Election Round-Up

The Anchoress has a good round-up. Everything about everything and links to everywhere.

Man, I'm nervous. This is a nail-biting day. I was involved in politics all the way from Fifth Grade when I learned the power of a vote: I voted for my opponent (I campaigned with Mickey Mouse signs saying "Vote for Melissa!") to be "polite" and lost the Student Body President election by one vote.

NEVER AGAIN!

Ha! No I wasn't permanently scarred, but I did learn a very good lesson in representative democracies and the power of ONE to make a huge difference. Cynical? You experience the power of one every time you're behind grandma on the freeway that's backed up for miles. Yes, indeed, one person can make a difference.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Vote I Go--UPDATED Scroll Down

I didn't vote early this time figuring mid-term elections and all, the voting would be lighter. I did drive by the early voting spot, the local library, and it was packed every day. Hmmmmm......

Living in one of the most conservative areas of Texas makes me wonder how much impact my vote will make. Ah, well, as Al Gore says, "If someone tells you that one vote doesn't make a difference, remember me." (Everyone in audience laughs.) "I don't think it's very funny," he deadpans.

Not funny for you.....

UPDATE: I went to the wrong polling place. It's a conspiracy!!! Actually, I'm so used to early voting, I've never voted in the regular polling place. So I got redirected, went to my kids school and voted on the new-fangled machine. More about that in a minute.

In the parking lot, one of my son's teachers and I chatted. She noted the same thing: last week early voting was so nuts she was going to vote today at her precinct, but had to call to find out where it was. Teachers, principal, staff all wearing Red, White and Blue. Nice to see them promoting civics.

ON VOTING MACHINES:
Anyway, the machine could not be described as intuitive. No touch screen, had to choose candidates by this little wheel device. It eventually worked, but I wondered about folks unfamiliar with technology. Perhaps I'm just too conditioned by Scan Trons (filling in the little bubbles) or maybe I'm just getting old, but I really like paper ballots best. I like the paper trail. I like the tangibility. I like the ability to say, "Hey, I voted and there was a paper, find it!"

And, I like the idea of purple finger prints, ala Iraq. That would eliminate voter fraud and demonstrate who all the apathetic losers are publicly. Whaddya think?

Marriage: "You Complete Me"

Ann Althouse has an interesting post relating to this historian's view that modern marriages put too much pressure on each other for life happiness. She says:

And so married people turned to each other. To excess. This peaked in the 1950s, and after that, there was some healthy skepticism of the overly insular family. But somehow we're drifting back into an excessively marriage-focused way of living.

The problem, in Coontz's view, is not only that we deny ourselves the happiness to be found in friendships, but also that by expecting so much from one romantic relationship, we can put so much pressure on it that it breaks. What's worse, if the marriage was our source of happiness, we have nothing.

No friendship substitutes for a good marriage. A marginal marriage can be saved by external friendships, though. No one person can be everything to another person. Commenter "me" says this:

Marriage has always had a storied past. Just look at the Hebrew marriage contracts. They were as complex as as a leveraged airplane lease. I don't think there was ever any ideal period for marriage. I believe the most successful marriages are between relatively independent people that could live well enough alone, but enjoy each other's company.

If you can't be happy with yourself, how can you be happy with someone else?

Oh, and another thing

I know the mid-term elections have been kinda overshadowed with news stories like this and you've been distracted by really, really important things like this, so I just wanted to remind you to go to your local polling place and vote.

Getting Real--Taking On Postmodernism's Mushy Headedness

Over the weekend Dr. Pat Santy and my blog-friend MaxedOutMama wrote compelling pieces on the nature of reality. (Please read both!) I can hear the collective sigh, but snap to, people! This is important. The real divide worldwide is philosophical. The war we wage is a war of ideas. There are reasons why Bush went to war and there are feelings why Democrats and progressives fight it.

Let's make this argument practical. Today in England, these topics are being debated not in abstract but concretely. Who deserves to die without choice is the question. Answer: 1) euthanasia for newborns who are sick or disabled and 2) Saddam Hussein's life should be spared. The first argument involves arguments about having a "useful life". The second argument involves a morally-superior sounding "humanitarianism". But whose life is worth less? A raping, murdering despot or an innocent, disabled child?

So the overall topic is important: what is real? The two sides of the divide are: what I experience is the only real thing or there is universal experience that is real. Dr. Santy says:

Well, let me tell you that this particular philosophical problem is not abstract at all, but one which pops up all the time in current discussions--even on this blog. How you deal with the concept of universals turns out to be extremely important, particularly in rational discourse, where objective reality and truth are necessary.

Consider this: if there is no way to account for generalizations or universals through empirical experience, then all such attributions may be considered subjective and hence, invalid.

In this word of subjectivity, my experience with gravity is as valid is say, Albert Einstein's. I say gravity is my friend and I don't fall down, I simply float. Albert sees me walking on the ground and says, Melissa, dear, you're planted to the earth. I reply, "That's what you think. You just don't get my reality." Does this conversation sound insane? Well, it is unless you don't believe in any universalities. When everyone's experience is "real", what is reality?

MaxedOutMama points out the logical ends of this thinking:

It follows also that no argument can be settled by recourse to reason or law, which leaves all arguments to be settled only by force. Seriously. Think about it. All law depends upon the ability to create abstract definitional categories, and then to assign individual behaviors or actions as being within the category or outside of it. A law as simple as the laws mandating that establishments that sell food require shirts and shoes on their customers cannot be enforced if the definition of "shirt" or "shoe" is considered infinitely malleable.

I believe this is the reason for the extreme left's love affair with dictators; unconsciously they know that in their epistemological view of the world, only a dictator can bring peace, because only a dictator can enforce law. [my emphasis, -ed.]

She states further:

This, of course, is the reason why so many of these leftists have fallen in love with Islamacist terrorism, even while they excoriate the evils of Judeo-Christian religion. To a person who does believe in universals, it is puzzling beyond belief that the same person can excoriate one religion and exalt a sect of another. But leftists recognize their counterparts quite accurately; it is the universality of the concepts and laws in the Judeo-Christian tradition that they resent (because they perceive them as a direct impairment on their individual lives), whereas the credo of the Islamicist terrorists is very simple. Quite literally, those who are taught in this tradition are told that anyone who does not believe what they (the terrorist) believes is an enemy of God and should be killed. Children raised in this belief system make admirable footsoldiers, and are the world's quintessential "useful idiots".

Mama is on a roll and continues:

To restate this, if your entire world is defined by yourself, disagreement is an attack upon your entire world. Disagreement is experienced as a literal attack, equivalent in psychic shock to someone busting down your door in the middle of the night and beating you within your own home.

The deep insecurity engendered by questioning the worldview of those who don't believe in universality and objectivity generates a strong defensive response beginning as fear, which is expressed as anger and then restated to the self as contempt. But the contempt does not adequately reddress the fear, and inevitably mutates into a fixed rage against the opponent. Human beings filled with rage inevitably hate.

Jeff Goldstein, back in the day, has taken on postmodernism and skewered it over and over. He says here in a post titled "Life and Death: Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism":

This is an interesting phenomenon, and one I’ve noted before. Specifically, a medievalist, pre-modern mindset like the ine animating the Islamofascist movement is, ironically, quite adept at using postmodern observations about the nature of truth to sustain a rhetorical advantage over the West. And it does so by playing to the West’s arrogance—its idea that, because it has embraced the tenet of multiculturalism, it is somehow showing itself to be tolerant and nuanced in its dealings with the Other.

But recent history has shown us that all this Western “understanding” is a ruse. Instead, it is a mindset that pretends to an understanding by deferring to the Other, a maneuver that serves only to undermine Enlightenment principles and ideas of universal rights while simultaneously giving control of the identity narrative to groups it purports to “understand”, who are then able to use that control to affect victim status, define and shame their enemies, and bracket out unfriendly criticisms.

But this only works because the premises have been accepted by many in the western intelligensia, and have, from there, made their way into public and social policy. I have noted time and again how this process proceeds from (or is reinforced by) the acceptance of certain linguistic assumptions—precisely those favored by political and social movements that are collectivist in nature.

And so we have Islamic fascists exploiting the postmodern rhetorical assumptions of a western socialist / progressivist left in order to bring about the spread of totalitarianism.

I made this huge, because this is the crux of the matter. The John Kerry's and Teddy Kennedy's of the world aid and abet this march to submission either overtly (sending love letters via the KGB) or covertly (cooing reassuringly that "America must be willing to redeploy and step out of the way."). The end result is the same: by embracing a multicultural, every reality is as valid as every other reality philosophy, they've embraced a totalitarianism that wishes to enslave them. It is suicide and to them, it is defined as liberty.

It really comes down to foregoing reality to listen the sticky, honey hued rhetoric that promises to reduce harm and help more by walking away. When any aggressive act is viewed as a loss, then actually losing has no reality. We haven't lost in Iraq, but to the left, going to Iraq was a loss at the outset. They cannot even entertain what a true loss will mean. Actually, to them losing, retreating, would be winning.

Jeff is right: the language is being butchered at the altar of self which ironically, embraces collectivism. The war we fight is against this thinking. Once that war is won, Iraq and obliterating Islamofascism will be simply one of applying the undivided will to win.

Is Killing Saddam Hussein Wrong?

Imagine it is 1985. Holocaust Memorials and museums had been opened for ten to twenty-five years all over Germany and somewhere, in a German prison, sat Adolf Hitler. Now, a good number of Germans still supported dur Fuhror, but after the United Nations, the rest of ruined Europe, the few remaining Jewish survivors of death camps and the Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill, thought about it, everyone believed that for reason to triumph over revenge, Hitler's life should be spared. He should live out his days munching Cheetos and watching Charlie Chaplin silent movies.

Would Europe be able to move on with their collective angst-filled consciences? Would the losers of the war feel that the war was really and truly over? Would it feel weird to go to museums knowing that the architect of such depravity sat in a cell down the street? Would an underground resistance, ever hopeful for a return to glory, give up and submit? Would the victims ever have peace knowing that the monster still lives?

Today, a sociopathic man dedicated to rape, torture, mass murders and known for wiping out his own people, sits in an Iraqi jail cell munching Cheetos and watching M.A.S.H. reruns while writing poetry and waxing philosophical.

Enlightened people everywhere believe that what he is "enduring" at this moment would be justice. As Prime Minister Tony Blair says:

Mr Blair told his monthly press conference in Downing Street that the Government was “against the death penalty, whether it is Saddam Hussein or anybody else”.

How very Churchillian. And he is not alone:

The Finnish presidency of the EU acknowledged 'the systematic, widespread and extremely grave' human-rights violations under Saddam, while repeating its opposition to capital punishment 'in all cases and under all circumstances.' German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced similar disapproval for the death penalty.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour urged Iraqi authorities not to execute Saddam and his two former aides.

'Whatever the outcome of an appeal, I hope the government will observe a moratorium on execution,' Arbour said.

Human-right lobby group Amnesty International said it regretted that the trial had degenerated into a 'shabby affair, marred by serious flaws,' said Malcolm Smart, the group's director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The South African government issued a statement that hanging Saddam would not the political challenges facing Iraq, which is embroiled in insurgency, terrorism and rising sectarian violence. Johannesburg expressed hope that the outcome of the trial would not lead to more strife in Iraq.

These sentiments display utter moral stupidity and lack of strategic foresight. Iraq suffers today in part because there is no clear winner. Winning means vanquishing the enemy and the enemy is personified by the leader.

In addition, when victims of such merciless horror must live with the knowledge that their pain inflicter enjoys three squares a day, electricity, a bath, etc. while they toil to rebuild not just physically, but emotionally, from the destruction he wrought, it doesn't seem quite fair. It isn't fair. It gnaws and unsettles.

Very few wronged people, when interviewed after the murderer is executed, say it feels satisfying. Most say, "I'm so relieved."

Relief. Relief from the possibility of escape to do more damage. Relief. Relief from having to hear his opinions on this or that for years. Relief. Relief from those who are ever hopeful that he'll return to power. These are all very good reasons to rid the earth of this man.

It makes Western values seem toothless and silly when someone so evil can be given a pass. We want new democracies to employ truth and justice. The truth is that Saddam Hussein was a psychotic despot who killed anyone who stood between him and his glory. Justice for Iraq is to end that horrible regime. That regime ends with Saddam Hussein's death.

"Pelosi's America"

I read with fascination and mirth a visiting European's take on the upcoming elections and what the U.S. will look like should the Democrats win.

I was in West Hollywood on Halloween. A friend described this area as one third retiree, one third Russian and one third gay. Sounds a bit like Europe to me.

The gays take every opportunity to dress up. Consequently Halloween has become a gay festival in LA. The first people I met when leaving the hotel were a group of men dressed up as ballerinas. This is Pelosi Land.

Americans can already see what their country’s future will be if they vote for Pelosi and her band. They only need to watch Europe. That is what America will be like 20 years from now if the Liberals succeed in turning the U.S. into a European-style welfare state. The latter is the cause of all Europe’s problems. It has led to secularization, because people who are catered for from the cradle to the grave no longer need God. It has led to the immigration debacle, because Europe has attracted welfare immigrants who only come for the benefits and not to contribute to the host country’s wealth creation. It has led to the loss of the citizens’ ability to care for themselves, because they expect everything from the state.

Is that where we're headed?

Ding Dong Saddam is as Good as Dead

Glad it's over. Almost. I'll believe it when I see his limp, lifeless body hanging from the gallows. Man, I wish they'd bring public hangings back. Tends to leave an impression for the rest of the ner-do-wells.

Iraq the Model: No one is above the law anymore.

Congratulations, Iraq! Let the future begin.

Condom Nation

Why do young people shun condoms? Ignorance? No. Lack of availability? Buwhahaha! How about this: It's not cool to want wear a condom. What does it say about trust? What does it say about spontaneity?

My, my. How can we expect young people to use condoms when immature adults have the same problem? Eww, requesting condom use means talking about sex which means I'm thinking about sex which means that I'm a hussy. Or, for men, talking about a condom means I won't have the lovely ungloved experience I so richly deserve or don't trust her when she says she's using birth control.

Social pressures and perceptions that influence young people's sexual behavior are markedly similar around the world, London researchers said.

Among the themes were:

-- Sex-related decisions are based on a partner's social position or behavior.

-- Condoms carry a stigma and are associated with a lack of trust.

-- A sexual partner can influence not only condom usage but sexual behavior in general.

-- Gender stereotypes of boys being experienced and girls sexually naive exist.

-- Sex offers both penalties and rewards.

-- Reputations are important.

-- Social expectations impede discussions about sex.

When researchers find a way for adults to talk about this (remember this topic here and here?), maybe they'll come up with a way for young people to talk about it. Somehow I doubt it. That would mean everyone grows up.

Euthanasia: Doctors Want It in UK--UPDATED

Give parents the choice of killing their severely disabled children after birth with medical review, say doctors.

It says "active euthanasia" should be considered for the overall benefit of families who would otherwise suffer years of emotional and financial suffering.

Deliberate action to end infants' lives may also reduce the number of late abortions, since it would allow women the chance to decide whether their disabled child should live.

And don't forget the doctors making the decisions.

Such mercy killings are already allowed in the Netherlands for incurable conditions such as severe spina bifida. John Harris, a member of the official Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University, welcomed the college's submission. "We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term, but cannot kill a newborn," he told The Sunday Times. "What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not the other?"

Indeed. The converse can be asked as well. Another doctor says this:

Dr Pieter Sauer, co-author of the Groningen Protocol, the guidelines governing infant euthanasia in the Netherlands, said British medics already carry out mercy killings and should be allowed to do so in the open. "English neonatologists gave me the indication that this is happening."

But the paper quoted John Wyatt, consultant neonatologist at University College Hospital, as saying: "Intentional killing is not part of medical care... once you introduce the possibility of intentional killing you change the fundamental nature of medicine. It becomes a subjective decision of whose life is worthwhile."

Simone Aspis of the British Council of Disabled People said: "Euthanasia for disabled newborns tells society that being born disabled is a bad thing. If we introduced euthanasia for certain conditions, it would tell adults with those conditions that they are worth less than other members of society."

Already, mothers receive late-term abortions for serious health conditions like the ubiquitous and subjectively vague depression.

UPDATE: By the way, the picture used for an article about this is of a preemie bigger than my sons were when they were born. One died. The other one is in the kitchen learning his multiplication tables.

The boys were born at 24 weeks gestation. One pound, eight ounces (at birth--he dropped serious weight after that) or 750 grams at birth. There are doctors today who recommend that these children be denied medical care. Death.

My son is moderately disabled (he doesn't know this.) Slow development, lung problems, lack of coordination, muscle weakness, autism, nearly every milestone years behind, executive functioning problems.

Life was transcendent bliss and hell at the same time for the first few years. It still isn't easy. My trials with my son have lead me to levels of empathy, patience and understanding on the one hand and frustration, isolation and rage on the other hand. I had to relearn how I looked at life. And I'm so glad to have had the opportunity.

And yet, we are lucky. Some parents have children who require round-the-clock care and do live in hell and their child was bigger and born later than my sons. Some children are suffering because of medical mistakes. Do you see the temptation for a doctor who just screwed up big time?

No one can predict life and death or level of disability right after birth in so many cases. One child who was on ECHMO, who I thought for sure would die, lives today. How do you know which way it will turn out? What if you make a mistake? What if a doctor believes a baby will turn out fine...and doesn't?

UPDATE: Sister Toldjah linked to my piece (double posted at Gina Cobb while I was guest-posting there) and says this:

Sounds like there are a few (too few) voices of sanity on this issue in the UK. I’ll be very eager to read about the results of the “ethics review” for this proposed “option.” I’m usually reluctant to throw the Hitler card on the table, but I can’t resist doing so here because what the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology are suggesting sounds all too familar.

Her link goes to this and I just had to share the article. It is horrifying:

March 24, 2005 – The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum features an online display showing how German physicians under Adolf Hitler (and even before Hitler came to power) had created a euthanasia program to kill those deemed “unworthy of life.” According to the Museum: “The victims included the mentally retarded, the institutionalized mentally ill, and the physically impaired.”

The Museum noted: “The ‘euthanasia’ program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

The roots of Hitler’s euthanasia program began in 1920 with the publishing of an essay by Dr. Alfred Hoche and law professor Karl Binding. The essay, “Releasing Persons from Lives Devoid of Value,” recommended a new medical ethic to deal with mental patients and those whose lives were considered worthless.

Who gets to decide what kind of life has value? Doctors? Hospital administrators? How about Insurance Companies?

While some people think Gay Marriage is a slippery slope, there ain't nothin' like Euthanasia to get a moral avalanche started.

Baby Killer, Jessica Coleman, Lauded

I didn't see this anywhere. Gina Cobb posted on it before going on her vacation. Never had heard of this girl. She stabbed her baby en utero, then when she birthed the baby she stabbed it again and "dropped it", it died and she gave the dead body to her boyfriend to dispose.

The delightful Ms. Coleman was on Oprah. Ahhh, that's why I didn't know about her. Don't watch TV and haven't seen Oprah in years. Gina says that, "Coleman is now being portrayed as a likeable figure with lessons to teach other young girls. "

Nice.

And partial birth abortion comes to the SCOTUS. Just think, this girl could have done it all legally.

Personal responsibility, such a quaint, old-fashioned notion.

Ace: Terrorists Endorse Democrats

Yes they do. And well they should. Life would be so much better for them if Democrats could take the President's time answering subpoenas and defending his decisions rather than hunting, killing and prosecuting terrorists.

Have you heard about it in the MSM? What? You haven't? Ace explains why:

But the media knows damn well the quotes are genuine, and certainly will not arrange telephone interviews (with people quite happy to talk to the press) in order to report the story themselves. They'll just embargo the story completely.

That's the media's most potent power -- not shading or slanting stories this way or that. But simply refusing to report major stories they feel may cause Americans to think "the wrong things."

So CNN can hang itself with its claim that "We're not in the business of censoring the news." That's precisely the business it's in, and business is good.

Amen, Ace. That's why I chortle when I hear anyone defend any major news source as being balanced. Ha! Back in the day of college publications, I learned that what didn't make it was often more important than what made it.

Read all about the endorsements, and who's making them here.

Priest Commits Suicide to Bring Attention to Islamic Threat--UPDATED, Scroll Down

An "erudite" German, Christian Priest burns himself alive to draw attention to the problem of Islam taking over the Western world. And here is the response:

The Protestant Bishop of Saxony, Axel Noack, said the suicide had shocked the community and that he hoped it would not hurt relations between Christians and Muslims.

Are you kidding me? Relations will improve. One less infidel to fight and conquer. One less ideologically honest person to persuade by force.

The Germans keep dithering and they won't have to worry about "hurt relations"--the only people left will by Muslims.

UPDATE: More at the Belmont Club courtesy Glenn Reynolds.

Not Weisselberg's death, but the fact it was unremarked may be the real story of this event. Gestures must express some deep but unexpressed emotion to be effective. Roland gave the performance of his life but the gallery was empty. And now there is a stir offstage. Is it a new cast of players come to perform? Or have the night watchmen arrived to turn out the lights?

America: Everyone Has A Job!--UPDATED

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse notes the economy is humming and no one is talking about it. She says:

It's a last-minute issue, but it should have been a big issue all along.

Amen, Ann. I think part of the reason it has been on the backburner is because the October surprises that started in September (Foley) have kept the Republicans bobbing and weaving like Casius Clay.

Then, Kerry opened his yapper (a gift to Republicans) but even that is off-topic. The Republicans should be high-lighting the economy non-stop.

As an aside, I saw in Saginaw, Michigan that 28% of the people there are below the poverty line. What the? While the South hums, Michigan and other tax-heavy states struggle. I have a friend in upstate New York who is just being killed by taxes. His impression is that the economy isn't doing well.

UPDATE: Could it be that headlines like this might be why Republicans don't get credit for the economy? "Jobless rate at five year low, fanning fears of inflation", The Mercury News. Yup, the economy going well is a bad thing. The text is even funnier:

Democrats highlighted such forecasts as they criticized Bush's handling of the economy. ``Job growth was too modest to allay concerns about whether job opportunities will expand in coming months,'' Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking Democrat on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, said in a written statement. ``Staying the course on the president's policies has failed to deliver greater prosperity and economic security for most families, which is why America needs a new direction.''

And this.....

Considering that some workers lack the education and skills to be readily employable, economists regard any unemployment rate below 5 percent as striking. ``We are beyond full employment,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Just remember, this is bad news. Repeat often. Republicans = Bad Economy. There, now you've got it!

MSM Purposefully Misses the Important News--UPDATED AGAIN Scroll Down!

How big is it that the whole raison d'etre of the Left's opposition to Iraq was undone, inadvertantly I believe, by The New York Times? Sure, the NYT was trying, once again, to influence the election by showing the current administration to be a bunch hypocritical imbeciles. I didn't count the number of anonymous sources in the article, but let's just say, true to form, almost all the sources chose to remain anonymous.

Doing a Google search reveals that this information doesn't concern anyone in the media nearly as much as making it seem like the administration gave every nutjob a cookbook for a bomb. Meanwhile, no one is asking where the cookbook came from: why, it came from IRAQ, of course, who intended to complete bomb-making during 2002. 2002.

Shrinkwrapped, says this:

If you read this story from the point of view of seeking information you might be surprised that the Times reveals such explosive facts which one might expect to help the Republicans next week. Yet if you realize that the goal of printing the story is to frame the Bush administration as stupid and incompetent, so that their opponents, a group of which the Times is a charter member, can maintain the belief in their own intellectual superiority, the contradiction evaporates. To the "left" the story is their wisdom and the "right's" stupidity; they are so sophisticated they don't even see how they discredit themselves.

The rest of the MSM, though, is doing their darnedest to continue The New York Time's Bush is Stupid mantra. Color me unimpressed. The people who are decided about voting in the coming mid-terms won't be swayed by this, but it will give the Left something to talk about besides their own leaders like Kerry who have contempt not just for the President but all the morons who voted for him or vote for anyone not Democrat.

UPDATE:

I guess the Anchoress noticed the same thing. She says:
Doubt making noise will change much. When the press doesn’t want to tell you a story, it doesn’t tell you a story. That’s what blogs are for.

UPDATE II:
Michelle Malkin, via LGF, has a response from Hoekstra (who pushed for the document releases. Like, him, I'll publish a lot of what he said, because it is very important. I will emphasis the important stuff if you want to skim.

"Yesterday's article by the New York Times highlights a number of important issues with respect to Iraq's WMD programs, as well as the importance of the documents that have been recovered in Iraq," said U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "I am pleased that the document release program continues to stimulate public discussion of these issues.

"With respect to the possibility that documents may have been released that should not have been released, I have always been clear that the Director of National Intelligence should take whatever steps necessary to withhold sensitive documents. In fact, as of today the DNI had withheld 59 percent of the documents that it had reviewed, and has become more risk-averse over time. If the DNI believes that the documents that were released were in the safe 40 percent, imagine what the 60 percent being withheld must contain.

"That said, it is also important to emphasize that the IAEA, contrary to its assertions, never raised any concerns about this material with the United States Government before going to the press. Similarly, the DNI's office has informed me that no agency of the U.S. Government had raised any issues about the potential or actual release of these documents before yesterday. If there were such problems, they would have been better addressed through the appropriate channels rather than the press.

"These documents also raise several additional issues of interest. First, it is extraordinary that the New York Times now acknowledges that the captured documents demonstrate that '[Saddam] Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.' This only reinforces the value of these documents in understanding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime. Only 1 percent of the estimated 120 million pages of captured documents have been reviewed, and we must continue working to promptly understand these materials. If there is concern about Saddam's nuclear program, there should be similar concern about potential connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda suggested in the documents.

"Second, my staff's preliminary review of the documents in question suggests that at least some of them may be internal IAEA documents. There is a serious question of why and how the Iraqis obtained these documents in the first place. We need to explore that carefully - I certainly hope there will be no evidence that the IAEA had been penetrated by Saddam's regime.

"Finally, it is disappointing but not surprising that the New York Times would continue to participate in such blatant and transparent political ploys, including what I believe are improper efforts by the IAEA to interfere with U.S. domestic affairs. The sad reality is that the New York Times has done far more damage to U.S. national security by the disclosure of vital, classified, intelligence programs than is likely to be caused by the inadvertent disclosure of decades-old information that had already been in the hands of Saddam's regime."