Dyre Portents The Rantings and Ravings of a Radical Moderate Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 18 6064

Articles from Dyre Portents

McCain Takes Giuliani to Task on Torture 2007-10-26 15:09:51 From the NY TimesRudolph W. Giuliani’s statement on Wednesday that he was uncertain whether waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, was torture drew a sharp rebuke yesterday from Senator John McCain, who said that his failure to call it torture reflected his inexperience. “All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview. Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.” Mr. Giuliani said on Wednesday night at a forum in Davenport, Iowa, that he favored “aggressive questioning” of terrorism suspects and using “means that are a little tougher” with terrorists but tha ...

Huckabee Rising In Polls 2007-10-26 13:43:46 He's finally passed Romney at least.From Rasmussen Polls:Rudy Giuliani remains precariously atop the pack with support from 20% of Likely Republican Primary Voters nationwide. Fred Thompson is close behind at 19% while John McCain enjoys a second straight day in third place with 14% of the vote. Huckabee continues to gain ground and is just two points behind McCain at 12%. This is the first time all year that Huckabee has surpassed Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts Governor slipped another point and he is now at just 11% nationally. No other Republican attracts more than 3% support while 18% are undecided.However with the increased numbers comes increased scrutiny. Can Huckabee hold up given some of his previous ethical scrapes?From MSNBCThe state Ethics Commission has investigated 14 complaints against Huckabee and validated five. Two pertain to unreported gifts - a $500 canoe and a $200 stadium blanket - and three to cash the governor or his wife received but did not initially r ...

Ron Paul Girl Vs Hillary Clinton 2007-10-26 01:22:01 Critiquing the Clinton health care plan in her own way Ron Paul Girl - Worker Bee? - video powered by Metacafe ... Ron Paul

Another Opportunity to Off Osama Squandered 2007-10-26 01:11:03 This from Col. David Hunt at Fox Fan CentralAmerica Could Have Killed Usama bin Laden — But Didn'tWe know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it. Nice job again guys — now, pull the damn trigger. Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden. You cannot make this crap up; truth is always stranger and more telling than fiction. Our government, the current administr ...

Ron Paul and Red State Wrap Up 2007-10-26 01:10:15 DWSUWF shows that the number of Hits to Ron Paul's website totally trashes Red States. He even offers us this nice graph:Proof that Dr. Paul's brand of conservatism is drawing more interest than Red State's brand of authoritarian social conservatism? Maybe.Over at Eunomia Daniel Larison sums it up this way:"It is a great irony this year that it is the purists who are actually swelling Republican ranks, while the pragmatists and big-tent folks are doing their best to empty that tent....Rather than translating the energy and excitement that Paul generates into an advantage for the GOP and the movement, the response is to recoil in horror and send Paul’s people packing. ... it seems to me that the impulse to ban newly arrived Paul supporters is much more representative of the state of the movement and the GOP these days."I couldn't have said it better myself. ... Ron Paul

Animal Cruelty as Art 2007-10-26 01:04:53 From Internet Ronin "Costa Rican artist Guillermo Habacuc Vargas paid two children to find a dog in a barrio of Managua, Nicaragua for an exhibition he had scheduled there. In the name of art, Vargas then tied up the dog in a corner of the salon, denied it food and water, and waited for it to die.""Habacuc has been selected to represent his nation at the prestigious Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008."I used to own an art gallery in Atlanta and if someone had submitted crap like this to me I'd have pressed animal cruelty charges against them and gotten them blackballed from any reputable art venue. (After choking down the urge to force feed him his slides and physically eject him from the premises into the middle of Piedmont Avenue.)h/t to Sideways Mencken ...

U.S. Ups the Ante Against Iran 2007-10-26 01:01:00 From the NY Times:WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — The Bush administration will announce a long-debated policy of new sanctions against Iran on Thursday, accusing the elite Quds division of the Revolutionary Guard Corps of supporting terrorism, administration officials said Wednesday night....The decision will be announced jointly on Thursday by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the administration officials said. “This is going to be a broad and wide-ranging effort,” a senior administration official said. “We will be freezing assets, and there will be ripple effects of where we can go from there.”...The immediate legal consequence of designating the Quds unit as a terrorist organization would be to make it unlawful for anyone subject to United States jurisdiction to knowingly provide material support or resources to it, according to the State Department. Any United States financial institution that becomes aware that it possesses, or has control o ...

Ron Paul Eying a Third Party Run? 2007-10-26 00:06:34 From the Political Insider:Paul Leaves Third Party Door Open An InchDuring an MSNBC interview Wednesday, Rep. Ron Paul was asked if he would run for president as a third-party candidate. Paul replied, "No, I don't plan to run in a third party. That's not my goal. But if we have a candidate that loves the war and loves the neocon position of promoting--" Interviewer Norah O'Donnell cut Paul off at that point, and did not return to the topic during the rest of the interview.Gee, that sounds a lot like Giuliani. Considering that the religious right has been talking to the leadership of a certain third party, it is entirely possible he may have been approached. Given the fact that Ron Paul third party run would ruin any chances of the GOP taking the presidency and conceivably bring the war in Iraq to an end sooner I could see why Dr. Paul might consider this option.I'm left wondering if the GOP would offer him the VP position to head that off and to draw Ron Paul's supporters into the ... Ron Paul

Giuliani Sells Out to Values Voters? 2007-10-24 22:26:56 I missed this but fortunately Sideways Mencken didn't.From The Hill: Perkins: Giuliani supports marriage amendmentTony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, told The Hill Saturday that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.Perkins said Giuliani told him in a private meeting that if the Defense of Marriage Act appeared to be failing or if multiple states began to legalize same-sex marriages, then he would support the constitutional amendment. Giuliani did not mention the amendment or the issue of gay marriage during his address to the Values Voters Summit, but that position could win him favor with some social conservatives who view the former mayor warily. Perkins said that was not enough to assuage his concerns about Giuliani, but “it was nice to hear.”If what Perkins said is true this may be the first step in Giuliani selling out to reap the religious rights votes and that says a lot about G ...

Blue Dogs Diss the DCCC 2007-10-24 19:18:15 by not paying their actual dues.From The Politico:A large group of “Blue Dog” Democrats has refused to give money to the party’s campaign committee so far this cycle, underscoring simmering tension inside the Caucus and concerns about the caustic language of at least one anti-war Democrat. According to a review of Federal Election Commission records, 15 Blue Dogs have given no money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as of Sept. 30, despite heavy pressure from party leaders. Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. (D-Ga.), one of the 15, said he had donated on Oct. 1, but his staff would not say how much the congressman gave to the DCCC.An additional 16 Blue Dogs have not given any cash but were exempt from party-mandated contributions because they are top GOP targets for defeat in 2008, party officials said. ...Members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of 47 moderate-to-conservative House Democrats, point out that they often represent tough, hard-to-hold swing districts that ...

Ron Paul Talk Banned at Redstate 2007-10-24 18:19:55 From RedstateEffective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal. Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I'm guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be. Which, judging by your comment history, you really don't understand, so allow me to offer an alternate explanation: we are a bunch of fascists and we're upset that you've discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we' ... Ron Paul

Fred Thompson On Immigration 2007-10-24 01:25:14 Thompson finally came up with an immigration policy. Below are some of the highlights of his policy along with my reactions.The Ones I Like:1: Increased Border Security: Doubling Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents handling interior enforcement, increasing the Border Patrol to at least 25,000 agents, and increasing detention space to incarcerate illegal aliens we arrest rather than letting them go with a promise to show up later for legal proceedings against them.Border security is inseparable from national security.2: Maximize Legal Immigration Program Efficiency: Reduce the backlogs and streamline the process for immigrants and employers who seek to follow the law. Also, simplify and expedite the application processes for temporary visas. Caps for any category of temporary work visa would be increased as appropriate, if it could be demonstrated that there are no Americans capable and willing to do the jobs.3: Modernize Immigration Law/Policy: Change the nature of our legal ...

Of Note 2007-10-22 23:31:36 If you've been reading a while you'll notice that I often do pointer posts to Michael J Totten's blog about Iraq. I do so because I believe that somewhere bewteen what the administration tells us and what the MSM reports lies the truth and that having access to a bird's eye view of Iraq via independent journalists helps to fill in that gap.Michael Yon is an independent journalist currently in Iraq who became so tired of the disparity between what he saw with his own eyes versus what the MSM was reporting that he has opted to give his articles to newspapers for free. Instead of being paid for his articles he has opted instead to depend on reader donations to fund his writing.So please take some time to drop by and read his work and see if you believe what he's doing is worthwhile.Also Michael J Totten will be leaving for Fallujah soon so don't forget to keep an eye out for his posts from there. ...

Huckabee Receives "Major" Endorsement 2007-10-22 14:56:42 from Chuck Norris posted at WorldNet DailyA short time ago, I wrote in jest about what I would do if I am elected president. Of course, that was written all in good fun. Like most of you, over the summer and into the fall, I've been watching, listening, studying and praying about who could lead this country as our next president. I won't leave you in suspense. Though Giuliani might be savvy enough to lead people, Fred Thompson wise enough to wade through the tides of politics, McCain tough enough to fight terrorism and Romney business-minded enough to grow our economy, I believe the only one who has all of the characteristics to lead America forward into the future is ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.I give Chuck points for this part..."It's time to quit choosing our leaders based solely upon charisma or one strong suite, and move back to being a culture which esteems and elects its leaders because of character and qualifications. It's substance, not pizzazz, we should want in a ...

A Minor Milestone 2007-10-19 16:41:46 My previous post was my 500th. Normally I'm not one to call attention to such things. I didn't post about my blogiversary or my 10,000th visitor. But 500 posts is a lot of work. Thanks to everyone that reads my ramblings. I doubt I'd have kept it up if I knew no one was reading. Have a great weekend! ...