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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: i-node who wrote (212180)11/22/2004 2:39:00 AM
From: Peter Dierks  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1583820
 
'The Loss That Keeps On Giving!
November 17, 2004

As we wait for CBS to concede the election, Democrats are claiming Kerry lost because Americans are stupid – and if there's one thing voters respond to, it's crude insults.

This is not only the first step of a brilliant strategy to win the red states back, but also inconsistent with the Democrats' theory that Bush was an illegitimate president for the last four years because Democratic voters in Florida were too dumb to follow an arrow to the circle by Al Gore's name. How stupid were the alleged Gore-supporters who couldn't figure out how to cast a vote in the 2000 election?

Using classical Marxist thinking, liberals can't fathom how issues like abortion and gay marriage could trump ordinary people's economic interests -– which liberals axiomatically assume are furthered by the Democrats' offers of government assistance. Democrats are saying to voters: How can you be so stupid to subordinate your own selfish economic interests to "moral values," the betterment of the country and the general welfare of people you don't even know?

It can only be false consciousness. If liberals think the Bush vote was composed of illiterate homophobes who fear women in the workplace, perhaps the Democrats should start demanding literacy tests to vote.

Garry Wills – who fills in "occupation" on his federal tax return with "self-hating Catholic" – denounced America in the New York Times as an unenlightened nation full of people who believe "more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution."

By contrast, apparently, "enlightened" people believe in the Aborted Birth more fervently than they believe in national defense. And just in the interest of fairness here, Garry: At least there's some documentation on the Virgin Birth story. For people who believe so fervently in evolution, these Bush mandate-deniers sure are resistant to it on a personal level.

On the same day, on the same nuanced Times editorial page, both Wills and Maureen Dowd wrote that Kerry was defeated by a "jihad" of Christians. The jihadists, according to Wills, were driven by "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity." Dowd said they were "a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves ... opposing abortion, suffocating stem-cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage." Finally – a jihad liberals oppose!

Speaking of gay marriage, as long as liberals are so big on discussing "mandates" and whether Bush has one (they say he does not), I think the one thing we can all agree on is that there is definitely a "mandate" against gay marriage. In fact, a clear majority of us are uncomfortable with the word "mandate" because it sounds like Wayne asking Stephen out for dinner and a movie.

Reacting to Bush's re-election in that calm, reasoned way we have come to expect of liberals, they are running to psychotherapists, threatening to move to Canada and warning of a fascist police state – including their fear of a Hollywood "blacklist." (Now you understand how the myth of McCarthyism began, red states!)

One depressed Kerry voter committed suicide at Ground Zero. Meanwhile, the entire Democratic Party is also contemplating political suicide by making Howard Dean its next chairman.

Some Democrats are so despondent they've contemplated (hushed whisper) prayer. They're just not sure if they're supposed to pray to Bill Clinton or to their "Higher Power."

The day after the election, documentary filmmaker and Upper West Side denizen Mitch Wood told the New York Times: "Watching my kids this morning, going down the street, flicking things in the air, jumping around, I wondered, are they going to have that sense of freedom that I had growing up?"

As if on cue, a commercial jetliner piloted by Islamofascist hijackers did NOT crash in front of Wood at this point, killing his entire family instantly, in silent testimony to the national security we currently enjoy under President Bush. Wood gave no indication of noticing this.

A teacher on the Upper West Side, Ireena Gurvich, said, "I'm thinking of leaving the country." Gurvich said she wanted to go to Canada because, "it's a kinder and gentler United States." And yet you still ask why our children cannot read or write.

Another denizen of the Upper West Side, Patty Fondrie, said: "If it gets bad, we'll go to France," where she will probably be murdered by Muslims.

Michael Conway, an administrator at United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif., was quoted in the Times worrying, "What's going to happen, some kind of blacklist?" – suggesting an entirely new, if somewhat scatological connotation, to the term "A-list."

I think we have a long way to go from Michael Moore being an honored guest at the Democratic National Convention to a "blacklist" –- except for actors who believe abortion and gay marriage are "wrong." But here's hoping.

anncoulter.com



To: i-node who wrote (212180)11/22/2004 8:38:03 AM
From: Alighieri  Respond to of 1583820
 
Hey, it was the Left who actually THOUGHT sanctions would be adequate to control the guy.

Continue to lie to yourself...it makes for a very ignorant state of mind.

Now, we know sanctions could NEVER have worked -- we had these criminals at the UN in charge. Another ideal of the liberals.

Which counters the notion that this war was fougth over a pack of distortions on the administration's side, right? You won't be happy until several thousand more soldiers die for another mistake, and you will find things like the UN FFO program to make it all justified.

PS: It was working. The guy was disarmed....haven't you heard?

In 1998 they were removed because they were being refused access.

We are talking about 2003, but you know that.

In fact it is the cause of unprecedented anti-americanism, not only around the ME but the world.

They'll get over it.


So which is right, your first statement that the war will improve America's standing in the arab world, or this dismissal? LOL...

Al



To: i-node who wrote (212180)11/22/2004 1:41:28 PM
From: Alighieri  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1583820
 
I guess they'll get over it...

Al
=======================================================
Malnutrition Rising Among Iraq's Children

53 minutes ago

Middle East - AP

By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Malnutrition among Iraq (news - web sites)'s youngest children has nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq despite U.N. efforts to deliver food to the war-ravaged country, a Norwegian research group said Monday.

Since the March 2003 invasion, malnutrition among children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years has grown from 4 percent to 7.7 percent, said Jon Pedersen, deputy managing director of the Oslo, Norway-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science, which conducted the survey.

The U.N. Development Program and Iraq's Central office for Statistics and Information Technology also took part in the survey.

"It's in the level of some African countries," Pedersen told The Associated Press. "Of course, no child should be malnourished, but when we're getting to levels of 7 to 8 percent, it's a clear sign of concern."

Figures from different countries are hard to compare, said Caroline Hurford, a U.N. World Food Program spokeswoman in Rome, noting that surveys may be out of date or apply different sampling methods.

A UNICEF (news - web sites) survey of Middle Eastern and North African states in 2003 found 7 million children were found to be suffering from malnutrition.

Before the invasion, the level of malnutrition among children in Iraq was at about 4 percent.

The latest study of 22,000 Iraqi homes in April and May suggests some 400,000 children are suffering from malnutrition. The results were confirmed by Iraqi interim government officials involved in the study, although the official figures are contained in a UNDP report, which has yet to be released.

Calls by the AP to the UNDP and to UNICEF in Geneva were not immediately returned.

However, Alexander Malyavin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq, told The Washington Post that the figures clearly indicated a "downward trend."

Before the war, the U.N. oil for food program was credited with nearly doubling the Iraqi population's annual food intake and reducing by half malnutrition levels among children.

That program lasted seven years before it was taken over in December 2003 by the U.S.-led coalition, which operated it through June 2004.

Since Saddam's ouster, the U.S.-led coalition has faced a growing insurgency which led to problems getting adequate supplies of food into hot spots, particularly in and around Sunni areas to the north and west of Baghdad.

In September, the Rome-based WFP reported that some 6.5 million Iraqis remained dependent upon food rations, a lifeline that has been increasingly threatened by the lack of security.

Earlier this month, the WFP, said its distribution of 1.6 million tons of food was completed, but noted some shortages, although it didn't say of what and where.

The WFP followed up with a one-year, US$60 million emergency food distribution operation aimed at providing 67,000 metric tons (74,000 tons) of food specifically for 220,000 malnourished children and more than 1.7 million primary school children.

Pedersen noted that the malnutrition levels were different throughout Iraq, with the most severe being in the southwest portion of the country while the northern reaches, which are Kurdish-controlled, had little malnutrition.



"It's clear that some parts of the country like Sulaimaniyah in the north have very little," he said. "And that is easily explainable in that it was outside of the Hussein regime, was supported by a lot of international NGOs and has been largely unaffected by the current unrest."

Regardless of the unrest that has gripped the country, Pedersen said the findings were still puzzling.

"Given the fact that World Food Program has distributed a lot of food, it's quite clear that one could expect some malnutrition, but the level that there is, it's a bit difficult to explain."