Peggy Noonan has a new article up about the unique challenges facing Republicans currently in office. Before I say anything about the article, let me say that Peggy Noonan is one of the best writers around. Everytime she says something it seems dead on and cuts through all the balogna.

Most people think the country is going in the wrong direction. Six months ago I would have attributed this simply to people being idiots and looking for someone to blame. Politics seem somewhat cyclical, and the cycle for Republicans might be up. The true negatives about the Bush administration really aren’t that bad. The country is not falling apart, the war in Iraq is rarely a headline anymore, and the economy is great. But I think over time people get anxious, and especially the undecided people in the middle that blow with the wind. "Well these guys have been in power for 10+ years and they haven’t done much, so screw them!"

Democrats have hated Bush since he was elected, but I think his major problems of late stem from his own party. When you don’t veto spending, and you promote GUEST WORKER programs, your own party is going to be fed up with you (and the same goes for congress). Republicans in D.C. better get their act together really fast, or the Democrats will be back in power. At least they would be up front about wanting to spend all our money.

This story is quite old, but I’d never heard it, so I figure many of you have not. In August of 2003 US forces found Iraq’s Air Force buried in the desert. We’re talking a real jet fighter, buried in the sand.

Naturally this leads to a question of whether or not WMDs could be buried in Iraq, but we have no way of knowing. What I think this example does though is show the reality of Iraq, something that few Americans grasp. People watch their TV and read their newspapers, and it all seems so easy. There is no human element to even concern themselves with. If WMDs were there, they should have been found. Nevermind that they could be buried like these jets, or flown to Syria. Nevermind that Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore, John Edwards, Nancy Pelosi, and many others said prior to the war that Saddam Hussein had WMDs (here and here). Their TV news and newspaper haven’t had a picture of a barrel with "WMD" on the side, and that’s all that matters. People are so quick to forget the names mentioned above and label the President a liar.

I found an exceptional Op-Ed piece at a very unlikely location: the LA Times. The writer, Jonah Goldberg, says "The fact that Hussein turned out to be bluffing about WMD isn’t a mark against Bush’s decision. If you’re a cop and a man pulls out a gun and points it at you, you’re within your rights to shoot him, particularly if the man in question is a known criminal who’s shot people before. If it turns out afterward that the gun wasn’t loaded, that’s not the cop’s fault." Excellent analogy showing that the burden of proof was on Saddam Hussein, not the President. Read the whole thing, not too long but very enlightening.

Are your beliefs about the war in Iraq based on facts or rhetoric? Determination or emotion? Strength or pacifism? Body counts or lives liberated? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Stupid ER. We’re watching the episode from Thursday. This stupid show just took another jab at the war in Iraq.

One of the doctors married another doctor, who just left for a second tour in Iraq (Galant). She went to a gathering for spouses whose significant other is off at war. They were all talking about how hard it is being a military spouse, when the ER doctor decided to speak up against the war, and how she doesn’t support it. ER has taken a number of shots at the war in past episodes, but it always drives me crazy how stupid their arguments are.

ER Doctor: "I haven’t seen any weapons of mass destruction, have you?"
Everyone else: "Uhh, err, but we have to support them…uhhh."

Instead of being mindless idiots like the writers wanted them to be, why didn’t they talk about this, or this?

Stupid freaking ER. I want them to know that I record their show, and always skip through the commercials.

A student in Colorado, Sean Allen, recorded some of the liberal comments made by his geography teacher. Among comparing Bush to Hitler, he also ragged on capitalism, the war in Iraq, Democracy, and the CIA. He’s a typical pacifist who thinks all war is evil no matter what.

It’s extremely annoying to listen to, especially since he’s subjecting a bunch of impressionable 10th graders to it. If you’ve got 20 minutes take a listen to what he has to say. He’s totally nuts, comparing the USA to North Korea. "We illegally invaded Iraq, so why can’t North Korea invade South Korea pre-emptively?" The student that records the teacher speaks up about half-way through. Props to him for having the guts to speak up to the crap his teacher is spewing.

Listen to the idiot here.

Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, made some comments the other day that sum up very well what is wrong with the Democratic Party. I think there are two big things that have got them completely clueless.

1) Bush is Evil – We are in year 6 of Bush’s Presedential history, and still the best that Democrats can come up with is "Bush is Evil."  First it was the election results in Florida, and he was evil for "stealing" it! Then it was the tax cuts for the rich! Then it’s the war in Iraq, and then it’s prescription drug plans not being enough, and on and on. The Democrats number one problem is that the only message they have is that Bush is evil. It has become the party’s mantra: If Bush likes it, we don’t. The only alternative ideas the party can put forward are whatever is opposite the Republican party. They are not completely void of ideas though, which leads me to their second problem.

2) Hand Outs – Personal responsibility is something entirely foreign to Democrats. If you read the mentioned article you would see Harry Reid complaining about health care. "Not everyone has it, so let’s give it to them!" This is where the socialist ideals of the Democratic party come into play. A core belief of the Democratic party is that government exists to take care of people. That is BOGUS! It’s no wonder the national savings rate has gone negative. Democrats love to talk about how we’re going to pay for social security forever, and pay all health care costs. When did it become the government’s job to make sure I’m healthy? I don’t need your stupid social security, I can save my own money! Yet the government just hands out money like there is no tomorrow, and personal responsibility has started to disappear. People pay $2000+ a year in car insurance to drive around their leased Hummer, but they can’t pay $1000 a year for health insurance.

Those are the two main things you hear from the Democratic Party, and that is why Kerry lost in 2004. He had zero vision. Bush was evil, and let’s make more people reliant on government hand outs. George Washington and the rest of our founding fathers are surely vomiting in their grave.

This recent story about John Kerry really struck me as odd. If you read it, you’ll see that John Kerry is claiming President Bush will call up more troops after he gets elected in November. The article goes on to show several people who have no idea what he’s talking about, and one person who claims he’s heard about this. Not surprisingly that person is a Democrat, but we’ll come back to that.

I’ve found it to be a constantly recurring theme that I must decipher and critically think about everything people say this election year. If John Kerry says President Bush is fighting the “wrong” war, what does that mean? John Kerry supported the war at one point, so does he just not like the way it’s turning out? Or is he trying to separate himself from Bush? What the evening news doesn’t tell you is that Kerry has had a 100 stances on the war in Iraq. It stems all the way back to the Democratic primaries. Good ‘ol Howard Deam was completely anti-war, so to distinguish himself from Dean, Kerry was pro-war. Well, Kerry won that battle…but now he’s got a problem: Bush is pro-war…and he can’t have the exact same stance on one of the most important issues to voters. Therefore, like he did in the Democratic primaries, he’s trying to find a new stance to “market” himself. If you don’t believe me check out www.kerryoniraq.com.

Something else in that article that blows me away is when Kerry says “Doesn’t George Bush watch the evening news?!” In other words, doesn’t President Bush see the body count reported every night?. This is an important point, because I think it’s what separates Liberals from Conservatives. Liberals think primarily with their emotions, and Conservatives think primarily with their brain. A Liberal can’t look at Iraq, see a death toll, and then decide “is it worth it?” Instead they just gawk and wail that a US Soldier died. I’m not demeaning the value of life, and in fact I’d say that is what the liberals are doing. I say when a soldier dies they have served their country and worked to secure freedom in Iraq. A liberal on the other hand will say they died fighting a pointless war and it’s all President Bush’s fault. They can’t even support our troops now because that’s indirectly supporting Bush.

Ultimately I think the majority of voters will be able to decipher all the coded messages being transmitted this election year. Democrats have been hoping for Iraq to turn into Vietnam, but that’s not happening. Republicans have been wanting the economy to boom like crazy, but I’d say it’s just in a regular recovery. In the end, look at what people say and decide for yourself if it’s the truth. You’ll be smarter for it.

Starting today we can witness the great onslaught of anti-Bush protestors in New York for the Republican National Convention. I don’t blame the media for covering the protestors, but I do blame them for not accurately representing them. The average viewer might assume that the people protesting are intelligent and pro-active, just out to make sure their voice is heard. However, if we look back at some recent protests of the war in Iraq, the people against Bush probably aren’t your normal Democrats. In fact, they’re probably Ralph Nader fans, because as you’re about to see, most protestors are even farther left than John Kerry. Most are socialist, some appear to have extreme mental disorders, a lot are hippies who miss the 70′s, and all of them make for great interviews. Check out the links below for some very telling videos from recent protests in the last couple years.

Brain Terminal 1: My Favorite Protestor

Brain Terminal 2: When Protestors Attack

Brain Terminal 3: Protesting the Protestors 1

Brain Terminal 4: Protesting the Protestors 2

Protest Warrior 1: Operation Wolverines

Protest Warrior 2: Eagle Strike

Protest Warrior 3: Crashing the Protests

There might be a little language in one or two of those, so you’re warned!