THE PROTESTS CONTINUE DOWN SOUTH

President Bush's tour of South America continues....and so do the protests. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is shooting off his big mouth, calling capitalism the "road to hell." Oh really? The one economic system responsible for lifting more of the world's people out of poverty than any other in the history of mankind is the "road to hell?"

It's easy to criticize capitalism...it feels so good, doesn't it? You see, because capitalism is an individual pursuit. You sit on your ass all day and complain about how rough you have it ... you eschew work ... you make lousy decisions ... and you go without. On the other hand if you recognize that the 40-hour work week is for those who pursue mediocrity; you consider each decision carefully, and you don't wait for others to do for you when you can do for yourself .. and you end up sitting pretty.

The chink in the armor of people like Hugo Chavez and Hillary Clinton has always been that they need the rich. Because without the tax revenues brought in by the wealthy, who pay most of the taxes by the way, politicians won't have enough money to buy votes. Same thing with Chavez and some of these other Latin American dictatorships. They derive their power from the fact that they have money. Without it, they're sunk. If only there were a way to boycott Chavez's oil...and deny him the financing for his anti-Americanism. Well .. you can dream, can't you?

TALKING WITH LIBERALS

As you know, the Democrats have pulled out of a presidential debate in Nevada that was to have been co-hosted by Fox News. The stated reason is some joke told by Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. The real reason is that the Democrats will do anything they can to discredit Fox News and to whittle away at its lead over CNN in the great cable news wars.

And just what did Roger Ailes say that has the Democrats so upset: Here's an excerpt from Ailes' speech to the Radio Television News Director's Association. You will see that Ailes went through quite a few celebs and politicos with some rather sharp jabs:

A man in France was arrested today for using his car to run down a pedestrian. He said he thought it was Osama bin Laden. Ok, it was a mistake, but it still ranks as France's biggest military victory ever. [Laughter] John Seigenthaler and I are the same age. Look at how he let himself go. [Laughter] It is true that I said Britney Spears looked great at the Academy Awards. And I later found out it was Jack Nicholson. [Laughter/ooohs] It is true that just in the last two weeks Hillary Clinton has had over 200 phone calls telling her in order to win the presidency she must stay on the road for the next two years. It is not true they were all from Bill. [Laughter] And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?' [Laughter]

Yawn. It's just a joke. But don't tell that to John Edwards, Harry Reid and the ignoranuses at the Nevada Democratic Party. You see, controlled by ultra-leftists....they decided to pull out of a debate. How about you? Do you see that as a reason to pull out of the debate? It was a comedy routine, folks. Ha ha. Get it?

As the editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal said "Hard-core liberals can't stand the Fox News Channel." The hard-left organization that has bragged that it "owns the Democratic Party, Moveon.org, opposed the debate from the start. Now they have an excuse to pull out of the debate and in the process paint Fox News as some sort of a right-wing cabal of news-twisting nut jobs.

Leave it to Dennis Kucinich, the obscure and somewhat weird (though likable) Ohio congressman most famously known for being made fun of on TV to get the situation right. Said the gentleman from Ohio: "If you want to be the President of the United States, you can't be afraid to deal with people with whom you disagree politically." If this is going to be how the Democrats operate, it's going to be a long 20 months.

This so-called right wing bias in the news coverage on Fox News is a complete joke. Last year I asked --- no I begged my listeners and Nuze readers to watch Fox News and present me with an example of right wing bias in their news coverage. We did have a few people who, after being educated in our wonderful government schools, couldn't tell the difference between news and opinion and who would cite Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly as examples of right wing bias. Hellooooo! These people are expressing opinions, not presenting the news. Focus on the premiere Fox News political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, and try to find some right wing bias in its presentation of the news ... not the panel discussions .. the news! We went through a whole year of this and not once could any liberal call the show, and not once did someone send us an email detailing a right-wing bias in Fox News Channel's news coverage.

The real problem the left has with Fox News is that it doesn't have a LIBERAL bias. Democrats are so used to having major news outlets slant the news to their favor that they just can't stand it when someone comes along and actually does present the news in an unbiased manner. So now they're retaliating.

Maybe Moveon.org really does own and control the Democrat Party!

KERRY'S SWIFT RETRIBUTION

Get over it, Senator.

The country long ago moved beyond John Kerry's Presidential ambitions, but the Senator, as he seems never to tire of reminding us, has not. Now Mr. Kerry's throbbing grievances jeopardize President Bush's nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.

Late last month Sam Fox, a 77-year-old St. Louis businessman, sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a confirmation hearing widely expected to be uncontroversial. But in the 2004 campaign, Mr. Fox gave $50,000 to the Kerry opposition group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

After some desultory questioning about "the image of America in Europe," Mr. Kerry solicited Mr. Fox's opinions as to "the politics of personal destruction"--to which Mr. Fox replied, "Senator, you're a hero." Not good enough. Mr. Kerry launched into a harangue about 527 committees (the Swift Boaters were one of those) and other affronts to his station in life, none of which were germane to Mr. Fox's qualifications to serve.

Mr. Kerry: "Do you think this should matter to me?" Mr. Fox: "I'm sorry?" Mr. Kerry: "Do you think this should matter to me?" Mr. Fox: "Yes, I do, I do." Mr. Kerry: "Do you think it should matter to everybody here, as a Senator?"

Mr. Fox, a major donor to Republican campaigns, says he gives generously to a variety of causes, most of them philanthropic, and doesn't recall the reasoning behind his Swift Boat donation. We can assume it was to defeat Mr. Kerry, though Mr. Fox also pointed out, sensibly enough, that 527s are creatures of contemporary politics: "That's the world we live in."

That's an insight Mr. Kerry's Democratic colleagues, who in solidarity may block Mr. Fox's appointment in a vote next week, would do well to remember. The Democrats are not without their own free-range advocacy groups, such as MoveOn.org. Before they build the gallows, they might consider what will constitute a hanging offense when the political composition of the government shifts.

The Senate confirmation process is already congested by Democratic intransigence, from Bush appellate judges to U.N. ambassadors. But at least these conflicts came with some veneer of substantive objection, not merely the desire for political retribution.

THE 'SURGE' IS SUCCEEDING

By Robert Kagan

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.

Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.

Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.

Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone shifted the dynamic.

As the Fadhils report, "Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases fled the country." The most prominent leader to go into hiding has been Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mahdi Army has been instructed to avoid clashes with American and Iraqi forces, even as coalition forces begin to establish themselves in the once off-limits Sadr City.

Before the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus, the Army's leading counterinsurgency strategist, U.S. forces tended to raid insurgent and terrorist strongholds and then pull back and hand over the areas to Iraqi forces, who failed to hold them. The Fadhils report, "One difference between this and earlier -- failed -- attempts to secure Baghdad is the willingness of the Iraqi and U.S. governments to commit enough resources for enough time to make it work." In the past, bursts of American activity were followed by withdrawal and a return of the insurgents. Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying."

A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself."

Apparently some American journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back -- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed."

It is no coincidence that as the mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence.

There is still violence, as Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda seek to prove that the surge is not working. However, they are striking at more vulnerable targets in the provinces. Violence is down in Baghdad. As for Sadr and the Mahdi Army, it is possible they may reemerge as a problem later. But trying to wait out the American and Iraqi effort may be hazardous if the public becomes less tolerant of their violence. It could not be comforting to Sadr or al-Qaeda to read in the New York Times that the United States plans to keep higher force levels in Iraq through at least the beginning of 2008. The only good news for them would be if the Bush administration in its infinite wisdom starts to talk again about drawing down forces.

No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the "good" news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. His latest book is "Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy.

HILLARY'S THESIS: THE VILLAGE NEEDS AN ENEMY

by Amanda B. Carpenter

Hillary Clinton’s political methods were founded on the theories of a 1960s radical about whom she wrote her college thesis in 1969. It may take a village to raise a child, but Clinton’s college thesis seems to say that the village politicos need an enemy to mobilize against.

She titled the paper, written to fulfill her Bachelor of Arts degree at Wellesley College, “There is Only the Fight.” It praises the work of radical activist Saul Alinsky, a man who epitomized a self-interested no-holds barred campaign style that Hillary has emulated in later years. Clinton’s savvy-but-ruthless politics, including the “politics of personal destruction” she so often condemns but more often practices, seem rooted in Alinsky’s famous rules for radicals.

One year after Hillary turned in her thesis, Time Magazine profiled Alinsky. Their assessment was much different than hers. It said, “In his [Alinsky’s] view, the end of achieving power justifies a range of means…If the occasion requires, Alinsky’s forces will not refrain from spreading rumors about an antagonist or indulging in something that comes very close to blackmail.”

Young Hillary balked at Alinsky’s critics who said he was too extreme. In her college paper she professed, “Much of what Alinsky professes does not sound radical. His are the words used in our churches, by our parents and their friends, by our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them and recognizes the necessity of changing the present structures of our lives in order to realize them.” While she wrote, Hillary Rodham learned.

How We Got It

Hillary’s senior thesis has been the subject of much speculation among conservative writers. For years, it was under lock and key in the Wellesley archives while the Clintons were in the White House, but was quietly made available to the public in 2001.

A few weeks ago, a journalism student named Dorian Davis contacted me to see if I was interested in looking at it. He sought the document as part of a school project and for his website RepublicanSpectacular.com. He said he was going to write a story about the “hidden thesis” and to his surprise learned it was available through his college’s interlibrary loan program with Wellesley.

He said he received a copy of it in the mail and then transcribed it for his own records. He sent me an email copy of his transcription.

Wellesley officials refused to verify if Davis’s transcription was accurate, but did confirm he was given an official copy. Chief Archivist Wilma Slaight told me in an email she would not verify the copy I had. She wrote, “Due to limitations of staff and time, we are not able to asses whether the transcription in your possession is an accurate copy of Hillary Rodham’s 1969 Wellesley College honors thesis, entitled There is only the fight: An analysis of the Alinsky model.”

Slaight said “as a matter of college policy, a copy of student thesis is retained in the Wellesley College Archives. Theses may be read in the Archives reading room during our normal business hours.”

Clinton staff would not verify the document either. Spokesman Philippe Reines said in an email that, “Questions pertaining to the academic work of their [Wellesley] alumni should be directed to Wellesley College.”

Other media reports that have surfaced about the thesis are consistent with the copy we recieved.

The Need for an Enemy

In discussing the early stages of Alinsky’s career as a Chicago radical, Hillary said to be effective he needed “an enemy in order to translate community interest into community action.” She worried that “the complicating, overlapping layers comprising our interdependent urban areas today make it difficult to single out an ‘enemy’ “ and that “the lack of a clear-cut enemy against whom to mobilize underscored lack of community capable mobilization.”

The University of Chicago, which sought expansion in an area called Woodlawn, became one of Alinsky’s first targets. Hillary wrote, “With its predominantly black population, Woodlawn exemplified the disorganized anomic areas resulting from massive Negro migration to northern cities.” She described Woodlawn as “overcrowded, dilapidated housing, an increasing crime rate, high employment”

The city wanted to expand the University of Chicago into Woodlawn, but some community members were opposed to the development. Hillary sided with the residents, wondering, “how, indeed are bulldozers and cranes halted when they move with the encouragement of such powerful forces as the city administration and a university behind them?”

Alinsky staved off the expansion by creating and guiding a group called the Temporary Woodlawn Organization. Hillary wrote, “Alinsky argues that those who wish to change circumstances must develop a mass-based organization and be prepared for conflict….for him, conflict is the route to power.”

To force the University to meet their demands, TWO’s members sprawled out in front of bulldozers. Hillary applauded the action. She wrote:

“TWO then decided that the usually acquiescent city [should] defer its approval of the University plan until the city planners worked out a comprehensive prospectus on Woodlawn’s future. TWO accompanied its demand with the threat of demonstrators lying in front of bulldozers and hundreds of demonstrators at a City Plan Commission hearing. The demands, threats and demonstration created effective countervailing political pressure in the deferment of city approval.”

Later, “the University of Chicago launched a smear campaign against Alinsky” she wrote. She did not specify what attacks were. She only wrote “these charges were echoes of ones that Alinsky had heard before and answered before.”

As a national figure, Hillary famously implied said she was a victim of smear campaigns, when she told Matt Lauer in 1998 that “there is a vast right wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.” Alinsky as victim translated decades later into Clinton as victim.

Manipulation by Proxy

As a college student she apparently thought his approach to working with religious communities was novel. Hillary wrote, “He [Alinsky] never approached a Catholic Priest in terms of Christian ethics, but on the basis of self-interest such as the welfare of the Church, even in its physical property.” As a senator Hillary has modernized techniques Alinsky used to manipulate different organizations for political advantage. Clinton’s politics are not all manipulation. Like Alinsky’s radicalism, Clintonian politics uses alliances and acts through proxies to achieve advantage.

Hillary’s thesis explains how Alinsky used the church to organize Chicago’s Back of the Yards. She said the problem was that area was that is was "bigamously wedded to the meat-packing industry and the Roman Catholic Church.”

Although Alinsky was no believer in the church, he was eager to use it for his own gain. He successfully consolidated the power of the church with local unions and other groups to form a Neighborhood Council that supported the Packinghouse Strike of 1946. Hillary assessed, “the community backing of the strike resulted in both a good settlement for the workers and in a more powerful voice for the Council.”

Hillary has adopted similar strategies as a politician by marching to the church to mainstream her views on abortion and push for larger government welfare programs.

In 1997 she wrote a column that said, “after years of fiery rhetoric, finger pointing and heated recriminations, it’s time for people of good faith -- on all sides of the abortion issue -- to lower the decibel level and seek common ground.”

Hillary has long been a staunch supporter of legal, abortion on demand, but has teamed up with pro-life leaders to push for an increase in federal funding to promote sexual health awareness. In reality, such calls would only increase government funding to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.

Recently, she joined forces with the pro-life Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) to talk about abortion “prevention.” The two co-authored a nationally published op-ed in April 2006 that sought agreement between far left and persons of faith on abortion. In a news conference held with Reid shortly after the column’s publication, Hillary said, “We are here together because we share the goal of reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, decreasing abortions and improving access to women's health care.”

In addition to her admiration of Alinsky’s ability to mobilize church-goers, young Hillary also commended how he organized corporate stockholders. She wrote in her thesis that leftist organizers should capitalize on the “great numbers of middle-class Americans suffering from feelings of powerlessness. They, who control the consumer market and the voting box, are bewildered by their children and by wars fought on television.”

She said the “frustration in the suburban ghettos, frequently directed at those even less powerful, could be channeled into achieving radical goals. The secret, as in any organizing, is that such goals must be perceives as paralleling self-interest. A good organizer could direct the process of perception as Alinsky did convincing stockholders to use their proxies to influence corporate policy.”

In a lengthy November 2006 piece she wrote for the Democratic Leadership Council’s Blueprint magazine, Hillary suggested that the middle class should be made to leverage pressure on corporate shareholders.

She called it “a new economic formula of Democratic Capitalism” and said it was “the way to ensure prosperity is to build an expanding middle class.”

Sen. Clinton then advised that corporations should “give the members of the middle class a stake in that prosperity” and that corporations should let “employers and investors draw their own conclusions about inflated CEO salaries by asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that corporations disclose full CEO compensation and how that relates to profitability and average worker pay.”

Mobilizations of communities, labeling adversaries as enemies and working through proxies are all Clinton trademarks. She is not a Saul Alinsky 1960s radical, but she has adapted and improvised his radical tactics to her own advantage.

Miss Carpenter is Assistant Editor for HUMAN EVENTS. She is the author of "The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Rodham Clinton," published by Regnery (a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

GLOBAL COOLING IS BACK

More troubling facts for the global warming movement. The government has released temperature data for February. Do the statistics show the Earth continues to warm at a troubling rate? Is certain doom accelerating in the environment, ready to melt the polar ice caps and cause California to fall into the ocean? Will winter soon be relegated to the ash heap of history, with the entire world enveloped in a global warming-induced massive temperature hike? Uh..no.

As a matter of fact, according to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, the average temperature in the month of February fell almost 2 degrees. What, you say? Is this over last year? The last 5 years? Compared to the last 10 or 20? Nope. When compared with the average over the 100-year period between 1901 and 2000. In fact, we've just experienced the 34th coldest February in the last 113 years.

This is a long-standing problem with the global warming hype. The facts and figures don't line up with the hysteria. Just as there may be data that shows the Earth is warming, there is plenty of information to the contrary. But anything that doesn't square with the environmental extremists is ignored and not reported. And that's why global warming has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with politics.