The Violence Worker!

Unauthorized Or Illegal?

While perusing through the news this morning with a big mug of joe in my hand, I came across a story that almost made me choke.  It's a bit of a gruesome story, but that wasn't what caused my reaction.

The headline that caught my attention:

Dog comes home with human hand

That's my 8-year-old dog, Bear.  The reason that headline caught my attention is that Bear, on occasion, takes himself out for a walk around the neighborhood.  Bear is 100 pounds of happy-go-lucky puppy and I can just imagine Bear bringing something like that back home.

What REALLY got my attention was the first paragraph and the reporter's choice of words to describe the victim's "status"

BROWNSVILLE — A family dog in Mission brought home a severed human hand Thursday, launching a search that turned up the body of a suspected unauthorized immigrant, police said.  (emphasis added)

Unauthorized Immigrant?  I suppose that's a step above "undocumented", but not much.  Unauthorized does not necessarily mean illegal.  It often does, but there are plenty of circumstances where it it isn't.

Illegal is illegal.  Words mean things.  Granted our hapless victim was only suspected, but we don't describe a suspected bank robber as having made an unauthorized withdrawal. 

Unfortunately, the liberals demand that we not speak the truth when it comes to illegal immigration.   By diluting the language, they dilute our culture and way of life.

VW

Obama Needs To Go!

OK folks, tell me again why you elected this Communist SOB as a President.  I’m tired of mincing words.  I tried to be respectful, but no more.  This wannabe Stalin is no good for this country and the change we need is to throw his Socialist ass out of office come 2012.

He doesn’t like Fox News…I get it.  Fine.  But to use the power and prestige of the presidency to marginalize Fox News is anti-American.  It borders on Stalinesque.  He’s gone so far as to ask the other networks to ignore Fox News and their correspondents.

Yesterday, he doubled down and lost.  He tried to exclude Fox News from an interview of the so-called Pay Czar (you know, that guy who is in charge of capping salaries).  All administrations often provide top off officials to be interviewed by the press pool of which Fox is a member.  The hacks in this administration tried to exclude Fox news.  Fox is a member of that pool.

Fortunately, the other networks refused to participate unless Fox was included.  They understood the implications that the next President could find them in disfavor – and if it was a Republican, I’d be just as pissed!  Maybe more so

Here’s the video:

Welcome to change, America.  Hugo Chavez/Fidel Castro style.

One has to wonder that if he is afraid of Fox News, maybe he's not exactly who we need as Commander-in-Chief.

VW

Journalism is Dead, Long Live Journalism

According to a study commissioned by the Columbia School of Journalism, if the profession is to be saved, then "the government, universities and nonprofit foundations should step in as newspapers suffer financially." and "they suggest a fund be established using fees from telecom or Internet providers for grants to innovative local news groups."

I was curious as to what they meant by that last statement so I went looking and found the actual study in PDF format posted on Columbia's website.  Specifically, I was interested in knowing who and how these grants would be administered.  This is what I found on page 95:

Local News Fund Council boards should be comprised of journalists, educators, and community leaders representing a wide range of viewpoints and backgrounds. In the largest states, it would be reasonable to have two or even three councils for different regions in the state, but for most states a single council should suffice. Each council—and the news organizations awarded grants—should be representative of local communities’ geographical, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity.

I can only imagine the chances of any thing even remotely conservative getting through that process.

With the White House  using the authority and prestige of the Presidency to try and bully Fox News, is it a far stretch to believe they might attempt to influence news organizations they disagreed with receiving grants or tax exempt status?   How much a of a leap is it to think that if they would attempt to control the organization's news cycle? 

The American press, free of government interference, has a long history of independence.  That doesn't mean non-partisan.  Newspaper editorial boards have traditionally taken partisan stances.  It was not uncommon at one time to have two newspapers in a city whose editorial orientation was from opposing political parties.  Sometimes, they were often named after their party of choice such as the "Tallahassee Democrat".  If the government controls the purse strings in some tangible way, any pretense of independence will be gone.

Journalism will most likely survive.  We don't need the government to keep it alive.  Journalism is changing and if it is to survive, it must find a way outside of government help to reinvent itself.  Professions change.  A car mechanic of 50 years ago would most likely be lost looking at a modern car engine.  Like any other species, if it is to evolve, it must adapt and overcome.  If Journalism as it is presently constituted cannot survive in its present form, then let it die.  No government aid should be used to revive it.  

As long as there is a First Amendment and as long as there are courts willing to enforce it, journalism will survive in some form.  Keep the government out of it!

VW

Rush Limbaugh And The NFL

When it was first announced that Limbaugh was interested in becoming an owner in an NFL team, I was surprised that the reaction was kind of tepid at first,  but in the ensuing days, the attack picked up steam   Throw in a couple of phony quotes, and Voila! he's forced to stand down.

What has this country come to? Somebody makes up a couple of quotes - no attribution, no proof, but the Mains Stream media spreads them like they were gospel. 

These people have the morals of a street whore and they sit in self-righteous judgment as if they were the keepers of all things good and holy.

Limbaugh is no racist.  He's a bit bombastic and irreverent at times.  He often operates from the theater of the absurd, but nothing he says or advocates is inherently racist.  If he did, they wouldn't have to make stuff up!

It was all politics.  You have Chris Matthews who gets a thrill running up his leg when he hears Obama speak suggesting that someone stick a gun up to Limbaugh's head and see if it will explode when they shoot him.  There's Keith Olbermann.  He gets up in front of a camera each day and tries his best to sound like a thespian up on the stage reciting Shakespearean sonnets to himself while he is trashing people in the most dishonest and mean-spirited way. 

Rush couldn't get away with acting like that for ten seconds, yet these guys (and others such as Ed Schultz) can say anything and they get a pass.

Freedom of speech only means the correct speech.  Anything else is racist.  Just ask the liberals.  If they had their way, Limbaugh and all the other Conservative talkers would be banned from the airwaves. 

VW

The Naked Lady No One Saw

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans ventured out of their comfort zone and gathered in various places around the country to express their anger at a government out of control.  I was one of them. 

The left reminds me of a guy who sees a naked woman.  He wants to look and stare, but he's afraid she'll notice him staring.  He looks away, but glances to the side to see if she is still there.  The left saw the Tea Parties, but they are trying hard to dismiss them as nothing more than a few (very few) "anti-government rightwing nutjobs" who got together to complain about paying taxes in general.  They saw the size of these protests, but their response was to just stand there, hands in their collective pockets while whistling some mindless tune so as not to look the least bit interested in yesterday's activities.  They noticed, just like our fellow who saw the naked lady.  They noticed, but they don't want to acknowledge the significance of what they saw.

The left uses two main tactics.  Sometimes, they target the threat in order to try and neutrakize it.  The example here is their clownish attempt to demonize Rush Limbaugh.  The other tactic is to minimalize it and that is what they are doing in this case..  Ignore it and it will go away.  All day today, the standard line was simply that it was a few disgruntled Nazis and it will all go away within a few days.  They will probably not even mention it tomorrow.

It is incumbant upon us to not let them just bury this movement.  They can try and dismiss it as "astroturf" and a flash in the pan all they want, but we aren't going anywhere.   We need to show them that we will not be easily cowed into submission and going.

This isn't about just taxes.  It's not anti-government and we will only grow stronger the more they try to down play it!

VW

Newspaper Bailouts

You had to know this was coming.  Newspaper bailouts have been bandied about here and there, but not much has been done toward that end.  That's all changed now.  A bill was introduced today in the Senate to provide a form of bailout for newspapers.  It's not exactly a cash infusion like AIG, but it does offer them a lifeline of sorts.  From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

"This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat," said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

So much for a free and independent press.  It's not like we've really had that in awhile, but this would certainly be the death knell to an industry already choking on their own effluvium.

A newspaper owned by a larger company would be ineligible unless the newspaper was sold to a non-profit to run.  Once run as a non-profit, some different rules would apply.

Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

Somehow, I derive little comfort from that part of the bill.   Reporting can often be slanted and facts either left out, or distorted just enough to make your side look better.  The fact that they would be barred from making endorsements is a minor impediment.

Gone would be any pretense that the newspapers were some kind of a watchdog over the government.  My dog is a good watchdog, but he won't bite me and presumably the press would not bite the hand that was feeding it the tax breaks it needed to survive.  All it would take would be an accusation of impartiality and a prospective loss of tax-exempt status and the watchdog would quietly remove its teeth.

There are a lot of reasons why newspapers are failing and although I've speculated as to the cause of death, my guess is probably as good as anyone's.  If there was a better guess as to the reason for failure, one would think the owners would be be fixing the problem rather than shutting down the presses.  Even if this abomination passes, I think it's only postponing the inevitable. NPR is not all that popular and making a newspaper into some kind  of print version is not going to save the industry.

No respectable newspaper should even consider something like this.  It goes against everything a free press stands for.   Hmmmm...check that, they shed that respectability cloak years ago.

On the other hand, ACORN will soon be flush with a few billion from the stimulus bill.  One might speculate that purchasing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer woul be something they may want to look at.  If you can control the news, no one will notice you are rigging the vote.

VW

ELOI Alert: File this under "YGTBSM"

Teacher placed on leave for questionable Facebook posting

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9781795&nav=menu1362_10 

You know what?  Present-day parents, and especially modern teachers and media types never cease to amaze me with just their....Eloi-like outlook on things.  The fact that people, anywhere, are "surprised" by acts of violence, with that stupid, vacant puppy-dog look that says "What is this 'violence' of which you speak?" God Almighty! (this little bit was not inspired so much by the story  itself, but by the station editor's blog entry and the perspective of some of the parents).  I call people like this the "first to be eaten" when XYZ disaster  (Posleen, Zombies, whatever) happens, because that's what their mentality has made them perfect for.

Lt Col Dave Grossman wrote a book recently called "On Killing" and he's also one of the guys behind the "Sheep, Sheepdogs and Wolves" meme that runs around the net.  I've bought his book but haven't started reading it yet, but I think I already disagree with his fundamental thesis - I think EVERY human being walking the planet, or the vast majority at least, has it in them to kill, or commit serious acts of violence given the right motivation and set of circumstances.  Even the Eloi-parents mentioned in the story, I'm willing to bet, would go to ANY lengths necessary to protect the lives of their kids, and I'm willing to be the moms would be willing to commit acts 10 X WORSE than anything the dads could come up with, if push came to shove.

Now if you want to argue that the photo, with the teacher sighting up the camera, is a little over the top, I think that's just arguing semantics, something else that the three groups I mentioned in the intro seem really good at.

Here’s something else: I see this story as somewhat similar to this one.

And here’s the worst part.  This will NOT change unless people like the woman in the original story, or Carol Thatcher in the second one, FIGHT BACK.  As long as they keep taking the easy way out – the “it’s not worth it” approach to fighting back, it’s going to get worse, and worse.

I’ve had it with the damn Eloi running the show.  It’s why I mean it, if I ever have children of my own, I’m homeschooling them, or at least sending them to a private school, Catholic or otherwise, that ain’t “ate up” like this.

Jeez Louise on a Sunday.

And if I seem disrespectful towards parents or what have you, bite me.  Any parent who teaches their child to be a drone, not even capable of defending themself or naive enough to think they can kumbaya their way out of every situation is a failure.  Teachers who do the same are grossly negligent in my book too.

Why Newspapers Are Almost Obsolete

I've read in a couple of places that one reason newspapers, even big papers like the New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, are on the ropes is the lack of classified ad revenue.  Classified ads are cash cows for newspapers but classified ads are in steep decline these days.  They usually require very little space and labor is usually not that intensive to publish them. 

Before the advent of the Internet, the cost of placing a classified ad was very affordable.  I've placed a few of ads over the years and the cost was usually fairly reasonable.  I think the last one I placed was in the late 80's and it cost me like 11 dollars for a seven day run.  I forget what it was for, but I did get results. 

For some people, perusing the classifieds in the daily paper was an art form.  They would pour over the ads like a bookie studying the Daily Racing Form looking for a winning nag.  They would find untold treasures hiding in all of that small print.  That was then, now we have the internet and people comb through Internet sites like Craig's List to find their bargain.  With very little money (compared to buying a printing press and hiring a huge staff to print and distribute), you could put up a web page that would allow people to place their own ads for free or very little cost such as Craig's List.  Once people realized they could place an ad that was either inexpensive or even free, newspapers started losing some serious money.

It took awhile for it to really start to concern the Newspapers because most newspapers had a healthy circulation rate and a wider readership than the internet.  Not so, today.  With the Internet, the news cycle shifted into a 24 hour full-on run.  "Cycle" no longer even applies.  Newspapers are full of yesterday's news.  By the time the newspaper printed the news and it landed on your doorstep or the newsstand, it's already been dissected, analyzed and digested by almost everyone.  Add to that, you can then read any number of blogs to get it even further reduced and refined and the newspaper's take is essentially irrelevant.

It also doesn't help that they've managed to alienate anyone in their readership that is further right than Josef Stalin.  That doesn't help circulation either

So classified ads are down, circulation is slumping and costs for everything are up.  It doesn't take a financial genius to understand that a tiny print ad costing 25 dollars or more for three days is rather pricey compared to free on Craig's List.  If you want to sell your house in the newspaper, you can get 3 lines of text for ONE DAY in both the Seattle P-I and Times for the paltry sum of 84 Dollars.  You read correctly.  $84 dollars a day will get you a one day print ad.  It does include a 7 days of online placement.  Such a deal!  Run that ad for a month and it starts to eat into the profit really fast.

The Seattle P-I is on the block and I suspect that by April, it will cease to function as a print entity.  It's just a matter of time before others start to fall, including the Gray Lady herself. We might not like the idea that newspapers are going the way of the horse and buggy, but it will happen.  As the car edged out the horse, so the internet is edging out the print media.

Many newspapers will undoubtedly try and remake themselves digitally, but I suspect that even that will only succeed in prolonging the inevitable in most cases.  If they already have a strong web presence, they may have a chance.

I do think it's kind of sad in a way.  I used to love getting up on a Sunday and spreading the paper out all over the table, perusing over the news, the editorials and of course, the color comics.  Now, The color comics are small enough that I need a magnifying glass on top of my reading glasses and instead of about eight or ten pages, it's reduced to one sheet. 

It's not worth reading anymore. 

VW

The Weekly Awesome: Update 1

Two links for you to view and reflect on. (NOTE: some links for further study provided at the bottom, which may spark some serious commentary in the future, special thanks to RightWingProf a blog well worth your time).

Guilt: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America and why it's a harsh dose of reality to burst the bubble of la-la-land coating a huge chunk of this country.

By the way, I love Ann Coulter - I love the fact that she has the guts to actually say what millions of people actually think but don't have the guts to say - someone has to do it, and if we didn't have her, we'd have to invent her.

Andy Breitbart's Big Hollywood - my new favorite blog, because the worst mistake the conservative movement in this country has ever made, was to cede the arts, academia, and the public forum to the far left.  Well, to be honest, I'm not sure if it's really so much ceded as much as "sucked so bad that it left a gaping hole the other side rushed in to fill."

I'm not going to sugar coat things, the reason why a lot of conservative culture lost out over the past 30-40 years is that it was guilty of the same things leftist-driven culture in America has since come full-circle to suffer from as well

1) The number one rule of cultural endeavors: entertain.  If you don't entertain on some level, you lose people's interest, and quick. 

2) Don't suck (see rule one).

3) Don't assume that "silence is agreement/compliance" or that everyone in your desire audience is on "the same page."

4) The echo-chamber/preaching to the choir effect.

Let me illustrate this as best I can, awkwardly and incompletely.  I'm 31 years old, and growing up, I think nothing did more damage to image of Christianity in America and its subsequent devaluation than the following things: Christian rock, and an overreaction to media-driven fake controversies (re: heavy metal music, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and throw a hand up if you remember these - Jack Chick pamphlets) which turned out to be chasing shadows more than anything else.

On the first - the reason why for most of its existence Christian rock has been mocked and ridiculed has been first and foremost, it was bloody awful as far as being "rock" music goes.  It was parodical.  Treacly, mealy-mouthed, saccharine to the point of encouraging diabetes, it promoted less an image of a loving God than a Peter, Paul and Mary sleepover guaranteed to do one thing:  get your child beaten up at school.  Seriously, what it did was contribute to an image of "Christianity is for wusses" and "Christianity makes your kid into a passive victim" or, come to possess a "persecution complex" as my dad used to put it. 

Christianity in America, Catholic and otherwise, was in a long downward trend because it turned off its young men, and still does in many ways.  Nothing has been more harmful than the image of "Jesus, the guitar playing-sandal wearing wandering hippie."  That's not what I was looking for in a God, and trust me, scratch deep enough of just about any other man in this country who's lost his drive for Church, and I bet you'll hear the same thing.  If I have to self-describe my religious views, well let me put it this way - Military Chaplains get the idea that "turn the other cheek" doesn't mean "be a passive wuss" - something that I think far, far, far too many mainstream preachers and parents believe.  In another life, I would have made a good Templar Knight, Hospitaler, or Teutonic Knight perhaps.  There's a reason the Norse worshipped Odin, and Yahweh of the Old Testament had a penchant for well-earned butt-kickings too don't forget.

Now to be fair, Christian rock has finally started to come into its own, mostly in the form of Christian metal (no, not Stryper) but honest-to-god metal bands like ZAO and Living Sacrifice, who might scare the pants off of many parents, but I guarantee you have probably done more to rehabilitate the image of Christians among the young than any number of sermons, crappy cartoons, horrible young adult novels, especially non-offensive to parents, etc, which typically fail because they end up being pale attempts to model successful works which succeed because they seemed to capture real life and all its fun and faults to a greater degree, contained some not-so-Christian themes and ideas.

It was Christianity's run for cover, fleeing from reality and retreating inside a plastic bubble in the post-'60s era, that did so much damage.  Nature abhors a vaccuum.  Ironically enough, as Breitbart's new site really demonstrates, the Arts driven by "liberal" points of view, have fallen into the same trap.  I think it's great to see the other side, for once, in its annoyingly self-righteous, moralistic, and arrogant way, hoisted on its own petard.  Much like the conservative movement has been (and I think often deservedly so) for the past 35-40 years.  

Here's some things to ponder about, for cultural conservatives, Christian, libertarian or otherwise.

NO ONE likes to be beaten over the head with message.  Message also doesn't make up for poor art.   Poor art is poor art, I don't care what your politics are, but unfortunately, there's a population of various fanboys who will buy stuff because it fits their "scene" or their "lifestyle" or whatever they call their little club of everyone non-conforming together these days.  As a self-proclaimed punk rock/indie kid, I couldn't stand the way that punk bands, especially "Straight-Edge" or "Hardcore" bands would sell records just because they were straight edge or hardcore, having little to do with the actual quality of their work.  (Re: I'm talking to you Earth Crisis, in particular).

Here's another, and I am really taking aim at (insert) fundamentalists (because they're the most well known for it, fair or not) here.  Draconian, fearful condemnation of things like books, games, etc, aimed at scaring your kids or warning your kids always seem to backfire don't they?  Why do you think that is?  Here's why:  music does not make your kid kill anyone, themselves included.  It's a cop-out. It's looking for the easy target, and it avoids self-reflection and self-analysis.  If you want a good case in point, just go listen to Jack Thompson (he of the ban videogames fame) sometime, and really listen to what he says - even if you think (as I actually do) that Grand Theft Auto is cultural trash, the guy is a grade-A idiot.  If you really don't like a particular cultural artifact, I have a novel idea - stop funding it.  Stop making it attractive by turning it into the forbidden fruit.  Stop supporting fundamentally un-American idea like censorship because you don't approve.  Stop adopting the same dang tactics that you claim the Left uses on you (lawsuits, bad legislation with a HOST of even worse unintended consequences towards the First Amendment or other fundamental freedoms).

If you don't like something, then don't buy it.  Don't watch it.  Understand this though, that the more you try to stick a kid in a hermetically sealed "bubble" of reality, the more and more of a disadvantage they are going to find themselves in the world. 

Like it or not, they have to interact with the world at some point, even if you send them to religious schools, live in a religious town, etc.  Overprotectiveness and overbearing hostility to the world sets otherwise good kids up for failure - rather than teaching them how to deal with the world and make good choices, instead it makes them the awkward outcast which you know?  There is no such thing as "individuality" when it comes to adolescence.  Telling kids that they are somehow "better" than their peers because of their suffering doesn't make for better kids, it makes for arrogant little snots - don't believe me?  Go check out the kids in a creative writing, journalism, or art class sometime and see what it does to the "other side" of the equation (here's a hint - they grow up to be the tired, poor souls who churn out the same movies over and over "the suburbs suck," "jocks are evil" "traditional values are all wrong," "America is bad") - I guarantee you, if those kids had gotten more dates in high school, we wouldn't be suffering through their pathetic attempts at revenge via the Multi-Plex and Barnes and Nobles right now.  Overprotective, "seal off the world" types do nothing but turn our more fodder for the Stuff White People Like crowd - aka, I love hipster Buddhist and Taoist kids especially, or as I like to call them the "ANYTHING BUT CHRISTIANITY kids because my parents did everything possible to make me hate Western culture, my fellow teens, and create nothing but resentment because I had no friends and coudn't get a prom date."  They adopt a religion-of-the-month because they want something in their lives, but got turned off not by reasonable, legitimate objections to bad cultural artifacts, but because their parents, peers, teachers, etc were, well, asinine about it.

The bad news of it is this;  unless they suffer from some unfortunate physical deformity or handicapped, most of the kids who get picked on in school really did or say something to bring it on themselves  It's time we stopped kidding ourselves about that, and about bullying too.  Bullying serves a great purpose, and I think we actually could use more of it in todays anti-septic cry-baby world (ever notice that you see fewer and fewer men as school teachers, at any grade level? Ever stop to wonder WHY for a second?  Ever wonder why there's fewer and fewer men in the "helping" professions?)

But back to my main point - if you think you're doing kids a favor by shielding them from all the bad influences of popular culture, I think you're making your kid a naive sucker waiting to be sucked up into a bad crowd, who'll REALLY do damage that a session of Grand Theft Auto or listening to some old-school Judas Priest can't do.  (Also, I should have made this clear earlier, I'm really talking about "teenagers" when I say "kids" here) - Point out to them first that the movie, or book, or whatever really isn't all that good come to think of it (a perfect case study - try the ultimate 20th Century "cool stuff" that seems awesome when you're 17, and unbearibly horrible by the time you hit your mid twenties, unless you're one of those losers permanently stuck in Stuff White People Like mode - "On the Road" and "Catcher in the Rye" are great exampels of this.  "American Beauty" and now it seems "Revolutionary Road" are new ones - "really, the suburbs are just SO horrible.  You never went to bed hungry, you had a roof over your head, but it was just so, so, sould crushing wasn't it." - When you point this out to a group of teens or smug 20 and 30 somethings, they seem to shut up pretty dang quick).

When you take the approach of ridiculing, or exposing the weakness of popular stuff, rather than pulling the reactionary "no, burn and ban it!" you actually have a real impact.  You make the kid able to think critically and decide what's good or not good, instead of becoming a fearful, rodent-like wuss always looking over his shoulder for fear the "devil is gonna git ya" if you play a session of D&D (hey, once upon a time I was a Level 12 half-elf ranger too), or listen to Motorhead (I'm smart enough to know that Lemmy's lifestyle would kill and normal human being except Lemmy apparently, and maybe Keith Richards, who I am convinced is a zombie).

I don't know how much sense I made in this post, or how many people I ticked off.  But if I made anyone think, then mission accomplished.

Now if you'll excuse me, time to boot up my rank 10 Witch hunter, and listen to some Maiden while I'm at it.

Update 1: These links, which Prof sent me, do a good job of encapsulating the theological and more interestingly, liturgical points I'm trying to make here.

Strange Places Pt 1.

Men and Church 

Facing East  

Time Blames Bush For Gaza

Scott McLeod is Time's Middle East go-to guy.  He's also a Bush hating moonbat, but then you probably knew that since he works for Time.  He wrote a piece explaining why the current battle in Gaza is W's fault.  Essentially, he tries to blame Bush for not correcting a centuries old fight.  Herewith is the heart of Mr. McLeod's rant.

The U.S. has the indispensable role to play in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But after spending most of its two terms walking away from negotiations and aimlessly supporting unilateral moves by Israeli hard-liners, the huge death tolls and continuing bloodshed are not the only results of the mismanagement of America's role. Israeli and Palestinian politics have become more severely fragmented, making it more difficult to find leaders who can make necessary and courageous decisions and make them stick for peace. The latest unspeakable round of killing is as much about the factional jockeying for power as it is about anything else--it's surely not about liberating Palestine or winning the war on terrorism, is it?

If there's anything good to come out of it, perhaps it's that the fighting on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration as the next American president will further concentrate his mind on the need to get serious about U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. A year ago, Bush convened the Annapolis peace conference in a clumsy, last-ditch effort to correct the mistake he made by abandoning U.S. mediation for nearly seven years. He optimistically predicted the parties would reach some kind of an agreement before he left office in January 2009. What happened instead? His legacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the scene of dead and wounded on the streets of Gaza.

Like every President before him, Bush tried to bring them to the peace table and like every President before him, he failed to bring about any kind of real peace.  He doesn't mention the fact that Clinton was not exactly successful in his eight years.  Perhaps President Bush understands what people like McLeod either can't or won't understand:  Hamas and their ilk do not want peace.

Sadly, Mr. McLeod doesn't tell us what Mr. Bush needed to say or do.  What magical thing could Bush say to the Palestinians and the Israelis that would bring about lasting peace in the region?  Hamas is a terrorist organization, dedicated in their quest to destroy the Israeli state and annihilate the Jews.  What do you say to them to make them accept Israel's right to exist?  He just says Bush didn't do the job.   If it is just sitting down at the table and talking, what should Bush (or any President for that matter) propose that would leave both sides feeling they came away from the bargaining table with a bargain?

I guarantee you that Barack Obama will not be able to hammer out any kind of lasting peace accord either. Hamas, and their Islamist allies are intractable in their determination to destroy Israel and Mr. Obama will not be able to negotiate that kind of hatred away.

VW