Good Riddance, Bob Bennett

Another edition of bullet pointed links to articles I haven't had time to write up but which are good.

• Peter Suderman of Reason.com looks at Paul Ryan, one of my favorite congressmen, and wonders if he's a serious reformer or just another compromised small government hypocrite. You decide.

• Harvard economist and former Reagan advisor, Martin Feldstein, argues in favor of an extension of the Bush tax cuts. I'm with him, natch.

• Former AG, Michael Mukasey, worries, rightly, that we are returned to a pre-9/11 (read: naive) mindset in treatment of terrorists. This is a problem. Unless you've forgotten history and think that these lucky breaks (panty bomber, failed Times Square bomb) are the new norm.

• To the point of terror and the Obama administration, Charles Krauthammer, one of the smartest opinionators out there, tackles the question of Miranda rights and the interrogation of terror suspects. Like immigration, this question isn't as easy at it seems.

• Another favorite of this blog, John Bolton (aka, The Mustachioed Badass), holds forth on the Greece-precipitated Euro-crisis.

• Meanwhile, Daniel Krauthammer reviews the Senate investigations into Goldman Sachs. I think this is a politically opportunistic show trial with little to no merit. Hopefully it also means Goldmanites will donate less to Obama in 2012. Maybe. Unless you think they'll also take advantage of any new regulatory regime to gain some advantage over competitors. That's probably what will happen. (h/t Scott L.)

• Bob Bennett is gone and I think it's a good thing. The MFM takes the liberal line that this is an example of hysterical conservative extremists over a good, reasonable, and conservative senator. Meanwhile, when Sestak defeats Specter in PA, that--that--will be a triumph over incumbency and a renewal of core American democratic principles. Huzzah for the little guy, or something.

• No weekly links post would be complete without at least one to my fav columnist, Bret Stephens. His column on Turkey carries extra weight for me as we recently traveled to Istanbul. I hope it doesn't turn into Iran; I'd like to go back someday.

• Finally, modern-day hero, General David Petraeus, was recently spoke at an AEI dinner wherein he received the Irving Kristol Award. His speech is (transcript here) is great review of the power of ideas helping to propel the success of The Surge. If you read nothing else from this week's list-o-links, read this.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Weekly Links: NYC, Neoconservatism, Secret Intelligence, John Bolton, Teh Panty Bomber, Tea Parties, Chessmasters, & Paul Krugman

In any given week, I collect so many links to good articles on which I'd like to opine, I'm unable to get to all of them. Thus, these weekly link dumps. If you're looking for something good to read, read one or all of these, listed in no particular order of priority.

(these aren't all political)

In NYC, old real estate families are getting back in the biz after the bubble burst on the new comers. (h/t Scott L.)

Father/dean of neoconservatism, Norman Podhoretz, answers questions about his ideology and why Jews tend to be liberal, among other things. (h/t Matt L. or Scott L.)

The Binyam Mohamed trial last week in London resulted in the release of secret American intel given to their British sources. According to high ranking British sources whom I personally questioned, the real concern is over the day to day sharing of intelligence between the middle management types. This will inevitably affect the long term development of intelligence.

My favorite ex-diplomat, John Bolton, makes the case for a military strike against Iran to preempt their development of a nuke.

Michael Mukasey, former US Attorney General, breaks down, point by point, why the administration's handling of the "panty bomber" did not have to be handled the way it was--Miranda rights, etc.

Glenn Reynolds reports on what he saw and heard at the Tea Party convention.

Russian opposition leader, Garry Kasparov, updates and warns us about current US policy towards Russia & Iran.

Finally, Paul Krugman makes an interesting argument on the one hand, if the Euro is to succeed, for greater EU political union and on the other hand, against the hubris of adopting an single currency. (h/t Taylor B.)

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More Change You Can Believe In: Obama Capitulates To The Russians

Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton to Rich Lowry:

"This is just pre-emptive capitulation, although like everything else, the rhetoric is that we're doing the opposite." It doesn't make sense that we should only be concerned with the short-and-medium-range threat and not also with "the long-range threat 2 or 3 years from now." And our intelligence on Iran is manifestly "inadequate." I wouldn't "bet a lot of money on it being right," and in any case, "there's this concept called 'break-out,'" where they achieve a quantum leap in their capability. It's a "bet against the future" that leaves "us and the Europeans in a more risky situation." All the talk of the intelligence changing and an enhanced short-and-medium-range capability is "blue smoke and mirrors" because they never believed in missile defense. "It's a convenient smoke-screen to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is to give up on missile defense in the hope the Russians will be nice to us." Secretary Gates’s comments were the "most disingenuous." Yes, we want a defense against the short-and-medium-range threat, but the whole idea of missile defense is based on a "layered defense." "Gates was a problem in the Bush administration on missile defense. He was always weak on this."

My man Mitt Romney is very sharp on this issue as well:

* The administration believes that by giving such a gesture of goodwill to the Russians, they will be more willing to give in to our request that they join in sanctions against Iran. Here, the president’s lack of negotiation experience may have come in to play. Yes, sometimes in a negotiation you give up something that is important to you, but you do that only when the other party has agreed to give you something you want even more. You don’t give before you get. But here it’s even worse than that: The president has taught Putin that when he blusters and threatens, America caves.

* The administration is also teaching our friends some very unfortunate lessons; the Eastern Europeans who have stood so valiantly with America and who took political heat for backing the missile-defense system have simply been brushed aside. They have to wonder why America is treating its foes better than it is treating its friends. It’s a question that also is surely being asked in Israel and Honduras.

* The administration’s discounting of Iran’s nuclear progress tells Israel that if it is to stop what its own intelligence may believe is an imminent threat, it may have to act alone — and precipitously.

Then, from Drudge, Analysis: Demise of U.S. shield may embolden Russia hawks and Barack Obama surrenders to Russia on Missile Defence.

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'Pressuring Israel, While Wooing Iran'

To my mind, John Bolton is the smartest, most astute foreign policy commentator. His recent article in the NY Post reminds those who forgot.

All the other regional problems would still exist even if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got his fondest wish and Israel disappeared from the map: Iran's nuclear-weapons program, its role as the world's central banker for terrorism, the Sunni-Shiite conflict within Islam, Sunni terrorist groups like al Qaeda and other regional ethnic, national and political animosities would continue as threats and risks for decades to come.

Instead, the US focus should be on Iran and the manifold threats it poses to Israel, to Arab states friendly to Washington and to the United States itself - but that is not to be.

President Obama argues that he will deal comprehensively with the entire region. Rhetoric is certainly his specialty, but in the Middle East rhetoric only lasts so long. Performance is the real measure - and the administration's performance to date points in only one direction: pressuring Israel while wooing Iran.

In this article, Bolton points out the obvious: Obama & Europe pressure Israel because they are the most reasonable party in this debate. I mean, they could try and put the screws to Hamas & Hezbollah, but those guys only respond to one type of pressure--the type of pressure they then artfully manipulate to make themselves appear to be the injured party (read: placing military/missile installations under & near schools & hospitals; wait for Israel to do something about it; cry "civilian massacre" and "humanitarian crisis"; watch as the liberal mainstream media & useful idiots in the US & Europe dutifully repeat this manufactured & farcical reality).

The other point I want to draw out is this: Just because the aggressor repeats their rationale for wanting to exterminate a country lots and lots of times does not make what they say true. Whatever their imagined insult emanating from the existence of Israel, rest assured that this is pure pretext.

That's not to say that the average Arab-on-the-street doesn't believe it to be so--in fact, I know they do--their mind-slave-masters in control of Iran, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., count on it.

So long as these grievance groups (they operate from basically the same public relations play book as Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson--only with violence added to the mix) can keep the focus on Israel, the United States, & (insert latest conspiracy involving Western powers), the oppressed populace will continue to ignore the fact that their "leaders" pocket all the "aid" (see Yasser Arafat) that comes from the West they are supposed to hate so much. Meanwhile, for them, everything remains the same--no peace, no prosperity, no democracy, no nothing.

These conflicts and imagined grievances are not for the benefit of the average Palestinian, they are to keep tyrants in charge and money in their pockets.

Want to know why there's no peace in the Middle East?

Ask yourself: Who has the most to lose were peace to break out between Israel and her neighbors?

Now you know why.


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Dateline: Xcel Center, RNC Day 3

UPDATE 4 Sept. 2:00am CDT: It's late, but I promised several people I would get some stuff up about Palin's speech tonight. Apologies for taking so long.

The short story: she hit it out of the park.

Like everyone else pulling for this ticket, I was hoping for something good and worried she might not deliver. But this, this was even better than I think anyone anticipated. She hit Obama and Biden hard--as did everyone all night long--and she appealed to the base. Make no mistake about it: the Republican base loves Sarah Palin.

I watched from the same place I've watched all the speeches all week--straight away from the podium on the concourse. It's a better vantage point that the press seats and puts me right in the mix with all the delegates. Of course they were going to respond positively to her speech, but if it were bad or not awesome (as it was), they could have just clapped politely--like they've done for several other speeches. But they didn't.

The atmosphere was electric. People were laughing, some of the women were getting emotional, and they were pumping their fists in response to some of the more red meat jabs at Obama. It was the perfect mix of all of the above.

One of the things I gather was missed by the folks watching at home was some of the crowd response. When Governor Palin talked about the media's stupdendously biased coverage of the campaign, the crowd sponatenously started chanting "N-B-C!, N-B-C!" and pointing towards the MSNBC booth stage right and up from Governor Palin. It was great. There is no question but that everyone knows that MSNBC is in the tank for Obama. They have completely lost all credibility.

As we sat in McGovern's after the session was over, we watched the various news outlets talk about Palin's speech. It was too loud to hear the audio, but we could gather from body language what everyone thought about the speech. Their body language was also an indication about how well she did. CNN & MSNBC pundits all looked angry. They were wagging their fingers at the screen and lecturing about who knows what--how much they hate Palin, or whatever. This is how much they hate her and how much they fear here.

All of this brings me to my last point: We interviewed Newt Gingrich tonight and he was very insightful. The one point he made that stood out to me had to do with the left's definition of feminism. What started out as a movement to advance the cause of and champion women, has been hijacked by a very narrow section of society who have defined "true" feminism in a very narrow way. True feminists would be proud of any woman who is going where no woman has gone before--women like Sarah Palin. But the feminists of the left demand that a woman be in favor of killing babies in order to join their club. As Newt pointed out, Governor Palin is turning the women's lib understanding of feminism on its ear. She is changing the definition. More than that, she's changing the whole language. She is telling women everywhere that they can be good mothers and wives and they can still serve their communities and their countries. She is telling women that they can be socially conservative and still be for women and for advancing women's causes.

In short, Sarah Palin is deconstructing the very carefully liberal-constructed understanding of feminism, so all can see it for the hateful, anti-human joke that it is. This is why the leftists in the blogosphere and the leftist dominated media are doing their worst to try and derail Sarah Palin.

But I've got news for the so-called progressives: It's not going to work. The rauccous chants of "N-B-C!" showed that Americans get it. They understand that what they're getting from the media about Governor Palin is not honest, hard-hitting journalism. It's a biased smear campaign of the worse sort. And there is beginning to be a backlash.

More tomorrow on Huckabee, Romney, Michael Williams, Newt, and others. So much good stuff to write about, so little time.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE 7:13pm CDT: Michael Williams: "Life begins at conception!" Also, Peggy Noonan:

with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?

UPDATE 7:02pm CDT: The video of the John Bolton interview is up.

UPDATE 6:09pm CDT: My editor, Matthew Sheffield, emailed a link to an article by Howard Kurtz, following up on Wolff's report of the Ailes/Murdoch/Obama meeting. It may have been innocuous, but it's really starting to look like Murdoch & Fox News were doing whatever they could to appease Obama so they're not shut out of a possible Obama presidency.

UPDATE 4:47pm CDT: Our interview with Howard Wolfson, former senior aide to Hillary Clinton and Fox News contributor is up. He's a good sport.

UPDATE 4:36pm CDT: President Bush last night:

Fellow citizens: If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the Angry Left never will.

UPDATE 4:21pm CDT: Just posted my long-time-coming Fox News/Roger Ailes/Rupert Murdoch/Barack Obama* piece over at NewsBusters. The story deals with Murdoch's conservative persona vs. desire to sell papers and ad time and Barack Obama's adversarial relationship with Fox News. Good stuff.

*Over-the-top performance, no real skill or experience.

UPDATE 3:55pm CDT: Finally, I got to interview one of my heroes, former Ambassador John Bolton. We'd been looking for someone to weigh in on media and leftist criticism of Palin's foreign policy experience (or, in their narrative, lack thereof) and who better than John Bolton? He told us that he has spoken with Governor Palin numerous times about issues like trade and missile defense and that she is competent on these issues and more--and further, that her experience there and knowledge there at least matched Barack Obama's.

UPDATE 3:42pm CDT: Just finished talking to Cal Thomas, cool conservative, about Palin, etc. Like everyone else, he thinks media attacks on Palin's family are repulsive. He thinks MSNBC is a joke whose only story is: conservatives are evil; Bush is evil, end of story. Once you've seen it once, why go back? And, as he pointed out, their poor ratings bear him out--no one is going back to watch the same old thing except for the angry left.

UPDATE 2:25pm CDT: Hot Air has video of Fred Thompson's speech. Do yourself a favor; check it out.

UPDATE 1:47pm CDT: The RNC just announced the schedule of events/speakers for this evening:

8 p.m. to 9 p.m.
- Speaker: GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele
- Speaker: Former Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.)
- Speaker: Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.)
- Musical Performance: John Rich, Gretchen Wilson, and Cowboy Troy

9 p.m. to 10 p.m.
- Speaker: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (N.Y.)
- Speaker: Gov. Linda Lingle (Hawaii)
- Video: Sarah Palin
- Speaker: Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin

Main: A lot to report since last night's early morning post:

- One thing I neglected to touch on was Fred Thompson's speech. It was fantastic. Those of us who have been following this race and have an inordinate interest in politics are familiar with John McCain's story, but for the passively interest American just tuning into the race, Thompson's narrative was powerful and compelling. And few people can tell a story like Thompson. Ace has a pretty good take on all the speeches, but one line stood out for me from the speech:

John McCain: "Character you can believe in."

Doesn't this just sum up the difference between the Democrat and Republican parties? Democrats love nebulous change, with no specifics, because it's "new" and "different" and "exciting." It doesn't matter what it means, just that it's change. Nevermind that things are the way they are because across the centuries, by and large they've been proven to work.

One other stark difference, at the Dems convention, they chanted O-ba-ma!, O-ba-ma! At the RNC, they chant, U-S-A, U-S-A!

- This morning at our blogger brunch, we listened to Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. He seemed like a reasonable enough dude, though he maintained his company's support of "net neutrality." One blogger said, "so you are against the very system that allowed your company to grow the way it did?" Schmidt: "Yes." He sounded like all the other rich Democrats. Now that they've got theirs, they want to shut things down so no one else can.

What was interesting was that he raised the specter of China as a possible reason for net neutrality. Of course, those of us who don't want government regulation of the internet in the way suggested by net neutrality point at China as an example as well. We trust the market to allow for freer speech than the do-gooders in government.

- Frank Luntz, a focus group pollster for Fox News spoke briefly at the convention and reinforced what we already knew: Sarah Palin needs to hit a home run tonight. Though her pick reinforces McCain's maverick, outside-the-beltway narrative, and though more experienced than Obama, she probably isn't even the 10th most experienced Republican (possible) VP choice. That does not mean, however, that she isn't possibly the most capable or talented or give John McCain the best chance to win. I'm comfortable with the image of Republicans taking a bit of a gamble (though I don't think it is one) with their VP choice especially when compared with the outrageously huge gamble Democrats took with Barack Obama.

- Ran into Brit Hume on the way to the brunch and he agreed to give us an interview later. First impression: he's taller than I'd anticipated. Second impression: he looks like he could use some sleep. At this point--the midway point--we call could.


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(Late) Sunday Night Links

These are the stories we've been reading this weekend.

- From the Daily Press, the unintended consequences--black market goodies--of public schools' crackdown on high calorie snacks. Libertarians & econ enthusiasts like us will love this one. (hat tip: Matt Lybbert)

- The Guardian reports on an female Iraqi sprinter who will compete in the Olympics this summer. Our feel-good story of the week, this definitely wouldn't have happened when Saddam was chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee.

- Before the Supreme Court is a very interesting case regarding the criminal trials in Iraq of men holding dual citizenship (US/Iraqi & US/Jordanian). Spiker, what say you?

- Writing in the LA Times, former Ambassador to the UN, and a man for whom we hold a great deal of respect, John Bolton, addresses Taiwan's complicated position. We know very little about this area of the world--what we learned in our Chinese history course at BYU and what we've read since then. Hopefully resident China/Taiwan expert, Dallas Stahle, will weigh in.

- Last, but never least, the only columnist we read every week no matter what (okay, we pretty much always read Daniel Henninger, too)--Mark Steyn. This guy is great. Smart, clever, and insightful. We're sure our liberal friends wish they had someone like him.

This week Steyn analyzes the state of Hillary's campaign. Writes Steyn,

The other day I gave a talk and a Democrat in the audience demanded that I disassociate myself from the sleazy attacks of some Republicans who’ve been referring to “Barack Hussein Obama.” I said I’d be happy to disassociate myself from (Clinton supporter) Bob Kerrey who’s been floating the whole nudge-nudge-Hussein-the-secret-Muslim thing, and to disassociate myself from (Clinton supporter) Bill Shaheen who’s been pushing the Obama-spent-most-of-the-Seventies-selling-cocaine rumors, and to disassociate myself from (Clinton supporter) Andrew Young who’s boasted that Bill Clinton has slept with more black women than Obama. And golly, after I’d got through disassociating myself from all the Democrat sleaze about Obama, I had no time to peddle any sleaze of my own.

Pretty much sums up how we feel.

*UPDATE 31 March 2008 4:38pm MST: Check out Ryan Decker's review of WFB and one of his recent books.


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