The Occasional Observer

From Newt.org:

ALLEN: We are interrupting that story because we have now on the phone with us Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich, your reaction to the U.S. attacks today on Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing. And I think we have to recognize that we are now committed to engaging this organization and breaking it apart and doing whatever we have to suppress it, because we cannot afford to have people who think that they can kill Americans without any consequence. So this was the right thing to do.

We have not yet gotten assessments of the damage, but I hope that it's been very decisive. And I think it's very important that we send a signal to countries like Sudan and Afghanistan that if you house a terrorist, you become a target. And if you want to get rid of the target, you've got to get rid of the terrorist.

Gingrich response to US Strikes against Osama bin Laden’s network
CNN BREAKING NEWS 13:45 pm ET
August 20, 1998; Thursday 1:45 pm Eastern Time

. . . terrorism is a much more profound threat than we have responded to. It should trouble every American that we've been trying to get bin Laden since 1993. You just mentioned the cost of repairing an American warship damaged by terrorists. We should all be concerned that we don't have the intelligence to know where they are, the ability to preempt, or the capacity to punish. And in fact, we have people who routinely go around the world holding press conferences explaining they're at war with the United States.

Gingrich Testimony to The House Armed Services Committee on U.S. National Security
Chaired By: Representative Bob Stump (R-Az)
March 21, 2001 (25 Weeks before September 11)

Ryan Sager of RCP interviewed the Speaker here about the direction of the GOP, and, as always, Newt was on point with thoughtful and fearless commentary. He discusses the SoCon/Libertarian divide in the GOP, John McCain's presidential prospects, Bush's education policy, and more.

He also gave a very candid analysis of W which I'm surprised wasn't splattered all over the newspapers. Reading it, I was glad that he said it, b/c it's exactly what I've been feeling about the President for some time:

Q: How far has Bush brought the Republican Party toward being a "governing party"?

A: Not very. And it's because the most important characteristic of a governing party is that you set the agenda and you win the argument. If you can't win the argument, you can't sustain the agenda. And if you're not setting the agenda, then random chance and your opponents are setting the agenda. I have a very mixed emotion about the Bush presidency. I think the president, on almost every big decision, has been essentially right. He has really had the moral courage to rise to some huge decisions. But he has not had the drive and the understanding to force the level of change those decisions imply. So we don't today have and information campaign capable of matching up with the Danish cartoon offensive. We don't today have a clear understanding of urban warfare and policing capable of dominating Hamas or Hezbollah or the anti-Iraqi forces in Iraq. I think his big decisions are right, but I think his ability to understand how difficult and how complicated follow through is is a major limitation.

A little backbone from the Chancellor:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Wednesday not to bow to fears of Islamic violence after a Berlin opera house canceled a Mozart work over concerns some scenes could enrage Muslims and pose a security risk.

"I think the cancellation was a mistake. I think self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practise violence in the name of Islam," she told reporters. "It makes no sense to retreat."

While it is not positive that the show was cancelled, this is a small example of the type of political leadership that will be needed in the West if we wish to preserve our cultural heritage.

Full story

As he drifts further from sanity, the Countdown (to lunacy) host has really topped himself this time. His defense of Clinton's bullying, irrational meltdown on Fox News Sunday is laughable. I could write an article pulling it apart, if not for the fact that Rick Moran at RedState has already done the job for me, and quite well at that. Rick has tons of quotable lines, but I found this description of Olbermann funny and accurate:

Olberman's shtick is reminiscent of the high school know-it-all who used to drive everyone nuts by trying to prove he was smart by using a large vocabulary - invariably misusing terms willy nilly - while taking on a professorial air of superiority that attracted every bully in the school like flies to rotting meat. Loud, insufferable, and laughably incoherent at times, the know-it-all was able to gather around him the witless, the woebegone, and the wasted where he would hold forth every day in the lunchroom, his sycophants hanging on every word.

This article posted on HumanEvents.com brings to light another tragic outcome of the Pope's recent speech. Not one leader in the West has spoken out to support him. We all need to wake up and face reality before it's too late.

Resolution on the table in Boston to remove large Citgo sign near Fenway which is city landmark. I agree with McDermott.

So what will happen this November? Time to go on record.

Senate:

(a) Dems take the Senate, GOP loses 6 or more seats
(b) GOP holds the Senate, loses 3-5 seats
(c) GOP loses 0-2 seats
(d) GOP gains

House:

(a) Dems take the House, GOP loses 15 or more seats
(b) GOP holds the House, loses 8-14 seats
(c) GOP holds the House, loses 1-7 seats
(d) GOP stays even or gains

If we're lucky, mid-terms might not be as bad a bloodbath as possible, due to poor fundraising efforts by Dems, and recent bounce in Bush's approval.

I imagine that if Dems don't get significant gains in House and Senate, that could be the end of Dean as DNC chair. As bad as not taking advantage of a politically favorable climate to pick up mid-term seats would be, it would be unthinkable to Dems to lose presidential race again in '08. There have been grumblings about Dean's leadership (and particularly his snubbing of traditional fundraisers in preference for more "grass roots" approaches that don't seem to be panning out), and this mid-term could be final straw. I would imagine they would move to get rid of him as soon as possible, to allow a new chair as much time as possible to get things going for '08.

at the UN.

El Guapo apparently wants to be El Loco too.

Here's more on what the nutbag had to say.

...in the wake of the Holy Father's speech. Anne Applebaum offers this wisdom in (surprise!) the WaPo:

...I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all...

...I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.