Questionable Tea Party Convention

Here is an interesting essay from one of the leading Conservative Bloggers on one of the leading Conservative blogs. (Okay, I admit it. I post there, too.)

Here's the important facts I gleaned from the piece.
1) The Convention is organized by folks no one has heard of before.
2) They are charging $500 a pop entrance fee.
3) They are a for-profit organization.

This is starting to sound like some hucksters are wanting to cash in on the tea party protesters. It started out as a grass-roots movement for ordinary folks to have their voices heard. Now, it is starting to have over-tones of a Ross Perot style third party.

Sarah Palin is going to be the keynote speaker at this convention. Why did she pass up other, more important speaking opportunities - such as the Guest of Honor at the House Republican's annual dinner last winter? - Or the Ronald Reagan Library event?

Her presence at this event may just wind up legitimizing a rip-off of a legitimate movement.

Steyn 1/9/10

Anti-Terror System Still Not Working

My take on Mark Steyn's latest. His column was published in the Orange County Register.

Summary:Airport measures taken since the Christmas terror attack have made things worse for passengers while not hindering more terror attacks.

Quote:

First, the bureaucrats at the TSA swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.

Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they were permitting only one item of carry-on on U.S. flights. In Toronto, no large purses.

Um, the Pantybomber didn't have a purse. He brought the bomb on board under his private parts, and his private parts weren't part of his carry-on. . . .

My Views: Valid point - National Security thinking needs to get away from all this politically correct, no profiling stuff. Clearly, the Fort Hood shooter should never have been promoted to Major in the US Army. It wasn't that his problems were unknown; it was the fear of official retribution if he was denied promotion - or (ahem!) kicked out of the army, entirely. Kicking him out of the country would have been too sensible.

Not valid point - the criticisms of Obama. Yes, he ought not have allowed the Christmas Terrorist a civilian trial but once he did, his remarks couldn't prejudice the prosecution. So the reliance on the word "allegedly" and so on. More significant are the President's latest statements on how the system failed and how things need to be improved.

Steyn's column is correct in critizing the President's actions; not so correct in criticizing the President's words. Sadly, actions still speak louder than words.

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Mark Steyn is a syndicated columnist from Canada. Here's his Wiki bio.

His latest book is on the right. This is the book that got several Human Rights Commissions in Canada hot and bothered. With free speech under unprecedented attack, Mark Steyn managed to pull out a badly needed victory. This was the first time a Canadian Human Rights Commission found a defendant innocent.

2009 Year in Review

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I've always liked JibJab's work. This is a funny video about 2009. I notice that they went real light on Health Care! I wonder why. It was too explosive, even for them.

The Peace Prize

Now for a story I missed in 2009. Almost everything to be said about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize has been said except for the elephant in the room. Why have a Nobel Peace Prize at all?

There's now been a century's worth of annual winners of this prize. How many among them made a real difference in World Peace? Many of them were great humanitarians. Many of them did lots of good deeds. But in settling the wars of the century, in preventing wars, how many of these winners ever did anything major?

The problem is that real peacemaking means doing things that automatically disqualify the person from ever getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Let's take up a couple cases of people who were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize - as a direct consequence of their peacemaking.

1) Franklin D. Roosevelt. He could have got it. In those darkest days of World War II, he could have announced that he was making peace with Hitler. H would have demanded a lot, but as long as FDR wanted to give him whatever he wanted, he could have got a peace treaty. Instead, he declared that the only peace he would accept with the Nazis was Unconditional Surrender. Warlike, true. But consider how much less peaceful the world would now be if the Nazis remained a major power in it.

2) Dwight Eisenhower. He ended the Korean War but that act precluded him from winning the Nobel Peace Prize. First, he got tough with the Communists. Told the Chinese that if they did not get serious about peace, he would start bombing them. Then, he accepted a truce (instead of a formal peace agreement). The U.S. army is there to this very day. But he stopped the fighting.

Now, let's look at the last few people who did win the Nobel Peace Prize (skipping Obama):

1) Mahtti Ahtisaari of Finland. What did he accomplish? His Wiki bio lists offices and awards, but what did he ever actually accomplish with any of them? He was the U.N. negotiaton on the Kosovo peace talks which failed. That's the noteworthy achievement.

2) Al Gore for his climate change work. Let's assume Gore is correct on every particular. Give him a Nobel Ecomomics Prize or even a Nobel Other Prize, but this work's relation to settling or preventing any war is tangental at best.

3) Grameen Bank is a banker who pioneered new banking methods for poor people. Give him an Economics Prize.

I could go on. Great humanitarians, great dedicated people but very few really made a direct contribution to World Peace.

And this is my problem with the World Peace Prize. Only those who act on the edges of the issue can get it. They're like the customer service reps at the Auto Service Centers who sit at their desks or wander the floor but who never crawl under the car and get their hands dirty. The mechanics who actually step into the gunk and are willing (and able!) to get dirty with the real decisions of War and Peace do not get awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I propose a Nobel Humanitarian Prize. That would be far more descriptive of what those dedicated individuals really did.

9 News Items Missed in 2009

These are 9 news stories that the establishment missed in 2009. Either they reported belatedly, partially, or not at all.

What strikes me about this list is how very important these stories were and how derided they were by the established elites. On the extremists-in-government stories, I recall how much attention was paid to these when the Republicans were in power. If they were important then, they were important this year, too.

More Terror Attacks on US

News today that another terror attack occured on NW Flite 253 to Detroit.

That's two attacks in just a few months. This compares to the record of the Bush years.

The Fort Hood attack was definetly related to left-wing attitudes on profiling and political correctness. This one is too new for us to know about yet. The suspect appeared to be a Nigerian who transited in via London and Amsterdam. Nigeria has a substantial Muslim population.

One of the Bush Administration anti-terror policies had been the cooperation of European Banks to track terrorism's financing. The New York Times decided to override Bush's objections and publicized this part of the anti-terrorism policy. As a result, the European banks invovlved, discontinued their cooperation. Since then, the threat of exposure and retaliation has inhibited private European institutions from cooperating with the US government.

For all the harranging on Bush for his anti-terror policies being too strict, the proof was in the scorecard. No major terror attack on US soil for the duration of his watch. Obama takes over and now what?

It is time to re-examine the Bush anti-terror policies. Those that worked and have been removed ought to be reinstated. Safety ought to trump ideology on this issue.

Middle East Necessity

This essay by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times says that we can't do the Arab's fighting and dying for them. They have got to take ownership themselves of the fight against terrorism themselves.

True, kind of. The problem of indeginous support vexed Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. Southerners who said they supported the Union but weren't willing to sacrifice to do it. Still, the job got done. The army had to conquer and then occupy the land for many years, though.