CenterFeudtag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-357902008-07-27T16:43:47-05:00Ideas Left and Right for the Politically AmbidexterousTypePad"He is the Felix Ungar to McCain's Oscar Madison."tag:typepad.com,2003:post-533402342008-07-27T16:43:47-05:002008-07-27T16:43:47-05:00Pollster Jay Cost has some good advice for the Obama campaign. I hope they heed it.PurpleStaterWhy Europe and the Left will miss Bushtag:typepad.com,2003:post-533272802008-07-27T11:07:49-05:002008-07-27T11:07:49-05:00In many ways, an Obama presidency will be a relief, in that it will force the Democratic Left to confront the realities of an ideology of religious supremacism that stands foursquare opposed to all of its professed ideals. But since that ideology doesn't originate with familiar opponents, it may take awhile for the realization to set in.PurpleStaterAP catches up to Michael Yon on success in Iraqtag:typepad.com,2003:post-532928042008-07-26T16:05:36-05:002008-07-26T16:05:36-05:00"Independent journalist beats MSM to the story" is seeming more and more like "dog bites man".PurpleStaterBush vs. Batmantag:typepad.com,2003:post-532778262008-07-26T12:04:59-05:002008-07-26T12:04:59-05:00Bush or Batman? Lots of people can't tell them apart. Including, apparently, the Wall St. Journal.PurpleStaterJohn Bolton slams Obama's revisionist Cold War historytag:typepad.com,2003:post-532768562008-07-26T11:36:14-05:002008-07-26T11:36:14-05:00Former Ambassador John Bolton weighs in with a harsh analysis of Obama's recent address in Berlin before a crowd of 200,000 Germans: First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not...PurpleStaterDo telltag:typepad.com,2003:post-529115542008-07-19T10:54:36-05:002008-07-19T10:54:36-05:0015 years after the institution of "Don't ask, don't tell." a sea change in public attitudes towards gays in the military. From the Washington Post: Today, Americans have become more supportive of allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the armed forces. Support from Republicans has doubled over the past 15 years, from 32 to 64 percent. More than eight in 10 Democrats and more than three-quarters of independents now support the idea, as did nearly two-thirds of self-described conservatives. These numbers are heartening, especially the response from conservatives.PurpleStaterHitchens waterboardedtag:typepad.com,2003:post-523770222008-07-07T21:36:15-05:002008-07-07T21:36:15-05:00Writer and gadfly Christopher Hitchens undergoes the procedure as part of an article for Vanity Fair: "Believe me, it's torture." He doesn't last long. Video here.PurpleStaterA Palestinian state by 2009?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-481289122008-04-07T22:36:26-05:002008-04-07T22:36:26-05:00WorldNet Daily is carrying an "insider account" of secret US-brokered negotiations that will supposedly lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of this year.PurpleStaterObama: Building a religiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-474839382008-03-24T22:25:02-05:002008-03-24T22:25:02-05:00I am late to the party blogging on this extremely clever video that riffs on the Obama phenom. It's been out for several weeks (you can tell because there are no pictures of Jeremiah Wright), but it's a fun sendup of the candidate and his minions.PurpleStaterMiddle East role reversaltag:typepad.com,2003:post-474836762008-03-24T19:47:07-05:002008-03-24T19:47:07-05:00On Jihad Watch/Dhimmi Watch, Hugh Fitzgerald offers an interesting thought experiment in response to the question: "If the Israel/Palestinian conflict were exactly the same as it is, only the roles of the two warring parties were exactly reversed, would you then switch allegiances to the Palestinian side?"PurpleStaterImagining an American intifadatag:typepad.com,2003:post-356705962007-06-22T20:18:47-05:002007-06-22T20:18:47-05:00Daniel Pipes conjures a grim near-future scenario that deftly mixes speculative fiction with recent history and current events: Just as the 7/7 bombings had revealed in Great Britain, Islamist sleepers in substantial numbers lived quietly and unobtrusively in the United States. The violence became daily, ubiquitous, endemic, and routine, occurring in rural towns, upscale suburbs, and metropolitan centres, targeting private houses, restaurants, university buildings, gas stations, and electricity grids. As its frequency increased, terrorists became less cautious, leading to many arrests and bulging prisons. Some terrorists avoided this ignominious fate by engaging in suicide attacks, usually accompanied by boastful Internet...PurpleStaterThe lowest ratio of real to apparent integritytag:typepad.com,2003:post-334525142007-04-29T12:06:02-05:002007-04-29T12:06:02-05:00Alan Dershowitz on Jimmy Carter: If money determines political and public views as Carter insists "Jewish money" does, Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his...PurpleStaterIs France moving closer to Israel?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-303446762007-02-11T14:20:49-06:002007-02-11T14:20:49-06:00Yes, according to the Jerusalem Post, which tracks a shift in French thinking about the Middle East: The negative attitude regarding Israel typical of the French government of late is shifting towards a new policy, according to the delegation of French senators sent to visit Israel and the West Bank by the Medbridge Institute. Now, France is eager to offer Israel support in ensuring its national security by confronting terrorist groups and regimes in the Middle East. "The feeling in France today is that terror must be handled directly, and we are ready to combat terrorism," Jean Pierre Plancade, vice...PurpleStaterThe left's betrayal of liberal idealstag:typepad.com,2003:post-153304352007-01-21T23:52:51-06:002007-01-21T23:52:51-06:00A must-read excerpt from UK journalist Nick Cohen's new book, What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way: Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? As important, why did a European Union that...PurpleStaterThe next Holocausttag:typepad.com,2003:post-153119072007-01-20T16:15:40-06:002007-01-20T16:15:40-06:00In an essay for the Jerusalem Post, Israeli historian Benny Morris lays out the depressingly plausible scenario: The second holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or 10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go-ahead. The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles...PurpleStater"George Bush, true Democrat"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-153025992007-01-19T22:51:59-06:002007-01-19T22:51:59-06:00Victor Davis Hanson points up the irony of how the US public, and particularly Democrats, have come to view Iraq: "If we fail..." Prior to Iraq, there was some American guilt over past realism, whether stopping before Baghdad in 1991, playing Iran off Iraq, cozying up to dictatorships, or predicating American Middle East foreign policy solely on either oil or anti-Communism. Read the liberal literature of the 1990s and it was essentially a call for what George Bush is now doing — and being damned for. Then the liberal bogeyman was not Paul Wolfowitz, but Jim Baker (“jobs, jobs, jobs”/”F—-...PurpleStaterElection eve 2006tag:typepad.com,2003:post-139366592006-11-06T11:16:00-06:002006-11-06T11:16:00-06:00Partisanship has its advantages. Committed Dems and Repubs don't feel conflicted. They may not march in lockstep with their respective parties, but by and large they share in their respective worldviews. Even if you have friends or relatives across the aisle, you can still retreat to the solace of your own side and know that 50% of the country (give or take) is with you. Kermit had it wrong - being green is easy. It's purple that's a bitch. Though I am a registered independent, I am culturally a Democrat. I voted for Carter and Clinton, Mondale and even Mike...PurpleStaterFallaci-Khomeini smackdowntag:typepad.com,2003:post-128579832006-09-17T08:14:20-05:002006-09-17T08:14:20-05:00In tribute to the recently departed Italian journalist, interviewer and polemicist Oriana Fallaci, Neo-neocon recalls her famous encounter with Ayatollah Khomenini. As good as you remember (or would imagine).PurpleStaterWith friends like these...tag:typepad.com,2003:post-128520572006-09-16T17:20:06-05:002006-09-16T17:20:06-05:00Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick says of Tony Blair: Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe. And he's not a very good friend. Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Blair was instrumental in convincing US President George W. Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous - view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else into...PurpleStater9/11 plus five yearstag:typepad.com,2003:post-127647122006-09-11T22:02:00-05:002006-09-11T22:02:00-05:00The five-year anniversary of Sept. 11 feels like intermission. We are well into what will prove to be a very long war, and already it feels like we have lost focus. Conspiracy theories run rampant: some 36 percent of the American public finds it plausible that the US government was somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks. The level of denial required to believe this is astonishing; you have to ignore the obvious fanatics chanting "death to America" and issuing fatwas declaring war on the west for over a decade and instead assume that the Bush administration, the managenent of the...PurpleStater