Free Frank Warner

Oops! Senator Schumer caught telling colleagues to call any budget cuts ‘extreme’

News reporters already were listening in on Sen. Chuck Schumer’s conference call with fellow Democratic senators, but he didn’t know it. So he revealed his strategy for making the Republicans’ plan to cut 1.6 percent in spending look like the end of the world.

Just call it “extreme,” he said.

After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over how to cut spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John A. Boehner of Ohio, the speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”

A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell.

Then the conference call began in earnest, with the Democrats right on message.

“We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,” said Ms. Boxer.

Schuler’s secret advice was just too juicy even for the Democratic reporters who heard it. This actually got reported in The New York Times.

Oh, and nice play-acting, Barbara Boxer, Ma’am.

Frank Warner

Free Syria!

It is so encouraging to see, against the radical Islamists determined to kill democracy even if the whole Middle East must die, that an enlightened movement of Arabs and Persians for freedom has emerged.

It appears Bashar Assad desperately is offering Syrians more economic freedom, Chinese Communist style, if they all give up their calls for free speech, free political parties, and free, fair and regular elections. That might work for a while, but the will to be free is so strong, and the right so universally established, that even a minute’s false imprisonment is a high crime.

Syrians, like everyone else, deserve to be free right now. The average Syrian suddenly is discovering he isn’t alone in his impatience to claim that right.

Frank Warner

Free Libya or leave it alone

Six months before the liberation of Iraq, I wrote “Free Iraq or leave it alone” on one of those Internet news groups.

My point was, if President Bush intended to carry out President Clinton’s policy of regime change in Iraq, he’d have to replace Saddam Hussein’s fascist government with a democratic government, or very quickly Iraq would have another dictator and the Iraqi people would be no better off.

The point holds now. To correct Colin Powell’s poorly premised rule, “If you choose to help a broken country, you must fix it.” The only thing that fixes a long-oppressed nation like Libya is freedom. And that takes bloody, expensive nation building. Otherwise, in Libya, we’re wasting the money we’re borrowing from China.

‘That road.’ Unfortunately, President Obama last night made it fairly clear he doesn’t plan to free the Libyans.

“To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.”

Obama will help the pro-democracy Libyans from the air for a while, but if Moammar Kaddafi can kill them all on the ground, that’s too bad, because we’re not going to kill or capture Kaddafi and we’re not going to oversee the democratization of Libya.

I just have to wonder how the president can say “We have intervened to stop a massacre” this year when he has no commitment to prevent the same feared massacre next year.

We’ve chosen Libya but we’re going to leave it, and we’re going to leave it broken. It would have been better not to have chosen Libya at all.

Frank Warner

* * *

Freedom Count in last night’s speech: 6, average

Freedom: 6 times.
Liberty: 0
Democracy: 0

Total: 6

Syrians publicly call for ‘Freedom,’ but dozens are shot to death

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad clung to power Friday as Syrians demonstrating for political liberty and their other long-denied human rights were gunned down by totalitarian mercenaries.

Dozens of people have been killed over the past week around the southern city of Deraa, medical officials have said, and there were reports of more than 20 new deaths on Friday, during demonstrations that would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in this most tightly controlled of Arab countries. ...

Inspired by successful uprisings against authoritarian rule in Egypt and Tunisia, the mourners chanted for “Freedom.”

There is evidence the pro-democracy protesters are being shot by Iranian thugs whom Assad has hired to frighten the masses back into submission. It’s interesting how so many more Arabs, having witnessed the liberation of Iraq, now want a taste of libery.

Meanwhile in Iraq, Iraqis freely exercise their right to demand improvements to their elected government. Yet no one but the stupid friends of Moktado al-Sadr (who coincidentally lives in Iran) calls for the return of dictatorship.

Maybe every sane person really wants to be free.

Frank Warner

Donald Trump joins calls to see Obama birth certificate

I’m a faither on President Obama’s birthplace. As sure as I believe anything, I believe he was born in Hawaii. But I’d still like to see his original birth certificate, out of simple human curiosity.

Donald Trump is a shallow megalomaniac, but he’s right to want to see that original birth certificate, and not settle for the birth certification that a Hawaiian government computer spit out in 2007. Open government isn’t about hiding things, especially things as basic as a U.S. president’s birth certificate.

Unfortunately, Trump is such a pompous goofball he probably set back the cause of seeing the Obama certificate when he appeared on "The View" today.

Obama's choice. Some people don’t accept their government on faith. Some people lose faith when they see evidence their government is hiding things. In this case, I’ve yet to hear anyone explain coherently why the president doesn’t authorize the release of his original birth certificate.

Remember, it was a Pennsylvania Democrat, Philip Berg, who sued to have that original birth certificate made public in 2008. The courts shot him down in 2009 because Hawaiian officials said Obama was born there, and because an Hawaiian law doesn’t allow him to see the original document without Obama's consent.

Remember, too, that a Hawaiian Democrat, Gov. Neil Abercrombie, this year promised he’d do all he could to let us see that birth certificate, and then he discovered the president had no interest in releasing it and it was possible the original birth certificate no longer exists. It might have been lost or replaced with official notes here and there.

Snopes cover-up. Let’s just see it for the sake of seeing it. And Snopes.com, stop changing the subject with false questions like “Is a Certification of Live Birth document provided by the Obama campaign a forgery?” Of course it’s not a forgery, but it’s not the original certificate.

The real question is, “Has the public seen President Obama’s original birth certificate, and why not?”

Blessed are those who believe and have not seen, but they’re the zealot faithers. I’m a curious faither. When a paper probably exists to document a basic fact of American history, I want to see it. If it is hidden, I want to know why. If it doesn’t exist, I want to know why.

Frank Warner

Scotland OKs rescue of Lockerbie bomber from Libya, says he still has less than 3 months to live

BREAKING FAKE NEWS:  EDINBURGH -- The government of Scotland has approved a rescue mission to save Abdelbaset Al Mohmed al-Megrahi, murderer of 11 Scots and 259 others in the 1988 Pan Am jet bombing at Lockerbie.

Megrahi, convicted in 2001, was freed in August 2009 by the Scottish government, which explained that his release was an act of mercy for a man with less than three months to live. The government has now decided that, with the bombing of Libya, Megrahi again has less than three months to live and again must be shown mercy.

Asked if a risky operation to save Megrahi would again insult the memories of those he murdered, the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said the only thing that separates Scotland from other countries is its willingness to use its power to protect dictators and their hired killers. “The mission is on!”

MacAskill said it is hypocrisy that the real democracies oppose Megrahi’s boss, Moammar Gaddafy, when they don’t oppose the dictatorships of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The only way to be consistent, he said, is to allow all dictators to oppress and murder.

“If you can’t save everyone, you must not save anyone,” MacAskill said, rushing to catch a Puma helicopter for Megrahi's rescue.

Wow, this story is hard to believe!

Frank Warner

George Monbiot: Japan disaster converts me to support nuclear power

George Monbiot, longtime opponent of nuclear power, in The Mail & Guardian:

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation. ...

Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.

This confirms a feeling I've sensed since the beginning of the Japanese disaster. After more than 30 years experience with nuclear power, people on both sides of the politics are a lot more realistic.

Frank Warner

That overlooked 2010 Kandahar detainee abuse scandal

Two years ago, I listed 20 stories the Democratic Party-dominated American press will have a hard time reporting on while a Democrat is in the White House. One story: the abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers and contractors in Afghanistan.

Well, how much have you heard about the alleged Jan. 15, 2010, murder by U.S. soldiers of three innocent Afghan civilians in Kandahar province? How many of the photos of U.S. Army Stryker “kill team” soldiers posing with dead Afghans have you seen?

In the American news media, we haven’t seen much about this.

It’s as if the reporters for our biggest newspapers and television networks, who couldn’t say enough about Abu Ghraib under a Republican president, don’t want the Democrats to look bad.

Frank Warner

Freedom Count in Obama’s Libya rescue speech: Zero

The Freedom Count tallies the number of times a speaker, usually a U.S. president, mentions “freedom,” “liberty” and “democracy” in an important speech. The premise is that if a speaker cares about something, he will mention it.

Over the years, we’ve come to see that a Freedom Count under 5 is low, and a Freedom Count of 10 or higher is high. (President Bush's second inaugural address set the record, with a Freedom Count of 43.)

In President Obama’s speech yesterday on the planned use of military force, not including ground troops, to support Libyan opponents of dictator Moammar Qaddafi, the president registered a Freedom Count of zero.

Which is stunning, considering all the opportunities to accidentally refer to Qaddafi’s opponents as freedom-fighters, or people fighting for their freedom or pro-democracy forces. It didn’t happen; no freedom, no liberty, no democracy in this speech.

Freedom Count

Freedom: 0
Liberty: 0
Democracy: 0

Total: 0

Derivative trading. To be fair, Obama did say:

“Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. … The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun.”

But since the Freedom Count has never counted derivative words such as “democratic,” it can’t be counted now if the count is to consistently count. Besides, the point of the Freedom Count is to measure what specifically a speaker is for. What are democratic values? Spell it out. You might hit a match in this pinball game.

It was encouraging, however, to hear the president again use the term “universal values,” which usually ticks off the Chinese dictatorship.

“We have made clear our support for a set of universal values, and our support for the political and economic change that the people of the region deserve.”

So OK, Obama gets subliminal points for that one.

‘Our cause is just.’ But his summary was weak:

“Our goal is focused, our cause is just, and our coalition is strong. Thank you very much.”

Our goal? What goal? Is it liberty? Our cause? What cause? Is it democracy? I won’t even go into the new “coalition,” which is a shadow of the coalition President Bush assembled to liberate Iraq. Saying you have a cause isn’t having a cause. You have to describe it in words. And if you’re going to risk American lives for it, the words had better be clear.

How about an occasional celebration of freedom by this president? How about reminding dictators of the crime they are committing every day when they deny a people’s liberty? How about educating the skeptics and brainwashed in enslaved nations about freedom’s protective, creative and curative powers?

They may be “only words,” but the principles of freedom are defended first by words. And every American president, by his words first, should be a champion of freedom.

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: Diogenes in the White House: The freedom a cynic can’t grasp.

Looking forward to the last episode of 'Big Love'

The HBO series "Big Love," about a semi-Mormon polygamist family, has been unlike any other TV series before it. The ending this Sunday has got to be powerful. It had better be.

And I'm really going to miss Jeanne Tripplehorn.

Frank Warner