Sixty-three years ago today, something happened that changed the course of history. And it had nothing to do with Elvis or the Beatles.
At 8:00 a.m. on December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii (not yet a state, by the way.) The attack destroyed 18 American ships and 161 planes, earning the Japanese a declaration of war as requested by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the following speech to Congress:
To the Congress of the United States:
Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with the government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
This morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
You'll note that it was not only Pearl Harbor that was attacked, but also Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines, Wake Island, and Midway Island. It was a full-out assault on the United States and her holdings. It was undoubtedly a terrible shock to those who had put their faith in the League of Nations and found that the world was still a dangerous and violent place.
It is popular to gloss over the Pacific side of World War II, given that the European theater produced such horrific images and truths we carry in our collective memory to this day--primarily the concentration camps, the emaciated prisoners freed by the victorious allies, and the inconceivable inhumanity that the Third Reich turned out to be. Yet it should not be forgotten that the Japanese attacked without provocation and with utter disregard for human life. Over 3000 American military personnel lost their lives that day (and doesn't that number sound familiar?)
Immediately after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese rounded up an estimated 12,000 Americans and Filipinos and put them into brutal prison camps, where they remained for the duration of the war. The Japanese fought fiercely throughout the war, and it was only the reality of the atomic bomb (not just a threat, as we relied on thereafter) that brought them to their knees.
Today we like to forget the horrors of Luzon, Guadalcanal, Burma, Midway--and scores of islands we no longer know the names of. But we must not do so.
Although today the Japanese are generally considered a threat to us only from an economic and trade standpoint, we must never, ever, forget how dangerous the world is, and how fragile all alliances are. Peace is almost always a temporary state in the international arena, and nations have no friends. It is said that there are no permanent alliances, only permanent interests, and Americans should remember that as we look back at our own history.
Sixty-three years ago today, 3000 Americans died in a vicious sneak attack. Three years ago, another 3000 died. The first time, the nation came together, Democrats and Republicans, and gave the President an unprecedented amount of grace to finish the job over four intense years of fighting. The last time, the nation came together--for about three weeks. Then the president's opposition set to work undermining the war on terror. It was a shameful episode in American history, and the men and women of World War II would not have understood it. But that's life in the twenty-first century. Our president is tough enough to take it.
Today, take a minute to honor the memory of the victims of Pearl Harbor, as well as those of the 9/11 attacks. And take heart that our president stands firm and echoes the words said those sixty-three years ago:
"With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God."
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Saturday, December 04, 2004
US OUT OF THE UN--AND THIS TIME LET'S MEAN IT
When I was a child, there was a big billboard next to a bridge in town that read, "US OUT OF THE UN." It was sponsored by the John Birch Society.
Whenever we drove past it, my Democrat mother would let out an exasperated sigh and look away with a look of disgust. So I knew that had to be a bad idea. At the very least, a Republican one.
After I became a Christian, I began to understand the scandal and the disgrace that the UN represented. But the billboard was long gone, and it seemed unlikely that the sentiment would find popularity again among any but the most isolationist of Americans (like Pat Buchanan.)
But now, a new day is dawning, and we re-visit the idea again--seriously, this time. It's not just a slogan any more. It's being seriously talked about in the houses of Congress and the homes of Americans.
The ever-widening Oil-for-Food scandal has laid bare the clear reason why the world was against our action against Iraq. After all, you don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and that's exactly what President Bush--unbeknownst to him--was proposing when he went before the "world body" and urged them to do something about the dictator they had been threatening for more than a decade.
Little did he know that Saddam was serving as an open cash register for France, Germany, and Russia. We knew we couldn't trust them; but it seems we didn't know why (another thing Porter Goss should be looking into--why didn't our own CIA know the program was rife with corruption? They could at least have warned the president about the extent of opposition he would face.) The powerful members of the Security Council, who moved heaven and earth to prevent President Bush from being true to his word, had less than no interest in deposing Saddam. "Regime change" was not on their agenda, as long as "slush fund" was on their bank statements.
This is only the final nail in the coffin, the tip of an iceberg that conservatives have been tracking underwater for decades. While moderates are content to disdain the United Nations as a "glorified debating society," chiding it for its ineffectiveness, conservatives object most to those things the U.N. actually does do--bashing Israel, handing out condoms, undermining the culture and tradition of third=world countries, undermining national sovereignty, and attempting to impose one-world government on passionately patriotic countries like the United States.
As we watch the story unravel, let us cheer on the moderates--and, yes, the liberals as even they sicken at the nepotistic fraud of the Annan family and the corporate corruption that is the UN--in their efforts to "mend it, not end it." Fine. Let them see if they can fix it.
But know this: the conservatives had it right first, and the institution is on its last legs.
And we'll be there to shoot it when it falls.
Whenever we drove past it, my Democrat mother would let out an exasperated sigh and look away with a look of disgust. So I knew that had to be a bad idea. At the very least, a Republican one.
After I became a Christian, I began to understand the scandal and the disgrace that the UN represented. But the billboard was long gone, and it seemed unlikely that the sentiment would find popularity again among any but the most isolationist of Americans (like Pat Buchanan.)
But now, a new day is dawning, and we re-visit the idea again--seriously, this time. It's not just a slogan any more. It's being seriously talked about in the houses of Congress and the homes of Americans.
The ever-widening Oil-for-Food scandal has laid bare the clear reason why the world was against our action against Iraq. After all, you don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and that's exactly what President Bush--unbeknownst to him--was proposing when he went before the "world body" and urged them to do something about the dictator they had been threatening for more than a decade.
Little did he know that Saddam was serving as an open cash register for France, Germany, and Russia. We knew we couldn't trust them; but it seems we didn't know why (another thing Porter Goss should be looking into--why didn't our own CIA know the program was rife with corruption? They could at least have warned the president about the extent of opposition he would face.) The powerful members of the Security Council, who moved heaven and earth to prevent President Bush from being true to his word, had less than no interest in deposing Saddam. "Regime change" was not on their agenda, as long as "slush fund" was on their bank statements.
This is only the final nail in the coffin, the tip of an iceberg that conservatives have been tracking underwater for decades. While moderates are content to disdain the United Nations as a "glorified debating society," chiding it for its ineffectiveness, conservatives object most to those things the U.N. actually does do--bashing Israel, handing out condoms, undermining the culture and tradition of third=world countries, undermining national sovereignty, and attempting to impose one-world government on passionately patriotic countries like the United States.
As we watch the story unravel, let us cheer on the moderates--and, yes, the liberals as even they sicken at the nepotistic fraud of the Annan family and the corporate corruption that is the UN--in their efforts to "mend it, not end it." Fine. Let them see if they can fix it.
But know this: the conservatives had it right first, and the institution is on its last legs.
And we'll be there to shoot it when it falls.
AN APPEAL TO COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES:
DON'T JUST FEED THE LAMBS TWICE A YEAR
"Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, 'Do you love me?' He said, 'Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.'
"Jesus said, 'Feed my sheep."
In this passage from John, Jesus gently brings Peter back into the fold after the headstrong disciple has denied Him three times, in the hour of His need. Peter is, no doubt, depressed and blaming himself for not having the courage to speak up for Jesus only hours after professing his undying fealty. Jesus sets him straight, and then invites Peter once again, as he had originally called the disciples, "Follow me."
Jesus tells us repeatedly that the world will know we are His because of the love we show, to each other and to others. It is compassion and love that should define the behavior of a Christian. And the outward evidence of that love is that we feed his sheep.
I am President of the Board of a local interdenominational helping ministry, and I and my fellow soldiers in the armies of compassion now look toward what some might call the "easy season," but which always brings to me a pang of regret.
For it is in this season--the holiday season--that people all over the nation turn their eyes toward God, whatever they perceive him to be, and feel the tug of a charitable impulse. There is, frankly, no shortage of generosity and programs between Thanksgiving and Christmas (sometimes, as people eye their end-of-year charitable donation tax total, the season extends to the end of the year). The poor and the hungry generally are fairly well-fed, and, this season as no other, those in need can find clothing, shoes, groceries, presents for the children--all manner of material need met to ensure that everyone has a "Merry Christmas." And, as a person working in this type of ministry, let me thank all those who give from the bottom of my heart, and let you know that your generosity is truly appreciated.
But I must, at the same time, remind us all that Jesus said, "Feed my sheep"--not "Feed my sheep at Thanksgiving and Christmas." As the saying goes, "Need knows no season."
It is wonderful to provide a turkey dinner for the homeless twice a year, but let the Lord work on your heart and contemplate what it means that these, the least of these, are not going to be brought out from poverty by two good dinners and a new coat.
Every week, I see people who have fallen into poverty or onto hard times, and their schedules do not conveniently follow a calendar. Gas companies, electric companies, and grocery stores don't become much more forgiving of those unpaid bills just because we are celebrating the advent of the One who paid the price for us all. And when the season for giving has passed, the landlord still expects rent, and the children still want food.
To help these--the lonely, the least, the lost, the left out--the ministry I serve depends entirely on the generosity and love of God's people in the churches. All our expenses are paid by the churches, and all our assistance is provided by church volunteers. Although Christianity is not merely a day, nor even a season, but a complete reformation of the believer's life, even Christians seem to fall into the mindset to meet need on an artificial schedule.
In my church, we believe in "divine appointments"--that God brings to the believer's attention and into their path the needs He desires us to meet. Rick Warren, in the best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life, says that "life is a test." God's tests to us, His tests of our faith, His tests of our love, come each and every day, in a wide variety of disguises. Perhaps today He has challenged you through this message, and you are wondering whether there is more you can do than offer donations, gifts, and alms during the Christmas Season.
Rest assured, there is.
More than anything else, the ministries of Christ across this country need your prayers. But do not pray only for the ministries--pray, as well, for direction as to how God would have you bless those ministries and the people they serve. Perhaps He would have you add to your seasonal generosity with a monthly stipend to a ministry or a missionary or a program that He has laid on your heart. Perhaps He will ask you to join this army as an occasional volunteer. Perhaps He would ask you to get down in the gutter with the very least of these with a cup of cold water (or, in the winter, hot chocolate) and a kind word.
But this year, don't let the season go by without going before God with an open heart and an open mind, asking Him where your best place of ministry lies.
Because hungry children and hurting grown-ups need a Merry March and a Merry May every bit as much as they do a Merry Christmas.
"Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, 'Do you love me?' He said, 'Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.'
"Jesus said, 'Feed my sheep."
In this passage from John, Jesus gently brings Peter back into the fold after the headstrong disciple has denied Him three times, in the hour of His need. Peter is, no doubt, depressed and blaming himself for not having the courage to speak up for Jesus only hours after professing his undying fealty. Jesus sets him straight, and then invites Peter once again, as he had originally called the disciples, "Follow me."
Jesus tells us repeatedly that the world will know we are His because of the love we show, to each other and to others. It is compassion and love that should define the behavior of a Christian. And the outward evidence of that love is that we feed his sheep.
I am President of the Board of a local interdenominational helping ministry, and I and my fellow soldiers in the armies of compassion now look toward what some might call the "easy season," but which always brings to me a pang of regret.
For it is in this season--the holiday season--that people all over the nation turn their eyes toward God, whatever they perceive him to be, and feel the tug of a charitable impulse. There is, frankly, no shortage of generosity and programs between Thanksgiving and Christmas (sometimes, as people eye their end-of-year charitable donation tax total, the season extends to the end of the year). The poor and the hungry generally are fairly well-fed, and, this season as no other, those in need can find clothing, shoes, groceries, presents for the children--all manner of material need met to ensure that everyone has a "Merry Christmas." And, as a person working in this type of ministry, let me thank all those who give from the bottom of my heart, and let you know that your generosity is truly appreciated.
But I must, at the same time, remind us all that Jesus said, "Feed my sheep"--not "Feed my sheep at Thanksgiving and Christmas." As the saying goes, "Need knows no season."
It is wonderful to provide a turkey dinner for the homeless twice a year, but let the Lord work on your heart and contemplate what it means that these, the least of these, are not going to be brought out from poverty by two good dinners and a new coat.
Every week, I see people who have fallen into poverty or onto hard times, and their schedules do not conveniently follow a calendar. Gas companies, electric companies, and grocery stores don't become much more forgiving of those unpaid bills just because we are celebrating the advent of the One who paid the price for us all. And when the season for giving has passed, the landlord still expects rent, and the children still want food.
To help these--the lonely, the least, the lost, the left out--the ministry I serve depends entirely on the generosity and love of God's people in the churches. All our expenses are paid by the churches, and all our assistance is provided by church volunteers. Although Christianity is not merely a day, nor even a season, but a complete reformation of the believer's life, even Christians seem to fall into the mindset to meet need on an artificial schedule.
In my church, we believe in "divine appointments"--that God brings to the believer's attention and into their path the needs He desires us to meet. Rick Warren, in the best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life, says that "life is a test." God's tests to us, His tests of our faith, His tests of our love, come each and every day, in a wide variety of disguises. Perhaps today He has challenged you through this message, and you are wondering whether there is more you can do than offer donations, gifts, and alms during the Christmas Season.
Rest assured, there is.
More than anything else, the ministries of Christ across this country need your prayers. But do not pray only for the ministries--pray, as well, for direction as to how God would have you bless those ministries and the people they serve. Perhaps He would have you add to your seasonal generosity with a monthly stipend to a ministry or a missionary or a program that He has laid on your heart. Perhaps He will ask you to join this army as an occasional volunteer. Perhaps He would ask you to get down in the gutter with the very least of these with a cup of cold water (or, in the winter, hot chocolate) and a kind word.
But this year, don't let the season go by without going before God with an open heart and an open mind, asking Him where your best place of ministry lies.
Because hungry children and hurting grown-ups need a Merry March and a Merry May every bit as much as they do a Merry Christmas.
Monday, November 15, 2004
SELL SHRUM, BUY BARNA
Let’s congratulate Bob Shrum.
He has just presided over his eighth losing presidential campaign. And he’s considered the Democrats’ “best” strategist.
Perhaps they should re-think.
As I predicted, on election day, the evangelicals turned out in record numbers, and they voted for Bush. One-quarter of the electorate–11.7 million people–were self-identified “born-again Christians.” Seventy-eight percent of them voted for Bush. That constituted somewhere between 59 and 78% of the born again population. The only demographic groups that gave the president a higher percentage of their vote were Republicans (93%) and Conservatives (84%)–neither of which merits a headline.
But the evangelical vote is definitely something to write home about. More to the point, it’s something to write George Barna about.
George Barna is a man who is going to become very, very popular in the near future.
Who is George Barna, you ask?
He’s the founder and director of the Barna Group, Ltd., a former pastor, a graduate of Boston University, recipient of two masters’ degrees from Rutgers and a doctorate from Dallas Baptist University.
He’s also the man who has, for decades, been compiling every imaginable statistic concerning evangelical Christians.
He knows all about us–our politics, our opinions, what we think of our pastors, what our future pastors think of us, how strongly pastors and congregations feel about a variety of topics, how many of us there are, and which issues activate us.
If I were a politician–especially a Democrat, hoping to hold on to a seat or get one in 2006, or even aspiring to win the Big One in 2008–I would sure be trying to get this guy’s cell number. Better than any other pollster, pundit, or media maven, Barna has his finger on the pulse of the born-again voter–and has had since before anyone thought there was any life in it. His treasure-trove of trivia is now worth its weight in gold, but he won’t be working for Hillary anytime soon.
You see, while his information is public knowledge, and all you have to do is do a little internet digging or buy one of his books, his services are not available to just anyone. Barna has five divisions, and they work for churches. The ultimate goal of the corporation is to bring about the spiritual transformation of the United States–by which we might mean something like the Jesusland map that Michael Moore finds so spooky.
But, whether you approve of his hopes for a renaissance of reformative evangelical Christianity, the facts at his fingertips are undeniably solid. Over the years, he has written 35 books on various trends in the Christian community, and pastors of virtually every evangelical denomination swear by his evaluations of the spiritual climate in America.
Ever since the election, puzzled Democrat leaders have been trying to figure out how to “talk to” these mysterious “values voters.”
As the saying goes, they should ask the man who owns one.
RECOMMENDED READING:
He has just presided over his eighth losing presidential campaign. And he’s considered the Democrats’ “best” strategist.
Perhaps they should re-think.
As I predicted, on election day, the evangelicals turned out in record numbers, and they voted for Bush. One-quarter of the electorate–11.7 million people–were self-identified “born-again Christians.” Seventy-eight percent of them voted for Bush. That constituted somewhere between 59 and 78% of the born again population. The only demographic groups that gave the president a higher percentage of their vote were Republicans (93%) and Conservatives (84%)–neither of which merits a headline.
But the evangelical vote is definitely something to write home about. More to the point, it’s something to write George Barna about.
George Barna is a man who is going to become very, very popular in the near future.
Who is George Barna, you ask?
He’s the founder and director of the Barna Group, Ltd., a former pastor, a graduate of Boston University, recipient of two masters’ degrees from Rutgers and a doctorate from Dallas Baptist University.
He’s also the man who has, for decades, been compiling every imaginable statistic concerning evangelical Christians.
He knows all about us–our politics, our opinions, what we think of our pastors, what our future pastors think of us, how strongly pastors and congregations feel about a variety of topics, how many of us there are, and which issues activate us.
If I were a politician–especially a Democrat, hoping to hold on to a seat or get one in 2006, or even aspiring to win the Big One in 2008–I would sure be trying to get this guy’s cell number. Better than any other pollster, pundit, or media maven, Barna has his finger on the pulse of the born-again voter–and has had since before anyone thought there was any life in it. His treasure-trove of trivia is now worth its weight in gold, but he won’t be working for Hillary anytime soon.
You see, while his information is public knowledge, and all you have to do is do a little internet digging or buy one of his books, his services are not available to just anyone. Barna has five divisions, and they work for churches. The ultimate goal of the corporation is to bring about the spiritual transformation of the United States–by which we might mean something like the Jesusland map that Michael Moore finds so spooky.
But, whether you approve of his hopes for a renaissance of reformative evangelical Christianity, the facts at his fingertips are undeniably solid. Over the years, he has written 35 books on various trends in the Christian community, and pastors of virtually every evangelical denomination swear by his evaluations of the spiritual climate in America.
Ever since the election, puzzled Democrat leaders have been trying to figure out how to “talk to” these mysterious “values voters.”
As the saying goes, they should ask the man who owns one.
RECOMMENDED READING:
DON'T ROCK THAT VOTE--JUST GIVE IT A GOOD TALKING-TO!
I was reading some depressed Kerryite blogging today. It’s amazing how arrogant these people really are. I thought I had seen unsupportable arrogance in college, but this election tops everything.
They are describing themselves as a “fledgling democracy movement,” as though evangelicals are the Chinese government and they are willing sacrifices going under the tanks at Tiannemen Square. They feel as though their “lives have been stolen” from them. They “can’t believe it’s happened.” They are “afraid to graduate and look for work in a nation like this.”
How disconnected from reality can one be?
The fact is, this is the same country it was the day before the election. The business climate is the same. Did these radical youth think that, if Kerry won, Wall Street and the other places they want to work would suddenly fill with benevolent pro-environment employers offering free health care to them and their gay partners? Did they not know what the world around them was like?
No, they didn’t. The mainstream media betrayed them, by perpetuating the image in their heads of what “real” Americans were like. If you watched enough Dan Rather, you would think the nation was chock-full of angry young voters, radical people of color, feminist women, and gay couples.
But that’s not true.
What’s true is that the biggest identifiable constituency groups in the Democratic party are media members, Hollywood entertainers, and academics. And there aren’t enough of them to populate Providence, Rhode Island–much less win an American election.
The intensity with which the vote-rockers threw themselves into beating the Bushies was breathtaking. They should get an A for effort, as they tried every slick and creative new way they could think of to get their man elected.
But the problem is that elections are decided by voters, and they didn’t get enough. The complexity of their efforts to win a game that boils down to a lean, mean ground game reminds me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Jones is attacked by a sword-wielding assassin who shrieks and pivots and flourishes menacingly–until Indy just takes out his gun and shoots him dead.
Ordinary and efficient beats fancy and foolish every time.
Unfortunately, that’s not an avenue open to the electorate (even if we got a law passed, you can bet the Courts would never let it stand.) So, we’re going to have to put up with this for a while. I was prepared for a bit of a letdown to course through the bloodstreams of the valiant vote-rockers, maybe a week or so before they got bored, took midterms, and went home for Thanksgiving Break.
But, after seeing the outpouring of apparent grief, disillusionment, suicidal and homicidal ideation that has flooded the airwaves and the internet since the election, I’m really beginning to think there’s something seriously wrong with some fraction of 48% of the country.
This is not the way grown-ups lose an election. This is the way two-year olds lose the privilege of watching yet another episode of “Dora the Explorer.”
It shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, though, considering that exit polls show that the only age group Kerry won a majority of (constituting 17% of the electorate) was the 29 and under crowd. Every other–EVERY other–age group went to the President (30-44 by 53/46; 45-59 by 51/48; and sixty-plus by 54/46.) One wonders what the results would have looked like, were it not for the misguided Vietnam-era sop to the college students that allows 18-year olds to vote. Despite the fact that they are generally still thinking like high school students–and those in college are considered so irresponsible that the college or university takes responsibility for them ("in loco parentis")–still, since they could be sent against their will to Vietnam, the Congress and the people decided to roll the dice and let them vote.
And look what happens.
Rather than graciously accepting defeat, those wacky young people are saturating the internet with conspiracy theories, dark threats, angry editorial cartoons, bitterness, rage, and resistance. It seems they have so little to do in their ordinary lives that they have endless time to forward email and fabricate plots.
Since the folk-singer vote went so heavily to Kerry, I suppose we can expect to be hearing about “two stolen elections” for years and years to come. No doubt, the button and bumper sticker industry will continue to boom, as they produce more and more clever variations on “Bush lied” (what rhymes with “stolen?") And, of course, since they know where their interests lie, the tenured radicals will continue to teach the young (even the 45% of them that voted for Bush) that their government is illegitimate and their leadership to be resisted.
Strange as it may sound, the voters of 1960 should thank their lucky stars for Richard Nixon. Had he not refused to sue over the results of the Texas and Illinois votes, it is entirely likely that John F. Kennedy would never have been president. And those who voted for Kerry should be grateful for Nixon’s good grace, too–since without John Kennedy and Vietnam, there would never have been a John Kerry to agitate on behalf of.
But instead of imitating their candidate (who, to his everlasting credit, had the class to bow out gracefully), the Kerry voters are still hanging on to the almost nonexistent hope that provisional ballots in Ohio–or maybe the panhandle votes in Florida–or maybe one of Nader’s lawsuits–or magic fairy dust–will hold the key to victory. They are not budging until we let them count all the votes again. They don’t care if they have to sit in lawyer’s offices for the rest of their lives. Nobody’s going to tell them they’re wrong.
But those of us who have had children should be able to see where this is going. The Kerry voters will scream and cry and dig in their heels and re-count the New Hampshire vote and wail about how unfair it all is. They’ll tell us every chance they get that they really, really, really want Kerry to be president, and the only way that rotten old George W. Bush could have won is if he cheated!
“You’re trying to ruin our lives!” they’ll cry to us, through Air America (the radio equivalent of standing in the corner and holding your breath). “You’re all mean and hateful, and we WON’T obey you!” they’ll scrawl across the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. “George W. Bush is a FINK!” they’ll pound out on the keyboards at Democratic Underground and Slate.
And then they’ll look sideways at us like manipulative Angelica in Rugrats and say, “We’ll never ask for anything again, if you just let us win.”
And we would really like to have some peace, the adults among us. We are awfully worn out by letting them rant and ignoring them, because even when you’re ignoring someone, if they’re screaming you can still hear them, and if they’re scratching it still hurts.
And then we’re going to have to apply some tough love to the little monsters. They’re not going to like it. The truth may sometimes hurt, but its more loving to tell them the truth than to let them live the lie.
If you know a young voter in denial, let me give you some help in explaining the results of the election to them. Sit them down at a calm time and turn off the tv, the computer, and the Nintendo. Be sure you have their full attention. Then, try something like this:
When your young voter breaks down in denial and disbelief, you may have to go a step further and provide the proof positive that President Bush did, indeed, win. And so did many, many Republicans. To-wit:
The results of the election–across the board–are totally clear. It wasn’t just the President who won. It was the most conservative choices for the Senate and the House. It was the constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman–and even an amendment that rejected the very notion of civil unions, as well. If the nation didn’t want the agenda and ideology of George W. Bush, they have a funny way of saying so.
The Founders were very wise. They understood that if they allowed each state to have the same vote, it would dilute the effect of the individual votes of those in the more populous states. Conversely, to provide proportional representation would disadvantage those in the less populous states, who may have more land, and who in a federal system were supposed to be equals on a state-to-state basis. Thus, they devised a bicameral system, in which one house contains representation for the people that provides equal representation by population, and one that provides equal representation by state, in the form of two Senators. In this way, it was believed that voters in both large and small states would have their say.
Once you have gone over how the system works, it’s time to get to business. (Remember: it’s not you they hate; it’s George W. Bush.)
They are describing themselves as a “fledgling democracy movement,” as though evangelicals are the Chinese government and they are willing sacrifices going under the tanks at Tiannemen Square. They feel as though their “lives have been stolen” from them. They “can’t believe it’s happened.” They are “afraid to graduate and look for work in a nation like this.”
How disconnected from reality can one be?
The fact is, this is the same country it was the day before the election. The business climate is the same. Did these radical youth think that, if Kerry won, Wall Street and the other places they want to work would suddenly fill with benevolent pro-environment employers offering free health care to them and their gay partners? Did they not know what the world around them was like?
No, they didn’t. The mainstream media betrayed them, by perpetuating the image in their heads of what “real” Americans were like. If you watched enough Dan Rather, you would think the nation was chock-full of angry young voters, radical people of color, feminist women, and gay couples.
But that’s not true.
What’s true is that the biggest identifiable constituency groups in the Democratic party are media members, Hollywood entertainers, and academics. And there aren’t enough of them to populate Providence, Rhode Island–much less win an American election.
The intensity with which the vote-rockers threw themselves into beating the Bushies was breathtaking. They should get an A for effort, as they tried every slick and creative new way they could think of to get their man elected.
But the problem is that elections are decided by voters, and they didn’t get enough. The complexity of their efforts to win a game that boils down to a lean, mean ground game reminds me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Jones is attacked by a sword-wielding assassin who shrieks and pivots and flourishes menacingly–until Indy just takes out his gun and shoots him dead.
Ordinary and efficient beats fancy and foolish every time.
Unfortunately, that’s not an avenue open to the electorate (even if we got a law passed, you can bet the Courts would never let it stand.) So, we’re going to have to put up with this for a while. I was prepared for a bit of a letdown to course through the bloodstreams of the valiant vote-rockers, maybe a week or so before they got bored, took midterms, and went home for Thanksgiving Break.
But, after seeing the outpouring of apparent grief, disillusionment, suicidal and homicidal ideation that has flooded the airwaves and the internet since the election, I’m really beginning to think there’s something seriously wrong with some fraction of 48% of the country.
This is not the way grown-ups lose an election. This is the way two-year olds lose the privilege of watching yet another episode of “Dora the Explorer.”
It shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, though, considering that exit polls show that the only age group Kerry won a majority of (constituting 17% of the electorate) was the 29 and under crowd. Every other–EVERY other–age group went to the President (30-44 by 53/46; 45-59 by 51/48; and sixty-plus by 54/46.) One wonders what the results would have looked like, were it not for the misguided Vietnam-era sop to the college students that allows 18-year olds to vote. Despite the fact that they are generally still thinking like high school students–and those in college are considered so irresponsible that the college or university takes responsibility for them ("in loco parentis")–still, since they could be sent against their will to Vietnam, the Congress and the people decided to roll the dice and let them vote.
And look what happens.
Rather than graciously accepting defeat, those wacky young people are saturating the internet with conspiracy theories, dark threats, angry editorial cartoons, bitterness, rage, and resistance. It seems they have so little to do in their ordinary lives that they have endless time to forward email and fabricate plots.
Since the folk-singer vote went so heavily to Kerry, I suppose we can expect to be hearing about “two stolen elections” for years and years to come. No doubt, the button and bumper sticker industry will continue to boom, as they produce more and more clever variations on “Bush lied” (what rhymes with “stolen?") And, of course, since they know where their interests lie, the tenured radicals will continue to teach the young (even the 45% of them that voted for Bush) that their government is illegitimate and their leadership to be resisted.
Strange as it may sound, the voters of 1960 should thank their lucky stars for Richard Nixon. Had he not refused to sue over the results of the Texas and Illinois votes, it is entirely likely that John F. Kennedy would never have been president. And those who voted for Kerry should be grateful for Nixon’s good grace, too–since without John Kennedy and Vietnam, there would never have been a John Kerry to agitate on behalf of.
But instead of imitating their candidate (who, to his everlasting credit, had the class to bow out gracefully), the Kerry voters are still hanging on to the almost nonexistent hope that provisional ballots in Ohio–or maybe the panhandle votes in Florida–or maybe one of Nader’s lawsuits–or magic fairy dust–will hold the key to victory. They are not budging until we let them count all the votes again. They don’t care if they have to sit in lawyer’s offices for the rest of their lives. Nobody’s going to tell them they’re wrong.
But those of us who have had children should be able to see where this is going. The Kerry voters will scream and cry and dig in their heels and re-count the New Hampshire vote and wail about how unfair it all is. They’ll tell us every chance they get that they really, really, really want Kerry to be president, and the only way that rotten old George W. Bush could have won is if he cheated!
“You’re trying to ruin our lives!” they’ll cry to us, through Air America (the radio equivalent of standing in the corner and holding your breath). “You’re all mean and hateful, and we WON’T obey you!” they’ll scrawl across the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. “George W. Bush is a FINK!” they’ll pound out on the keyboards at Democratic Underground and Slate.
And then they’ll look sideways at us like manipulative Angelica in Rugrats and say, “We’ll never ask for anything again, if you just let us win.”
And we would really like to have some peace, the adults among us. We are awfully worn out by letting them rant and ignoring them, because even when you’re ignoring someone, if they’re screaming you can still hear them, and if they’re scratching it still hurts.
And then we’re going to have to apply some tough love to the little monsters. They’re not going to like it. The truth may sometimes hurt, but its more loving to tell them the truth than to let them live the lie.
If you know a young voter in denial, let me give you some help in explaining the results of the election to them. Sit them down at a calm time and turn off the tv, the computer, and the Nintendo. Be sure you have their full attention. Then, try something like this:
“First off, I want you to know this is going to be hard. I know you’re unhappy right now. I hear that. But this is just getting out of hand. You need to understand that, however you approach it,” (take a deep breath here, then proceed with clarity and firmness, “John Kerry lost.”
(Be sure to have plenty of Kleenex ready when you have this conversation; they’re going to take it hard.) “John Kerry is NOT going to be president of the United States.
“And, sweetie, the reason he’s not going to be president of the United States is that more American voters wanted President Bush to stay President.” (At this point, the young voter may stare at you in shock and horror, unable to understand how you–even YOU–could betray him. Stay strong.)
“I know, I know. The Europeans told you Kerry was going to win. The media told you he was going to win. All the people you know voted for him. All the people you met promised they were going to vote for him.
“But that’s not what happened.”
When your young voter breaks down in denial and disbelief, you may have to go a step further and provide the proof positive that President Bush did, indeed, win. And so did many, many Republicans. To-wit:
The results of the election–across the board–are totally clear. It wasn’t just the President who won. It was the most conservative choices for the Senate and the House. It was the constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman–and even an amendment that rejected the very notion of civil unions, as well. If the nation didn’t want the agenda and ideology of George W. Bush, they have a funny way of saying so.
The Founders were very wise. They understood that if they allowed each state to have the same vote, it would dilute the effect of the individual votes of those in the more populous states. Conversely, to provide proportional representation would disadvantage those in the less populous states, who may have more land, and who in a federal system were supposed to be equals on a state-to-state basis. Thus, they devised a bicameral system, in which one house contains representation for the people that provides equal representation by population, and one that provides equal representation by state, in the form of two Senators. In this way, it was believed that voters in both large and small states would have their say.
Once you have gone over how the system works, it’s time to get to business. (Remember: it’s not you they hate; it’s George W. Bush.)
“You see, darling–I’m going to be as gentle with this as I can, but there’s just no way to make it any better for you–the problem is, MOST people didn’t want to give you the president and vice-president you wanted. In fact, the majority of Bush voters were voting for Bush, while the majority of Kerry voters were voting against Bush. Sadly, neither those who voted for him nor those who did not seemed to care much about who occupied Kerry’s spot on the ballot (though, to be fair, they evidently didn’t want it to be Ralph Nader or Michael Badinarik.)
“That’s not a very mature reason for voting.
“And I’m sorry to tell you this, honey, but the voters also picked a lot of people you really aren’t going to like. You could have won control of the Senate, if a higher number of states contained Americans that preferred John Kerry to President Bush. But they didn’t. The Republicans run the Senate, 55 to 44. And you could have won control of the House of Representatives, if enough people in each district agreed with the Democratic agenda more than the Republican one. But they didn’t. The Republicans won the House, as well, 231 to 200.
“And you might even have gained a foothold in the statehouses, if voters in individual states preferred your agenda to the Republican one. But governors are Republican, too–29 to 21. And, of course, you lost both the popular vote by (at least) three and a half million votes, and the electoral college, 286 to 252. Oh, and I almost forget–there were also 11 winning ballot measures on defending traditional marriage.” (Wince sympathetically here.) “Sorry. I know you really cared about that one.
“So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re Blue, I guess you have a right to be. Let me put it in sports terms. It’s always a disappointment when your team doesn’t win. Some of your friends were happy when the Red Sox won the Series, remember? But then some of them–the New Yorkers–were kind of sad, right?
“Well, look at it this way. You wanted the Blue team to win the election, but they barely got in the game.
“Basically the Reds just beat you, 5 games to none.”
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
OR WERE THEY NEVER REALLY THERE?
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GAY POPULATION COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET
As we all know by now, the traditional marriage amendments on the ballots of eleven states helped generate one of the largest turnouts in American history. The opponents of gay marriage triumphed in all eleven states, from 56% in Oregon to better than 80% in Mississippi. The moral traditionalists, it seems clear, were quite concerned about this issue, and they came out to say so.
Speaking of "coming out," there's an interesting bit of data buried in the piles of post-election information that has been made available. See if you spot it:
Are you [the voter] gay, lesbian, or bisexual? (4% Y; 96% N)
YES -- Bush 23% Kerry 77%
NO -- Bush 53% Kerry 46%
Yeah, yeah, we knew Bush wasn't going to get this vote. It's no surprise that Kerry got 77% of the gay vote.
But, wait.
The percentage of gays in the ELECTORATE is--what? Four percent? FOUR?
How many zillions of times have we heard it. "Ten percent of all Americans are gay. And they are from all walks of life, from every income level, every race, in every region of the country…."
If that's actually TRUE, then ten percent of the VOTERS should be gay, as well.
Instead, we have a percentage much, much closer to the estimate usually offered by pro-family groups--3% of women, 5% of men. The ten percent figure, they contend, is an artifact of the skewed data collection methods used by the originator of the claim, Alfred Kinsey. Because his data over-sampled imprisoned child molesters, the incidence of homosexuality in the population is overstated in the Kinsey data.
Thus, we have a puzzle. Given the importance of the gay marriage amendments, and given the desperate desire of pro-gay and pro-choice activists to get rid of this president, one would have expected a disproportionate turnout of such voters (of course, that's just anecdotal evidence, derived from the speakers' lists of the many anti-Bush protests, rallies, and descents of various kinds on Washington.)
Yet, if they are ten percent of the population and 40% of the electorate, one has to conclude that they are less concerned about the election than the population as a whole, which produced a turnout of just under 60%.
And if, as gay rights activists insist, gays are distributed throughout the population, with no non-ideological characteristics to distinguish them, this data indicates they constitute a mere four percent of the population--four times the percent of Nader voters, sure, but not nearly enough of a constituency to justify the attention that has heretofore been lavished on them by the press, the culture, and the political establishment.
Facts are stubborn things. And sometimes they tell secrets.
As we all know by now, the traditional marriage amendments on the ballots of eleven states helped generate one of the largest turnouts in American history. The opponents of gay marriage triumphed in all eleven states, from 56% in Oregon to better than 80% in Mississippi. The moral traditionalists, it seems clear, were quite concerned about this issue, and they came out to say so.
Speaking of "coming out," there's an interesting bit of data buried in the piles of post-election information that has been made available. See if you spot it:
Are you [the voter] gay, lesbian, or bisexual? (4% Y; 96% N)
YES -- Bush 23% Kerry 77%
NO -- Bush 53% Kerry 46%
Yeah, yeah, we knew Bush wasn't going to get this vote. It's no surprise that Kerry got 77% of the gay vote.
But, wait.
The percentage of gays in the ELECTORATE is--what? Four percent? FOUR?
How many zillions of times have we heard it. "Ten percent of all Americans are gay. And they are from all walks of life, from every income level, every race, in every region of the country…."
If that's actually TRUE, then ten percent of the VOTERS should be gay, as well.
Instead, we have a percentage much, much closer to the estimate usually offered by pro-family groups--3% of women, 5% of men. The ten percent figure, they contend, is an artifact of the skewed data collection methods used by the originator of the claim, Alfred Kinsey. Because his data over-sampled imprisoned child molesters, the incidence of homosexuality in the population is overstated in the Kinsey data.
Thus, we have a puzzle. Given the importance of the gay marriage amendments, and given the desperate desire of pro-gay and pro-choice activists to get rid of this president, one would have expected a disproportionate turnout of such voters (of course, that's just anecdotal evidence, derived from the speakers' lists of the many anti-Bush protests, rallies, and descents of various kinds on Washington.)
Yet, if they are ten percent of the population and 40% of the electorate, one has to conclude that they are less concerned about the election than the population as a whole, which produced a turnout of just under 60%.
And if, as gay rights activists insist, gays are distributed throughout the population, with no non-ideological characteristics to distinguish them, this data indicates they constitute a mere four percent of the population--four times the percent of Nader voters, sure, but not nearly enough of a constituency to justify the attention that has heretofore been lavished on them by the press, the culture, and the political establishment.
Facts are stubborn things. And sometimes they tell secrets.
SNEAKING OFF THE PLANTATION
My best friend is Black (no jokes, please.) She's also very religious. She goes to one of those few churches where the election wasn't really addressed much this year, but you can't stop folks from talking amongst themselves.
This weekend, she was talking to one of the mothers of the church (for you blue staters, they're the older women who are sort of relied upon to do a lot of the layperson's legwork for the pastorate.) The old lady leaned over and whispered something to her. It was the kind of thing you don't discuss in polite company in the traditional Black church, the kind of secret you have to be kind of quiet about, because you just know most folks wouldn't approve. She confessed--not a sin, exactly--but, clearly, a violation of Black church tradition. Here is what she said:
"Don't tell anybody, but I voted for Bush."
I don't know how many times this scenario was repeated across the country this past weekend, as newly red Black people begin to slowly reveal that they just couldn't stomach their masters in the Democrat party this time around. As they do, though, I think they will find that their act was not one of rebellion, but one of liberation.
This new ability to breathe will, over the next two years, be felt in several traditionally Democrat voting blocs, and, I suspect, be transmitted as well even to those who voted for Kerry, as they realize that the sky is not, after all, falling. The seniors' checks will still come to them. Children will still be educated--oddly, even better than before. Tax reform will actually improve the lives of everyone, from the least of these on up. And there will be no gay marriage, except in Massachusetts.
Traditionally Democratic Catholics voted Republican this year, to the tune of nearly 60% in some places. Women voted for Bush. Hispanics gave more than forty percent of the vote to the President, besting his showing with them as governor by an additional ten percentage points. Organized labor went for Kerry, but as they re-assess their wisdom, they will find that their rank and file is never very happy with far left social causes, and maybe there are a few organizations--like NARAL and Planned Parenthood and NOW and SEICUS and the ACLU and the gay rights groups--that should mysteriously drop off their Christmas card list this year.
It may be a secret now, but if the President fulfills his promise of compassionate conservatism and holds the line against the liberal-based destruction of our American way of life, there's a good chance it will be an open one by 2006.
Of course, then the Democrats will just have judges declare "separate but equal" polling places constitutional, to make sure that African-American voters who want to vote Democratic can go to a specifically Democrat and supportive polling place to do so. Or maybe they could rescind the law against the literacy clause.
After all, Europeans and liberals agree. 59 million Americans CAN be "dumb."
This weekend, she was talking to one of the mothers of the church (for you blue staters, they're the older women who are sort of relied upon to do a lot of the layperson's legwork for the pastorate.) The old lady leaned over and whispered something to her. It was the kind of thing you don't discuss in polite company in the traditional Black church, the kind of secret you have to be kind of quiet about, because you just know most folks wouldn't approve. She confessed--not a sin, exactly--but, clearly, a violation of Black church tradition. Here is what she said:
"Don't tell anybody, but I voted for Bush."
I don't know how many times this scenario was repeated across the country this past weekend, as newly red Black people begin to slowly reveal that they just couldn't stomach their masters in the Democrat party this time around. As they do, though, I think they will find that their act was not one of rebellion, but one of liberation.
This new ability to breathe will, over the next two years, be felt in several traditionally Democrat voting blocs, and, I suspect, be transmitted as well even to those who voted for Kerry, as they realize that the sky is not, after all, falling. The seniors' checks will still come to them. Children will still be educated--oddly, even better than before. Tax reform will actually improve the lives of everyone, from the least of these on up. And there will be no gay marriage, except in Massachusetts.
Traditionally Democratic Catholics voted Republican this year, to the tune of nearly 60% in some places. Women voted for Bush. Hispanics gave more than forty percent of the vote to the President, besting his showing with them as governor by an additional ten percentage points. Organized labor went for Kerry, but as they re-assess their wisdom, they will find that their rank and file is never very happy with far left social causes, and maybe there are a few organizations--like NARAL and Planned Parenthood and NOW and SEICUS and the ACLU and the gay rights groups--that should mysteriously drop off their Christmas card list this year.
It may be a secret now, but if the President fulfills his promise of compassionate conservatism and holds the line against the liberal-based destruction of our American way of life, there's a good chance it will be an open one by 2006.
Of course, then the Democrats will just have judges declare "separate but equal" polling places constitutional, to make sure that African-American voters who want to vote Democratic can go to a specifically Democrat and supportive polling place to do so. Or maybe they could rescind the law against the literacy clause.
After all, Europeans and liberals agree. 59 million Americans CAN be "dumb."
Friday, November 05, 2004
SIZE MATTERS
55 SENATORS KEEP HOPE ALIVE
In his first term, President George W. Bush had a Republican Senate. Well, sort of. A little bit. Sometimes. And not so you'd notice.
Now he has 55 Senators of his own party. And that's a very, very important number.
Not only does he have a far greater chance of defeating the filibustering nonsense the Senate Democrats saddled him with in the first term, putting one judicial appointment after another on ice, on the flimsiest of excuses--he also has new Senators that are far, far more conservative than the ones we've seen before.
The chief obstructionist, Tom Daschle, defeated House Minority Leader, has fallen to a flat-out conservative, John Thune. Pro-life Louisiana Congressman David Vitter surprised everyone by defeating two Democrats with better than 50% of the vote, avoiding a run-off election. The open Florida seat, formerly that of Democratic presidential aspirant Bob Graham, went to the President's former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Martinez. The old job of John Edwards (the unluckiest unemployed lawyer in America) was picked up by a conservative co-sponsor of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act while in the House, who defeated former Clinton chief of staff, Erskine Bowles.
South Carolina's open seat, emptied by the resignation of distinctly Democratic Fritz Hollings, is now the property of former House member of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus, Jim Demint. Former ambassador to the United Nations and pro-life conservative firebrand Alan Keyes lost an open Republican seat to liberal Democrat Barack Obama, but Keyes was handicapped from the beginning by coming to the race late, in a party in disarray, scrambling to replace the unfortunate Jack Ryan, running as an outsider in a state he was not from, and which handily delivered its electoral vote to John Kerry. Keyes can take it, and we'll get over it. Perhaps most interestingly of all, the putative new Senate Minority leader, Harry Reed of Nevada, may be a pal of Patricia Ireland and Hillary Clinton, but he is also the rarest of breeds these days--a pro-life Democrat.
And Thursday evening, after the news reported in the morning that the assumed next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, moderate Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter had "warned" the president not to send up any divisive judicial nominees that might overturn Roe v. Wade, the airwaves were awash in Specter's denial that he ever did such a thing. If he did, he's been slapped down good, and I doubt he'll try it again, assuming the 60% of his conservative fellow Senators on Judiciary vote him into the position in the first place.
In this term, the president is likely to appoint at least one, and perhaps up to four new Justices to the Supreme Court. This, indeed, has been the target of the evangelical leadership for more than two years, since the first rumblings began that homosexual sodomy might become a right and gay marriage a fact of American life. But those Justices will no doubt share the president's concern with the taking of unborn life. If Rehnquist's health fails, we can expect the brilliant conservative Antonin Scalia to rise to the position of Chief, and another conservative to replace him. Several other justices are not well, and some are old. It is doubtful the other 8 will all hold out for another four years.
The fact is, not since 1972, the year before Roe was decided, has there been a better time to be an unborn child in America.
They have a pro-life president, a pro-life House, a pro-life Senate, and a presumably pro-life electorate on their side. The cozy roost the pro-abortion lobby had during the Clinton administration was vacated during the first Bush administration, and now has a "this property is condemned" sign on it. There's an open door at the White House for Crisis Pregnancy Centers and adoption advocates, and empty chairs at the Judiciary committee, just waiting for pro-life doctors, nurses, social workers, authors, and activists to occupy them as witnesses at hearings on the various aspects of abortion law. And International Planned Parenthood is persona non grata at the American delegation to the United Nations.
This president has delivered the goods for his pro-life base. The administration has been suffused with concern for the sanctity of innocent life, both in domestic affairs and foreign policy. The American UN delegation has fought to remove language that would spread the poison of abortion throughout the world--and won. The Congress has passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, the Child Custody Protection Act, and the Abortion Non-discrimination Act. Many of the incoming Senators already have solid records protecting the sanctity of life. Others have made promises the voters expect them to keep.
Fifty-five is a wonderful number. It's going to help some very vulnerable people stay alive.
In his first term, President George W. Bush had a Republican Senate. Well, sort of. A little bit. Sometimes. And not so you'd notice.
Now he has 55 Senators of his own party. And that's a very, very important number.
Not only does he have a far greater chance of defeating the filibustering nonsense the Senate Democrats saddled him with in the first term, putting one judicial appointment after another on ice, on the flimsiest of excuses--he also has new Senators that are far, far more conservative than the ones we've seen before.
The chief obstructionist, Tom Daschle, defeated House Minority Leader, has fallen to a flat-out conservative, John Thune. Pro-life Louisiana Congressman David Vitter surprised everyone by defeating two Democrats with better than 50% of the vote, avoiding a run-off election. The open Florida seat, formerly that of Democratic presidential aspirant Bob Graham, went to the President's former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Martinez. The old job of John Edwards (the unluckiest unemployed lawyer in America) was picked up by a conservative co-sponsor of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act while in the House, who defeated former Clinton chief of staff, Erskine Bowles.
South Carolina's open seat, emptied by the resignation of distinctly Democratic Fritz Hollings, is now the property of former House member of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus, Jim Demint. Former ambassador to the United Nations and pro-life conservative firebrand Alan Keyes lost an open Republican seat to liberal Democrat Barack Obama, but Keyes was handicapped from the beginning by coming to the race late, in a party in disarray, scrambling to replace the unfortunate Jack Ryan, running as an outsider in a state he was not from, and which handily delivered its electoral vote to John Kerry. Keyes can take it, and we'll get over it. Perhaps most interestingly of all, the putative new Senate Minority leader, Harry Reed of Nevada, may be a pal of Patricia Ireland and Hillary Clinton, but he is also the rarest of breeds these days--a pro-life Democrat.
And Thursday evening, after the news reported in the morning that the assumed next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, moderate Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter had "warned" the president not to send up any divisive judicial nominees that might overturn Roe v. Wade, the airwaves were awash in Specter's denial that he ever did such a thing. If he did, he's been slapped down good, and I doubt he'll try it again, assuming the 60% of his conservative fellow Senators on Judiciary vote him into the position in the first place.
In this term, the president is likely to appoint at least one, and perhaps up to four new Justices to the Supreme Court. This, indeed, has been the target of the evangelical leadership for more than two years, since the first rumblings began that homosexual sodomy might become a right and gay marriage a fact of American life. But those Justices will no doubt share the president's concern with the taking of unborn life. If Rehnquist's health fails, we can expect the brilliant conservative Antonin Scalia to rise to the position of Chief, and another conservative to replace him. Several other justices are not well, and some are old. It is doubtful the other 8 will all hold out for another four years.
The fact is, not since 1972, the year before Roe was decided, has there been a better time to be an unborn child in America.
They have a pro-life president, a pro-life House, a pro-life Senate, and a presumably pro-life electorate on their side. The cozy roost the pro-abortion lobby had during the Clinton administration was vacated during the first Bush administration, and now has a "this property is condemned" sign on it. There's an open door at the White House for Crisis Pregnancy Centers and adoption advocates, and empty chairs at the Judiciary committee, just waiting for pro-life doctors, nurses, social workers, authors, and activists to occupy them as witnesses at hearings on the various aspects of abortion law. And International Planned Parenthood is persona non grata at the American delegation to the United Nations.
This president has delivered the goods for his pro-life base. The administration has been suffused with concern for the sanctity of innocent life, both in domestic affairs and foreign policy. The American UN delegation has fought to remove language that would spread the poison of abortion throughout the world--and won. The Congress has passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, the Child Custody Protection Act, and the Abortion Non-discrimination Act. Many of the incoming Senators already have solid records protecting the sanctity of life. Others have made promises the voters expect them to keep.
Fifty-five is a wonderful number. It's going to help some very vulnerable people stay alive.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
MASTER OF THE GAME
IS ED GILLESPIE THE GREATEST POLITICAL STRATEGIST OF ALL TIME?
Of course, he didn't "go it alone"--Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove are part of the team, as well. But major credit for this victory has to go to Ed Gillespie.
Consider: Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, orchestrated the single most well-reviewed Republican convention in recent memory. Even the great Lee Atwater could never claim such fame, as his conventions were marred by party infighting and accusations of being all red meat, and no beef.
The 2004 Republican National Convention brought together a wide variety of Republicans or supporters thereof--from pro-choice stem-cell supporter Arnold Schwarzennegar to pro-life former Kerry pal John McCain. Not only did they "all get along," but they all managed to focus their love and adoration on George W. Bush, each doing his part in preparing the stage for the President's amazing speech, majestically delivered "in the round" to the whole convention. For this alone, he deserves high honors.
Yet Gillespie is also the architect of this election season's superlative "ground game." The Bush campaign developed an astonishing grass-roots and email effort that sent out monthly, weekly, and daily updates on key issues, advance copies of ads, special interest mailings to a variety of types of voters--women, veterans, Hispanics, teachers--all designed to give voters the sense of being an "insider" in an exciting political adventure. They developed an extensive army, with leaders in virtually every precinct in America. They used state political apparatuses to play the game more intelligently this time than last, asking the important questions to find out what the demographics, interests, and environment were on the ground. In the final hours of the campaign, they put one million volunteers on the ground.
The people on Ed's email lists were treated to advance copies of the advertisements about to be run, links to websites that provided important election information, and other resources for political junkies across the nation. This is an important aspect of the campaign, though few have made mention of it. One of the worst aspects of modern politics is that states and voters are treated differently, according to their usefulness to the politician. By using email and focused groups (as opposed to "focus groups"), the campaign is able to devote attention and resources to voters that might otherwise be ignored. Those who lived in battleground states were the targets of campaign ads, but with email and web pages, even the most electorally secure voter had the chance to see the ads he or she might only get if they played to a national audience.
This connection to the base seems to be a hallmark of Gillespie's style. It connects him--and, through him, the party and the president--to the rank-and-file voter. There's something cool about watching a man tear up a Terry McAuliffe or a Susan Estrich on Fox and Friends in the morning, and then getting an email from him that afternoon. It's just, you know, cool.
And so, as we lean back into the comfortable margin of President Bush's victory, let us raise a toast to the man whose media savvy and impish personal charm brought us to this day: To you, Ed Gillispie, Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Kudos.
Of course, he didn't "go it alone"--Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove are part of the team, as well. But major credit for this victory has to go to Ed Gillespie.
Consider: Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, orchestrated the single most well-reviewed Republican convention in recent memory. Even the great Lee Atwater could never claim such fame, as his conventions were marred by party infighting and accusations of being all red meat, and no beef.
The 2004 Republican National Convention brought together a wide variety of Republicans or supporters thereof--from pro-choice stem-cell supporter Arnold Schwarzennegar to pro-life former Kerry pal John McCain. Not only did they "all get along," but they all managed to focus their love and adoration on George W. Bush, each doing his part in preparing the stage for the President's amazing speech, majestically delivered "in the round" to the whole convention. For this alone, he deserves high honors.
Yet Gillespie is also the architect of this election season's superlative "ground game." The Bush campaign developed an astonishing grass-roots and email effort that sent out monthly, weekly, and daily updates on key issues, advance copies of ads, special interest mailings to a variety of types of voters--women, veterans, Hispanics, teachers--all designed to give voters the sense of being an "insider" in an exciting political adventure. They developed an extensive army, with leaders in virtually every precinct in America. They used state political apparatuses to play the game more intelligently this time than last, asking the important questions to find out what the demographics, interests, and environment were on the ground. In the final hours of the campaign, they put one million volunteers on the ground.
The people on Ed's email lists were treated to advance copies of the advertisements about to be run, links to websites that provided important election information, and other resources for political junkies across the nation. This is an important aspect of the campaign, though few have made mention of it. One of the worst aspects of modern politics is that states and voters are treated differently, according to their usefulness to the politician. By using email and focused groups (as opposed to "focus groups"), the campaign is able to devote attention and resources to voters that might otherwise be ignored. Those who lived in battleground states were the targets of campaign ads, but with email and web pages, even the most electorally secure voter had the chance to see the ads he or she might only get if they played to a national audience.
This connection to the base seems to be a hallmark of Gillespie's style. It connects him--and, through him, the party and the president--to the rank-and-file voter. There's something cool about watching a man tear up a Terry McAuliffe or a Susan Estrich on Fox and Friends in the morning, and then getting an email from him that afternoon. It's just, you know, cool.
And so, as we lean back into the comfortable margin of President Bush's victory, let us raise a toast to the man whose media savvy and impish personal charm brought us to this day: To you, Ed Gillispie, Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Kudos.
I SEE A NATION AND I WANT TO PAINT IT RED
WHAT'S NEXT FOR BUSH'S AMERICA
As the dust settles here in the wee hours of the morning, assuming that Mary Beth decides to act like an adult and stop stomping her feet and threatening to sue people, we have a Republican president, a more Republican house, and a legitimately Republican Senate.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time.
It's time to get some new judges and Justices. It's time for Scalia to ascend as Rehnquist steps aside, and for George W. to get someone confirmed who will interpret the law, not make it. Then, Justice O'Connor can be released from her duties, something she's reportedly wanted for quite some time now, and another strict constructionist can take her place.
It's time for the Congress and the Courts to LISTEN to the voice of the people--the people who, in eleven states tonight, sent a very clear message. Marriage, they said, is the union of one man and one woman. They said so by incredible margins--in the 60 and 70 percent ranges. They said so decisively, and whether or not they voted for George W. Bush. They proved this is not a "wedge" issue. It is a matter of deep concern to the people of America. And it is not for the Court to decide otherwise.
It's time for the President to get out his veto pen--or, better yet, for the Congress to exercise good Republican judgment and cut both taxes AND spending. If Congress won't produce a balanced budget, the president no longer has to worry about his political viability. Far from a lame duck, he is now a man without political strings. He need not run for re-election. He need not worry about his political future. He can use his veto power, without worrying about his long-term political capital.
It's time for Fallujah to become an ashtray, and for the United Nations to understand where their future interests lie. The political will to move hard against the Evildoers has been awaiting the moment when taking that risk will not lose the president his job. It's time to finish what those head-slicing animals started when they decided Iraq was not going quietly into the bright sunlight of democracy.
It's time to get some commonsense legal reform. If there's anything the American people have had enough of, it's lawyers and lawsuits. What does it tell you when we can only muster a kind of bemused annoyance when we find that there are Americans among the many lawyers offering themselves up to defend Saddam Hussein in his trial? Of course, we think. That's what they always do.
Good doctors in America are being run out of business by skyrocketing malpractice insurance bills caused by ridiculous monetary awards teased out of juries by slimy shysters like (former) Senator John Edwards. The president has promised to do something about it, and I believe he will. Because it's time.
And, after four years of petulance, it's time for the Democrats to stop pretending the Republicans can only win by cheating and that we didn't win at all. It's time for them to get over it and get back to the business of helping us run this great country. We can agree, and we can agree to disagree--but we must stop disagreeing just to be disagreeable and tearing down our nation just to prove our side right. And it's time for those same Democrats to tell the cryptocelebrity policy advisors to just go away and leave politics alone.
The politics of hysteria and conspiracy have failed. Patience, calm, and wisdom have prevailed.
Now let's all get to work doing what Americans do--fixing what's wrong and doing what's right.
As the dust settles here in the wee hours of the morning, assuming that Mary Beth decides to act like an adult and stop stomping her feet and threatening to sue people, we have a Republican president, a more Republican house, and a legitimately Republican Senate.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time.
It's time to get some new judges and Justices. It's time for Scalia to ascend as Rehnquist steps aside, and for George W. to get someone confirmed who will interpret the law, not make it. Then, Justice O'Connor can be released from her duties, something she's reportedly wanted for quite some time now, and another strict constructionist can take her place.
It's time for the Congress and the Courts to LISTEN to the voice of the people--the people who, in eleven states tonight, sent a very clear message. Marriage, they said, is the union of one man and one woman. They said so by incredible margins--in the 60 and 70 percent ranges. They said so decisively, and whether or not they voted for George W. Bush. They proved this is not a "wedge" issue. It is a matter of deep concern to the people of America. And it is not for the Court to decide otherwise.
It's time for the President to get out his veto pen--or, better yet, for the Congress to exercise good Republican judgment and cut both taxes AND spending. If Congress won't produce a balanced budget, the president no longer has to worry about his political viability. Far from a lame duck, he is now a man without political strings. He need not run for re-election. He need not worry about his political future. He can use his veto power, without worrying about his long-term political capital.
It's time for Fallujah to become an ashtray, and for the United Nations to understand where their future interests lie. The political will to move hard against the Evildoers has been awaiting the moment when taking that risk will not lose the president his job. It's time to finish what those head-slicing animals started when they decided Iraq was not going quietly into the bright sunlight of democracy.
It's time to get some commonsense legal reform. If there's anything the American people have had enough of, it's lawyers and lawsuits. What does it tell you when we can only muster a kind of bemused annoyance when we find that there are Americans among the many lawyers offering themselves up to defend Saddam Hussein in his trial? Of course, we think. That's what they always do.
Good doctors in America are being run out of business by skyrocketing malpractice insurance bills caused by ridiculous monetary awards teased out of juries by slimy shysters like (former) Senator John Edwards. The president has promised to do something about it, and I believe he will. Because it's time.
And, after four years of petulance, it's time for the Democrats to stop pretending the Republicans can only win by cheating and that we didn't win at all. It's time for them to get over it and get back to the business of helping us run this great country. We can agree, and we can agree to disagree--but we must stop disagreeing just to be disagreeable and tearing down our nation just to prove our side right. And it's time for those same Democrats to tell the cryptocelebrity policy advisors to just go away and leave politics alone.
The politics of hysteria and conspiracy have failed. Patience, calm, and wisdom have prevailed.
Now let's all get to work doing what Americans do--fixing what's wrong and doing what's right.
BACK TO YOUR CAGES, MONKEYS:
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REJECT THE CELEBRITOCRACY AND ELECT THEIR OWN PRESIDENT
Bruce Springsteen and John Kerry appeared before a crowd of 80,000 people. Guess who they probably actually turned out to see? Not the Senator.
Michael Moore trained his camera on the "battleground" states, looking for malfeasance. Guess what he found? Nothing.
Bon Jovi, Ben Affleck, Janeane Garafolo, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Moby, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and--oh, how sweet it is--JOHN MCENROE--have ALL been defeated. They pulled out all the stops, they dumped their money into George Soros' 527s, they screamed and ranted and raved and even sang for free--and guess what?
The grown ups got mad, got active, got on the phones, went to the polls, and spanked them good.
This election sends a message not only to John Kerry and the anti-war left, but also to the elitists in Hollywood and their now fully-exposed allies in the liberal press.
This one's for you, Dan Rather. And for Mary Mapes. And it's for Americans Coming Together. And for the Media Fund. In your eye, George Soros. Go back to whatever bizarre country you came from. You, too, Mrs. Heinz "no real job" Kerry.
And with gratitude, it's for you, Ron Silver. For standing tall and defending patriotism in an industry of pygmies and traitors. And it's for the real heroes that fought and were imprisoned and died in Vietnam. And, most of all, it's for John O'Neill, a man of courage and strength. A man who can be proud that he fought this last battle for truth. A man who can fade back into history and live out his life in peace, knowing that he answered the call again when his country needed him most. To coin a phrase, he defended this nation as a young man, and he saved it when it needed to be saved.
Bruce Springsteen and John Kerry appeared before a crowd of 80,000 people. Guess who they probably actually turned out to see? Not the Senator.
Michael Moore trained his camera on the "battleground" states, looking for malfeasance. Guess what he found? Nothing.
Bon Jovi, Ben Affleck, Janeane Garafolo, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Moby, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and--oh, how sweet it is--JOHN MCENROE--have ALL been defeated. They pulled out all the stops, they dumped their money into George Soros' 527s, they screamed and ranted and raved and even sang for free--and guess what?
The grown ups got mad, got active, got on the phones, went to the polls, and spanked them good.
This election sends a message not only to John Kerry and the anti-war left, but also to the elitists in Hollywood and their now fully-exposed allies in the liberal press.
This one's for you, Dan Rather. And for Mary Mapes. And it's for Americans Coming Together. And for the Media Fund. In your eye, George Soros. Go back to whatever bizarre country you came from. You, too, Mrs. Heinz "no real job" Kerry.
And with gratitude, it's for you, Ron Silver. For standing tall and defending patriotism in an industry of pygmies and traitors. And it's for the real heroes that fought and were imprisoned and died in Vietnam. And, most of all, it's for John O'Neill, a man of courage and strength. A man who can be proud that he fought this last battle for truth. A man who can fade back into history and live out his life in peace, knowing that he answered the call again when his country needed him most. To coin a phrase, he defended this nation as a young man, and he saved it when it needed to be saved.
Friday, October 22, 2004
FOR THE GOOD OF THE SOUL OF THE NATION, KEEP OUR FAITH-BASED PRESIDENT!
A PLEA FROM A SOLDIER IN THE ARMY OF COMPASSION
Right now, I'm listening to Bush speak in Minnesota (he's in Minnesota--I'm not.)
As is his usual habit, he spoke first, and for several minutes, about a volunteer he met on his way in and the importance of the "soldiers in the armies of compassion" to the defense and health of this nation. The military is strong, and we'll keep it strong, and the economy is growing, but the true strength of America is in the hearts and souls of Americans who love a neighbor as they want to be loved themselves and are changing this nation one heart, one soul, one citizen at a time.
Not long ago, John Kerry told a bunch of leftist Hollywood radicals who had just spent the evening trashing the president that THEY represented the "heart and soul of America."
Personally, I'm voting for the man who wants America's soul to be healthy and free--not nasty, perverse, and sick.
As a soldier in the army of compassion, I and many of my fellows are worried about the possibility of a Kerry presidency. We don't want to go back to the days when the federal grant system was a closed door to those who dared to do their charitable work out of a heart for God. We don't want to go back to the time when start-up funds were available only to those willing to take the cross off the door. We appreciate the wisdom of the president who tells us that "government can't change the hearts of men and women. Faith can."
Under president Bush, we have seen faith-based institutions become competitive with other, less effective helping agencies. Dan Burton--who was the originator of the "charitable choice" legislation that started this whole ball rolling in the previous administration--believed that faith-based institutions would prove more cost-effective than those that ran primarily on paid staff. President Bush opened that door wider, took that chance, and he was right to do so.
Against long-standing competition, faith-based institutions have begun to win those funds, with millions of dollars now going to thousands of organizations and new programs to help children of prisoners, at-risk children, adults with substance abuse problems, the homeless, the hungry, the poor, and the disabled. These soldiers are doing their work in the way that only they can, with a cup of cold water and a kind word, with due regard for the dignity and worth of every human being as a child of God. And president Bush's projected 2005 budget asks for $350 million in new project funding, to continue the process of helping Americans by treating them as human beings, not projects, or numbers. It is a small number, as federal budget appropriations go, but we can do much more with it than one might think.
Moreover, we don't expect to stay on the government's dime. These funds are primarily start-up costs, and most have matching requirements. All we require is a chance to prove the viability of our programs. Once they're humming along, we expect to bring them to self-sufficiency. Our very nature is to take the little and watch it grow, to teach the man to fish, instead of just feeding him one. It is no different with the programs themselves. Just as we aim to train people to move off assistance and eventually return to help those newly in need, so we expect to use government funds to build the infrastructure needed to do the work of the long-term, work we will shoulder ourselves as the programs mature.
There are other faith considerations at stake this time, too. Under no other president in memory have people of faith felt they had an advocate in the White House, willing to protect their rights against the ever-increasing onslaught of ACLU and fringe-kook lawsuits bent on scrubbing every vestige of God from the public square. We have no reason to believe that all the gains we have seen under the Bush administration would be continued under a Kerry regime. In fact, Kerry's total unwillingness to apply the faith he claims to be his to anything in public life strongly argues otherwise.
And we are concerned as to the people who travel with Kerry on his ideological highway. Despite the token presence of Jesse Jackson, we are disturbed at the paucity of religious sensibility in the Kerry campaign. Their "religious advisors" have quickly been let go, as the campaign found their liberal brand of religion incompatible with the voters they were trying to court. Not quite as awkward as Dean, Kerry still presents his faith almost as if he is ashamed of it. "I was an altar boy" rings false to us, as false as Teresa's invocation of her late Republican husband. We don't understand a man who claims a core belief he won't act on. It's the very opposite of who we are.
The soldiers in this army have been pleased to have an earthly commander who knows his place under the Heavenly Commander in Chief. We understand a man who prays, who reads Oswald Chambers on a daily basis, who talks to God before he orders the instruments of battle aimed at human beings. We understand a man whose faith permeates his life, and who acts to do what he knows to be right even when he knows it will not be popular, here or abroad.
I can't give you the statistics. I know that, according to polls, the vast majority of Americans serving in Iraq favor the president. He is their commander in chief, and they seem pleased with him. In the armies of compassion, there are Democrats and Republicans, all races, all creeds. But my gut tells me, this year, we are standing behind the US commander in chief, because he knows he is commanded by OUR Commander-in-Chief.
May God bless the President and the United States of America.
Right now, I'm listening to Bush speak in Minnesota (he's in Minnesota--I'm not.)
As is his usual habit, he spoke first, and for several minutes, about a volunteer he met on his way in and the importance of the "soldiers in the armies of compassion" to the defense and health of this nation. The military is strong, and we'll keep it strong, and the economy is growing, but the true strength of America is in the hearts and souls of Americans who love a neighbor as they want to be loved themselves and are changing this nation one heart, one soul, one citizen at a time.
Not long ago, John Kerry told a bunch of leftist Hollywood radicals who had just spent the evening trashing the president that THEY represented the "heart and soul of America."
Personally, I'm voting for the man who wants America's soul to be healthy and free--not nasty, perverse, and sick.
As a soldier in the army of compassion, I and many of my fellows are worried about the possibility of a Kerry presidency. We don't want to go back to the days when the federal grant system was a closed door to those who dared to do their charitable work out of a heart for God. We don't want to go back to the time when start-up funds were available only to those willing to take the cross off the door. We appreciate the wisdom of the president who tells us that "government can't change the hearts of men and women. Faith can."
Under president Bush, we have seen faith-based institutions become competitive with other, less effective helping agencies. Dan Burton--who was the originator of the "charitable choice" legislation that started this whole ball rolling in the previous administration--believed that faith-based institutions would prove more cost-effective than those that ran primarily on paid staff. President Bush opened that door wider, took that chance, and he was right to do so.
Against long-standing competition, faith-based institutions have begun to win those funds, with millions of dollars now going to thousands of organizations and new programs to help children of prisoners, at-risk children, adults with substance abuse problems, the homeless, the hungry, the poor, and the disabled. These soldiers are doing their work in the way that only they can, with a cup of cold water and a kind word, with due regard for the dignity and worth of every human being as a child of God. And president Bush's projected 2005 budget asks for $350 million in new project funding, to continue the process of helping Americans by treating them as human beings, not projects, or numbers. It is a small number, as federal budget appropriations go, but we can do much more with it than one might think.
Moreover, we don't expect to stay on the government's dime. These funds are primarily start-up costs, and most have matching requirements. All we require is a chance to prove the viability of our programs. Once they're humming along, we expect to bring them to self-sufficiency. Our very nature is to take the little and watch it grow, to teach the man to fish, instead of just feeding him one. It is no different with the programs themselves. Just as we aim to train people to move off assistance and eventually return to help those newly in need, so we expect to use government funds to build the infrastructure needed to do the work of the long-term, work we will shoulder ourselves as the programs mature.
There are other faith considerations at stake this time, too. Under no other president in memory have people of faith felt they had an advocate in the White House, willing to protect their rights against the ever-increasing onslaught of ACLU and fringe-kook lawsuits bent on scrubbing every vestige of God from the public square. We have no reason to believe that all the gains we have seen under the Bush administration would be continued under a Kerry regime. In fact, Kerry's total unwillingness to apply the faith he claims to be his to anything in public life strongly argues otherwise.
And we are concerned as to the people who travel with Kerry on his ideological highway. Despite the token presence of Jesse Jackson, we are disturbed at the paucity of religious sensibility in the Kerry campaign. Their "religious advisors" have quickly been let go, as the campaign found their liberal brand of religion incompatible with the voters they were trying to court. Not quite as awkward as Dean, Kerry still presents his faith almost as if he is ashamed of it. "I was an altar boy" rings false to us, as false as Teresa's invocation of her late Republican husband. We don't understand a man who claims a core belief he won't act on. It's the very opposite of who we are.
The soldiers in this army have been pleased to have an earthly commander who knows his place under the Heavenly Commander in Chief. We understand a man who prays, who reads Oswald Chambers on a daily basis, who talks to God before he orders the instruments of battle aimed at human beings. We understand a man whose faith permeates his life, and who acts to do what he knows to be right even when he knows it will not be popular, here or abroad.
I can't give you the statistics. I know that, according to polls, the vast majority of Americans serving in Iraq favor the president. He is their commander in chief, and they seem pleased with him. In the armies of compassion, there are Democrats and Republicans, all races, all creeds. But my gut tells me, this year, we are standing behind the US commander in chief, because he knows he is commanded by OUR Commander-in-Chief.
May God bless the President and the United States of America.
SOME THINGS JUST ARE:
POLITICS IN THE RED ZONE
Every once in a while, I have to admit that it's good to be part of Red America. Questions that vex the nation as a whole are no controversy to us. We have certain shared values and assumptions that help to make even our politics a little less rancorous, a little more cooperative than the cutthroat world beyond.
Now, I am speaking here of a Red community, not a whole Red state. The Red/Blue thing is divisive within the states, but very often counties, towns, or voting districts are pure Red, while others are pure Blue. It makes it much easier to get to the local problems of tax abatement, zoning regulations, and budget priorities.
Let me give you a taste of this.
The state House seat in our district is up for grabs this year, the incumbent having decided she had been there long enough. The competitors for it come from two sides of the same town--the gentleman from where the University sits, the lady from where industry reigns. Our University breeds a fairly liberal lot who, for the most part, limit their political participation to protesting and grumbling; when push comes to shove, most of them don't even vote. The industrial side of town is largely sharply conservative, with a dash of union sentiment to dull the edges.
On Thursday night, the university hosted a debate between the two candidates. About 100 people showed up, mostly of the college type. In the back sat a few rows of nicely suit-and-tied College Republicans. The front row featured several women with pro-choice t-shirts or buttons. The rest of the crowd was in the 18-30 range, both sexes, several races, a smattering of international students.
Although the man insists that this race is about two things--jobs and education--the vast majority of questions concerned what we have come to refer to as issues of life and culture: abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, Planned Parenthood funding, and gay marriage. Indeed, the conversation was so heavily skewed to the "wedge issues" that I thought the pro-choice professorette in front of me was going to fly across the room, there was so much air coming out of her in the form of exasperated sighs.
What had her so upset was this. Though the man is a Democrat, and the woman a Republican, both are thoroughly pro-life. The woman has the endorsement of right-to-life and is a long-time local pro-life activist. The man is a Catholic who once considered the priesthood, and must have said a dozen times that he believes that "life begins at conception and should continue until natural death." This drove the pro-choice college students nearly insane.
The debate was polite, quiet, and respectful. The questions were pointed, but largely controversial only to the assembled audience. Both are against abortion, euthanasia, public funding of Planned Parenthood, public or private research on embryonic stem cells, and gay marriage. The woman is concerned that the state's version of the Defense of Marriage Act may be obliterated by court action, and therefore favors an amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The man believes the law will withstand court challenge, and is against such an amendment.
Both are concerned about the homeless and the budget, the $2 billion deficit the governor made out of a $2 billion surplus, and funding K-12 and university education. While the man supports funding for health care coverage for the uninsured, he admits there is little chance the state can provide it any time soon. The woman notes that many uninsured people choose to be uninsured, but concedes that we need to find a way to help those who don't. She points out that, in our district, we are blessed with hospitals that will not turn you away merely because you have no insurance, and suggests the need to spread that philosophy throughout the state.
The woman mentions God and the faith-based initiative more often than the man, but both are clearly unapologetic about basing their decisions as legislators on their faith as Christians.
The pro-choicers in the front row scribble furiously throughout the presentation, and when the questions from the audience are passed up, there are several challenging the candidates to define "life" and to say whether they could (you'll excuse the expression) conceive of a situation in which abortion should be legal. Both reluctantly cede the decision to a woman and her doctor when the physical health of the woman is in "grave danger." But that is the "physical" health--they are both still on the wrong side of the current Supreme Court.
Do they support parental notification legislation? Yes. Do they oppose partial-birth abortion? Yes. Would they propose or support legislation to provide more support and funding for adoption? Yes. Should the living wills and do-not-resuscitate orders of those who can no longer answer for themselves be honored? Yes. Would they block the University from offering RU-486? Yes.
It is likely that, if the students vote for either of the candidates, they will vote for the Democrat, because they will be obediently punching the one big hole that says straight party ticket. But they won't like it.
Here in the Red Zone, the idea that life begins at conception is uncontroversial. Our Democratic mayor came in first last year in the right-to-life 10K. Those who are pro-choice when in the statehouse have the sense not to mention it back home, and to spend a lot of time in the churches simply being seen.
It's a good place to be.
And the funniest part was that, after the debate was over, the two candidates found themselves in conversation with a member of the audience about abortion--and they were working together to present the pro-life position.
God bless Red America.
Every once in a while, I have to admit that it's good to be part of Red America. Questions that vex the nation as a whole are no controversy to us. We have certain shared values and assumptions that help to make even our politics a little less rancorous, a little more cooperative than the cutthroat world beyond.
Now, I am speaking here of a Red community, not a whole Red state. The Red/Blue thing is divisive within the states, but very often counties, towns, or voting districts are pure Red, while others are pure Blue. It makes it much easier to get to the local problems of tax abatement, zoning regulations, and budget priorities.
Let me give you a taste of this.
The state House seat in our district is up for grabs this year, the incumbent having decided she had been there long enough. The competitors for it come from two sides of the same town--the gentleman from where the University sits, the lady from where industry reigns. Our University breeds a fairly liberal lot who, for the most part, limit their political participation to protesting and grumbling; when push comes to shove, most of them don't even vote. The industrial side of town is largely sharply conservative, with a dash of union sentiment to dull the edges.
On Thursday night, the university hosted a debate between the two candidates. About 100 people showed up, mostly of the college type. In the back sat a few rows of nicely suit-and-tied College Republicans. The front row featured several women with pro-choice t-shirts or buttons. The rest of the crowd was in the 18-30 range, both sexes, several races, a smattering of international students.
Although the man insists that this race is about two things--jobs and education--the vast majority of questions concerned what we have come to refer to as issues of life and culture: abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, Planned Parenthood funding, and gay marriage. Indeed, the conversation was so heavily skewed to the "wedge issues" that I thought the pro-choice professorette in front of me was going to fly across the room, there was so much air coming out of her in the form of exasperated sighs.
What had her so upset was this. Though the man is a Democrat, and the woman a Republican, both are thoroughly pro-life. The woman has the endorsement of right-to-life and is a long-time local pro-life activist. The man is a Catholic who once considered the priesthood, and must have said a dozen times that he believes that "life begins at conception and should continue until natural death." This drove the pro-choice college students nearly insane.
The debate was polite, quiet, and respectful. The questions were pointed, but largely controversial only to the assembled audience. Both are against abortion, euthanasia, public funding of Planned Parenthood, public or private research on embryonic stem cells, and gay marriage. The woman is concerned that the state's version of the Defense of Marriage Act may be obliterated by court action, and therefore favors an amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The man believes the law will withstand court challenge, and is against such an amendment.
Both are concerned about the homeless and the budget, the $2 billion deficit the governor made out of a $2 billion surplus, and funding K-12 and university education. While the man supports funding for health care coverage for the uninsured, he admits there is little chance the state can provide it any time soon. The woman notes that many uninsured people choose to be uninsured, but concedes that we need to find a way to help those who don't. She points out that, in our district, we are blessed with hospitals that will not turn you away merely because you have no insurance, and suggests the need to spread that philosophy throughout the state.
The woman mentions God and the faith-based initiative more often than the man, but both are clearly unapologetic about basing their decisions as legislators on their faith as Christians.
The pro-choicers in the front row scribble furiously throughout the presentation, and when the questions from the audience are passed up, there are several challenging the candidates to define "life" and to say whether they could (you'll excuse the expression) conceive of a situation in which abortion should be legal. Both reluctantly cede the decision to a woman and her doctor when the physical health of the woman is in "grave danger." But that is the "physical" health--they are both still on the wrong side of the current Supreme Court.
Do they support parental notification legislation? Yes. Do they oppose partial-birth abortion? Yes. Would they propose or support legislation to provide more support and funding for adoption? Yes. Should the living wills and do-not-resuscitate orders of those who can no longer answer for themselves be honored? Yes. Would they block the University from offering RU-486? Yes.
It is likely that, if the students vote for either of the candidates, they will vote for the Democrat, because they will be obediently punching the one big hole that says straight party ticket. But they won't like it.
Here in the Red Zone, the idea that life begins at conception is uncontroversial. Our Democratic mayor came in first last year in the right-to-life 10K. Those who are pro-choice when in the statehouse have the sense not to mention it back home, and to spend a lot of time in the churches simply being seen.
It's a good place to be.
And the funniest part was that, after the debate was over, the two candidates found themselves in conversation with a member of the audience about abortion--and they were working together to present the pro-life position.
God bless Red America.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
TWO MORE REALLY STUPID IDEAS
THE COLORADO ELECTORAL COLLEGE INITIATIVE IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE FUN THIS YEAR
In Colorado, they will vote this time on whether to continue with the winner-take-all electoral system. The ballot initiative would allow Colorado to apportion its electoral votes among the candidates instead of using the traditional system. This may or may not be Constitutional, and threatens to disrupt the election, especially if the vote is as close as many expect.
The group opposing the measure is called "Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea." I like that.
But it's not the stupidest idea abroad in the world concerning our election. Here's two more:
The Associated Press is reporting that the Guardian of London (that's a newspaper, by the way) is giving its readers the names and addresses of Clark County, Ohio voters not affiliated with a party. With this information, the paper wants them to send letters to Americans, stressing how important the US elections are to Britons. Presumably, these letters will also give us dumb Americans the information we need to truly understand how we should be voting.
I've about had it with foreigners telling us what to do.
Europe is quaking in fear of what the American Cowboy might do in his next term. They're afraid he'll talk tough to the terrorists some more and they might have to quell uprisings in the huge and hostile Arab populations they stupidly allowed to proliferate in the past decades. They haven't been this hysterically perturbed since the Cold War, when they expressed their extreme fear of the Reagan Administration by having puppet shows and pouring blood on the ground at military installations.
Who cares?
John Kerry continuously refers to our "allies"--by which he means "people who hate us and think we are plotting with the Jews to take over the world." At the same time, he denigrates the "coalition of the bribed"--by which he means "nations who have sent men, money and arms to help us in the war in Iraq." He seems to think we should admire and emulate nations like France and Germany, but he fails to focus very clearly on what those countries are like.
The fact is that, while Kerry carps about our 5.4% unemployment rate, at least ours can be attributed to a slowly recovering economy. The socialist tendencies of those nations have given them both a semi-permanent unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent. People in France work less than those in any other industrialized nation. And I don't even want to talk about their military histories. I don't feel like laughing that hard.
The other part of this story I find disturbing (the second stupid idea, in case you're counting) is that the paper paid $25 for the voter rolls. The county officials say that anyone can buy the list and do whatever they like with the information.
WHAT?
The database that you HAVE to appear in, in order to exercise your CONSTITUTIONAL right to VOTE is for SALE?
I'm not sure which of these I find more disturbing--the presumption of a foreign media to meddle in a US election, or the gall of a state government to require your information and then sell it to anyone who wants it.
The whole thing is very, very disturbing.
In Colorado, they will vote this time on whether to continue with the winner-take-all electoral system. The ballot initiative would allow Colorado to apportion its electoral votes among the candidates instead of using the traditional system. This may or may not be Constitutional, and threatens to disrupt the election, especially if the vote is as close as many expect.
The group opposing the measure is called "Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea." I like that.
But it's not the stupidest idea abroad in the world concerning our election. Here's two more:
The Associated Press is reporting that the Guardian of London (that's a newspaper, by the way) is giving its readers the names and addresses of Clark County, Ohio voters not affiliated with a party. With this information, the paper wants them to send letters to Americans, stressing how important the US elections are to Britons. Presumably, these letters will also give us dumb Americans the information we need to truly understand how we should be voting.
I've about had it with foreigners telling us what to do.
Europe is quaking in fear of what the American Cowboy might do in his next term. They're afraid he'll talk tough to the terrorists some more and they might have to quell uprisings in the huge and hostile Arab populations they stupidly allowed to proliferate in the past decades. They haven't been this hysterically perturbed since the Cold War, when they expressed their extreme fear of the Reagan Administration by having puppet shows and pouring blood on the ground at military installations.
Who cares?
John Kerry continuously refers to our "allies"--by which he means "people who hate us and think we are plotting with the Jews to take over the world." At the same time, he denigrates the "coalition of the bribed"--by which he means "nations who have sent men, money and arms to help us in the war in Iraq." He seems to think we should admire and emulate nations like France and Germany, but he fails to focus very clearly on what those countries are like.
The fact is that, while Kerry carps about our 5.4% unemployment rate, at least ours can be attributed to a slowly recovering economy. The socialist tendencies of those nations have given them both a semi-permanent unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent. People in France work less than those in any other industrialized nation. And I don't even want to talk about their military histories. I don't feel like laughing that hard.
The other part of this story I find disturbing (the second stupid idea, in case you're counting) is that the paper paid $25 for the voter rolls. The county officials say that anyone can buy the list and do whatever they like with the information.
WHAT?
The database that you HAVE to appear in, in order to exercise your CONSTITUTIONAL right to VOTE is for SALE?
I'm not sure which of these I find more disturbing--the presumption of a foreign media to meddle in a US election, or the gall of a state government to require your information and then sell it to anyone who wants it.
The whole thing is very, very disturbing.
LISTEN, DO YOU HEAR IT?
THERE'S AN EARTHQUAKE COMING
I'm going to tell you a secret now.
There's an earthquake coming, and if you stand very still and block out the noise of Iraq and the economy and Scott Peterson and Bill O'Reilly and everything else that passes for news these days, you can hear it. The ground is humming softly, all over Red America. The sound gets louder on Sundays and Wednesdays, and mid-week Thursdays, but then it softens for a bit.
But it's still there. And on November 2, everyone will hear it.
There's a campaign out there--actually, probably thousands of them--among pro-family voters to register new voters and get them to the polls. And the issue isn't Bush. It isn't Iraq. And it isn't the economy.
The issue is gay marriage.
You can tell that the Democrats are starting to hear the hum, but they're not quite sure what it is or how dangerous. Lately, they've been trying to push it back into the ground, to cover our ears, and pretend it's not there by saying it's something else: "partisan politics," maybe, or "a wedge issue," or a "distraction." In two debates, the Democratic nominees tried to defuse the issue by dragging and dropping Mary Cheney into their Republican Hypocrisy file. But it didn't work.
Make no mistake: this is a grass roots movement if ever there were one. The Kerry nationals and the gay rights people are trying to spin this issue as something the Administration stirred up to shore up the base. But that's not what happened. What happened is that the culture got to be too much. What happened is that Christians got fed up. What happened is that Courts started doing things that Red Staters think the Court shouldn't be allowed to do--like overrun the will of 78% of the people of Louisiana and declare their desire to protect marriage illegitimate.
That won't stand.
Hundreds of independent Christian groups across the country, some usually political, others not, are emailing and snail-mailing alerts to their members. Pastors everywhere are preaching on the subject. Megachurches are mobilizing to hand out voter guides, informing their people as to where the candidates stand on the issue
Even in traditionally Democratic churches, pro-family voters are putting aside their concerns about the war and the economy. They are not forgiving on these issues, but those things are transitory and temporal. The question of marriage, they believe, touches on eternal truths that simply cannot be compromised.
Black democratic operatives like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (both illegitimate on the issue because they are pro-gay marriage) have been dispatched to calm the black evangelicals back into the barn. But that won't work either. Black pastors across the country are up in arms. They have already held their own rallies calling for support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. More than 40 national Black pastors recently signed an open letter to Congress, begging them to pass the FMA. Blacks and whites, Baptists, and Pentecostals, are all on the same team this year, and it's Team Bush. This year, even the Amish want to vote.
I can tell you that the ground forces of the right are activated and ready. This month, all over the nation, it's what's you might call "Marriage Preservation Month." It's going by a variety of project names and sermon series, but the idea is the same. The people of God have had enough. Get out and vote.
The only person I've seen in media that is catching on to this is marginalized Democratic strategist Pat Caddell---and nobody's listening to him. The other night on FoxNews, he said the gay marriage issue is "a category 5 hurricane," just about to make landfall.
And he's right.
In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton was warmly received at the annual meeting of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Black Pentecostal body in America. This year, COGIC pastors are telling their people that Bush may have screwed up the economy, but he's our only chance to save marriage in America.
The weekend before the election, watch the cable skies. Every evangelist from Jerry Falwell to T.D. Jakes to Juanita Bynum to Joel Osteen will be preaching some variation of the "Christian Patriotism" sermon. You may not know those folks, and that's okay. You don't have to. But you might want to know that Osteen's church is now leasing the 16,000-seat Compaq Center for their regular church services.
I remind you that the last election was decided by just over 500 votes in one state.
In the 1980 election, a force arose in the electorate that the media didn't know was coming. It was the force of moral anguish, and it was triggered primarily by abortion and the nascent gay rights movement. In that year, Ronald Reagan ascended from obscurity, and the evangelicals began their move into the center of the political world. This year, as in that, we, people of faith who have grown complacent with a fat and happy culture, are acting on our convictions and our guilt.
We didn't fight when Hollywood slid further and further toward the abyss, celebrating illicit sex, drugs, homosexuality, lesbianism, witchcraft, prostitution, gambling, and all manner of immorality. We slightly stirred when advertisers targeted our children with barely dressed models in incomprehensible ads for clothing. We slept on while public schools normalized gay sex and adoption.
But we are awake now.
We are looking around us and seeing degeneracy. We see Janet Jackson and the many sins of CBS. We see Michael Moore and the anti-war movement that, whatever one thinks of the war itself, reaches new lows in the unpatriotic and the crass. We see the media's rejection of The Passion of the Christ and clearly see the contempt the cultural gatekeepers have for people of faith.
We see, most of all, Gavin Newsom marrying men to men and women to women in illegal San Francisco ceremonies. We see the Massachusetts Court declaring it unconstitutional to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. We see the Supreme Court authorizing homosexual sodomy as a constitutional right. We see the society around us falling to pieces, and the culture aiming its poisonous relativism at OUR families, OUR communities, OUR nation.
No one expected Ronald Reagan to win the 1980 election. No one but the prophets of the religious right.
The prophets are back this year. And on November 3, we'll know if there's been an earthquake.
I'm going to tell you a secret now.
There's an earthquake coming, and if you stand very still and block out the noise of Iraq and the economy and Scott Peterson and Bill O'Reilly and everything else that passes for news these days, you can hear it. The ground is humming softly, all over Red America. The sound gets louder on Sundays and Wednesdays, and mid-week Thursdays, but then it softens for a bit.
But it's still there. And on November 2, everyone will hear it.
There's a campaign out there--actually, probably thousands of them--among pro-family voters to register new voters and get them to the polls. And the issue isn't Bush. It isn't Iraq. And it isn't the economy.
The issue is gay marriage.
You can tell that the Democrats are starting to hear the hum, but they're not quite sure what it is or how dangerous. Lately, they've been trying to push it back into the ground, to cover our ears, and pretend it's not there by saying it's something else: "partisan politics," maybe, or "a wedge issue," or a "distraction." In two debates, the Democratic nominees tried to defuse the issue by dragging and dropping Mary Cheney into their Republican Hypocrisy file. But it didn't work.
Make no mistake: this is a grass roots movement if ever there were one. The Kerry nationals and the gay rights people are trying to spin this issue as something the Administration stirred up to shore up the base. But that's not what happened. What happened is that the culture got to be too much. What happened is that Christians got fed up. What happened is that Courts started doing things that Red Staters think the Court shouldn't be allowed to do--like overrun the will of 78% of the people of Louisiana and declare their desire to protect marriage illegitimate.
That won't stand.
Hundreds of independent Christian groups across the country, some usually political, others not, are emailing and snail-mailing alerts to their members. Pastors everywhere are preaching on the subject. Megachurches are mobilizing to hand out voter guides, informing their people as to where the candidates stand on the issue
Even in traditionally Democratic churches, pro-family voters are putting aside their concerns about the war and the economy. They are not forgiving on these issues, but those things are transitory and temporal. The question of marriage, they believe, touches on eternal truths that simply cannot be compromised.
Black democratic operatives like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (both illegitimate on the issue because they are pro-gay marriage) have been dispatched to calm the black evangelicals back into the barn. But that won't work either. Black pastors across the country are up in arms. They have already held their own rallies calling for support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. More than 40 national Black pastors recently signed an open letter to Congress, begging them to pass the FMA. Blacks and whites, Baptists, and Pentecostals, are all on the same team this year, and it's Team Bush. This year, even the Amish want to vote.
I can tell you that the ground forces of the right are activated and ready. This month, all over the nation, it's what's you might call "Marriage Preservation Month." It's going by a variety of project names and sermon series, but the idea is the same. The people of God have had enough. Get out and vote.
The only person I've seen in media that is catching on to this is marginalized Democratic strategist Pat Caddell---and nobody's listening to him. The other night on FoxNews, he said the gay marriage issue is "a category 5 hurricane," just about to make landfall.
And he's right.
In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton was warmly received at the annual meeting of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Black Pentecostal body in America. This year, COGIC pastors are telling their people that Bush may have screwed up the economy, but he's our only chance to save marriage in America.
The weekend before the election, watch the cable skies. Every evangelist from Jerry Falwell to T.D. Jakes to Juanita Bynum to Joel Osteen will be preaching some variation of the "Christian Patriotism" sermon. You may not know those folks, and that's okay. You don't have to. But you might want to know that Osteen's church is now leasing the 16,000-seat Compaq Center for their regular church services.
I remind you that the last election was decided by just over 500 votes in one state.
In the 1980 election, a force arose in the electorate that the media didn't know was coming. It was the force of moral anguish, and it was triggered primarily by abortion and the nascent gay rights movement. In that year, Ronald Reagan ascended from obscurity, and the evangelicals began their move into the center of the political world. This year, as in that, we, people of faith who have grown complacent with a fat and happy culture, are acting on our convictions and our guilt.
We didn't fight when Hollywood slid further and further toward the abyss, celebrating illicit sex, drugs, homosexuality, lesbianism, witchcraft, prostitution, gambling, and all manner of immorality. We slightly stirred when advertisers targeted our children with barely dressed models in incomprehensible ads for clothing. We slept on while public schools normalized gay sex and adoption.
But we are awake now.
We are looking around us and seeing degeneracy. We see Janet Jackson and the many sins of CBS. We see Michael Moore and the anti-war movement that, whatever one thinks of the war itself, reaches new lows in the unpatriotic and the crass. We see the media's rejection of The Passion of the Christ and clearly see the contempt the cultural gatekeepers have for people of faith.
We see, most of all, Gavin Newsom marrying men to men and women to women in illegal San Francisco ceremonies. We see the Massachusetts Court declaring it unconstitutional to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. We see the Supreme Court authorizing homosexual sodomy as a constitutional right. We see the society around us falling to pieces, and the culture aiming its poisonous relativism at OUR families, OUR communities, OUR nation.
No one expected Ronald Reagan to win the 1980 election. No one but the prophets of the religious right.
The prophets are back this year. And on November 3, we'll know if there's been an earthquake.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
UNFIT COMMAND OF THE TRUTH:
TWO GROUPS, TWO BOOKS, ONE PREDICTABLE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
I don't often do this, but I'm about to comment on a book I've never read.
The reason I can do so is that its genesis is essentially the question at hand, not its contents, because I'm making a point here.
Concentrate.
There's a group of people who call themselves SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth. Every one of them was a swift boat commander during the Vietnam War, and they are on record accusing John Kerry of, essentially, various forms of dereliction of duty, fraud, and malingering. Their leader, John O'Neill, is the man who took over the boat Kerry was commander of when he bugged out of country 8 months early.
John O'Neill, a lawyer, knows the consequences of telling lies in print. He has even said publicly that if Senator Kerry can prove them false, he should sue them. So far, there have only been threats to block distribution of the book, but no lawsuits based on libel. The men quoted in the book by the veterans, "Unfit for Command," (a book I HAVE read) have signed affidavits concerning their contributions and eyewitness accounts of Kerry's conduct.
This book was number one on the amazon best-seller list before it was even released. Yet only FoxNews gave it any serious attention until Kerry himself made an issue of it while whining that the President (who has nothing to do with O'Neill--I'll get to that) was being mean to him. Then the mainstream press gave it just enough attention to dismiss it as a "pack of lies" and insist that there was no need to answer its charges. It was even compared to the Democrat 527s as an example of McCain-Feingold poisoning the political well.
The lefties insist that the Swiftees are creatures of the Bush campaign, despite the fact that John O'Neill has clearly been an adversary of the Senator since 1971, for reasons having nothing to do with politics. At that time, O'Neill was the chief spokesman for a veterans group that sought to match the visibility and credibility of Kerry's largely fantasist Vietnam Veterans Against the War (which was later proven to have included a surprising number of people who had never even been in the service, much less in Vietnam). They never told Bush what they were going to do, and Bush didn't see it coming.
Fast forward.
Now we are engaged in a great and uncivil war. A war testing whether this nation or any nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal is willing to practice "equality" between political parties. The press has not pursued the questions of Kerry's service and his post-war treason with nearly the zeal it put into generating fake memos and chasing 30-year old dental records from President Bush.
Now there comes forth a group calling itself "Texans for Truth." Its goal is to focus America on the president's National Guard record and spread unsubstantiated rumors, while suppressing the actual evidence that Bush fulfilled his duty to the Guard in less time than he was enlisted for. It is not made up of National Guard members, but of Texans who hate Bush. (The Swiftees have limited their actual membership to people who were in swiftboats in Vietnam.) None of their number, as far as I know, claim to have been in the Guard with Bush (indeed, that is much of their complaint--that no one has surfaced that can confirm the lieutenant was there in the first place).
They, too, have a book (this is the one I haven't read). It is, cutely, called "Unfit Commander," and it recycles old stories about Bush's National Guard record. It has no affidavits, though I understand it contains reams of photocopies of the president's records, so perhaps they just don't know one kind of documentation from another. Its author is Glenn W. Smith, a longtime Democratic Party operative, founder of DriveDemocracy.org, a creature of Moveon.org, the George Soros-backed far leftist advocacy 527 that has helped cause all the trouble this election cycle. If voters are angry that there has been little discussion of "issues," they can thank Moveon for its cerebral discussion of such vital questions as whether President Bush is Hitler or just Mussolini with a funny mustache.
(Brief aside: For those who are curious, the top financial donors to the 527 groups are financier and currency manipulator George Soros, Hollywood producer Steve Bing, Progressive Insurance founder Peter B. Lewis, and…..(drum roll please)…Jane Fonda. Astonishing coincidence. I guess what goes around truly does come around. But do me a favor and spread that information to your favorite Vietnam Vet, especially if he's voting for Kerry.)
The Texans are clearly a politically-driven me-tooism from the innards of the Democratic left, the lowest form of imitation that the campaign silly season can devise. Yet since they have popped up, I have seen mention of them and their empty accusations on mainstream news media--a location in which John O'Neill and his many decorated heros were not welcome.
To review: one group is made up of eyewitnesses to what they consider John Kerry's chicanery surrounding the Vietnam War. These men--many of them multiply decorated war heros, both Democrats and Republicans--made themselves available to the media, which had no time to talk to them. When the media did discover them, it was to villify them--not far off from the "nuts and sluts" defense of the Clinton administration against all who would accuse the president of things that later turned out to be true.
This group is marginalized.
A second group is made up of Democratic operatives who have no knowledge of the president's National Guard record or of the president himself, yet presume to write a toss-off tell-all based on nothing but photocopies of records long in the public domain. This group is backed by a 527 dedicated to getting rid of Bush, which itself was birthed through a start-up grant from a 527 dedicated to getting rid of Bush, bankrolled by a man who has promised to spend his entire fortune, if necessary, to defeat Bush.
When this group makes itself available, the media is at home and receptive.
It is astonishing that anyone believes in the myth of an objective media anymore.
I don't often do this, but I'm about to comment on a book I've never read.
The reason I can do so is that its genesis is essentially the question at hand, not its contents, because I'm making a point here.
Concentrate.
There's a group of people who call themselves SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth. Every one of them was a swift boat commander during the Vietnam War, and they are on record accusing John Kerry of, essentially, various forms of dereliction of duty, fraud, and malingering. Their leader, John O'Neill, is the man who took over the boat Kerry was commander of when he bugged out of country 8 months early.
John O'Neill, a lawyer, knows the consequences of telling lies in print. He has even said publicly that if Senator Kerry can prove them false, he should sue them. So far, there have only been threats to block distribution of the book, but no lawsuits based on libel. The men quoted in the book by the veterans, "Unfit for Command," (a book I HAVE read) have signed affidavits concerning their contributions and eyewitness accounts of Kerry's conduct.
This book was number one on the amazon best-seller list before it was even released. Yet only FoxNews gave it any serious attention until Kerry himself made an issue of it while whining that the President (who has nothing to do with O'Neill--I'll get to that) was being mean to him. Then the mainstream press gave it just enough attention to dismiss it as a "pack of lies" and insist that there was no need to answer its charges. It was even compared to the Democrat 527s as an example of McCain-Feingold poisoning the political well.
The lefties insist that the Swiftees are creatures of the Bush campaign, despite the fact that John O'Neill has clearly been an adversary of the Senator since 1971, for reasons having nothing to do with politics. At that time, O'Neill was the chief spokesman for a veterans group that sought to match the visibility and credibility of Kerry's largely fantasist Vietnam Veterans Against the War (which was later proven to have included a surprising number of people who had never even been in the service, much less in Vietnam). They never told Bush what they were going to do, and Bush didn't see it coming.
Fast forward.
Now we are engaged in a great and uncivil war. A war testing whether this nation or any nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal is willing to practice "equality" between political parties. The press has not pursued the questions of Kerry's service and his post-war treason with nearly the zeal it put into generating fake memos and chasing 30-year old dental records from President Bush.
Now there comes forth a group calling itself "Texans for Truth." Its goal is to focus America on the president's National Guard record and spread unsubstantiated rumors, while suppressing the actual evidence that Bush fulfilled his duty to the Guard in less time than he was enlisted for. It is not made up of National Guard members, but of Texans who hate Bush. (The Swiftees have limited their actual membership to people who were in swiftboats in Vietnam.) None of their number, as far as I know, claim to have been in the Guard with Bush (indeed, that is much of their complaint--that no one has surfaced that can confirm the lieutenant was there in the first place).
They, too, have a book (this is the one I haven't read). It is, cutely, called "Unfit Commander," and it recycles old stories about Bush's National Guard record. It has no affidavits, though I understand it contains reams of photocopies of the president's records, so perhaps they just don't know one kind of documentation from another. Its author is Glenn W. Smith, a longtime Democratic Party operative, founder of DriveDemocracy.org, a creature of Moveon.org, the George Soros-backed far leftist advocacy 527 that has helped cause all the trouble this election cycle. If voters are angry that there has been little discussion of "issues," they can thank Moveon for its cerebral discussion of such vital questions as whether President Bush is Hitler or just Mussolini with a funny mustache.
(Brief aside: For those who are curious, the top financial donors to the 527 groups are financier and currency manipulator George Soros, Hollywood producer Steve Bing, Progressive Insurance founder Peter B. Lewis, and…..(drum roll please)…Jane Fonda. Astonishing coincidence. I guess what goes around truly does come around. But do me a favor and spread that information to your favorite Vietnam Vet, especially if he's voting for Kerry.)
The Texans are clearly a politically-driven me-tooism from the innards of the Democratic left, the lowest form of imitation that the campaign silly season can devise. Yet since they have popped up, I have seen mention of them and their empty accusations on mainstream news media--a location in which John O'Neill and his many decorated heros were not welcome.
To review: one group is made up of eyewitnesses to what they consider John Kerry's chicanery surrounding the Vietnam War. These men--many of them multiply decorated war heros, both Democrats and Republicans--made themselves available to the media, which had no time to talk to them. When the media did discover them, it was to villify them--not far off from the "nuts and sluts" defense of the Clinton administration against all who would accuse the president of things that later turned out to be true.
This group is marginalized.
A second group is made up of Democratic operatives who have no knowledge of the president's National Guard record or of the president himself, yet presume to write a toss-off tell-all based on nothing but photocopies of records long in the public domain. This group is backed by a 527 dedicated to getting rid of Bush, which itself was birthed through a start-up grant from a 527 dedicated to getting rid of Bush, bankrolled by a man who has promised to spend his entire fortune, if necessary, to defeat Bush.
When this group makes itself available, the media is at home and receptive.
It is astonishing that anyone believes in the myth of an objective media anymore.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
SOMETHING NEW IN THE LANDFILL THIS TIME
MEDIA HYPOCRISY AND THE UNBORN DEAD
As you may know, they have finally found the body of Lori Hacking, the unfortunate pregnant woman (no, not that one--another one) whose duplicitous husband decided to murder her rather than fathering a child.
But, wait, you say. That's not politics!
Bear with me. We'll get there.
I note on the television in connection with this pregnant woman case that everyone seems to be horrified that her monster of a husband, Mark (and all the more monstrous for having appeared previously so kind and good), not only murdered her in cold blood but put her body in a trash dumpster, like she was so much garbage.
But why be so amazed and outraged? After all, unborn children are consigned to the trash every day in this country, where we've developed a 4000-a day habit for the blood of unwanted babies. Every day, fetal tissue of the kind inside Lori Hacking is scraped and suctioned and sucked down the stainless steel drains of abortion clinics and hospitals across the nation.
America is hopelessly conflicted on abortion.
We accept abortion as a right on the flimsiest of legal reasoning--a function of the procedural due process right of privacy, an interesting inference by the Supreme Court discerned from the "penumbra" of the Bill of Rights. Yet we recoil at the thought of late-term abortions, saline abortions, young girls having them without their parents' knowledge or consent, and women killing their children against the wishes of the father. The fact that Lori Hacking's own husband killed not just his wife--but his child, as well--leaves us trembling with rage and disgust. But if he'd convinced her to have an abortion first and murdered her later, would the case get as much play? Would we give it an honored position in the pantheon of the 24-hour news cycle, with Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson?
A dead woman is a dead woman, but a dead woman WITH CHILD--that's a story.
But why? This from the same news media in which the vast majority of correspondents believe in "a woman's right to choose." This from Katie Couric, who has marched in the annual March for Women's Lives--celebrating the right of women to choose to do what Mark Hacking (and Scott Peterson) effectively did to their children. Is it only okay to treat people like trash if we are women or doctors? Are the dead only trash when they've not been born yet?
John Kerry believes "life begins at conception." He is a father. He is a Catholic. Yet, he has never met an abortion expansion he didn't like--or at least vote for. He didn't even vote for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, to make illegal a procedure that more than 70% of the country finds abhorrent. And, as President Bush's ads have pointed out, he voted against the Laci Peterson law, making the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide. Well, at least he's consistent in some things. His statements conflict, but his actions match perfectly.
President Bush believes abortion is wrong. I don't know that he's ever phrased it the was Kerry has, that "life begins at conception." He is a father, as well. And he's a born-again Methodist. But he has the courage of his convictions. He stands against abortion every chance he gets. One of his first acts was to reinstate his father's "Mexico City Policy," an international ban on federal aid to organizations that promote or provide abortion in nations where the procedure is illegal. Clinton undid the ban on his first day in office. Would Kerry cancel it again?
President Bush stands with the unborn, from conception to birth, and with unwanted children into adoption wherever possible and best. He stands with the old and the weak and the sick, protecting them from those who would take their lives for convenience, or economics, or selfishness. He protects human embryos from experimentation, even though he earns the ire of diseased celebrities and even the opposition of Nancy Reagan for doing so. Kerry promises to strip that protection and harvest the unborn in the name of scientific progress, though the leader of the faith he has chosen to follow sees such research as an unspeakable crime against the innocent.
The President wants to see a nation where Lori Hacking and her child are protected from harm and avenged when it comes to them. He sees them both as victims. John Kerry wants abortion to be (according to the Democratic mantra) "safe, legal, and rare"--but is a "rare" murder less of a murder because it is unusual? Kerry would probably pursue policies to protect Lori Hacking from her husband, physically--but his policy on her child is to fund the instruments that could kill it and to ignore its death even when it occurs as part of an adult homicide. Mark Hacking saw his wife and his child as obstacles to the smooth path of his own life. He probably wouldn't mind repealing the law against murdering people who are in the way.
Yet, rhetorically, even the liberal media are taking the president's side--which shows what unconscionable hypocrites they are. Why are they all up in arms about poor Lori Hacking and her unborn child? Why are they incensed that someone would do such a dastardly thing to a pregnant woman?
The baby inside her is one in 45 million and counting. Every day we throw babies away, and CBS never blinks its eye.
They're just mad because Mark Hacking left the wrapper on this one.
As you may know, they have finally found the body of Lori Hacking, the unfortunate pregnant woman (no, not that one--another one) whose duplicitous husband decided to murder her rather than fathering a child.
But, wait, you say. That's not politics!
Bear with me. We'll get there.
I note on the television in connection with this pregnant woman case that everyone seems to be horrified that her monster of a husband, Mark (and all the more monstrous for having appeared previously so kind and good), not only murdered her in cold blood but put her body in a trash dumpster, like she was so much garbage.
But why be so amazed and outraged? After all, unborn children are consigned to the trash every day in this country, where we've developed a 4000-a day habit for the blood of unwanted babies. Every day, fetal tissue of the kind inside Lori Hacking is scraped and suctioned and sucked down the stainless steel drains of abortion clinics and hospitals across the nation.
America is hopelessly conflicted on abortion.
We accept abortion as a right on the flimsiest of legal reasoning--a function of the procedural due process right of privacy, an interesting inference by the Supreme Court discerned from the "penumbra" of the Bill of Rights. Yet we recoil at the thought of late-term abortions, saline abortions, young girls having them without their parents' knowledge or consent, and women killing their children against the wishes of the father. The fact that Lori Hacking's own husband killed not just his wife--but his child, as well--leaves us trembling with rage and disgust. But if he'd convinced her to have an abortion first and murdered her later, would the case get as much play? Would we give it an honored position in the pantheon of the 24-hour news cycle, with Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson?
A dead woman is a dead woman, but a dead woman WITH CHILD--that's a story.
But why? This from the same news media in which the vast majority of correspondents believe in "a woman's right to choose." This from Katie Couric, who has marched in the annual March for Women's Lives--celebrating the right of women to choose to do what Mark Hacking (and Scott Peterson) effectively did to their children. Is it only okay to treat people like trash if we are women or doctors? Are the dead only trash when they've not been born yet?
John Kerry believes "life begins at conception." He is a father. He is a Catholic. Yet, he has never met an abortion expansion he didn't like--or at least vote for. He didn't even vote for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, to make illegal a procedure that more than 70% of the country finds abhorrent. And, as President Bush's ads have pointed out, he voted against the Laci Peterson law, making the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide. Well, at least he's consistent in some things. His statements conflict, but his actions match perfectly.
President Bush believes abortion is wrong. I don't know that he's ever phrased it the was Kerry has, that "life begins at conception." He is a father, as well. And he's a born-again Methodist. But he has the courage of his convictions. He stands against abortion every chance he gets. One of his first acts was to reinstate his father's "Mexico City Policy," an international ban on federal aid to organizations that promote or provide abortion in nations where the procedure is illegal. Clinton undid the ban on his first day in office. Would Kerry cancel it again?
President Bush stands with the unborn, from conception to birth, and with unwanted children into adoption wherever possible and best. He stands with the old and the weak and the sick, protecting them from those who would take their lives for convenience, or economics, or selfishness. He protects human embryos from experimentation, even though he earns the ire of diseased celebrities and even the opposition of Nancy Reagan for doing so. Kerry promises to strip that protection and harvest the unborn in the name of scientific progress, though the leader of the faith he has chosen to follow sees such research as an unspeakable crime against the innocent.
The President wants to see a nation where Lori Hacking and her child are protected from harm and avenged when it comes to them. He sees them both as victims. John Kerry wants abortion to be (according to the Democratic mantra) "safe, legal, and rare"--but is a "rare" murder less of a murder because it is unusual? Kerry would probably pursue policies to protect Lori Hacking from her husband, physically--but his policy on her child is to fund the instruments that could kill it and to ignore its death even when it occurs as part of an adult homicide. Mark Hacking saw his wife and his child as obstacles to the smooth path of his own life. He probably wouldn't mind repealing the law against murdering people who are in the way.
Yet, rhetorically, even the liberal media are taking the president's side--which shows what unconscionable hypocrites they are. Why are they all up in arms about poor Lori Hacking and her unborn child? Why are they incensed that someone would do such a dastardly thing to a pregnant woman?
The baby inside her is one in 45 million and counting. Every day we throw babies away, and CBS never blinks its eye.
They're just mad because Mark Hacking left the wrapper on this one.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
DEMOCRAT WAR POLICY
THE "PERSONAL" IS "POLITICAL"
Democrats often chant that they want abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare."
It seems that these are the touchstones of all Democratic policy. ("Moral" and "right" died with Jimmy Carter, it seems. Oh, isn't he dead? Sorry, my mistake.)
Take war, for example. They vote for it, but they don't want to practice it. They hesitate to be tough or to take risks. That's not "safe." They want our troops to be unmolested and instantly triumphant. They complain bitterly when soldiers are injured or killed, they cry for help from the international community because they don't want American blood shed for…well, for liberty.
They want their wars to be legally okayed by the United Nations. It's not good enough that the war enforces the very rules of the body itself--instead, we must pass the global test of convincing everyone to agree with their own resolutions when push comes to shove. They ignore the fact that the vast majority of United Nations nations are tyrannies, military juntas, kingdoms, and other types of government that can only hope to one day have the kind of legitimate government enjoyed by Coalition forces.
Finally, the Democrats want their wars to be rare. They don't believe in wars for anything but self defense. Liberty, freedom, pre-emptive security, economic interest, geopolitical reality--none of these mean much to Democrats. They do, however, enjoy calling people into "fake" wars, in order to undermine the real ones. For example, while we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, they frequently taunt the President about the dangers of Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, implying that we should also be in those nations.
Of course, this is a feint. Because it would alienate at least half the Democratic base (of which Michael Moore constitutes at least a quarter, by weight), no Democrat is going to authorize war against any of those nations.
Not until the Kerry Administration signs on to the Democrats' draft bill.
Democrats often chant that they want abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare."
It seems that these are the touchstones of all Democratic policy. ("Moral" and "right" died with Jimmy Carter, it seems. Oh, isn't he dead? Sorry, my mistake.)
Take war, for example. They vote for it, but they don't want to practice it. They hesitate to be tough or to take risks. That's not "safe." They want our troops to be unmolested and instantly triumphant. They complain bitterly when soldiers are injured or killed, they cry for help from the international community because they don't want American blood shed for…well, for liberty.
They want their wars to be legally okayed by the United Nations. It's not good enough that the war enforces the very rules of the body itself--instead, we must pass the global test of convincing everyone to agree with their own resolutions when push comes to shove. They ignore the fact that the vast majority of United Nations nations are tyrannies, military juntas, kingdoms, and other types of government that can only hope to one day have the kind of legitimate government enjoyed by Coalition forces.
Finally, the Democrats want their wars to be rare. They don't believe in wars for anything but self defense. Liberty, freedom, pre-emptive security, economic interest, geopolitical reality--none of these mean much to Democrats. They do, however, enjoy calling people into "fake" wars, in order to undermine the real ones. For example, while we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, they frequently taunt the President about the dangers of Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, implying that we should also be in those nations.
Of course, this is a feint. Because it would alienate at least half the Democratic base (of which Michael Moore constitutes at least a quarter, by weight), no Democrat is going to authorize war against any of those nations.
Not until the Kerry Administration signs on to the Democrats' draft bill.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
WELCOME TO OUR QUAGMIRE, MR. CHIRAC
OUTGOING WHITE HOUSE PHONE CALL 11:26 A.M., JANUARY 24, 2005
JOHN KERRY: Good morning. This is the president of the United States, John Francois Kerry. Would Monsieur Chirac be in just at the moment? Oui, merci, I'll wait.
(Humming the Marseilles) Da dum da da da--Oh, yes. Bonjour, Jacques, Je--what? Oh, yes, well, I know you speak English. I just thought that--oh, I see. Well, yes, I suppose my snotty boarding school French might not be quite up to your standards. Fine, we'll speak in English, then.
Say, I just called to see if--what? Oh, well, thank you. That's very nice. I'm quite pleased to have beaten that lying cowboy moron, as well. Thanks for your kind words.
I was just calling you to--excuse me? The what? Oh! What am I planning to do about the oil for food thing? Well, I was rather planning to let it play out, you know, see what the investigation comes up with, and--well, I suppose we could talk about something else. I'd have to mull that over for a while. What? No, no, that's not some kind of code. No, Jacques, please don't offer me money.
But, say there. Speaking of offering, I was just calling to invite you to a little summit I'm putting together for next week. I know it's short notice, but I'm sure you'll want to come when you find out what the topic is.
Oh. Well, yes. That's right. Can't put anything over on you, then, eh? Yes, it's about Iraq. I'm having a few world leaders over for a nice big summit, full of important nuanced discussion and good, rich food--oh, I don't know. I'd have to ask the White House chef, I suppose.
Well, Jacques, I really don't know the chef's name. I kind of just got here. I'd ask Teresa, but I haven't seen her in a kitchen in--yeah, ha ha! You read my mind. I wouldn't want to try anything she cooked, either. That's what cooks are FOR, right? Ha ha ha!
Now, look, Jacques. I need to get an answer on this thing. Who else is coming? Oh, well, I was going to invite all the allies we haven't quite had around for a while, maybe some we lost more recently, the ones who are already--oh, my, Jacques. I don't think that's a very nice thing to say about Prime Minister Blair! I haven't heard language like that since this morning, when I made Teresa's coffee too hot.
Anyway, look--what? Oh, well, no. I haven't actually--well, you're the first I called because of the special relationship our two nations have always had--are you still there, Jacques? What? Oh, yes, I suppose it is very important to make sure you don't miss the French re-runs of Dallas. Are they--oh, finished now?
Okay. Now, how much of an entourage will you be bringing? We'll have to figure out which room--what?
Oh, you have something else to do? Well, yes, I know you're a very important world leader, but so am I now, Jacques, and as you know you have a stake in Iraq, too--well, not, I didn't mean a steak you eat, I meant--well, no. Stop laughing, Jacques. I know you don't have anything there right now. Oh, I--and you don't plan on…yes, I see.
Well, don't you think it would be a good idea to at least sit down and talk about it?
Jacques? I think we've--
[dial tone]
Is there something wrong with this line?
Hello?
JOHN KERRY: Good morning. This is the president of the United States, John Francois Kerry. Would Monsieur Chirac be in just at the moment? Oui, merci, I'll wait.
(Humming the Marseilles) Da dum da da da--Oh, yes. Bonjour, Jacques, Je--what? Oh, yes, well, I know you speak English. I just thought that--oh, I see. Well, yes, I suppose my snotty boarding school French might not be quite up to your standards. Fine, we'll speak in English, then.
Say, I just called to see if--what? Oh, well, thank you. That's very nice. I'm quite pleased to have beaten that lying cowboy moron, as well. Thanks for your kind words.
I was just calling you to--excuse me? The what? Oh! What am I planning to do about the oil for food thing? Well, I was rather planning to let it play out, you know, see what the investigation comes up with, and--well, I suppose we could talk about something else. I'd have to mull that over for a while. What? No, no, that's not some kind of code. No, Jacques, please don't offer me money.
But, say there. Speaking of offering, I was just calling to invite you to a little summit I'm putting together for next week. I know it's short notice, but I'm sure you'll want to come when you find out what the topic is.
Oh. Well, yes. That's right. Can't put anything over on you, then, eh? Yes, it's about Iraq. I'm having a few world leaders over for a nice big summit, full of important nuanced discussion and good, rich food--oh, I don't know. I'd have to ask the White House chef, I suppose.
Well, Jacques, I really don't know the chef's name. I kind of just got here. I'd ask Teresa, but I haven't seen her in a kitchen in--yeah, ha ha! You read my mind. I wouldn't want to try anything she cooked, either. That's what cooks are FOR, right? Ha ha ha!
Now, look, Jacques. I need to get an answer on this thing. Who else is coming? Oh, well, I was going to invite all the allies we haven't quite had around for a while, maybe some we lost more recently, the ones who are already--oh, my, Jacques. I don't think that's a very nice thing to say about Prime Minister Blair! I haven't heard language like that since this morning, when I made Teresa's coffee too hot.
Anyway, look--what? Oh, well, no. I haven't actually--well, you're the first I called because of the special relationship our two nations have always had--are you still there, Jacques? What? Oh, yes, I suppose it is very important to make sure you don't miss the French re-runs of Dallas. Are they--oh, finished now?
Okay. Now, how much of an entourage will you be bringing? We'll have to figure out which room--what?
Oh, you have something else to do? Well, yes, I know you're a very important world leader, but so am I now, Jacques, and as you know you have a stake in Iraq, too--well, not, I didn't mean a steak you eat, I meant--well, no. Stop laughing, Jacques. I know you don't have anything there right now. Oh, I--and you don't plan on…yes, I see.
Well, don't you think it would be a good idea to at least sit down and talk about it?
Jacques? I think we've--
[dial tone]
Is there something wrong with this line?
Hello?
YOU CAN KEEP IT
WHAT THE PRESIDENT REALLY WANTED TO SAY
Much has been made of the President's demeanor in the first debate. Against a clearly unfair set of questions (Jim Lehrer: "Mr. Kerry, please tell us what would make you such a good president." "Mr. Bush, why are you such a liar?" Don't look it up. It's exaggeration for effect.), the President appeared testy, nasty, bored, and exasperated.
I'm not going to say that's not true. In fact, it's something I actually found refreshing. It's just what I would have felt like doing, if I were the president of the United States and some idiot Frenchman disguised as an American war hero decided he should tell me what to do.
And after giving it some thought, I think I know just why it came out that way. So, here, if you will indulge me (and you will, because you can't stop me; you can only reply) is my version of what the President was holding back but really, in his heart of hearts, wanted to say to John Flip-flop Kerry, Jim Demshill Lehrer, and the whole nation during the first debate:
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Bush, you have a two-minute closing statement.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, thank you for having me, Jim. I hope the nation has learned a lot about my opponent and myself tonight. I'd also like to thank the good people of Florida, because they've been through-- I'm sorry. I just can't-- (Sighs). Okay, look. I have to be honest with you, Jim, and with the American people. You may have noticed that I've been a little--well, maybe a little exasperated tonight. And it's not the flashing lights. My team likes those. And it's not even the biased questions you're throwing at me. I'm used to that.
(Turning to face Kerry): Senator Kerry, do you know what I spent my day doing? While you were getting your hair and your nails done? Do you know what I've been doing and thinking about while you were covering up your weird orange skin so you didn't scare the viewers? Do you?
I was all over this state, looking at the unbelievable damage those hurricanes have done to our people and property. I saw people whose houses are destroyed, people who haven't had electricity in weeks. I saw those kids your witch of a wife thinks should be going naked through the streets of Florida--I still don't know why she said that or what she meant.
Anyway, I, uh, oh, yeah--I looked at all this devastation, all this destruction, and I came back to the hotel room with my brother, Jeb, and I looked him in the eye. "Jeb," I said, "I'm the President of the United States, and I can't even make sure that those people have something to eat tonight. Do you realize that? It kills me to have to leave here and go play footsie with that met-er-o-sexual hack tonight. I just want to smack him around. It's times like these I almost wish I could have a drink, but I know that wouldn't even help."
(To the camera) I look at America and I see a lot of good news. A lot of good people helping their neighbors and living right and raising kids to love this country. But I also see a lot of pain. A lot of people are hurting. A lot of jobs were lost after 9/11. My opponent talks like I took all those jobs away from all those Americans. He and his friends act like I personally blew up the twin towers. They want to sit on the sidelines and laugh because I chose not to panic a bunch of schoolkids and stayed seven minutes to read a book about a goat. I suppose they'd prefer I sat in the Senate, or the Hamptons, reading Jean-Paul Sartre--yeah, I know who he is. I'm not a moron, you know.
Or maybe you don't, because Mr. Kerry's friends have made a big point of saying how stupid I am, how uneducated, how I'm not "intellectually curious." They get mad at me because I don't read the papers. Well, why should I read the papers? I'm the president of the United States! There's nothing in the paper I don't know first! The reporters spend half their time trying to find out what I already know, and the other half interviewing people who don't know the answers. I don't READ the New York Times because I'm IN the New York Times!
So, look. I'm going to level with you.
I didn't really know much about being president when this thing started. I just knew there was something in my soul, my spirit, that said I should try. I knew God had a plan, and I thought I was part of it. Then, when 9/11 happened, it seemed that was why He'd put me there. For such a time as this. And I did that job. I became the commander in chief. I was a uniter. I held widows (not the way the last president did--the decent, God-fearing American way). I encouraged first responders. I hugged little kids whose parents would never come home again.
And then the time came and we had to hit Afghanistan. And I knew what I had to do, and I did it. And once again I found myself the Mourner-in-Chief of the United States of America. I held people up. I prayed for them. They prayed for me. We wept together. And we rejoiced together that their loved ones had gone on to a better place for a noble cause.
And then every intel source in the world said Saddam has WMDs. Saddam is going to strike. Saddam is a crazy murdering tyrant. The people of Iraq are suffering. Saddam is shooting at our planes every single day. He's taking the oil-for-food money and buying solid-gold cars and ostentatious palaces while his people starve in the street and get raped and thrown in prison---(choking up)--and I said, "Not on my watch. This no-count rat isn't going to flout UN resolutions and murder people and plot to destroy the United States of America on MY watch. Not after 9/11. Not on your life. Lock and load. It's showtime."
And so, as my opponent likes to say, I "took us to war." A war Senator Kerry authorized and then didn't want to pay for. Didn't want to supply the troops, if he couldn't get his way on the economy to do it. Didn't care then whether folks had to have a bake sale to buy body armor--suddenly now he cares? Do you believe it? I don't.
But the worst part is that while I'm trying to run all this--win two wars, put down insurgencies, chase terrorists all over the world, deal with North Korea and Libya and Iran and Africa and Mexico, visit world leaders and international summits and meet with families of the dead and plan strategies for global trade and international police cooperation and African AIDS relief AND tax policy and health care, prescription drugs, unemployment, steel tarrifs, no-call lists, child pornography laws--I could go on.
While I'm doing ALL this--some nutbag named Moore is making a movie about what an international menace I am. Saddam Hussein cut people's hands off and cut their tongues out--and I'M supposed to be the bad guy? Some creep named Soros who I don't even think is an American, I don't know--is putting millions of dollars up to tell America and the troops that Iraq is Vietnam and we're going to lose and I'm the devil. This guy wants to make heroin legal--and I'M the devil? And the Democrats and my opponent are all over the country telling everyone I'm doing a lousy job and I don't care about them.
Well, you know what? He's half right. Most days, I'm proud to be the president of this great country. It's an honor and a privilege, and I love the people of America and the meaning of America.
But when folks like him start spouting off about how he'd do this different, and that different--and eventually EVERYTHING different--that's when he's right. I'm doing a lousy job.
Because when you look into the eyes of a woman whose husband or son isn’t coming home, and all you can do is pray and hug her, this is a lousy job.
And when you watch the stock market go up and down no matter what you do about it, this is a lousy job.
And when half the American people don't even understand that their very lives and families would be in terrible danger if we didn't have my Homeland Security and Defense Departments slaving away to keep them safe--didn't you people see 9/11? It was on tv--I don't know how you could have missed it! When half the American people are MAD at me for PROTECTING them--you're darn right, it's a lousy job!
And, Senator Kerry, if you think you can do better, if you really think that you can call up your pal Jacque and convince him to bring in troops, do it! In fact, if I win, I'll appoint you and Jimmy Carter as a special delegation--maybe with Jane Fonda and Bruce Springsteen or something--to go over there to France and summitryize all you like. See if you can get them in. Go ahead. I'll wait.
If you think you can get the terrorists to stop beheading people on the Internet and blowing things up, go ahead! Try your hand! I won't stop you.
I'm telling you, if you really think you can run a multi-billion dollar budget--and not just talk about appropriating the people's money, but actually managing it and deciding what to do about 80 million different issues with half your mail calling you names and wanting you dead and the other half asking for your wife's cookie recipe and how's your dog--if you think you can do this lousy job, well, you can HAVE it!
(To camera) And I want to talk to you undecideds right now. Get off the fence and make a decision. This is America, and you better figure out what your opinion is, or you're going to get run over by the train of history. Make a choice and stick with it. If you think Senator Kerry can do a better job after 20 years in the Senate without an important piece of legislation to his name--a divorced Catholic who says he thinks life begins at conception and then votes every time to kill it, a man who voted to go to war and not to fund the troops fighting it, who says he's against gay marriage but won't lift a finger to stop it, who voted against every important weapon we used to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and are now using to maintain the peace, who can't even debate me without spending half his day getting primped and primed and bronzed and waxed--if you think a man like that is fit to run this country, go ahead and vote for him.
But if you like your morals and your marriages straight, vote for me. If you want your soldiers to finish the job they started and bring Iraq and Afghanistan into the world of civilized nations, vote for me. If you follow the faith you claim to believe in, and you want the terrorists busy in some other country than this one, vote for me.
I personally don't care who you vote for. If God gives me this job again, I'll do the very best I can, because I love the American people, and the stakes are too high to do anything less. If that's not in the Plan, I'll go home to Crawford and love my wife and ride my horses and pray that the President is listening to God, just like the rest of you do every day. But I'm done with this debate. I'm not even staying to wave at people. I've been up all day, since early morning, and I've been doing my job.
So, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Lehrer, Mr. Kerry, people of America, I'll be leaving now. I'm going home with my wife now to NOT watch the CBS news. Good night.
Much has been made of the President's demeanor in the first debate. Against a clearly unfair set of questions (Jim Lehrer: "Mr. Kerry, please tell us what would make you such a good president." "Mr. Bush, why are you such a liar?" Don't look it up. It's exaggeration for effect.), the President appeared testy, nasty, bored, and exasperated.
I'm not going to say that's not true. In fact, it's something I actually found refreshing. It's just what I would have felt like doing, if I were the president of the United States and some idiot Frenchman disguised as an American war hero decided he should tell me what to do.
And after giving it some thought, I think I know just why it came out that way. So, here, if you will indulge me (and you will, because you can't stop me; you can only reply) is my version of what the President was holding back but really, in his heart of hearts, wanted to say to John Flip-flop Kerry, Jim Demshill Lehrer, and the whole nation during the first debate:
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Bush, you have a two-minute closing statement.
PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, thank you for having me, Jim. I hope the nation has learned a lot about my opponent and myself tonight. I'd also like to thank the good people of Florida, because they've been through-- I'm sorry. I just can't-- (Sighs). Okay, look. I have to be honest with you, Jim, and with the American people. You may have noticed that I've been a little--well, maybe a little exasperated tonight. And it's not the flashing lights. My team likes those. And it's not even the biased questions you're throwing at me. I'm used to that.
(Turning to face Kerry): Senator Kerry, do you know what I spent my day doing? While you were getting your hair and your nails done? Do you know what I've been doing and thinking about while you were covering up your weird orange skin so you didn't scare the viewers? Do you?
I was all over this state, looking at the unbelievable damage those hurricanes have done to our people and property. I saw people whose houses are destroyed, people who haven't had electricity in weeks. I saw those kids your witch of a wife thinks should be going naked through the streets of Florida--I still don't know why she said that or what she meant.
Anyway, I, uh, oh, yeah--I looked at all this devastation, all this destruction, and I came back to the hotel room with my brother, Jeb, and I looked him in the eye. "Jeb," I said, "I'm the President of the United States, and I can't even make sure that those people have something to eat tonight. Do you realize that? It kills me to have to leave here and go play footsie with that met-er-o-sexual hack tonight. I just want to smack him around. It's times like these I almost wish I could have a drink, but I know that wouldn't even help."
(To the camera) I look at America and I see a lot of good news. A lot of good people helping their neighbors and living right and raising kids to love this country. But I also see a lot of pain. A lot of people are hurting. A lot of jobs were lost after 9/11. My opponent talks like I took all those jobs away from all those Americans. He and his friends act like I personally blew up the twin towers. They want to sit on the sidelines and laugh because I chose not to panic a bunch of schoolkids and stayed seven minutes to read a book about a goat. I suppose they'd prefer I sat in the Senate, or the Hamptons, reading Jean-Paul Sartre--yeah, I know who he is. I'm not a moron, you know.
Or maybe you don't, because Mr. Kerry's friends have made a big point of saying how stupid I am, how uneducated, how I'm not "intellectually curious." They get mad at me because I don't read the papers. Well, why should I read the papers? I'm the president of the United States! There's nothing in the paper I don't know first! The reporters spend half their time trying to find out what I already know, and the other half interviewing people who don't know the answers. I don't READ the New York Times because I'm IN the New York Times!
So, look. I'm going to level with you.
I didn't really know much about being president when this thing started. I just knew there was something in my soul, my spirit, that said I should try. I knew God had a plan, and I thought I was part of it. Then, when 9/11 happened, it seemed that was why He'd put me there. For such a time as this. And I did that job. I became the commander in chief. I was a uniter. I held widows (not the way the last president did--the decent, God-fearing American way). I encouraged first responders. I hugged little kids whose parents would never come home again.
And then the time came and we had to hit Afghanistan. And I knew what I had to do, and I did it. And once again I found myself the Mourner-in-Chief of the United States of America. I held people up. I prayed for them. They prayed for me. We wept together. And we rejoiced together that their loved ones had gone on to a better place for a noble cause.
And then every intel source in the world said Saddam has WMDs. Saddam is going to strike. Saddam is a crazy murdering tyrant. The people of Iraq are suffering. Saddam is shooting at our planes every single day. He's taking the oil-for-food money and buying solid-gold cars and ostentatious palaces while his people starve in the street and get raped and thrown in prison---(choking up)--and I said, "Not on my watch. This no-count rat isn't going to flout UN resolutions and murder people and plot to destroy the United States of America on MY watch. Not after 9/11. Not on your life. Lock and load. It's showtime."
And so, as my opponent likes to say, I "took us to war." A war Senator Kerry authorized and then didn't want to pay for. Didn't want to supply the troops, if he couldn't get his way on the economy to do it. Didn't care then whether folks had to have a bake sale to buy body armor--suddenly now he cares? Do you believe it? I don't.
But the worst part is that while I'm trying to run all this--win two wars, put down insurgencies, chase terrorists all over the world, deal with North Korea and Libya and Iran and Africa and Mexico, visit world leaders and international summits and meet with families of the dead and plan strategies for global trade and international police cooperation and African AIDS relief AND tax policy and health care, prescription drugs, unemployment, steel tarrifs, no-call lists, child pornography laws--I could go on.
While I'm doing ALL this--some nutbag named Moore is making a movie about what an international menace I am. Saddam Hussein cut people's hands off and cut their tongues out--and I'M supposed to be the bad guy? Some creep named Soros who I don't even think is an American, I don't know--is putting millions of dollars up to tell America and the troops that Iraq is Vietnam and we're going to lose and I'm the devil. This guy wants to make heroin legal--and I'M the devil? And the Democrats and my opponent are all over the country telling everyone I'm doing a lousy job and I don't care about them.
Well, you know what? He's half right. Most days, I'm proud to be the president of this great country. It's an honor and a privilege, and I love the people of America and the meaning of America.
But when folks like him start spouting off about how he'd do this different, and that different--and eventually EVERYTHING different--that's when he's right. I'm doing a lousy job.
Because when you look into the eyes of a woman whose husband or son isn’t coming home, and all you can do is pray and hug her, this is a lousy job.
And when you watch the stock market go up and down no matter what you do about it, this is a lousy job.
And when half the American people don't even understand that their very lives and families would be in terrible danger if we didn't have my Homeland Security and Defense Departments slaving away to keep them safe--didn't you people see 9/11? It was on tv--I don't know how you could have missed it! When half the American people are MAD at me for PROTECTING them--you're darn right, it's a lousy job!
And, Senator Kerry, if you think you can do better, if you really think that you can call up your pal Jacque and convince him to bring in troops, do it! In fact, if I win, I'll appoint you and Jimmy Carter as a special delegation--maybe with Jane Fonda and Bruce Springsteen or something--to go over there to France and summitryize all you like. See if you can get them in. Go ahead. I'll wait.
If you think you can get the terrorists to stop beheading people on the Internet and blowing things up, go ahead! Try your hand! I won't stop you.
I'm telling you, if you really think you can run a multi-billion dollar budget--and not just talk about appropriating the people's money, but actually managing it and deciding what to do about 80 million different issues with half your mail calling you names and wanting you dead and the other half asking for your wife's cookie recipe and how's your dog--if you think you can do this lousy job, well, you can HAVE it!
(To camera) And I want to talk to you undecideds right now. Get off the fence and make a decision. This is America, and you better figure out what your opinion is, or you're going to get run over by the train of history. Make a choice and stick with it. If you think Senator Kerry can do a better job after 20 years in the Senate without an important piece of legislation to his name--a divorced Catholic who says he thinks life begins at conception and then votes every time to kill it, a man who voted to go to war and not to fund the troops fighting it, who says he's against gay marriage but won't lift a finger to stop it, who voted against every important weapon we used to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and are now using to maintain the peace, who can't even debate me without spending half his day getting primped and primed and bronzed and waxed--if you think a man like that is fit to run this country, go ahead and vote for him.
But if you like your morals and your marriages straight, vote for me. If you want your soldiers to finish the job they started and bring Iraq and Afghanistan into the world of civilized nations, vote for me. If you follow the faith you claim to believe in, and you want the terrorists busy in some other country than this one, vote for me.
I personally don't care who you vote for. If God gives me this job again, I'll do the very best I can, because I love the American people, and the stakes are too high to do anything less. If that's not in the Plan, I'll go home to Crawford and love my wife and ride my horses and pray that the President is listening to God, just like the rest of you do every day. But I'm done with this debate. I'm not even staying to wave at people. I've been up all day, since early morning, and I've been doing my job.
So, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Lehrer, Mr. Kerry, people of America, I'll be leaving now. I'm going home with my wife now to NOT watch the CBS news. Good night.
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