WUI (Writing under the influence)

This is the question that Chuck Riley must be asking himself of late. Most of his supporters I know are absolutely opposed to any "harsh" measures like a fence or deportation through unemployment. But Chuck must know that those supporters are in minority in his district.

Chuck knows that he didn't lose the last election because 10% of use voted for Tom Cox as a protest vote against Mary Gallegos. He knows he needs some Republicans, especially those who don't like Wal*Mart, to vote for him instead of Terry Rilling.

But most Republicans, even those who don't like Wal*Mart coming to Cornelius, want something done with illegal immigration. And that something is not amnesty.

So what is Chuck Riley to do? How is he to attract Republicans without turning off some Democrats in the process?

How about a flier with the appropriate message sent by mail just to registered Republicans? Would that work? Maybe.

A couple of days ago I got just such a flier from Chuck Riley (click to enlarge.)

Chuck Riley promises in this flier to be pretty tough on illegal immigration. He doesn't want to deport everybody but imposing penalties on employers would have the same effect.

In any case, I was surprised by the "harsh" language by Democrat standards so I started wondering whether the same flier went to all registered voters or just to Republicans and maybe so called Independents. I checked Riley's website and in the issues section I found only the usual: education, healthcare, jobs and economy, etc.

Is there a way to find out if Chuck has two sets of principles depending on how the wind blows?

Many interesting initiatives on the ballot this year. Most of them nobrainers. But there is this one about car insurance and credit scores that gave me some pause. At first, I wanted to vote against it. Why would I tell private companies how to run their businesses. There are enough insurance companies for a healthy competition so if credit score is not the right criterion for establishing insurance premiums, sooner or later they will get rid of it.

But then I read what Bill Sizemore, the sponsor of Measure 42, had to say.

I realize that some of my fellow conservatives might object to more government regulation of business, which this measure is. To them, I would simply respond: When government requires citizens to buy a product, as is the case with insurance, the product is no longer truly a “free enterprise” product. We have to buy their product. We have no choice. When we are required by law to buy a product, the playing field is automatically tilted in the seller’s favor, in which case it is important that reasonable controls be installed to insure that consumers are not gouged.

Good point. I may have to think about it some more.

Well, it must be true because when they voted to elect Hamas some said it was because they hated Bush.

[I]f you look at Iran and the Palestinian State, both are unique in the sense they conducted a free election. When George Bush took the white house, we had Arafat in Palestine, and a moderate as President in Iran. Now we have Ham-as in Palestine and the fundamentalists are back in power in Iran. Both were free elections. Can we hear the voice of the people in these two places? I think we can. What are they saying? Are they not repudiating American foreign policy? Is this the direction we would like things to be going? Is it what George W Bush set as a goal? Or has his radical and belligerent approach to foreign policy reviled these voters as they give power to the forces who do not seek to live in peace with the rest of the world?

[I will disregard for now that no such thing as "Palestinian State" ever existed. I wonder if anybody in Israel knows about it.]

Now Palestinians regret their vote.

A recent poll cited by Stephen Farrell of the London Times suggests that most of them regret their vote in January to give a parliamentary majority to Hamas, regarded as a terrorist group by the U.S. and the European Union. The survey says that if that election were held now, only 18% would vote for Hamas, compared with 38% for its main rival, Fatah.

...is coming no matter how much Forest Grove and Cornelius liberals object.

A proposed Wal-Mart in Cornelius got one step closer to reality Monday when the state land use review board refuted claims by opponents that the city had acted outside its purview by approving the building.
Cornelius First, the group which opposed the store’s plans, has three weeks to appeal the board’s decision, but the group’s leader, Tracy Irwin, said she would not pursue an appeal.
Opposition to the development has been varied. Forest Grove officials are concerned about the traffic that the store would bring, Cornelius First offered up questions about the impact of the store on local businesses.
Irwin said that Cornelius First is no longer meeting on a regular basis and group members hope their fears prove unfounded.

I came here to be free. Some new arrivals want more.

Hector Romero, 25, one of the many Latino illegal immigrants working at Issaquah Highlands, has been framing houses for two years, making $14 an hour before taxes.

Amid the national controversy over what to do about illegal immigrants, Romero keeps going to work each morning. He just wants to become a U.S. citizen.

"I love Mexico but I have my family here now," he said.

If he could become a citizen, he said, "I have rights to demand things like sick pay, vacation pay, even medical insurance. But right now there's not much I can do."

When I was coming to the US, everybody was warning me that there was no health insurance unless you paid for it yourself, there were no rights for workers and that, if I decided to go back to school to get education, I would have to pay for it. I came anyway. I still pay my student debts off. But it was worth it. Unfortunately, because of people like Mr. Romero and American liberals who defend his position, this country may not be able to offer the same opportunities for other hones immigrants.

I remember when Poland was to be admitted to NATO. There were many in the US who objected. When NATO requested more troops for its operations in Afghanistan the French, the Germans, and the rest of the Old Europe refused. Poland just sent 1,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Poland will increase its military contingent in Afghanistan from 120 troops currently to about 1,000 by February, Minister of Defense Radoslaw Sikorski said while in Washington D.C.

"We are going to participate in operations in eastern Afghanistan," Sikorski said

Polish officers will also be integrated into the command structure of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Defense Ministry said.

"The cost of the Afghanistan intervention is estimated at 300 million zlotys ($92 mln) and will be covered by Poland," the Ministry added.

The new deployment of troops will not adversely effect Warsaw's commitment in Iraq, the statement said.

NATO commander James Jones urgently requested last week that an additional 2,000 troops be sent to Afghanistan, noting that Taliban resistance has proven far more resilient than expected.

Why would Poland do it when other, more sophisticated members of the EU wouldn't. Polish people happen to have good memory. They remember that the freedoms they enjoy today were given to them by the stubbornness of another great American president.

In addition to 1,000 troops, Poland is giving its hero proper recognition.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish admirers of Ronald Reagan plan to raise a statue of the former U.S president in Warsaw, where he is revered for his role in the downfall of communism in Europe.

The 3.5-meter (3.8-yard) stone-and-bronze statue will stand across from the U.S. Embassy, the head of the group raising money for the memorial said on Monday. The group includes Poles living in Poland, Canada and the United States.

"Reagan was the person who defeated the communists and opened the way for freedom in Poland," Janusz Dorosiewicz said. "The statue is a way for his legacy to live on."

Many Poles credit staunch anti-communist Reagan with helping the anti-communist movement in eastern Europe. In 1989, Poland became the first country in the region to shake off communism.

The group plans to unveil the Reagan statue on in 2007 on July 4 -- the U.S. Independence Day.

BTW, Polish Prime Minister just met with Bush and Cheney.

PM Jaroslaw Kaczynksi met with U.S. president George W. Bush on Wednesday and both leaders declared their mutual friendship and good working relations.

Kaczynski also met with vice-president Dick Cheney and discussed energy security, relations with Ukraine, the Iran issue, as well as the ongoing problems in the Middle East.

The issue of the anti-missle [sic] shield which the U.S. wants to place in either Poland or the Czech Republic was not discussed.

They probably thanked him for being able to run those secret CIA prisons in Poland.

Swedish liberals lost elections because the young people who were classified as mentally disabled so they could be removed from the rolls of unemployed were still allowed to vote and they voted for more jobs rather than more welfare.

Petterson told the Swedish daily paper Expressen that she had no desire to go to a psychologist but was persuaded to do so by the unemployment agency. The psychologist gave her a number of tests that she found stressful and humiliating, such as building objects with wooden blocks. To her surprise the psychologist said that Petterson should be classified as disabled since she wasn't good enough at mathematics. Jessica was shocked to hear this: "I might not be a math genius, but I know how to count," she told the paper.

The unemployment agency explained that it was simply a matter of changing a code in her status as unemployed. If she agreed to be classified as mentally disabled she would be entitled to a range of government subsidies and programs. In fact, she could begin working at "Samhall" - a government project aimed at providing employment for the disabled. There she could get a job cleaning and building wheelchairs.

"I felt the panic spreading in my body," she said. "Samhall is intended for the truly disabled who could never get another job. Could I really work there? A place that might mean a lot for a handicapped person - but that would be a giant leap backwards in my development and self-respect."

[...]

Alarmingly, what happened to Petterson is not an isolated incident in Sweden. The state unemployment agency is constantly attempting to force people to "admit" to being disabled. Today 19.3 percent of those seeking jobs at the unemployment office are being classified as disabled.

Stockholm University professor Mikael Holmqvist, who has done research on the subject of Samhall's workers, believes that most of these people are in fact not disabled at all. They have been lured or threatened into agreeing to become classified as such. The reason for this is simply that if you are disabled you are removed from the statistics of open unemployment, something that the current Social Democratic government greatly appreciates.

So this is how that model liberal paradise has been propped up. If people can't find jobs in the private sector because it has been ravaged by liberal policies they are classified as mentals so they can get a public useless job. This is exactly what communists in my old country did. Everybody had a job no matter how idiotic because communists wanted to prove to the West that there was no unemployment in the communist "market" system.

In any case, it seems that liberals in Sweden had not been able to brain-washed enough people to get reelected forever. Finally, the reality has caught up with them and they lost.

One of the world's most consistently successful political parties, the Social Democrats have governed Sweden alone or in coalitions for 65 of the past 74 years. The party's defeat reflects a feeling not only that Mr. Persson has become complacent in office, but also that Sweden's celebrated social welfare model, with its high tax rate and generous benefits, has encouraged too many people to stay out of work for too long.

The only mistakes Swedish liberal made was not having produced 50+% "unemployment" the way the American lefties want 50+% people in the US to stop paying any taxes.

The election results from Sweden are very encouraging. No matter how much welfare you offer people eventually they realize that somebody (most likely their children) will have to pay for it and it will be difficult because there won't any economy to speak of to produce enough jobs to pay all the debts off.

UPDATE: Additional info from CSM. What's interesting is that Swden economy was actualy growing when the liberals lost.

To outsiders, the rejection may even appear puzzling because the Swedish economy is humming along at its fastest annual economic growth rate in six years - 5.6 percent. With low inflation and interest rates, and strong productivity gains, the economy appears to be as safe and secure as a Volvo.

But Fredrik Reinfeldt, who will be the country's next prime minister, sounded the alarm in his campaign - one which apparently resonated with Swedes, and, hopefully, will have a similar effect on European social- welfare countries in far worse shape.

Mr. Reinfeldt, who leads a conservative-turned-centrist party called the Moderates, is worried about Sweden's long-term ability to compete, especially in the global marketplace.

Of particular concern is joblessness. On the surface, it looks pretty good - around 6 percent. But pull back that golden teak veneer and it's rough underneath. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute puts real unemployment at closer to 16 percent. That's because the government doesn't count people on sick leave, in training programs, in early retirement, or students who are studying only because they can't find work.

The Swedish model of high income taxes in exchange for a plethora of social services was workable when it was dreamed up in the 1930s. Unlike other European states, Sweden's history wasn't marked by feudalism, and Swedes had a trusting relationship with a state whose civil servants were efficient. Theirs was a small, homogenous, and well-educated population with a strong work ethic. A social pact between people and state could work, and it did, until succeeding generations became too reliant on the "nanny" state and businesses too restricted by it.

Reinfeldt cites a lack of new jobs. Sweden has created almost no net-private sector jobs since 1950, according to Magnus Henrekson of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics. Thirty percent of Swedes are employed by the government. Small businesses suffer from restrictive regulation and labor rules.

To stimulate job growth, Reinfeldt and his coalition partners plan to halve payroll taxes for employers hiring long-term jobless youths and sell off government stakes in such businesses as telecommunications and airlines. He wants to further deregulate, a move that pulled Sweden out of an economic crisis in the 1990s. And to lure people to work, he plans to reduce generous jobless benefits and cut income taxes for the poor.

Reinfeldt describes these steps as tinkering, because Swedes still love their model. And much about it has paid off, especially investment in education and R&D. But the model, as is, won't hold up to globalization, an aging population, and immigration pressures. Swedes seem willing to face this. Can the rest of Europe?

I don't really know what drives liberals. They will always find something to complain about. But it seems that they have to invent new reasons to complain as fast as the old disappear. Most of those new complaints have to do with the state of the middle class in the US.

Here's a small sample of the many ways in which ordinary Americans today are Bill-Gates-like rich compared to almost all humans who've ever lived:

* None of us has ever starved to death
* We have indoor plumbing and artificial light
* We bathe regularly
* We have solid roofs over our heads, rather than bug-and-vermin-infested thatched roofs
* We routinely converse in real time to people one mile or one thousand miles away
* We don't get smallpox
* Our life expectancy is decades longer

And while it's possible to list some ways in which the average person today is worse off than were pre-industrial folk -- for example, no one before the 20th century died in airplane crashes -- only the most doctrinaire ascetic would deny that almost everyone today in the Western World is vastly better off than were the overwhelming bulk of the human population before the industrial revolution.

[...]

Among the best of these studies is one produced annually by economists James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, and published jointly by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute. The 2006 study will be released this week. Among the most important findings of Economic Freedom of the World: 2006 Annual Report are these:


Nations in the top fourth in economic freedom have an average per-capita GDP of US$24,402, compared to US$2,998 for those nations in the bottom fourth

The top fourth of economic freedom also has an average per-capita economic growth rate of 2.1 percent, compared to 0.2 percent for the bottom fourth

Unemployment in the top fourth of economic freedom averages 5.9 percent, compared to 12.7 percent in the bottom fourth

Life expectancy averages 77.8 years in nations in the top fourth of economic freedom but a mere 55.0 years in the bottom fourth

Nations in the top fourth of economic freedom have only 0.3 percent of children in the work force, while nations in the bottom forth suffer 19.3 percent of their children in the labor force

In the top fourth, the average income of the poorest 10 percent of the population is US$6,519 compared to US$826 for those in the bottom fourth

As this careful new study makes clear, there is no denying that more freedom means more prosperity for more people -- and that lack of freedom ensures poverty for the masses, regardless of the degree of technological sophistication.

It's clear to me that the only reason why liberals complain about economical state of the middle class is to gain more power. The problem is that liberals offer more prosperity for less economic freedom which is an oxymoron.

...they would be in a different school in 5 minutes.

A very disturbing piece should make many parents with children in public schools think if they really don't want any choice in education.

Transfer denied for kids taught by transsexual

Batavia school district refuses to grant requests of five parents


The Associated Press


(September 7, 2006) -- BATAVIA -- Five parents who asked to transfer their children out of Batavia High School classes with a transsexual teacher have been denied, according to Batavia district Superintendent Richard Stutzman Jr.

The written requests did not meet the guidelines set by the district, Stutzman said, without saying how.

"That's all between the school, the teacher, the parents," he said.

Other students were allowed to adjust their schedules because their requests were based on changes in their academic programs, Stutzman said.

Classes began Wednesday.

The science teacher has been with the district for seven to eight years and is now living as a woman to prepare for sex reassignment surgery, Stutzman said.

Diagnosed with a transsexual disorder, the teacher is still going through a medical transition but returned to school dressed as a woman -- and addressed as a female.

The teacher has about 100 students this year and was expected to make a "brief statement" at the start of class, then proceed with teaching, the superintendent said.

Among several students heading to school Wednesday, some said the situation was weird or awkward; others said they didn't have a problem with it.

"If he wants to do it, then that's him," said senior Carissa Visalli, 17.

The district has held informational meetings about the teacher for staff members and parents.

Of course, some parents don't have enough money -- or at least they think they don't -- to transfer their children out of government schools. This is why vouchers and eventually completely privately run schools are so important.

Many people are envious of Europeans because of the long vacations they enjoy. Well, nothing is free. So many Europeans are looking at their free time as a liability rather than a perk.

According to the poll, conducted by market researchers Harris and the FT, a majority of workers in four of the five main economies of the European Union -- Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK -- support the idea that the government should not be allowed to dictate the numbers of hours a person can work in a week.

European workers may not even consider this but their attitude may actually be good for the economy.

According to media reports UK Employment Minister Jim Fitzpatrick plans to introduce legislation this October that would, for the first time, limit the amount of hours that 17,000 oil rig workers can put in. This promises to be a serious headache for an industry that has relied on its workforce to put in long hours on base in return for lengthy periods of leave.

Perhaps Fitzpatrick should read a recent report from the European Central Bank that suggested one of the ways to alleviate economic troubles caused by an aging and shrinking European population was to extend the hours people work. "A number of euro area countries have a large potential to increase labor supply by raising average hours worked and the effective retirement age," the report says

Such a move should encourage companies to hire from sectors of society that are underrepresented in the current workforce, such as women and older workers. The ECB believes this would improve the efficiency of the European economy and make it strong enough to withstand the demands of growing numbers of the retired.

Because whatever is good for an individual is almost always good for the whole society. This is why pure capitalism works so perfectly. Greed is good.

The same guy who thinks Bush stole both elections thinks that Ahmadinejad was elected, in a free and democratic election, by the people of Iran because they didn't like Bush.

The scary part is he votes in free elections and his votes count even if he thinks Rove personally destroys his ballots.

After seeing the "movie" I have only two things to say:
1. What was the whole fuss about?
2. There are many people who before 9/11 worked for FBI, CIA or other government agencies who can't sleep at night because they know they had screwed up a big time.

UPDATE: I liked this comment somebody made on the movie. Paraphrasing: ABC had more courage in two days than the Clinton administration in 8 years.

UPDATE: I didn't really want to put it that way but Tom Nichols of NRO did:

Are Canadians Stupid?

It’s not about foreign policy, it’s about who we are. As long as we are a secular, tolerant, open, and free society — and by “we” I mean all of us in the West, including Canada — the terrorists will continue to strike, because everything we are, our very way of life, is repellent to them, and they are going to do everything they can to destroy it completely.

Is that clear enough, or will it finally sink in only when pieces of the Canadian parliament are falling out of the sky in burning flinders?

Many of our neighbors to the north behave as bad as many Muslims:

One in five Canadians believes the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans, according to a poll released on Monday.

The Ipsos-Reid poll found that 22 percent of Canadians, and 26 percent of young Canadians, agree with the conspiracy theory. The number was the highest, at 32 percent, in Quebec, which has shown the least support for the U.S. war on terror.

But there are many in the US who think the same. Sometime I think they do it because their preconceived notions prevent them from admitting that real evil exits and that no matter what we do, short of submitting to Islam, that evil will want to kill us. There are also those on the left who think that because Gandhi said something about there never having been a situation that couldn't be resolved peacefully -- maybe he was right as long as we always surrender and let ourselves to be killed -- Islamo-fascist are simply responding to something we have done and if we only stopped...

In any case, both the deniers and apologists desecrate the 9/11 victims and are as bad as Holocaust deniers:

Members of the hate-America crowd and jihadist sympathizers occasionally hold forth about the bravery required to pull off the 9-11 attacks. As Bill Maher infamously said about crashing planes into buildings, "Say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

What the peddlers of such tripe are really saying is that Rodney Dickens, Asia Cottom and Bernard Brown are merely props. Their families are dupes or liars, as are the hundreds of witnesses who saw Flight 77 bear down on the Pentagon. And, by the way, the U.S. government, not Islamic extremism, is the real enemy.

If that is bravery, then the callous child murderers of Hitler's SS were among the most heroic figures in human history.

Such sentiments repulse decent human beings because they minimize crimes that transcend politics or ideology. To absolve the killers, much less to justify or glorify their actions, is to defile their victims again.

There's another way to vindicate the terrorists and desecrate their victims -- by promoting outlandish conspiracy theories about 9-11. Of the many perversions about controlled demolitions, military pods and blacked-out windows, the one that has garnered the greatest number of maladjusted adherents is that a U.S. military missile -- not a Boeing 757 passenger plane -- struck the Pentagon.

What the peddlers of such tripe are really saying is that Rodney Dickens, Asia Cottom and Bernard Brown are merely props. Their families are dupes or liars, as are the hundreds of witnesses who saw Flight 77 bear down on the Pentagon. And, by the way, the U.S. government, not Islamic extremism, is the real enemy.

Science can't penetrate the small minds that cultivate such irrational beliefs. For the rest of us, the new book "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up To The Facts" systematically dismantles all the conspiratorial nonsense.

The book can be bought here.

I wanted Bush to win the 2000 election for very selfish reasons: economic freedom, more conservative social values, hope for school vouchers, etc. But there were people, much wiser than me obviously, who wanted Bush to win because they felt it would be better for this country.

By chance, I discovered a pre-election opinion piece written by Peggy Noonan. After listing a few earthly reasons to vote for Bush, she says this:

The next president may well be forced to shepherd us through the first nuclear event since World War II, the first terrorist attack or missile attack. "Man has never had a weapon he didn't use," Ronald Reagan said in conversation, and we have been most fortunate man has not used these weapons to kill in the past 50 years. But half the foreign and defense policy establishment fears, legitimately, that the Big Terrible Thing is coming, whether in India-Pakistan, or in Asia or in lower Manhattan.

When it comes, if it comes, the credibility--the trustworthiness--of the American president will be key to our national survival. We may not be able to sustain a president who is known for his tendency to tell untruths.

If we must go through a terrible time, a modest man of good faith is the one we'll need in charge. That is George Walker Bush, governor of Texas.

Unbelievable. It almost makes me ashamed that my reasons were so material. Almost, because, as it turned out, those qualities I appreciated in Bush saved our economy from complete collapse after the attacks.

On that day, Polish king, Jan Sobieski, started the battle that would end the Turkish conquest of Europe started 300 years earlier. The battle of Vienna was, like the Christian crusades, a defensive response to Muslim imperialistic advances. September 11, 2001 was not a coincidence and it was not caused by anything US or Israel may have done but by the movement that started shortly after Mohammed died in 632 A.D.

That movement's "accomplishments" since 9/11/2001 are listed by Christopher Hitchens in a WSJ editorial:

(1) The reopening of a restaurant in Bali, where several dozen Australian holidaymakers and many Indonesian civilians had earlier been torn to shreds. (2) The explosion of a bomb at a Tube station in London which is regularly used by two of my children. (3) The murder of a senior Shiite cleric outside his place of worship in Iraq. (4) The attempt to destroy the Danish economy--and to torch Danish embassies and civilians--as a consequence of the publication of a few caricatures in the Danish press. (5) The murder of the U.N. envoy to Baghdad: a heroic Brazilian named Sergio Vieira de Mello, as vengeance (according to his murderers) for his role in shepherding East Timor to independence. (6) The near-successful attempt to blow up the Indian parliament in New Delhi, and two successful attempts to disrupt the commerce and society of Mumbai. (7) The destruction of the Golden Dome in Samara: a place of aesthetic as well as devotional importance. (8) The bombing of ancient synagogues in Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco. (9) The evisceration in the street of a Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, and the lethal threats that drove his Somali-born colleague, a duly elected member of the Dutch parliament, into hiding and then exile. (10) The ritual slaughter on video of a Jewish reporter for this newspaper.

As Hitchens himself says, "This list is not exhaustive or in any special order, and it does not include any of the depredations undertaken by the votaries of the Iranian version of Islamic fundamentalism."

The movement will be stopped not by compromising and diplomacy but by a final victory. I'm very afraid that the victor may not be us.

I don't recall the President ever mentioning any supposed link between Saddam and terrorists until it was clear there were no weapons of mass destruction awaiting use against the USA in Iraq.

From the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq:

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

[...]

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

[...]

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

[...]

Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups...

[...]

Oh, how short is our memory or profound is our ignorance.

Liberals vote for more funding for public schools and then abandon them.

They also vote for people who build useless MAX and then get stuck in traffic. It's MAX's 20th anniversary and only the lefties in the Forest Grove News Times can be happy about it and lie in the process. The truth is: NOBODY USES IT!!!

The media's conspiracy theory is:

1. Wilson said Bush's famed "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address -- "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" -- were a lie.


2. Wilson's wife was then revealed to be an "undercover" spy at the CIA, exposing Wilson and his family to danger.


3. Therefore, she was "outed" by the White House as retaliation against Wilson for calling Bush a liar.

Point No. 1 of liberals' conspiracy theory has been proved false since Britain's Butler Commission reviewed its government's pre-war intelligence on Iraq and concluded that "the British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium."

It was again proved false when our own Senate Intelligence Committee also concluded, in July 2004, that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium from Niger.

[...]

Point No. 2, that Wilson's wife was an undercover agent, has been proved false even to the willfully blind since Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced the conclusion to his pointless investigation last year, saying that Plame's employment with the CIA was not undercover, but merely "classified."

[...]

Now it turns out, even point No. 3 of liberals' conspiracy theory was false: The original "leaker" of Plame's name to columnist Bob Novak -- not a crime -- was not in the White House at all. It was Richard Armitage, a State Department official and opponent of the Iraq war.

[...]

What was Fitzgerald investigating? Not only was there no underlying crime, there was not even -- as the Times put it -- "an attempt to silence Mrs. Wilson's husband" (or an attempt "to respond to people calling you a liar in the New York Times," as normal people put it).

Fitzgerald's entire investigation was nothing but a perjury trap from beginning to end for anyone who misremembered anything about who told whom what about a low-level nobody at the CIA who happened to be married to a Walter Mitty fantasist.

Bush should pardon Libby before any trial takes place and waste any more tax payers' money. We need that money to prosecute all those imperialistic wars around the world.

Another set of stubborn facts about the war are listed here.

The article concludes with this important message:
Commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by watching ABC's miniseries The Path to 911, airing this Sunday the 10th and Monday the 11th, 8/7C. A dramatization not so loosely based on the official findings of the 9/11 Commission Report, signed by all members of the Commission.

I will. And so will my children. They are already praying for voters not to lose their minds in November.

That's pretty much a message from a WSJ editorial. While debunking the myth that the rich don't pay taxes anymore, WSJ also says this:

The truth is that there has been a modest widening of the income gap in recent decades, regardless of which party is in power. That gap seems due largely to growing returns on education and skills in the global economy. Americans without a high-school diploma are losing ground against those who have college degrees. But this argues not for higher taxes on the rich, who already pay the vast bulk of U.S. taxes. It argues for reforming K-12 education so even the weakest and poorest students can compete against the world.

But what's the left's answer to this problem? Punish the rich for the right decisions they make. The rich get richer because of a very simple principle: competition. Maybe public schools should try it for a change.

BTW, as for those myths that WSJ is debunking, how about this one?

First, the new data show that the bottom 50% of Americans in income--U.S. households with an income below the median of $44,389--paid a smaller share of total income taxes in 2004 (3.3%) than in Bill Clinton's last year in office (3.9%). That 3.3% is the lowest share of total income taxes paid by the bottom half of earners in at least 30 years, and probably ever. The majority of American families with an income below $40,000 pay no income tax at all today, and many of them also get a welfare subsidy from the Earned Income Tax Credit that effectively offsets much of what they pay in payroll taxes.

By contrast, Americans with an income in the top 1% paid 36.9% of all federal income taxes in 2004, down slightly from 37.4% at what was the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. But the top 5% and 10% of earners saw an increase in their tax share over that same period, with the top 5%'s share rising to 57.1% in 2004 from 56.5% in 2000. If this isn't the definition of a highly "progressive," a k a redistributionist, tax code, we don't know what is.

Especially instructive is what has happened to tax shares since the tax rate on capital gains and dividends was cut to 15% in 2003. These investment tax cuts have corresponded with a huge spike in tax payments by the affluent. Between 2002 and 2004, the income tax share of the top 0.1% of earners rose to 17.4% from 15.4%. A reasonable conclusion is that much of this increase reflects tax payments on capital gains and dividends--which have soared by an astounding 79% and 35%, respectively, since the rate cuts.

Now, this is not supposed be news anymore. But the left just doesn't listen to facts. As long as they are some who just can't make it or don't care, the left want all of us to live in misery. Like the French or the Germans.

So WSJ sensing that that is indeed the left's goal ends on this note:

[...] it's a mistake to put much stock in these class-envy statistics on income shares, gini quotients, and wealth gaps that Washington and the media like to stress. There's nothing that policy makers can do about them in the short run, and a preoccupation with inequality will do actual harm if it leads to policies such as higher tax rates that reduce economic growth. We'd suggest readers ignore the inequality fad that is intended for election-year consumption and keep their eyes on what really matters--the policies that promote growth and prosperity for all Americans.

Indeed.

So it turns out that it wasn't Bush who lied to go to war but it was Wilson who lied to stop the war.

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

I wonder if Grovenet's peacemongers will now apologize for falsely accusing Bush, his administration and his supporters of lying to go to war for oil.

Somehow I doubt it. After all, you have to lie to be a peacemonger. You have to lie to be a liberal. Besides, I doubt NYT will apologize either so Grovenet's peacemongers will not know they did anything wrong. Because they can't get out of bed in the morning without first reading NYT to figure out what to think.

UPDATE: NYT did not yet apologize. This piece however explains in rather simple language how wrong NYT and its followers were. Grovenet's peacemonger have no choice but to acknowledge they were duped. Of course, it is easy to dupe them for they rely on their hate more than on their limited analytical skills.