Tuesday,
December 30 2003
THE TERRORIST CIRCUIT: Phil
Luciano writes in the Peoria Journal Star that his small town
in central Illinois is part of a "terrorist circuit"
that runs from coast-to-coast:
Peoria
and Champaign are part of a seven-city "circuit" that moves
and disperses terrorists to specific sites across the nation,
says Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy.
McCoy
got that information at a recent FBI conference in Springfield.
He shares that snippet of intelligence not to panic central
Illinois, but to stress what the FBI told police at the conference:
America, including much of its law-enforcement community, has
not taken seriously enough the threat of al-Qaida in this country...
The
terrorists enter the United States in San Francisco and Los
Angeles, then move to Phoenix, then Denver. From there, some
head to Peoria and Champaign. Some terrorists remain in those
communities, while others head on to New York City.
This seems
to be pretty big news. So why are we learning about it from a
columnist in Peoria and not one of the major media outlets? Don't
they have contacts at the FBI? If the story is true, now that
the "circuit" has become public you can bet the terrorists
will stop using it and set up another route. So did the PJ Star
scoop everybody in the country or did a county Sheriff just blow
the cover on a piece of intel that was supposed to be kept quiet?
(Hat tip: Illinois
Leader)
RUMBLING
ON THE RIGHT: I'm always a bit dismissive of the "Bush
is losing his base" stories that pop up from time to time.
So when I read this quote from today's Washington
Times piece - with the requisite ominous title "Rumbling
on the Right" - I had to chuckle:
"I'm
hearing a lot of anger," says Richard Viguerie, the guru of
conservative political direct mail. "I'm beginning, for the
first time, [to hear] people talk about 'it would not be the
worst thing in the world if Howard Dean were president,' because
the size of government would stay still rather than increase
50 percent under a second Bush administration."
First of
all, I'd be surprised if there were more than a handful of conservatives
in the country so ideologically rigid and shortsighted that they'd
be willing to let US national security suffer because non-discretionary
spending went up a few percentage points under Bush.
Second, you'd
have to be on some serious psychotropics to think "the size
of government would stay still" under a Dean administration.
That's absolute fantasy. Dr. Dean is on
record repudiating the idea that "the era of big government
is over." Dean's already on
record with a host of new spending programs that he'll finance
by reaching into Americans' pockets and repossessing the Bush
tax cut.
The only
thing that would prevent a Dean administration from increasing
the size of government is a Republican Congress - and their inability
to kick the pork habit this past year doesn't inspire a lot of
confidence.
The article
does go on to basically refute the idea that Bush is losing support
among his base by citing recent polls
showing him more popular at this point in his term among Republicans
than any President except Ronald Reagan. Those numbers are not
going to change between now and November.
In fact,
with so much at stake I suspect that if an angry,
combative Dean wins the nomination and decides to try and
run a hard-left general election campaign, we'll see a more energized,
united base behind a Republican president than there's been in
a long time.
- T. Bevan 10:15 am | Link
| Email
Monday,
December 29 2003
TAIBBI'S WAR ON CHRISTIANS: You'll have to forgive me if you've
already seen this
article by Matt Taibbi, because I hadn't. It appeared a couple
of weeks ago in the New York Press, though I don't remember hearing
anything about it at the time. It's the most vicious, arrogant
attack on Christians I've seen in some time and another example
of the yawning divide in America - not between the left and the
right but between the far left and the rest of the country. I
suggest you take time to read the whole thing.
Taibbi starts
by claiming that "nonbelievers in America are far too polite,
which will prove to be their undoing." To prove this point,
he goes on to launch ad hominem attacks against Billy and Franklin
Graham, calling them "fifth-rate shysters" who have
"spent decades engaged on a relentless quest to turn the
United States into the world’s revenge on smart people."
This is
impressive stuff: a misused anti-Semitic slur and the classic
liberal formulation that Christian belief equals stupidity. Ted
Turner would be so proud.
But there's
more here than the typical condescending remark to Christians
by members of the intellectually superior limousine left. Taibbi
and others like him actually believe Christianity has a negative
effect on society and is something we'd be better off without.
"Christianity,"
Taibbi writes, "has opposed social and scientific progress
virtually every step of the way for the last 2000 years."
Is that
so? Check the scorecards of the world's major religions over the
last two millennia and tell me which one has the best track record
of producing modern, progressive, and peaceful nations. Here's
a hint: it's not Islam.
Nevertheless,
Taibbi wants a war against Christianity:
In any
fight, you must meet force with force. Evangelism is naturally
expansive. Atheism is defensive. That is why they are growing,
and we’re sitting around like idiots watching as pious troglodytes
occupy the White House and send us hurtling hundreds of years
back in time, to the age of the Crusades...
The
time has come to put a stop to this sort of thing. And the way
to do it is not to shrug off the evangelical lunacy and simply
oppose them on the political front. We must attack the religion
directly. They are trying to convert us. I think it is high
time we start trying to convert them.
So there
it is. Taibbi doesn't have a beef with any other religions, of
course, indeed he can't bring himself to utter a single word critical
of any other faith or attack the IQ of those believing in anyone
or anything other than Christ.
Taibbi's
militancy and his blinding hatred of Christianity in particular
is another example of how the far, far left wing of the Democratic
party continues to move itself into ideological territory already
occupied by Islamofascists. -
T. Bevan 11:52 am | Link
| Email
