Making up crap Friday

First let me say that Friday cat blogging was more fun.
Story one. First off it comes with this inflammatory headline:

Grand Old Party of Child Endangerment
Think Foley is bad? Republican policies have harmed millions of American kids.

Now on to the “brand new facts”.

This combination of irresponsible tax cuts and out-of-control spending guaranteed that there would be little left over for the crucial social programs American children need, such as meaningful spending on healthcare, job-creation and anti-poverty programs.

The result was predictable. From 2000 to 2005, the number of American children living in poverty went up by 1.3 million, and the likelihood that any given child is poor increased by 9%.

I hadn’t heard that. So lets move over to the US census. And sure enough, the numbers of children living in poverty increased. By 1.3 million. But as a percentage of children the numbers went from 34.8% DOWN to 33.5%. Either she’s an idiot or is deliberately trying to mislead. I report, you decide.
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Story 2: From Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. First the title.

GOP Bigotry That Backfired

Then without backing up one lousy thing he accused the GOP of only being freaked out about the Foley scandal because of its homosexuality piece. That if this were heterosexual no one would be worried. He accuses Republicans of being so scared of homosexuality that their biggest fear is the “recruitment” of new homosexuals by preditors on our kids. He easily equates “anti-homosexual doctrine” with the GOP.

In any event, the recruitment myth helps explain why social conservatives, who make up perhaps the most loyal and energetic segment of the Republican Party’s base, are so up in arms. And that outrage, in turn, helps explain why the party has been so frantic all week, so uncharacteristically slow to come up with a game plan for responding to the scandal. Social conservatives were already grumbling that the Republicans talk a good game but never get around to addressing their core issues. Now comes this.

In pre-feminist times, people thought of young girls as particularly delicate and vulnerable. We worried about their being compromised or corrupted by older men. It’s fascinating that much of today’s America seems to be more viscerally worried about young boys.

So because the GOP has a big tent and keeps its focus on things like security and money vs social concerns he’s assuming that the “GOP” is anti-homosexual and is only upset with Foley because of the boys aspect. What a load bullshit. blech.

Pre-emptive war

Iraq the Model is all for it.

America too had her share of mistakes that made things go in the wrong direction instead of helping out. Perhaps America’s biggest mistake was the hesitation in keeping up the strategy of preemptive war.

Yes, America used that strategy in Iraq but failed to go on, and instead of chasing terrorists, America stopped at Iraq and sat waiting for terrorists to come in.

Point or no point, I have to say it ticks me off. We’re sitting there waiting for you people to get your shit together. You have sovereignty, try using it. Close borders, close bank accounts, get people involved, arrest Sadr.

Thank you Secretary Rice:

Rice said the U.S. role is “to support all the parties and indeed to press all the parties to work toward that resolution quickly because obviously the security situation is not one that can be tolerated and it is not one that is being helped by political inaction.”

In a series of meetings with leaders representing most ethnic and religious factions, Rice delivered a blunt message about how Americans do not see the history behind ethnic and sectarian splits, said a senior State Department official present at the sessions.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were confidential, said Rice also said Americans need to see Iraqis working together rather than killing one another.

UPDATE: From an anonymous comment at Instapundit:

We’re not losing momentum in Iraq. The Pentagon strategy is a very deliberate form of tough love that is forcing the Iraqis to defend their own country.

Arabs are culturally the most passive, fence-sitting people on the planet. By their own admission they follow the strongest leader out there. If we had sent 500,000 troops to Iraq and fought a Soviet-style counterinsurgency, the end result would have been an Iraq with no incentive to do the very hard work of creating viable fighting forces from scratch. We would’ve been their new masters in perpetuity.

We also can’t attack Iran and Syria right now because the Iranians would then activate their Iraqi militias and send a million Basij into Iraq. Syria would do a Saddam and start firing WMD-tipped missiles at Israel. The entire region could go up in flames.

Don’t let the media convince you that things are going badly in Iraq. The Anbar tribes are now fighting al Qaeda on their own initiative, and the Shi’ite-dominated government is slowly dismantling al Sadr’s Mahdi Army. “Experts” predicted that neither of these things would ever happen because of secular loyalties, but they are happening, and only because we’re forcing the Iraqis to stand up and fight for their country.

Finally, take a look at what happened when the French, Soviets, and Russians fought Muslim insurgencies with the kind of aggressive, “proactive” approach so many Americans claim to want.

The French lost 18,000 in Algeria, a KIA rate three and a half times ours. The Soviets lost 14,000 in Afghanistan, a KIA rate twice ours. The Russians officially lost 5500 in the First Chechen War of 1994-96, but Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia puts the actual number at 14,000, a KIA rate ten times ours. Nobody knows how many Russian troops have died in the Second Chechen War, but Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia had the number at 11,000 by 2003.

Our strategy in Iraq is sound. It’s keeping our own casualties down, and it’s forcing the Iraqis to defend themselves.

Don’t despair. We’re winning.