ConservativeINC

What does four (six?) years of college education get you? Well, it seems like it gets you a vocabulary of about fifteen words, horrible BO, and a penchant for crazed chantings. Yeah, that’s about right. Want proof? Here’s a video that the brave guys and gals over at Hot Air took at the recent die-in (if only they actually died).

No word if they are now going to change their name to smelly air.

It strikes me odd to say that conservatives are so reviled in the world. The fact is that they aren’t hated because they are getting elected so often. Mexico and Canada chose the candidate that was to the right. So did Germany and France. England’s PM is staying in Iraq. And now Greece voted to keep their conservative government going. I don’t think Mr. Murtha had read about this story when he made his comments that he thought the democrats would gain dozens of seats.

From Mark Hemingway at the Corner we get a great link to an article done about the oft-maligned Blackwater. Warriors for Hire, from the Weekly Standard, tells the story of military contractor Blackwater. These men are mostly ex-military or police and all of them were honorably discharged. They are not involved in offensive operations and are not mercenaries.

On a personal note, I contribute some of my stuff to NowPublic. I do not think it unfair to say that most of the people who contribute or view the site are mostly liberals. But something went beyond the pale in one of the stories. In the comments section someone gave a link to a video where some contractors got blown up in an IED attack and said that this was what should happen to all the “mercenaries” in Iraq. Sick.

At the Campaign Spot at NRO we have some analysis of HillaryCare 2.0, as they call it. They say it is basically going to be the same thing as the first one. The only difference is that this time she is smart enough not to mention any specifics. Michael Tanner from Cato had this to say:

Even putting aside the liberty concerns, once they say you have to buy health insurance, you have the question of, ‘what meets the definition of health insurance?’ Is my $100,000 deductible considered health insurance? You end up having to meet mandates, and the government starts setting requirements – you can’t have more than a $2,000 deductible, you have to cover prescription drugs, you have to have this, you have to have that or else it won’t meet mandate… Once you start regulating that, the special interests start demanding that they be included, and you inevitably end up with ever larger costs to the program, and ever-higher subsidies to help people afford it. Or you have to cap premiums, which she hinted she might do. The individual mandate is first domino leading to a lot more regulation.

From Pajamas Media via Iraq the Model we get this story that explains the deteriorating circumstances surrounding the Iraqi government.

This feverish movement to attract the Sadr bloc seems strange given the long history of rivalries between the Sadrists on one hand and the Iraqi list and Accord Front on the other - and it looks even stranger in the case of Fadheela with whom the Sadrists have been technically at a state of war in Basrah for a long time now.

But then it’s not strange at all since they all share the common goal of weakening Maliki’s ruling coalition and ultimately succeeding it.

So as expected, announcing the coalition of four is doing more harm than good to its members, especially Maliki so far.

Just before the two Kurdish and two Shia parties announced their coalition, the ruling coalition held a total of about 170 seats in the parliament; only a dozen votes short of the majority enough to pass legislation.

Now that the Sadrists have left it has been reduced to only 140 with a high possibility to go further down to 127 if the group of Inizi decides to go forward with their threat to leave the UIA.

Until now our math has been based on the assumption that the independent MP’s in the UIA (20 plus seats) preserve the status quo, but those too had flirted with the idea of abandoning the UIA and were just shy of declaring the step: now if the defection of the Sadrists encourages them to do so, the loss would go up to about 55 seats, leaving Maliki with little more than a 100 votes to work with on his side.

On the other hand, the Sadrists are unlikely to be successful in future political adventures in other coalitions be it with the Fadheela, Iraqi list or the Accord Front.

Largely because all four more or less believe their visions are representative of those of the Iraqi people. And so to them, entering any alliance won’t be about promoting the mutual interests of the members of an alliance but about using other members’ votes to impose the vision of their party - not exactly a recipe for a cohesive coalition.

Bad things are happening with the government in that country. Every move we make to weaken Maliki is a move towards destroying the government as we know it. It remains to be seen if this will spell the end for democracy in Iraq.

An update to Syria v. Israel: Nuclear Edition comes from a blogger who is an ex-spook (CIA or military intelligence). What I find interesting about this is that when you couple it with the information that Syria is no longer Iran’s go to player it might make sense that Syria is trying to gain power by its own means. Using a boat to ship the illicit material could be because it was too heavy for air transport but it could also have been chosen to completely sidestep Iran (since that is where planes stop off during their North Korea to Syria trek).

I have linked to some articles from Tree Hugger in my blogs and here’s possibly the last. In Zimbabwe Fights Back Against Invasive Species they tell the horrible story of Zimbabwe. And that horrible story is that invasive species are taking control of that country and it could be bad for global warming. People dying today = who cares; plants causing global warming = let’s march!

In Iraq there is some more good news. We have already banded together with Sunnis to the North and now we are trying to do a similar thing in the South with the Shiites. The only catch is that whereas the al Qaeda Iraq group is a terrorist organization the Shiites will have to deal with militias. Admitably, this is going to be a different monster altogether. But partnering up with tribal leaders sick of war is probably our and Iraq’s best option for success.

Even with these and other improvements in Iraq Obama has come out for a timetable for surrender:

We are going to bring an end to this war and I will fight hard in the United States Senate to make sure we don’t pass any funding bill that does not have a deadline

Courage under fire indeed.

And from Jihad Watch we have an interesting story about how converts are playing an increasing role in terrorist cells. That is Westerners who have converted are taking a greater part in blowing up other Westerners. Assimilation has become a matter of life or death. BigT

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