Krauthammer 5/29/09

Confirm the Supreme Court Appointment

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Sonia Sotomayer ought to be confirmed but first her decision against the New Haven firemen ought to be highlighted.

Quote:

And on her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and the superior wisdom she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background grant her over a white male judge. They perfectly reflect the Democrats' enthrallment with identity politics, which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society.

My Views: Obama wants judges to have "empathy". Empathy for who? Did this judge have any empathy for those firemen whose promotions she ruined? I guess it all comes down to what group one belongs to - a group that is favored or a group that is not. This. Is. Not. Right.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Krauthammer 5/22/09

Obama's Policies = Bush's

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: For years, the Democrats have denounced Bush's anti-terror policies as lawless, tyrannical, and foolish. Now Obama is keeping most of those very same policies.

Quote:

The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day.

My Views: Okay, so what are these bad Bush policies that are now good because they're now Obama's?

• Restoration of military tribunals


• Keeping Guantanamo Prison active but closing it eventually


• Patriot Act Wiretaps


• E-mail intercepts


• Predator drone attacks


• Iraq withdrawal in 2010 or beyond


• Afganistan surge


• Rendition of prisoners


• State Secrets in court cases


• Afghanistan's Bagram Prison (same as Gitmo, Guantanamo policy)

Democrats still love to bash Bush but their actions speak louder than their words.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Krauthammer 5/15/09

More on Torture

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: This responds to the negative reaction to his last column on this subject. The criticism of his last was that the Democrat leaders' approval of torture did not justify it. "Yes it does," he responded.

Quote:

Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable person would do under certain urgent circumstances.

My Views: If we wish to believe that the Democrat leaders now leading our country (i.e. the present Speaker of the House and others) are fit to do so, then it follows that we accept them as reasonable people. The CIA folks were certainly entitled to do so. The Democrat's silent approval of the methods at the time served to complete the many other factors present which justified this stuff.

Torture, like war and many other things is evil. If pacifists suddenly take over, should we jail all the sholdiers, or just fire the lot and disband the military?

That's the problem with Pelosi and the Democrats here: they're right on the general issue but by wanting officials prosecuted and jailed, they go too far. Far left extremism is just as bad as the far right kind.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Coulter 5/13/09

Liberal Taliban Issues Fatwa Against Miss California

My take on Ann Coulter's latest. Her column was published on Townhall.com.

Summary: Miss California is only the latest woman who is being demonized for stating a politically incorrect thought. Where's the freedom for women in a culture that imposes left wing thought with such draconian measures for disobedience? Many of the women most prominent in the old media are hardly "liberated".

Quote:

From Katie Couric on CBS to Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC, the whole stable of TV anchorettes weirdly have the exact same politics as their liberal masters. It's the ideological burqa women are required to wear to work in the mainstream media. As with a conventional burqa, it enforces conformity and severely restricts the vision.

My Views: Ann Coulter is the Babe Ruth of political punditry. Like that famous baseball player of old, few of his contempories struck out as much as he did. He is famous because when he did hit the ball, the results were spectacular. His home-run record lasted decades.

This is Ann Coulter. Most of her work is crap. But when she connects with an issue, no one can combine language and logic as well as her. This column draws attention to three significant factors of the Miss California/Miss USA story:

1. The surprise at a beautiful woman expressing an incorrect thought
2. The over-the-top reaction to that
3. The comparison to the women held up for role models in our society.

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Anybody who is as hated as Ann Coulter is must be doing something right. She is very right-wing but every left-wing blogger would love to write like her. I hate rants; opinion pieces must argue from the facts. Pay attention to how she uses facts and draws politically incorrect connections among them. People would do well to think and not just be outraged.

Here's her Wiki bio. Her latest book is at the right.

Krauthammer 5/8/09

The Hamas "Peace" Gambit

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: There's another Middle-Ease peace offer, this one from Hamas. Terms: 1) Israel accept permanent Palestinian boundaries; 2) Israel gets in return a 10 year truce. After the 10 years is up, then it is back to war. That's the "peace offer".

Quote:

"Apart from the time restriction (a truce that lapses after 10 years) and the refusal to accept Israel's existence, Mr. Meshal's terms approximate the Arab League peace plan . . ."

-- Hamas peace plan, as explained by the New York Times

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

-- Tom Lehrer, satirist

My Views: Not sure why people support this offer, unless they will support anything that has the label "peace offer" on it. Hamas gets 10 years to organize war on Israel - how does this contribute to peace. Better that Israel maintains the means to keep the wars in the region down to some kind of low level, that the all-out holocaust that Hamas would surely fire, if it were given the time and opportunity to do so.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.

Krauthammer 5/1/09

The Torture Debate

My take on Charles Krauthammer's latest. His column was published in the Washington Post.

Summary: Torture is bad but like many bad things (war) there are exceptions when it is justified. This column identifies two exceptions and relates them to the events after 9/11/2001. The most telling fact that has become known about this whole controversy is that the key Democrats who now want to prosecute the Bush officials knew and approved this at the time.

Quote:

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.

My Views: This is really the key point to this. If the Bush Era tortures were so bad, then the leaders who were in on it ought to have said so - at least in private. While reasonable people can always criticize after the fact, reasonable people who knew what was going on did not do so. They ought to not be doing so now.

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Charles Krauthammer is a more establishment columnist. He came to punditry by way of psychiatry (at Massachusetts General Hospital) via the New Republic Magazine. He appears on TV where you never see his wheelchair. Here's his Wiki bio.

He wrote a book which is pictured at the right. I am drawn by the substance and the thinking than any particular writing flair.