Canadian election, the Star featured an op-ed penned by a Toronto high school teacher that Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John. A. MacDonald, would be a Liberal if he were alive today. The fact that even the most cursory glance of policy and political philosophy shows that all prime ministers up until Louis St. Laurent were much to the right of today’s Conservatives (with Lester Pearson having the most in common with today’s Stephen Harper) was apparently lost on the Star. And par for the course, no opposing op-ed was allowed.
In another case of political spin disguised as journalism, the Star also offered up a pre-election whopper that the Conservative platform would reverse Canada’s social programs to pre 1919 levels. I may not have read all of the Conservative Party platform, but certainly doing away with Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, disability and unemployment benefits would have caught the attention of more than the Star’s hysterical op-ed page.
And it gets worse. Even fallen war heroes are not immune from the Star’s political skew. As Michael Petrou pointed out on Macleans’ blog, just a few weeks ago the Star ran a headline that highlighted the uncle of a fallen soldier’s claim that Afghanistan was a lost war. The Star had interviewed the soldier’s mother, who had mentioned that her son, Cpl. Thomas James Hamilton, believed strongly in the cause and had volunteered for three tours of duty. The Star buried those facts inside the story and ran with the politicized headline instead, giving readers an overall impression that stood in stark contrast to the fallen soldier’s beliefs. Fortunately their online editors had the decency to change the headline for the web.
The Star has also found a creative way to defend their bias. Years ago, after a few short months as a reader, I canceled my subscription due to their anti-conservative and anti-Israel bias. I told them as much. That got me a letter, supposedly from their publisher, stating that they have no bias as they regularly host a citizen advisory board. The fact that they had such a form letter available was a testament to the fact that more than one person had canceled their subscription for the same reason. But I found the cover/excuse to be an interesting one. To be sure, no one who cancelled their patronage of the paper was invited to take part in the advisory panel. The panel was filled with good likeminded leftists, brainwashed academics (another misnomer) and activists for groups that have little regard for the safety of the Western world. What the publisher was essentially saying was that a room full of leftists and radical activists is the Star’s idea of a diverse group. He didn’t need to send that letter. That much was already apparent from their op-eds (and unfortunately from their “news reporting” as well).
All of the above are pitiful examples of propaganda disguised as journalism. But the magnitude of the Star’s manipulations is most grotesquely displayed in the columns of featured writer Linda McQuaig.
McQuaig writes exclusively about leftist causes. That itself would be fine. But in her defense of logically indefensible positions, she reinvents the rules of math (and just about whatever else she can grasp at). Her end goal is for insane propositions to be taken as fact by readers who don’t care to follow her convoluted reasoning and simply accept her conclusions.
A prime example of this is her past assertion that Canada has, in essence, a flat tax. Despite all studies showing that Canadians pay an average of 50% of their revenues in some form of government taxation (income, sales, capital gains, etc.) and despite the even clearer fact that lower income earners pay less and those who earn more pay more, McQuaig single handedly reinvented the laws of arithmetic to argue that all Canadians really pay between 30-35% in taxes. If Canada does indeed have a flat rate, she argued (the point of her reinventing math in the first place), then any tax cuts would amount to the poor paying the greatest percentage. Of course, both a cursory glance and a substantive look at actual tax rates shows otherwise and even the EU has largely adopted tax cuts as a way to stimulate jobs and investment. But why write the truth when rubbish is a good substitute? After all, the Star won’t report the truth.
Similarly, in various columns, McQuaig has blamed former Ontario Premier Mike Harris for that province’s young offenders, written that Harper will cut social spending so drastically that, from the way she describes it, he’ll send Canada back to the middle ages (I guess the Prime Minister’s Office never got the note) and otherwise fills her columns with tales of vast and abundant conspiracies. Again, if it were a conservative making such claims of the opposite side, the outcry from the left would be audible 100 miles away. Either that or they’d be wholly ignored. No paper would print their unsubstantiated ramblings. No such luck with the Toronto Star.
McQuaig also has another trait. Like so many of the radical left, her sympathies lie with terrorists who she sides with, always, against Israel. There are simply no radical leftist fads or causes celebres that escape her narrow minded world view. Unlike many on her side, she tries to support these fancifully misbegotten notions with logic. As with math, when the logic or facts don’t fit, she invents them or quotes others who do it for her.
No where is there a better example of this than in her latest column, one in which she decries Canada’s support for Israel. (It should be of note that Canada’s support for Taiwan, India or any other allies fighting a dictatorial enemy may also not meet with McQuaig’s approval. But I assume she’ll have to confer with her “professors” before she issues a pronouncement on same one way or another.) Again, she does not find it sufficient to merely state her opinion and move on. In this case too, she must manipulate reality in a way that combines the talents of a communist propaganda minister with those of an acrobatic contortionist.
McQuaig does not once make mention of the 80 rockets that Hamas lobbed into populated areas of Israel. The fact that Israel and Hamas signed a six month truce, which Hamas refused to resign is also ignored. In fact, McQuaig quotes Richard Falk, a man she refers to as a “Jewish-American professor,” as saying that the situation was Israel’s fault for having entered into Gaza a month ago on a military incursion.
The truth is that intermittent attacks coming from Gaza were commonplace even after the ceasefire was signed. Hamas continually broke the terms and conditions throughout its six month duration. Last month, the Israeli Army found that Hamas supporters were digging a tunnel toward Israel that presented a clear security risk. Israel destroyed the tunnel and left.
As her column progresses, her other claims continue to decry incredulity. She blames Israel for sectioning off Gaza. The problem is that Gaza also has an equally long border with Egypt, so Israel could not unilaterally section it off. McQuaig knows this, so she again relies on Falk as the source of her seemingly (as well as actually) incredulous claim. To be sure, Israel did block off Gaza after rocket attacks persisted. But if Gaza was at all reasonable, why would both Israel and Egypt see the need to block it off? Israel still allowed food and vital supplies in, McQuaig’s reference to food shortages (for which she again quotes Falk, as only he and Hamas have made this claim) is unsubstantiated and probably countered by the mere fact that all Hamas fighters have clearly had ample strength and resources to continue fighting over the past few days.
What’s also missing from the picture is that Israel gave the Palestinian Authority in Gaza its autonomy in the hopes that a lasting peace could be cemented. Had they not done so, the Israelis would still be there and there’d be no argument over border crossings. So the argument that Israel has some kind of desire to reenter Gaza is scurrilous. They could have kept it in the first place.
But who is this Richard Falk who McQuaig so relies on, and whose singular claims are taken by McQuaig as fact? Well, a simple google search immediately exposes who Falk is and shows him to be little more than a Hamas mouthpiece, albeit one with other very interesting ties as well.
Falk is a professor emeritus. He is also a Special Rapporteur for the UN. But as Pajama Media’s Ron Radosh succinctly puts it: “Falk’s appointment was made, not surprisingly, by the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D’escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the Sandinista liberation theologian who was himself appointed by Daniel Ortega. Throughout D’escoto’s entire career, he has been a left-wing ideologue, whose anti-Americanism is legendary.”
Yes, Nicaragua is on the UN Human Rights Commission, as is Saudi Arabia. They do not designate all appointees, but one prominent Ortega ally found Falk to be just the man for a Special Rapporteur position. Perhaps Father D’escoto is a McQuaig fan too. But aside from being a pal to Ortega’s pals, Falk also has some opinions about Hamas that would shock even their Palestinian counterpart Fatah (which has also engaged in terror and has yet to renounce the “Jerusalem Martyrs Brigade” of suicide bombers with allegiance to Fatah).
Among Falk’s pronouncements is that Hamas should not be branded a terrorist organization (what a man who thinks that an unrenounced past history of targeting infants doesn’t qualify a group as terrorist is doing working for the UN Human Rights Commission is a question best left to them) and that Hamas’ legitimacy is recognized by other Palestinian groups. He also views the suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians as the “right of resistance.” By contrast, he compares the Israelis, (who have taken precaution after precaution not to target civilians, and seek to minimize casualties even when Hamas terrorists barricade themselves in civilian areas – Israel is, again, also the only side ever to have given real concessions) to Nazis.
Yes, Richard Falk may be Jewish, but he’s probably one of the only Jews aside from Meir Lansky to be denied entry into Israel. The reason he was turned back at Ben Gurion airport was due to the fact that even before he started his investigation, he was making the above listed pronouncements and blaming Israel once again for the current crisis. In the words of the Israeli foreign ministry, Falk’s mission was “profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israeli initiative.”
Falk has no first hand knowledge of the situation. In short, not only is a he a Hamas mouthpiece (who, again, makes statements that would even be countered by Abbas), he’s also a fraud. There’s no way he could have known what was happening on the ground. His ridiculous assertions and public statements were made before he arrived, and because of them, he was turned back. Israel has let in scores of international observers, just not elderly professors emeriti who call them Nazis and glorify Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters.” Even then, they’d have let him in if not for his statements of “fact” before he arrived.
Is that all? Unfortunately not. Falk is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who is sad that the issue did not receive prominence during the presidential election. According to Falk, not only did the US government quite possibly arrange 9/11, Barack Obama should have made it a campaign issue as well!
In other words, McQuaig and the Star (that prints her trash) may as well have used a guy who claims to get his information from a large bunny named Harvey who sits at his left side as their source.
As Falk, with no first hand knowledge of the situation, must have been getting his “information” from Hamas (unless he made it up himself – I’m discounting Harvey from the picture), McQuaig was more than likely quoting Hamas when quoting Falk. And of course, the fact checkers at the Star couldn’t be bothered to notice this. They were probably too busy rereading George Orwell’s 1984, or as the Star might call it “the Employee Training Manual.”
McQuaig ends off her column by sanctimoniously opining that Israel does have a right to defend itself. The only problem for McQuaig, seemingly, is that when it does, it should be mindful of the accusations of an indirectly Ortega appointed Hamas sympathizer. If he suspects impropriety then all defensive measures must stop.
It’s one thing to be a crazy leftist who fumbles with the truth on taxes and spending policy and who views math as her own personal lump of molding clay, ready to twist and contort at her leisure. It’s another thing entirely to print falsehoods in defense of avowed terror organizations that recruit young children to their causes and target infants for slaughter, while smearing those who were attacked and blaming them for it. Yet all those traits fit neatly into the package that is Linda McQuaig.
As for the Star’s consistent pounding of these same views, it’s finally time to call a spade a spade. The anti-Semitism that it and columnists like McQuaig engage in is covert. As in the most recent example: Find one lone radical professor who makes a false claim which decries incredulity and report it as the “statement of a Jewish-American professor,” instead of that of a Marxist and terrorist sympathizer whose views represent the same lunatic fringe that has turned Mideast Studies programs in universities such as Columbia into hotbeds of anti-Semitism.
Promotion of radically leftist myths at the expense of logic is the central mission of the Toronto Star. We get it. But if that’s the case then be upfront about it. There are many liberal and conservative publications that market themselves accordingly. They do not pretend to be unbiased conveyors of news. Their purpose is to share thoughts and opinions. That would be a hard task for an outfit like the Star that is short on facts and long on insults, diatribes and unsubstantiated pronouncements. But that’s no excuse for it to dress itself up as a news organization.
Linda McQuaig's Latest Piece Is Provably False
(The following is the already published portion of the column featured above. It deals specifically with her latest - and perhaps greatest - example of bias and lack of integrity:)
Like many who are familiar with Linda McQuaig, I’ve found the great liberties that she takes with the truth to be startling. McQuaig writes exclusively about leftist causes. That itself would be fine. But in her defense of logically indefensible positions, she has at times reinvented the rules of math and just about whatever else she can grasp at. Her end goal is for insane propositions to be taken as fact by readers who don’t care to follow her convoluted reasoning and simply accept her conclusions.
A prime example of this is her past assertion that Canada has, in essence, a flat tax. Despite all studies showing that Canadians pay an average of 50% of their revenues in some form of government taxation (income, sales, capital gains, etc.) and despite the even clearer fact that lower income earners pay less and those who earn more pay more, McQuaig single handedly reinvented the laws of arithmetic to argue that all Canadians really pay between 30-35% in taxes. If Canada does indeed have a flat rate, she argued (the point of her reinventing math in the first place), then any tax cuts would amount to the poor paying the greatest percentage. Of course, both a cursory glance and a substantive look at actual tax rates shows otherwise and even the EU has largely adopted tax cuts as a way to stimulate jobs and investment. But why write the truth when absolute rubbish is as good a substitute?
Similarly, in various columns, McQuaig has blamed former Ontario Premier Mike Harris for that province’s young offenders, written that Harper will cut social spending so drastically that, from the way she describes it, he’ll send Canada back to the middle ages (I guess the Prime Minister's Office never got the note) and otherwise fills her columns with tales of vast and abundant conspiracies. Again, if it were a conservative making such claims of the opposite side, the outcry from the left would be audible 100 miles away. Either that or they’d be wholly ignored. No paper would print their unsubstantiated ramblings.
McQuaig also has another trait. Like so many of the radical left, her sympathies lie with terrorists who she sides with, always, against Israel. There are simply no radical leftist fads or causes celebres that escape her narrow minded world view. Unlike many on her side, she tries to support these fancifully misbegotten notions with logic. As with math, when the logic or facts don’t fit, she invents them or quotes others who do it for her.
No where is there a better example of this than in her latest column, one in which she decries Canada’s support for Israel. (It should be of note that Canada’s support for Taiwan, India or any other allies fighting a dictatorial enemy may also not meet with McQuaig’s approval. But I assume she’ll have to confer with her “professors” before she issues a pronouncement on same one way or another.) Again, she does not find it sufficient to merely state her opinion and move on. In this case too, she must manipulate reality in a way that combines the talents of a communist propaganda minister with those of an acrobatic contortionist.
McQuaig does not once make mention of the 80 rockets that Hamas lobbed into populated areas of Israel. The fact that Israel and Hamas signed a six month truce, which Hamas refused to resign is also ignored. In fact, McQuaig quotes Richard Falk, a man she refers to as a “Jewish-American professor,” as saying that the situation was Israel’s fault for having entered into Gaza a month ago on a military incursion.
The truth is that intermittent attacks coming from Gaza were commonplace even after the ceasefire was signed. Hamas continually broke the terms and conditions throughout its six month duration. Last month, the Israeli Army found that Hamas supporters were digging a tunnel toward Israel that presented a clear security risk. Israel destroyed the tunnel and left.
As her column progresses, her other claims continue to decry incredulity. She blames Israel for sectioning off Gaza. The problem is that Gaza also has an equally long border with Egypt, so Israel could not unilaterally section it off. McQuaig knows this, so she again relies on Falk as the source of her seemingly (as well as actually) incredulous claim. To be sure, Israel did block off Gaza after rocket attacks persisted. But if Gaza was at all reasonable, why would both Israel and Egypt see the need to block it off? Israel still allowed food and vital supplies in, McQuaig’s reference to food shortages (for which she again quotes Falk, as only he and Hamas have made this claim) is unsubstantiated and probably countered by the mere fact that all Hamas fighters have clearly had ample strength and resources to continue fighting over the past few days.
What’s also missing from the picture is that Israel gave the Palestinian Authority in Gaza its autonomy in the hopes that a lasting peace could be cemented. Had they not done so, the Israelis would still be there and there’d be no argument over border crossings. So the argument that Israel has some kind of desire to reenter Gaza is scurrilous. They could have kept it in the first place.
But who is this Richard Falk who McQuaig so relies on, and whose singular claims are taken by McQuaig as fact? Well, a simple google search immediately exposes who Falk is and shows him to be little more than a Hamas mouthpiece, albeit one with other very interesting ties as well.
Falk is a professor emeritus. He is also a Special Rapporteur for the UN. But as Pajama Media’s Ron Radosh succinctly puts it: “Falk’s appointment was made, not surprisingly, by the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D’escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the Sandinista liberation theologian who was himself appointed by Daniel Ortega. Throughout D’escoto’s entire career, he has been a left-wing ideologue, whose anti-Americanism is legendary.”
Yes, Nicaragua is on the UN Human Rights Commission, as is Saudi Arabia. They do not designate all appointees, but one prominent Ortega ally found Falk to be just the man for a Special Rapporteur position. Perhaps Father D’escoto is a McQuaig fan too. But aside from being a pal to Ortega’s pals, Falk also has some opinions about Hamas that would shock even their Palestinian counterpart Fatah (which has also engaged in terror and has yet to renounce the “Jerusalem Martyrs Brigade” of suicide bombers with allegiance to Fatah).
Among Falk’s pronouncements is that Hamas should not be branded a terrorist organization (what a man who thinks that an unrenounced past history of targeting infants doesn’t qualify a group as terrorist is doing working for the UN Human Rights Commission is a question best left to them) and that Hamas’ legitimacy is recognized by other Palestinian groups. He also views the suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians as the “right of resistance.” By contrast, he compares the Israelis, (who have taken precaution after precaution not to target civilians, and seek to minimize casualties even when Hamas terrorists barricade themselves in civilian areas – Israel is, again, also the only side ever to have given real concessions) to Nazis.
Yes, Richard Falk may be Jewish, but he’s probably one of the only Jews aside from Meir Lansky to be denied entry into Israel. The reason he was turned back at Ben Gurion airport was due to the fact that even before he started his investigation, he was making the above listed pronouncements and blaming Israel once again for the current crisis. In the words of the Israeli foreign ministry, Falk’s mission was “profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israeli initiative.”
Falk has no first hand knowledge of the situation. In short, not only is a he a Hamas mouthpiece (who, again, makes statements that would even be countered by Abbas), he’s also a fraud. There’s no way he could have known what was happening on the ground. His ridiculous assertions and public statements were made before he arrived, and because of them, he was turned back. Israel has let in scores of international observers, just not elderly professors emeriti who call them Nazis and glorify Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters.” Even then, they’d have let him in if not for his statements of “fact” before he arrived.
Is that all? Unfortunately not. Falk is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who is sad that the issue did not receive prominence during the presidential election. According to Falk, not only did the US government quite possibly arrange 9/11, Barack Obama should have made it a campaign issue as well!
In other words, McQuaig and may as well have used a guy who claims to get his information from a large bunny named Harvey who sits at his left side as their source.
As Falk, with no first hand knowledge of the situation, must have been getting his “information” from Hamas (unless he made it up himself – I’m discounting Harvey from the picture), McQuaig was more than likely quoting Hamas when quoting Falk. And of course, there was no need for her to run a basic fact. Not when you’re using George Orwell’s 1984 as a journalists’ training manual.
McQuaig ends off her column by sanctimoniously opining that Israel does have a right to defend itself. The only problem for McQuaig, seemingly, is that when it does, it should be mindful of the accusations of an indirectly Ortega appointed Hamas sympathizer. If he suspects impropriety then all defensive measures must stop.
The spin and, honestly, the anti-Semitism that columnists like McQuaig engage in is covert. As in the most recent example: Find one lone radical professor who makes a false claim which decries incredulity and report it as the “statement of a Jewish-American professor,” instead of that of a Marxist and terrorist sympathizer whose views represent the same lunatic fringe that has turned Mideast Studies programs in universities such as Columbia into hotbeds of anti-Semitism.
It’s one thing to be a crazy leftist who fumbles with the truth on taxes and spending policy and who views math as her own personal lump of molding clay, ready to twist and contort at her leisure. It’s another thing entirely to print falsehoods in defense of avowed terror organizations that recruit young children to their causes and target infants for slaughter, while smearing those who were attacked and blaming them for it. Yet all those traits fit neatly into the package that is Linda McQuaig.
Like many who are familiar with Linda McQuaig, I’ve found the great liberties that she takes with the truth to be startling. McQuaig writes exclusively about leftist causes. That itself would be fine. But in her defense of logically indefensible positions, she has at times reinvented the rules of math and just about whatever else she can grasp at. Her end goal is for insane propositions to be taken as fact by readers who don’t care to follow her convoluted reasoning and simply accept her conclusions.
A prime example of this is her past assertion that Canada has, in essence, a flat tax. Despite all studies showing that Canadians pay an average of 50% of their revenues in some form of government taxation (income, sales, capital gains, etc.) and despite the even clearer fact that lower income earners pay less and those who earn more pay more, McQuaig single handedly reinvented the laws of arithmetic to argue that all Canadians really pay between 30-35% in taxes. If Canada does indeed have a flat rate, she argued (the point of her reinventing math in the first place), then any tax cuts would amount to the poor paying the greatest percentage. Of course, both a cursory glance and a substantive look at actual tax rates shows otherwise and even the EU has largely adopted tax cuts as a way to stimulate jobs and investment. But why write the truth when absolute rubbish is as good a substitute?
Similarly, in various columns, McQuaig has blamed former Ontario Premier Mike Harris for that province’s young offenders, written that Harper will cut social spending so drastically that, from the way she describes it, he’ll send Canada back to the middle ages (I guess the Prime Minister's Office never got the note) and otherwise fills her columns with tales of vast and abundant conspiracies. Again, if it were a conservative making such claims of the opposite side, the outcry from the left would be audible 100 miles away. Either that or they’d be wholly ignored. No paper would print their unsubstantiated ramblings.
McQuaig also has another trait. Like so many of the radical left, her sympathies lie with terrorists who she sides with, always, against Israel. There are simply no radical leftist fads or causes celebres that escape her narrow minded world view. Unlike many on her side, she tries to support these fancifully misbegotten notions with logic. As with math, when the logic or facts don’t fit, she invents them or quotes others who do it for her.
No where is there a better example of this than in her latest column, one in which she decries Canada’s support for Israel. (It should be of note that Canada’s support for Taiwan, India or any other allies fighting a dictatorial enemy may also not meet with McQuaig’s approval. But I assume she’ll have to confer with her “professors” before she issues a pronouncement on same one way or another.) Again, she does not find it sufficient to merely state her opinion and move on. In this case too, she must manipulate reality in a way that combines the talents of a communist propaganda minister with those of an acrobatic contortionist.
McQuaig does not once make mention of the 80 rockets that Hamas lobbed into populated areas of Israel. The fact that Israel and Hamas signed a six month truce, which Hamas refused to resign is also ignored. In fact, McQuaig quotes Richard Falk, a man she refers to as a “Jewish-American professor,” as saying that the situation was Israel’s fault for having entered into Gaza a month ago on a military incursion.
The truth is that intermittent attacks coming from Gaza were commonplace even after the ceasefire was signed. Hamas continually broke the terms and conditions throughout its six month duration. Last month, the Israeli Army found that Hamas supporters were digging a tunnel toward Israel that presented a clear security risk. Israel destroyed the tunnel and left.
As her column progresses, her other claims continue to decry incredulity. She blames Israel for sectioning off Gaza. The problem is that Gaza also has an equally long border with Egypt, so Israel could not unilaterally section it off. McQuaig knows this, so she again relies on Falk as the source of her seemingly (as well as actually) incredulous claim. To be sure, Israel did block off Gaza after rocket attacks persisted. But if Gaza was at all reasonable, why would both Israel and Egypt see the need to block it off? Israel still allowed food and vital supplies in, McQuaig’s reference to food shortages (for which she again quotes Falk, as only he and Hamas have made this claim) is unsubstantiated and probably countered by the mere fact that all Hamas fighters have clearly had ample strength and resources to continue fighting over the past few days.
What’s also missing from the picture is that Israel gave the Palestinian Authority in Gaza its autonomy in the hopes that a lasting peace could be cemented. Had they not done so, the Israelis would still be there and there’d be no argument over border crossings. So the argument that Israel has some kind of desire to reenter Gaza is scurrilous. They could have kept it in the first place.
But who is this Richard Falk who McQuaig so relies on, and whose singular claims are taken by McQuaig as fact? Well, a simple google search immediately exposes who Falk is and shows him to be little more than a Hamas mouthpiece, albeit one with other very interesting ties as well.
Falk is a professor emeritus. He is also a Special Rapporteur for the UN. But as Pajama Media’s Ron Radosh succinctly puts it: “Falk’s appointment was made, not surprisingly, by the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D’escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the Sandinista liberation theologian who was himself appointed by Daniel Ortega. Throughout D’escoto’s entire career, he has been a left-wing ideologue, whose anti-Americanism is legendary.”
Yes, Nicaragua is on the UN Human Rights Commission, as is Saudi Arabia. They do not designate all appointees, but one prominent Ortega ally found Falk to be just the man for a Special Rapporteur position. Perhaps Father D’escoto is a McQuaig fan too. But aside from being a pal to Ortega’s pals, Falk also has some opinions about Hamas that would shock even their Palestinian counterpart Fatah (which has also engaged in terror and has yet to renounce the “Jerusalem Martyrs Brigade” of suicide bombers with allegiance to Fatah).
Among Falk’s pronouncements is that Hamas should not be branded a terrorist organization (what a man who thinks that an unrenounced past history of targeting infants doesn’t qualify a group as terrorist is doing working for the UN Human Rights Commission is a question best left to them) and that Hamas’ legitimacy is recognized by other Palestinian groups. He also views the suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians as the “right of resistance.” By contrast, he compares the Israelis, (who have taken precaution after precaution not to target civilians, and seek to minimize casualties even when Hamas terrorists barricade themselves in civilian areas – Israel is, again, also the only side ever to have given real concessions) to Nazis.
Yes, Richard Falk may be Jewish, but he’s probably one of the only Jews aside from Meir Lansky to be denied entry into Israel. The reason he was turned back at Ben Gurion airport was due to the fact that even before he started his investigation, he was making the above listed pronouncements and blaming Israel once again for the current crisis. In the words of the Israeli foreign ministry, Falk’s mission was “profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israeli initiative.”
Falk has no first hand knowledge of the situation. In short, not only is a he a Hamas mouthpiece (who, again, makes statements that would even be countered by Abbas), he’s also a fraud. There’s no way he could have known what was happening on the ground. His ridiculous assertions and public statements were made before he arrived, and because of them, he was turned back. Israel has let in scores of international observers, just not elderly professors emeriti who call them Nazis and glorify Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters.” Even then, they’d have let him in if not for his statements of “fact” before he arrived.
Is that all? Unfortunately not. Falk is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who is sad that the issue did not receive prominence during the presidential election. According to Falk, not only did the US government quite possibly arrange 9/11, Barack Obama should have made it a campaign issue as well!
In other words, McQuaig and may as well have used a guy who claims to get his information from a large bunny named Harvey who sits at his left side as their source.
As Falk, with no first hand knowledge of the situation, must have been getting his “information” from Hamas (unless he made it up himself – I’m discounting Harvey from the picture), McQuaig was more than likely quoting Hamas when quoting Falk. And of course, there was no need for her to run a basic fact. Not when you’re using George Orwell’s 1984 as a journalists’ training manual.
McQuaig ends off her column by sanctimoniously opining that Israel does have a right to defend itself. The only problem for McQuaig, seemingly, is that when it does, it should be mindful of the accusations of an indirectly Ortega appointed Hamas sympathizer. If he suspects impropriety then all defensive measures must stop.
The spin and, honestly, the anti-Semitism that columnists like McQuaig engage in is covert. As in the most recent example: Find one lone radical professor who makes a false claim which decries incredulity and report it as the “statement of a Jewish-American professor,” instead of that of a Marxist and terrorist sympathizer whose views represent the same lunatic fringe that has turned Mideast Studies programs in universities such as Columbia into hotbeds of anti-Semitism.
It’s one thing to be a crazy leftist who fumbles with the truth on taxes and spending policy and who views math as her own personal lump of molding clay, ready to twist and contort at her leisure. It’s another thing entirely to print falsehoods in defense of avowed terror organizations that recruit young children to their causes and target infants for slaughter, while smearing those who were attacked and blaming them for it. Yet all those traits fit neatly into the package that is Linda McQuaig.
Obama’s Economic Team Does Not Bode Well for the Interests of America
By Yomin Postelnik
Featured on CFP: 12/30/08
On Nov.5, the day after the election of Barack Obama, in an article titled “Obama win met with urgent call for global action,” Reuters reported, “Political leaders urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to help forge a new economic order to lead the world out of its worst financial crisis since the 1930s.”
If you read that line carefully, the intent of Europe’s leaders is clear. Barack Obama should “lead” America to follow their plan, one that will be focused on bringing about the resurgence of European economic dominance. Or as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso put it, "I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the United States of America will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal."
When European powers ask the United States to “join forces” with them, their intent is for America to act in a supportive role, not one in which it takes the lead. To believe otherwise is to suggest that Europe places America’s interests above its own. And though they may suggest such commitment from us, they are not so reckless as to entertain pursuing a similar course themselves.
Yet the fact that Obama was being asked, in essence, to do little more than to heed the EU’s beckoning was lost in the nuance of Reuters’ reporting. To the average reader, the article featured only praise and hope for Obama’s leadership. With statements such as “help forge a new economic order” and “lead the world out of financial crisis,” 90% of readers saw the piece as a plea on the part of world leaders for Obama to lead the way out of economic doom. Indeed, over 90% of Democrats subscribe to this “Super-O” theory, so why shouldn’t the rest of the world?
In actuality, the insinuations of the Reuters piece were an obscene case of misplaced journalistic optimism, a rare trait that only makes an appearance on the occasion of a Democrat being elected to the White House. The fact that its lines were penned mere hours after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s deployment of Iskander missiles to the Polish border (in protest of the US Missile Defense Shield) and the leaking of “Prime Minister” Putin’s plan for consolidation of power (showing at least how seriously Russia takes the new President-elect) should give us pause at the incredulity of the article’s insinuations.
The EU is made up of world leaders who have led the way in global economic affairs since well before Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate. They are not looking for him to lead them in a new direction. Their statements, when read properly, are clear. They see Obama as easy pickings in their effort to get America to follow the path that they prefer.
The only question that Americans should be asking is whether the hopes of Europe’s leaders are founded. Unfortunately for America, everything about the transitioning Administration indicates that they are.
To date, President-elect Obama has made a series of economic appointments. While appointees are diverse in age, background and geography, most share a common thread: extensive foreign policy experience.
This is especially true of the most important member of Obama’s economic team, Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner. Geithner spent many of his formative years in Zimbabwe, India (which is a staunch ally and would be a plus in any foreign policy role, but not in a position charged exclusively with protecting American interests), and Thailand, where he graduated from high school. His bachelors degree was in governmental and Asian studies and his masters was similarly in international economics and East Asian studies. Geither is a Council of Foreign Relations member, as well as a member of the Group of Thirty. He has also served on the International Monetary Fund. In short, while Geithner has amassed many impressive credentials, much of his training, history and outlook are internationalist in nature.
The same is true of Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson. In fact, one would be hard pressed to indicate why a former UN Ambassador would be a natural fit for Secretary of Commerce in any case. This is especially true of Richardson, who played a prominent role in the strengthening of UNEP, the “United Nations Environment Programme.” Again, a good choice for the EPA, not for US Commerce.
Which brings us to Paul Volcker. Volcker is universally touted for his experience and for having engineered disinflation. Yet Volcker also had a lead role in one of this nation’s most serious economic blunders. In the 1970s, Volcker took a lead role in suspending gold convertibility, resulting in the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, a system by which our dollar was (more or less) pegged to the value of gold, providing it with tangible, long term value. The fact that our dollar has little intrinsic value is because of the decisions of Paul Volcker, Richard Nixon and others in the 1970s.
At the time, Ronald Reagan aptly warned the public that any nation that has gone off the gold standard has met with economic collapse. Volcker does not recognize his actions in suspending gold convertibility to be a mistake, which is quite telling and should be a source of concern for those who are now so eager for his advice.
Furthermore, Volcker is even more internationalist than is Geithner. From 2000 to 2004 Volcker served as Director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America, an organization that seeks to boost the public image of the United Nations among Americans. He is also a member of the Group of Thirty and a founding member of the Trilateral Commission. His knowledge of and experience in dealing with small business, the bedrock of America’s job market, is unfortunately far less extensive.
Lawrence Summers, President-elect Obama’s pick for National Economic Council Director has a more conventional economic background, though he too has an internationalist worldview. His two years as Chief Economist of the World Bank undoubtedly contributed to his outlook, but perhaps only minorly so.
Still, what were Summers’ crowning economic accomplishments during his term as Treasury Secretary: His advocacy to deregulate derivatives and his support of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act ordinance that prohibited banks from owning other financial institutions. Simply put, as Treasury Secretary, Summers vociferously supported and advocated for the conditions that helped lead to the mortgage meltdown and paved the way for large banks to take over brokerage houses. This is not the man we need to head up the National Economic Council at this time.
One might ask; isn’t it enough that these nominees all possess sharp minds? Won’t such an experienced group of people know what to do? The answer, as shown throughout our history as a nation, is threefold: No, no, and no.
As no American administration has ever had an economic team consisting of members with as many foreign policy credentials, the most reliable barometer of whether a foreign policy outlook has led to national success (including economic success) are the performances of our past presidents. They best serve to indicate how previous international experience affects one’s outlook and shapes the policies of an administration.
Few recent presidents have had international experience prior to taking office. Only George H. W. Bush (UN Ambassador and Liaison to China) and Richard M. Nixon had previous backgrounds in foreign policy (unlike Nixon, Johnson’s vice-presidency was relatively free of international duties and Eisenhower’s foreign roles were military in nature and centered on defending the US). Prior to them, only James Buchanan and Martin Van Buren had notable foreign experience.
As you can see, those who left their most indelible impressions on America, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, the Roosevelts, Lincoln, Truman, Cleveland and Jackson, all did so from uniquely American backgrounds and perspectives. Some would add Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant to this list, both presidents who sought to heal a nation.
The reason why presidents without foreign policy backgrounds make for better leaders is the same as the reason for why governors generally make better presidents than senators. They have first hand knowledge of the problems facing Americans and approach most issues from a standpoint of what is best for the American people. As a result, they care little to make concessions with other countries if they are against our national interests. Sure, they’ll act as benefactors to other countries and cooperate with them, but they will not go to extreme lengths just for the sake of getting along, when the consequences of doing so appear to outweigh the benefits. (Of note, George H. W. Bush stands out among presidents who had previous foreign policy experience, but his accomplishments came from his experience as a congressman, as CIA Director, RNC Chair and as Vice President. Still, his previous diplomatic background hampered his ability to present a bold response to certain problems and often made him conciliatory even when decisive leadership was needed. By contrast, abject failures such as Jimmy Carter were profoundly influenced by internationalist thought, even if they had little actual foreign policy experience.)
Presidents before 1824 who had international experience, approached their foreign roles from an entirely different standpoint than did those who succeeded them. When John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams went to represent the United States in the capitals of Western Europe, their mission was of a singular nature, to raise support for the newly founded America. Still, it is quite possible that Washington, Madison and Jackson (who may be added as a contemporary of the latter part of this period as well) had the most lasting affect on our nation from among its first two generations of leadership. Jefferson himself considered his writing of the Declaration of Independence, written well before he entered into the sphere of diplomacy, as his crowning achievement. And indeed, it is his early work that forms the greatest part of his legacy to the nation.
Furthermore, even the foreign experiences of these foremost presidents may have hampered their leadership in some respects. After all, Jefferson’s affinity toward France and Adam’s previous refusal to declare war on that nation, at a time that such a war seemed to be in the national interest, were primary causes that led to the War of 1812. Both had been touched by their experiences there. Hamilton had no such affinity for France and therefore advocated a very different course, one that would have averted a far greater war with England.
If we are to learn anything from history, it is that decisions regarding what is best for a nation are best made by those whose impressions, points of view and policies are formed by experiences that come from within that nation itself, by those who relate to and appreciate the daily lives of the majority of its citizens. History shows us that, as a general rule, significant foreign experience with the very best of intentions still serves to cloud one’s judgment.
The primary focus of an economic team must be to protect the interests of the nation above all else. Heavy foreign policy credentials among domestic advisors are a bad mix. Our national economic leaders must be in tune with the real needs of the American people. The American economic picture, not the global worldview, must be foremost in their minds and in their thought processes. This is not the case among the current nominees and we can only hope that others will fight for policies that truly benefit the American people. We as a nation need strong voices, be they lone members of Congress or other public leaders, who will stand up and defend the economic interests of the United States of America. And, most importantly, the time to do so is now.
Featured on CFP: 12/30/08
On Nov.5, the day after the election of Barack Obama, in an article titled “Obama win met with urgent call for global action,” Reuters reported, “Political leaders urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to help forge a new economic order to lead the world out of its worst financial crisis since the 1930s.”
If you read that line carefully, the intent of Europe’s leaders is clear. Barack Obama should “lead” America to follow their plan, one that will be focused on bringing about the resurgence of European economic dominance. Or as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso put it, "I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the United States of America will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal."
When European powers ask the United States to “join forces” with them, their intent is for America to act in a supportive role, not one in which it takes the lead. To believe otherwise is to suggest that Europe places America’s interests above its own. And though they may suggest such commitment from us, they are not so reckless as to entertain pursuing a similar course themselves.
Yet the fact that Obama was being asked, in essence, to do little more than to heed the EU’s beckoning was lost in the nuance of Reuters’ reporting. To the average reader, the article featured only praise and hope for Obama’s leadership. With statements such as “help forge a new economic order” and “lead the world out of financial crisis,” 90% of readers saw the piece as a plea on the part of world leaders for Obama to lead the way out of economic doom. Indeed, over 90% of Democrats subscribe to this “Super-O” theory, so why shouldn’t the rest of the world?
In actuality, the insinuations of the Reuters piece were an obscene case of misplaced journalistic optimism, a rare trait that only makes an appearance on the occasion of a Democrat being elected to the White House. The fact that its lines were penned mere hours after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s deployment of Iskander missiles to the Polish border (in protest of the US Missile Defense Shield) and the leaking of “Prime Minister” Putin’s plan for consolidation of power (showing at least how seriously Russia takes the new President-elect) should give us pause at the incredulity of the article’s insinuations.
The EU is made up of world leaders who have led the way in global economic affairs since well before Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate. They are not looking for him to lead them in a new direction. Their statements, when read properly, are clear. They see Obama as easy pickings in their effort to get America to follow the path that they prefer.
The only question that Americans should be asking is whether the hopes of Europe’s leaders are founded. Unfortunately for America, everything about the transitioning Administration indicates that they are.
To date, President-elect Obama has made a series of economic appointments. While appointees are diverse in age, background and geography, most share a common thread: extensive foreign policy experience.
This is especially true of the most important member of Obama’s economic team, Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner. Geithner spent many of his formative years in Zimbabwe, India (which is a staunch ally and would be a plus in any foreign policy role, but not in a position charged exclusively with protecting American interests), and Thailand, where he graduated from high school. His bachelors degree was in governmental and Asian studies and his masters was similarly in international economics and East Asian studies. Geither is a Council of Foreign Relations member, as well as a member of the Group of Thirty. He has also served on the International Monetary Fund. In short, while Geithner has amassed many impressive credentials, much of his training, history and outlook are internationalist in nature.
The same is true of Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson. In fact, one would be hard pressed to indicate why a former UN Ambassador would be a natural fit for Secretary of Commerce in any case. This is especially true of Richardson, who played a prominent role in the strengthening of UNEP, the “United Nations Environment Programme.” Again, a good choice for the EPA, not for US Commerce.
Which brings us to Paul Volcker. Volcker is universally touted for his experience and for having engineered disinflation. Yet Volcker also had a lead role in one of this nation’s most serious economic blunders. In the 1970s, Volcker took a lead role in suspending gold convertibility, resulting in the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, a system by which our dollar was (more or less) pegged to the value of gold, providing it with tangible, long term value. The fact that our dollar has little intrinsic value is because of the decisions of Paul Volcker, Richard Nixon and others in the 1970s.
At the time, Ronald Reagan aptly warned the public that any nation that has gone off the gold standard has met with economic collapse. Volcker does not recognize his actions in suspending gold convertibility to be a mistake, which is quite telling and should be a source of concern for those who are now so eager for his advice.
Furthermore, Volcker is even more internationalist than is Geithner. From 2000 to 2004 Volcker served as Director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America, an organization that seeks to boost the public image of the United Nations among Americans. He is also a member of the Group of Thirty and a founding member of the Trilateral Commission. His knowledge of and experience in dealing with small business, the bedrock of America’s job market, is unfortunately far less extensive.
Lawrence Summers, President-elect Obama’s pick for National Economic Council Director has a more conventional economic background, though he too has an internationalist worldview. His two years as Chief Economist of the World Bank undoubtedly contributed to his outlook, but perhaps only minorly so.
Still, what were Summers’ crowning economic accomplishments during his term as Treasury Secretary: His advocacy to deregulate derivatives and his support of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act ordinance that prohibited banks from owning other financial institutions. Simply put, as Treasury Secretary, Summers vociferously supported and advocated for the conditions that helped lead to the mortgage meltdown and paved the way for large banks to take over brokerage houses. This is not the man we need to head up the National Economic Council at this time.
One might ask; isn’t it enough that these nominees all possess sharp minds? Won’t such an experienced group of people know what to do? The answer, as shown throughout our history as a nation, is threefold: No, no, and no.
As no American administration has ever had an economic team consisting of members with as many foreign policy credentials, the most reliable barometer of whether a foreign policy outlook has led to national success (including economic success) are the performances of our past presidents. They best serve to indicate how previous international experience affects one’s outlook and shapes the policies of an administration.
Few recent presidents have had international experience prior to taking office. Only George H. W. Bush (UN Ambassador and Liaison to China) and Richard M. Nixon had previous backgrounds in foreign policy (unlike Nixon, Johnson’s vice-presidency was relatively free of international duties and Eisenhower’s foreign roles were military in nature and centered on defending the US). Prior to them, only James Buchanan and Martin Van Buren had notable foreign experience.
As you can see, those who left their most indelible impressions on America, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, the Roosevelts, Lincoln, Truman, Cleveland and Jackson, all did so from uniquely American backgrounds and perspectives. Some would add Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant to this list, both presidents who sought to heal a nation.
The reason why presidents without foreign policy backgrounds make for better leaders is the same as the reason for why governors generally make better presidents than senators. They have first hand knowledge of the problems facing Americans and approach most issues from a standpoint of what is best for the American people. As a result, they care little to make concessions with other countries if they are against our national interests. Sure, they’ll act as benefactors to other countries and cooperate with them, but they will not go to extreme lengths just for the sake of getting along, when the consequences of doing so appear to outweigh the benefits. (Of note, George H. W. Bush stands out among presidents who had previous foreign policy experience, but his accomplishments came from his experience as a congressman, as CIA Director, RNC Chair and as Vice President. Still, his previous diplomatic background hampered his ability to present a bold response to certain problems and often made him conciliatory even when decisive leadership was needed. By contrast, abject failures such as Jimmy Carter were profoundly influenced by internationalist thought, even if they had little actual foreign policy experience.)
Presidents before 1824 who had international experience, approached their foreign roles from an entirely different standpoint than did those who succeeded them. When John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams went to represent the United States in the capitals of Western Europe, their mission was of a singular nature, to raise support for the newly founded America. Still, it is quite possible that Washington, Madison and Jackson (who may be added as a contemporary of the latter part of this period as well) had the most lasting affect on our nation from among its first two generations of leadership. Jefferson himself considered his writing of the Declaration of Independence, written well before he entered into the sphere of diplomacy, as his crowning achievement. And indeed, it is his early work that forms the greatest part of his legacy to the nation.
Furthermore, even the foreign experiences of these foremost presidents may have hampered their leadership in some respects. After all, Jefferson’s affinity toward France and Adam’s previous refusal to declare war on that nation, at a time that such a war seemed to be in the national interest, were primary causes that led to the War of 1812. Both had been touched by their experiences there. Hamilton had no such affinity for France and therefore advocated a very different course, one that would have averted a far greater war with England.
If we are to learn anything from history, it is that decisions regarding what is best for a nation are best made by those whose impressions, points of view and policies are formed by experiences that come from within that nation itself, by those who relate to and appreciate the daily lives of the majority of its citizens. History shows us that, as a general rule, significant foreign experience with the very best of intentions still serves to cloud one’s judgment.
The primary focus of an economic team must be to protect the interests of the nation above all else. Heavy foreign policy credentials among domestic advisors are a bad mix. Our national economic leaders must be in tune with the real needs of the American people. The American economic picture, not the global worldview, must be foremost in their minds and in their thought processes. This is not the case among the current nominees and we can only hope that others will fight for policies that truly benefit the American people. We as a nation need strong voices, be they lone members of Congress or other public leaders, who will stand up and defend the economic interests of the United States of America. And, most importantly, the time to do so is now.
Friday, December 26, 2008
American Thinker: Easy Pickings Arrive at the International Table
Easy Pickings Arrive at the International Table
By Yomin Postelnik
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/easy_pickings_arrive_at_the_in.html
By Yomin Postelnik
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/easy_pickings_arrive_at_the_in.html
Sunday, December 21, 2008
A War Hero Rises to the Call Again – America Needs Allen West
The National Republican Congressional Campaign played a sorry game of defense in the 2008 elections. The net result in Florida was the lost of one House seat (Republicans lost two and gained one). Nationally, our net losses totaled 21.
If one side is playing only (or primarily) defense and the other side has their offensive strategy down pat, the offensive team will almost always win spectacularly. That’s true in just about any field; business, national defense, exercise, politics, chess, you name it.
The inefficiency of the GOP to communicate its ideas to the public is now as legendary as it is shameful. In previous articles I’ve painstakingly pointed out how GOP policies have largely been correct, very often essentially so. As such, they are also quite easy to defend. Yet for some reason, sanity seems to have lost its voice with regard to the public perception of all major issues. For prime examples of how needed GOP policies are left to ridicule when the reasons for them should be comprehensible to a five year old, feel free to go over “What Republicans Must Do in 2008,” “Truth in Reporting – If Only We’d Insist On It” and “An Effective Conservative Response: Bush Haters Are Fools, Don’t Emulate Them .”
Enter a candidate who has yet to hold back a punch, a candidate who has routinely gone toe to toe with liberals on policy issues and has won the debate every time, winning the admiration of many of the most liberal residents of Broward County, Fla in the process. Conservatives and libertarian-minded people who attended his rallies or speeches saw in him the makings of the next Ronald Reagan. And, of course, what was the NRCC’s response to such a candidate? They ignored him. Now that he won 45% of the vote without one penny of their support or one minute of their help, past history dictates that the NRCC will finally give its attention to his 2010 race. If they don’t, then we as a party will have institutionalized idiocy, inefficiency and callousness from almost the top down.
Thankfully, Lt. Col. Allen West doesn’t care what these people do on a national level (though we who care about electing him and other like minded conservatives should). And because he doesn’t define his strategy by their support, he was able to mount a serious challenge to a Democratic incumbent in what was otherwise a Democrat blowout year. So watch out Congressman Ron Klein, 2010 is not your year and Allen West, a man who has rightly earned the title of General of Conservatism, is honing in on the conquest.
I’ve written a number of articles on Allen West since he first announced his long shot candidacy for Congress in 2007. He was unique among candidates in his ability to communicate conservative values and philosophy to mass groups. I attributed this ability to his sincerity and truthful dedication that is backed up by his record as a military hero with 20 years of service. Some of his ability to communicate also stems from his decision to dedicate his first year out of the military to teaching high school, foregoing far more lucrative lines of work to make a difference in his community. In 2007 he was a long shot. But what a long shot worth covering.
Well, now the rest is history. Allen West is a long shot no more. On election night, the only surprise on the Republican side (and the local media actually used the word “surprise” to describe the Klein-West results) was that a first time GOP candidate who had been in the race for less than a year had earned 45% of the vote. This was in spite of receiving no help from the national party and not regarding the fact that so many other Democratic incumbents had just received far more votes than they’d ever received before (in the district neighboring West’s, the Democratic incumbent actually received between four and five times his average number of votes) due to huge turnouts for Obamania (a phenomenon that West appropriately terms “the election of a prom king”). And now, after his spectacular performance, West is clearly the odds on favorite to win in 2010.
Our party needs national spokespeople who can defend the simple and rational truths of conservatism. It is far too long that 90% of those who are given the task of representing our side in media interviews are unable to articulate even the most basic reasons for our viewpoints. This should never have been the case and for whatever reason it is, our monumental PR calamity needs to stop now.
We can turn things around. Michael Steele’s convention speech this summer ended in a rallying cry. Hopefully he will be the next RNC Chair. Mike Huckabee is reaching out to voters every week, in an effective way that will enlarge our base and further our goals and Carly Fiorina is fast becoming a national voice of reason on economic concerns.
But what this party needs more than anything are people who the public can relate to, candidates who provide common sense and a clear message at a time that many of the leading voices in our nation seem to have lost all reason. For this, the Republican Party has no better voice than a military hero, a consistent voice on national security and a high school teacher who inspired students to national service and toward their own self betterment. In short, what this party, indeed what this nation needs is Allen West.
I would urge fellow conservatives to get involved in this most crucial campaign by going to www.allenwestforcongress.com or his Facebook page here.
If one side is playing only (or primarily) defense and the other side has their offensive strategy down pat, the offensive team will almost always win spectacularly. That’s true in just about any field; business, national defense, exercise, politics, chess, you name it.
The inefficiency of the GOP to communicate its ideas to the public is now as legendary as it is shameful. In previous articles I’ve painstakingly pointed out how GOP policies have largely been correct, very often essentially so. As such, they are also quite easy to defend. Yet for some reason, sanity seems to have lost its voice with regard to the public perception of all major issues. For prime examples of how needed GOP policies are left to ridicule when the reasons for them should be comprehensible to a five year old, feel free to go over “What Republicans Must Do in 2008,” “Truth in Reporting – If Only We’d Insist On It” and “An Effective Conservative Response: Bush Haters Are Fools, Don’t Emulate Them .”
Enter a candidate who has yet to hold back a punch, a candidate who has routinely gone toe to toe with liberals on policy issues and has won the debate every time, winning the admiration of many of the most liberal residents of Broward County, Fla in the process. Conservatives and libertarian-minded people who attended his rallies or speeches saw in him the makings of the next Ronald Reagan. And, of course, what was the NRCC’s response to such a candidate? They ignored him. Now that he won 45% of the vote without one penny of their support or one minute of their help, past history dictates that the NRCC will finally give its attention to his 2010 race. If they don’t, then we as a party will have institutionalized idiocy, inefficiency and callousness from almost the top down.
Thankfully, Lt. Col. Allen West doesn’t care what these people do on a national level (though we who care about electing him and other like minded conservatives should). And because he doesn’t define his strategy by their support, he was able to mount a serious challenge to a Democratic incumbent in what was otherwise a Democrat blowout year. So watch out Congressman Ron Klein, 2010 is not your year and Allen West, a man who has rightly earned the title of General of Conservatism, is honing in on the conquest.
I’ve written a number of articles on Allen West since he first announced his long shot candidacy for Congress in 2007. He was unique among candidates in his ability to communicate conservative values and philosophy to mass groups. I attributed this ability to his sincerity and truthful dedication that is backed up by his record as a military hero with 20 years of service. Some of his ability to communicate also stems from his decision to dedicate his first year out of the military to teaching high school, foregoing far more lucrative lines of work to make a difference in his community. In 2007 he was a long shot. But what a long shot worth covering.
Well, now the rest is history. Allen West is a long shot no more. On election night, the only surprise on the Republican side (and the local media actually used the word “surprise” to describe the Klein-West results) was that a first time GOP candidate who had been in the race for less than a year had earned 45% of the vote. This was in spite of receiving no help from the national party and not regarding the fact that so many other Democratic incumbents had just received far more votes than they’d ever received before (in the district neighboring West’s, the Democratic incumbent actually received between four and five times his average number of votes) due to huge turnouts for Obamania (a phenomenon that West appropriately terms “the election of a prom king”). And now, after his spectacular performance, West is clearly the odds on favorite to win in 2010.
Our party needs national spokespeople who can defend the simple and rational truths of conservatism. It is far too long that 90% of those who are given the task of representing our side in media interviews are unable to articulate even the most basic reasons for our viewpoints. This should never have been the case and for whatever reason it is, our monumental PR calamity needs to stop now.
We can turn things around. Michael Steele’s convention speech this summer ended in a rallying cry. Hopefully he will be the next RNC Chair. Mike Huckabee is reaching out to voters every week, in an effective way that will enlarge our base and further our goals and Carly Fiorina is fast becoming a national voice of reason on economic concerns.
But what this party needs more than anything are people who the public can relate to, candidates who provide common sense and a clear message at a time that many of the leading voices in our nation seem to have lost all reason. For this, the Republican Party has no better voice than a military hero, a consistent voice on national security and a high school teacher who inspired students to national service and toward their own self betterment. In short, what this party, indeed what this nation needs is Allen West.
I would urge fellow conservatives to get involved in this most crucial campaign by going to www.allenwestforcongress.com or his Facebook page here.
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