Lest we forget

If you haven't read this, you should. I will even go so far as to say you owe it to yourself. Just a taste of what you have in store:

Our Right to Security
Al Qaeda, not the FBI, is the greater threat to America.

BY DEBRA BURLINGAME
Monday, January 30, 2006 12:01 a.m.
(Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.)

One of the most excruciating images of the September 11 attacks is the sight of a man who was trapped in one of the World Trade Center towers. Stripped of his suit jacket and tie and hanging on to what appears to be his office curtains, he is seen trying to lower himself outside a window to the floor immediately below. Frantically kicking his legs in an effort to find a purchase, he loses his grip, and falls.

That horrific scene and thousands more were the images that awakened a sleeping nation on that long, brutal morning. Instead of overwhelming fear or paralyzing self-doubt, the attacks were met with defiance, unity and a sense of moral purpose. Following the heroic example of ordinary citizens who put their fellow human beings and the public good ahead of themselves, the country's leaders cast aside politics and personal ambition and enacted the USA Patriot Act just 45 days later.

A mere four-and-a-half years after victims were forced to choose between being burned alive and jumping from 90 stories, it is frankly shocking that there is anyone in Washington who would politicize the Patriot Act. It is an insult to those who died to tell the American people that the organization posing the greatest threat to their liberty is not al Qaeda but the FBI. Hearing any member of Congress actually crow about "killing" or "playing chicken" with this critical legislation is as disturbing today as it would have been when Ground Zero was still smoldering. Today we know in far greater detail what not having it cost us.

Read it all and reflect on what is happening in the political arena today.

This is another of the articles that should be on your reading list while you ask the question about who you want to be leaders of our country in the future.

And for an excellent legal view of what is happening or not happening with the NSA question and whether or not it is legal or Constitutional, it is difficult to find a better overview than this by John Hinderaker at Powerline.

But don't question their patriotism

I remember a long time ago now calling MCI Wordcom to cancel my subscription to their long distance service because they chose to have Danny Glover as their spokesman. A little thing perhaps but it felt good to make a statement. I was not proven wrong. He along with several other far left wing types have decided that America is the most evil country on earth and Bush is its biggest terrorist. And with Harry Calypso Belafonte as the UNICEF "Goodwill Ambassador", I am having second thoughts about what I had believed was the UNs only redeeming program. This is unbelievable. An exerpt:

Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including actor Danny Glover, Princeton University scholar Cornel West and farmworker advocate Dolores Huerta that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday and attended his television and radio broadcast on Sunday.

“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution,” Belafonte told Mr Chavez during the broadcast.

“We respect you, admire you, and we are expressing our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and your revolution.”

The 78-year-old singer, famed for his calypso-inspired music, including the Day-O song, was a close collaborator of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.

h/t LGF
More on Harry O here by Ronald Radosh on his past pntifications.:

* In June 2000, Belafonte was a featured speaker at a rally in Castro's Cuba, honoring the American Soviet spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Tears, one observer reported, "streaked down" Belafonte's face, "as he recalled the pain and humiliation his friend [Paul] Robeson had been forced to endure" in 1950s America. Undoubtedly, he was pleased to hear Cuba presented "as an example of keeping the principles the Rosenbergs fought and died for alive."

* In 1997, Belafonte was featured speaker at the 60th Anniversary celebration of the "Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade," at which he honored these self-proclaimed "premature anti-fascists" who served in the mid-1930s as Stalin's private Comintern army, a battalion (not a brigade) that served as enforcers of Soviet policy during the Spanish Civil War. To Belafonte, nothing had changed since the 1930s. The VALB was still representatives of "a truth that engulfed the universe . . . that fascism anywhere is a threat to people everywhere."

He did not pause to remind the aging vets that their anti-fascism disappeared overnight after their return home - when the remaining soldiers got the news about the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, and quickly declared that the only enemy was FDR's warmongering and Great Britain.

* Speaking in October 1983 at a "World Peace Concert" run by East Germany's official Communist youth organization, Belafonte gave his blessings to the Soviet-sponsored "peace" campaign pushing unilateral Western disarmament, at a time when the Soviets were putting SS-20 missiles in East Germany.

As The New York Times reported, Belafonte "attacked the American invasion of Grenada and also criticized the scheduled NATO weapons deployment" of Pershing 2 missiles in West Germany, which Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan deployed to offset the Soviet missile offensive.

Belafonte, in other words, was supporting the Soviet bloc in its Cold War with the United States. And he was doing so in full embrace with the East German prison state. Here, where the notorious secret police, the Stasi, ruled by waging a perpetual witch-hunt against the entire population - Belafonte had only love and good wishes for their success.

No wonder that the late Leo Cherne, head of the International Rescue Committee, rejected Belafonte's being honored. "I happen to have some reservations about Belafonte," he wrote one of the IRC's board, "I have found him . . . beyond my tastes for the elements of left-wing predisposition. He played a significant relief role in Ethiopia at a time when Ethiopia was under the control of the left wing dictator Mengistu, at the very time that the Castro military forces were playing an active support role."

To Harry Belafonte, Castro is a freedom fighter and Colin Powell and Condi Rice merely "house slaves." Ever the diplomat, Colin Powell responded to Belafonte's blast by calling the singer his "friend," and noting that the slave analogy was from another time and place and was simply "unfortunate." Secretary Powell should take to heart the simple adage, with friends like that...

True American Patriotism that.

Don't miss this letter Europe, it is another wakeup call

To go along with this post and this one, Victor Davis Hanson writes a letter to Old Europe that is hopefully read and taken to heart. A couple of excerpts:

Even in this era of crisis, we cling to the notion that in the eleventh hour you, Europe, will yet reawake, rediscover your heritage, and join with us in defending the idea of the West from this latest illiberal scourge of Islamic fascism. For just once, if only for the purpose of theatrics, we would like to urge calm and restraint to a Europe angry, volatile, and threatening, in the face of blackmail and taunts from a third-rate theocracy in Tehran — or a two-bit fascist thug fomenting hate and violence from a state-subsidized mosque in a European suburb.

He goes on later to talk about some of the dreams and asperations that have led the Europeans down the pathe they have chosen:
Y

our idealistic approach to health care, transportation, global warming, and entitlements have won over much of coastal and blue America, who, if given their way, would replicate here what you have there. Yet the worry grows that none of this vision of your anointed is sustainable — given an aging and shrinking population, growing and unassimilated minority populations, flat growth rates, increasing statism, and high unemployment.

We wish you well in your faith that war has become obsolete and that outlaw nations will comply with international jurisprudence that was born and is nurtured in Europe. Yet your own intelligence suggests that the Iran theocracy is both acquiring nuclear weaponry and seeking to craft missile technology to put an Islamic bomb within reach of European cities — oblivious to the reasoned appeals of European Union diplomats, who themselves operate as Greek philosophers in the agora only on the condition that Americans will once more play the role of Roman legionaries in the shadows.

And the final paragraph:

Either your economy will reform, your populace multiply, and your citizenry defend itself, or not. And if not, then Europe as we have known it will pass away — to the great joy of the Islamists but to the terrible sorrow of America.

Read it all, it is classic Hanson and why he is one of my favorites.

NYTimes might be in deeper than they want to believe

The New York Times may be in a deeper hole than just the loss of credibility and trust of the people. Scott Johnson at Powerline does a yeomans job of outlining the legal trouble the Gray Lady may be in:

"Since the New York Times published the Risen/Lichtblau NSA story on December 16, we have cited the federal law that makes the disclosures on which the story is based a crime. The federal law is 18 U.S.C. § 798, a law that precisely prohibits leaks of the type of classified information disclosed in the story. Subsection (a) of the statute provides:

Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—
(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or
(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or
(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or
(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

"Subsection (b) defines the critical terms of the statute; suffice it to say that I believe they are clearly applicable to the conduct of the "nearly a dozen current and former govenment officials" who spoke to the Times. Their violation of the statute is a felony. Because their disclosures to the Times were illegal, these current and former government officials sought the promise of confidentiality from the Times to protect their identity..."

John Hinderaker adds in the conclusion:

" My guess is that the Times' decision to commit a crime by publishing the leaked information was based on a political calculation, not a legal one. They probably think the administration lacks the will to prosecute them, and that if the administration makes the effort, the Times will have a winning hand politically, and the Democrats will benefit. They're probably right on the first point, if not the second. Still, with Pinch Sulzberger, Bill Keller, and the reporters and editors involved in the story potentially facing time in a federal penitentiary, the paper is taking a terrible risk.

In any event, it is deeply revolting to see the Times denouncing President Bush for failing to "respect the boundaries of the law.""

The "chickens coming home to roost" saying seems to be true in this case. The NYT was so adamant about a full investigation into the Plame affair seems to have come back to bite them. What were they thinking? Maybe the thought that since they were the great New York Times, the paper of record at one time that they are immune to the laws of the United States and that they were the fourth branch of government, with full immunity and impunity.

A Few Sane Voices In Europe

Having read what Former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar had to say in a speech at Hillsdale College last October I can only hope that he is also the future Spanish Prime Minister. Here’s a brief excerpt:

It is often said that Europe always leans towards the soft option because it lacks the military power to do otherwise. The truth is that, at some recent point in our history, Europeans in general have chosen, either consciously or unconsciously, to separate diplomatic from military means, favoring conciliation over pressure and force. We refuse to call things by their proper names; we refuse to accept that there really are people prepared to die in order to kill us; we refuse to recognize our enemies, both at home and abroad.

We are engaged in a battle of civilizations against an emerging, assertively political Islam, all over the world. To make ourselves weaker is the best recipe for disaster. Another recipe for disaster would be to distance Europe from the United States.(h/t American Future )

I am reminded of an old post that addressed that very same thing. It was from Matthias Döpfner, Chief Executive of German publisher Axel Springer AG titled "Europe, Thy Name Is Cowardice". An exerpt from the post:

A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe – your family name is appeasement." It’s a phrase you can’t get out of your head because it’s so terribly true.Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo and we Europeans debated and debated until the Americans came in and did our work for us. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians. Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore 300,000 victims of Saddam’s torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace-movement, to issue bad grades to George Bush.

Read both as well as the (long) article by Mark Steyn and along the same line, James Lileks post in response.

The Rule of Holes

The first rule of holes is, if you find yourself in one, "Stop Digging". Sounds simple and easy doesn't it? As simple as it is, is seems that it is not that easy. First, lets look at the main house organ of the Democratic Party i.e. The New York Times. The Gray Lady seems to think that the outing of a minor employee of the CIA, who hasn't been covert or overseas in over five years is a major story that demands investigation and is more worthy of the who, what, where and why of the leak than its most recent revelations. The leaker or leakers in that case should be found and punished to the fullest extent of the law for the damage done to national security. Yet in some of the recent revelations brought to our attention through the use of leaks from within the intelligence community of truly secret national security issues, the leakers should be treated as "whistle blowers". They even defend the Washington Post for its reporting of the CIA rendering and detention centers. All of this in just today's editorial.

One possibly legitimate distinction between the two groups is that the Plame leakers may not have known that there was anything secret about Valerie Plame's CIA employment--prosecutor Fitzgerald apparently concluded that she was not a covert agent--while there is no doubt that the NSA leakers were well aware that they were compromising highly classified intelligence operations.

In any event, under the governing law, the leakers' motivations are irrelevant. They committed a crime, and should be prosecuted and jailed.

The Times continues its meme of "warrantless domestic wiretapping" which it knows full well (if its editors would read their own paper) is about the NSA monitoring international communications. Somehow that little distinction has been lost and they have decided that an outright fabrication about domestic surveillance adds much more spice. Plus the fact that it is being swallowed and continually regurgitated as truth by the rest of the media.

Scott Johnson at Powerline had this to say:

1. References to the NSA eavesdropping program as "domestic spying." See, for example, the Times story on the investigation of the leaks underlying the story: "Justice Dept. Inquiry into leak of domestic spying." Contrary to the language used by the Times, the program is one of foreign intelligence surveillance; it is not a domestic spying program. Like the authorities in Oceania, the Times seeks to dictate the politically correct attitude to the subject.

2. Implications that the "nearly a dozen current and former government officials" who leaked the highly classified information on which the Risen/Lichtblau stories are based are "whistle-blowers." The linked Times story quotes Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project: "The whole reason we have whistle-blower laws is so that government workers can act as the public's eyes and ears to expose illegality or abuse of power." Yet no whistle-blower law authorizes government employees to report allegedly illegal conduct to the New York Times.

On the contrary, federal law (18 U.S.C § 798) precisely prohibits leaks of the type of classified information in which the Times articles on the NSA program trade. The Times articles themselves involve an epidemic of lawbreaking among current and former government officials -- a fact the Times conceals from its readers by failing to disclose the applicable law. Now why would it overlook such a critical piece of information even when reporting on the opening of a criminal investigation of the leaks?

Stay tuned for more on the Rule of Holes. Also coming soon is my call for a bipartisan hanging re Abramoff and friends, both Republican and Democrat.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin as usual is all over this with an excellent (as usual) post about the double standard of the Old Gray Lady. So does Rick Moran. His conclusion:

If ever one needed proof that the liberal worldview (if ever its adherents were voted back into power) would be dangerous to the safety and security of the United States then this editorial should put all doubts to rest. Simply put, this editorial proves once and for all that liberals would prefer that terrorists succeed in attacking us rather than do what is necessary to protect us. The key word here is “necessary,” of course. And the fact is that the Times definition of “necessary” seems to be so limited and constricting that, if left up to them, the terrorists would have a gigantic head start and a leg up in trying to kill as many of us as they can. Any possible defense that they are serious about national security can therefore be ignored.

Cassandra at Tigerhawk has another super post on this two-faced view of the NYT with lots of links.

Tom Maguire probably has the most extensive post and links to this latest kerfuffle that I have seen. The position of the NYT toward the leaks and its editorial has seemed to have the opposite effect it wanted. Out of the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.

The case of the disappearing Press Release

As noted below, shortly after posting a press release on establishing a commission to contact space aliens, it disappeared from the PRWeb site intitially linked by a Google News Alert. I did find it on the web in its entirety however. It appears to be a petition drive from several nutcase NGOs to the UN for a Resolution and seems to have been successful in raising it up for debate. It was put forward on PRWeb as an official UN press release See how you read it and let me know what you think.

U.N. General Assembly Resolution To Establish United Nations Decade Of Contact & Diplomatic Relations With E.T.s

For the first time in almost 27 years, the United Nations General Assembly will be debating the issue of establishing diplomatic relations with advanced Extraterrestrial Civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. On December 16, 2005, a Resolution to establish a United Nations Decade of Contact was formally transmitted to the incoming President of the General Assembly, H.E. Jan Eliasson of Sweden by the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), a Non-Governmental Organization. President Eliasson was Sweden's Ambassador to the United Nations from 2000 to 2005.

Almost to the day twenty-seven years ago, on December 18, 1978, the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve decision 33/426, inviting U.N. Member States "to take appropriate steps to coordinate on a national level scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects, and to inform the Secretary-General of the observations, research and evaluation of such activities." Then U.S. President Jimmy Carter then supported the U.N. General Assembly's decision. Carter himself had a close Encounter of the First Kind with a UFO (Night Light) in October 1969, in the company of 10 members of the Leary, Georgia Lion's Club while he was running for Governor of Georgia. Four years later, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a public UFO sighting report, dated September 18, 1973.

United Nations Decade of Contact
Former Canadian Minister of Defence, Hon. Paul Hellyer has requested that the Canadian Parliament hold hearings on the issue of relations with Extraterrestrial civilizations. On September 25, 2005, at the Toronto Exopolitics Symposium held at Convocation Hall, University of Toronto, former Minister of National Defence Hellyer stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." He stated, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today." Over 630,000 registered journalists and 283,000 registered media outlets world-wide have downloaded a November 24, 2005 Thanksgiving Day (USA) Yahoo News story of Mr. Hellyer's request to the Canadian Parliament.

Mr. Hellyer, Canada's former Minister of Defence, supports a United Nations Decade of Contact. In the introduction to a recent book, EXOPOLITICS: POLITICS GOVERNMENT AND LAW IN THE UNIVERSE, by ICIS International Director Alfred Lambremont Webre, Mr. Hellyer writes, "To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation Alfred Lambremont Webre is proposing a 'Decade of Contact' - an 'era of openness, public hearings, public funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality.' That could just be the antidote the world needs to end its greed-driven, power-centered madness."

A United Nations Decade of Contact has four Objectives: (1) DISCLOSURE - Governmental disclosure related to Extraterrestrial Presence; (2) DECADE OF CONTACT - Public funding of a 10 year process of public education and research about the Extraterrestrial Presence; (3) DISARMAMENT - A permanent ban on all space-based weapons and warfare in space through a Space Preservation Treaty Conference; (4) DIPLOMACY - Public Interest UNITED NATIONS Diplomacy with ethical Off-Planet Cultures now visiting Earth.

The Disclosure Project, a U.S.-based non-profit organization, on May 9, 2001, held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in which numerous high-level military-intelligence, governmental and private sector witnesses publicly described experiences and evidence establishing that advanced Extraterrestrial civilizations are interacting with our terrestrial civilization at this time. A military-intelligence spying technology known as "remote viewing" originally developed at Stanford Research Institute in the mid-1970s by Dr. Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ has yielded replicable data regarding the existence of Off-Planet cultures now visiting Earth.

On May 20, 2005, Brazil, a major U.N. Member Nation took official measures in support of a United Nations Decade of Contact. The Brazilian Air Force (FAB) openly allowed examination of classified UFO documents in several military facilities in Brasilia, the Federal Capital. The United Nations General Assembly has voted in favor of a treaty banning weapons and warfare in space. The last time a United Nations vote was held on this issue was on December 8, 2003, when the General Assembly voted 174 - 0, with four lone abstentions (Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, United States of America).

Reached for comment, one Non-Governmental spokesperson stated, "We are certain 2006 will be a banner year for official disclosure of an advanced Extraterrestrial presence, and for the beginnings of a United Nations Decade of Contact."

CONTACT:
Institute for Cooperation in Space(ICIS) - 1-877-266-7337
Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd
Information: http://www.peaceinspace.net
Email: email protected from spam bots

Non-Governmental Organizations Contact:

Toronto, Canada: Victor Viggiani, Exopolitics Toronto Symposium
Tel: 905-278-5628
http://www.exopoliticstoronto.com

Washington, D.C.: Dr. Steven Greer, The Disclosure Project
Tel: (540) 456-8302 (Office)
http://www.disclosureproject.org

Please sign this Petition to the United Nations General Assembly for a UNITED NATIONS DECADE OF CONTACT
View this petition and your signature at
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/529287855

A print version of the UNITED NATIONS DECADE OF CONTACT Petition,
and a feature article can be found in the forthcoming UFO Magazine (www.ufomag.com).

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY:
http://www.un.org/ga/60/

TEXT OF THE UNITED NATIONS DECADE OF CONTACT RESOLUTION
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/529287855

Website: http://www.peaceinspace.net

Ya Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

Our tax dollars in support of the United Nations is being well spent. U.N. General Assembly Now Has Resolution To Establish United Nations Decade Of Contact & Diplomatic Relations With E.T.s . A press release from the UN is available in pdf format or at the link Just a taste to whet your appetite.[Apparently the links have been deleted and taken off the web. They now reside in cyberspace purgatory. I now wish I had printed the entire thing. Sorry for that. Maybe someone can find it in the UN archives. Found it in all its glory. See new post above.]

For the first time in 27 years, the United Nations General Assembly will be debating the issue of establishing diplomatic relations with advanced Extraterrestrial Civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. On December 16, 2005, a Resolution to establish a United Nations Decade of Contact was formally transmitted to the incoming President of the General Assembly, H.E. Jan Eliasson of Sweden by the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), a Non-Governmental Organization. Almost to the day twenty-seven years ago, on December 18, 1978, the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve decision 33/426, inviting U.N. Member States "to take appropriate steps to coordinate on a national level scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects, and to inform the Secretary-General of the observations, research and evaluation of such activities."
Almost to the day twenty-seven years ago, on December 18, 1978, the United Nations General Assembly voted to approve decision 33/426, inviting U.N. Member States "to take appropriate steps to coordinate on a national level scientific research and investigation into extraterrestrial life, including unidentified flying objects, and to inform the Secretary-General of the observations, research and evaluation of such activities." Then U.S. President Jimmy Carter* then supported the U.N. General Assembly's decision. Carter himself had a close Encounter of the First Kind with a UFO (Night Light) in October 1969, in the company of 10 members of the Leary, Georgia Lion's Club while he was running for Governor of Georgia. Four years later, while Governor of Georgia, Carter filed a public UFO sighting report, dated September 18, 1973.

And who could forget this:

United Nations Decade of Contact
Former Canadian Minister of defense, Hon. Paul Hellyer has requested that the Canadian Parliament hold hearings on the issue of relations with Extraterrestrial civilizations. On September 25, 2005, at the Toronto Exopolitics Symposium held at Convocation Hall, University of Toronto, former Minister of National Defence Hellyer stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." He stated, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today." Over 630,000 registered journalists and 283,000 registered media outlets world-wide have downloaded a November 24, 2005 Thanksgiving Day (USA) Yahoo News story of Mr. Hellyer's request to the Canadian Parliament.

* The President who consulted psychics as part of his CIA intelligence gathering. [I wonder if this was a warrantless search?] Hat tip Betsy Newmark.

Read the whole thing and remember that this is the same outfit Kerry wanted to administer those "Global Tests"

Good News

First of all I hope all of you had a good Hogmanay (Scottish New Years Eve) and will have a bright New Year. There does seem to be more good news that is not being widely reported in the MSM. First, let me point you to an article in Investors Business Daily that says thing are good all over.

The New Year: Despite natural disasters and the casualties of war, Americans say 2005 was better than 2004 — and a huge majority expect things to improve again in 2006. Truth is, things are better the world over...

A new Quinnipiac University poll of about 1,200 registered voters found the hopefulness of Americans as unflappable as ever — with no rose-colored glasses in sight.

Fifty-three percent thought 2005 was better for them personally than 2004; only 33% thought it was worse. Among those ages 18 through 29, 68% thought 2005 was better for them than 2004; only 24% called it worse. With 4.5 million new jobs in the last 2 1/2 years, GDP growth over 4% and a 5% unemployment rate, those numbers shouldn't be a great shock.

As to the future, 79% thought the new year would be better for them personally, with only 10% predicting a worsening. Of 18- to 29-year-olds, the number rose to 93%, with only 3% pessimistic about 2006. For those in their 30s and early 40s, 85% thought the near future would be bright...The world has a great deal to celebrate. Incomes are up worldwide, and they continue to rise. Life spans are up, from an average of under 50 years at the beginning of the 20th century in the U.S. to 77 today — an increase exceeding 50%. Life expectancy was around 40 years in China and India a half-century ago; today it's well above 60

If you read the daily nattering negativity of the Media and the of the Democratic Party and its left wing, some of this might be hard to take, so I suggest that you may need to have your anti-depressants handy. If good news is deemed by you to be bad, this is very, very bad. Next comes one of my favorite authors, Ralph Peters in his op-ed piece in the Post.

IRAQ made impressive progress in 2005. You wouldn't have known it from the daily news coverage or the surrender-now demands of left-wing extremists, but the long-suffering nation marched forward.

Here and abroad, the enemies of freedom insisted that failure was inevitable. Terrorists, insurgents, journalists with agendas, global America-haters and the Democratic Party's national leadership all tried to force our troops out of Iraq, no matter the consequences for the 26 million human beings who'd be left behind.

But the Iraqis refused to fail. Our troops refused to fail. And the Bush administration refused to fail.

Thank God.

Over the last 12 months, the pessimists called every major development wrong. But that won't stop them from doing everything they can again this year to devalue freedom, discredit democracy, drive Iraq toward civil war, encourage the terrorists and, above all, embarrass the Bush administration.

Our critics, foreign and domestic, will continue to ignore the human rights of millions while shrieking over the "mistreatment" of imprisoned terrorists and demanding a "fair" trial for Saddam (in Europe, with no death penalty). But the left's self-righteous bluster sounds more like sour-grape nagging every day.

CONSIDER just a dozen of the many reasons for optimism about Iraq:

Amen and his 12 points should be read as well as the entire short article. Here is one of my favorite graphs.

WE should be encouraged by the progress in Iraq and heartened by the American people's distrust of elitist propaganda. From Hollywood's latest anti-American rant to the decaying New York Times, the stars of the America's Most Arrogant Show have had to learn yet again that we don't take orders from trust-fund snots, campus cowards or actors (when Alfred Hitchcock said, "Actors are cattle," he was being far too kind).