Regressive Progressives?

Progressive regression is the coin of the liberal realm. The world appears awash in liberals resisting change and progress. Some might say that improvement and progress aren't really what 'progressives' seek. Fact is that liberals are the 'Amish' of politics. Liberal political thinking stopped with Marx and Engels. Liberal political activity reached its high point with Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, and Fidel Castro. It's easy to understand that the current crop of liberals, Schavez, Sheehan, Dean, Murray and Cantwell, McDermott, and Gore and the Clintons are psychological children and political ignorants when compared to their pedagogues.

Monday's Wall Street Journal's 'Review & Outlook' speaks to regressive progressives by exposing the World Bank board's effort to keep corruption in loans and payments to third world nations; speaks to Richard Branson's 'Virgin' commitment to green energy causes; and Europe's effort to destroy Microsoft after the Clinton Administration's failure to do so here.

The WSJ writes that at the annual World Bank meeting in Singapore, European elites let it be known "that they prefer a (current) lending system that gives lip service to ending graft but in fact turns a blind eye to corrupt government officials on the receiving end of billions in foreign aid." Worse, "British Development Secretary Hilary Benn threatened to withhold $94 million in funding next year to protest the transparency and accountability conditions that Paul Wolfowitz (former Bush administration member) is implementing." Imagine that so called progressives attempt to continue corrupt and failed ways? That's regressive progressive behavior.

Then the WSJ says that "There's plenty of reason to cock a sceptical eye at Richard Branson's pledge, announced last week in New York in the company of Al Gore and Bill Clinton, that he will devote 10 years and about $3 billion of profits form his Virgin airline and railroad businesses to combat global warming." While it all sounds like Branson is supporting Gore and Clinton on questionable climate claims, he's actually investing in energy businesses like rapeseed and ethanol production. The WSJ questions "There are serious doubts among scientists whether biofuels can serve as safe and reliable substitutes for current fossil fuels. There are also real questions about the environmental impact-in deforestation and intensive farming-of switching to biofuels."

Again, the liberal progressive obsession with fossil fuels 0vershadows the often unintended negative and costly side affects of just doing anything to feel good. The replacement of cheap and powerful fossil fuels requires more than a few cottage industry wind farms and corn growing fields. In fact, it's now estimated that all the world's corn and other biofuel feedstocks can generate about 5% of the world's current energy demands and less than 2% in the next decade's time.

Then the WSJ explains Europe's Neelie Kroes' effort to: "ensure a level playing field." That's liberal progressive regressive speak for keeping innovations and improvements out of products unless regulators and oppressors direct it. This is of course a return to the Soviet style "command economy." Ms. Kroes feels that she and her fellow "know it alls" say that they know what the people need and at what fair cost. and they are willing to use our tax dollars to get their way.

The fight is over Adobe document functions and file security. While the liberal progressive regressives attack Microsoft (for beating Apple like a drum) for lacking security features to protect users from hackers, the same drum beaters say that any new security features must be kept separate and must cost accordingly. Then Microsoft asked Adobe to provide a document security function in Vista, the new and improved Windows, which Adobe declined to do. So Microsoft offers its own document security feature along with the free Adobe reader. Ms. Krores screams bloody murder because this will improve Windows and will give Microsoft a market advantage. Duh! It's an earned market advantage due to Adobe's business strategy. In the words of the venerable (loony) Al Gore: "How dare they; who do they think they are?"

We are living in the days of the regressive progressives that pine for a Cuban 19th century style government and economic environment. Seems that when the world gets too complicated and too filled with opportunity and hope, the liberal progressive regressives will find the energy to stop all this progress.

Clinton tells the truth!

The recent dustup between Billy Clinton and Chris Wallace on FOX News Network has finally exposed the underbelly of the Clinton/Democrat 'world view.' Clinton explained and even ranted that he "did everything he could to kill Osama." He sought probable cause indictments; sought CIA certification; respected the rights of Osama and others nearby so that any action against Osama wouldn't hurt his possibly innocent friends or his co-conspirators and co-murderers.

Clinton was honest that he did everything that "HE" could. That he tried to get the "alleged terrorist" which Clinton and Democrats everywhere feel must be accorded all if not more than your and my constitutional rights and protections. And that's what the people should know. The people must know that the Clinton and Democrat/liberal 'world view' is that every single person on earth must be provided every possible right and protection from getting caught. Problem is that neither the American people nor most American jurisprudence experts agree with that extreme if not childish and pollyannish view.

Clinton's administration had what insiders say over a dozen opportunities to arrest or kill Osama. Yet each opportunity was met with self doubt and sometimes even with "political focus group" thinking. Several opportunities came and went because Clinton's legal beagles said "they didn't have probable cause" under US constitutional protections to arrest him. Several opportunities to kill Osama and his top Al Qaeda advisers were passed because of fear of hurting others and because of concern that the media might call the attack a 'wag the dog' attack to divert attention from Clinton's White-house sex scandal, according to Dick Morris, Clinton's political advisor.

The truth is that Clinton did his best based on Democrat/liberal legal views that are disconnected from the American people and especially from the historical application of the American Constitution. The fact is that the CIA and the FBI did their best at protecting the American people based on the extreme Democrat/liberal 'world view' that the FBI can't warn the CIA and the CIA can't warn the FBI. The truth is that the Clinton crowd, led by Jamie Gorlic, their most extreme firewall advocate, created the legalistic minefield that prevented reasonable homeland protection.

A reasonable example of this firewall between law enforcement, the FBI, and intelligence agencies is this: A counter-terrorist agent enters the home of a suspected terrorist. He finds no evidence of this person's possible activity. Yet there is a dead girl in the bedroom. She's been raped and strangled the night before and the body has not yet been dumped elsewhere. Fact is under the Clinton/Democrat/liberal 'world view,' the agent is forbidden under CRIMINAL threat to disclose the murder to local law enforcement or even the FBI. This same type of gamesmanship goes for illegal immigration and for any other crimes, no matter how heinous.

Democrats and the media do everything in their power to hide these views. The truth is that only the people have the right to decide whether our government adheres to these extreme views and legal interpretations. Not the dishonest and complicitous media; not the Clintons; not liberal courts; and not the Democrats!

NY Times Speaks

Today's Times' editorial discussing the impending illegal combatant detention and trial needs a line by line response.

NY Times Editorial-My comments in red!

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless (?????) politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe (A disproved assertion because American troops and our diplomatic corps have yet to be accorded Geneva protections in any war or military action since the Geneva Convention was adopted) and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws (Dishonest hyperbole because America has always considered those warring with America to be out of the reach of domestic courts, rather they are subjected to military courts) — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists (Another misrepresentation because the CIA has supported the Newsweek examination of the intelligence gathered from the now famous 14 high level prisoners that gave up critical intelligence through coercive interrogation. In fact, the CIA says and Newsweek's Pulitzer reporter say that 8 attacks in final planning were thwarted). Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser (Democracy is the BIG winner because the people support aggressive interrogation).

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention (Dishonest representation), had them questioned in ways that will make real trials (Again a lie because real trials for enemy combatants, legal or not are in military courts) very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts (Their less than professional and very bigoted opinion) to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling (It was called by even Democrat experts an overreach for applying Geneva rules to terrorists) striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism. (Democrats are soft on terrorists because they feel that respecting them will change their ways. The lie is that Democrats refuse to say it because they know the people don't support that position)

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies (Duh!). Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone (Flat out lie) he wants for as long as he wants (Flat out lie) without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions (Flat out lie), to authorize what normal people consider torture (they say less then 8 hours of sleep is torture and so on), and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error (We are back to the excuse that a person in the wrong place at the wrong time that just happens to live with terrorists and murderers are just misguided).

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal (Dishonest, there are several avenues of appeal to define illegal combatant). The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted (Lie, because the combatant can appeal his or her definition of illegal combatant to US courts).

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate (Absolute lie) a half-century of international precedent (Precedent has be fair but now US lawyers say that even female interrogation of a Moslem is torture) by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment (They can challenge their definition which then puts them into the right court of jurisdiction). These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists (Again an dishonest assertion). They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals (As America does. Nobody reviews anything but the verdict and if it was fairly asserted). The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly (This is the anti-US-lawyer full employment opportunity by suing under Geneva day and night). All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant (Which is then reviewed by US federal courts) and not have a trial (Also dishonest because illegal combatants don't get trial anywhere until the war is over, or they are executed by past standards).

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms (Again the myth that Newsweek and the CIA and even my previous article have dispelled. Coercive evidence is often reliable when supported by subsequent evidence. Democrats want any additional evidence to be quashed even though it proves the guilt of the terrorist) — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses (That's American law).

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence (The New York Times forgets that illegal combatants aren't regular US criminals. They can't get their bigoted terrorist coddling brain around that distinction) .

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture (Absolute lie because rape is not sexual coercion like stripping a guy).

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler (Which they appear to be anyway). But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical (The tyranny is with far left wing bigots) law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Myth Busting

The news is not good for a long held liberal position on granting special protections to foreign despots, murderers, tyrants, and terrorists. The basis for extending special constitutional protections is the Geneva Convention treaty for treatment of military combatants and civilians. This treaty was proposed by the United States after more than 62 million soldiers and civilians were killed during World War II. Some estimate that more civilians died than soldiers.

The intent of the Geneva Convention was to establish clear wartime treatment standards that all signatories would respect. Problem is that only the United States has respected the Geneva Convention. Fact is that North Korea and China didn't respect Geneva in the UN's action. The Soviet Union didn't respect Geneva when they shot down Powers' U2 spy plane. North Vietnam's soldiers didn't respect Geneva during the late sixties and early seventies. In fact Senator McCain was tortured with hundreds of other pilots and captured soldiers.

We know the French tortured Algerians after signing the Geneva Convention. We know the British tortured IRA terrorists during the 1970s and 1980s. We know South American and Central American dictators tortured and murdered thousands without a thought of Geneva Convention protections. And we know what Middle Eastern despots and terrorists do to Americans, civilian and military. That leaves only the United States. So the myth that we must adhere and even provide extra protections to not just soldiers, but illegal combatants and terrorists, so that our soldiers and civilians will receive respectful treatment is not just misguided, but factually inaccurate.

Worse is the myth that aggressive interrogation doesn't result in successfully gathering usable information. A CBS investigative story debunks the myth that only respecting and hugging terrorists will encourage them to rat on their fellow murderers. Proof is that coercive interrogation works. Some say that Senator McCain opposes coercive questioning because he was tortured and then accused of talking by several other torture victims in Hanoi, North Vietnam. If he did talk, he would have to admit it by saying that torture works because it worked on him. So he says no way.

Bottom line is that no other nation respects the Geneva Convention and most importantly, coercive interrogation works.

Censorship!

Wasn't it the 'National Socialists' of Germany that found repeating an untruth three times internationally makes it a fact? Seems the inheritors of both their politics and their propaganda programs follow the same line. Carbon dioxide is pollution! Carbon dioxide is pollution! Carbon dioxide is pollution! Now that the debate is over, let's decide which liberal programs are funded and which liberal extremists will benefit from them.

Wrong answer! There is no proof that man-released carbon dioxide warms or even cools the planet. Some feel CO2 cools mudda earth, but their voices were silenced decades ago. Some scientists feel that the sun and our planet's hot core are actually the culprits. But the hysteria-du-jour is that man is guilty. American jurisprudence claims that we are all innocent unless proven guilty. This protection doesn't apply to science nor does it apply to conservative thinkers.

Remember that Osama is an "alleged" terrorist while president Bush is "a terrorist." Go figure! In secular socialist thinking, relative morality and situational ethics rules. So all liberals need is to censor scientists so that only one voice of consensus is heard. And they are at it again. Today's NY Times tells us that the venerable Royal Society of Britain has accused ExxonMobil of funding organizations that God forbid, believe the global warming debate is not over.

So we can now ad selective censorship to relative morality and situational ethics as the cornerstones of secular socialist thinking.

What's Torture, Stupid?

Seems to me that Americans are burned out on politics after decades of liberal torture. We're tortured by tortured explanations, tortured definitions, and tortured deceptions to prevent us from learning what liberals really think about the constitution, rights for murderers and terrorists, and especially a hate for competitive private enterprise.

The "Happy" news is that the people hear, probably for the first time ever, liberals openly demand that we must extend extra constitutional protections and privileges to foreign terrorists, tyrants, and despots, as liberal courts drape uber-constitutional protections and privileges around our citizen felons and murderers.

The issue is the "world court" believes that extracting information from a person without their consent is torture. This opinion flows from the Geneva Convention's Article 3 "(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment." So any effort, overt or covert, to confuse, tire, trick, or otherwise force an "unlawful combatant," a usually armed fighter out of uniform, to divulge secret information about their organization and its members they say is torture. Americans say otherwise.

Seems that Americans almost always think and believe other than the 'world.' Why I ask? The answer is simple. The 'world,' meaning other industrialized nations, is founded on a secular socialist or mostly Islamist political infrastructure. It's a world of "foreign values, foreign morals, and foreign ethics." It's these values and the 'world view' they represent that American liberals embrace. It's these values and the 'world view' they represent that the American majority soundly rejects.

American values are indisputably Judeo-Christian in touch and feel. American values encourage freedoms, choices, and equal opportunities that the 'world view' dismisses. Americans know right from wrong. The 'world view' says right or wrong are shaped daily by consensus. Clinton's bombing civilian targets in Yugoslavia, a UN member nation, without UN support was "legal," "proper," and even "moral," because he sought and got general 'world view' consensus. President Bush acts within American laws, values, and morals. Yet Democrats, liberals, and the "world view" is that he is a war criminal. Why? Because he didn't get their "consensus (approval)" before acting.

So it goes for torture. Torture is whatever the 'world view' feels it is. All that is required to redefine torture is to gain consensus. Just convince your neighbors that a killing or raping is moral because the "bitch" had it coming. Get a free pass from the law. Convince 300 plus mayors that there is global warming, and by definition IT IS.! Convince the 'world view' that pressuring terrorists to talk is torture, and bada bing, IT IS.

Not in America. Not now and not ever.

Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

Envirowars today reasserts its commitment to exposing untruth, half truths, political exploitations, and to seek and publicize dishonesties in the radio, print, and TV media, and in the general culture, and in the entertainment and political landscape.

It's less than 60 days to the election that will either continue America's major toward world stability through hope, opportunity, and freedom for all or will return this nation on a path to minimalism, atheism, and a hopeless malaise.

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