Bush no Lie

McLellan to the contrary, the case that George Bush lied prior to the invasion of Iraq cannot be substantiated with the evidence at hand. Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post elaborates at the WaPo's website.

Awesome Video Saturday XXXXVI

This video discusses an interesting story, a very unflattering chapter in the public service of Monica Conyers, the wife of Congressman John Conyers. I think it's safe to say that she embarasses herself pretty definitively.

The Role of Business

I've written about government and the oil companies at In Rare Form.

Fiscal Irresponsibility

One of our biggest domestic threats comes from looming entitlement obligations. Follow the link for more.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/126234.html

Uribe v. Pelosi

I'm pulling for Uribe. Here's more on how Colombia continues to act in good faith, despite the disrespect paid to it by the Democratic leadership.

Awesome Video Saturday XXXXII

I don't usually watch late-night television, but a blog posted these videos from the White House Correspondents dinner. Craig Ferguson was the featured entertainment and I think he was pretty funny. You can't go wrong with a Scot. The video is in three parts.

¡Ayúdela!

More Colombia stuff:

• This is an Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal by former Secretary of State James Baker. It is further repudiation of the FTA's politicization.
• The announcement of a biofuel agreement between the US and Colombia is welcome news. Although relatively small in scope ($1 billion) anything that helps an improving democracy strengthen itself against regression to a a more violent time is a good thing.

When Fools lead the Blind

This is an important post.

I wish I could say that the Politicians pushing for the death of the U.S.-Colombia Free-Trade Agreement were merely ignorant. Instead I would say that it rises to a level of ideological corruption that indicates the real stuff that Pelosi, Obama, and Clinton are made of. Their stance is opposed by many other Democrats, as shown in today's Wall Street Journal.

Among the reasons given by the FTA's opposition is a stated concern about the union worker. This Boston Globe editorial by Edward Shumacher-Matos explains how the pact would actually benefit U.S. exports into Colombia by lowering tariffs on U.S. goods significantly:

US goods, however, still face tariffs of 35 percent and higher. Under the new agreement, 80 percent of US auto parts, medical equipment, and farm and other products will be duty free immediately. The rest will be phased in over 10 years.
The Colombian government is making the bigger sacrifice because a permanent agreement removes uncertainty for investors. Trade, combined with US support for Colombia's military and justice system, have helped Colombia beat back a leftist insurgency, largely demobilize right-wing paramilitaries, and spark a boom that has reduced poverty, unemployment, and the economic weight of drug mafias.

In fact, many Colombian Unions are in favor of the pact. Mary Anastasia O'Grady had a must-read article in yesterday's WSJ. The FTA will bring investment and should promote economic stability. In spite of the competition that it may expose them to, they recognize the net benefit of freer trade. For more see the video below.

I've had an interest in Colombia for many years. It's sad that this issue has been politicized to the point of jeopardizing the tremendous progress made in that country during this decade.

Good News from Iraq

Check out this post from Michael Barone on the Kagan report.

Cubans

I enjoyed this article from Pajamas Media about the supposed but apparently non-existent ideological shift between old and young cubanos. Apparently we are just as conservative as our parents.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/cubanamerican_generational_shi/

McCain, the Conservative?

There are three interesting articles demonstrating some things that I like from John McCain. He's growing on me, and I hope that continues. A lot will depend on his choice for Vice President.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120645482100762421.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120640701463560977.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120657642878567071.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

Colombia, Liberty, & Trade

I think U.S. support for Colombia's liberalizing government is vitally important to our economic and national security in this hemisphere. Democrats are abandoning Colombia at a critical time, in a ploy to shore up support among opponents of free trade. This is a bad idea, but continues Democrat's long tradition of doctrinal inconsistency.

Read the following for more:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120631596510858221.html?mod=todays_columnists

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120640555842961083.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

Not so Super

The Wall Street Journal has this great editorial about the very murky nature of the Democrat's process of selecting their nominee for President. It is not at all consistent with the way they have assailed Republicans in 2000 and 2004.

Bush in Africa/Projection

I cited a few links in SPOTD #136 about President Bush's visit to Africa and the very positive views about him held by many Africans. There was also praise from Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof. Geldof has written a longer piece for TIME. It was very interesting, but revealed something about Geldof (and I think many other people) that he has not noticed.

Geldof's praise for Bush in Africa is matched by Geldof's criticism of Bush in Iraq. Why the difference? On Africa they agree and on Iraq they don't. Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? When someone agrees with you, and does things that you advocate/admire, they are brave, courageous, a genius. When you they act contrary to your opinion they are ignorant, stupid, or perhaps even malicious. Geldof does a poor job, a non-effort really, to reconcile the dichotomy. I'm not just criticizing liberals like Geldof. This extends to the folks that like the president on terror but hate him on immigration. He must be in league with the construction companies or "big agriculture."

This tendency to view proponents of policies we disagree with through the prism of good/evil is often incorrect and just as frequently is the source for today's acrimonious political discourse. Sometimes people just disagree. It is as simple as that. Win the battle with superior ideas, not ad hominem attacks that betray at best a lack of sophistication and at worst the exact kind of malice that one may be projecting on the target of their ire.

More trouble from Chavez

I was dismayed by this report about troop mobilizations by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. He has moved units to the Colombian border following that country's successful killing of a top FARC leader. As I've written before, Chavez has recognized FARC as a legitimate political actor, despite the fact that they are funded through illegal and immoral activities. He did this to undermine the Uribe government in Colombia, a close ally to the United Statets.

I mentioned that I was dismayed, but that is less so at the behavior of Chavez (hardly surprising) than at that of Congress which failed to approve enhanced trade relations with Colombia. Colombia has greatly improved over the last several years, but politicians in Washington don't seem to understand how tenuous that success is.

The death of Raul Reyes and 16 of his comrades is the death of more terrorists. We all know how I feel about that.

Obamania II

I discuss some of the case against Obama in In Rare Form. Check it out!

R.I.P. William F. Buckley

He passed away at age 82. One of the key figures of the conservative movement and a founder of The National Review.

That'll be one of the best places to learn more about him. There is also this AP article.

UPDATE 2/28

I really enjoyed this remembrance from the WSJ. A piece:

These achievements might not have happened without Buckley, who was uniquely suited to preside over the often-feuding factions of the early political right. He liked arguments over principle, but he also had an uncommon talent for adjudicating disputes and building coalitions. And though Buckley had bedrock beliefs, he had a conservative's distrust for systems and grand theories; his politics were pragmatic. His thinking and prose were governed by a critical-deliberative style that emphasized contingency and complexity. More than anything else, Buckley wanted to promulgate what he often referred to as "a thoughtful conservatism."

Here also are some excellent Buckleyisms.

Obamania I

Peggy Noonan scares me every once in a while. I get worried that she is slipping into a mode that many commentators fall into as they become olde...er...more seasoned. But then she restores my faith. Today's column is a great one, and it draws together several issues related to Obamania that are worth addressing. Some excerpts:

Barack Obama's biggest draw is not his eloquence. When you watch an Obama speech, you lean forward and listen and think, That's good. He's compelling, I like the way he speaks. And afterward all the commentators call him "impossibly eloquent" and say "he gave me thrills and chills." But, in fact, when you go on the Internet and get a transcript of the speech and print it out and read it--that is, when you remove Mr. Obama from the words and take them on their own--you see the speech wasn't all that interesting, and was in fact high-class boilerplate. (This was not true of John F. Kennedy's speeches, for instance, which could be read seriously as part of the literature of modern American politics, or Martin Luther King's work, which was powerful absent his voice.)
Mr. Obama is magnetic, interacts with the audience, leads a refrain: "Yes, we can." It's good, and compared with Hillary Clinton and John McCain, neither of whom seems really to enjoy giving speeches, it comes across as better than it is. But is it eloquence? No. Eloquence is deep thought expressed in clear words. With Mr. Obama the deep thought part is missing. What is present are sentiments.

-----

Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough. But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America's sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.
That's the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn't come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.

Read the whole thing.

La Política

For muchas cosa políticas, visit In Rare Form.

Primary Watch

Check out In Rare Form for some chatter about the race. We do like that Romney guy.

Also visit my sister's blog for her take on the importance of our involvement in the political process.