BigT’s Roundup - Monday Ed. (10-8-07)

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BigT’s Roundup - Monday Ed. (10-8-07)

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Everything that is happening in the land written here; from my blog at ConservativeINC.

Is there a genocide going on in Darfur? Well, legally, no. That is if you believe what ex-President Jimmy Carter has to say.

There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does
not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don’t
think it qualifies to be called genocide.

I guess it’s time to shelve the Darfur is Dying Game created by MTV
because the ex-pres has had the final word. Sure, he didn’t say there
isn’t a bunch of killing going on but he did say it wasn’t a genocide,
yet, legally, whatever. This is sort of like when in Jaws someone says
something along the lines of this: “if you say barracuda, no one cares.
But if you say shark, everyone freaks out.” If it isn’t going to be
called a genocide no one will care for long.

Speaking of violence, England has just banned a particularly violent videogame named Manhunt 2.
Can’t say that I agree with them. What damage could a videogame do?
Really? I think when a national government bans a game it does more to
erode morality then does letting the game be sold. Separating personal
choices from the taint of immorality by making choices for a nation’s
citizenry voids any guilt someone has from doing anything immoral
because if the government says that it’s OK then it must be moral. If
an individual city wants to make that decision that is fine, even if a
state wants to ban something that should be fine as well because it
would require more discussion at the individual level and if you see
your city or state becoming a bore because dancing and videogames are
outlawed you can move to the next town over. Or, like hip college students, you could focus on something really fun like the world’s biggest twister game ever!

Or those violent British youth could take up a real sport like baseball. But after the Angels’ got bounced in three games from the playoffs I really don’t want to talk about it. Not at all. It’s depressing. We sucked.

Maybe the British should take a page out of Turkey’s book about how to respond to something they don’t like. In
the past week Turkish hackers have attacked over 5,000 Swedish website
in what appears to be (is there really any question?) retribution for a
Swedish cartoon depicting Mohammed. What the British could do is
hack into Manhunt 2 and put in some Bobbies who tell the violent
characters to put down their guns and talk out their problems in front
of the nice CCTV cameras. But in all seriousness, how hard would it be
for a bunch of Chinese or North Korean or Russian or Iranian or
Venezuelan to plan an attack on our computers? Probably not so hard as
long as they pick sites that don’t have a bunch of security. I doubt it
would be all that hard to hack a little ways into our government’s
secured systems. Maybe we’ll have Cyberspace War I soon.

The battle over SCHIP is quickly becoming a war in its own right.
Well, not really but democrats are sure harping on it a lot these days.
They probably have done the math and think that this is the type of
domestic issue that can vault their nominee, OK, vault Hillary Clinton
to victory. Doing their part to win this “war” for America’s children Huffington
Post has a guy who is asking for donations to fund a calling campaign
aimed at kowtowing five renegade democrats who aren’t falling into line.

SCHIP is the type of issue that seems all good when you first hear
about it. But then you realize that the democrats want to expand it to
cover children significantly above the poverty level and that they have
refused to change the bill so that it will only cover those children
who are below and slightly above the poverty line. I think that all
types of federal government handouts are a bad idea not because I hate
poor people (that’s just the liberals favorite straw man) but because
it is inefficient and, more importantly, it creates a dependency on the
federal government for the basics for life.

The private sector does a good job already at using charity to help
people and if the government got out of the way there would be a lot
more money freed up to go to charitable foundations. At least these
foundations have to answer to someone, government bureaucrats rarely
have to answer for what they do.

Furthermore, if the democrat leadership were as adept politically as
the woman who is going to lead them into the next presidential
elections they wouldn’t choose a kid to be the face of their “poor kids
need health care too” campaign who wasn’t poor. That kid, Graeme Frost,
according to the Weekly Standard,
goes to a private school that costs $20,000 per kid, has a father that
owns a business, lives in a 3,400 square foot house that was recently
renovated, and whose family has a reasonably estimated net worth of
$500,000.

This is the type of thing you get when you try to make everything a
“right.” “How can you be for kids without health care?” Some liberals
are probably asking that at least. Quite frankly, I wish that every kid
grew up with health care, free food, a pony, and universal education.
But that is not plausible. Well, it is a plausible position to take if
you’re willing to take a system of health care that will get
progressively worse and fail its customers at the most basic levels.

Back to the political side of this equation. The democrat… let’s cut
out the clutter, when Hillary Clinton becomes the presidential nominee
for the democrats she will need to shore up all the support she can for
her domestic plans because, right now at least, her foreign credentials
are under a brutal assault from the left. The DailyKos openly questions whether or not Hillary is anti-war.
I guess it didn’t sit right with kos that a retired general who
supports Hillary said that Ms. Clinton is not anti-war but is for a
different strategy regarding Iraq. He also calls Senator Clinton a
traitor (my word, not his) to the kookosphere because she supported the
legislation calling Iran’s army a terrorist organization.

On second thought, she probably doesn’t have to worry. I don’t think
the left is willing to commit electoral suicide like the right is just
because their candidates aren’t exactly what they want. In a few
months, maybe after she has sewn up the nomination, the kookosphere
will come out with a new theory (they love theories) saying that
Hillary was just positioning her votes and her rhetoric so she could
appeal to moderates and conservatives. This way they could, in good
conscience, vote for her.

And to make sure that every Top Security document that could one day prove to be damaging for Ms. Clinton will get “lost” she has hired Sandy Berger, famous for stuffing documents in his pants and socks.
I’m sure that she thinks that he offers good advice plus he is
obviously as loyal as can be based on his willingness to go to jail for
his bosses.

One last thing about Hillary, sort of. inc
Magazine has an article out that gives tacit support for Hillary’s
health care plan and support for other democrat’s plans because they
are “big” ideas.

Her proposal — like Richardson’s, and Edward’s, and
Obama’s — is a big idea, and should she get elected, the habits Clinton
acquired in the Senate could go a long way toward seeing it become law.

I bring this up not to bemoan Ms. Clinton’s policy anymore but to
point out that a publication that should be pro-conservative (the
magazine is a business magazine and business guys are, still, largely
conservatives) obviously leans to the left. And I’m not the only one
who notices this fact. Just look at this chart from NewsBusters:

So the media is populated by a bunch of liberals. Duh! Of course it
is. The problem is that it does have an affect on the way that people
think about important issues. That is why I’m all for the kookosphere
and the good guys on the right just as much because I think it is
important that people get news from a slant that they know about. The
MSM still calls itself impartial but most know it isn’t. But how are
you suppose to know unless you become a news junkie? You won’t know
what’s a bias and what’s an unbiased report unless you dedicate hours
to scouring various news sites for information and a more complete
picture of what is going on.

While we can go to the Internet for better information in the United
States the same cannot be said about Burma. It would seem that the
junta has squashed that uprising brutally and they are making sure that
no one hears about it by cutting off all access to the outside world:
no Internet, no cell phones, nothing. Shouldn’t we do something more about this? Probably, but we won’t.

At least we did something in the crucial region of the Middle East
by deposing Saddam Hussein. And as more time ticks off things are
improving in that war-torn country. “Like what?” asks the token
liberal. Well, glad you asked, two Shiite bigwigs in Southern Iraq have signed a peace agreement.

Two of Iraq’s most powerful Shi’ite leaders have agreed
to end a bitter rivalry in a bid to end months of armed clashes and
assassinations in the oil-rich south that have threatened to spread
into a wider conflict.

Radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim,
leader of the largest Shi’ite political party, the Supreme Islamic
Iraqi Council, promised yesterday to stop the bloodshed and enhance
cooperation between their two movements.

An official in al-Sadr’s office in the holy city of Najaf called the agreement a “fresh start”.

And this is what an Iraqi lieutenant Colonel in charge of a police station in Anbar had to say to an American journalist:

“What do you think about the possibility of Americans
withdrawing their forces?” I said. He had already said please don’t
leave us to Captain Dennison, but I wanted at least a little
elaboration.

“That is not in the best interests of Iraq right now,” he said. “We
need some more time. If they pull out there will be a real possibility
of serious sectarian warfare. Anbar is secure. Only Baghdad and the
surrounding area remains to be secured. As soon as that happens, the fight will be over.” [my emphasis]

I hope that he is right and I hope that we don’t abandon him.

BigT’s Linkapalooza:

Jewish Center burned in… Silicon Valley.

Debt market is rebounding.

Wealthy, not poor, join al Qaeda from Syria.

Cruds, Quds in Iraq (Quds = Iranian intelligence).

Waxman building slime files on conservatives so as to bolster liberal push for Fairness Doctrine.

Putin doesn’t just control the Russian government he controls its NGOs as well.

The top 1% pay more then the bottom 90% in taxes. I thought the tax cuts were for the rich?

Four from Huffing and Puffing Post: Blackwater Bad, Blackwater Very Bad!, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week Very, Very Bad!!, and America developing assassination by radioactive isotope AHHHHH!!!! No word on what they think about Russia actually using this technique however.

And, finally, on the lighter side: the Gregalogue!

BigT