Socialism is a nice idea, in theory, they tell me. I won’t be conceding that point anymore. Too many have conceded it for too long, and too many have been fooled into thinking it can work — again. And, the costs of that particular thought are just too high.
Tag: liberty
From the level-headed responses I’ve read regarding the NSA’s web cookie whoopsie, Captain Ed has to have the best analysis:
In the great spectrum of Internet privacy dangers, “persistent cookies” sits on the weakest end. Spyware from free downloads cause more security problems than cookies, and even the ones used by the NSA can be blocked by any browser on the market. The AP uses the mistake to make cookies sound vaguely sinister when they’re almost as ubiquitous on the Internet as pop-up ads, if not more so. The Guardian gets even more hysterical, in all senses of the word, when it says that the “[e]xposure adds to pressure over White House powers”.
The silliest part of the story is that no one can understand why the cookies would present any danger to visitors to the NSA website. Both versions of the story call the risk to surfers “uncertain”, but a more accurate description would be “irrelevant”. Even if the NSA used it to track where casual visitors to its site surfed afterwards, it would discover nothing that any casual surfer wouldn’t already be able to access on their own with Google or a quick check on Free Republic. Now imagine who stops to check on the NSA website and try very hard to come up with any good reason to spend precious resources on scouring the web preferences of bloggers and privacy groups instead of focusing on real signal intelligence, which already comes in such volume that the agency has trouble keeping up with their primary task.
[Emphasis in the original.]
Jeff does an outstanding job of showing the flip side of the coin the press doesn’t want to admit:
Yes, the President is responsible for making the decision to go to war based in part on intelligence that turned out to be incomplete. But the President is also responsible for acting with swift resolve to unseat a brutal dictator, terrorist and friend to terrorists. He’s also responsible for having the sheer guts to go it alone when a great many of the West’s liberal democracies shirked their responsibility both as leaders of the world and as members of the Security Council of the United Nations. He’s also responsible for bringing Saddam Hussein to justice, for capturing or killing his cohorts in crime, for cutting off a huge source of funding to Palestinian murder gangs, for shattering Ansar al-Islam, and for freeing the Shiite people of Iraq from decades of illegitimate rule by a Stalinist political party. And in many ways, President Bush is personally responsible for bringing liberty to Iraq for the first time ever, and for changing the history of the Middle East, and the Arab and Muslim worlds.
I am totally down with Tom’s plan.
Hugh notes Kevin McCullough’s campaign to send Christmas cards to the ACLU.
Ever since the little phisch was born, the Christmas cards we’ve sent out have been the kind where a photo of the youngun was part of the card. So we have a few boxes of Christmas cards that will likely never be used. Kevin’s campaign sounds fun, and I have the materials.
So the ACLU can expect a Christmas card from me this year. Probably two. Maybe three.
Alright, four.
Let’s just say, when I get tired of signing them and filling out the address info on the envelopes, okay?
Today we honor those who serve and served in our nation’s armed forces. Though the original day of remembrance was Armistice Day, noting the end of World War I, it became Veterans’ Day, where we honor those who have served throughout out nation’s history. I think it is quite appropriate that a day to thank and honor our veterans falls within the same month as the Thanksgiving holiday.
Each citizen of this country, whether they want to admit it or not, owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who wear and have worn the uniforms of our armed forces. Having been, at one time, in the process of becoming one of those in uniform, I hold a special place in my heart for our servicemen and women.
In addition to all veterans, there are a few people I would like to thank.
From within my family: Dad, Uncle J.D., Granddaddy, and Uncle Richard.
Friends: Will, Wally, Damion M., Brian, Dan, Larry, John A., and Gary R.
From Detachment 310, 1988-92: Liz, John, Craig, Cathy & Michael, Kristin, Greg, Russ, and Colonel Hendrickson. I miss you guys.
“It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed — that is, an extension of the revenue.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21
(Of course, any talk of instituting a national sales tax has to go hand-in-hand with repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, and the end of the income tax.)
The Federalist Patriot, 05-43 Digest:
Al-Qa’ida murdered almost 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil in about an hour back in 2001–almost all of them civilians. The reason no additional American civilians have died in attacks on our homeland is that 150,000 uniformed American Patriots have formed a formidable front on al-Qa’ida’s turf, a very inhospitable region of the world. These Patriots are a proud breed–Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen–and they have chosen to stand in harm’s way in order to defend their families, their friends, their country.
In doing so, more than 2,000 of these brave souls have been killed.
This week, every mass media outlet took a break from their “CIA leak” promotion to run headlines and lead stories about the Iraq death toll reaching 2,000 (1,567 killed in action since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 19 March 2003)–as if the death of American Patriot number 1,999 was somehow less important. Typical was this headline from The New York Times: “2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, A Grim Mark.” But not a whisper in the Leftmedia about the 3,870 Iraqi security forces killed in the last six months alone, in defense of their emerging democracy.
For The Patriot, every death of a member of our Armed Forces is equally devastating, and we mourn each one. Not a day passes without our prayers for both those standing in harm’s way, and their families.
The “dezinformatsia” machines promote this “milestone” for one reason only–to foment additional dissent and rally support against the Bush administration’s national-security strategy, which is to protect our homeland by taking the battle with Jihadis to their turf. In doing so, the Leftmedia has reduced the sacrifice of these young Patriots to nothing more than political fodder for their appeasement agenda.
On the night of 11 September 2001, President Bush told the nation, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” He set in motion pre-emptive operations, which would become the “Bush Doctrine.” Our analysts continue to support the doctrine of pre-emption firmly as the best measured response to the Jihadi threat around the world.
As for those still “Stuck on Stupid“, insisting that there were no WMD found in Iraq, here’s a partial list of what didn’t make it out of Iraq before the invasion: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium, 1,700 gallons of chemical-weapon agents, chemical warheads containing the nerve agent cyclosarin, thousands of radioactive materials in powdered form designed for dispersal over population centers, artillery projectiles loaded with binary chemical agents, etc.
As The Patriot noted in October, 2002, our well-placed sources in the region and intelligence sources with the NSA and NRO estimated that the UN Security Council’s foot-dragging provided an ample window for Saddam to export some or all of his deadliest WMD materials and components. At that time, we reported that Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover Iraq’s WMD stores, noting, “Our sources estimate that Iraq has shipped some or all of its biological stockpiles and nuclear WMD components through Syria to southern Lebanon’s heavily fortified Bekaa Valley.”
In December of 2002, our senior-level intelligence sources re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq’s biological and nuclear WMD material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug on the UN’s ruse.
To that end, we are deeply indebted to our Patriot Armed Forces, who have prevented al-Qa’ida or some other Jihadi terrorist cell from striking a U.S. urban center with WMD. Make no mistake–Islamofascists want to bring America to ruin, and they will use any means at their disposal to do so. Mr. President, stay the course.
[Emphasis added. –R]
Many explanations have been given to account for the almost matchless barbarism into which Palestinian society has descended in recent years. One is the effect of Israeli occupation and all that has, in recent years, gone with it: the checkpoints, the closures, the petty harassments, the targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. I witnessed much of this personally when I lived in Israel, and there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.
Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.
In other words, while Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn’t hold.
“Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.”
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison, 1784)