Updated: The "Blessings" Of Bush Ongoing In Iraq

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism

The heyday for Iraq’s Christian community was under Saddam Hussein, when “Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq’s population in 1980. By 2008,” thanks to the Bush pig, “they were merely 0.89 percent.” Iraq’s “dwindling Christian community,” “whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries,” has suffered a terrible loss today.

“Militants seized a Baghdad church during evening Mass, held the congregation hostage and triggered a raid by Iraqi security forces. The bloodbath left at least 58 people dead and 78 wounded — nearly everyone inside.”

Judging from the outcome of the “rescue” raid led by the Iraqi security forces, the latter took almost as much care to avoid casualties as the militants themselves. We trained those Iraqis well, now didn’t we?

If you think Americans are capable of changing the fundamental disregard for the sanctity of human life, endemic among Muslims in that part of the world—you’re an idiot.

UPDATE: Here are some of the headlines coming out of Iraq, via Antiwar.com:

21 Bombs Across Iraqi Capital: At Least 110 Killed

Church Massacre Another Blow for Iraqi Christians
Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy
Iraqis Fear al-Qaeda Revival After Church Siege
Tuesday: 117 Iraqis Killed, 322 Wounded

But what of those ink-stains digits? Democracy is a mess of pottage. It does nothing to safeguard what matters: life, liberty and property.

One Twisted Brother

Barack Obama, Critique, Elections, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

Dana Bash, a CNN reporter who is never bashful about covering the president favorably, cringed when forced to deliver John Boehner’s rapid response to Barack Obama’s “enemies” quip. Recall that “during an interview last Monday on the Spanish-language radio station,” Mr. Obama tried to galvanize Latinos by referring to his opposition as “our enemies” who need punishing.

Posted only much later in the day on CNN (@8:01 PM ET), and only after the Obambi-issued mea culpa had already gone up on the network’s website, here is the House Minority Leader’s rather good response to that twisted brother:

“Mr. President, there’s a word for people who have the audacity to speak up in defense of freedom, the Constitution and the values of limited government that made our country great,” Mr. Boehner is set to tell an audience in Cincinnati tonight. “We don’t call them ‘enemies.’ We call them patriots. … “We have a president in the White House who referred to Americans who disagree with him as ‘our enemies,’” Mr. Boehner’s speech says. “Think about that. He actually used that word. When Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush used the word ‘enemy,’ they reserved it for global terrorists and foreign dictators – enemies of the United States.”

Sadly, we have [a] president who used the word ‘enemy’ for fellow Americans…fellow citizens,” the speech continues. “He uses it for people who disagree with his agenda for bigger government…people speaking out for a smaller, more accountable government.

The Venerated Vote Discounted

Democracy, Elections, Individual Rights, Political Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans

The other day I said to a (male) friend: “I would give up my vote if I could be assured all women would do the same.” He replied: “In that case, I would consider voting.”

So does the vote count? Or does every vote counts?

Not at all. In “Default and Dynamic Democracy,” Loren E. Lomasky observed that, “As electorates increase in size, the probability that one’s vote will swing the election approaches zero” … “[I]n large-number electorates, there is a vanishingly small probability that an individual’s vote (or voice) will swing an election … [F]or citizens of large-scale democracies, voting is inconsequential.”

The winner in an election is certainly not the fictitious entity referred to as “The People,” but rather the representatives of the majority. While it seems obvious that the minority in a democracy is thwarted openly, the question is, do the elected representatives at least carry out the will of the majority?

In reality, the majority, too, has little say in the business of governance – they’ve merely elected politicians who have been awarded carte blanche to do as they please. As Benjamin Barber wrote:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.

In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy E. Barnett further homes in on why genuinely informed individuals have little incentive to exercise their “democratic right”:

If we vote for a candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for, but we have also consented to the laws she has voted against.
If we vote against the candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for or against.
And if we do not vote at all, we have consented to the outcome of the process whatever it may be.

This “rigged contest” Barnett describes as, “‘Heads’ you consent, ‘tails’ you consent, ‘didn’t flip the coin,’ guess what? You consent as well.'”

On a more pragmatic note, here is how my libertarian WND pal, Vox Day, explains why there will be “No Change After Nov. 2”:

“The reason we can be sure that the Republicans are going to betray the tea party once they come to congressional power is that we know that they are not going to even attempt to solve any of the four most pressing problems facing the nation at the moment. In some cases, Republicans are almost certainly going to try to make them worse. Consider:

1) The economy. Republicans have nothing to offer on the subject. They are almost completely silent on the subject of state bankruptcies, pension-fund shortages and the secrecy of the Fed. Trading fiscal policy-oriented Neo-Keynesians for monetary policy-oriented Monetarist Keynesians isn’t going to materially improve anything.

3) Immigration. Republicans are mostly on the wrong side of this as well, being self-destructive fans of unsustainable open borders.

4) The endless wars. Republicans still support invading and occupying other nations despite the overall cost of the Bush/Obama wars now exceeding one trillion dollars.”

(I omitted Vox’s second point, “The massive mortgage fraud.” As you all already know, as much as I abhor the fractional reserve system that embroils banks in fraud, I do not agree that the facts, to which one must cleave religiously, support the case of the deadbeat defaulters. But we’ve both written exhaustively—and respectfully–about our “foreclosure fracas” disagreement.)

To Vox’s list of Republican contributions to the political morass we’re in, Paul Gottfried adds some other intractable accomplishments.

Zombie Zakaria Has Some “Ideas” For You

Affirmative Action, America, Education, Europe, Government, Labor, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Political Economy, Science, Technology

Fareed Zakaria: is there anyone more inane and wishy-washy than he? Zombie Zakaria’s “Restoring the American Dream” presentation is in the tradition you’ve come to expect from this CNN pundit.

Thus, Fareed vows to “bring you solutions” to “the hollowing out of the middle class” by growing the state’s role in R & D, for, as he concludes, “Almost all of the science and technology research that we take for granted now came out of the Defense Department spending post World War II.”

But surely, and logically, we cannot assert that because the DOD (the Department of Defense) gave rise to certain technologies, without it these inventions would not exist, as ZZ claims? It might be the case that sans state intervention, there would be even more innovation than with it.

This guy’s “ideas” are festooned with similar falsehoods.

Another of ZZ’s lessons comes courtesy of the super-productive German workforce.

“Despite some of the highest wages in the world, strong unions, lots of regulation, Germany has maintained a very powerful manufacturing base, employing millions,” ZZ opined. “It has held in good stead during this economic crisis. Germany’s unemployment rate has actually fallen for the past 15 months straight, an unbelievable record in this economic climate.”

As ZZ narrated the above passage, images of industrious German factory workers flashed on the screen, and were contrasted with the long lines of the unemployed in America. Guess what the American assembly and unemployment lines look like? You are right: By comparison, the German workforce so famous for its industry looked relatively homogeneous.

Still, ZZ hopes to apply efficiencies learned from the German cohort to America’s increasingly third-world, imported, underclass of workers. (“The United States,” we are told, “now ranks 52nd in the world in quality of science and math education.” It used to have “very high levels of performance in math and science.” What happened other than suffocating unionization in education, third-world immigration, and affirmative action?)

As Fareed and his well-to-do, high-achieving (indubitably high IQ) guests conclude, and I paraphrase, opportunities are indeed boundless if somebody has the smarts and the motivation; everybody can be the designer of an iPod or a programmer at Google; this essentially, is not a rarified group. Any one can get to be at “the top end of America.”

ZZ’s smart panel, which can never be called an interest group plumping for government/taxpayer subsidies (no never!), included Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola; Lou Gerstner, who has run R.J. Reynolds, American Express and IBM; and Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO of Alcoa, the aluminum giant.

All were agreed that laborers are interchangeable in as much as potential is concerned, and if given the right conditions by government.

I have advocated in my writings for “a natural shift from a credit-fueled, consumption-based economy, to one founded on savings, investment and production.”

ZZ favors only a shift from consumption to investment; massive federal-government investment.