Saturday, December 31. 2005
The Washington Post's Scott Wilson reports:
Syria's former vice president said in a television interview Friday that President Bashar Assad threatened former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in the months before Hariri's assassination and that the sophisticated operation to kill him could not have been carried out on the authority of only one agency.
"Hariri was subjected to many threats from Syria," Abdul Halim Khaddam, who resigned the vice presidency in June after two decades as a confidant of the Assad family, told al-Arabiya television in an interview from Paris. "Dangerous things were said."
Khaddam stopped short of accusing Assad of personal involvement in the decision to kill Hariri on Feb. 14 in Beirut. But he said that "in principle, no government body in Syria, be it a security apparatus or otherwise, can single-handedly make this decision."
...
Khaddam's comments suggesting the participation of senior Syrian officials in Hariri's slaying were among the most pointed yet from a figure of his former stature within Syria's ruling Baath Party. Assad has denied Syrian involvement, saying Hariri's death harmed Syrian interests.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
If Congress really wants to get a grip on federal spending, members have no choice but to heed the motto of bank robber Willie Sutton and go where the money is.
According to a recent federal report, three entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- together cost almost $1 trillion in 2004, or nearly half of all federal spending in that budget year. With the huge baby-boom generation on the verge of retiring, and health-care costs climbing, the tab for the three programs will skyrocket in coming years -- from 8 percent of the nation's economy today to 28 percent by 2050.
If Congress doesn't make changes that would at least limit these mushrooming costs, huge tax increases, deep spending cuts or more borrowing -- or some combination -- will be unavoidable. All three options would have a negative impact on the economy and Americans' living standards.
Congress has had no problem exacerbating the budget crunch by passing unaffordable tax cuts. But members have shown no stomach for the hard choices that are essential to put the brakes on entitlement spending. This year, most Democrats used opposition to President George W. Bush's call for private accounts in Social Security as an excuse not to talk about other changes needed to head off a looming shortfall in the program. This month, the Senate and House struggled to pass a five-year, $40 billion package of spending cuts that included only modest reductions in Medicaid and Medicare.
December 31 ...
In 1687 the first Huguenots set sail from France for the Cape of Good Hope, where they would later create the South African wine industry with the vines they took with them on the voyage. In 1695 a window tax was imposed in Britain, which, surprisingly enough, resulted in many windows being bricked up. In 1775 the British repulsed an attack by Continental Army generals Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold at Quebec; Montgomery was killed in the battle. In 1862 President Abrham Lincoln signed an act admitting West Virginia to the Union. In 1879 Thomas Edison gave his first public demonstration of incandescent lighting to an audience in Menlo Park, NJ. In 1891 New York's new Immigration Depot was opened at Ellis Island. In 1929 Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played "Auld Lang Syne" as a New Year's Eve song for the first time. In 1946 President Harry Truman officially proclaimed the end of hostilities in World War II. In 1955 General Motors became the first US corporation to earn more than one billion dollars in a single year. In 1960 the farthing coin, which had been in use in Great Britain since the 13th century, ceased to be legal tender. In 1961 the Marshall Plan expired after distributing more than $12 billion in foreign aid. In 1979 at year end oil prices were 88% higher than at the start of 1979. In 1999 Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was designated acting president.
Friday, December 30. 2005
While there is justifiable criticism of Ted Kennedy and the UMass Dartmouth student who lied about harassment by Homeland Security, we think the real opprobrium should be for the reporter who penned the orignal story, which we tore apart.
The writer, his editor, and the publisher of The New Bedford Standard-Times should issue public apologies for the shoddiest journalism we've seen in a year of shoddy journalism.
We ask that every time a Democratic Congressman or liberal interest group discusses budget matters. In his latest missive, Rep. Michael Capuano mailed to constituents this information:
After weeks of struggling to find the votes, Republican leaders pushed a $50 package of budget cuts through the House shortly before Thanksgiving. This budget reconciliation package cut Medicaid by $11.4 billion. One program targeted for a reduction was preventive medical care for poor children. Student loans suffered the largest reduction in the program's history, $14.3 billion. Almost $5 billion was cut from child suppot enforcement programs, limiting states' ability to collect court-ordered payments. All these reductions will offset the tax cuts that the President and the Republican-led Congress still insist on pushing and will do nothing to trim the deficit. Meanwhile, liberal interest group American Progress says:
One of the most disturbing things about the House's effort to cut the Medicaid program is not even the size of the $12 billion spending cut. More problematic is the plain fact that these proposals will cut health care spending for low-income Americans to finance tax cuts for wealthy Americans. Strong rhetoric, as one would expect from advocates. But when does rhetoric become dishonesty? One can make the case that advocates don't have an obligation to inform their constituents that "cuts" are not from last year's budget, but are "cuts" from the highest proposals for next year. But when it is said that "the plain fact" is that "cuts finance tax cuts for the wealthy," it's patently untrue. Federal revenue is going up, all of the departments in question will spend more money next year than last year, and spending decisions are in no way tied to tax rates, because tax rates don't have a bearing on revenue generation. The concept of "financing" reduced revenue that is actually going up is illusory.
So is it rhetoric, or is it a lie?
From AP:
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.
The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.
Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation.
Today's theme seems to be enterprising youngsters, except this one gets mostly criticism rather than praise. A Florida high school student who wants to be a journalist, Farris Hassan, decides to go to Iraq himself:
Using money his parents had given him at one point, he bought a $900 plane ticket and took off from school a week before Christmas vacation started, skipping classes and leaving the country on Dec. 11.
His goal: Baghdad. Those privy to his plans: two high school buddies. The timeline of his adventure in Iraq is here.
He learned about "immersion journalism" and decided he wanted to experience it rather than just be a spectator. Contrast this young man with Newsweek's Joe Cochrane, a guy who gets paid to tell us about Iraq. From a July piece we ran:
Newsweek reporter Joe Cochrane admits his own ignorance about things happening in Iraq, then lectures us about ours:
Is it really that bad in Iraq? It’s hard to say because the international media cannot adequately cover the war and Iraq’s reconstruction because it’s simply too dangerous. I would love to write about new schools being built and local village leaders learning about democracy, but I can’t go out to see such things. Maybe that’s why American friends who’ve never even been to Iraq—or read a book about the country for that matter—tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say things are so bad. Unfortunately though, the pioneering spirit in America is waning. Years ago, teenagers would lie about their age to get into the military during wartime. Today, a trip to Iraq by an ambitious young man is described thusly:
But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation...
It begins with a high school class on "immersion journalism" and one overly eager — or naively idealistic — student who's lucky to be alive after going way beyond what any teacher would ask...
And as soon as the lanky, 6-foot teenager opened his mouth — he speaks no Arabic — his true nationality would have betrayed him...
Hassan's dangerous adventure winds down with the 101st Airborne delivering the Fort Lauderdale teen to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad...
Traveling on his own in a land where insurgents and jihadists have kidnapped more than 400 foreigners, killing at least 39 of them, Hassan walked straight into a death zone...
"This place is incredibly dangerous to individual private American citizens, especially minors, and all of us, especially the military, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure this youth's safety, even if he doesn't acknowledge it or even understand it," a U.S. official who wasn't authorized to speak to the media said on condition of anonymity...
His plan was to take a taxi across the border and ultimately to Baghdad — an unconventional, expensive and utterly dangerous route...
He now understands how dangerous his trip was, that he was only a whisker away from death. AP Writer Jason Straziuso says at one point that much of Hassan's story of his time in Iraq can't be corroborated, though evidently Straziuso is quite sure that Hassan was "a whisker away from death." Hassan wrote before his trip:
There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction. Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice's call for help. Unfortunately altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will. No wonder AP is so horrified.
Update: Ace agrees. So does Michelle Malkin.
Another enterprising kid makes the news. From Reuters:
If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this.
Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.
Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.
He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking out how he would pay for university.
The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo. A 10 by 10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $100.
He sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $1,000, he issued a press release.
That was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.
So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels. Tew's home page now looks like an online Times Square, festooned with a multi-colored confetti of ads.
December 30 ...
In 1853 the US bought about 45,000 square miles of land from Mexico in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase. In 1879 Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" was first performed, at Paignton, Devon, England. In 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed. In 1924 Edwin Hubble announced his discovery of the existence of other galactic systems. In 1936 rhe United Auto Workers union staged its first sit-down strike, at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, MI. In 1944 King George II of Greece proclaimed a regency to rule his country, virtually renouncing the throne. In 1947 King Michael of Romania abdicated in favor of a Communist Republic, claiming he was forced from his throne. In 1953 the first color TV sets went on sale for about $1,175. In 1972 the US halted its heavy bombing of North Vietnam. In 1978 Ohio State University fired head football coach Woody Hayes, one day after Hayes punched Clemson University player Charlie Bauman during the Gator Bowl after Bauman had intercepted an Ohio State pass. In 1980 "The Wonderful World of Disney" was cancelled by NBC after more than 25 years on the TV; it was the longest-running series in prime-time television history. In 1993 Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations. In 1997 more than 400 people were massacred in four villages in the single worst incident during Algeria's insurgency.
Thursday, December 29. 2005
Investor's Business Daily asks that very question:
It's hard to imagine a major American newspaper in 1942 announcing before the Battle of Midway that we had broken the Imperial Japanese code or before D-Day that the Allies had a machine that let us read the Nazis' highest-level transmissions.
Yet in the war on terror, that's exactly the kind of information that papers like the Times and The Washington Post, in the name of the "people's right to know," have provided our jihadist enemy -- from stories on secret CIA prisons where our mortal enemies are held to wiretaps on al-Qaida operatives and their U.S. contacts. But our "right to know" has consequences:
In its Dec. 16 story reporting that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on calls between terrorist suspects abroad and residents of the U.S. -- a practice that is not only legal and constitutional, but also has broken up several terrorist plots -- it alerted al-Qaida that we might be listening in.
As damaging as the story was, its timing was curious, to say the least. If the "people's right to know" was so important, why did the Times sit on the story for a year, only to publish it on the eve of the debate on renewing the Patriot Act, inciting a brouhaha that also drowned out the good news of Iraq's successful and violence-free election of a permanent government?
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, says he knows of two senators who decided to vote against renewing the Patriot Act in its present form based on the Times piece. No newspaper is capable of revealing every government secret or foible or outrage. They must pick and choose. There are no doubt people in government somewhere right now usurping power, wasting money, cheating someone, or violating someone's rights. Newspapers choose which ones to focus on -- in these cases, stories that help the enemy. We hear the constant refrain that dissent is patriotic. Well, sometime it isn't.
Early indications are that the annual year-end look-back shows on the networks will bill 2005 as the "year of the disaster." (One can imagine the stories about Iraq getting thrown in, implying it's a disaster as well.)
The networks should be introspective rather than retrospective, as the coverage of the year's biggest stories has been as disastrous as the events themselves. Year-end shows are an opportunity to set the record straight, but does anyone think the networks will?
Let's look back at the big media stories of the year 2005, and the emphases placed on them, most of which proved wrong or exaggerated later:
January: Asian Tsunami (The US and UK didn't offer enough help quickly);
All year: Iraq War (War for oil, Bush lied, no WMD, Bush lied, we're losing, Bush lied, troops are dying, Bush lied, things are worse there than under Saddam, Bush tortured people, and of course, Bush lied);
All year: Plame Affair (may be a sinister plot by Karl Rove, leaks came from White House)
August and September: Katrina (George Bush hates black people, FEMA responded slowly on purposes for a number of reasons, the levee collapsed because of Bush budget cuts, there was murder and death and raped babies in the Superdome, nearly 10,000 people could be dead);
Most of the Summer: Bird Flu (will be like 1918 despite our health advances, US government not prepared because of Bush policies)
September and October: High Gas Prices (caused by the Iraq War; profiteering by oil companies, Dick Cheney directly profiting, caused by forces other than supply and demand);
September: Rita (was less disastrous than Katrina because FEMA favors Texans over New Orleans; the relative competence of local officials had no bearing)
December: Wiretapping (unprecedented, unquestionably unconstitutional)
Year of disaster indeed.
Christopher Hitchens reminds us of this in his latest offering in Slate:
...(M)ost Iranians were delighted and relieved to see the end of Saddam Hussein, just as they were to see the overthrow of their old Taliban enemies in neighboring Afghanistan, and the fact that both events also now mean American troops on their borders is, in Iranian "street" terms, one of those half-full/half-empty propositions. Moreover, Iran last January was preparing for its own "elections," so the idea of any political process in an adjacent territory had its interest and even its allure. Hitchens warns us, however, that the administration should have a more clear policy toward Iran. It's worth the read -- very refreshing to read pieces from someone unlike the vast majority of today's journalists: someone who knows the Middle East well, and is neither a rooter of the administration nor someone oddly honor-bound to hate its every move.
There's quite a bit of caterwauling about the NSA listening to the phone calls of alleged terrorists or people with alleged ties to alleged terrorists. While much of the concern is legitimate, the attention paid by the media to the issue would have one believe that today's journalists are raving civil libertarians. Would that it were so.
Today, there are cameras in public places in many cities. The cameras in Boston that were hooked up for the Democratic convention are now being deployed on street corners. There are cameras in transit systems, cameras in private buildings, and cameras in police cars. It's sad that the media became fixated on our surveillance society only after alleged terrorists and those with ties to them became the victims.
In Boston, not only are there cameras throughout the MBTA subway system (we saw how well the ubiquiotous cameras worked in London), but now the "T" as it is called is changing it's antiquated token system to the "Charlie Card," where commuters will be able to buy the stored value cards at machines throughout the system.
The rub? The cards will tell MBTA officials when and where a traveller entered the system. Add that to the cameras, and you have a powerful tracking system. Some state officials are justifiably wary of this.
Unfortunately it takes intense hatred of the current administration to get journalists to pay attention to privacy issues, and they focus on those that don't affect about 298 million of us. Where have all the media privacy advocates been all these years?
The social security number is used for everything now;
The driver's license is the de facto ID card (and you can lose it for things other than bad driving);
Your credit records can be accessed by landlords, employers, and insurance companies for reasons other than financial;
Many people have access to your medical records;
There are cameras in virtually every store in America;
There are cameras in virtually every public building in America;
There are cameras in public places in more and more big cities.
In all of these cases, we were assured by the government that the information would be used for specific purposes. In all cases, those uses have been expanded. And yet the media's concern is primarily the privacy of alleged terrorists.
December 29 ...
In 1170 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, was murdered in his own cathedral by four knights acting on Henry II's orders. In 1813 the British burned Buffalo, NY, during the War of 1812. In 1837 Canadian militiamen destroyed the Caroline, a US steamboat docked at Buffalo, NY. In 1845 President James Polk and signed legislation making Texas the 28th state of the United States. In 1848 President James Polk turned on the first gas light at the White House. In 1890 the US Seventh Cavalry killed over 400 men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, SD, in the last major conflict between American Indians and US troops. In 1934 Japan renounced the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. In 1936 Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke was born. In 1940 during World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London. In 1952 the first transistorized hearing aid was offered for sale by Sonotone Corporation. In 1972 following 36 years of publication, the last weekly issue of LIFE magazine hit the newsstands; the magazine later became a monthly publication. In 1996 the Guatemalan government and leaders of the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union signed a peace accord in Guatemala City, ending a civil war that had lasted 36 years. In 1998 Khmer Rouge leaders 'apologized' for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed 1 million lives.
Wednesday, December 28. 2005
American University law professor Kenneth Anderson takes co-editor of The American Prospect Robert Kuttner to task over an entirely predictable piece that Kuttner wrote for the Boston Globe comparing Presidents Bush and Lincoln.
Anderson writes, i n part: (via Instapundit)
Kuttner and his antiwar confreres, for example, might seem like shining examples of Copperhead Democrats, eager for peace no matter what, having concluded that Lincoln was a simpleton whose only character trait was a stubborness and resistance to reason that had already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands in a lost war. As for democracy in the Middle East, Kuttner et al. might be thought to resemble those in Lincoln's day who thought that blacks were simply incapable of participating in self-government. As for religion, Kuttner et al. might be thought to resemble most closely the anti-war Democratic newspapers of the day - along with many of the sophisticated newspapers of Europe - who were appalled by the religiousity of the Second Inaugural Address and accused its author of offering "puritanical" theology in place of public policy, and who believed that Lincoln was invoking the mantle of the Almighty in order to shield his own policies from criticism - Lincoln was guilty, in their eyes, of being at once a believer and a hypocrite, which is not that different, so far as I can tell, from how Kuttner sees Bush. As for the belief that Lincoln acquainted himself with a wide range of opinion through his wide reading, whereas Bush lives apart from newspapers and criticism - well, ironically, both elite Radical New England opinion and elite New York Democratic anti-war opinion believed that the ill-educated Lincoln lived in a world shaped by Western frontier prejudices and that he was simply outside the mainstream of what American and European elites "knew" to be the real world, not so different from what Kuttner et al. in the "reality-based community" like to think of themselves and President Bush.
Etc., etc. One can spin these parallels on and on.
Read the whole post.
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