Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.
John F. Kennedy

I saw this quote and it made me yearn for the days when Democrats had the cahones to stand up to someone not named Bush. Of course, being relatively young (37), I’ve never really seen those days. I’ve seen the days of Carter responding meekly to the Iranians, I grew up spending a lot of time in VFW’s and American Legion Posts with my Dad listening to how we could of won Vietnam if the politicians had stayed out of it, I’ve seen Clinton running out of Somalia and all the effects it had there. Now I see the Democrats declaring the war in Iraq is lost and crying for a pullout. I think that it’s because of things I’ve seen that I have a respect, even if begrudgingly, for Democrats like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman. It really starts to make my blood boil, that later today, while people are out eating burgers and dogs, while we’re watching fireworks ostensibly to celebrate our fight for independence that Democrats are planning and plotting on how to get us to surrender in Iraq. I wonder how the Democrat Party could of moved so far away from words of JFK
I’m reminded of that Ronald Reagan quote:

I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrats left me”

Now I wonder who else the Democrats are trying to leave behind. The list is sad in it’s occupants. The Democrats want to leave the Iraqi’s, the Afghani’s, the Israeli’s, the memories of the soldiers who’ve given life and limb in Iraq and Afghanistan, and quite frankly ever soldier that’s over there now, it wants to leave behind the ideals that America finishes what is starts and it wants to leave behind the America that JFK spoke of. It’s frustrating talking to extreme lefties these days, the vitriolic acid that drips from their voices or in their posts concerning Bush (sure I got my problems with the dude but not like the moonbats) or Cheyney.
The media isn’t any better. It just parrots the talking points of the Democrats cheerfully walking in lockstep with them down the road of abandoning the Iraqi’s and a little piece of our soul all at the same time. The shift has happened over time, it started with editorial pages and then slowly progressed to effect the entire newsroom and into our TV sets. What’s so astonishing is not only the amount of lies they will tell, but rather the truths they won’t tell. For reference go look at Michael Yon’s post Bless the Beasts and the Children. In it he talks about a village where over the course of some time Al-Quaeda slaughtered and tortured every man, woman, child, and even animals in the entire village so they could use it as a base to plant bombs on a local road. Even though there are other embedded reporters in Baqubah not one is reporting in the MSM about the slaughter Al-quaeda did here. He’s offered his pictures free of charge to outlets who want to broadcast about this slaughter, as I write this not one has taken him up on it. Our media is complicit in their silence, they don’t want to broadcast about this slaughter, rather they will lead with the latest American casualties in an effort to aid the Democrats path to surrender. They know that reporting an atrocity like this will instill support in our troops trying to bring peace and freedom to Iraq. How sad it is, that on a day we all celebrate our independence the Democrats and the media are working so hard to make us give up on granting the Iraqi’s the same thing. The last word tonight on the subject comes from this email that Instapundit put on his page (hat tip to HotAir.com).

Yon’s story doesn’t get attention because it is humiliating.

It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., – can’t do squat about such determined use of force.

Our words, images, arguments and skills can’t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won’t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.

So we pretend Yon’s massacre – and the North Korean killing fields, the Arab treatment of women, the Arab hatred of Israel, etc. – doesn’t exist, and instead focus our emotions and attention on the somewhat-bad domestic things that we can ‘fix’ with our DC-based allies. Things such as Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, etc. When we ‘fix’ them, then we get status, applause, power, new jobs, ego, etc.

Please don’t be surprised. We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.

The main stream media and all those who think that they aren’t biased. This article here won’t get much press, of course you cant’ expect an article that shows their bias to last long out there now can you?

Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)

News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff

Now that’s not entirely surprising, but what is concerning is the 9-1 ratio for donations among reporters to Democrats versus Republicans. Sure they can support who they want, but shouldn’t they disclose who they support when writing articles? Especially political articles?

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

I’m for one shocked. Simply shocked, that MSNBC actually reported this, perhaps it’s their way of saying they aren’t biased. What’s ironic here is that the paragon of media monitoring, the site devoted to rooting out bias in all things media….Media Matters.org isn’t reporting on this at all. Of course that’s to be expected since it’s a George Soros funded group that just likes to bash Fox.

Any real conservative or even someone who actively watches the MSM will realize it’s bias, all you have to do is look at the same story from different sources to see what gets changed or to see what parts get more emphasis then others.It’s an interesting piece, to see the list of reporters contributing to political parties/orgs look here. The Jawa Report has more on it here.

There’s been some buzz in the blogosphere recently concerning the Haditha Marines. Of course you won’t see it on the main stream media but there has been movement and it looks good for those Marines. To refresh your memories these guys were accused of slaughtering 24 Iraqi’s in cold blood. They maintained their innocence all the while. The media of course lied about it, John Murtha tried them in the press, and of course the world held us to a different standard.

Today I saw 2 different stories about it though that shows that the tide is turning in their defense and perhaps, just perhaps they will be proven innocent and release. One is here by Kit at Euphoric Reality and the other is here from Gateway Pundit. Great reads and I recommend that you all go and read both pieces, especially since you won’t see it on your night news casts anywhere.

Ok, this is funny and the writer of the article, of course doesn’t make the connection. It’s about the Republicans fighting with the Dem’s over earmarks i.e. the habit of tacking money onto a bill that shouldn’t be spent but is being spent to pander to a person, group, or business.

(06-14) 04:00 PDT Washington — For the second straight day, minority House Republicans ground the House to a standstill Wednesday as they drove home their objections to a Democratic plan to deny a floor vote on lawmakers’ thousands of pet projects.

Public anger over the surging number of special member projects called earmarks — derided as pork barrel spending — was a factor in the Republicans’ loss of House control last November, GOP members concede, and now they say they’ve gotten religion on the need for openness in government.

Ok, first things first, Love how the writer from San Fran, that notorious religion hating, republican hating city says they “got religion” anything to tie the Republican party more to religion and further away from defense, smaller government, and just plain values. It has to be “religion”, little touch of bias here eh?

Charges of hypocrisy flew in floor speeches as House leaders huddled behind closed doors to seek a way out of a dispute that Republicans said showed Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi had backed down on promises of openness and disclosure made when they took power last January.

Well, d’uh did you really expect Nancy “burka” Pelosi to keep her promises? Now seriously who here thought she would? Go ahead, raise your hands, I’ll wait. No one eh? Thought so. Most ethical congress ever!

Democrats argued Republicans were engaging in partisan attacks to try to embarrass Pelosi. They charged the GOP lawmakers lacked credibility on earmarks, the number of which exploded during their 12 years of House rule.

Now we get to some truth. Earmarks did explode under the Republicans, I’m ashamed to say. Now as to embarrassing Pelosi…well we can let her do that by herself just fine.

But Republicans cried foul over a plan by Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., for the House to pass all of the dozen spending bills without any earmarks.

Obey said House members from both parties — even while expressing concern about rising government spending — had inundated his committee with 33,000 earmark requests (remember this number for later-Logan). He said it would take the committee’s staff four weeks to study all those pork barrel requests and pare them to a manageable level.

Now, let’s think about this for a minute. Obey has a point, 33,000 is one heck of alot of earmarks to go over. He’s got to see which ones are for Republicans, and get rid of them. See which ones might actually improve the country and get rid of them, and then he’s got to see which ones might help make America stronger and get rid of them, and finally he has to see which ones are for anything that might have a hint of values in it and get rid of them. Poor man needs time. Thank Allah that it’s probably a lot less of them then under the democrats right? After all Pelosi promised to cut that down.

Obey proposed to put the earmarks into the bill as the House prepares to confer with the Senate to reconcile the two chambers’ different versions of the spending bills. Obey promised to disclose the list of the earmarks a month before such a conference, which Democrats hope to hold by late summer, so members and the public will have time to scrutinize and react to the projects.

But once the House-Senate conferees agree on a final bill, the rules of the House and Senate bar members from amending the legislation to remove individual items. That means, the Republicans charge, that Obey alone will decide on billions of dollars of federal spending affecting projects in practically every House district.

See now “Obey” isn’t just his name, it’s what he wants everyone to do OBEY lol. So what he’s saying is “lets pass the bill” and later when I confer with Senator Harry “we surrender” Reid and Teddy “Mary Jo who?” Kennedy to make sure I didn’t leave anything the republicans want in there I’ll put my stuff back in. In addition, remember this is coming from the party where Johnny “Abscam” Murtha threatened to block all earkmarks and appropriations of anyone who stood against him. What do you think the chances are of a republican earmark getting in? About the same as the Democrats finding some testicular fortitude in Iraq I bet.

In 2005, according to the White House budget office, under Republican control of Congress there were 13,492 earmarks in appropriations bills totaling almost $19 billion.

So earlier in the article the Democratic majority House was asking for 33,000 earmarks, and in the last session run by republicans it was 13,492 earmarks. So, between 2005 and 2007 it went up about 250%. Wonder what happened in that time frame to make earmarks go up so much? Hrm, could it be that in 2006 the Democrats took over? Most ethical congress ever eh?

“Our Republican friends are desperately looking for anything to squawk about because they haven’t been able to find anything substantive to complain about,” Obey said.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., heaped scorn on the Republicans. “What’s funny is that many of the Republicans who are fighting for the right to vote against earmarks … never met an earmark they didn’t like,” he said.

Seems like the only thing Democrats love more then surrendering is earmarks, wouldn’t you say? Now of course the writer of the article makes no correlation for the jump in earmarks and doesn’t point out at all that if the House went with Obey’s plan that it would be impossible for anyone to take earmarks out of a bill or even debate the viability of the earmark, but since the writer is in San Francisco, I really didn’t expect him to be unbiased or point out the foibles of the Dem’s.

Ok, so saw this op-ed piece in the New York Times and while I normally ignore what they write I had to comment on it all. Let’s have a look at it shall we? *all emphasis added in the block quotes are mine*

A Failure of Leadership

Published: June 9, 2007

The immigration compromise collapsed on the floor of the Senate Thursday night. Many of its hard-line foes are celebrating, but their glee is vindictive and hollow. They have blocked one avenue to an immigration overhaul while offering nothing better, thwarting bipartisanship to satisfy their reflexive loathing for amnesty, which they define as anything that helps illegal immigrants get right with the law.

Ok, don’t think that most who are against this train wreck of a bill are in glee right now. We know it’s going to resurrect it’s head like a George Romero zombie any day/week now. I’m glad to see that the NYT at least recognizes that illegal immigrants are not within our law. That’s one of the few pieces of truth in this op-ed. However they mislead by saying nothing better is offered. Many have offered better ideas and even amendments trying to fix the Amnesty bill. Ideas like, enforce current laws, or let’s deport the ones who are here and have broken more laws. Not many on the right are proposing massive deportations of 12-20 million people. We’ll take some attrition through enforcement. One of the biggest issues is that the bill tried to heal the wound without stopping the bleeding first. By this I mean that we tried to cure illegal immigration issues without stopping the numbers/influx from growing.

The tragedy is that the compromise bill was written to bring these restrictionists along, with punitive, detestable provisions that many supporters of comprehensive reform agreed to endorse for the sake of a “grand bargain.” The bill was badly flawed but fixable, as long as there was the possibility of leadership and courage in Congress.

The tragedy is that it really wasn’t a compromise bill at all. Calling it a “grand bargain” is tantamount to what a used car salesman calls a car that he knows is being held together by bubble gum, duct tape, and a hanger. It didn’t address any of the main issues with illegal immigration that worry so many in America. It didn’t address the sieve-like borders, catch and release letting illegal alien criminals back into the populace, and it didn’t address the financial impact on social security.

But obstruction happened. Republican amendments, designed to shred the compromise, happened.

Jeff Sessions wanted to deprive legalized immigrants — yes, legal residents — of the earned income tax credit, a path out of poverty for millions.

John Cornyn wanted to strip confidentiality protections for immigrants who apply for legal status, making them too frightened to leave the shadows.

Jim DeMint just wanted to kill the bill, so he voted for a volatile amendment whose substance he disagreed with. “If it hurts the bill, I’m for it,” he said.

Let’s look at the reality of these amendments.

Sessions wanted to only grant the earned income tax resident to those who had become legal CITIZENS. He didn’t want the tax credit to people who, while the bill had them as legal were not yet citizens. Really it’s not what the NYT’s claims it to be. They write the article in such a way as to make you think that he wants to withhold the EITC from citizens. Not True. He simply wanted immigrants to finish the citizenship process before they got this benefit of being a citizen.

Cornyn wanted “confidentiality protections” removed from the bill. What this means is that ICE would be able to share info with the FBI, or local police forces, or DEA etc on those utilizing the amnesty to get legal here. Think back to the 9-11 report. One of the issues that came out of the report was that different law enforcement agencies would not share info on criminals and it enabled people to slip past those who were supposed to protect the country. Democrats put that type of wall up during the Clinton years and have decried it being partially removed since 9-11. What the NYT’s isn’t telling you is that without this amendment by Cornyn it would be illegal for ICE to tell the DEA if one of the people who was granted amnesty just happened to be a member of a cartel from south America, or to tell the FBI that Achmed BombUtodeath just got granted amnesty after climbing over the fence.

Demint’s backed a few things. Mainly that illegal immigrants granted amnesty be required to provide their own health care like legal student visa holders, AND he wanted triggers put in that would ensure that the government was actually protecting the border like it should before granting amnesty. He also wanted all amendments to be debated and voted on. Shame on him for wanting Democracy and wanted to give a chance for all voices to be heard.

Look over the reality of those 3 Senators and tell me if there is actually anything wrong with what they want? I think the NYT once again shows how out of touch it is with America. Most American’s would agree with those 3 Senators, who might I add were eloquent in the defense of their amendments.

The anti-immigrant hard-core — no amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty ever — must not be allowed to hold the nation hostage. Like nativists of generations past, they think the country is being Latinized, and they fear it. The country is changing, but the way it always has, absorbing newcomers, shaping and being shaped by them, inexorably turning them, their children and grandchildren into Americans. Globalization has accelerated and complicated that upheaval, and decades of federal dithering have made things messy and chaotic.

No one is holding the nation hostage. It’s part of the American system where we debate bills and Senators vote not only on what they believe but on what their constituents want. Senators offices have been deluged with calls against amnesty, yet the NYT’s expects the congress to ignore what Americans want since they disagree with it. Part of the problem with illegal immigration right now is that they AREN’T trying to assimilate into our country and we ARE being latinized. Press 1 for English anyone? They are right that decades of dithering by the feds have put us into this spot.

Restoring order will be wrenchingly difficult, but it must be done. The country cannot leave an unlawful, chaotic system to fester, with legal immigration channels clogged, families split apart, crops rotting and state and local governments dreaming up ways to punish 12 million peoplewho aren’t leaving, no matter what Congress does. We cannot simply fortify a wall while continuing to extract cheap labor from cowering workers who risk death to get here. Inaction on immigration carries a brutally high price, but those on the phobic right are willing to mortgage their country’s future to pay it. whose identities are unknown to the authorities, and

Their right, restoring order will be extremely tough to do. It starts by stopping the influx of illegal immigrants and protecting our borders. Then we can look at attrition by deporting those who are here and breaking our laws. If the bill did those 2 things 75% of the people that the NYT calls “phobic” would quiet down almost immediately. Now as to local governments wanting to “punish” illegal immigrants (Barletta in Hazelton, he’s talking about you but stand firm!) that’s a “fire in a crowded theater” type line. It’s designed to scare people into submission, to punish those who stand firm in beliefs that the NYT’s does not hold to. Look at the “crops rotting” crap. That is fear mongering if I ever heard it. Does anyone truly believe that will happen?

Now as to the “build a wall” comment. We sure can build a wall, and we should. It’s a law and should be upheld. Illegal immigrants aren’t cowering since a lot of cities/states have become sanctuary zones so that to is a straw man argument. The NYT’s is willing to mortgage the culture, tradition,and safety of America over this, yet they point fingers at the right. One final note, they bash the right for the failure of the bill, yet it was Bush who frigging wanted it, yet their BDS is so strong he only gets blamed for it’s failure. One of the few times I was glad to see him fail.