Blogs For Victory

In response to the shocking death of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho:

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 16, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI made a strong appeal for peace in Iraq today, in the wake of the kidnapping and death of the archbishop of Mosul.

The Pope led the praying of the midday Angelus in St. Peter’s Square after he celebrated Palm Sunday Mass. He began his pre-Angelus address with a tribute to Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul.

The 65-year-old archbishop was kidnapped Feb. 29 after leading the celebration of the Way of the Cross. His two guards and driver were shot and killed…

…”At the end of this solemn celebration in which we have meditated on Christ’s Passion,” the Holy Father said today: “I would like to recall the late Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Monsignor Paulos Faraj Rahho, who tragically died a few days ago.

“His beautiful witness of fidelity to Christ, to the Church and his people, whom he did not want to abandon despite numerous threats, moves me to cry out forcefully and with distress: Enough with the bloodshed, enough with the violence, enough with the hatred in Iraq!”

The Holy Father went on to plea for an end to the upheaval caused by the war in Iraq, which began five years ago this week.

He said: “And at the same time I make an appeal to the Iraqi people, who for five years have endured the consequences of a war that has provoked upheaval in its civil and social life: Beloved Iraqi people, lift up your heads and let it be you yourselves who, in the first place, rebuild your national life!

“May reconciliation, forgiveness, justice and respect for the civil coexistence of tribes, ethnic groups and religious groups be the solidary way to peace in the name of God!”

The left, following the lead of dimwitted MSM reports, has chosen to call this a Papal condemnation of the liberation of Iraq – of course, what it really amounts to is a heartfelt call for what all good people want – an end to the hatred, which can only be accomplished as Iraqis rise up and work for reconciliation, justice and peace. Iraqis are doing this, in ever greater numbers, but let us pray that the death of Archbishop Paulos serves as a catalyst to bring all Iraqis of goodwill together for the future of Iraq.

From NRO’s The Corner:

JP Morgan Chase + Bear Stearns

A great old firm got bought out today for peanuts. I was a partner before and after the Reagan administration. A sub-prime credit casualty.

Paulson and Bernanke have done exactly the right thing. It was a run on the bank. The Fed stopped it right there. No banking crisis.

The big Wall Street banks are in good shape, even with earnings losses they’re still well capitalized, profitable and solvent. Fed stopped it from spreading on Friday; JPMorgan takes them over tomorrow.

The Fed cut the discount rate today by a quarter point. It will reduce target the fed-funds rate on Tuesday. The banking system will function fine. That’s the key.

Paulson was good on the talkies today, emphasizing confidence in the banking system. He’s a capable guy who is working the phones and is in touch with everyone This is how to stop a crisis. Bush was right to put on an optimistic face on Friday in my interview and later in his speech to the N.Y. Economics Club.

Senator Schumer is calling Bush “Herbert Hoover.” But Hoover signed protectionist Smoot-Hawley, just as Hillary and Obama are today trying to break up NAFTA. Hoover signed a huge tax increase, just as Hill-Bama are preaching. The Dems are emulating Hoover. Bush is trying to stop it.

But the administration should be pushing for a strong dollar. That would help.

That is the one thing missing – the push for a strong dollar. On the other hand, the rest of the world will likely start to shore up the dollar pretty soon – a cheap dollar means exporting to America is getting vastly more expensive. For all the Euro-zone’s chest thumping about the Euro’s value vis a vis the dollar, they never really wanted it to be significantly more valuable than the dollar because a strong Euro means Europe has a harder time exporting to us, and a harder time keeping out US exports. Same thing with China, Japan – heck, the whole world. No one wants to be shut out of the US economy, and the falling US dollar is making it harder and harder to sell us stuff, while making it easier and easier for us to go the other way.

One of the best things we could do for strengthening the dollar would be to make the Bush tax cuts permanent – part of our problem is that foreign investors see HillBama and worry that next year we’ll see a very massive tax increase, thus making returns on US investments much smaller…so, much better, for now, to put the money in Euros, gold and oil futures…our task is to drag that money out of those three shelters from potential Democratic tax hikes.

When it was suicide-bomber violence all the time, the MSM couldn’t get enough coverage of Iraq…even if they had to use video and pictures provided by (and sometimes staged by) the terrorists, themselves….my, how times have changed:

NEW YORK — Remember the war in Iraq?

The question isn’t entirely facetious. The war has nearly vanished from TV screens over the past few months, replaced by stories about the fascinating presidential campaign and faltering economy.

Yet Americans continue to fight and die there, five years after the war started in March 2003…

…Statistics clearly illustrate the diminished attention. For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for 3 percent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s survey of news coverage. During the same period in 2007, Iraq filled 23 percent of the news hole.

The difference is even more stark on cable news networks: 24 percent of the time spent on Iraq last year, just 1 percent this year.

And its not like there isn’t plenty of “if it bleeds, it leads” sort of stories to report from Iraq…but it seems that stories of terrorists bleeding at the hands of Coalition and Iraqi forces just doesn’t command the media attention which suicide bombs used to. Why is this? Simple – to report from Iraq in 2008 is to report that we’re winning – and this doesn’t fit the MSM template for Iraq, and thus it becomes a non-story.

But we here at Blogs for Victory haven’t forgotten the war – and here’s a recent story of another victory in Iraq.

Our leftwing friends leaped with glee on the leak about this report – because the leak had that the report was all about how Saddam wasn’t connected to al-Qaeda. This was a false leak – the report doesn’t say that. What it says (page ES-1) is that no “smoking gun” was discovered showing a direct connection between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. This is a far cry from the leaked assertion that Saddam had nothing to do with al Qaeda. Further undermining the series of lies the left has spread about Saddam and terrorism, the report notes that Saddam’s regime had strong ties to various Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations – the left assuring us endlessly that Saddam’s allegedly secular regime was the sworn enemy of Islamic fundamentalism, and thus Saddam would never have cooperated with al Qaeda.

The report has some other interesting facts:

1. In 1999, the top ten graduates of Saddam’s terrorist training were dispatched to London, on call at a moment’s notice to conduct terrorist operations around the world.

2. Saddam’s terror masters stockpiled weapons (via “diplomatic pouch” to Saddamite embassies) in Romania, Greece, Austria, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Czech Republic, Turkey, Yemen, Azerbaijan, Lebanon and the Gulf States.

3. As war impended in 2002, Saddam’s terror masters concerned themselves with how to dispose of these terrorist weapon stockpiles in nations likely to come in to the anti-Saddam coaltion.

4. Saddam’s intelligence service developed high tech car bomb technology as early as 1999.

5. Saddam’s intelligence service developed means of smuggling suicide vests past checkpoints.

6. Saddam’s intelligence service developed means of producing IED’s as early as August of 2001.

7. There is a memo dated September 22, 2001 listing highly educated, Baath party members who are designated for suicide terrorist actions.

8. An August 2002 memo indicates that Saddam’s intelligence service will set up suicide training for non-Iraqi suicide volunteers during the summer vacation period.

9. A 1993 memo detailing Saddam’s support for Fatah, Palestine Liberation Front, Force 17 (a Palestinian terror group), Renewal and Jihad Organization, The Palestinian Abd al-Bari al-Duwaik, Islamic Jihad Organization, Islamic Ulama Group, The Afghani Islamic Party, Jam’iyat Ulama Pakistan.

10. A 1993 memo showing Saddam providing training for terrorists from Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Eritrea and Morrocco.

11. A 1993 memo showing that Saddam wanted to use his trained terrorists to kill Americans bringing humanitarian assistence to Somalia.

12. A September, 2001 memo showing Saddam wanting to work with Islamic radicals to undermine the Kuwait government.

13. A 2001 memo showing that various Palestinian terror cells were at Saddam’s disposal as a quid-pro-quo for Saddam’s support for Palestinian terror groups.

14. A January, 1988 memo showing Saddam providing $2.5 million to the terrorist Abu Abbas (who was later found dead in Saddam’s Iraq right before the start of the liberation).

15. A pre-9/11 memo from 2001 showing Saddam’s agents carrying out deliberate attacks on American aid workers.

16. A July, 2001 memo showing a direct interest by Saddam’s regime in working with the bin-Laden affiliated terror group, The Army of Muhammed.

What we have here is a complete demolition of the leftwing narrative about Saddam vis a vis the terrorist threat we faced, and still face.

Saddam was not “boxed in”; Saddam was more than willing to work with Islamist groups; Saddam was preparing for conflict long before 9/11 – in fact, if you look at some elements of Saddam’s program, it is a clear parallel to al Qaeda…foreign fighters recruited for “martyrdom” operations and then set out to do their master’s bidding. The report cleverly notes that the best way to look at Saddam’s regime and bin-Laden’s terrorist group is like the differences between the Cali and Medellin drug cartels – competitors, but with a shared interest in thwarting US attempts to stop their activities.

The critics can keep their head in the sand, if they wish, but when President Bush stated that Saddam’s Iraq was a growing threat, he was speaking the absolute truth. Taking out Saddam’s regime has greatly reduced the ability of terrorist’s to strike at us and thus made the United States, and the world, a safer place.

Bobby Jindal leading the way in Louisiana:

Jindal ‘bats a thousand’ at session

BATON ROUGE — The state Legislature on Friday wrapped up its second special session during the 2-month-old administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal by completing a full sweep of the governor’s proposed package of business tax cuts and $1.1 billion in surplus spending priorities.

Jindal and his legislative allies won all the initiatives they set out to accomplish during the six-day session, including a controversial bill to grant a partial tax deduction for private school tuition.

Flanked by many members of his supporting team of lawmakers at an evening news conference, the governor framed the results as a positive statement on Louisiana’s national image.

“This group should be proud of batting a thousand,” Jindal said. “The country’s watching us … we know they’ll like what they see.”

The session followed a February lawmaking period in which the governor passed a slate of new ethics laws. A regular spring session of the Legislature will begin March 31.

Lawmakers passed bills to eliminate a 1 percent sales tax that businesses pay on utilities, an estimated annual savings to Louisiana companies — as well as a loss of state revenue — of $69 million. They also passed an expedited phaseout of taxes on corporate debt and on manufacturing machinery and equipment. Those taxes were widely seen as burdens on companies that expand their operations, therefore placing Louisiana at a competitive disadvantage with other states.

What have you Democrats got as your “breath of fresh air”? Barack Obama – an ultra-liberal product of the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine…you can keep him; we GOPers have genuine change we can believe in. Bobby Jindal is just starting out, and he’s already done more real things for people than Barack Obama could ever dream of doing – it is in this youthful, idealistic conservatism where we’ll finally win all down the line, crushing the life out of that leftwing thought which has been desrtoying our nation for decades.

You can’t win, lefties – your worldview is built on lies and thus it never, ever works when put into practice. Sure, you’ll be able to win an election or two, from time to time, but not by running on what you are; only by hiding it…but we’re out there, telling people what we believe, and then putting it into place…and it works, every time we try.

More oppression in Tibet:

Clashes between protesters and security forces in Tibet’s main city, Lhasa, have left at least two people dead, according to reports.

An emergency official said that many people had been hurt and an unspecified number had died.

The US-based Radio Free Asia quoted witnesses who said they had seen at least two bodies on Lhasa’s streets.

Tibet’s government would “deal harshly” with the protesters, its Chairman Qiangba Puncog warned.

“We will deal harshly with these criminals who are carrying out activities to split the nation,” he told the Associated Press news agency, denying that police had opened fire.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency earlier said police had fired warning shots and used tear gas to disperse protesters.

Rallies have continued all week in what are said to be the largest protests against Beijing’s rule in 20 years.

Most people are for free trade with China – including President Bush – on the theory that the more we trade with them the more liberty there will eventually be in China. Others are opposed to free trade with China – labor unions leading the way here – because they simply don’t want to compete with China’s cheap labor. I’m with neither camp – neither free trader nor protectionist: I’m for freedom trade.

I’m sick to death with these tyrannical regimes which presume to have the authority to actually do what they do. We can’t get rid of them all, but we can certainly cut our ties to them. I’m for completely free trade, but only with other free nations – we should ditch all trade agreements with China, and open trade agreements with, say, India. It is time for the free people of the world to firmly and without question stand athwart the unfree nations – and stand with their enslaved populations.

UPDATE: The International Olympic Committee urges people not to boycott China’s Olympics over the Tibet situation. My answer: You miserable, truckling cowards at the IOC should have thought of that before you awarded the Olympics to an anti-human, totalitarian dictatorship.

“America is still the No. 1 killer in the world.”

“We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

“The government gives [black Americans] the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people … God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

“We started the AIDS virus … We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty…”

Those are the words of Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s spiritual guide and mentor. Jeremiah Wright isn’t merely some pastor who endorsed Barack Obama.

Barack Obama has been going to Jeremiah Wright’s church for two decades. He officiated Barack and Michelle Obama’s wedding. He baptized their children. The title of Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, comes from one of Wright’s sermons. Obama personally thanked Wright after winning his Senate bid in 2004. Obama “prayed” with Wright before announcing his bid for presidency.

In addition to the above quotes, just days after September 11, 2001 he said, “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye … “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

This is the kind of anti-white, anti-Israel, anti-American rhetoric that Barack Obama has been listening to for 20 years. And what does Barack Obama say about his church? Just last month he said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.”

And yet, Obama’s supporters want us to ignore this story… just push it under the rug. While they’ll align Republicans with any obscure pastor who does or says something controversial, they’re trying to convince us that Obama’s 20-year long close relationship with Wright, including his effective endorsement of him, his church and rhetoric with a $22,500 donation in 2006 is irrelevant.

UPDATE: Wright holds an official position in Obama’s campaign.

UPDATE: Wright leaves Obama campaign.

Obama’s campaign announced that the minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., had left its spiritual advisory committee after videotapes of his sermons again ignited fierce debate in news accounts and political blogs.

Obama urges voters not to reject his candidacy because of guilt by association. I’m sorry, but this goes far beyond guilt by association. Wright’s departing the campaign was a politically motivated cover to protect Obama’s campaign, and clearly not a repudiation of Wright himself or his ministry, as Barack Obama has been connected to Wright for twenty years, and has less than a month ago dismissed criticisms of the church by saying “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.”

UPDATE: Obama actually makes an appearance on FOX News.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Obama defends himself, and not too well:

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

In other words: “I really want this to go away, and so I’m going to try and narrow it down to a condemnation of ‘anything which makes you mad’ without an actual condemnation of the worldview holding America to be a racist nation”.

Not good enough for me, Senator – I want to know if you believe in Wright’s overall preaching, or whether you disagree with it. Like this – I mostly agree with my pastor, but I disagree with his stance on the war…on the other hand, I believe his stance on the war is a valid position to hold in light of the message of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. I won’t say “I categorically denounce” my pastor’s views on the war even though I disagree with them. Are you, Senator, or are you not, a fully communicating member of “Trinity United Church of Christ”?

So much for change you can believe in:

Sen. Barack Obama requested $8 million for a military defense contractor that has close ties to one of his most prodigious fundraisers.

Obama disclosed the 2006 request on a long list of earmark requests his campaign made public today. The $8 million was for something called a “High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program.” The request led to $1.3 million in funding for the program. According to the campaign’s earmark disclosure, the defense project was overseen by General Dynamics, one of the nation’s largest military contractors. Obama’s Illinois finance chairman, James S. Crown, serves on the company’s board of directors and his family holds a sizable stake in the company.

Crown and his wife, Paula Crown, are members of Obama’s National Finance Committee and have raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign, according to a list of fundraisers posted on Obama’s campaign website.

If you can see a difference between Obama and the rest of the corrupt Democratic leadership, then you are much more perceptive than I am. All I can see is an ultra-liberal extremist who makes certain the money men get paid for their support…

The sufferings of the Christians in Iraq continues:

Mosul, Mar. 13, 2008 (CWNews.com) – Archbishop Bishop Paulos Faraj Raho of Mosul, the Iraqi prelate who was kidnapped by gunmen on February 29, is dead.

The kidnappers of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop, who had been demanding a heavy ransom, told Church officials that the archbishop was dead, AsiaNews reports. The kidnappers reportedly gave instructions on how Church officials could recover the archbishop’s body.

Archbishop Raho was seized outside the Holy Spirit cathedral in Mosul after conducting a Stations of the Cross service on Friday, February 29. His driver and two bodyguards were killed by the gunmen who abducted the archbishop.

In the days since the kidnapping, Church leaders had pleaded in vain for some clear evidence that Archbishop Raho was alive and well. The archbishop, who was 69, suffered from a serious heart condition and needed daily medication. It remains unclear whether Archbishop Raho died of that heart ailment or was killed by his abductors.

Informed of the prelate’s death, Pope Benedict XVI issued a statement condemning “an act of inhuman violence that offends the dignity of the human being.”

The critics are as-usual on this – because evil men killed a good man, our effort in Iraq is a failure. The critics, however, are easily and best ignored these days; so invested in defeat are they that they no longer even approach rationality.

But it cannot be denied that the situation of Iraqi Christians is desperate – in spite of many efforts on the part of Iraqi Moslems to do the right thing, the small Iraqi Christian community is all too easy as a scapegoat for any radical and/or criminal group which wants to make a point, or even just make a buck. I am more and more coming to the conclusion that the Christians of Iraq need the protection – as the Kurds have – provided by having an autonomous region of their own. There was a move a few years ago to make the Assyrian area of northern Iraq a self-governing region, and we should look into that (while Christians are scattered around Iraq, most Iraqi Christians live in Assyria).

While this horrible tragedy has brought real sadness to me, I refuse to be stampeded into folly – Iraq must remain a united nation, lest Iran and Syria gain by a carve up of the Iraqi body politic. Outside of such puresly strategic considerations, the fate of our effort in Iraq hinges upon the ability of a majority Moslem nation to engage in a pluralistic democracy which accords respect to ethnic and religious minorities. If we carved up Iraq along confessional and/or ethnic lines, we’d just be substituting a multitude of problems for a single problem. The Iraqis must move forward, together – Sunnis and Shia; Moslem and Christian; Arab and Kurd; only thus can Iraq take its rightful place amongst the nations of the world, and serve as an example for an exhausted and dispirited Arab/Moslem world, weighed down by centuries of oppression.

Interesting and rather alarming article over at First Things by Steven W. Mosher about the collapse of birth rates around the world – the article is written in the form of an argument between Mosher and a lefty who insists that the concerns about the brith rate are actually just racists worried there aren’t enough white babies being born, but as Mosher points out, the demographic winter is spreading rapidly around the globe:

The unprecedented fall in fertility rates that began in postwar Europe has, in the decades since, spread to every corner of the globe.

Take Latin America, for example. The image of the loving Mexican mamacita surrounded by a passel of barefoot children remains scratched on the minds of Americans, even when it has largely vanished in the dusty pueblos of Mexico itself. Government-enforced sterilization campaigns, along with simple modernity, have dramatically shrunk family size south of the border in recent years. When I speak to American audiences, they are invariably surprised to learn that the average young Mexican family now numbers no more children than its American counterpart.

But Central and South American countries, too, are seeing their birthrates fall. Most Latin American countries are now rapidly approaching replacement rate fertility, if they are not already there, according to the United Nations Population Division (UNPD). Women in Brazil, the largest South American country, currently average only 2.3 children. The inhabitants of Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile are even less fertile.

Across the Pacific, China has become a byword for forced-pace population control. Since the early eighties, Chinese women have been allowed an average of only 1.7 children, a birthrate so low that by 2020 China’s median age will be older than that of the United States.

India’s de facto two-child policy is neither as well known nor as brutal as China’s. But this policy, in conjunction with simple modernity, has effectively brought the fertility rate down to about 2.8 or so. India is projected to reach replacement rate fertility in a decade or so.

The voluntary childlessness of the Japanese exceeds even the forced-pace population reduction of China’s one-child policy. With a total fertility rate of only 1.25, Japan is on the brink of a major demographic meltdown. Its population of 127 million has stopped growing and—if the birthrate continues at this low level—will soon begin to shrink at an alarming pace. A population bust, like an explosion, proceeds in geometric progression.

The old-age tsunami that is about to hit Japan will not spare other Asian countries. The Four Tigers—Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore—are already getting long in the tooth.

Wherever we turn in the world, we see the same general picture. The only seeming exception is Sub-Saharan Africa, where birthrates are still fairly robust. But Africa has another problem: It languishes in the grip of an HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is sending some nations, such as South Africa, into absolute population decline.

The latest forecasts by the UNPD show the number of people in the world shrinking by mid-century, that is, before today’s young adults reach retirement age. I am speaking here of the UNDP’s “low variant” projections—historically the most accurate—which show that the population of the world will continue to creep up until about the year 2040, peaking at around 7.6 billion people. This is only a fraction more—one-sixth or so–than the 6.5 billion that the planet supports at present. Then the global population implosion, slow at first, but accelerating over time, begins. We fall back to current levels by 2082 and then shrink to under five billion by the turn of the next century.

I first took note of this around the year 2000 – when I came across the “low variant” projection and noted that the global population in 2150 could be 3 billion people, less than 50% of what it is today. From what I understand, the “low variant” revolves around whether or not birth rates will continue to fall at their current rate – and since that time, I’ve seen no indicators of a reversal of the demographic trends. In short, the “low variant” does seem to be the way things are going – though we must always keep in mind that things may change.

But, of course, things won’t change just by accident – it took a consistent effort by governments and pressure groups to bring us to this condition, and it will take a similar effort to swing things the other way. In my view, we live in a pretty wrecked world – a century or more of leftwing influences have entirely destroyed the basis for civilization; and not just our civilization, but all civilization. That we still have a semblance of civilization is akin to the way the Romans had civilization in the late 4th century – only because the final crash hadn’t happened, yet.

We’ve bought a lot of lies over the past century – that we can in the normal course of events engage in uncommitted sexual liasons; that we can in the normal course of events divorce for the most trivial of reasons; that we can in the normal course of events consume massive amounts of pornography; that we can in the normal course of events use abortion and birth control to decouple sex from its procreative aspect; that we can in the normal course of events farm out the raising of children to day care and public schools…the net result of all this lying to ourselves is what you see in front of you: random school shootings; massive illegitimacy, serial divorce when people even bother to marry…and, most devastating, the lack of willingness to produce the next generation. And, by the way, how do I plead? Guilty – I bought the lie, too.

We can rebuild our world and reclaim our civilization from the ruins – but for us to do so, it will take a conscious decision on our part to stop lying to oursleves, and to start acting like real men and real women.