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Ranman1
B.V. VIP - Friend
Joined: Sep 28, 2001
Posts: 14884
Location: USA
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 Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2002 6:13 am Post subject: The Sullivan-Fowler Award The Award for the Politically Dumb |
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The Sullivan-Fowler Award
The Award for the Politically Dumb
March 1, 2002
Named for the former finance director and chairman of the Democratic National Committee about whom Judge Manuel L. Real said, in reference to the Clinton fundraising scandal, “If Mr. Fowler and Mr. Sullivan didn\'t know what was going on, they\'re two of the dumbest politicians I\'ve ever seen.”
Carter Rips Bush on \'Axis\' Label
We think it’s completely dumb that former President Jimmy Carter – on whose watch the Shah of Iran was deposed in favor of a fundamentalist extremist (not to mention oppressive) Islamic regime, leading to 52 American Embassy workers being held hostage in Teheran for 444 days and spawning ABC’s news show Nightline – would criticize President George W. Bush for calling North Korea, Iran and Iraq an “Axis of Evil.” But, he did. That was dumb. He wins. Here’s the AP report:
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 21, 2002; 8:53 PM
ATLANTA –– Former President Jimmy Carter on Thursday criticized President Bush\'s labeling three countries an “axis of evil,” saying the statement was \"overly simplistic and counterproductive.”
Carter said Bush\'s statement seriously jeopardized progress made with North Korea, Iran and Iraq in recent years.
“I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement,” said Carter, speaking at an Emory University conference on the impact of terrorism.
Carter also said the growing gap between the rich and the poor continues to be the world\'s greatest challenge, although he noted that many terrorists falsely claim to be among the world\'s destitute.
“We are very concerned now about terrorism. Osama bin Laden is not poor, he\'s very rich – and the people who committed those horrible acts on Sept. 11 were not poor,” he said.
RUNNERS-UP
Oy Vey, Mario
“Why don\'t we declare war on education…?” was just one of the ultra dumb things the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, said during his keynote address at the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County\'s February fund-raiser at the Boca Raton Resort and Club.
But it’s not the only thing. Quoted in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the one-time presidential hopeful also said, “We are all committed to the effort the president is leading. But there is an increasing sense of whether this is a winnable war. Is this a war that can be won with armaments and soldiers, or is this a war like the war against crime or the war on drugs, that has to be fought from generation to generation without ever declaring victory?”
The Sun-Sentinel further described Quomo’s remark, “Instead of just military action, Cuomo said the United States needs to try to understand terrorist motivations, and eliminate them where possible. He said America needs to become more socially responsible worldwide – helping Argentina cope with its economic disaster, for example.”
Yikes.
Stupidity Watch
From Best of the Web by James Taranto, Opinion Journal 2/23/2002
The House Surrender Caucus has grown since Sept. 14, when Rep. Barbara Lee of California was the only congressman to vote in favor of Osama bin Laden. FrontPageMagazine.com reports on a rally of idiots at the University of Southern California, at which several far-left House members spoke.
Rep. Dennis Kucinch of Ohio floated a conspiracy theory to the effect that the Bush administration was behind the October anthrax scare:
He spoke ominously of Congress being forced to abandon Washington and its investigation of the Administration \"during the anthrax scare when anthrax, possibly from a government lab, arrived in the mail.\"
\"The trappings of a state of siege trap us in a state of fear,\" he continued. The crowd lost control of itself when Kucinich excoriated, \"the patriot games, the lying games, the war games of an un-elected President . . .\"
And Rep. Maxine Waters of California said: \"Some of us, maybe foolishly, gave this President the authority to go after the terrorists. We didn\'t know that he too was gonna go crazy with it.\" She questioned the president\'s desire to pursue \"all of these other countries that supposedly are identified with terrorism,\" and said: \"\"The only person who should be celebrated and honored and revered is Barbara Lee.\"
Dinosaur Vomit
From Best of the Web by James Taranto, Opinion Journal 2/25/2002
With America at war, former president Clinton spent the weekend in Australia, where he urged American leaders to act as if their country were weak. The Australian Associated Press reports:
Speaking at the 2002 World Congress on the Peaceful Reunification of China and World Peace in Sydney, Mr Clinton said this \"brief moment in history\" when the US had pre-eminent military, economic and political power, would not last.
\"This is just a period, a few decades this will last, and I think that all of us who are Americans should think about this and ask ourselves how do we wish this moment to be judged 50 years from now,\" he said.
\"And how would we like to be treated when we no longer have this pre-eminent position and we have to work in a cooperative fashion with others to a far greater extent than we have to do today.
\"It seems to me if we would think about it like that it would be much more likely to lead all Americans, without regard of their party, to making the right decisions about how we should approach a lot of these problems that we face.\"
This defeatism is not only ill-timed but preposterous. Sure, past empires have fallen, but the Roman Empire lasted more than 500 years. Besides, nations are not like people, with a life span that is more or less predetermined by nature. Rather than behaving obsequiously toward lesser powers in hopes that they\'ll return the favor when America has declined, American leaders should be concentrating on how to keep their country the mightiest on earth.
By the way, just what is this World Congress on the Peaceful Reunification of China and World Peace before which Clinton spoke? A Taipei Times editorial describes it as \"a pro-unification rally hosted by a well-known radical unification group and a mouthpiece of Beijing.\" China certainly has ambitions to be a major power rivaling the U.S., and it probably has as good a chance as any country in the world of realizing them in the next half-century--so Clinton was telling his audience just what they wanted to hear. In return, according to the Times, he got $153,000.
Still Have A Lot To Learn
It has nothing to do with the fact that the editors of the Sullivan-Fowler Award didn’t go to the University of California, Los Angeles. We legitimately think their Graduate School of Education and Information Studies students are dumb.
Excerpted from the Daily Bruin [UCLA student paper]
Despite being 3,000 miles away, Laura Bush fueled debate between administrators and students who objected to the possibility of having the first lady speak at this year\'s commencement ceremony.
Students in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies met with Dean Aimee Dorr on Friday to demand that she rescind the invitation to Bush.
Critics cited Bush\'s “shallow credentials” and complained they were not allowed to participate in the selection of their commencement speaker.
“We\'re disappointed that the selection for a student event had no student input,” said Estela Zarate, a doctoral student in education.
The dean is usually the one who formally invites commencement speakers. In this case, Chancellor Albert Carnesale sent the invitation because it is general practice for the chancellor to do so when the university contacts the heads of state.
Carnesale, who sent off the invitation in early February under the recommendation of the school, said Tuesday that \"it is extremely unlikely\" he would rescind the invitation.
\"She seems to me to be an entirely appropriate speaker,\" Carnesale said of Bush, a former teacher, librarian and current education advocate.
\"Having had a career in education and information studies, she\'s been dedicated to those areas, as has been demonstrated by her actions,\" he added….
The article continues but we won’t bore you any further. It can be summarized like this: UCLA education students are sanctimonious elitist liberals who don’t really care about who their speaker is as long as he or she isn’t Republican. Anyone who thinks it isn’t that simple, please raise your hand.
Mrs. Bush, don’t go. The audience is dumb.
Is this guy on drugs?
Aaron Sorkin, creator of NBC\'s hallucinogenic drug-induced “The West Wing” political drama, thinks he can write a better script for George W. Bush. In New Yorker Magazine he laments:
“The White House pumped up the president\'s schedule to show him being much busier and more engaged than he is, and Tom Brokaw let it happen--the show was a valentine to Bush. That illusion may be what we need right now, but the truth is we\'re simply pretending to believe that Bush exhibited unspeakable courage at the World Series by throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, or that he, by God, showed those terrorists by going to Salt Lake City and jumbling the first line of the Olympic opening ceremony. The media is waving pom-poms, and the entire country is being polite.”
Rumor has it Sorkin may have been upset about NBC News special \"The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing,\" which aired before a recent “West Wing” episode, or that he may be miffed at the White House for declining his request to tape some real White House staffers for an upcoming episode.
By the way, NBC apologized to Tom Brokaw for Sorkin’s remarks. Wouldn’t want to offend Tom.
HONORABLE MENTION
Watch it Wiggle
From Best of the Web by James Taranto, Opinion Journal 2/19/2002
The National Organization for Women is jealous of Jell-O. Seriously. A press release from the fringe-feminist organization complains:
There was one event in Salt Lake City that the media basically ignored. The Poor People\'s Economic Human Rights Campaign organized the \"March For Our Lives,\" which took place the day of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies to bring attention to the thousands of poor women, men and children in the U.S. The March drew 400 participants, including poor and homeless families from Utah, across the U.S., and other countries around the world, as well as other activists for economic justice. Terry O\'Neill, NOW\'s membership vice president, traveled to Salt Lake City to speak and march on behalf of NOW.
Human-interest features about Jell-O (Utah\'s official snack food) and the Mormon church are fine, but it\'s a shame the media are ignoring the real story of starving people in our own country.
Oh, c\'mon. If people were starving in America, it would be a story, but they aren\'t. Besides, what does any of this have to do with the Olympics?
Democratic Gold
Washington Times Inside the Beltway by John McCaslin 2/20/2002
The Democrats get the gold for deception and hypocrisy.
\"If hypocrisy and deception were Olympic sports, Rep. Bob Menendez and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would be gold-medal winners — even with a French judge,\" Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican, says of the New Jersey Democrat and his DCCC.
In an impassioned speech during debate on campaign-finance reform, Mr. Hayworth late last week recounted several instances of communist Chinese trying to influence the outcome of the 1996 presidential campaign. The Republican lawmaker urged colleagues not to allow such \"enemies of this state\" to perpetrate similar abuses in the future, by banning non-U.S. citizens from making contributions to political parties.
Perhaps in an attempt to score points with minority voters, the DCCC instead issued a press release accusing Mr. Hayworth of saying that \"Hispanics are enemies of the state.\"
Outraged by the assertion, Mr. Hayworth is now distributing a transcript of his remarks, where clearly the word Hispanic doesn\'t appear (the communist Chinese are mentioned at least five times).
The DCCC didn\'t stop there, sticking an audio track of Mr. Hayworth\'s speech on its Web site, \"only it has been doctored,\" Mr. Hayworth has discovered.
In fact, all of the Republican\'s references to Chinese efforts on behalf of the Clinton-Gore campaign were edited out.
If that\'s not enough, Mr. Menendez is quoted in a DCCC release as saying that Mr. Hayworth attacked Hispanics, and rips Republicans for offering an underlying amendment prohibiting foreigners from making contributions to political campaigns, calling it an \"attempt to silence voices and exclude ethnic groups.\"
Wouldn\'t you know, on March 30, 1998, Mr. Menendez voted \"aye\" on the Illegal Foreign Contributions Act of 1998 — seeking to bar noncitizens from making campaign contributions or expenditures.
Picking on Pickering?
The Lib-Dems are at it again. Why is the truth so difficult for the Left to accept? As the New York Times reports on embattled Bush judicial nominee Charles Pickering:
Progressive is not exactly the description used by the national black officials who are making an intense effort to prevent the judge\'s appointment. “A vote for Pickering is a vote against civil rights,” said Julian Bond, the national chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, speaking against the nomination with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, “It\'s hard to imagine a person who is more hostile to civil rights.” Judge Pickering has also been condemned by a variety of big-city newspaper editorial boards and columnists.
But such comments carry little weight among those who actually know the man personally here in Laurel, in southeast Mississippi. Judge Pickering, now a federal district judge in the nearby city of Hattiesburg, was praised by black city officials for helping to set up after- school youth programs here, and for directing federal money to medical clinics in low-income areas when he was a state senator. Black business leaders say he was influential in persuading white-owned banks to lend money to black entrepreneurs, helping to strengthen the city\'s black middle class.
“I can\'t believe the man they\'re describing in Washington is the same one I\'ve known for years,\" said Thaddeus Edmonson, a former local president of the N.A.A.C.P. who is now president of the seven-member Laurel City Council and one of its five black members.
We’re not sure which is dumber, the fact that liberal leaders didn’t think anyone would ask around about Pickering, or that their strategy of lies will probably work.
[url]http://www.rightturns.com/award/awcurrent.htm [/url] |
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Sow your wild oats on Saturday night -- Then on Sunday pray for crop failure. |
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