Live From the Anti-Socialist Republic (formerly Dispatches From the Religious Red Zone)

In Praise of Sarah Palin

2009-07-04T16:01:00.001-04:00

In advance of the nation's Independence Day, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin once again asserted her own independence, by stepping out of "politics as usual" and stepping down from her position as Alaska's governor. See her speech here.

By doing so, she again violated our image of the "typical politician," holding the well-being of her family and her state above her own interests in power and influence. Though Palin has done nothing wrong, she has been hounded by the press and besieged by nuisance lawsuits for months, even after the election that brought her to prominence as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican party was over. It was this unending distraction that convinced her that the interests of the state could be better served by her Lieutenant Governor, and the interests of her family lie with her resignation as governor.

How refreshing it is to be treated to a person in a leadership position who steps down from that position for the good of others, rather than one being forced out of office by scandal, selfishness, sexual deviance, or criminality (not to mention those who refuse to leave--yes, I'm talking to you, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, David Patterson. Some things really do disqualify you from leadership, and adultery should be one of them.)

Palin stated in her resignation speech (which, like Sarah herself, struck the media like a bolt from the blue, shoving all other news temporarily off the map, and stunning even the most savvy of press observers) that she could do just as much good work for the people of Alaska out of the office as in it, something she said she has always believed about political power. Essentially, she said that it's not the office one holds, or the name on the door, or even having a door at all that makes powerful political influence; it's the passion of the activist and the depth of the commitment.

On July 3rd, Sarah Palin proved her mettle as a champion of the interests of Alaskans, a fiscal conservative, and a family-focused woman. She recognized that all the attention she was getting--not for her policies, her position, or her record as Governor--were wasting the time and resources of the people of Alaska, the people she had pledged to serve. Defending one's self against Vanity Fair articles, former campaign workers, and late-night comedians takes time and effort. And, as Governor, her time and effort was to rightly belong to the people of Alaska. If she was going to have to fight personal battles to protect her family and her reputation, it would have to be on her own time. Rather than continue this drain on Alaskan resources, the Governor assessed her team, and realized that there were people on it who could carry on without her--and without the lightning rod she had become.

She did the right thing. As she did when asked to serve as the candidate for Vice-President (a position, you may have noticed, that invites the kind of unending personal attacks she is still experiencing--unlike that of governor of Alaska, which is supposed to be an office respected by the national media, or at least ignored.) As a side note, I would say that after Dan Quayle was no longer Vice-President, he was also no longer mentioned by the national media. Nor was any other such figure hounded while out of the national running.

In fact, that's the history of the Sarah Palin we've come to know. She does the right thing.

When she saw corruption on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Committee--corruption she was powerless to do anything about, even as the Ethics Supervisor--she resigned in protest. Then, from the outside, she pursued the case, eventually driving the Attorney General and the Republican Party Chair from office. She did the right thing.

When faced with a late-in-life potentially hazardous pregnancy, Sarah welcomed the advent of a new baby. When told this unborn child would be born with Down Syndrome--despite, as she told an Evansville pro-life audience, a momentary flash of fear and understanding of just how easy it would be to have an abortion and make it all go away--she stood true to her strong faith in God, her stalwart belief in the intrinsic value of human life, and her love of family. She had the baby, and at 5-months old, Trig Palin did what few adults ever do in their lives. He became a symbol of hope to activists and parents of the disabled all over this planet, a living proof that children with disabilities can be welcomed, cared for, and equally cherished. Women need not fear them. Societies need not abort them.

Again, in the face of life-changing challenge, she did the right thing.

When her teenage daughter came to her as an unwed mother, she again stood by the principles of her faith and her family. In the Palin's faith, all life is precious. All life, no matter how conceived, damaged in the eyes of society, inconvenient, or frightening. Even knowing she was about to be thrust into the spotlight, Sarah Palin did not move to cover up her family's "secret." She made no attempt to shun her daughter or keep her from the family stage. Instead, she welcomed both her daughter and Levi Johnson, Bristol's then-fiancee, into a political adventure that few ever experience. She stood on stage, challenges and all, and spoke the Politics of Truth to the American people.

Again, she did the right thing.

And now, as she leaves the Governor's mansion, we do not expect her to simply go away. We know that God has raised her up "for such a time as this," that she will be preparing for the "open doors" that will be given to her in the next few years. Whether she will run for office again remains unknown. Whether she is the kind of person who should lead the American people is a question we can already answer.

Yes. Because she can be trusted to Do the Right Thing.

The Constitution Under Fire: First Things First

2009-03-05T18:00:00.003-05:00

Today we are going to start looking at what the Obama Administration is doing that looks suspiciously like "remaking" the United States in ways the Constitution never envisioned. Some might call these initiatives "attacks" on the Constitution. I leave that up to you.

First, let's remember what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That's rather meaty, but that hasn't stopped the new regime from attempting to re-design it.

Is religion under attack? Well, at the moment, there's no concerted effort to overtly violate the First Amendment on this issue, but there are some disturbing signs that the once-friendly atmosphere that supported, encouraged, and nurtured a religious sentiment might be on its way out.

For example, the President's new "Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Initiatives" has added "Neighborhood" to the office created by President Bush to help small faith-based programs compete with secular agencies in the race for federal grant dollars (of which, by the way, there are a lot more to be had in coming months, once the Stimulus Bill goes into effect.) This is in keeping with President Obama's Alinsky-style (you'll excuse the expression) "faith" in grass-roots initiative, and his near-deification of the community organizer.

For the president and his followers, "faith" is not the key to neighborhood sustainability; "community" is. In other words, where President Bush was constantly reminding us that government could not love you, and that only a human being, motivated by the love of neighbor that comes through faith, could minister to a person in need with "a cup of cold water and a kind word," the Obama vision is quite different.

Although he got his start in the churches of Chicago's South Side, he very quickly converted the power of faith into a political force, concentrating on the "Rules for Radicals" method of making demands on government. Where a normal faith-based institution centers on prayer and faith, the type of community organization Obama spent his Chicago time building sees faith as merely the tool by which to achieve community power.

In keeping with his belief that the government can easily replace (and is in fact preferable to) an institution of faith, the President has in mind to change the charitable donation rules so that people who fall into the category he determines to be "rich" cannot claim the full deduction for their charitable contributions. This will, no doubt, reduce the amount of money available to churches and charities--thus requiring Big Daddy government to step in and take over the functions of such organizations.

In re-shaping the new office, Obama is also planning to "review" the rules under President Bush which allowed religiously-based charities to hire people that agreed with their religious mission. The President and his staff believe these rules are unconstitutional and are planning to alter them so that religious organizations that compete with non-religious ones for federal dollars would be required to follow all the rules and regulations that ordinary businesses are susceptible to--including equal opportunity hiring rules that would force a church to hire someone who actively opposed the religious mission of the ministry.

In addition, most religious broadcasters believe that the "hate crimes" legislation pushed by the Administration will make it difficult to discuss the Biblical position on homosexuality over the public airwaves, to the point that even simply reading the Bible on air might be construed as "hate speech."

So, that's just a little on the religion part of the Amendment. What else is in there?

How about freedom of speech? How do we like that?

While the president has claimed that he is not interested in a revival of the Fairness Doctrine, and the Congress has legislatively closed off that possibility, the same day Congress voted on it, Dick Durbin got a different Amendment passed, which opened up the door to local content requirements that would, eventually, spell the end of national talk-radio programming--which is, in fact, its aim. The fact is that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and others make the new Administration very very nervous.

Local content regulations would basically require that radio stations provide a specific number of hours in the day during which national programming would be pushed out by locally based programming.

But the fact is that Limbaugh and his compatriots are what make local affiliate stations profitable. Advertisers know they are getting millions of listeners, and they pay for the time. It is highly unlikely that audiences would stick around for local talent, especially if it were required to provide a "balanced" (which means "liberal") perspective. They would simply shut down all controversial programming, the national hosts would move to a pay outlet, like Sirius or XM, and the local station would revert to non-controversial music.

There is also the consideration that we could see a new effort to use the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), passed during the Clinton Administration, which forbids protesters--as well as the volunteers that the pro-life movement calls "counselors"--from approaching women entering an abortion clinic. One could argue that this draconian legislation interferes with the pro-lifers' freedom of speech (as well as assembly).

Now, freedom of the press is also undermined by the "fairness doctrine" or any disguised version thereof. But these days it seems like it hardly matters any more. The "free" press has voluntarily enslaved itself to the current administration. Moreover, while it's not unconstitutional, we can look at the treatment of oppositional press persons during the campaign. If you recall, there were several incidents in which unflattering press treatment of the candidate was responded to with a stony wall of silence. Several reporters who had been less than complimentary to the Obama campaign were bumped off the campaign plane right at the end of the campaign, to make room for more friendly reporters.

What will happen to the press if they ever break free of their hypnotic attraction to the President?

We have yet to see an attack on tne freedom of assembly or petition--but, remember, it's only been a month.

Stay tuned for the next "Constitution Under Fire" report, "Disarming the Second Amendment."

What A Conservative Is--And Is Not

2009-03-04T20:50:00.007-05:00

Rush Limbaugh gave a wonderful speech at the CPAC convention, as we all know by now. In it, he attempted to give a definition of "conservatism," which I won't go into here, but he well admits that his was what we in the academy used to call a "functional" definition of conservatism, rather than the type of strict definition one might find in a point-by-point explanation.

Since the fundamental premise of my blog is that I am a conservative, I now present to you the definition of "conservatism" that I am working with here.

But, first, what a conservative is NOT.

A conservative is not born that way; as with salvation, you cannot merely be raised to be a conservative, the child of conservatives, or the citizen of a conservative region or country. You must come to conservatism on your own, embrace it of your own free will, and practice it as an individual.

A conservative does not believe that government is the solution to most problems. As Ronald Reagan famously said, "too often, government IS the problem." A conservative who falls on hard times may find himself taking public money--but he will not prefer indolence to work, and he will not press the state to provide increasing stipends for his willingness to not work.

A conservative is not a member of any particular club, a person of any particular ethnicity, or a holder of any particular office. He or she is simply a person who is committed to the principles of conservatism.

So, what, exactly, are those principles?

The principles of conservatism can be found in the Founding documents of the American Republic--the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. They are summarized with great skill in the Declaration, the preamble to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. However the principles pre-exist the documents, as they flow from the innate and God-given rights of man; it was merely the genius of the Founders to identify them.

Conservatism in a modern sense is encapsulated in the three-legged stool of ideology that Ronald Reagan brought with him to the White House: social, economic, and military. On the social leg, a conservative is one who holds the positions of traditional morality and culture--pro-life, pro-family, value-based judgments, moral absolutism, patriotism, faith, and freedom.

The second leg of the stool is economic, and consists of a loyalty to free-market capitalism and private enterprise. Free people, free markets, capital flowing freely according to its best interest. The "invisible hand" of the market will ensure the most profitable outcome,providing there is minimal regulation to facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation.

The final component is a commitment to a strong national defense. During the Cold War, that meant defenses to weaken and ultimately defeat the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union (the uterly vile, atheistic, anti-freedom, anti-capitalist nature of which was what made it evil, by the way). Once that task had been completed, new enemies arose, and by 2001, they made themselves known in a big way.

Thus, today, the conservative positions are against abortion, gay marriage, and the persecution of the church by the state and agents thereof. They are opposed to interference with the private market (bailouts, stimulus packages, nationalization of banks and car companies, socialized medicine, statism in any form.) And they are opposed to any reduction in our military forces, any retreat in the war on terror, precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and/or Afghanistan, failure to control the nation's borders or encourage or facilitate illegal immigration, any reduction in our traditional support for the nation of Israel, or the slightest movement toward undermining our precious right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

Can you see why conservatives are not really big fans of the new administration?

It's not just that President Obama is who he is, though. It's also that he is who we said he would be--and the Democrats and fair-weather conservatives promised he wouldn't be.

People like Christopher Buckley swore he couldn't possibly govern from the left, while conservatives were screaming that he would increase the availability of abortion, pick up where Hillary left off in socializing the health care system, legalize marijuana (give it another three months, tops), and meddle unceasingly in the educational system.

We appear to have been right about what he would do once in office.

Now, would some of you disillusioned Obama voters who replied to our warnings not with "oh, there's nothing wrong with that," but with "oh, no, he won't do that," take the time to listen to us when we give you "the rest of the story?"

Because it's not going to be pretty, and it's not going to work. We don't have to "hope" he fails, because his policies are guaranteed to fail. We just have to pray he figures out his failure before he takes all of us down the socialist rabbit-hole with him.

And that God will have mercy on us all.

Thirty Days to Socialism

2009-03-04T19:36:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I posted here, and a lot has happened. First off, this "red zone" went blue in this past election, largely because of people who came over the state line to harass Hoosiers into voting for Obama, and because of the number of socialist college students that infest this once sensible state.

There is much to be said, and then there will be much more to be said, but for now I will just introduce the new order with a piece I recently did over at pardonmyenglish.com. It will help explain where we will be going this year in the Dispatches.

"Thirty Days to Socialism"

No, it's not a book. It's the life you and I and the nation are actually living. The American people are buying it hand over fist, and small groups to support the concept are springing in neighborhoods everywhere, led by cadres of loyal supporters of the present president and administration.

Oh, they don't call it that. They call it a "stimulus bill," and a "recovery package." They use code words like "transparency" and "accountability," but in the best Orwellian tradition, they don't mean either.

They mean socialism. Redistribution of income. Nationalization of industries and banks. Other societies have called them "five year plans" and "industrial policy." But they all mean socialism.

In just thirty days, the President has managed to bring the people to the trough he serves them from, filled to the brim with goodies and handouts. In just thirty days, he has persuaded America to spend more money than most of us can even understand, a debt that now must be monetized, because our friends the Chinese are no longer interested in our long-term bonds. The delirious Congress and three turncoat Republicans have handed over more than 700 billion dollars--which really is only a small portion of the nearly nine trillion in guarantees and bailouts and supports that have been flowing from DC since last October.

In just thirty days, using words like "crisis" and "impending" and "catastrophe"--by showcasing the "losers in life's lottery," who mewl and beg for their kitchens and their health care, knowing that only the great President can make them whole--the newly minted (literally--have you seen Montel hawking those coins?) president has made socialism palatable even to some Republicans.

Lindsey Graham--one of John McCain's staunchest supporters, one of Obama's former bitterest enemies, and yet always an undependable conservative--has said that nationalizing the banks should remain on the table. Now Alan Greenspan--husband of NBC's Andrea Mitchell--has made noises indicating he, too, might favor a nationalization of the banks.

How long before someone moves to repeal the twenty-second amendment, so we can live in the same "paradise" as the Venezuelans?

After all, getting this far only took thirty short little days.

Why Does Trig Need A Mommy, and Other Questions for the Media

2008-09-07T02:55:00.000-04:00

Recently, the Democratic chattering class and the media have developed a fondness for mommies and babies that they have never before displayed (it must have been all those cute pictures of the Palin family with their Down Syndrome child.)

Suddenly, liberals everywhere--especially feminists--are incredibly concerned that if Mrs. Palin becomes the Vice-President of the United States, poor baby Trig might be deprived of 24-hour a day access to his Mommy.

This, we are informed, would be a disaster of epic proportions.

But why?

Aren't these the people who are endlessly scolding those of us on the socially conservative side of the spectrum for our silliness in expecting children to have both a Mommy and a Daddy?

Daddy Todd Palin, currently the First Gentleman of Alaska, is a stay-at-home dad, and plans to continue the practice as the Second Gentleman of the United States. He is, by all accounts, a devoted and wonderful dad. Mommy Sarah takes her baby to work with her as needed, and the family all works together.

But if this is unsatisfying to formerly anti-traditional liberals, would they like to withdraw their support for homosexual couples having and/or adopting children? Particularly when both parties are working?

If it's okay--even, many argue, preferable--to raise a child with two Daddies and no Mommy, or two Mommies and no Daddy, why is it suddenly child abuse to raise a child with a full-time Daddy and a working Mommy, and lots of relatives, sitters, and nannies (as I'm sure will be available to the Vice-President of the United States)?

I'm just asking.

I would also like someone to tell me how old one's children must be before one is allowed to enter the full-time work force? I ask this because I always thought feminists were adamant on getting us all back to work as soon as possible after giving birth, but now Sally Quinn tells me that Bristol Palin--an engaged young lady (when I was a feminist, everyone over 12 was a "woman" (or "womon," if she were a lesbian or an enlightened radical)--requires the care of her mother for an unspecified amount of time:

McCain claims he knew about the pregnancy, and was not at all concerned. Why not? Not only do we have a woman with five children, including an infant with special needs, but a woman whose 17-year-old child will need her even more in the coming months. Not to mention the grandchild. This would inevitably be an enormous distraction for a new vice president (or president) in a time of global turmoil. Not only in terms of her job, but from a media standpoint as well.

So, does that mean that we should not hire as public servants anyone whose children are small, or in poor health, perhaps people whose siblings are on the edge of divorce, or who might have any reason to think about their family--even a little bit--while at work? What about people who have elderly parents who might become ill or die?

And is this requisite judgment retroactive? Do we judge politicians on this behavior in the past? If so, what do we make of Joe Biden, who was sworn in as a Senator at the bedside of his critically ill sons after an accident that took the life of their mother and brother? Was that the wrong choice to have made? Should we now judge him to have been an unfit parent and bar him from the vice-presidency? Or is the Senate so much less stressful and time-consuming than the Vice-presidency that it doesn't matter--and, if so, why is it considered on the Obama side to be so much better a training ground for the office than a Governorship?

And why, oh why didn't anyone question the propriety of John Edwards continuing to ravenously seek the presidency--an office very few people really wanted him to have in the first place--while his wife was, quite literally dying of cancer? Why didn't anyone ask whether that would have been a terrible distraction to the devoted husband he was claiming to be at the time?

Is it because he is a Democrat, and the media rule on Democrats is "touch not mine anointed?" You'll note that the Republicans didn't ask the question; they're too polite. But until the media clarifies its rules on family devotion, I will remain in the dark.

No, really. I just don't understand the rules.

Like, did anyone bother to ask Jack Kennedy about his children? As I recall, they were small at the time (remember John-John saluting the coffin?) I seem to remember that the Kennedy children were all over the White House all the time. Lots of cute family pictures of babies playing near the President's desk and all that. Is it only okay for men to bring their children to work?

The Obamas kids are both girls, both will reach the age to make sexual mistakes before eight years in the White House are up. Is it too much pressure to put them in the White House? Might all that stress lead them to rebellion?

And what about Michelle? She already works. how is she going to handle the pressures of being First Lady, all the travel and entertaining, while trying to be a good mother to two little girls, driving them to ballet and piano lessons? She's already talked about how much time she spends planning their lunches and reading labels on the food she is buying--how will she ever find time for all that in the demanding pressure-cooker that is the life of the First Lady?

I'm not asking these questions, but I do wonder why the media doesn't.

After all, they don't seem to have a problem prying into when Bristol Palin might have become pregnant, whether the Palins were married when Track was conceived, what discussions the Palins had with their doctors about the impending birth of their baby (normally, under liberal rules, an unheard-of intrusion into the right to privacy; HIPPA takes a dim view of it, too), and a lot of other things that used to be labeled "off limits."

I'm just asking for a set of written guidelines, that's all. Just tell me the rules.

Democrats Trash Flags, Republicans Wave Them

2008-09-07T02:54:00.000-04:00

Not to questions anyone's patriotism or anything, but whatever could have possessed the organizers of the Democratic National Fiasco at Invesco Stadium last week to leave 84 trash bags of flags behind?

If you watched the ascension of Obama to his perch as the official Democratic presidential candidate, you may have noticed the unusual spectacle of tens of thousands of Democrats waving flags throughout the stadium.

But what happened to the flags after the styrofoam columns went back to Hollywood is a pretty interesting story in and of itself--and another example of the genius of the McCain campaign.

It seems that the Democrats left the 12,000 flags in garbage bags, "in and near garbage bins," according to the vendor who claims to have found them. The vendor then gave them to the McCain campaign (quite probably because he figured that John McCain had a pretty good idea how to treat a flag.)

As a result, the McCain campaign was handed a pre-filled template of American iconography:

Boy Scouts were sorting through 84 bags of flags in Colorado on Saturday, before a McCain supporter had veterans distribute them to the audience.
“We want to find good homes for these flags,” radio host Dan Caplis said at the rally, adding that whatever flags remained would be placed at memorials throughout Colorado.

Audience members, who booed when Caplis announced that the flags were left in Denver, waved the flags and chanted “U.S.A” before McCain arrived at the rally with his running mate, Sarah Palin.

How sweet is that? Boy scouts. Veterans. War memorials. "U.S.A." Sarah Palin.

The Obama camp has a lot to learn about politics, if they allowed this to happen.

Caught utterly flat-footed, a DNC convention spokesman could only sputter ineffectively:

Damon Jones, spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee, released a statement saying McCain should applaud the fact that thousands of American flags were “proudly waved” at their convention.
“But instead his supporters wrongfully took leftover bundles of our flags from the stadium to play out a cheap political stunt calling into question our patriotism,” he said.

Wow. Another example of total political incompetence. To say that McCain should "applaud the fact" that American flags were "proudly waved" at the DNC convention just underlines the notion that there is something unusual about Democrats waving flags. And it really doesn't matter if the flags were "wrongfully" taken (which is unexplained, as well). The apparent fact that they were in garbage bags is undisputed by Mr. Jones.

The flag code says that a flag is to be disposed of by burning, once it is no longer useful. Or, it can be thrown away if it is "worn, damaged or tattered beyond repair."

So, we are left with two possibilities. Either the Democrats don't know how to treat the flag, or when they are given flags, they destroy them.

Either way, it gave the McCain camp a chance to honor veterans, wave flags, and interact with Boy Scouts.

Grand-slam home-run.

Introducing John Sidney McCain, Political Genius

2008-09-06T21:50:00.002-04:00

Though conservatives nationwide continued to doubt the wisdom of selecting Senator McCain as the standard-bearer for the GOP until approximately eleven-o'clock last Friday, over the last week he has proven conclusively that he is the right man for this time to take the reins of the presidency.

For those who doubt, consider the evidence. Prior to the convention, the political buzz was that Obama was going to go to his convention, hit it out of the park, and get a big statistical bounce, after which, the Republicans would put on a lackluster, dispirited convention (assuming the hurricane didn't wipe them out), and eventually lose the election.

What a difference a week makes.

It began the day after the Democrats' overblown finale of their "history-making" convention. Playing up the unity image, Hillary's people were allowed to keep their votes, but Hillary herself, acting as a New York delegate, put Barack over the top and gave him the nomination. Hillary and Bill gave what were considered wonderful, unifying speeches, and the media was in hog-heaven. Chris Matthews' leg was, no-doubt, positively vibrating.

Then, in an astonishing moment of hubris, the One chose to accept his nomination like a rock star--in a stadium, to a cheering throng, at a ticketed event, featuring too many Hollywood big-wigs and high-profile entertainers to count (Oprah, I understand, cried her false eyelashes off.)

John McCain chose to leave the event alone, filming a quick congratulatory video lauding Obama for his historic nomination. At the end of his statement, he said:

"Tomorrow we'll be back at it. But, tonight, Senator--job well done."

Boy, he wasn't kidding.

McCain got "back at it" so fast and so furiously, Obama never knew what hit him (or, rather "who" hit him.)

The first glimmer of his genius came the next morning, as we all awoke not to glowing reminiscences of the past four days of Democratic politics--but breathless anticipation of who John McCain was going to pick for his vice-president.

It would have been a small story, but as clues began to come out that it might be the female governor of Alaska, it became a news tsunami.

Thus, the Democrats' convention quickly disappeared down the memory hole, flushed even further into the sea when Governor Palin opened her mouth and revealed herself to be an unexpected star.

While Hurricane Gustav threatened to both destroy New Orleans (again) and divert the attention of the media from day one of the Republican convention (scheduled to feature keynoter Joe Lieberman, originally), McCain demonstrated his superlative political instincts by insisting that the convention be scaled back to only the legal requirements, to allow the GOP to pay close attention to the oncoming storm. President Bush and Governor Bobby Jindal (Republican) were graciously granted the spotlight for the duration of the danger, and Laura Bush and Cindy McCain used their personal speeches to appeal to the delegates to raise money for Hurricane Relief.

As if that weren't brilliant enough, he had already--without controversy--permitted the writing of the most conservative Republican platform in decades, which pumped up the delegates quite a bit. It is unclear (at least to me) how much McCain had to do with the selection of speakers, but whoever was, demonstrated sheer political mastery. Knowing when the networks would join the broadcast (not until 10 p.m.--a ridiculously late hour, but the trend in recent elections), the convention planners set up the second night to have Laura and George Bush address the convention delegates. The President appeared via satellite, since he was busy dealing with the Gulf Coast), and was not seen on the network broadcasts--perfectly allowing those in the hall to see the president they still love, while sending the symbolic message that the era of Bush is over, and the new era of Republican reform under McCain is about to begin.

In prime time, Senator Fred Thompson gave a rip-roaring barn-burner of a speech, demonstrating why he had been dragged into the primary in the first place. Some wags and pundits that night even suggested that McCain might not be able to meet expectations in his speech, leading Republicans to wish they had picked Thompson.

Then, for the second time in two elections, a Democrat spoke to the Republican National Convention. And not just any Democrat, but the Democratic party's vice-presidential candidate in 2000! In a convention where political and personal courage were major themes, Senator Joseph Lieberman took his political life in his hands to fulfill his friend John McCain's request to appear and cast partisanship aside, urging all Americans to put country first and elect John McCain. It brought the house down.

Mark this: John McCain, by this point, with the selection of Sarah Palin and the promise to bring the Republican party back to its roots, had brought his base so far back to the fold that they were unabashedly cheering a man they vilified a mere eight years ago.

And he wasn't done yet.

The next night, after revelations of Palin's daughter's pregnancy had ignited a firestorm of attacks and counter-attacks, the also-rans of the primary lined up, one by one, to endorse their former rival, the vice-presidential nominee they didn't turn out to be, and the newly reform-oriented Republican party. One at a time, Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani delivered the kind of speeches they should have given during the primary season if they really wanted to be president.

And then came Sarah.

To thunderous applause, the self-described "hockey mom" introduced herself to the nation, demonstrated her unabashed love for her family--no matter how "challenging" they may be--pledged her fealty to John McCain and the reformist Republican party, and took withering shots--not at Joe Biden, but at Barack Obama, continuing the narrative begun when she first appeared, that she herself is more qualified to be president than Obama (though not nearly as qualified as McCain.)

When McCain appeared faux-unexpectedly (Obama did the same thing at his convention), the screams of the crowd were more likely gratitude to him for picking Palin than expressions of love for McCain, but the delegates were certainly well on their way to fully embracing McCain--moderate reform and all.

On Thursday night, Cindy McCain made her first major speech before a national audience and proved conclusively that she would be a far better First Lady than Michelle Obama, though she said not a word about it. Her speech was about John and her family, the country, and the Palins. But her introductory bio and the details of her personal narrative revealed to the nation for the first time that she has already been essentially doing the work of first ladies for decades--visiting foreign countries, working with the poor, being one of many charity-minded people who serve as the American face of compassion around the world.

It's a powerful image. Who would be a better first lady? The woman who adopted a baby from Mother Theresa's orphanage? Or the woman who makes $100,000 working part-time at the University of Chicago Hospitals, and complains about the price of piano and ballet lessons?

Then, introduced by a biographical video and a stark, dark stage piece voiced-over by Fred Thompson, McCain appeared, again to thunderous applause.

I won't go into the speech here. Suffice it to say, by the end of the convention, McCain had done two things that had seemed impossible only a few weeks ago:

He had unified the base of the Republican Party behind his own reformist agenda, and he had re-established the Republican party as a conservative party, with conservative principles, intending to govern from the right, for the good of the entire nation. And to do so in a bipartisan spirit, reaching across the aisle to likeminded people, working together to put country first.

The full impact of this can only be understood when one looks at the world of talk radio. Today, even Rush Limbaugh (who has in his archives, parodying songs ridiculing "Maverick John McCain" for not being a real conservative) is enthusiastically supporting the Republican ticket. And so is the base of the Republican party, who will go home, call someone at party headquarters, and sign up to work their hearts out to get this "change" and "reform" ticket elected to the White House.

If he can do this with the Republican party, I can only imagine what he can do with the nation.

And the clearest sign that his strategy has totally succeeded came this morning, the day after the convention. While last Friday the Democrats' good-buzz aftermath was marred for them by the selection of Sarah Palin, today all the news is about the last night of the Republican National Convention, the newness and freshness of Sarah Palin, and the surprising new fighting spirit of the GOP.

Last Friday, I may have seen a snippet of the Obama megaspeech about six times--and only because it was part of top-of-the-hour news.

Today, the political narrative is all about Republicans, and I have seen many, many repeats of different parts of the McCain speech all day long.

According to the most recent polling, Obama's 8-point lead after his convention has either dwindled to two or disappeared entirely. Add to that the Nielsen overnights that show that McCain pulled even more viewers than Obama's record-breaking acceptance speech (and even though Obama had an 80K headstart) and that Palin's speech drew only a few million less than Obama's--and more than Hillary's or Biden's--and you cannot help but conclude:

John McCain may have the best political instincts we've seen in the Republican party since Ronald Reagan.

Job well done, Senator. Job well done.

Now Is The Time: Come Home to Your Senses, Joe Lieberman

2008-09-06T21:50:00.001-04:00

Before he goes back to Washington for the final session of this Congress, there's one more thing Joe Lieberman should do.

Become a Republican.

At the moment, Lieberman is an "Independent Democrat," but he still caucuses with the Democrats. But the word in Washington these days is that the Democrats in the Senate are so angry with Lieberman for having the (excuse the expression) audacity to speak at the RNC convention that they are planning to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country--not their party. At the moment, the Democrats control the Senate by a 51-49 margin, with Lieberman technically an independent, but caucusing with the Democrats. Were he to officially become a Republican, it would make the Senate a 50-50 split, with Dick Cheney (a Republican, in case you hadn't noticed) to break the tie.

Were Lieberman to switch parties, the Republicans would control the Senate for the next few months. It would be a risky move for both the Senator and the Republicans in the Senate. Taking the reins of power so close to the election presents both the possibility of total failure and the promise of sweet victory. Taking the power out of the hands of an obstructionist, do-nothing Senate and actually doing something as the election approaches could be just what the country wants to see.

If Republicans squandered the opportunity, however, it could merely mean greater losses in November.

It would mean rolling the dice. But, right now, in the Democratic Senate, Lieberman doesn't have much more left to lose.

Sarah, Plain and Cool, Driving Democrats to Dysfunction

2008-09-06T21:45:00.002-04:00

You knew it would happen. It took mere political moments for horrified Democrats around the nation to find sexist, elitist, and downright crazy ways to attack Senator McCain's VP-designate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Although few knew her before last Friday, she has emerged as clearly the coolest Republican that ever lived. She hunts and fishes, her husband is a snow-mobile champion, she's a marathoner and a union member, kicked the crap out of the Alaska GOP on principle, has a son going to Iraq, and was known on her high school basketball team as "Sarah Barracuda" for her tenacity and grit. She even played with a fractured ankle once--and helped win the game, anyway. She eats moose and caribou, brings her 5-month old baby to work with her, and (unlike McCain) can multi-task with baby and blackberry.

It's time to white out all those "Chuck Norris" and "Fred Thompson" jokes and write-in "Sarah Palin." She makes Arnold Schwarzennegar look like Pat Boone.

First, it was the campaign itself, risking its newly-minted image as the party of middle class, small-town voters, by sniffing:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Slightly later in the day, The One himself (and his running mate--let's call him "The Other") then quickly tried to mute the campaign's heavy-handedness with a pretense of politeness:

"We send our congratulations to Governor Sarah Palin and her family on her designation as the Republican nominee for vice president. It is yet another encouraging sign that old barriers are falling in our politics," the statement said."

But the game was already on. Obama/Biden fears and despises this ticket, because it one-ups them on several fronts.

First, and most deliciously, it provides one person out of four in the race that actually has some executive experience--some real, hands-on, decision-making, voter-serving, budget-crafting, making-it-work executive chops. Obama, Biden, and McCain have never done any of that. They've never run a company, much less a city or a state. They've always been one of one-hundred, individually accountable to no one, and ultimately responsible for nothing. McCain's character, at least, has been forged in the fires of adversity, in the Hanoi Hilton. So we know a bit about his intestinal fortitude.

All we know about the courage quotient on the other ticket is that Joe Biden rides the Amtrak, and Barack Obama made a speech four years ago.

Then there is the "woman thing," so to speak. While the Obama campaign couldn't find any qualified woman he liked and trusted enough to be his number two (go away, Hillary), in a party so woman-centered it requires by rule that the majority of convention delegates be women, McCain effortlessly discovered one last February, and esteemed her enough to put her in the mix. And, as time went on, it was her scrappy life story, her heart, and her values that kept her in there--not her gender.

Because we now know that, in this most intense competition she held her own with all the media's darling front-runners, and made the cut at every turn.

And now the Democrats are wailing like banshees, because that was Hillary's historical moment. It's bad enough that Hillary couldn't close the deal for the top of the ticket--but to be shown up by (gag) Republicans in their open-mindedness and egalitarian feminism!

It is a most miserable day for the Democrats--cheered only by the prospect of a killer hurricane coming to wipe out the RNC convention and showcase the "compassion" of Democrats.

The attacks on the remarkable Sarah Palin have come quickly and ruthlessly, and some of them are some of the starkest examples of lift-wing hypocrisy anyone's seen in years. Let us first look at who she really is, before we put on our hazmat suits and wade into what the Democrats are trying to do to her.

Her political experience (she was on the City Council while Barack was a "community organizer"--one of those people that hoped and prayed that Aldermen and mayors would look kindly on his petitions for help, or at least not wreck his plans) is dismissed as "mayor of a town of 9000." Barack entered the state senate in 1997--a beneficiary of the Chicago political machine, and a ruthless player, having eliminated all his opposition on a technicality, including the woman who made it possible for him to run in the first place.

By 1997, Sarah Palin was in her second year as mayor. By the time young Barack Obama keynoted the Democratic National Convention in 2004, while running to be a first-term Senator, Palin had been term-limited out of her two as mayor, having not only cut her own salary while in office, but taxes by 40%.

By 2004, she had already resigned as Ethics Commissioner of Alaska's Oil and Gas Commission, objecting to the Commission's lack of ethics. When Obama was taking his oath of office, Sarah Palin was driving the resignation of the State Party Chairman from the Commission and the Attorney General from office.

On February 10 of 2007, Obama announced his run for president, effectively ending his attention to the Senate (having been in the Senate barely 2 years). (For example, from September to November of 2007, he missed 80% of Senate votes.)

While Obama was missing votes, Sarah Palin was racking up an 80% approval rating as governor and fighting corruption in the Alaska Republican party. Obama, for all his time in one of the most corrupt political clubs in the nation--the Chicago Democratic machine--never saw fit to challenge it at all.

But the women of the Democratic party are losing their minds. How dare this person call herself a woman! How dare any woman disagree with their pro-abortion, anti-family agenda!

Kim Gandy of NOW called Palin "a woman who opposes women's rights," failing to see that not every woman in America believes that it is a "right" to kill an unborn child. Palin is, in fact, a woman who has paved the way for other women, holding challenging jobs usually reserved for men, while raising a family as well.

The Democrats don't know what to do with themselves. The Republican party has shown them up for the ideologues that they are. The Republican party has nominated a woman more qualified than the Democrats' ticket-topper, without making an 18-month long giant deal about her gender. It has, instead, allowed its candidate to select her on her merits. She is not a crony, and she is not a Washington insider. She promises to bring no state of any electoral heft, nor does she come to the position after years of thirsting to be president.

He has found a woman called by duty to do what's right, and willing to set aside her interests for those of the country.

It's a tremendous coup for the GOP. In their eagerness to quell excitement, the donkey party and its minions have already insulted small towns, women in general, mothers, Alaska--anything they can think of.

First, there is the "why did she have a Down Syndrome baby?" argument (which we've already seen in this very forum.) That seems to take as its base that it is her own fault--she was too busy, she should have stayed home, she should have told people she was pregnant, she shouldn't have flown in the last moments of her pregnancy, and on and on and on--that the baby was born with DS.

But there are no facts to this argument, since the Palins knew very early on what the circumstances of their child were to be, and they made the decision to trust God and act out out of love, instead of fear.

Then there is the appalling rumor spread across the lefty blogosphere that five-month old Trig belonged not to Sarah, but to Bristol (some comments have even insinuated that the father is shipping-off-to-Iraq Track, or maybe even the handsome Todd [her father--there is very little that is too abhorrent for the imaginations of these cretins to entertain.])

Of course, now that we know that Bristol is pregnant and engaged, the timeline rules out the possibility that Trig was borne by Bristol. So much for leftist logic.

But if it's not enough to attack her for confusing you with her family, what next? I know--attack her for not being attentive enough to her family! After all, shouldn't conservatives want her to stay home with that baby?

Sally Quin flutters and clucks over Palin's failure to live up to the lifestyle rules she thinks Palin is supposed to play by as an evangelical. (Palin, by the way, is a Pentecostal, not a fundamentalist, and not a Baptist, from whose annals Quinn chooses the requirements to assign the Governor). Then she assigns Palin to monitor her soon-to-be-a-grown-and-married-woman daughter, essentially forever:

And now we learn the 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. She and the father of the child plan to marry. This may be a hard one for the Republican conservative family-values crowd to swallow. Of course, this can happen in any family. But it must certainly raise the question among the evangelical base about whether Sarah Palin has been enough of a hands-on mother.

Nice feminism, there, Madame Quinn.

Once again, liberals misread the people they most despise, Christian conservatives. Christian conservative women do not live in electricity-free huts, barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove, waiting for heaven. They are all around you, working in the home and out, and many are twice as smart as any network news anchor parroting DNC talking points from behind a desk.

"Being a mother" does not have to mean staying home all the time, particularly when one's husband is already doing so. Few Christian women these days consider it a requisite of holiness to lock one's self away for 18 years. There are a great many Christian professional women whose mothering skills are enhanced by helpful husbands, older children, and gracious female relatives--all of which Palin has, in abundance. Besides, this is a discussion that should have been settled while she was a mere governor. She's going to be working somewhere, it seems--why not the vice-presidency (which, to be fair, actually isn't as hard as being a governor.)

No one asked Jack Kennedy what he planned to do about his children. No one is asking Barack Obama--whose wife works--how he is going to handle fatherhood and the presidency. And, even more hypocritically, when was the last time someone read Barbra Boxer or Nancy Pelosi or any other woman in elected office the riot act for not being at home "where she belongs?"

The new concern of Democrats with the vice-presidency is comical. After all, wasn't this the same office in which Richard Nixon famously was never allowed above the first floor of the White House? What were John Edwards' qualifications to be president? Gerald Ford? For that matter, by their standards, their own presidential candidate isn't qualified to be vice-president!

And that's another fascinating dynamic of this. As a game-changer, McCain has succeeded admirably, because the comparison is not being made between Biden and Palin, but between Palin and Obama. Every time a surrogate is asked about Palin's inexperience, the conversation is instantly redirected to Obama's inexperience, which keeps the focus of the presidential campaign where it belongs--on the utter unpreparedness of the Democrats' choice to actually be president (we are still waiting for anything Obama has ever done that compares to the things both McCain and Palin have done--or even anything that compares to what Biden has done! Matter of fact, Obama can't even say he lived in the White House and failed to reform health care--and she wasn't even considered good enough to consider!)

But it's not the attacks on her experience that are the most egregious. The worst media behavior has been about sliming every part of her personal life they can possibly grab hold of. Really, think about it: Obama wants to kill babies who have just been born (if their mama meant to kill them); his willing media allies are engaged in trying to destroy a five-month old baby with Down Syndrome.

And the hypocrisy of it all is mind-blowing. The same women who have been haranguing women in the home to get out and make something of themselves, to use their talents for the good of the world, to unchain themselves from the house--and the baby as soon as possible. These are the women who demand government-sponsored daycare (and Obama wants to reach down to age zero to take the babies out of the home) so that mommies can get out and work.

Today they want to steal Sarah Palin's shoes and chain her to the stove.

Keep it up, Democrats. This moose-dressing, gun-toting, corruption-cutting, baby-saving, Superwoman will break you. You can't beat someone who won't quit, and you can't cow the newly energized base by throwing mud.

Sarah Barracuda's in the game now. And she's bringing an army with her.

WILL IT BE A HIPPIE NEW YEAR IN 2007?

2007-01-26T13:32:00.000-05:00

Cindy Sheehan’s recent unwelcome appearance at a Democrat leadership press conference does not bode well for the future of our new Congressional masters. (For the video, go here.)

Instead of having the opportunity to bask in their new power and announce the House Democrats’ plan for the new Congress, Democratic politicians found themselves shouted down by Sheehan and her merry band of pranksters, forcing Rahm Emanuel to end the presser early and the Democrats to withdraw to another venue.

While the new leadership is attempting to appear statesmanlike, awaiting the President’s thoughts on what the future holds, the rabble that believes it elected them is storming the castle, waving torches, screaming for an immediate pullout.

Welcome back to Vietnam, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the Age of Aquarius all over again. (Actually, more like still, since an astrological “age” is 2150 years. In fact, the 60s weren’t even in the traditionally recognized “age of Aquarius,” which begins in either 2000 or 2150, depending on whose theory you use. But, then, attention to detail has never been a hippie value--unless you count staring at the lines in your hand for hours, at which the pot-addled and LSD-drenched once excelled.)

Nevertheless, it seems clear at this point that the sensibility of the hippie is on the ascendancy in ways we haven’t seen since we thought the 80s killed them all off or pushed them into the corporate world (Jerry Rubin, Ben & Jerry's, Fruitopia....)

Watch, as elemental feminism ascends to the halls of power. Nancy Pelosi is a mere taste of that which is yet to come. As we move to the technological place where men need not participate in virtually any area of American life, the polymorphous perversity repressed since the age of Freud is no more than a Dead album away from attaining full acceptance.

The masculine will collapse under its own ideological weight. The educational efforts of LGBT activists will flower, as a new crop of young adults emerges from high school to help frame the debate in the next election. Rejecting the old, tired, restrictive linguistic traps of “male” and “female” they will vote for new legislators that sever the linguistic and legal bonds of gender and extend the bonds of matrimony to whosoever will come to express their love for one another, for as long as they both shall feel like it.

It doesn’t take a Weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing. To coin a phrase.

The traditional marriage activists are on the ropes. No doubt about it. While referenda put to the voters at large still win large majorities, they’re not nearly as large as they once were. Florida is aiming to put the question on the ballot in 2008, but the new rules on Florida initiatives will make it difficult to pass, requiring a supermajority to make it law.

The old sentiments of hippiedom seem to have sunk in to the culture. What’s marriage, after all? Just a silly piece of paper. If Bob and Fred want one of those pieces of paper, why not? And why shouldn’t Bob and Fred express their love however they choose? Love is cool, man. And choice rules.

And we have a war, man. A war that’s killing American kids, a war that nobody volunteered for—oh, wait. We’re going to have to change some of those signs.

Survey the political landscape. Deja-vu, baby.

The lead performers of the political drama as it opens on 2007 form a masterpiece of collective counter-culture consciousness. From the Eleanor-Roosevelt-channeling feminist to the fun-free environmentalist, the left side of the aisle would be perfectly at home alternately chanting “Die, Pig, Die” outside the Democratic National Convention and following Pigasus through the mud as the jack-booted fascists give chase. Except that, this time, they’re going to be running the convention. And their pals in PETA won’t let them humiliate a pig anymore.

On the right side, we have a perfect lineup of hardhats and militarists, eager to wade into the fray and smash a few heads. From the former P.O.W. hawk that agitates to put more troops into this generation’s Vietnam, to the unofficial sultan of homeland security and hard-line law enforcement, the Republicans are polishing up their tough-guy/grown up images, burying the scandals of the past as fast as they can.

The “silent majority” that elected Nixon is silent again, and as of 2006, no longer even an electoral majority. In the last election, the moral traditionalists were narrowly defeated—but defeated, nonetheless—by a rather loud and angry mix of people who hate what’s going on in Iraq, but don’t really have a cohesive plan for what to do next.

The doves are flourishing; you can hardly see the GDP rise or hear the stock market roar for the noise of their wings—and their studded tongues—flapping. Hollywood is again passing bucks to such hopeless peaceniks as Dennis Kucinich and their re-vamped standard-bearer, the novice film-maker Al Gore. Gore’s cachet with the chic set is rising, while dour Hillary is even having problems ginning up interest in Iowa.

And the media world is gaga for ‘Bama.

Groovy, baby.

Except that, politically, the era of the hippie was not a love-fest. It was a mess. And it led to America’s first real loss of a war (you can’t count Korea, because it’s still technically on.) So, if we’re moving into that mode, what comes next?

Read the tea-leaves and see.

Once the Watergate Congress had arrived in Washington, ready to put the Nixon era behind them, they also made sure to bring in a new stand on Vietnam: lose at any cost. Right now, only the Cindy Sheehans of the party are moaning that tune. The leadership is doing its best to pretend they are doing something else.

But when the Congress decides to stop sending troops, and then to stop funding the war itself, it won’t be long before we get the rest of the Democrats’ Vietnam strategy: watch American servicemen on tv trying to escape from a nation the Congress made them give away.

It didn’t take us nearly as long to get here this time. At this point in the Vietnam episode, we were only up to May of 1967. It would be another eight years before the children of the Haight and their compatriots in the media succeeded in engineering the American defeat—a defeat that would frame the global image of the US until, ironically enough, we beat Saddam in the original Gulf War.

Of course, it makes sense that we would move more quickly this time. After all, the learning curve wasn’t nearly as steep. The media and the leftover counter-culture had been loaded for bear since September of 2001, when International A.N.S.W.E.R. first let the world know that it wasn’t going to stand for any standing-up-for-America-type behavior.

For the War for Iraqi Liberation, we barely had a six-month window. The media—even those embedded with the troops—soon reverted to their natural “blame America first” mentality. The pundits and the Democratic politicians were in full bray against the war by the end of 2003 (having temporarily given up on trying to get the people to pin the label on the war in Afghanistan, which by then we clearly seemed to have won. At this point, they barely bother to pretend they don't want us to lose.

Unfortunately for them, the American people weren’t thirsty enough to drink the Flavor-aid right then. But they’d get there. And the Democrats knew it.

Although they lost in 2004 (despite their pal Dan Rather’s valiant effort to libel the president with doctored documents), they kept up the drumbeat. Everything bad was because of Iraq. Everything good was despite it. If the stock market went up, it was because the oil companies were manipulating everything in order to make more money out of the war. If any disaster happened, it would have been avoidable had we not had all our resources flailing away in Iraq.

The booming economy was swept under the rug. The new schools, roads and infrastructure built by Americans in Iraq stayed in the closet, while the daily body count of soldiers and the uncountable toll of civilians was announced with great and unseemly glee. Each thousand-death mark was breathlessly awaited and scrupulously observed.

Every mistake, misstep, or malfunction of the US in Iraq was blasted from the rooftops. We stared at the naked Iraqi pyramid from Abu-Ghraib for months, regardless of whether it had any real news value that day or not. The outrage of the president and his senior officials and the fact that the perpetrators were caught and punished were totally ignored. As far as the Big 3 media were concerned, Abu-Ghraib was the real American soldier.

Just as when the nation brayed for the head of Lt. William Calley and the peace movement demanded immediate troop withdrawal for the My Lai massacre, the Abu-Ghraib photos have been used as an excuse to justify backing away from supporting the war, and every event since has been twisted in that direction.

“The people” are tired of the war, and the media is eager to exult in its defeat of the imperial US monster that roams the world forcing its will on weaker nations. A good 30 years of counter-culture indoctrination, thanks to the good offices of the National Eduational Association (and the other NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts) gives them a good shot at doing just that.

This time, we may have beaten Saddam, but the midterm elections make it more than likely we will soon fall back to our fallback position and let the Congress lose the war.

Oh, by the way. You may be wondering why I didn't mention the President's new initiative in Iraq--the "surge" he announced this week. That's because it really doesn't matter much. We can surge and make it work, or we can surge and do it wrong--the media and the liberal cloud over this nation will stay the same.

If we win, they will paint it as "democracy at the point of a gun." If we lose, they will crow, "I told you so."

I hope I’m wrong. But the signs don’t look good. I don’t see anything out there to stop the love-train from papering the Middle East with a false, unlasting peace.

Don’t shoot the messenger, man. I just say what I see.

And what I see is a major bummer.

JUMPING THE GAY SHARK: HAS WALMART FINALLY COMMITTED CORPORATE SUICIDE?

2006-09-07T12:27:00.001-04:00

There's a phrase they use in television to refer to a show that has simply gone one step too far in pursuing the entertainment dollar. The show that has finally entered the vast wasteland in its quest for ratings. They say it has "jumped the shark"--a derisive reference to a Happy Days episode that drove its audience away when the character Fonzie…actually jumped a shark. On water-skis.

The show's audience never fully returned.

In recent years, Americans have gotten used to hearing reasons why we should boycott Walmart. So much so that we barely pay attention to the emails, right and left, that flurry into our inboxes, insisting that big-box discount giant Walmart no longer deserves our patronage.

On the left, we hear that Walmart, a stubbornly non-union shop, is unfair to its workers, pays sub-optimal wages, offers lousy insurance, and is destroying the mom-and-pop store (the what?) On the right, we are told it is too commercial, too materialistic, does business with nasty regimes--like China, which seems to be its number one supplier of…well, just about everything but food.

Through it all, Walmart has sailed on, secure in the knowledge that, as long as it delivers the goods without alienating its core market--the red-state, semi-rural discount shopper--nothing can take it down. Even while becoming the number one target of American lawsuits, with a new one filed every day of the year, America kept coming to buy its groceries, guns, lingerie and lawn tractors at Walmart. 24 hours a day.

Until now. Now, Walmart just might have jumped the shark.

All over red-state America, the news was "out" last week.

Walmart is now a proud--though apparently only "loud" because the American Family Association got wind of it--member of the Gay Chamber of Commerce.

The what?

Yes, Virginia, there is a Gay Chamber of Commerce,
and Walmart not only is part of it--it went down on its big corporate knees to beg for the privilege.

As part of the partnership, Walmart is not merely pledging not to discriminate against gays--which there has been no evidence it has ever done. It will also sponsor two conferences of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, and pursue corporate relationships with businesses with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered owners (LGBT.) In addition, one of Walmart's corporate vice-presidents will serve as an advisor to the Chamber.

Why Walmart would feel the need to pander to what amounts to less than five percent of the public is a mystery--

One reason may be the oft-repeated claim that gays have more disposable income than heterosexual consumers. But the data on this assumption has yet to be clarified.

Even if that is the case, Sam Walton's dream wasn't about people who could afford to go elsewhere. His genius was in maximizing the consumer dollar of those who had little to begin with, in bringing quality merchandise at discount prices, while making the consumer feel welcomed and valued. Walmart has always done so in an environment deliberately designed for the comfort of the consumer. At Walmart, you get a friendly smile, a family-friendly atmosphere, and an invitation to come back soon (which most of us know we will.)

But maybe those of us in the red states have gotten over our psychological need to be greeted at the door by a warm and friendly smile. There are now other stores that keep late hours and have reasonable prices. It's nice that Walmart price-matches, so you only have to roam around cyberspace and page through the ads that come in the mail, then head to Walmart to get the sales prices on everything. At this point, however, we may have to admit that "nice" and "convenient" cannot be our highest values.

It may be time for Christians and moral conservatives to ask themselves whether it is too high a price to pay, to save a little money. Walmart may have forgotten that it's only the premier store of its kind because consumers made it that. And they did it because Walmart cultivated the image of being a "family-friendly" store. Other stores have imitated it and are making inroads into its market share.

Already, the usual suspects in the Christian activist community are weighing in. From the American Family Association:

Randy Sharp said his organization wasn’t surprised by the news because it was the latest in a “long list” of Wal-Mart actions to “recognize and endorse a personal sexual behavior.”

“It’s disappointing. I personally chose two months ago to stop shopping at Wal-Mart ... and I think others will follow suit,” Sharp said. “Up until a year and a half ago, the AFA applauded Wal-Mart for their pro-family policies, but now it seems Wal-Mart has decided to push aside that legacy left by (founder) Sam Walton and joined those who look at the bottom line and stock prices.”

The Family Research Council's response:

"I don't think this is something that will sell on Main Street America, where most Wal-Mart stores are located," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council (FRC). "I don't think cheap prices on goods from China will be enough to stop a rollback in their customer base if they choose to go down this aisle."

Shoppers, generally, will go where the best deal is. But if the deals are essentially the same--but one constitutes a morally offensive environment--I wouldn't bet the market that Walmart can stay on top.

Walmart should have checked the waters before it jumped this shark.

WHAT KIND OF HOUSE DID YOU SAY THAT WAS?

2005-01-14T15:44:00.000-05:00

The record/tape/DVD/etc club, Columbia House, is launching a new venture. It's called "Hush," and it should be of interest to two sets of people: perverts and moralists.

Perverts will be thrilled, because the House is partnering with Playboy to start an adult video club, along the lines of its specialized clubs for other types of material--including Christian music and video.

Which brings me to the second set of "persons with interest."

All you born-again believers who joined Columbia House to get 12 CDs for a penny, eager to get your copies of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith and Carman on the cheap need to start thinking twice about putting cash into the hands of the people who brought you the so-called "sexual revolution."

By partnering with Playboy, Columbia House has revealed to us how far they are willing to go to make a buck. Never mind the copious evidence that pornography is one of the most common gateways to child seduction, exploitation, and sexual abuse. Ignore the attempts of the government itself to reduce the amount of incomprehensible filth pouring into your email box--now Columbia House wants to dump yet more trash on your doorstep and over the Internet.

Columbia House may have a "Christian" selection club. But it has no Christian sensibilities. All the company wants is to rake in all the money it can, selling anything it thinks it can sell. All they want is your money.

Do your family a favor--and don't give it to them any more.

FORGET NOT THIS INFAMOUS DATE

2004-12-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

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."

US OUT OF THE UN--AND THIS TIME LET'S MEAN IT

2004-12-04T11:23:00.000-05:00

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.

AN APPEAL TO COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVES:

2004-12-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

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.

SELL SHRUM, BUY BARNA

2004-11-15T08:25:00.000-05:00

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:

DON'T ROCK THAT VOTE--JUST GIVE IT A GOOD TALKING-TO!

2004-11-15T08:14:00.000-05:00

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:

“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.”

OR WERE THEY NEVER REALLY THERE?

2004-11-09T13:42:00.000-05:00

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.

SNEAKING OFF THE PLANTATION

2004-11-09T13:38:00.000-05:00

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."

SIZE MATTERS

2004-11-05T02:12:00.000-05:00

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.

MASTER OF THE GAME

2004-11-03T20:45:00.002-05:00

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.

I SEE A NATION AND I WANT TO PAINT IT RED

2004-11-03T20:45:00.001-05:00

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.

BACK TO YOUR CAGES, MONKEYS:

2004-11-03T20:45:00.000-05:00

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.

FOR THE GOOD OF THE SOUL OF THE NATION, KEEP OUR FAITH-BASED PRESIDENT!

2004-10-22T18:01:00.000-05:00

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.

SOME THINGS JUST ARE:

2004-10-22T17:57:00.000-05:00

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.

TWO MORE REALLY STUPID IDEAS

2004-10-16T13:17:00.000-05:00

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.

LISTEN, DO YOU HEAR IT?

2004-10-16T13:14:00.000-05:00

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.

UNFIT COMMAND OF THE TRUTH:

2004-10-13T09:54:00.000-05:00

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.

SOMETHING NEW IN THE LANDFILL THIS TIME

2004-10-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

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.

DEMOCRAT WAR POLICY

2004-10-06T13:17:00.000-05:00

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.

WELCOME TO OUR QUAGMIRE, MR. CHIRAC

2004-10-05T06:44:00.000-05:00

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?

YOU CAN KEEP IT

2004-10-05T06:07:00.000-05:00

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.

EATING THE FUTURE

2004-10-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

KERRY'S STEM CELL POSITION BOTH HYPOCRITAL AND INHUMANE

When John Kerry talks about stem cell research, he says "science" and "scientists" so often, you would think you were listening to Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

In a way, you are.

As you may recall, Dr. Frankenstein was so interested in finding out if he could re-animate dead tissue, he didn't think through the consequences of his pursuits to his subject or to the society. Mary Shelley's classic horror story is the quintessential man/monster question--who is really the monster? The re-animated corpse, forced into a new life it is neither ready for nor desirous of--or the Doctor himself, playing God without the heart of God for the creatures he creates?

For Kerry, there is no consideration of the consequences of pursuing a line of research that uses discarded human embryos. Although they have been conceived, and he claims to believe that "life begins at conception," he seems not to notice that--by his own words--such research requires that human beings be murdered.

President Bush came to this question with the genie half out of the bottle. There are existing stem cell lines, and he did not order them destroyed. Like the early medical experimenters who dissected corpses culled from the graveyard, he decided that what's already dead is already dead, so let's find out if there's any medical good to be had of them. But he forbade the federal government from paying for the creation of new lines, without interfering with the private sector's right to do such research.

After all, if George Soros can spend 10 million dollars trying to defeat the president, why can't he pay for some research? There's no shortage of money on the embryo-killer side. If they want to rob the graves, let them pay for it.

This is a sensible and moral position for several reasons. First, to put the federal government in a position to make it profitable to harvest embryos leads inevitably to the deliberate creation of more. We will, in the name of the people, create life with the express intention of destroying it.

Second, it is a culturally schizophrenic position to both encourage infertile couples to conceive because they have a right to be parents, treating the embryos as proto-children, and to encourage researchers to treat the same entities as disposable and experimental. It is fundamentally illegal to sell people--at least at the moment. It must remain illegal for the government to pay for the creation of doomed life.

Finally, this question cuts at the very heart of human nature, of worth and value, of good and evil. Would it be right to torture and kill one person to save many? It is an ancient philosophical dilemma. On the one hand, every individual has worth and value, and it would be wrong to "trade" their life for the lives of others. On the other, the collective good can be served by the sacrifice of one.

But the sacrifice of a human life can only be honorable when it is voluntary, as in the case of a soldier who gives his life for his country and its security. Only an individual can sacrifice his life--for another to do so on his behalf is murder, plain and simple.

And so we must say, to Christopher Reeve and Nancy Reagan and Michael J. Fox--we love you. You are special and unique and of infinite worth. But you were once an embryo, too. And each of those you seek to kill to bring about the cure you crave is also an individual of infinite potential and infinite worth. We can ask you--but not compel you--to sacrifice yourself for that one, but we cannot in the name of science sacrifice that one for you.

This self-absorbed culture is not in desperate need of cures for diseases and ways to grow new organs outside the human body and more money for increasingly amoral research projects. More urgently we need to re-assess our attitude toward human life, what it is and what it's worth.

Today they ask us to breed children to cure the ills of their parents and grandparents--not a surprising request from the generations that introduced and perfected abortion on demand for the sake of convenience. But tomorrow, if science finds, or even theorizes, that the blood of the old may be useful to the health of the young, or if in mapping the human genome we have uncovered the genetic markers for character flaws and behavioral quirks--then all bets are off. For we will have already erased the line that separates cutting edge science from ghoulish experimentation.

If we proceed on the path John Kerry recommends and the president is seeking to close off--then we are no better than the nazis experimenting on camp victims, than Saddam torturing his prisoners for fun, than--more keenly--the witch fattening Hansel and Gretel so she can eat them.

When human life is negotiable then everything--and everyone--is on the table.

THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN CANDIDATE

2004-09-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

TWO MEN WANT TO BE PRESIDENT. ONLY ONE KNOWS WHY

One of the earliest truisms in Rick Warren's runaway Christian bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life is that "It's not about you." The purpose of your life has nothing to do with you, except to the extent that it requires your cooperation to fulfill it. God has given everyone a unique set of talents and experiences and abilities, and He knows exactly what He has in mind for your destiny.

It occurred to me recently that one of the things that distinguishes the two candidates for president this year is a sense of purpose. Even before he was president, George W. Bush knew there was some reason God wanted him to be in that position. After September 11, he was virtually certain that he had been called, as many evangelists put it, "for such a time as this." His role was to bring the nation through an almost unimaginable tragedy, to steer us through the night, a steady guiding hand. He was our protector, our guard, our dependable leader for many months afterward. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, he found himself--though the moment was short lived--fulfilling his pledge to be "a uniter, not a divider."

In this run for a second term, he has not changed his conviction. He understands that he has been granted the honor of being a steward of the people and resources of the United States of America. It humbles him. It drives him to excellence. It haunts his waking dreams. George W. Bush, the man who has been so central to life in the United States for the past four years, both to those who love and to those who hate him, awaits the call of God to see what the next four years may bring.

I don't mean that he's not "political." To the contrary, God has given him a true gift for politics, especially relational, grass-roots politics. And I don't mean that he's planning to glide into office on some divine instrument, without policies or explanation or a solid case on which to make him president. He has all those things, and more. But at his core, where it really counts, George W. Bush is a man of faith, following a walk of faith, certain sometimes only that the God who put him where he is will take him where he is to go. Like Abraham (the patriarch, not Lincoln), the President acts on conviction, even when the end (or, as it is so popular to say these days, the "exit strategy") is not in sight.

Talking to Bill O'Reilly this week, the president expressed puzzlement at the idea that there are some in the nation who are disturbed by the way he shows his faith in office. He said he doesn't see how a man can separate his faith from his life, and his life happens to be the presidency. That is exactly the right answer. His current job in life, granted him by God, is to be president of the United States. Whether God retains him there is not in George's hands, but in those of God and the people. What happens next is not about him; it's about God's plan and the future of America. That's why, as commentators so often say, the president is "comfortable in his own skin." It's because he knows he doesn't even own the skin.

Faith is not a blind leap into the unknown. And it's not a privileging of emotion over reason. Faith is knowing Who is leading you, and trusting that He knows what He's doing. Faith means taking risks that might seem foolish, and sticking with the plan when things seem unclear. George W. Bush lives every day in that faith.

John Kerry, on the other hand, seems the very opposite. Of all the things we know about him, the one thing we do not know is why he wants to be president.

Because he won't tell us, both right and left are free to make up the answer that satisfies them. For the left, he wants to be president so he can wake up every day trying to make the lives of average Americans better. He wants to be president to rescue all those imperiled American soldiers being held against their will by the current president in Iraq. He wants to be president to "give back" to the nation that has been so good to him. Whatever. But none of the motivations the left imputes to the Senator have ever been stated by him.

On the other side, the right looks at Kerry and says, "Aha! He wants to be president so he can pursue the left wing agenda of his wife's foundations!" Or, perhaps he wants to be president to escape being the junior Senator from Massachusetts (it seems clear that the Senior one isn't leaving any time soon). Could he want to be president so that someday, after being president, he might have a marketable skill and an income of his own? We don't know. And he won't say.

While President Bush is driven by his faith, Kerry seems utterly disdainful of his. He claims convictions that he acts in opposition to. He chafes at the authority of the faith community he has chosen to be a part of. He denigrates those who do claim to be motivated by their faith to advance political positions. Evidently it does not motivate him.

Those who are not motivated by moral conviction often act out of economic self-interest. Yet Kerry is running for a position that pays less than a grant from his wife's foundation and entails an enormous amount of work. Though he seems to have little passion for the position, he shows no more evidence of wanting the job just for the money. After all, it's barely a step above his existing salary as a Senator.

Does he want the job because his party wants him to have it? Because the people have begged him to do it? It seems unlikely, given that the majority of Kerry-leaning voters don't like him, but dislike Bush. The race is so close now, it is impossible that he could have believed before he started that "America" wanted him--such a perception would border on the megalomaniacal.

So what is his purpose for being president? We do not know.

What is his purpose for being? That, too, we neither know nor have a sense that he does. He has ambition, yes--but it seems merely a drive to run, without a reason to win. His promise of "leadership" consists only of doing "everything" differently than the way Bush has done it--which is a silly thing to say, since there's no way he could possibly know how Bush has done "everything." No one person except President Bush knows "everything" he has done, because he has done so many things in so many different areas of effort. Of course, the Senator would have a better chance of knowing more of what the President has done if he had been present for the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings and meetings that he missed while running for President. Oh, well.

He might know a little more about Iraq had he gone there. He might have a reasonable critique if he had attended Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's speech before the Joint Session of Congress that Kerry was too busy barnstorming the battleground states to attend. He might have a better chance to be president if he spent more time examining incoming information and less time excoriating the people who are providing it and acting on it.

So, for now, John Kerry remains a man without a purpose. His mission, as he sees it, is to unseat the president.

But why?

The world may never know.

NEW VOTERS, OLD MEDIA

2004-09-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

THE SIGNS ARE ALL THERE FOR A NOVEMBER 2 EARTHQUAKE

The mainstream media is missing a huge story, mostly because it doesn't like the topic. But in a month they're going to find out just why there are so many new voters this year.

I can tell you that the ground forces of the right are activated and ready. The word has gone out and is going out all over this nation, and voter registrars are reporting more than the usual number of new voters. The media thinks this is all a result of the closeness of the 2000 election--that's because the media is mostly liberal, so the Democrat explanations for everything resonate with them.

But they're wrong.

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. It isn't to prevent the closeness of the 2000 election, though that reminder provides strong motivation to take this one more seriously.

The issue is gay marriage.

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, we believe, touches on eternal truths that we simply will not compromise.

The nation may be at war in Iraq, but we moral traditionalists believe it is time to face down the enemy in a cultural and spiritual war that must be won.

As in perhaps no other election in our history, this choice of presidents has deep spiritual meaning. Whoever is president will likely get to appoint an indeterminate number of Supreme Court justices, considered a necessity before the Court decides to declare homosexual marriage a constitutional right. The President appoints federal judges, and it's time to hold the Senate's feet to the fire for their intransigence at confirming judges that will interpret the law, not make it.

The President barely mentions this issue, though the GOP platform is crystal clear, and we know without doubt where he stands. Senator Kerry has given pro-family voters no hope, particularly when the Democratic platform's section on "family" values is all about health care and the economy.

That's not what we want to hear. Already, the evangelical community is beginning to feel stirrings of guilt for having put worldly things ahead of godly things. Watching the culture dissolve around us has only intensified that guilt. The Bible says, "If MY people, who are called by MY name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin, and heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14, emphasis mine.) The burden is on the church to change the culture, not the culture to change itself.

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.

And we are getting ready for the battle. Prayer groups have been mobilized across the country to specifically intercede on this issue, for this election. Visions and prophecies are zipping around cyberspace with dizzying speed. Email boxes are filling up with information as to which companies are pushing the homosexual agenda, the addresses of their CEOs, and their websites. Petitions come out every day on issues of concern to morality-based voters.

When November 3 dawns, the powers that be would do well to comb through the augurs of the exit polls, seeking to know what happened.

Because if the culture doesn't change, it's going to happen again.

CBS DOES IT AGAIN

2004-09-29T13:23:00.000-05:00

WHIPPING UP A FRENZY AGAINST AN IMAGINARY DRAFT

I rarely, if ever, watch mainstream network news. But, as it happens, I was erroneously told that our gubernatorial debate was going to be on the local CBS station last night immediately after the news (it was actually on the PBS station.) So I happened to catch the tail-end of the CBS Evening News (Currently) with Dan Rather last night.

The "What Does It Mean to You" segment featured a woman and her children ("and they are not alone," according to Richard Schlesinger) who are so stupid that they are basing their vote on the rumor that Bush might re-instate the draft if re-elected. Actually, that's my interpretation. CBS seemed to consider them alert, rather than stupid, but what do you expect from a network that can't tell the difference between a 2004 Word document and a 1971 memo?

This is another low blow from the network that's becoming synonymous with political dirty trickery. It is irresponsible, as CBS made no effort to disabuse this deluded woman and her kids of the notion that Bush has a secret plan. No one told her that the bills to re-instate the draft in Congress are not only going nowhere, but every one of them is sponsored by a Democrat. No one told her that the President, Vice President, and everyone associated with the Administration have stated categorically that they have NO intention of doing any such thing.

Last week, Don Rumsfeld was on the Hill, and that very question came to him. He dismissed the whole idea as nonsense. There is "NO" truth to that rumor. We have plenty of people already in the military, are happy with our retention and recruitment rates, and don't want an army full of people put in there by compulsion.

Of course, that would play right into the hands of the Democrats--an unwilling army is one more easily pulled out of an unpopular war. So maybe this mom and her kids had better vote for Bush.

Because a vote for Kerry or for Democratic domination in the Congress is far more likely to achieve a draft than a vote for Bush.

Look at it this way, President Bush says he's not interested in doing this, and if there's one thing we know about President Bush, it's that he means what he says, no matter what anybody else wants him to do. And as for Kerry?

Well, Senator Kerry has already said he won't re-institute the draft--but as we well know, he can ALWAYS change HIS mind.

WHAT IF IRAQ GOES BAD?

2004-09-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

JOHN KERRY'S POLITICKING ENDANGERS AMERICA'S FUTURE SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

So far, John Kerry has trashed the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and insulted the "coalition of the bribed"--that is, Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, the former Soviet satellite states, and the 30 or so others that are spilling their blood in Iraq on behalf of the Iraqi people. The other day, he even extended his disdain to the Iraqi Prime Minister himself.

Prime Minister Allawi came here not just to beg for help, but to personally convey his gratitude for all the help we've already been so far. He spoke to a joint session of Congress--which one might remember is the actual job site for both Kerry and Edwards--and was honorably and respectfully received. Some (not Democrats) were visibly moved by the Prime Minister's speech.

John Kerry was not present, nor was John Edwards. They were, instead, politicking, as usual. And it was in the form of politics, as usual. Despite the fact that he does not himself live in Iraq (one of the few places in the world where his wife has not bought any real estate), Kerry presumed to know what the reality on the ground really is. He accused the Prime Minister of living in the same "fantasyland" as the President. He essentially accused him of (you'll excuse the popular expression) "sugarcoating" the situation for political purposes.

How disgusting.

Even the president, during the joint press conference, deferred to the Prime Minister on questions of how things were going there. Don't ask me, he implied repeatedly. Ask him; he lives there. The press, however, continued to ignore the Prime Minister, as though their only interest in Iraq is what American politicians think of it. Given the opportunity to "ask the man who owns one," their journalistic instincts disappeared completely.

Imagine if you will, what will happen if John Kerry becomes president and the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate.

Already, he has given our actual allies no reason to continue working with us, because he considers them beneath his contempt (which reaches pretty low). He wants to trade them in for other "allies" who currently won't give us the time of day and didn't show any interest in deposing Saddam to begin with. Now that Iraq's a quagmire, he seems to argue, they will all jump in with us, if I just ask nicely enough.

But what if France (which has already publicly stated it won't come into the war no matter who is president) and Germany and Russia and the rest of the more valuable "allies" decide they don't want to play after all. And what if John Kerry's sister's unconscionable meddling in the Australian election actually helps result in a change in government in that nation? The prospective new leader promises to leave Iraq if he wins. If that happens, and other real allies start to fall away, what will keep Allawi and the Iraqis from falling apart?

If we don't support the new Iraqi government, who will? And if no one does, how can it survive? Suppose something happens to Allawi, or suppose he just fails to sustain the pro-American government? Suppose Iraq, oil and all, becomes a sworn and violent enemy of the US--only now with a new and improved terrorist training haven for your jihadist pleasure?

How is President Kerry going to keep the evildoers at bay when he has dismantled every potential bar to their ascendancy? The Islamofascists hate two sets of people: Americans and Jews. They hate others for helping us. They attack others to get them out of the way. If we have no will to win, no military morale, and no intention of doing the hard work to get a Democratic Iraq up and running, there are no other nations who have any incentive to do so.

Nitwits across Europe want their countries out of the war. So do the terrorists. And so does John Kerry.

But it won't be London picking up the pieces when the vicious psychotics nurtured and trained in an anti-US Iraq flies more planes into buildings. It won't be Eastern Europeans beheaded in a country they aren't fighting in. It won't be Belgians at risk when there's no one to stop the terrorists.

It will be us.

Can President Kerry come up with some kind of magical plan to protect us against a fully hostile, terroristic and independent Iraq? Will his buddies at the UN intervene to help us? Once he's fired John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge and revoked the Patriot Act and dismantled the homeland security system, what's he going to defend us with? As Zell Miller pointedly inquired, "Spitballs?"

THE POLITICS OF PETULANCE

2004-09-27T11:04:00.000-05:00

BUSH PLANS TO WIN, BUT THE KERRY KOOL-AID DRINKERS WON'T TAKE LOSING LYING DOWN

We already know that the Democrats have dispatched legions of lawyers to states where they expect the election to be close (most notably, Florida--though they may have gone home for this month to avoid drowning in the wrath of God). We already know that the Democrats didn't believe they lost last time, even after multiple counts of the votes and a thorough explanation of the electoral college system had been made available to them.

So I was wondering what will happen this time, if last time is any indication. It seems likely that a close election will be interpreted again as a "stolen" one. Any state in which the margin is less than five million votes (including Vermont and Rhode Island) will be held in abeyance while the lawyers hash it out. The absentee votes will be complicated and final results won't be available for a time, during which the Democrats will attempt to discover a new form of math that allows them to win without taking the majority of either the electoral college or the popular vote.

Of course, the race card will be flipped out again, with Democratic lawmakers (or are they? Their elections, too, might be in jeopardy) dragging out whatever minority, poor, elderly, handicapped, or freedom-challenged (incarcerated) would-be voters they can find or coach to claim their vote was interfered with. Jesse Jackson, Henry Waxman, Robert Wexler, and other troublemakers from the donkey side of the circus will hold rallies and act victimized. No doubt, there will be plenty of Alzheimer's patients who didn't get to vote for fear that they might be Democrats. Perhaps the party will sue because they aren't allowed to get people drunk and take them to the polls anymore. Who can know what they might do?

What I do know is that all of this is extremely dangerous. Democrats and their lawyer buddies might find the sue-till-you-drop game fun and exciting, but what it does is retard the transition from one administration to the next. It prevents people from getting into position to do the job of running--and protecting--this country.

Wouldn't it have been nice, and generous, and statesmanlike of Al Gore to eschew all that time-wasting lawyering in 2000? How come, being the Vice President and (one assumes) knowledgeable of the immensity of the threat that international terrorism posed to the US, Mr. Gore did not choose to go quietly and let the next president get settled in before something horrible happened? Why did Gore barely mention national security when vying to become our next president? Why did he act like the most terrible threat this nation faced was gas-guzzling SUVs and traffic jams?

He was THERE. He was in the White House. He should have known, as well as President Clinton now claims to have known, how dangerous Osama was. Was he so inconsequential as a Vice President that President Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Geroge Tenet didn't even consider him worthy of finding out about the mayhem going on against American interests all around the world? Doesn't that make you feel better about having Vice President Cheney on the team? We KNOW he knows what's going on. No question. He's on top of it.

But if Gore knew, his oath to preserve, protect and defend this nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic, took a backseat to his political ambition--nay, lust--to be president of the United States. Instead of protecting the system, instead of protecting the process, instead of protecting the nation, Gore chose to resist, rebuke, and recount.

Can we expect any less from Mr. Kerry and his team?

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH DAN RATHER

2004-09-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

HERE'S MY LARRY KING IMPRESSION

So now we know. Democrats fake both their documentaries AND their documents.

John Kerry likes to compare Iraq to Vietnam. We've just had our 1000th (watch that "th"; it might be forged) casualty. At this rate, to be Vietnam the war has to last more than 50 years.

Be sure to read frontpagemag's expose on Mrs. Kerry's charitable activities.

If I had to place a bet today (and I don't gamble), I would predict a landslide for President Bush (Kerry will probably keep Massachusetts, DC, and Vermont). Once the evangelical vote mobilizes in the last few weeks of the campaign, Kerry is toast. Burned toast.

Why hasn't anyone in the media noticed that the DVD of Passion of the Christ is the number one DVD on Amazon and sold 9 million copies in its first 2 weeks?

If Kerry has some kind of voodoo power to get "allies" (by the way, aren't "allies" supposed to be on our side?) to help us, why doesn't he volunteer his services and go talk to them now? Wouldn't that be more statesmanlike than just calling President Bush names?

Considering all that Prime Minister Allawi has been through and how tough he seems to be--not to mention the resources he has the potential to control in the Middle East as either friend or foe to the US--I would stop sniping at him if I were Kerry.

Where's John Edwards these days? It must be seminar season at the Ramada or something (am I the only one eerily reminded of a no-money-down real estate crook when he talks?)

Why does Teresa H. Kerry want to be First Lady of a nation full of "scumbags," "liars," and "idiots" who have already elected a president and vice-president who are "unpatriotic"? Is there some law in France that keeps Kerry off THEIR ticket?

The Democrats keep screeching about losing 1,000 men in a year in Iraq (over a year actually). But the Union Army lost that many in some single battles of the Civil War (and so did the Confederates). More are murdered in a year in New York or L.A. or Chicago. Four times that many innocent lives are taken in abortion EVERY DAY. And they don't have body armor to protect them, either.

Why should government health care cover people up to 300% of the poverty level, as Kerry wants to do? Shouldn't 300% of the poverty level be considered rich? How far above poverty do Democrats have to get before they think they can make it on their own?

Isn't it funny that pro-Bush "negative" ads (Swift Boat vets excepted) attack Senator Kerry's record, political statements, and issue positions, while anti-Bush "negative" ads call him and the vice-president criminals, liars, racists, and Nazis? When President Bush ran a soft-focus positive ad with a small image of 9/11, the Democrats screamed at that, too. I think they will only be happy when the only sound they hear from the GOP is the President intoning "I'm George Bush, and I approved this message" before a Kerry commercial.

Why are cultural issues that bring people to the polls in great number--like abortion, gay marriage, and gun control--considered "wedge" issues, while issues that excite the media and the Democrats--like health care, social security, and the environment--are "real" issues? When you break it down, "health care" and "social "security" are programs, not issues. "The environment" is a policy target, not an issue. An "issue" is a question of preference, on which there are two sides. No one is "against" the environment. No one "opposes" health care. If the Democrats were to honestly talk about issues, they would have to re-frame their topics. For example, to make "health care" an issue, they have to specify "government-paid" or "single-payer" health care. "Privatization" of social security is an issue.

I love watching Donald Rumsfeld testify before Senate committees. (Paraphrased) "Are things bad in 3 provinces? Sure, they are! Can they get better? Of course! Does negative rumor-mongering hurt the war effort? Of course! Senator, I disagree with the very premise of your question. The president is not a lying weasel bent on re-introducing the draft, and his mother did not wear army boots!"

Can we elect Allawi to something here? He seems to be a good, tough guy. He might be able to whip some of these blue states into shape.

Someone should search Democratic statements for the phrase "sugar coat" over the past few years prior to the forgery of the CBS documents. Then you'd have your culprit.

It amuses me when the Democrats claim that they are going to fight the war "smarter" when they don't want to fight the war at all. I get the feeling "smarter" means "on paper, from a think tank at Harvard." I have no idea what "more sensitive" could possibly have meant.

I noticed something the other day. Last weekend, C-SPAN was following Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, walking around surveying hurricane-related damage. Where was Trent Lott? Home in Mississippi, sending folks from there over to help Sessions and the people of Alabama. But where, I wondered, was North Carolina Senator John Edwards? Why, he was rampaging through battleground states like Ohio and Iowa! What a great example of constituent service. If I were a North Carolinian, I would be fed up with this self-serving politician, and I would want to know why he couldn’t bother to show up in his own storm-ravaged state to check on his own people. Some family values he's got.

Speaking of family values, have you noticed that after a brief roll-out of the notion that Republicans don't have a monopoly on values and that Democrat "issues" and "programs" ARE American values--you haven't heard word one on it again? I guess the family values thing didn't go over. So, since it was a gimmick to begin with, they've pitched it in the trash and (forgive the expression) moved on.

My, we live in interesting times.

HOW COME NO ONE'S NOTICED THE IRAQI WAR IS OVER?

2004-09-20T11:16:00.000-05:00

FIGHTING IN IRAQ IS NOT THE SAME AS FIGHTING WITH IRAQ

I'm sick to death of hearing Democrats say the President was wrong on Iraq. They complain that we're in a "quagmire," that the President said we'd be welcomed as liberators but now we're "occupiers," that the war was supposed to be a "cake walk," that there were no links to terrorism and no WMDs, and so on and so on and so on.

But the President was right and they're the ones who were wrong. Before this war, the Democrats predicted tens of thousands of casualties, a long and protracted war against an intractable regime, starvation and misery and strife for endless ages as we plundered and pillaged the people of Iraq (you know--just like Vietnam.) They were predicting this before the war began, and as soon as the war was over they started revising history to do their best to make it true.

But it's not.

Let's get one thing straight right now. The Iraqi war is OVER. No one seems to have noticed it, but the war with Iraq initially ended when Saddam fell, and fully and technically ended on June 28, when Iraq officially became an independent nation with which the United States is NOT at WAR.

A war is a condition of enmity between two governments. The government of Iraq is not only friendly to us, it is dependent on our help and goodwill. We are allies, even if not equals.

The war that took place and is now over was against an Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein. That war took very little time and resulted in the toppling of Saddam (and all his hideous statuary). While the Saddam regime was out and no other Iraqi government was yet in, the Coalition Provisional Government ran things. We were also not at war with the CPG. There is an immense difference between being attacked by rebel forces within a nation and being in a condition of war with the government of that nation.

When we entered Iraq and toppled the government, though the media and the left (and even many on the right) have convenient amnesia on the subject, we WERE welcomed as liberators. Have we so soon forgotten the joyous Iraqis beating statues with their shoes and shouting, "Thank you, Mister Bush!"? Have we no memory of the thousands being helped by the Coalition forces to seek their loved ones in mass graves and the remains of Saddam's horrible prisons? Just because they want us out now doesn't obliterate the fact that they welcomed us as liberators THEN.

I don't recall the President telling us that it was going to be finished in a few weeks. I don't remember being under the impression that resistance fighters would not continue their insurgency. And I do remember that the ravenous murderers that were trained by Saddam Hussein were said to be capable of anything against either Coalition forces or the Iraqi people.

Moreover, there is a direct connection between Iraq and terrorism. You may say, "Sure, NOW there is," but do you really think that if we had invaded France and toppled ITS government that it would suddenly fill up with psychotic kidnapping thugs? Iraq was a haven for terrorists--whether al Qaeda or not shouldn't make any difference. The idea that we shouldn't be in Iraq because our enemies are soulless and bloodthirsty is ridiculous. The fact that they kidnap innocents, behead people, blow up children, and generally (sorry John Kerry) outdo Genghis Khan in their brutality and madness--that very fact should argue FOR utterly destroying them.

That said, I'll concede that we have found no completed weapons of mass destruction. The combined intelligence of the United Nations, the United States, the British, the Russians, and everyone else (including, some reports indicate, Saddam himself) were utterly convincing in their assumption that Saddam had them. Many today still think he did, but hid them somewhere before we got there. We have found the precursors and the makings of such things. We have found the manuals for making them. We have found the computers containing plans and plots and schemes to make and use biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of various kinds.

What is NOT in question is that Saddam violated the UN resolutions demanding his transparent disarmament. There's a lot of hand-wringing about how we "didn't let the inspectors do their job." But the fact is that it was Saddam and his regime that was preventing the inspectors from doing their job. Remember: they were U.N. INSPECTORS, not DETECTIVES. They were not charged with sneaking around Iraq poking into hidey-holes and guessing at where WMDs might be hiding.

They were supposed to INSPECT the weapons Saddam had and his records of having destroyed the illegal ones. They were supposed to be INVITED to look at these things, not sent on wild goose chases, "minded" 24 hours a day, and controlled by the regime. Perhaps that is why they were so awful at the job. They didn't want to look, because they weren't supposed to have to. So they only looked where they were permitted to, and odds are good that Saddam and his minions just moved things around. How else can you explain their unwillingness to let the inspectors go wherever they wanted to? If they weren't hiding something, why was so much off-limits?

Just because the world's suspicions have so far come up empty doesn't mean Saddam didn't invite invasion. He didn't comply with the UN resolutions, he didn't cooperate for a decade, he didn't even attempt to fulfill the agreement he himself signed following Gulf War One. We had every legal and moral right to go in and force compliance.

And once we got there, we discovered just how battered and abused the Iraqi people really were. One of the problems we now have is that it's not easy to teach people self-sufficiency when they've been dependent on a tyrant all their lives. The Iraqi people knew they wanted freedom; they've just never tried it before, and it's a little tricky at first. Look at how many people STILL sign up to be policemen and national guardsmen and security forces--even when standing outside such an installation is a virtual ticket to eternity by way of car bomb.

We are at war with terrorists. Of that, there is no question. And we have no idea how long that war will go on.

Terrorists have no government. They have no negotiators. They have only ideological drive and murderous intent. Anyone can be a terrorist, while not everyone can be a citizen of whatever nation they happen to pick. The state of terrorism has no borders. It has no diplomats to deal with, no resources to trade, and no value to civilized nations. With this maddeningly stubborn enemy we are in a war for the survival of Western civilization.

But no matter what you hear, never forget: We are NOT at war with Iraq. We HAD a war with Iraq.

And we WON.

"EVERY UNION SOLDIER WAS DOWNED BY A DEMOCRAT"

2004-09-17T09:48:00.000-05:00

RACE, REALITY, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

"Every union soldier was downed by a Democrat" was a Republican slogan for many years after the Civil War ended. We should think about resurrecting it. It's a lot (as Bill O'Reilly would say) pithier than most of the nonsense that passes for political rhetoric these days ("Stronger at home, respected in the world." Huh?) It's short and to the point. And it's true.

As in any political season, as we run down to the wire, the race card flips out of the Democratic deck, and the left seems to think it can partner up with "Bush lied, kids died" to form a trump suit. Surely by now we are smarter than that.

Aren't we?

I can't say I was surprised by the news that the Media Fund is running blatantly race-baiting ads in minority-heavy communities, but I have to admit I frequently wonder just how much they can get away with.

It was bad enough when the Dems ran ads equating the GOP with church arsonists (it is little known, by the way, but the fact is that the bulk of that "epidemic" of church arsons was perpetrated by Satanists and other anti-Christian nutballs). But now the Democrats have come so close to taking off the mask of tolerance it seems likely that any day now they will let slip their real agenda.

After all, can a party that bungled a political dirty trick as badly as this one did with the "Bush was AWOL" story possibly sustain itself much longer? Any school child could have identified the font on those documents as computer-generated. Anyone with half a brain (or, as Mrs. Kerry thinks of them, resisters of Mr. Kerry's health proposals) could tell you that no one in their right mind would use the term "CYA" in writing a memo to himself to do something nefarious. It's like writing a list you leave in your car when you have it detailed that reads: "Buy gun. Buy rope. Kill Bob. Pick up dry cleaning."

The 60 Minutes documents are about as hard to refute as the Encyclopedia Brown villain who doesn't know that ancient coins don't have "B.C." stamped on them.

But here we have, on another track, another example of the Democrats' seemingly inexhaustible capacity for underestimating the intelligence of the American public. They seem especially certain of their ability to deceive minorities with feats of transparent misdirection. Consider these new ads. Apparently, they are targeted to black voters, and they assert that when President Bush talks about success in America, he's not talking about black Americans. They also claim that when Bush says we're turning a corner, "he's not talking about the corners in YOUR neighborhood."

The voiceover is a black man (although I remember Johnny Cochran teaching us that black voices aren't distinguishable from white ones). The ads urge minority voters to quit being "played" by the Republicans, who will allegedly be trying to prevent them from voting, and call the president a "rich white man." (John Kerry, one assumes, is only using "rich white man" as a clever disguise. He's really a small blonde black woman with a slight limp.)

By any means necessary, as they used to say.

The other day, John Kerry told an audience that the President has put the "no minorities allowed" sign on the White House door.

I wonder how Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Mel Martinez, Elaine Chao, and Rod Paige (among others) manage to go to work (excuse me, "slavery") in the morning.

It is amazing that a party that did so little to bring black talent to the forefront during its past administrations has the nerve to accuse the Republican Party of being anti-minority. Perhaps the Democrats have a little memory problem. Let me help.

It was not the Democratic party that was founded explicitly to abolish the scourge of slavery in these United States. It was, in fact, the Republican party. Moreover, the Democrats were the party that attempted to dissolve the Union in its desperate effort to retain the ungodly, inhuman, murderous practice of buying, selling, and owning human beings. Hundreds of thousands of good men, white and black, died in the fight to legally destroy the practice of slavery. The Democrats cared more for their tradition of exploitation than either the Constitution or the unity of the nation.

Guess we forgot that, huh?

And the one party that ran the South as a virtual prison for black people for a hundred extra, unnecessary tragic years was not the Republican party. It was the Democrats. It was the Southern Democratic party that terrorized and tortured black people (and Republicans) in the private fiefdoms that every Southern county became. The Republicans couldn't even get ballot access in the South, because the Democratic party was the only party there was.

Oh, yeah. Forgot that, too.

It's really amazing that the Democratic party has managed to create a mythology that claims that racist Southern Democrats left their party because they were so much more comfortable with the evil Republicans. Actually, the Republicans didn't become racists--Democrats became Republicans, hoping to have some chance of gaining elective office in the good-old-boy closed system of the South. Maybe some of them were racists, but it wasn't becoming Republicans that made them so. And after a while, most of them got over it.

The Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed if it weren't for Republicans. It wasn't the Republican party divided by racism--it was the Democrats. It wasn't Republicans who joined the Klan and the White Supremacist parties. And maybe we could recall for just a minute who's been running this misbegotten "war on poverty" that has only succeeded in driving men out of their families, children out of their homes, and hope out of the hearts of millions of fine black men and women. Who runs the system? Did Republicans invent the dependency system of welfare? Did Republicans encourage men and women to avoid marriage to get more state benefits? Do the Republicans perpetuate programs to make bureaucrats rich and poor people miserable?

No, that would be the Democrats again.

And why don't people like Al Sharpton ask some pointed questions of their oh-so-close white liberal friends in the Democratic party?

Like, why is it that the only black on the Supreme Court was appointed by a Republican? How come Democrats can't find it in their hearts to put black folk in real positions of power? How come the leaders of the Democratic ticket are as white as they come? Who's that white guy that runs the party? How come so few of the blacks in Congress have real leadership positions? Why are Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and Rod Paige Republicans? Why was the first black man to run for President in a party primary (Alan Keyes) a Republican? Why is it that an unknown governor from a miniscule state like Vermont can be touted as the Next Big Thing and supported by the Democratic party, while long-time loyalists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Maynard Ferguson and Andrew Young are considered lesser lights--and when Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun ran for office, even the party didn't think they had a chance?

And let's talk about policy. How come Democrat politicians are so adamant in their opposition to school vouchers when black parents are practically standing on top of their cars screaming for them? Don't they mean it when they say they care about educating children? Or do they really just mean they care about making sure the people who aren't educating children don't lose their jobs? What policies do the Democratic party pursue that actually help black people--or any people? Explain just how creating dependency makes people stronger.

Maybe the "leadership" of the black community should be giving the Democratic party some tough scrutiny these days. After faithfully delivering better than 90% of the vote for decades, what have they got? They got a 40% share of the Democratic convention. So what? The candidate still doesn't have a plan to do anything but throw money into programs that have never worked in the first place.

And you know what's really insulting?

Here we have a major 527 of a major party basically assuming that YOU, the "black voter" in "YOUR neighborhood" aren't going to be affected by the president's plan for "America." You, black voter, are not part of the America of privilege. We know this, because we are Democrats, and we realize that all blacks are poor, ignorant, and live in bad neighborhoods. In fact, we ASSUME the neighborhood is bad because YOU live in it.

Think about it.

The Democrats are assuming that black voters, by DEFINITION, are excluded from the president's economic policies, even though there is no way that money can see your color. Democrats assume that black people are neither Dr. Cosby nor Dr. Dre. In fact, they have castigated Dr. Cosby for criticizing black parents who aren't teaching their children manners. Democrats don't bother with manners, because they think they might offend someone by demanding standards of civility and decorum. They think this because they don't live in black neighborhoods. Even if they live next door to black people, they don't think of them as (whisper) "black."

This is going to be brutal, but it's a truth the Democrats and those who vote for them need to face.

The Democratic party has a completely unhealthy preoccupation with race because it's run by white liberals who can't let go of their own 300-year (or more) history of racism. To this day, they can't see people as people. To this very minute, they can't stop categorizing everyone by skin color.

Oh, they don't wear sheets and burn crosses (but they have been known to both burn and wear flags, though not simultaneously). They don't put "whites only" signs on their fountains. Instead, they condescend to blacks by treating them as children, by assuming that they can't achieve on their own, and by setting them on a separate track than they themselves would follow.

Look at the speeches at the Democratic convention. How did the "son of a mill worker" get where he is today? (Where he is today, though he didn't mention it, is in the highest reaches of wealth in America, a perch to which he flew by destroying OB-GYN doctors as a trial lawyer.) How did any of them achieve? Why, the same way Republicans did, of course. They worked hard, did the right things, lived right, and kept going. All politicians did--and those who didn't learn quickly to align themselves with those who did or to find a small moment of deprivation in their lives from which to biographically recover.

What they never do is use the welfare system as a stepping stone to success. What we never hear is how a Democrat politician learned from her social worker how to become self-sufficient and get off welfare and start her own business. What the Democrats never trot out are people who have risen from the ashes of poverty on the winds of welfare. Even if they could find such people, they wouldn't showcase them because Democrats actually agree with Republicans that welfare is not something to be proud of.

Republicans see a successful welfare program as one that ends because all of its clients move into a higher economic bracket. Democrats see a successful welfare program as one that lives on forever, growing larger and larger, encompassing more and more people. Republicans create programs to help people grow out of welfare. Democrats write grants for programs to go out and find more people to put in the system.

What may be most insulting of all is the way the Democratic party uses, rather than welcomes, black people. A person who is black who votes is, to Democrats, a "black voter." A politician who is black is a "black politician." A civil rights activist who is black is a "black leader." A Republican who is black is an "Uncle Tom."

Democrats define race not only by skin color, but also by levels of agreement with the positions of the Democratic party. Just like in slavery times, the left labels people "good" or "bad" blacks based on their willingness to take direction. There are, in Democrat terms, "our" blacks, and "their" blacks--"their" blacks are inauthentic because they have failed to develop the proper opinions for black people--which are easily discerned from a careful study of great black leaders like Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, and William Jefferson Clinton.

So now the Media Fund wants to hammer home the point that President Bush isn't black. That's hardly a surprise. But the fact is that John Kerry isn't either, so if we follow the multicultural line of logic, Kerry cannot truly represent black people either. Is there something coming down the line that we aren't yet aware of? Do the hopelessly white Kerry and Edwards plan to put Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely Braun in the cabinet? From the way the commercials run, it sounds more like they want us to think they will put 50-cent and Nelly in there.

Don't get played by the Republicans?

At least Republicans play fair.

SENATOR KERRY, DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?

2004-09-15T18:03:00.000-05:00

TEN QUESTIONS NOBODY'S GOING TO ASK KERRY AT THE DEBATES

1.) Senator Kerry, you said in July that you believe that "life begins at conception." Yet you have a near-perfect record on opposing legislation that would reduce the availability of abortion, even partial-birth abortion. Can you assure pro-choice voters that you have so little core conviction that you will protect their interests as president? Or can you assure pro-life voters that you aren't just a lying weasel and you might entertain some of the same kinds of abortion-reducing legislation president Bush has signed?

2.) Senator, can you cite one piece of legislation you have sponsored in the last 19 years, why you did, and what effect it has had on the lives of Americans?

3.) Senator Kerry, I'm a Vietnam veteran. Would you like to apologize to me for telling American legislators that I and my comrades in arms committed atrocities during the Vietnam War on "a daily basis?"

4.) Senator Kerry, you have said that any attack on the US would be met with a swift and sure response. Could you be more specific as to what form that response would likely take?

5.) Senator Kerry, do you now believe that the first Persian Gulf War was the right thing to do, and if so do you regret not voting to authorize that war?

6.) Senator, your team has criticized President Bush for disappearing during 3 months while he was in the Texas Air National Guard. You have said he did not fulfill his duty. You have been absent for 92% of the most recent session of the Senate, the job you now hold and one which you pledged to do for the people of Massachusetts. Would you please release all your travel records for the past Senate session so we can see what was so important that you had to miss all those votes?

7.) Senator Kerry, one of your surrogates, Max Cleland, recently referred to Bush and Cheney as "pure evil." Do you think that kind of language goes over the line, even in the heat of a political campaign? Also, various elements of your campaign have either hinted or outright said that the President compares unfavorably to Adolf Hitler. Do you think that is appropriate rhetoric to use about the commander in chief during a war?

8.) Just how many advisors are there on your campaign, and what do you need them for if you already know what you think?

9.) Senator Kerry, how much of the national security infrastructure will you keep on if you are elected president, and what safeguards would you employ to ensure that the security of the United States is not compromised by a radical change in administrations?

10.) Senator Kerry, would you autograph my copy of "Unfit for Command?"

THE BONESMAN AND HIS BOXES

2004-09-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

THE UNNECESSARY CRUELTY OF KERRY'S CAMPAIGN PROVES HE IS UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT

This weekend I saw the protest in Washington held by Vietnam veterans opposing John Kerry's candidacy, based on his actions after he left his Vietnam service to become a willing useful idiot for the North Vietnamese. Any American who saw this event should be on the warpath today. The speakers, many of whom had suppressed the horrible memories of Vietnam and its aftermath in their long and otherwise ordinary lives, related how Kerry's statements before the Congress and his "Winter Soldier evidence" made their lives more miserable--while they were in country, when they came back to this ungrateful country, and ever after, ever since.

Let me make this clear. My primary differences with John Kerry pre-exist my learning of the extent to which he manipulated his war record and treasonously gave the enemy what it wanted by way of confession. My cutpoint for Kerry comes in other character issues, policies, the people with whom he surrounds himself, and his generally untrustworthy, self-aggrandizing Brahmin nature. There is plenty of Kerry for me to reject him without resorting to the cold case files of Vietnam that have recently been opened on both sides (though not BY both sides.)

But perhaps the worst thing Kerry has done, perhaps the most egregiously selfish act of his entire life has been, paradoxically, to wrap himself in the American flag at the Democratic National Convention and declare himself to be "reporting for duty."

For those who have long harbored a visceral hatred of the Fonda-Kerry crowd--the kind of hatred one can only know after years of festering misery, frustration, and shame--the idea of a Kerry presidency is a slap in the face. It tells them that the "loving" flower children that spit on them and threw bags of feces on returning vets, even the disabled, were right all along. It signals to them the possibility that the country they bled for, the country their comrades-in-arms died for, the country they were tortured for, the country they have maintained a strained and desperate allegiance to, to this very day--that country has determined by election that their efforts were, in fact, in vain.

If John Kerry and his theory of American error is allowed to be taken as fact beyond the rarified halls of the academic, political, and media elite, it will be the last gutshot to a generation of fine young men who did their duty, were tortured for their loyalty, and came back to no reward. It will be the triumphant howl of the draft-dodger and the tenured radical shouting down the patriotic hymns of American exceptionalism that have, though battered, survived the ravages of time and the revisionists of history. It is a cruel and nasty form of piling on, one the radical element of the Democrat left cannot resist--but one that Kerry should have been a better man than to have participated in.

Regardless of the Swift Boat veterans' accusations, this was the wrong time to bring Vietnam back into the national consciousness. To bring up a still controversial and divisive war while we are in the middle of a war for the very survival of Western Civilization is utterly without precedent. It is foolish and it is dangerous.

For a supposedly principled politician to purposely drive a wedge between Americans at war by insisting on his vision of another war is an unconscionable use of his public access. So long as Vietnam remains the battleground of the American psyche, and so long as the Iraq War is used to stand in for Vietnam, this nation is at risk. If we cannot agree that the war on terror is, regardless of the past, a war of necessity, a war of survival, and a war we must win, we will remain paralyzed and polarized. The Democrats do not care enough for the safety of this nation in the 21st century to give up their quest to take home the trophy on Vietnam.

The veterans of Vietnam have gone on with their lives, doing their best to help make a nation, as their forebears of nearly every generation before has done. American gratitude to her fighting men (and now women) has always been a source of honor and dignity. America honors her war dead. And, until Kerry's beloved revolution came, she honored her returning soldiers, as well.

By this time, one would think the nation would have healed. But it never could, because the patriotism of the Vietnam veterans could never be spoken after the war. The forces of radical pacifism had, in their own minds, ended a war and brought down a president. They were ascendent. It was to be the Age of Aquarius, a peaceful, loving time. Everyone was supposed to move on with their lives.

Except, as is always the case with the left, they never bothered with the healing. While there were therapeutic circles to which one could turn to learn how to deal with Vietnam guilt, or to manage post-traumatic stress disorder, where were the reconciliations sought or apologies offered by those who had taunted, teased, and trashed the returning heroes in ways that would make Lord of the Flies look like a Bahai tea party? Where were the imprecations to the hippies and the radicals to apologize for their part in the vicious battle of hard-hats and long-hairs? Why is it the left is always forcing other people to apologize, even when they give as good as they get in the fight?

John Kerry, by claiming his right to the presidency rests on a single, painful, divisive moment of American history, has torn open this wound and now the maggots of the left are in full squirm. Make no mistake--whatever Kerry's motivation may have been, the far left loves this argument. They won't be satisfied until the last American flag has been burned and the last American soldier has been brought by the truth squads before their 21st century Red Guard (though today they've changed the uniform to blue, thanks to Comrade Rather). They won't rest until every child whose parent served "understands" who was "really" right. They can't, because they know that maintaining a lie requires constant vigilance. The truth will, if not artificially suppressed, denied, and re-written, rise to the surface and be found.

There are veterans of Vietnam who have never stopped hearing the shots in their heads and smelling the blood in their lonely late night. There are those who put their uniforms in a trunk somewhere and tried to forget and go on. When I was working on my dissertation, an analysis of the image of Vietnam veterans Hollywood gave us, I met many men whose anger and bitterness and rage at those who sent them was matched only by the same emotions for those who forced them into silence when they returned. The very idea of dragging these walking wounded back through one of the worst moments of their lives--with the intention of denigrating their choice to serve and remain loyal to the nation--is simply unthinkable. I cannot imagine the callousness that can deliberately, for partisan political gain, bring this horrific episode back to the stage.

John McCain, the still proud warrior who has risen to the top in politics and in the esteem of many, speaks little of his own experience as a prisoner of war in the so-called "Hanoi Hilton." When all of this came up, he refused to make comment on Kerry's Vietnam service. No one listened to him, but he wished out loud that we could leave this 35-year old episode to fade into history.

But Kerry didn't let that happen. Instead, he orchestrated (or allowed to be orchestrated) a convention whose front and center claim was that Kerry's fitness for office was to be judged not by his 20 years on the public payroll, but by his moment in the sun 35 years ago, when he was winning medals (and filming himself for posterity) in Vietnam. He allowed a book to be written that purported to tell the story of his stunning heroism. He claimed to be proud to have been a soldier.

But it could never have worked. Unless he is utterly self-absorbed, he must have known that there were veterans and their families who had never forgotten the misery his words had inflicted on them. He had to have known there were those whose first-hand knowledge would refute his claims. At the very least, he should have suspected that there might even be those out there willing to say anything, do anything to get revenge on him and keep him from being president.

Yet he came to Boston and stood in the teeth of those whose bodies had been tortured based on his testimony, those whose minds had been tortured by the image of themselves his self-serving words had painted, those whose children and grandchildren had never been able to get them to say a word about their experiences--because people like John Kerry had pre-empted the story. Once Kerry had won the American debate on Vietnam--quite literally so, on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, against the very John O'Neill that now spearheads Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--their voices would not be heard.

Having put in motion the cultural mechanism that would shut down any attempt the veterans could have made to tell their own stories, Kerry abandoned them, moving on to become a rather unremarkable, though well-connected, Senator. He could have stayed there. He could have even come to this very moment of his life, running for the presidency, without mentioning his Vietnam experience. He could have, like President Bush, included it only as an incidental part of the resume, one you might miss if you blinked during the convention. He could have challenged his fellow member of Yale's Skull and Bones on the basis of almost anything else you could imagine, any shared aspects of their lives and history. Or he could have just stuck to "the issues."

But he didn't.

He opened this box and showed us his medals. But they weren't really there, because he threw them away. Or maybe he didn't. Or maybe they were ribbons.

When his fellow Swift Boat officers replied to what they consider his egregious lies, Kerry tried to shut the box. He held it over his head like a banner, but he didn't want us to look in any more. Instead, he went looking for President Bush's box.

But President Bush hasn't made the contents of his box an issue in the campaign. Its contents aren't the basis of his qualification for office. They weren't last time, and now that he has a track record as president, they aren't this time, either.

And now other men are coming forward to show us what's in their boxes. Long sealed from public view, sources of shame and guilt, these boxes aren't shiny and nice like Kerry's--and most of them aren't inconsequential like Bush's.

Theirs are the boxes that no one wanted to look in. Their boxes are full of bones and fear, of frustrated ambitions, of limbs and loves lost, of trust betrayed, of dignity denied. Like zombies staggering through the graveyard, these men thrust their boxes forward at Kerry, demanding that he finally look, that he finally see. For in them are their ruined reputations, their mental anguish, the blood of comrades, and the spit of hippies.

And now Kerry doesn't want to look. He wants to talk about something else. He wants to run away to the safety of Social Security and health care and the economy. He wants the accusations to stop, the boxes to close, the men and women whose 30-plus years he stole to go away.

But this is the graveyard he made. Now let him lie in it.

SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE AND WALKING THE TALK

2004-09-10T15:13:00.000-05:00

WHY RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES LOVE BUSH AND WHY THEY'RE RIGHT

During the 2000 campaign, when George W. Bush was just a governor, I remember the moment I knew I would be voting for him.

It was in the middle of a primary debate, and the question to the panelists was "Who is your favorite political philosopher?" Without apology, yet with deep humility, the Texas governor replied, "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart."

My conservative antenna went way up. I knew Bush was considered a favorite, but I didn't know all that much about him. I had though that the clear religious candidate was Alan Keyes, who had no chance to win. But here--here was a man unafraid to start a storm of controversy by openly declaring his allegiance to the "hateful" philosophy the Democrats and the ACLU had spent 8 years trying to bludgeon us away from.

And it wasn’t just that he said it. It was the way he said it. The words he used. The humility. The simplicity. The sincerity.

My discernment went on high alert, and I knew that statement came from his heart. It certainly wasn't going to come from any political advisor worth his or her paycheck.

And so I started to watch George W. Bush. And, more importantly, to listen to him.

That phrase, "changed my heart" is a telling one. It's the phrase of the evangelical, because it carries the evangelical assumption that being born again (or "born from above," "of the Spirit," as the Bible says) is not something you inherit or fall into. It's a moment or an evolution of moments that you can identify as a definite change of your very being. A new birth.

It rings truer than "changed my life," because people can change their lives through diet and exercise, having children, or watching Oprah (so I'm told.) But your "heart" only changes in a religious conversion. He was talking in code, and he was talking to us. In the center of the secular political arena, he had let the secret out. It was like drawing a fish in the dust of the coliseum.

When Bush had to face the question of letting Karla Faye Tucker die for her crimes, Pat Robertson lobbied to save her. After committing the horrific crimes for which Texas had given her the death penalty, Tucker had found Christ and led Bible studies. I have no doubt that she was sincere. But Governor Bush, following his own discernment, used his authority and meted out the justice she had earned. And even she didn't disagree with him.

At that point, I knew he had instincts beyond the political, because if he wanted to pander to a religious base, he would have done the easy thing and given in to Pat's pleadings. Pat was wrong on Karla Faye, as he was wrong to assume that just because God prompted him to run for president meant he was to win. As he later admitted, that might not have been in the plan. God had a plan for Pat's candidacy, and it would be a powerful force in political history--but it was Pat's flesh that expected victory. God wanted obedience.

When George W. carried out his duty as the governor, he took a small political hit, but he preserved the authority of the office he held. It would not be the last time that George W. Bush would fight for a principle against the winds of political expediency. He has developed a history of making unpopular decisions and sticking with them. And that makes us love him more.

When President Bush started talking about compassionate conservatism, few understood the ramifications of this grand vision. If you were in the Christian conservative camp, however, and politically aware (admittedly not that big a group), you recognized the influence of Marvin Olasky (The Tragedy of American Compassion--click below to buy through amazon.) If you listened to him talk about prison reform--even if you weren't all that political--you recognized the outlines of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, which had introduced rehabilitative religion into the prison system.

Al Gore tried to talk about his religion, and it rang hollow from a pro-choice politico whose sole driving force seemed to be the need to become president. Bush wanted it, seemed to think he was called to it--but he didn't ravenously desire it, he didn't need it to complete himself. He was comfortable in his own skin, the way Christians are when they have faced down their demons and moved on.

His inauguration speech was a masterpiece of spiritual exhortation. He called us to follow our American destiny, linking that destiny to something huge and unknowable to which we are called by God. Time and again, he acted as our national prophet/priest, evoking Biblical imagery as we dealt with the explosion of the space shuttle, and, of course, the tragedies of 9/11. Over and over, he told the citizens who met him on the rope lines, when they told him they were praying for him, "That's the most important thing you can do for a president." He didn't just talk the talk. He walked the walk.

One of the reasons we religious red folk love this president so much is that he truly is a praying man. We know from interviews he's done with "our" press that President G.W. Bush is a man of faith and prayer. (By "our" press, I mean the Christian media, not the ordinary kind, in whom we have little--you'll excuse the expression--faith.) We know that he is genuine pals with Billy and Franklin Graham--not just because he's president, but way before that. We know that he prayed about starting the war, and, unlike Dan Rather and Michael Moore, we find it reassuring, not alarming.

We know it from the people he's surrounded himself with--Vice President Cheney, whose wife Lynn is well known to us; Andrew Card, whose wife is a minister; Karen Hughes, who is so traditional she left her job with her president and her friend to be in-house mom to her teenage son; and, of course, John Ashcroft. And we even know it from the testimony of other familiar faces of the religious red--Franklin Graham, James Robison, Pat Robertson, J.C. Watts, Charles Colson, Rick Santorum, Michael Reagan, and John Danforth, to name just a few.

We also know that he prays for the nation on a daily basis, that he is driven to his knees by the weight of the office, just like Lincoln. As a friend of mine likes to say, "I feel good knowing that not only am I praying for my president--he's praying for me, too."
This is a feeling we did not have while the former resident of the Oval Office was there. It's not that we didn't pray for President Clinton, too, though. We did, though I confess I suspect much less enthusiastically than we do for Bush 43, and some of our prayers were likely along the lines of the "blessing for the Czar" from Fiddler on the Roof--"May God bless and keep the Czar…far away from us!"

And we know it from the people who oppose him, from the unreasoning, visceral hatred spewed by Hollywood actors, pro-choice and pro-gay activists, and the ever-more-obviously liberal media. If you look at the box office, you'll soon discern that for a nation of 250 million people, it would seem that there is no statistical majority going even to one movie a year. The media may be obsessed with Hollywood's comings and goings, with the couplings and de-couplings of people paid to pretend to be someone else--but the heartland really isn't listening.

The religious red have had it up to here with Hollywood and its horrible language and values leading our children into the abyss. We are doing all we can to protect them from the culture of hip-hop and lyrical hatred of America, its institutions, and its president. We are, as my pastor says, "different." We don't wear the latest fashions. We don't read the hot new novel. We don't see the movie that brings in millions and glorifies adultery or homosexuality or child prostitution or drug addiction, no matter how many academy awards it gets nominated for. We see movies we have to buy to get. We rent our movies at Christian stores, where statistics aren't collected.

You wouldn't know it from the media, by the way, but Christian bookstores (which are not counted in the New York Times best seller calculation) make up one-third of all bookstores in the nation. And Christian books make more money than all but the most over-paid secular authors (like Bill Clinton.) Think what that means for Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, authors of the end-times Left Behind thrillers. Those books repeatedly went to the New York Times list, even excluding their number one position on the Christian best-seller list. That means they are even more popular than the New York Times can imagine. And the New York Times hates that.

We don't care who Whoopi Goldberg wants us to vote for, or whether Ben Affleck will be appearing with John Kerry. We won't be swayed--except those who weren't really planning to vote, who will now be driven by piety and citizenship to the polls--by the caterwauling of ridiculous singers trying to rock the vote out of the hands of Republicans. We don't take our life cues from them. We flee them.

We don't believe what the liberal elites say about our president. We note that most of the actors, activists, and singers that want to tell us how stupid the president is didn't themselves graduate from college--some didn't even make it out of high school. President Bush, on the other hand, went to Yale (like Kerry and Bill and Hillary) AND Harvard (like Jack Kennedy). He was also a fighter pilot, which you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know takes no small intelligence. (Imagine if strings were pulled to get an unqualified son of a Congressman into a position as dangerous as flying F-102 fighter jets--and he DIED. Is there anyone crazy enough--even the scandalously corrupt Ben Barnes--to do that? No, far more likely that Yalie Bush got into the Texas Air National Guard because he was good enough to do the job.)

So, the snippy elitist mantra that "Bush is a moron" doesn't play in Red country.

And we don’t get our news from the mainstream media. We get it from the Christian media. We get it from FoxNews. We get it from the Internet and from specialized publications. We don't trust information coming from an institution in which better than 80% of the reporters oppose our core beliefs.

So we don't care what happens on 60 Minutes, or how many Kitty Kellys might be out there waiting to hamstring the president. We heard early in the campaign of Dean backers' willingness to spread malicious rumors that Bush had taken part in an abortion. These rumors were expected to appear in pro-life chat rooms, a stealth attempt to deliberately spread falsehoods in cyberspace. The singer (I think he's a singer--I don't know much about modern music) Moby encouraged people to lie about the president if it would achieve the objective of defeating president Bush.

Now, we are told, the same smear-merchant gossip-monger that tried to claim our beloved President Reagan's wife had an affair with Frank Sinatra is trying to claim that our President used illegal drugs at Camp David while his dad was in the White House. And that he paid for some girl's abortion. Well, look at that. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

We don't buy it.

And even if we did, it wouldn't matter. Because the other thing about us that the president can count on is that we believe in redemption. As far as we are concerned, what George W. Bush did before that change of heart when he was forty is irrelevant. We know he was a drunk (we don't usually buy "alcoholism" as a "disease." We consider it a sinful behavior, as destructive and as changeable as any other). We know he was a party boy, an unserious person uncertain of what to do with his life. Did he do harder drugs? Maybe. But that's the old nature.

We pick up George W. Bush when he becomes a born-again Christian. After the DUIs, and after any of the behavior the left is trying to insinuate he engaged in. We take him for who he is today. Jesus changed him. He became a serious person, a good husband and father, a strong Christian and a sober and thoughtful man.

And even beyond that, we take him as president for who he became after the terrorist attacks of September 11. His character as president was built on that mound of rubble from which he thundered through that megaphone and forged with the twisted steel of the Twin Towers. That moment of murder and mayhem is more than an event; it has become a part of his character. It shapes his destiny, and he knows it.

And so do we.

We believe in President Bush because he believes in God, the people of America, the family, and freedom. And he sees how they all fit together in the plan God has chosen him to fulfill.

God has a plan for each of us, not just the ones in "big power" positions. Every person on earth has a purpose for being here, a fact made evident by the fact that the Almighty God, Creator of the universe, the most powerful entity there is, cared enough for each one's potential to create them in the first place. Part of George W. Bush's destiny has been to carry the mantle of the presidency for four years in obedience to God. Another part is to engage this electoral battle again.

We have seen George W. Bush in the dark night of the morning of September 11. We have seen him rise above the ashes in the bright future he leads us toward as we continue to recover from attack and drive to ground those who would attack again. He has laid out his credentials, and he awaits our decision.

President Bush has his destiny. You have yours. I have mine. Part of your destiny, and mine, is to determine, in consultation with God, whom we most trust to shepherd this good nation into the bright future or the dark night that the next four years may bring

And the final poll to be taken will have a universe of One. Our "right track/wrong track" scores will be 100% or nothing. We won't be able to deny our voting record. We won't be able to spin it.

And it won't just be about the next four years.

So, please. Vote. But if you're a Christian, vote like one. Don't vote based on selfish interests and economics. Sure, the President has a great economic plan, too. But that's not what God's looking at.

Vote for the ones who can't speak for themselves, and vote for the values God gave us. Vote for the children yet unborn this president pledges to protect. Vote for the marriages yet unmade that this president will fight to preserve. Vote for the children yet to be adopted that the President, to no fanfare, held a summit meeting to help. Vote for the young who will yet grow old, whose lives this president will protect from involuntary euthanasia.

And vote for the billions of people of the world who labor yet without hope under despots and dictators and strong-men and tyrants. Whether liberty spreads through their lands will have a grave impact on how safe we can be. They can continue under the yoke of the self-serving bureaucrats of the UN and the murderous maniacs that have hijacked their religion or be released through the international spread of freedom in what the President has pre-emptively declared "Liberty's Century."

Vote as if billions of lives and the hope of the future depended on it.

Because they do.

Further recommended reading:

THE HAWK THAT EATS ITS YOUNG

2004-09-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

KERRY'S POSITION ON ABORTION SHOULD DISTURB EVERYONE
(Reprinted from July)

Just before John Kerry thrilled Democrats and near-Democrats alike with his selection of the Dan Quayle of the left, he said something that few in the press bothered to examine closely.

The headline they missed should have read: "Kerry declares support for murder."
None of the mainstream media outlets chose to interpret the candidate's remarks this way, of course. By "this way" I mean the only possible way they could be interpreted. Since (not in case) you missed it, here is the verbatim statement made by the pro-choice Senator: "I oppose abortion personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."

Now. While all you pro-choicers who were busy that weekend wipe the Chardonnay off your copy of Bill Clinton's book, let me explain why this is such an enormously important component in Kerry's character map.

Kerry has repeatedly, consistently, unendingly, and loyally toed the Massachusetts liberal line on abortion. He votes for every expansion of the practice, and against every common sense measure that would help to make it (as the Democrats never tire of claiming they want it to be) "safe, legal, and rare." Moreover, like all pro-choice Catholic politicians, he has claimed to be "personally pro-life" while voting publicly "pro-choice."

The reason so many allegedly Catholic politicians can get away with this theological sleight of hand is that no one in their right mind, from the Pope to the President, believes for a minute that these people are "personally pro-life." Unless that phrase is meant to mean that the politician would find it rather distasteful to personally, with their own hands, crush the skull of an unborn baby in order to personally commit a partial-birth abortion, they are actually "personally" pro-choice. However, they continue to claim to be Catholic in order to have a chance of fooling some of those who fall on the red side of the electoral map into not considering them evil weasels.

None, though, has ever come out with the kind of blasphemy against the pro-choice movement that Kerry's statement represents. No pro-choice politician is EVER supposed to admit--er, claim--that life begins at conception. The feminist pro-abortion movement doesn't stand for that sort of thing. Anyone who could say such a thing is clearly beholden to a superstitious, unscientific mindset, a puppet of the Vatican, a right-wing fanatic, a kook.

Except this time.

This time they, like the media, are strangely silent about Kerry's newfound commitment to the fetus. He hasn't yet exhibited the "love affair" with it that Jocelyn Elder accused the pro-life movement of having (insert your favorite joke about the hugginess of the Kerry/Edwards team here), but he's opened the rhetorical door.

In fact, he's done more than that. He's painted himself into a corner with people on both sides of the question, as well as with people who can follow a simple argument.

This is what it boils down to. If you believe that "life begins at conception," then any interference with pregnancy after that point is definitionally an intentional termination of "life," which most people, red and blue alike, would agree pretty much adds up to murder.

So, John Kerry's position is that unborn children are alive, that he hates the fact that they are killed, but since the Supreme Court has allowed it to happen he will defend to the death a woman's right to choose to--well, to murder her child.

Huh?

Some think that perhaps Kerry is simply lying. But why would he say something so stupid? Why, if he doesn't believe that life begins at conception, would he say such a thing? And if he does believe it, what else can we make of his willingness to preserve "choice" but that he is simply not bothered by cold-blooded murder?
Of course, that would also explain how he can claim to think not only that the war in Iraq should not have been started (even though he gave the president permission by voting for it), but ALSO that we should not now leave. Apparently, he is bothered by the loss of life in Iraq to pursue what he considers a phony war, but not so much so that he is willing to make it stop.

Kerry is, quite simply, a man without a conscience. Out of his own mouth we have the proof. A man of conscience does not define murder and then advocate it. Instead, as president Bush has done, he examines his conscience and his faith with great care, finds the right position, and stays with it.

President Bush thought through his position on stem cell research. It is clear-eyed and clear-headed. Despite the opposition of conservative icon Nancy Reagan and her not-so-beloved of the right son, Ron, President Bush has no intention of changing his policy. The Congressmen can beg him, Orrin Hatch can side with the embryo-killers, and famous sick celebrities can whine all they like, but President Bush is a man of his word. The president's position of conscience dictates his position on policy, and dependably so.

John Kerry, on the other hand, has hidden his conscience from us lo these many years, only revealing now that his treatment of fetal life is even more horrific and self-serving than we thought.

When we knew only of John Kerry that he was "Catholic" and that he was "pro-choice," we could rest fairly easily, understanding him to be merely a "lapsed" Catholic who deep down worshipped at the altar of Planned Parenthood. But now we know something horrible about him, and the notion that this happy murderer might someday be president should scare us to death.

To be completely inflammatory about it, even Hitler didn't believe he was murdering human beings when he gassed the Jews. He thought of the Jews as sub-human. Even the most strident pro-lifer has a hard time believing that pro-choicers believe, as they do, that abortion is murder. They cannot understand how that simple fact eludes their opponents, but they do give them the benefit of the doubt and accept their claim to see only "tissue" when they look at the ultrasound.

But here we have, for the very first time, a self-confessed sociopath, a man who understands the words of morality but cannot internalize them. It is interesting to note this in light of his past behavior (you did know he was in Vietnam, didn't you? I think everyone has gotten that memo by now).

John Kerry, as we have all been told until it makes us want to puke, was a "war hero" in Vietnam. He spent four whole months there, during which time he later claimed to have witnessed and participated in "atrocities." When he returned to the safety of the states to pursue his political ambition, he viciously turned on his fellow soldiers, accusing them of all manner of horrific treatment of their Vietnamese opponents. Though he confessed incessantly on Capitol Hill, he never apparently bothered to inform anyone who might have been able to put a stop to it in Vietnam. Now we know why.

We can now see that it is likely that Kerry's behavior was fully sociopathic, entirely to serve his political ambition. John Kerry had no reaction to the atrocities he saw while in country; he saved his reaction for the cameras and the eager ears of politicians and media vultures seeking clubs with which to beat President Nixon. They got what they wanted, and so did he--a hawk outfit he could put on and take off at will.

For most of his political life, it's been hanging there in the closet, waiting for the right time, waiting until it was time to go to the costume party in Boston. When the Democratic National Convention came, the suit was freshly pressed, the medals were lined up nicely (forget he once threw them away; they're back now), and Kerry's metaphorical shoes were shined. And the Senator put on his suit and went to his Party.

When Kerry came back to Boston he was wearing the hawk suit, and he was claiming to be a patriot. Any discrepancies between his voting record and his purported support for the troops were, of course, decried as "questioning" his "patriotism."

But now we have a more serious charge on which to hang the Senator. We need not question his "patriotism" or try to have him done up for treason. No, this most damning statement of his own making provides a gap between fantasy and reality that will drive the Democrats screaming to the fax machines, if anyone has the guts to bring it up in debate.

I'll spare the news media the work of designing the question. Here it is: "Senator Kerry, you said this summer that you believe that life begins at conception. If that is the case, can you reassure pro-choice Americans that you don't believe it enough to actually prevent any murders by abortion? And can you assure pro-life voters that you believe it enough to make an effort to reduce the number of abortions that take place in this country, perhaps by following the President's lead in banning partial-birth abortion, encouraging adoption by federal policy, or reducing funding to Planned Parenthood International?"

"Senator?"

That sound you hear is Kerry's four million paid and unpaid advisors wrackng their brains to make this position comprehensible to human beings.

For when someone has the nerve to point out the difference between Kerry's "life begins at conception" core belief and his incredible willingness to vote for policies that threaten, shorten, and terminate that life, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Because now we are questioning his humanity.

CAN I GET A WITNESS?

2004-09-07T16:07:00.000-05:00

WHY I DON'T ASSUME THE SWIFTEES ARE LYING

I understand that during his (apparently Constitutionally permitted) Kerry campaign speech in Riverside church recently, former President Clinton opined that the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth should be ashamed of themselves. We are not supposed to bear, the former president and admitted serial liar reminded us, "false witness." I have also heard this mantra from various purveyors of Democratic talking points. It is apparently designed to silence religious Bush supporters, by tarring them with a brush of hypocrisy.

But it doesn't work.

The assumption this operates on is that the Swiftees are "bearing false witness." But bearing false witness--usually termed "lying" requires that one state something is true that one knows to be false. (This is why "Bush lied, kids died" is a canard. Unless you want to list all the people, including Senator Kerry, who "lied" by believing and disseminating and acting on the information that Saddam probably had WMDs, you can't claim Bush "lied.") Yet there is no reason to believe this to be the case, unless you are predisposed to believe that Senator Kerry is presumptively NOT lying.

True, we are not to bear false witness. But a witness is someone who testifies to something they saw or heard or have first-hand knowledge of. A false witness invents those things. While Kerry denies the claims of the Swiftees, it is unclear to me why my adhesion to the 10 Commandments requires me to accept Kerry's veracity over theirs. (And coming from Clinton, who accused his accusers of lying about him while he was lying himself the entire time, it is even more murky.)

The Bible does say to let everything be determined by two or three witnesses. But here we have a dozen or so on one side and at least 150 on the other. What are we to do with that? If they are telling the truth, then Kerry is lying, and he is the one bearing false witness, and he did it first. Therefore, my loyalty belongs on the side of those who expose the truth in the service of justice and to protect America from a bad and uninformed choice.

Moreover, if they are lying--which I have no way of knowing, not having been there--their evidence should be answerable, and it is the duty of Kerry (because he is asking us to make him president on the basis of his valor as a soldier) to answer them. Instead, he has behaved as a guilty man, accusing the accusers and refusing to engage the issue.

My duty as a Christian and a voter is to vote for the man I believe will be the best and most God-honoring president for this nation. In the process of doing this, I must evaluate the character, statements, and policies of both men. When accusations come, I should indeed note the character of the accusers, but not to the exclusion of the content. Thus, I look at the Swift Boat veterans and I see noble men who don't particularly like John Kerry. And I see a lot more of them than I see of veterans in the Kerry camp.

I look at those accusing President Bush of various nefarious intents, and I see Michael Moore, a self-aggrandizing propagandist driven by an unreasoning hatred not only of the President but of America itself (if you don't believe me go look up the things he says in other countries.)

More importantly, I weigh the character of each man in consideration of each accusation. President Bush's character is well-established. He is a godly man, who reads The Word and Oswald Chambers daily. He is a leader concerned with the well being of the nation, a man whose destiny was forged in the twisted steel of the Twin Towers, who swore that such carnage would never again take place on American soil. And he has held to his word, chasing the terrorists across the globe and employing our military to kill and capture them. He has no intention of ending the war against terrorism while the terrorist philosophy still holds a death grip on billions of the world's people. And he has no intention of signing a treaty with evil and calling it a day.

When I look at Senator Kerry, I see a man with no convictions. He claims to be a Catholic, yet he disagrees with the Church on nearly every issue. As I have written here before, his confusing position on abortion paints him as a sociopath. You can't believe something is murder and still, in good conscience, vote for its unending continuance. On this issue he leaves us two choices: he is lying or he is evil. His positions have changed with the political winds--not, as some would claim, merely evolving as he observes the nuances of the situation. Instead, he has parroted members of his party (like Howard Dean) when their ideas were popular and contradicted them (as when he tries to decorate himself with "conservative values") when it became convenient to him.

The idea that the Swift Boat Veterans were an invention of the Bush Administration is ridiculous. The men who now want to stop him from being president long ago wanted to stop him from testifying in Congress. Especially the ones who were being tortured by North Vietnamese sadists quoting his very words to them to prove America was a wicked country destined to lose against the Communists.

When I was in college, I did my master's thesis on the image of the Vietnam War and its veterans that Hollywood gave us. It was not a pretty picture. Until Rambo arrived, the Vietnam veteran was depicted as a crazed baby-killer, conflicted by his continuing thirst for war and bitter at his nation. That was the image John Kerry fed us all. And the men who fought the war did not deserve the disdain, cruelty, and venom that was hurled at them when they returned--largely as a result of Kerry's claims (which, by the way, were later demonstrated to have involved at least some totally fabricated stories.) The anti-war hippies wanted to "bring the boys home," but when they got them home, the flower children met them at the airport with protest signs and spittle.

The claims of the Swift Boat veterans are logical, considering the character of John Kerry. The evidence is compelling. I do not believe they would have sought this publicity had they not felt forced to by what they saw as the danger of Kerry becoming President without their having lifted a finger to stop it. I cannot say they bear false witness, and I cannot judge their claims. The best I can do is accept their right to make those claims, and weigh them against what I can and do know.

Are hundreds of decorated veterans to be assumed liars because they accuse one? Are their medals and ribbons (which they kept and honored, instead of throwing them over the White House wall) less deserving of respect than Kerry's merely because he is a Senator who wants now to be president?

During the Vietnam war, the President spent 5 years in the National Guard and Kerry spent four and a half months in Vietnam. The president flew planes, Kerry piloted a boat. Both left the service for political activity. Both served. Both should be proud of their service. The President has done the right thing. He deplored all the 527 ads and has moved to pressure the FEC to close the loophole that they slithered through in the McCain-Feingold legislation. He honors Senator Kerry's service. He does not ask the question.

Kerry has done the opposite. He has continued to question the president's service, let his surrogates call him a "draft-dodger" (note to Democrats: "serving" is not "dodging."), and trashed the Vice President for taking family deferments. For those who don't know (which seems to be most of those backing the Senator at his rallies), the law allowed various types of deferments during different periods of the war. They were based on government assumptions about the value of those activities the deferments applied to. Being newly married could earn you one. Having a small child counted, too. The idea was that we didn't want to draft people into a situation that unfairly burdened their family. Today, lest we forget, the Democrats complain when mothers and fathers are deployed at the same time, even though they volunteered for the armed forces. You would think that Democrats would appreciate the "family leave" concept applied to the draft. Guess not.

The Vietnam era is not yet over. It will not be over, no matter how many other wars we fight and win, until the last veteran and the last anti-war protestor are lying in their graves. As long as anti-war protestors like Senator Kerry try to perpetuate their vision of the war and try to stand on their service to justify their thirst for power, people like John O'Neill will try to stop them.

My faith tells me that God invented government. Attacking a nation at war from the inside is simply wrong. Are the Swiftees bearing false witness? Maybe. But even if they are, they are not running for office. It is the Senator who asks for the mantle of leadership, and it is the Senator who must be judged by the voters.

AN OLD (AND WISE) SOLUTION TO OUR FUTURE PROBLEMS

2004-09-07T14:38:00.000-05:00

PRIVATE INITIATIVE AND HEALTH CARE

Last week, the President laid out a vision for a more self-reliant society. It was a bold undertaking, and it is the logical extension of the trajectory the American nation began on, before it got derailed by programs promoting dependency and entitlement.

The American Republic did not come to be because the colonies coddled their members from cradle to grave. The signers of the Declaration declared themselves independent; they didn't beg England to take better care of them, and they didn’t write a Constitution for a welfare state. The settlers of the West would never have made it to Oregon with the sense of entitlement modern Americans have now. People didn't expect their employers to give them generous pensions to retire--when the job ended, the pay ended, and the worker moved on. He didn't whine that the railroads or the tavern owners or the landowners didn't have any loyalty to him. He just plain left.

But by the end of the 20th century, we had come to the point where a disgruntled employee can sue his company for not firing him for a good enough reason. The idea we have today is that your employer somehow owes you a living--and vacations, paid holidays, a 401K, and unending loyalty. It doesn't matter how little loyalty most workers show to their employers these days. They still expect to be treated better than our grandparents were after 40 years of hard work and consistent service. Today a man who is fired for being chronically late for work claims disability because he has a psychological difficulty with punctuality.

Employers today--especially small businesses, where 70% of the new jobs come from--cannot afford the expectations of their workers. The Democrats' answer to job problems is to raise taxes on those businesses to pay for entitlement health care. What they don't seem to get is that part of why hiring slows down is that it costs a fortune to train a new employee and to set up the unemployment account for them--and then a fair number of them quit and move on. In an uncertain economy, such as post-9/11, employers would rather overwork the employees they have (hence the productivity numbers going through the roof) or hire temporary workers (letting the agency take the initial employee expense) than take a chance on hiring new ones.

What's more, when employers do hire, they don't want to start benefiting workers until they are sure those workers are going to stay. Thus, the availability of health care to workers varies with the time the worker is on the job. 45 million people don't have health care. Why not? No one ever seems to ask that question.

Part of it is because some people don't have full-time jobs--people who used to be considered stay-at-home moms and didn't appear in the "no health care" category because they were covered by a family plan. Those people today are considered without care because they are part-time workers, not covered by their own employer. Part of it is because people don't stay in jobs long enough to get health care. I know several people who have taken and quit at least 3 jobs in the past year, by their own choice. Each time, their employer prepares the mechanisms to put them on the insurance and then loses their entire investment in the employee.

Another, hopeful, factor is the surge of self-employment. Getting health care while self-employed is, to most people, complicated and difficult to understand. Starting a business is difficult enough without having to mess with that for one's self. Employees are covered, but often the boss is not. Millions of people have left the industrial work force for entrepreneurial self-employment--everything from making bumper stickers to selling Mary Kay and Pampered Chef--and they don't necessarily see the need for health coverage, especially if they have the option to be covered through a spouse. Then, too, even when spousal coverage is possible, most plans can only be entered or changed in certain months. If you find after signing up for it that your health care is inadequate to your needs, it is not unusual to have to wait up to a year to make a change in it (thus, many Americans are, in the Democrats' parlance, "under-insured.")

Then, too, there is the divorce question. Single moms often find themselves in years-long protracted battles over who is going to carry the health care coverage. Not infrequently, children are supposed to be covered by absent fathers, who spitefully quit coverage-carrying jobs to escape easing the burden on an ex-spouse (women do this, too; I don't mean to point the fingers just at fathers. Though it's clearly fathers who make up the bulk of those called "deadbeats."). Thus, we have another factor that complicates the matter and helps move those numbers higher.

Finally, while the Kerry camp trumpets the "45 million uninsured," he ought to address why it is that 40 million of them were already in that position by the end of the Clinton administration. Considering how many people change jobs, move from one job to another voluntarily, or even occasionally choose not to have health care because they don't want the premiums taken out of their check, it seems to me that the increase is modest, compared to what it might have been after 9/11.

As for the cost of health care, it is unlikely that Kerry and his doctor-suing buddy Edwards are going to be able to bring it down. Not while insurance plans cover drugs for male impotence, mild depression, seasonal affect disorder, allergies of various kinds, and the like. These maladies that we are bombarded with advertising about now didn't even exist a few years ago. People got allergies, they sneezed. People got depressed at the holidays, they ate ice cream and got over it. Don't even ask what men did when they had a "dysfunction." Now we are in such a therapeutic and over-medicated society that it is amazing that insurance companies can even afford to exist.

The president wants us to insure ourselves, with group plans that move with us from job to job. We wouldn’t be dependent on keeping the job we have to be insured. He wants us to be able to be the nomadic adventurers of the 21st century that our forebears set us up to be. Generation X employees and those who have come after already jump jobs much faster than their fathers or grandfathers did. They don't like to be tethered to a job, preferring projects to lifelong jobs--especially those who work in the IT field (for those unfamiliar with the hip lingo of the computer world, "IT" stands for "information technology," or what most of us think of as "computers.")

The President has read the culture exactly right. His plan is perfect for IT specialists, self-employed entrepreneurs, internet businesses, home sales, and the vast majority of new employment that has been generated over the past few decades. During those same years, we have bled manufacturing jobs profusely, because manufacturing is increasingly automated, requiring either little work (which employers are loathe to pay union wages for) or increasingly complicated (requiring technology degrees that the union laborers usually don’t have.)

It might sound good on the Democratic stump, but a last-ditch effort to save the manufacturing sector is a fool's errand. Pat Buchanan may shriek, but outsourcing manufacturing jobs is the smartest move for the American economy. We have come to a point where Americans should be doing "thinking" jobs whenever possible, importing goods at cheap prices and providing highly valuable and technical services. Making furniture is no more salvageable in this day and age than small farms are--or the horse-drawn carriage was when the car came in.

President Bush realizes that many, especially in the manufacturing sector, aren't ready for that yet--largely because of the mess the Democrats have made of the educational system. But he believes that we can change that, too. That's what the job training is about. That's what the No Child Left Behind standards are about. His vision is to train Americans to live in the 21st century, not the 20th. The Democrats can't see beyond their petty special interests. The unions are terrified of becoming extinct. In an independent work force, each employee owns his own job. He negotiates his own contract. He doesn't need a union, and he doesn’t need lawyers to sue employers for jobs he has the luxury to leave.

The Democrats want to shout down the president's plan for his second term. They have to. If he wins, they lose more than an election; they lose their very reason for being.

A VISION FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

2004-09-07T14:33:00.000-05:00

THE BUSH CAMPAIGN ROLLS OUT A STRATEGY FOR NOW AND THE DISTANT FUTURE

With a deftness that even amazed his biggest fans (notably, me), the President in his stirring nomination acceptance speech managed to neatly package the two parties into the party of the 1900s (the Democrats) and the party of the Twenty-First Century. If that message can get out, and if people really understand the consequences of the vision the president is pursuing, only Michael Moore and the people who saw his movie will be voting for Kerry and company.

In case you missed it, while Kerry and Edwards whine about "good jobs" and "single payer healthcare" and "social security," and the taxing the rich, the president has actually thought through a strategy that transforms our vital institutions into workable engines for the future. Everyone knows that when Democrats say "good jobs" they mean union jobs. And everyone also knows that union jobs are factory jobs and other types of work in which you take your orders from someone else. Just after World War II, big labor made a strategic decision to give up shop-floor control (which, ironically, plays as both socialism and Bush's owner-oriented capitalism!) for, essentially, filthy lucre.

Instead of moving up from the mailroom to the Boardroom--the quintessential American dream--"good jobs" or "union jobs" offer only a lifelong tether to various forms of wage slavery. This really should play well in the Marxist community, but maybe not this year. The fact is that President Bush, while remaining as capitalist as they come, has distilled what little is right about Marx (worker ownership in preference to alienation) and mixed it with Adam Smith (less government, more personal responsibility) and come up with something that, by gum, just might work.

President Bush, while protecting us from nefarious outsiders, has evidently also been thinking about the economy with that MBA of his. Realizing that Social Security, an antiquated concept (you should excuse the expression), cannot be fixed in its current form, as the number of people who will soon be drawing on it far outweighs the number of people who will be able to pay into it for their own future, the President has devised a strategy for weaning the nation from its dependency.

Instead of dumping money into an imaginary "trust fund" that the Congress constantly raids, current social security recipients will receive what they've been promised, but those coming up behind them--the farther behind the longer they will be in the new system--are asked to save for retirement on their own, with the government's help. By the time our18-year olds reach retirement age (which will probably have moved upward by a decade at that point), their retirement will be paid for not by the government, but by their own wise choices. And that's what Republicans are all about--encouraging people to make wise choices.

When he looks at the tax code, President Bush sees a giant, tangled mess that was designed in a different century, a different world. In the new America, people will pay taxes in a more simplified system, and business owners won't need expensive tax lawyers to keep them out of jail. This is a move in the direction of Republican utopianism. Republicans love work and hate taxes. Democrats hate work and love taxes.

That may sound unfair, but it's true. The Democratic idea of making your life better isn't helping you work harder or smarter--it's giving you more money for working less. Fundamentally, Democrats dislike work. They may sing hymns to the factories, but they never seem to think of those "good jobs" as something to enjoy. Instead, they consider work to be something in which those who labor deserve to earn more than those who invest, even though that puts the workers in a position to be careless about all but the most dire of company difficulties. This leads to a tendency to want to take profits away from investors, in order to provide more cash, compensation, benefits, and other goodies to workers.

The Republican vision of work is that God set us to labor 6 days and rest one, and if they could, they would do away with taxes altogether. (Of course, neither the no-work vision or the no-tax concept could actually work; that's why they're utopian.) Republicans enjoy vacations, but they are more likely to feel guilty about what they have not earned. They resent the government redistributing income to people who have not earned it. And they see those "good jobs" that the Democrats love to hype so much as mere stepping stones to eventual up-the-ladder success. A real Republican takes a job in a factory or as a waitress in order to move on to a better job, not the same job at better pay. A Democrat expects to be paid more every year for doing the same work--because that's what the party and the union bosses have told him is "fair."

But if you examine those assumptions, what's fair about them? If there is no rise in the cost of living, if there is no inflation, if there are many other people who would like to do those jobs better than the person who works only to get more money--why should they get a raise? Why should the entrepreneur be punished by not being able to reinvest in capital improvement just because the worker who isn't any more productive expects to be paid more? Republicans recognize that you improve your situation by either becoming better at what you do (and, therefore, more valuable), moving up into a better-compensated position, or going somewhere that pays better in the first place.

Democrats don't get that.

But the economy actually works better with more people working productively and moving up in the system. The lower-skilled jobs are filled by entry-level workers, those workers move into better jobs; eventually many of them start their own businesses. In this country, millions of people have started their own businesses in the past year. It is an astonishing trend, one the unemployment statistics utterly fail to reflect. And President Bush wants to see it continue.

A nation that hands out money for no work is a nation that teaches laziness and dependency--and reaps the whirlwind of selfishness and poverty. A nation that offers a hand up and out of poverty is a nation of compassionate conservatism--that produces a harvest of proud citizens invested in the continuing good health of the nation, able to see beyond our own shores to those who haven't yet come to that vision.

Rather than stick to perfecting our own Jerusalem, George W. Bush sees a nation in the future that can have the luxury of sharing its own wealth of knowledge and resources, as well as the track record (with a foundation laid by the last 200 years Ahnold reminded us of) to attract the world to the American way of life. By shoring up our own financial stability, by re-teaching our own citizens to stand on their own two feet without expecting the government to do anything more than get out of their way, we strengthen the whole of the nation. And by building a stronger nation, we remain the force that stabilizes the world.

MISSING THE (SWIFT) BOAT

2004-09-03T17:18:00.000-05:00

WHY KERRY'S FLAILING AT CHENEY WON'T WASH

Before the confetti had even been swept from the floor of Madison Square Garden after President Bush's acceptance speech, John Kerry was ranting in Ohio at how terrible the GOP convention had been.

This is a very unusual--not to mention petty--thing to do following one's opponent's convention. The President gave the Democrats their good night's rest before lighting into them on the campaign trail. It's rather cheap and unseemly to be unable to control one's self enough to refrain from dragging your loyal followers out in the middle of the night to provide backdrop. What's more, Kerry's deranged focus tells us something very important about where this party is headed and what (if anything) the Senator must be thinking.

Kerry caterwauls that his "patriotism" has been questioned yet again, a charge that reappears every time someone has the audacity to recite his voting record or to quote his words from 1971 when his "patriotism" was the last of his concerns. He throws the gauntlet down before, of all people, Dick Cheney, sniffing that he questions whether five Vietnam deferments makes one more fit for office than his own clutter of medals.

The answer, of course, is no. Of course it doesn't.

But the problem is that winning medals 30-plus years ago during a four and a half month period doesn't make Kerry fit for the office, either.

What no one seems to get in this ridiculous one-upmanship is that military service is neither a requirement nor a qualification to be president of the United States. Franklin Roosevelt, obviously, didn't serve. Adolf Hitler did. Would anyone argue that Hitler's stint as a corporal during World War One (a wounded hero, at that) made him an appropriate leader for the German people? Or that Roosevelt should have bowed out for someone with more experience, once the war was on?

Moreover, you can't have it both ways. First, the Moore contingent of the Democrats complains that Cheney is the real power behind the throne, that he squirrels away in his secret location, running both the war and the government, while the president sits stupidly in an elementary classroom, reading a book about a goat. He is also the evil genius behind the global conglomerate Halliburton, pulling strings to benefit his boys while plotting to perpetrate a profitable war. Yet, at the same time, according to Kerry, he is unfit to lead (never mind that the head-to-head here is supposed to be Edwards--suggesting that Edwards might be ready for the commander-in-chief's chair is laughable).

If he has already been running the military, the war, and the government, why should anyone be worried that Cheney hasn't put in the requisite four months and twelve days of photo ops, atrocities, secret trips to Cambodia, and injuries to qualify him for the presidency?

Kerry made his military record front and center, virtually asserting no other qualifications. This is his resume. He is asking for the job based on his very short experience in the previous century, in a position far beneath that of commander in chief. Moreover, after leaving that position, he smeared his former co-workers and his bosses, and spent the next 20 years trying to undermine the industry he now asks to be made the leader of.

Substitute "box boy" for "Swift Boat commander" (sorry, John O'Neill; your experience doesn't qualify you, either.) Substitute "CEO" for "Commander-in-chief." If he wanted a top job in industry, he would have to come up with better and more recent credentials. Cheney has proven his mettle in the arena, as has Bush. Bush has served in the position Kerry aspires to gain with his non-experience. Cheney has apprenticed that position, while Edwards was busy suing the medical insurance industry into bankruptcy and driving doctors out of their practices.

On paper, in the business world, there would be no contest.

Unfortunately, we don't vote on paper (well, not after the 2000 elections, at any rate). We vote in our heads, where logic and emotion get all confused with facts and lies. Whether the Kerry camp can rein their man in and get him to stop looking like a girlie man every time someone looks at him cross-eyed remains to be seen.

As the President said, in Texas, they call that swagger "walking." You know who George Bush is as soon as you see him. He says what he thinks, and he doesn't always care what others think. That drives the liberals nuts because they desperately want everyone on the planet to care what they think. It's what gives comfort and sustenance to Hollywood celebrities, the unshakeable conviction that everyone--even the president of the United States--is breathlessly waiting to find out what they think. President Bush takes information, he takes advice, and he listens with compassion. But, in the end, the decision belongs to the authority vested in him as the President of the United States. He knows it, and Senator Kerry needs to show that he at least understands it.

Kerry says he wants more nuance, more sensitivity, more alliances. But we've tried that before, and Al Quaeda interpreted it as a green light to blow things up, and Saddam interpreted it as a green light to thumb his nose at the international community. The kinder, gentler president is the domestic side. And the President's conservative compassion is the progeny of his father's "kinder, gentler nation," with its thousand points of light. But the face we show the emirs and princes and strongmen and dictators and tyrants that actually rule over most of the world's populations must be fierce and unblinking.

On the most important issue of our time, Bush and Cheney don't back down. And Kerry and Edwards blink entirely too much.

THE BATTLE IS ENGAGED

2004-09-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

THIS NATION MAY BE COLORED RED AND BLUE, BUT IT IS DIVIDED PAST AND FUTURE

If ever there was a year to ridicule those who claim that "there is no difference between the two parties," this is it. After having seen the two conventions, how can anyone still claim that the US is ruled by the "Republocrats," who merely exist to perpetuate the power of their two-party system?

Well, except Ralph Nader.

No, this year there are very clear differences. The two contenders hold divergent views on the meaning of government, history, and culture. They believe different things about God, the international order, and economics. But the most important difference is that one party (the Republicans) has realized that the world changed completely on September 11, and the other (the Democrats) wants to minimize, ignore, or simply deny that truth.

The Democrats still think that, as Tip O'Neill famously said, "All politics is local." But today all that is local is bound up in everything that happens around the world. Ask the mothers and fathers who lost their children in Middle School 1 in Russia this week whether anyone on the planet can still afford to pay attention only to the cookie sales and the property taxes. Those parents sent their kids to the first day of school--and, unwittingly, into the center of an international conflict.

And it could happen here.

Before September 11, we didn't know that the world had changed without us, because our leaders didn't tell us. Our media didn't notice the series of Al Quaeda victories that had been celebrated in the Arab terrorist community since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and before. We were told that there were some foreigners that were arrested and tried and locked up for the action, but we weren't told the degree to which they linked into a worldwide terrorist network of people still at large--and still dedicated to killing Americans. Instead, we were led to believe that the problem had been solved.

Over the years of the Clinton administration, we heard from time to time of violent actions around the world, a bomb here, an execution there. But no one let us in on the information that all these seemingly isolated events were the efforts of one enormous group, headed by one extraordinarily dangerous man. We may have heard of bin Laden, and we may have seen a few documentaries on Osama flit by on PBS, but the information was not marked "urgent" for the public.

During the Clinton administration, there was little said about America being at risk. Like the mayor in Jaws, the president didn't choose to tell us we, the people--not only the members of the military--had targets on our backs. Whether you believe Clinton's claim to have told the new administration about Al Quaeda's gathering threat or not, you cannot deny that he never told us.

During the 2000 election, instead of telling us about the danger we were in, Vice President Al Gore focused on the same old democratic mantra issues--jobs, education, the environment, and health care. All of those are important, of course. But if he knew--and shouldn't he have, being the Vice President?--didn't he realize that the imminent danger of personal incineration should have been treated as slightly more important?

When President Bush was elected, he found out about Al Quaeda. (Actually, before; the challenger always receives a National Security briefing prior to the election. I don't know if this is so that he can back out if he discovers that the world is too scary, or what.) He moved on it as quickly as he could, but he kept the same status quo in terms of public release of information that the CIA and the intelligence community already had humming along. In other words, we didn't find out anything.

Until September 11.

On that day, America discovered that she was at war. It was a war that had been declared in the prior decade and in the prior administration by the enemy, via two public fatwas calling for the indiscriminate murder of all Americans by all Muslims. They had been issued by bin Laden, and had never been rescinded. More importantly, the American people had never been told.

The Administration moved quickly to plug leaks in US security, to set up new barriers to terrorists, to find and cut off their support networks, and--most importantly--to take the battle to the enemy. With no hesitation, the President moved on Afghanistan, whose illegitimate government harbored bin Laden and supported his activity.

Before long, the bipartisan fear gave way to partisan loathing, as Democrats alternately castigated the Bush administration for not acting soon enough and shredded it for going too far in pursuing security. They screamed that the Patriot Act was intrusive and fascist, yet they whined that in the 8 months he had held office (after the most uncertain election in our history) he had not implemented the kind of measures they now opposed as heavy-handed.

How many think that the new president and the newly (and barely) confirmed Attorney General could have implemented passenger screening measures and expanded surveillance powers before September 11? I can hear them screaming "impeachment" now!

When President Bush began warning Saddam Hussein that he was treading on thin ice, there were already mumblings of discontent in the nation. Spoiled by a quick war in Afghanistan in which we had utterly devastated the enemy, the nation wanted to relax, though there was enough support to start the war. The people seriously opposed to the Iraq War at the outset were largely those who had opposed the Afghan war, too. There were few of them, and patriots, for the most part, drowned them out.

But before long, the Democrats again began to chip away at the unity of the nation, musing about the WMD's, and attacking Bush on the domestic front, as well.

Howard Dean moved the Democratic party toward its protestor activists, leaving behind old-style FDR Democrats like Zell Miller, and even liberals concerned about security like Ed Koch. Senator Kerry saw the writing on the wall and moved lefter (if such a thing is possible). Ted Kennedy thundered about the president's "lies," and the entire Democratic pack delighted the enemy by attacking not only the President but the war itself.

Academics smelled blood in the water and re-introduced students to teach-ins, die-ins, and anti-war propaganda. They were in their element, especially when their anti-Vietnam hero claimed the mantle of decorated veteran. The mainstream media sneered at the Bush administration, embracing Kerry and his lapdog veep choice, John Edwards. Much was made of the Democratic convention and its success in convincing the American people that Kerry had the military gravitas to be president.

But then, the post-convention bounce disappeared. And the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth surfaced to question the very record Kerry had taken such pride in. And the Kerry team continued to pound their message into us--the nation is miserable, poor, and sick, and only they can fix it.

In fact, it is amazing that Kerry, who wants to be president, makes no remarks on the events that occur that might require a president's attention. He has said nothing about the Madrid train bombing, nothing about the triple axle of terrorism achieved recently in Russia--a double airline bombing, a subway explosion, and a blood-soaked hostage-taking in a middle school. Imagine that. The man who wants to be president has nothing to say about Al Quaeda and Chechen terrorists murdering innocents around the world; but he can't wait to talk about Dick Cheney's deferments.

After the Republican convention was over, Kerry popped out of the box at midnight to whine about how mean everyone had been to him. But this little escapade shows the desperately political and politically desperate nature of his campaign. To begin with, he went to Ohio to do this. Red people--and the folks whose votes he really needs are red people--don't go anywhere at midnight, particularly not to a political rally.

Secondly, he didn't address the merits of the convention, and he didn't say anything new. If he was going to make folks stay up late, he should at least make some kind of news for them. All he did was try to steal the president's thunder by complaining about speeches he admits he didn't even see. He said he had read them, but didn't see them. He claimed--as he always does--that his "patriotism" had been attacked. Of course, perhaps he has a point, given that the Democrats can't tell the difference between a "voting record" and "patriotism". But this is all pre-9/11 argument. It's all political bluster, and none of it focuses on what this election is about and what the presidency has by necessity become.

But the Republicans now understand that, while the Democratic issues of the past decades are important matters for the president to deal with, the fundamental issue right now is to protect the people of the United States from terrorist attacks.

Astonishingly, the Democrats act as though September 11 did not happen. They bash the president for presiding over an economy that has lost jobs--forgetting that we lost 1.5 million jobs, just in the weeks following September 11. They ignore the near collapse of the airline industry, the economy of New York, and the tourism industry. They have no memory of the moment of unity that saw the Congress of the United States sing "God Bless America" on the steps of the Capitol Building.

It's all business as usual for them again. And that's exactly why we had a September 11. Because Democrats don't learn.

When the World Trade Center was first bombed, there was a moment of shock, then back to business as usual. There were hearings going on during the 90s, and a commission that finished its recommendations shortly before September 11, but business as usual means that we don't pay attention to threats and warnings until something happens. It's like when you call the police and they tell you that they can't stop that crazy man from calling you until he actually does something.

That shouldn't be good enough in your local jurisdiction, and it's deadly in the international arena.

I'm not saying that the Democrats' issues--jobs, health care, education, and the environment--aren't important. I'm not saying that the Republican's "wedge" issues--gay marriage, abortion, gun control--aren't either. (By the way, a "wedge" issue is an issue that the mainstream press doesn't like to talk about). But all of them pale into insignificance in the post-September 11 world, when you are choosing a Commander-in-chief.

Once upon a time, the president had the luxury of wearing many hats, any one of which could be more or less important at any given time. He was the commander-in-chief, but also the party leader, the American representative to the world, the primary diplomat. In some eras he was the sugar daddy. During budget time, he might be Santa Claus.

This president has a plan for modernizing all our institutions, one that he will explain in greater detail as the weeks spool out toward election day. He intends to deal with jobs, health care, education, and the environment, and you can quarrel with them and prefer the Kerry formulation, or not.

But the fact is that no health care plan can protect you from a suicide bomber. No job is safe so long as Islamofascists can destroy our infrastructure. Neither a box-cutter-wielding hijacker nor a suitcase nuclear bomb cares how much education you have. And if America is attacked on her own soil with Weapons of Mass Destruction, there won't be an environment left to protect.

We have to live in the post-9/11 world, no matter how tempting it may be to revert to our comfort zone of a decade ago--or even of 35 years ago. The new century, President Bush predicts, will be liberty's century, and he has high ambitions for helping make that happen.

We must retain the Commander-in-Chief that lives for the future, not the old-style liberal internationalist that wants to ride into the White House on a wave of goodwill from Hollywood and the mainstream media. Because Democrats don't seem to remember.

And elephants never forget.

FULL OF SOUND AND FURY AND SIGNIFYING NOTHING

2004-09-01T17:59:00.000-05:00

A FEW MINUTES OF "ACCIDENTAL" VIEWING REMINDS ME WHY I CAN'T BEAR CNN ANY MORE

This afternoon, while I was looking for something to watch during a lull in FoxNews's convention coverage, nothing of interest on MSNBC or CNBC, and interim remarks on C-SPAN, I accidentally changed my channel to CNN.

Once upon a time, CNN was the only cable news network. Alas, while competition has improved the field, it has not helped Ted Turner's increasingly left-spinning network to become better. It was far more reliable during the first Gulf War, when it was covering the event non-stop for 72 hours. The program I landed on was "Crossfire," which has also seen better days.

Once upon a time, "Crossfire" was a major player in the political debate game. It was feisty, but intelligent. It was entertaining and informative without being irritating.

Nowadays, it has four hosts instead of two--though I confess I only know this from the credits; the few moments I saw of James Carville and Robert Novak were enough for me. Evidently, though, it also features Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. I am sorry to report that Novak has not aged well, and Carville is a better strategist than an analyst. It also seems to have been filmed at a diner full of Democrats, who frequently cheered Carville's demented rants.

But, wait. I'm not letting Novak off the hook on this one. Though I don't fault him for having no supporters in the CNN diner, he did not, in my opinion, do conservatism proud. While Carville came across as plainly crazed, Novak seemed slightly drunk. Both stumbled over their words several times, in a way that would have gotten them fired from any self-respecting network on the first day. Also, some kind of bell kept going off, evidently signaling that it was time to move from one issue to the next. Setting the tone, at the top of the show, Carville ran his lines into Novak's, who promptly corrected him. Not only was it politically uninformative and unhelpfully uncivil--it was unprofessional, as well.

I have seen this program only a few times in the last year or so, but each time I am saddened to see the state it is in. Carville is not suited to a program in which he is expected to have any kind of civil discourse, and Novak's bluster has lost its luster.

In fact, CNN itself is really only a shell of its former self. From its glory days under the first Bush administration, it quickly degenerated with the new administration, becoming such a lapdog for the Clinton Administration that conservatives began referring to it as the "Clinton News Network." We should not be surprised that the network owned by leftist Christian-basher Ted Turner has become another mouthpiece for anti-Bush-administration propaganda, though they labor to make it seem "fair and balanced," since Fox has been destroying them lately in the ratings.

But they are neither fair nor balanced. Their left bias is evident in their news reporting, and their supposedly rightist commentators tend to be vastly overmatched by mad dogs like Carville. Then, too, the Larry King we used to know has been replaced by a softball-tossing poodle. Remember when King made headlines when Perot announced his presidential candidacy? One will wait a long time before his program makes any news.these days. A smart politician would be better off announcing something on Jon Stewart's fake news show. It probably gets better ratings.

Then, too, CNN seems to have been "Bloombergized" to a point beyond human comprehension. Switch over there in the middle of the day and you're hard pressed to figure out where the news is, with multiple bands of scrolling headlines scattered all over the frame--not to mention the weather, for which those who have CNN probably already have a whole channel.

It's sensory overload, and, in the end, it has the same news as FoxNews and MSNBC. When my kids were first learning to read, I got a television with closed captioning because I figured it would help them learn words (little did I know how often the transcription is faulty). Now, however, there is so much informational debris in the ocean of news that there's no room for the closed captioning.

So, if you want a headache, go to CNN. If you want news and discussion, stay with FoxNews. And if you want to find out whatever happened to John McEnroe, join the hundreds of people watching CNBC. (Sorry, Dennis Miller. I love you, but you've picked the wrong pony this time.)

MISSING IN ACTION

2004-09-01T17:27:00.000-05:00

BY CHOOSING ONLY THREE HOURS TO COVER, THE BROADCAST MEDIA HAVE PROVEN THEMSELVES UNWORTHY OF THE PUBLIC TRUST

On Monday, a remarkable speech was made from the convention floor. It was impassioned. It showed the President's strength in wartime and provided a powerful and stirring defense of the necessity of going to war in Iraq. The speaker provided stark reminders of the world before Saddam's demise, and eloquently made the case that freeing the Iraqi people was worth it.

And none of the networks covered it.

No, I am not talking about Rudy Giuliani, though the three hours this week that ABC, CBS, and NBC deemed worthy of their attention did not include his excellent remarks. And, obviously, I am not speaking of John McCain, who also did not see the light of network day, as the big three chose no coverage on Monday night.

The speaker was an Iraqi woman, whose name I cannot recall and could not spell even if I could. Her name, as I'm sure she would agree, is not the issue, for she spoke for millions. Standing on a stage before thousands of delegates, this woman proudly, carefully, and gratefully recited the triumphs of the Bush administration over the oppressive madman that once controlled her country.

She was not deterred by the violence. She was not bowed down by fear. She was not complaining about the slowness of progress. Instead, she reminded us all of the unconscionable waste of talent and life that Saddam wrought during his unholy reign.

It was an important moment to see. But the networks don't care about the content of their broadcast. Their only concern is that they don't interfere too much with the reality shows that have become their bread and butter.

How ironic that the big three networks have, in one sense, gotten the message that real life is interesting to Americans. And, yet, given the opportunity to broadcast the real workings of actual government, they have better things to do.

Except that they don't. There is nothing better they could have done than to broadcast both conventions, gavel to gavel, as C-SPAN did.

The networks did not show John McCain or Rudy Giuliani or Bill Frist's wonderful defense of the president's health policies and embryonic stem cell research position. They chose to ignore the young Republicans on Wednesday afternoon as they were addressed by Angie Harmon (of Law and Order) and her husband or by the winner of an MTV contest called "Stand Up and Holla." They didn't show the tributes to those lost in 9/11 or the speeches by those who have lost loved ones in the combat aspect of the war on terror.

Most voters probably don't know who Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Party, is. If they are watching the convention on one of the Big Three, they still don't. Gillespie came in with a mock-SNL opening segment, "Live from New York, it's the Republican National Convention!" which showed some of that humor that the commentators keep complaining they aren't seeing from the Republicans. They also missed speeches by Dennis Hastert, Mark Racicot, and Lindsey Graham, and an amazing skewering of the Hollywood left by Ron Silver. Not to mention a prayer by one of the dearest figures of the Christian right, Joni Erickson Tada. And that was just on Monday, a day the networks declined to even look at.

On Tuesday, they didn't show Elizabeth Dole, Sam Brownback, Elizabeth Hasselback (who, I'm told, is on The View and gave a stirring speech about breast cancer research), Princella Smith (the MTV winner referenced above), and Secretary of Education Rod Paige. On Wednesday, instead of covering anything before the "major" speeches (as defined by the networks), they will deprive voters of Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell, Elaine Chao (who, by the way, is married to McConnell), Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and Michael Reagan, adopted son of the late president. Apparently, NBC's "Dateline" puff on Jane Pauley and the Drew Carey Show are more important to the voting public than the public policy speeches of any of those people.

And, finally, tomorrow, the major networks will ignore a tribute to Olympic medal winners, with Dorothy Hamill and Mary Lou Retton, a speech by Lynn Swann, and music by Donnie McClurkin and Michael W. Smith. Evidently "must see TV" isn't about the imperatives of citizenship, and the popularity of "reality programming" hasn't reached the political arena yet. Oh, wait--there is a reality program where they are PRETENDING to pick a candidate, but I guess the real thing doesn't have the demographics the nets are looking for.

This is all fairly disgusting, and fairly new. When I was growing up (don't do the math), the political conventions were required viewing in my household, and I know we didn't have cable television back then. Instead, the networks actually took some time to COVER what was going on in politics, rather than their current habit of just sitting back and sneering at it. If you look to ABC, NBC, or CBS for your political news, you will be woefully uninformed. There is just no way to sandwich complex political issues (nevermind debate!) into the few hours the networks devote (and I use the term loosely) to news. Especially if you still need to have time for Bush-bashing "human interest" stories.

The FCC requires that networks set aside a certain amount of time for "public interest" programming. If they don't, they don't get their license renewed. I propose that we go back to the old days, by force if necessary. What would it take to have the FCC and the FEC require that those who hold public licenses carry ALL of BOTH conventions? Is that not "public interest" programming, every bit as much as those invitations to write to Pueblo, Colorado? Or the unending reminders to do smart and healthy things and talk to your kids?

It's not as though that makes the political process inescapable. Those who want to watch re-runs of the Lucy show could probably find it on cable or paid channels.

And that's the key. As long as those channels that people can watch for free in some areas make the political process mysterious and unreachable, those who have no access to cable (perhaps because they can't afford it) will remain horrifically uninformed about the process, the issues, and the people involved. They will be at the mercy of those who screech loudest and those whose strategy is to keep the poor ignorant so they will keep voting for the party of dependency and hand-out. I won't mention any names here.

The airwaves belong to the people. That's why the FCC grants licenses to tv and radio stations. But, increasingly, the people's airwaves belong only to the elite media. Ironically, thoughtful and truthful examination of the issues are becoming available only to those who can pay for their television signals. If the networks are not willing to serve the people, by covering the most important events taking place in the nation this year, then they should have those licenses revoked.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

2004-08-25T16:42:00.000-05:00

DOES CALLING THE PRESIDENT A CRIMINAL EVER WORK?

I was listening to Senator Kerry castigate the administration about Abu Ghraib (again) and call for the head of Don Rumsfeld (again) this afternoon. Yesterday, I heard Howard Dean claim three times in one sound byte that the President has broken the law. The other day I heard a protester planning to head to New York next week call President Bush a "war criminal." Then it struck me: we have been this way before.

Cast your mind back with me to the summer of 1987. Does anyone remember the Iran Contra hearings? The Democrats were in high dudgeon, accusing the Reagan administration of violating the Boland Amendment to trade arms for hostages. It was quite the talk of the liberal media, electrifying cocktail party conversation in academia--but to the people, it was all just an attack on the president. It didn't prevent Reagan's number two man, George H.W. Bush, from being elected in 1988--even after former National Security Advisor John Poindexter was indicted in May of that year.

Moreover, there were rumblings in the press prior to President Nixon's re-election, as well. In fact, as the Washington Post reported, the head of the Committee to Re-elect the President (unfortunately abbreviated as, lest we forget, "CREEP"), Jim McCord, had been arrested bugging the Democratic National Headquarters in June of 1972. These facts were not unknown to the public, and many liberals hoped the election would go to McGovern, but instead Nixon was re-elected in a landslide.

Remember, too, that although President Clinton was not yet impeached by 1996, there were plenty of suspicions about him, and the accusations of his mendacity and possible criminality flew. Vince Foster had committed suicide and Whitewater was under investigation (Jim Guy Tucker and the McDougals had been convicted in May of that year and Clinton had given his videotaped testimony in June). The White House Travel Office fiasco remained a sore point with the 40% of Americans that never liked him in the first place. Polls showed that 60% of the American people thought Clinton was hiding something with regard to Whitewater. But none of the attacks that came his way prevented Clinton from being re-elected.

It may well be that the hysterical screams of the left that Bush is a "liar" and a criminal of various stripes will backfire on the Kerry camp. Hollywood celebrities using their professional skills to produce slick anti-Bush commercials could easily have the effect of merely annoying the voters--especially if they really use the slogans they are reportedly thinking about ("He's not on our side" and "Don't get mad, get even.") That remains to be seen.

But before they turn up the volume on the scandal machine, and before they hit full bay callng the president and his administration criminal, they might want to take a trip down memory lane. From history, it looks like the "criminals" are the ones that get re-elected.

Recommended reading:

HOIST BY HIS OWN SWIFT BOAT

2004-08-25T00:20:00.000-05:00

WHAT JOHN F. KERRY'S CURRENT CONTROVERSY SAYS ABOUT HIS CHARACTER

When you look at the dispute between the Kerry camp and the Swift Boat vets, don't miss the keys to the Senator's character. (Click here to purchase through Amazon )

The one piece of evidence the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have brought against Kerry that Kerry cannot answer is his supposed Christmas Eve in Cambodia, 1968. This is a story that Kerry has told more than 50 times over the years, but let's look at why he used it in 1986.

His 1986 claim (the memory that was "seared--seared--" into him) came at a moment of particular political context. At the time, Kerry was trying to make political points against then-President Reagan, by comparing him to former President Nixon (this was back in the day when Nixon was the most hated president in history, and the Democrats were trying to put Reagan on that list, too). To make that comparison, he had to find a way to make Reagan's support of the Contras comparable to something Nixon did. The answer was obvious--Nixon secretly invaded Cambodia.

Kerry took to the floor, decrying Reagan's secret war, and citing his own psychic wounds from being a soldier in another secret war, the scars seared into him by hearing his president lie about his presence in Cambodia. He described being shot at by both friends and enemies, celebrating Christmas, and located the events very precisely: Christmas Eve, 1968.

The problem, of course, as recent critics who can read a calendar have noted, is that Richard Nixon was not yet president in 1968, and the notion that President Johnson would have let him sneak into the War Room prematurely to give military orders for a secret invasion of Cambodia is ridiculous. Nor is it plausible that the commanders themselves were engaged in breaking international law by venturing into a forbidden zone just to get shot at by drunken Vietnamese. If the on-ground commanders were calling the shots to move the war to a higher, illegal, level, surely we would have heard of it by now.

Moreover, the most dramatic detail of the story--drunken Vietnamese celebrating (that big Buddhist holiday) Christmas--only works if the events take place at Christmas. To make that happen, it has to be 1968 in order for Kerry to have been there, since he got himself wounded three times in just four months and twelve days (surely some kind of record), and any other Christmas would have found him somewhere else.

So, we know that it is utterly impossible for the Cambodia story to be true. Since it isn't true, we must look at Kerry's motivation for inventing it. Clearly, he intended it to score emotional political points against President Reagan. He knew his valiant posture would draw support for him and scorn against President Reagan. In short, what has been claimed to be a defining moment in Lieutenant Kerry's understanding of the war and politics was an invention. His very being as a political actor is artificial.

Why should this matter?

Because character is important in politics. If you don't believe it, ask Jim McGreevey.

Kerry's telling of the Cambodia fairy tale tells us that, for political gain, he will not only spin self-aggrandizing stories of personal derring-do, he also does not care about what those stories, wittingly or unwittingly, accuse others of being and doing. For Kerry to have been where he claims to have been, not only the evil Richard Nixon would have had to have been corruptly complicit. Anyone with him, anyone commanding him, anyone who knew he was there would have been in violation of the law, not to mention in grave personal peril. His story implicates everyone on his boat (we assume he didn't undertake this secret mission all by himself) and potentially everyone in his chain of command.

But Kerry doesn't care.

Just like he didn't care what the prisoners of war languishing in the Hanoi Hilton might have to endure as a result of his claims about their actions. Surely he realized that by professing voluntarily what American POWs were being tortured to elicit he merely reinforced the conviction of the enemy that their cause was just--and ours, corrupt. But his drive was not to preserve American lives on the ground in Vietnam; it was to topple the Nixon administration and undermine the war effort.

No wonder there's a shrine to Kerry in a museum in Vietnam.

The question for today is not the excruciating detail of his lies, but the meaning of them in his character. For a political party that can't scream "Bush lied, kids died!" loud enough (even when the "lies" are exposed as truth), the Democrats seem strangely unmoved by the revelation that at least one of the Senator's stories is clearly a fairy tale. They seem quite happy to let sleeping dogs lie when it comes to the Winter Soldier hearings, and to bury Kerry's entire life between 1969 and the opening of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

The mainstream media, too, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this story, which they were only when Kerry himself couldn't stand to sit still any more and started talking about it. At that point they had no choice, since they have a blood-pact with the Democratic National Committee to broadcast every word that comes out of Kerry or Edwards (or their surrogates at the estimated six-trillion 527 groups made up of Hollywood celebrities and rabid Bush-haters)

Now that the issue is in play, it deserves to be watched closely for what it says about Kerry. First, the behavior itself--the smearing of American soldiers during the war--speaks to the type of smarmy political ambition that is extremely unattractive to voters. Second, his inability to defend himself, except by accusing the Bush administration of "coordination," seems suspect, not unlike the kind of misdirection that slick lawyers often use when their clients are losing. Moreover, the charge is a dangerous one to make if he can't prove it, since any such coordination would be a serious violation of the law. In essence, he is responding by calling the president of the United States a criminal. (Of course, compared to what the Kerry-leaning 527s routinely say about the president, "criminal" seems almost friendly.)

Another aspect of the response is Kerry and Edwards' seemingly childish pleading for the president to call off the dogs the Kerry campaign presumes belong to him. This kind of whining doesn't usually play well with voters; it didn't fly when Howard Dean appealed to the DNC to make the other candidates play nice with him during the primary. In fact, that perceived weakness on the part of Dean may have fed his precipitous fall from grace. Kerry never called for help from the DNC to protect him. But now, when the petty primary is over and it's time to play with the big boys, Kerry turns girlie-man, shrieking for help and telling Bush to make them stop.

Except Bush can't make them stop. And he shouldn't try, either.

This is Kerry's fight, not his. The president wasn't in Vietnam (as the Democrats never tire of telling us), so he has no way of knowing whose version is right. He's staying above the fray, accepting Kerry's version at face value, as a gentleman should. The Swifties are the men to whom Kerry must answer, because it's their character and integrity that he impugned all those years ago.

This controversy has shined an important light on the character of John Kerry. For those afraid that John Ashcroft might trample their civil rights for ideological reasons, look well to the behavior of the Senator. His reaction to the free speech of the Swifties has been to summon a cadre of lawyers to try to keep their book from being published or sold, to threaten to sue television stations who run the ad, and to accuse the 200-plus Swift Boat vets (more than 50 of whom have signed affidavits attesting to the veracity of their accounts) of collusion with the Bush administration. Because, of course, they surely couldn't have thought this up on their own. This last is ridiculous, since John O'Neill's objections to the Senator's version of events dates back to the Vietnam era itself.

Second, note how he reacts to an aggressive action by an opponent. Rather than answer the charges, he is hiding behind his surrogates, sending his spokesmen out with talking points, making them make assertions about historical truths they actually know nothing about. And he's calling for help from the President, who he knows can't help him without looking complicit in the attack. Would a President Kerry react to international aggression the way President Bush has, by taking the fight to the attacker? Or would he barricade himself in the White House while he calls for help and cover from his buddies at the UN?

Candidate Kerry has shown his colors. President Bush has shown his. Whether the Swifties have truth on their side or not, they have clearly thrown Kerry off his game. If candidate Kerry can't handle American patriots when they blow a hole in the side of his rhetorical boat, how will President Kerry keep his hand steady when Islamofascists try to blow a hole in the side of his real White House?

SHOWDOWN

2004-08-24T17:32:00.000-05:00

WHY A BIG PART OF THE CULTURE WAR WILL BE DECIDED IN THIS ELECTION

This election is not only about the war in Iraq, as we have recently discovered. It is also about the war in Vietnam, how we feel about it as a nation, who was right about it, and what it means for our future.

Barack Obama notwithstanding, this nation is severely divided, and that division reflects a cultural segmentation that truly began in the very questions that the Swift Boat controversy raises. In 1971, Kerry and his Winter Soldier compatriots shoved their rhetorical bayonets into the heart of the nation, claiming that American soldiers were engaged in widespread atrocities in Vietnam. Their contention was that the nation was entrapped in an illegitimate war, a quagmire of incredible proportions, and the only moral thing to do was to leave Vietnam to the Vietnamese.

Other Americans--notably his current nemesis, John O'Neill--disagreed and maintained that the soldiers were serving honorably, that the war was, yes, messy, but important, and that America herself was a great nation, worthy of honor, reverence, and respect. The Kerry/Jane Fonda contingent (never, by the way, a majority of public opinion during the War) held that the United States was a corrupt and tyrannical nation, bent on world conquest of the weak and the foreign, and that we deserved to lose.

Since the end of the war, the three primary architectural forces of Democratic Party policy--elite academics, mainstream media, and Hollywood celebrities--have labored mightily to ensure that the Winter Soldier version of Vietnam was the one pounded into the heads of the American people, particularly college students. It is fair to say that, until the Reagan revolution, the academics were essentially holding the fort alone. But once the war-mongering, hyper-patriotic Reagan had appeared on the scene, legions of journalism students tutored in the evilness of America jumped into the pot to enhance the flavor. Particularly on the social issues that traditionalists held dear--abortion, gun control, gay rights--US journalists carried the water for the Democratic party, making clear that those who stood with the Reagans were backward Neanderthal morons, while those who fell into the camp with Mondale and then Dukakis were the intellectual elite. Patriotism, American flags, and armies were "out." Peace coalitions, flag burning, and abortion were "in."

But the Democrats lost anyway.

At the same time, we can see now that the entertainment media was trending left, and television scripts in particular were echoing the prejudices of their pals in the National Organization for Women, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and People for the American Way. (Norman Lear, producer of multiple television shows, founded PFAW in response to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority.) The same people who were "hard-hats" supporting the Vietnam War in the 70s moved over to the Republican side in the 1980s (remember, it was a Democratic president who first articulated the American interest in Vietnam, though it is now erroneously seen as a "Republican" war) and became "Reagan Democrats."

Before the advent of the Clinton administration, only hippies, tenured radicals, and Hollywood celebrities were still worried about American "hegemony" or "Western imperialism." They had a lot to say, but few voters paid any attention to them. Every March for Choice every year featured information tables with literature from the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and various types of Socialists, but for the most part, even in friendly territory, such arguments were downplayed by rational people on both sides of the issues.

With the defeat of George H.W. Bush, the Democrats smelled blood in the water, though their man only won by a plurality of the vote, in a split election in which his incumbent opponent had broken the "no new taxes" pledge and angered economic conservatives (and his "New World Order" language had scared away cultural conservatives). For eight years, they plighted their troth to the Clintons with impunity, though the people themselves were somewhat taken aback during the impeachment period. In fact, though the media seems to have missed it, the whole Monica Lewinsky affair left (you'll excuse the expression) a bad taste in the mouth of Americans, who took the next opportunity to reject Clinton's vice president and rid themselves of the moral morass of the 90s. In fact, Gore may well have lost because he was not conservative enough for the "red" states and not liberal enough for the "blue" states. In other words, he was too Clinton for the right, and not enough Clinton for the left.

With the advent of George W. Bush, it seemed that tradition might have won after all. But--with the brief exception of a moment of political silence and moral sanity that followed 9/11--the blue people never stopped caterwauling about having lost the election. The president, they maintained (and still do) was not really "elected;" he was "selected" by the Supreme Court, in some kind of conspiracy orchestrated between FoxNews Channel and Jeb Bush (and, of course, the Zionists). Although prayer meetings sprouted at the White House and patriotism flourished throughout the nation, the culture war still remained at an impasse.

But this year something has changed. This year, the Kerry campaign has made what might be a fatal mistake: the elites were so full of their own possibility that they launched what is essentially a two-front war. Now, while trying to fight the electoral battle of today, John Kerry, Vietnam hero, is also mired in the roots of the culture war. At the same time that he has to defend himself against the slings and arrows of outrageous attacks on his peacenik voting record (or, in the terminology of the Democrats, "his patriotism"), he has to use his other hand to fire on the traditionalists. Unfortunately for Kerry and his team, they have underestimated the number of Americans who have never accepted the propaganda of the academy, the snotty arrogance of Hollywood, or the brainwashing of the mainstream media. And now he has to contend as well with the legions of veterans he slandered on Capitol Hill in the 1970s and libeled in his now out-of-print book, "The New Soldier."

What no one on the Kerry team counted on--not Moveon.org,, not The Media Fund, not Americans Coming Together, not even Michael Moore or EMILY's List--was that there would be people who would not wait for the president to take up their concerns. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were not going to let this man become president, would not sit on their hands and hope that the Bush campaign would hit the right notes. No, they decided to stand and fight the last battle for Vietnam all on their own, and without concern for any other issue.

As a matter of fact, as far as issue-oriented groups go, this has to be the most single minded we've seen in a long time. No one on the Swiftie team has a single word to say about Iraq or Afghanistan, the economy, gay marriage, or any other issue that Americans supposedly care about. They've not staked a position on health care, welfare, education, or the environment. Their only concern is that Kerry not be allowed to become commander-in-chief, and their only reason is that they claim to know him for who he really is. One gets the distinct impression that even the current wars aren't the impetus for their concern; they simply believe him unfit to be commander-in-chief, regardless of the circumstances. (Click here to purchase through Amazon: )

And so, unexpectedly and against our will, America has come to its final reckoning on Vietnam. For if the Kerry forces prevail, it will send the implicit message to the anti-American left that they have won. They were right, and they will have a president to prove it. If the patriots and the Bush camp win the day, with their love of God and country, it will be a repudiation of the Hollywood-academy-press troika that has sought to finish the job of the Winter Soldier investigations lo these many years.

If the hippies prevail, they will bring with them the full pantheon of their religion. Moral relativism, secularism, and pacifism will have won the day. Moral traditionalism, the rule of law, and patriotism will be defeated. As we pull the electoral lever, we open doors to the future. The possible outcomes of the election carry specific, predictable, and vastly different sets of consequences.

John Kerry and the antiwar left have chosen this electoral hill to die on. It falls to the people to decide who will win the war.

A TRUTH OF NOVEL PROPORTIONS

2004-08-23T12:36:00.000-05:00

JOHN KERRY AND JOHN O'NEILL'S LIFELONG ANIMOSITY IS THE STUFF OF A CHEAP PAPERBACK NOVEL

It is an amazing thing to see. It's so dramatic it seems almost surreal.

We are in the midst of a political drama worthy of a 1970s novel or television miniseries. When it first opened, we didn't know it was happening, but now we are hundreds of pages into it--nearing the end, in fact--and its trajectory seems quite clear.

In March of 1969, after young John Kerry had seen his fill of Vietnam, with 3 purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star under his belt (or on his chest, at any rate), he left "country" to return "stateside," denounce his fellow soldiers, and begin his long trek toward the White House. Later, in 1971, he squared off on the Dick Cavett show with Navy man John O'Neill, who, no coincidence, had taken command of Kerry's boat after his short stint in it and was mightily perturbed at the things Kerry had been saying about his friends.

The exchange has recently been replayed a few times on C-SPAN, and I highly recommend it to all. It not only offers a window into the souls of the two men, it tells us something shameful about the current state of American discourse. The level of debate on the Cavett show is so far beyond anything we could expect today, it seems almost antique.

Not only is Kerry his usual articulate self--with an insufferable Boston accent that has somehow mellowed over the years--but O'Neill, too, is quick and clever. Both men have the command of the facts over which they dispute, and their disagreements, though sharp, remain on the high ground of two gentlemen debating serious matters of public policy. At that point, either of them could have been in Congress, though Kerry had tried and failed to be, and O'Neill never was.

But more than the style of the confrontation, the substance of their meeting is of vital interest now, as well. They parry and thrust over the actions of America and her soldiers in Vietnam, and both are clearly agonized over the loss of life and the seeming intransigence of the situation itself. O'Neill, then with a group called "Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace," holds firmly to the "stay the course" position, while Kerry seems--though not entirely clearly--to favor (you'll excuse the pun) swift withdrawal of American forces and ceding of the region to the Communists. In fact, Kerry says at one point (I'm paraphrasing here) that we can't stop Vietnam from becoming communist, and we might as well let them do it. Something like that.

O'Neill is clearly in the anti-Communist camp, while Kerry has just as obviously made his bed with Jane Fonda. It is fascinating to watch the back-and-forth with the twenty-twenty hindsight to know whose position turned out to be correct. Particularly telling is the interchange in which Cavett notes that no one has suggested that there would be "a bloodbath" if we were to pull out and asks both whether they think there would be. Kerry hedges a bit, but contends that "history" tells him that it is unlikely that there would be a bloodbath, while O'Neill states that the prior actions of the Vietnamese regime strongly indicate that a bloodbath would likely result from premature withdrawal of American forces.

Today, of course, we know who was right, and it was not the idealistic young Kerry. He admits on the show that there might be acts of revenge, but he seems to dismiss it as too small a matter to worry over in the zeal to bring the boys home.

What did happen after Saigon fell?

For one thing, it is estimated that as many as 65,000 South Vietnamese may have been executed. Tens of thousands were "internally exiled" in re-education camps. And, under the Communists' tutelage, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge slaughtered between 1.5 and 3 million people, depending on whom you talk to, and "re-educated" millions more.

Would you call that a "bloodbath," Senator Kerry? It certainly wasn't the land of bread and roses the Kerry/Fonda crowd was expecting to emerge from the ejection of American forces from Southeast Asia.

Now, our novel has opened with the riveting confrontation between the two men in 1971. An uneasy truce is made, as both move on into their lives--Kerry to public service for the people of Massachusetts, an undistinguished Senator making few waves but plenty of friends in high places, O'Neill to obscurity as a lawyer somewhere.

The book could plod on for hundreds of pages, chronicling Kerry's legendary place in the anti-war myth, his rejection of his medals/ribbons (whatever), his failed first marriage, his "interstitial" period of wild dating in the company of Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd, and his marriage 8 years ago to the megarich Teresa Heinz (later to be known as "Teresa Heinz Kerry.") O'Neill's part in the book would be to disappear. Perhaps from time to time the narrator might tell us in what proximity the two men were, perhaps not. It matters little, for the sudden explosion of O'Neill back on the scene at the height of Kerry's march to the White House should come as a shock to all.

As he is recovering from surgery (he donated an organ to his own wife), John O'Neill sees John Kerry on television and is horrified to realize that the man might well be on the way to becoming president. Out of obscurity, after years of silence, the man in the white suit from the Cavett show begins to contact other veterans and feel his way toward becoming a political force.

And, in the final pages of the book, lo and behold, he appears! Just as the Great Man has taken his place in the pantheon of war heroes, anointed by the Democratic National Convention, just as he can almost catch sight of the Rose Garden as his own--here comes the long-forgotten interloper to throw down the gauntlet of war. The unwelcome adversary, flanked by 250-plus Swift Boat veterans, 60 of whom provide eyewitness testimony to an unheroic, even manipulative, John Kerry, barrels toward him, unheeding of his hysterical shrieks for lawyers, help, and cover. In a riveting, (but lucky for Kerry, buried by the friendly media) press conference, the band of unloving brothers stands, one by one, to denounce the man who would be president.

At this point, Kerry's tragic flaw--an unrealistic conviction that the presidency "belongs" to him--raises its ugly head, and his campaign begins to unravel. Like the grizzled veteran Gore (who makes a few small appearances, but plays no major role), Kerry's very being is bound up in his quest for the presidency. He believes, to the depths of his soul, that it is his turn, his time. After all, did he not bow to the demands of the pollsters and choose the vice-president the party wanted him to? Did he not obediently learn to love the little puppy? And has he not even gone so far as to consume boatloads of horrid ethnic and regional food (though much of it wound up in dumpsters, quickly replaced by catered French cuisine) to satisfy the requirement of being a "regular guy?"

It's not fair.

The question is where we go from here. The usual form of the novel would speed toward the final confrontation--a moment of reckoning, where old lies are revealed, and the future is awarded to truth and destiny. Such moments in real life are few and far between, but stranger things have happened. The final conclusion of the novel can only be determined by whose side its author is on, and, in some sense, it closes a chapter in America's own understanding of Vietnam.

Will the story end with the vindication of the veterans who "stayed the course," who still maintain that their service--and their war--was right, and good, and honorable? Will the nation finally decide that the worst thing that happened in Vietnam was that we failed to give these brave men the resources they needed to win?

Or will the Kerry character be triumphant, and with him the Hollywood celebrities, academics, and 60s holdover hippies that believe and teach that the Vietnam War was wrong from the outset, that the Vietnamese were destined to become Communists, and we should have let them do it, regardless of what they eventually did to their own people and other Southeast Asians?

The Kerry campaign is now pointing fingers at the Bush campaign, rather a dicey move in a world in which no less than three 527s are run by overt Democratic operatives. But the fundamental problem with Kerry's FEC filing and his insistence in blaming his troubles on Bush is that he is misreading the plot. The presidential campaign is between Bush and Kerry. But Kerry and the DNC made the Kerry campaign a chapter in this novel--a riveting potboiler that has been spooling out for more than thirty years, and whose central conflicts should have been settled before he began a second one.

If Senator Kerry wanted to wrap himself in the flag of his Swift Boat unit, he should have checked to be sure no one else was holding the end of it.

The final chapter of this novel has yet to be written, but when we finally see it, it will almost certainly shape our future attitude about war and about the Iraq war in particular.

The Democrats want to make Iraq "another Vietnam," while at the same time reinforcing their interpretation of Vietnam itself. If Kerry is elected, he will take to the White House with him an attitude about war that cannot but undermine our positions in Afghanistan and Iraq--and, indeed, throughout the Middle East. Should the President retain his seat, however, it will represent the final triumph of patriotism over the hippie generation, sending a message to our adversaries around the world that not only do we have free speech, but the free market of ideas leads to the failure of fringe dissent.

There are few messages more needed in the international arena these days than a clear statement that America is both strong enough to vanquish our adversaries and strong enough to permit dissent. And few more potentially incendiary than a signal to the world that America admits fault in Vietnam and is willing to negotiate its vision of the Middle East with terrorists and Europeans.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of this exciting epic drama.

I'LL TAKE KEYES, PLEASE!

2004-08-19T17:44:00.000-05:00

WHY ALAN KEYES COULD BRING POLITICAL DEBATE BACK TO ILLINOIS

The entry of former UN ambassador Alan Keyes into the Illinois Senate race sets up a unique situation in American politics. For once, we have a race in which at least one of the candidates is not desperately thirsting to gain office--and can therefore feel free to speak his mind and heart. The Obama-Keyes matchup will be well worth watching this year, particularly for those wondering what religious conservatives REALLY think. Because Alan Keyes will be telling us the brutal, unmediated, unvarnished truth.

While Obama was eager to debate erstwhile candidate Jack Ryan as many as 6 times (Ryan was said to be contemplating two or three), suddenly he has now run out of time to discuss the issues with the silver-tongued Keyes. As well he should. There is not time enough in what's left of history for Obama to master either the language or the oratory Alan Keyes has at the tip of his tongue. In short, the more Obama tries to debate Keyes, the more voters will move out of the "D" column and into the "R."

Keyes is, in this race at any rate, precisely what the electorate always claims to want--an honest man, telling it like it is, who isn't being paid off by anybody and doesn't owe any favors. He may in fact be the only man in Illinois politics who doesn't have a corrupt connection to Illinois politics--a feat that can only be achieved by coming from somewhere else. Indeed, it is the rare politician that isn't related to some other politician--to a Ryan or a Daley or a Madigan--and all the eligible folks that aren't claim not to be interested.

Keyes will be more than interesting to watch. Because if the nosy press finds out something about his personal life that carries a whiff of scandal, he'll just say, "That's my business. Get over it." Whereas most politicians would have a healthy fear of dropping in the polls, Keyes is checked by no such hesitation. He is as likely to tell an interviewer to shut up as he is to say Barack Obama has a "slaveholder mentality" (he's already done the latter.)

I'm glad to be in Indiana, not far from Chicago, where I will get to hear all this. I feel sorry for the rest of the country, who will not. Because, while the national press will tell you that Keyes is running, will ridicule him for jumping into the race after objecting to Hillary's carpet-bagging, and will shout the word "extremist" from the housetops on the rare occasion that they absolutely must talk about him, there is one thing they simply will not do. They will never let the nation see Alan Keyes talk. They will never allow an unmediated view of an unapologetic black pro-life conservative.

One would have to be a C-SPAN junkie to know who Keyes is. He once ran for president as a Republican, a bruising experience, but an enlightening one. Now a backer of the president, then he held himself out as the true candidate of conservatism, compassionate or otherwise. He does not suffer fools gladly, if at all, and his grasp of the Founders' intentions and the meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution knows no living peer.

With two black candidates in the race, we may finally get a real discussion of things like the effects of the welfare dependency system on the black family. With a true conservative and a liberal in disguise, we will get at least two positions on things like gay marriage, abortion, and gun control. And if they start to talk about taxes, the citizens of Illinois will soon hear some ideas they've never been allowed to hear before.

So, sit back and watch the Illinois Senate race if you can. Mr. Obama may well win, simply because Illinois is largely controlled by the Democratic elites in Chicago. But he may not. And, whichever way it turns out, Ambassador Keyes will definitely give Mr. Obama a heck of a ride to November.

POLITICIANS: KEEP YOUR SEXUALITY OUT OF THE PEOPLE'S BUSINESS!

2004-08-19T17:05:00.000-05:00

JIM MCGREEVEY IS REASON NUMBER ONE WHY THE PERSONAL SHOULD STAY OUT OF THE POLITICAL

All right, that's enough.

It was irritating enough that former President Clinton felt the need to exercise his sexual proclivities in the people's Oval Office, by preying on Monica Lewinsky. He thought so little of the space that we, the people, granted him as a perk of working for us as the president that he abused our time and our space to pursue his personal entertainment.

Then, as the election approached, I kept hearing about how Kerry and Edwards are "metrosexuals," which appears to be some kind of politically correct word invented recently to describe what we used to call "sissies"-- a man who is less than a manly man, but not gay. This is the kind of primping prima donna that flies in a hairdresser of his own to give him a "touch up." A real man would just go to a barber. Dick Cheney just runs his hand through his receding hair and pushes into the wind.

Now, we have (you'll excuse the expression) a full-blown sexuality scandal in an executive office. The governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey, turns out to be as "queer" (hey, if the fab five can use it, so can I) as he is corrupt. New Jersey, being the maggot-infested carcass in the field of American politics, has managed to produce yet again a scandal of Herculean proportions, one which has the added media draw of the entire panoply of the Scott Peterson/Michael Jackson/Kobe Bryant trifecta--lies, seduction, and denial.

Mr. McGreevey, a now self-proclaimed "gay American" (is there a hyphen in that, by the way?}, recently resigned due to the embarrassing facts that 1) he is gay; 2) although married, he has been having an affair with a man; and 3) he is about to be sued by his alleged former boyfriend. Jersey being Jersey, however, after the news media stopped reeling from his "courageous" announcement of his gayhood, they began to clue-in to the fact that there was more to the story than he was letting on.

Indeed, there was much more.

McGreevey, as it happens, hasn't really gotten to his "unique truth." There is nothing "unique" about Americans believing themselves to be gay. There is nothing "unique" about such persons having affairs, either. McGreevey's truly "unique" truth is that he is one of the most corrupt politicians any state has managed to produce in American history, a feat made much more impressive by his Olympic-level competition in New Jersey history.

Now his alleged lover, an Israeli poet and sailor named Golan Cipel, claims that he himself is not gay. Rather, he contends that the Governor fell in love with him and pursued him to the point that he first left his employ and then threatened to sue him for--depending on whom you believe--either five or fifty million dollars (or perhaps something in between.) To be fair, Cipel's story is almost as bizarre as McGreevey's claim that he is leaving so that his sexuality and affair won't interfere with the smooth functioning of Jersey politics.

Cipel, one is asked to believe, a heterosexual with no qualifications for the job, was tapped by McGreevey to be homeland security chief for New Jersey (a state that, we read in the 911 report, does indeed have something to worry about in the terrorism department.) He claims at this point not to have known that the governor was gay; after all, he was happily married. It was not until the governor began making aggressive advances on him that he realized the whole job thing might have been a ruse to get closer to the young man.

Now, we have seen such relationships in the past--powerful politicians giving jobs to comely young interns or otherwise unqualified women, such as Fanne Foxe or Monica Lewinsky. But one hardly ever believes that the recipient of Daddy's sugar is unwitting as to the quid pro quo involved. In this case, Mr. Cipel asks us to believe that he knew nothink, (nothink!) about the governor's intentions. Moreover, I would be willing to bet that, as this pornographic tale unspools, the governor will ask us to believe that he didn't give his "boyfriend" employment in exchange for sexual favors (because he knows that "bribery" is a much less welcome unique American truth than "an adult consensual affair.")

And, yet, I wonder.

Imagine being a young Israeli poet and sailor, a straight man, seeking only to come to America and get a job for which you are totally unqualified. Is it such a stretch to think that you might lead yourself to believe that it is merely your boyish charm, charisma, and natural leadership qualities that persuade the heterosexual governor to take a chance on you and give you that job? Would you not expect to be desired for your "unique truth" of being an untested talent, a diamond in the rough--to be valued for what's in your mind, not your pants?

In this scenario, had the governor been a woman, eyebrows would indeed have been raised. But there is a cultural "truth" operating here, as well. The fact is that we do not ask that question of a same-sex power relationship that we would of a heterosexual one. The "who did she sleep with" question is usually aimed at women climbing the ladder--and often unfairly to those who are in fact not sleeping with the boss. Not only do we not question whether the young male intern is sleeping with the boss, but to ask the question would be seen as prima facie evidence of homophobia.

So it could be as Mr. Cipel claims. Perhaps he was blinded by his ambition to the designs Mr. McGreevey had on his body.

More damaging, Mr. McGreevey's story is patently ridiculous. The notion that he could have been somehow wronged by his lover, after having a "consensual" relationship with him, does not pass the laugh test. Were the boy a woman, there would be no question that McGreevey was the predatory party. He was the one with the power. He was the one with the job to give. He was the one receiving sexual favors. Under the theory of sexual harassment, you can't have a consensual relationship with an underling of any kind; I'm not sure if starting with the relationship and then bestowing the job makes it better or worse.

Although we may be tempted to see Mr. Cipel as a con man, preying on a powerful man in order to extort money from him, the shiny suit does not fit. The fact is that Mr. Cipel had no economic power in the relationship, and therefore is the de facto victim. Mr. McGreevey is married with a child. It is his responsibility morally to resist the wiles of even the most romantic of Israeli poets. Mr. McGreevey is a governor. It is his responsibility to resist the desire to stuff his administration with close friends and incompetent non-citizen aliens. Mr. McGreevey was an employer. It was his responsibility to resist even the most comely of young things seeking to draw him to dip his pen in the company ink. But McGreevey did not take any of his roles seriously enough to serve them well. He did not resist any of the temptations to which he was put.

For McGreevey is more than just an adulterer. He is a case in point of why our politicians should be (as the boy scouts say) morally straight in every way. As the dust settles from his sexual identity announcement, a cascade of other problems will be coming to light. It is already beginning, with the national media digging back into the Jersey papers to see the scandals it has missed.

During the Clinton administration, it was popular to pretend that a politician's sexuality was none of our business. It was said that we were obsessed with sex, and that one could be an adulterer and a liar and still a good president.

No, in fact, one cannot. Because a good president (not necessarily, please note, a "successful" or "competent" one) is also a good person. And one cannot be an adulterer (gay or straight), a liar--or, for that matter, a pederast, a murderer, or a wife-beater--and still be a good person.

It would be nice if we did not need to worry about the sexuality of politicians. Indeed, it would be nice if we did not have to worry about any of their appetites. But the fact is that their character--which includes their sexuality--has an impact on how they will do their job.

Bill Clinton's rampant predatory lust interfered with his performance as president, though many would like to deny it. As a result of his affair and his marital problems, for a year 8 hours of his day each week were taken by his therapy. As a result of his lies we spent 40 million dollars chasing a perjurer who could have just admitted guilt and be done with it.

Whether the Kerry/Edwards hair obsession and metrosexual proclivities would distract them from presidential duties is a matter of speculation. A man who makes home movies of himself pretending to be in combat, apparently for future political use, might well be overly concerned about appearances. It is clear now, though, that a gay corrupt politician is no less sleazy than a straight one--and that sexuality, whatever its form, should be separated from the people's business.

THE FRIEND OF MY ENEMY SHOULD NOT BE MY PRESIDENT

2004-07-30T01:55:00.000-05:00

JUST LOOK AT THE COMPANY KERRY KEEPS

Let's accept the notion that John Kerry could handle the presidency. Let's accept the notion that he's a good guy, not really a liberal--almost what you might call a Republican.

Nonetheless, I cannot in good conscience vote for the man, simply for the company he keeps.

I know we shouldn't judge people on that basis--unless we are law enforcement officers. Police and FBI agents and detectives and those who are standing between evil and ordinary people very often find themselves having to do just that. If you hang out with criminals, the cop's radar perks up and focuses on you. What may seem like a coincidental meeting often turns out to be a solid connection.

And who are John Kerry's friends? I'm not talking about his so-called "Band of Brothers"--a bunch of vets who served with him in Vietnam, never saw him again until he decided to run for president, and now follow him everywhere like puppies. I'm not even talking about his main squeeze, John Edwards, whose hail-fellow-well-met motivational seminar friendliness only makes the physical closeness of the two even more creepy.

No, I am speaking of his Hollywood pals, his international buddies, and the legions of screaming, WTO-protesting wackos that trail in his wake and desire nothing more in the world than to remove President Bush from office, by any means necessary.

John Kerry and John Edwards are constantly harping on this weird idea that they have some magical psychological rapport with foreigners that will enable them to persuade world leaders to act outside their interest and against their will to support the US under a Kerry Administration. Remember, the King of All Political Media, Bill Clinton, was unable to do any of that, resulting in the rest of the world nurturing legions of terrorists while Jamie Gorelick built an impenetrable wall between the CIA and all the information they needed to know what was going on.

And even if they could, we must wonder why.

Why would the French, the Germans, the Russians suddenly decide to throw their lot in with us, after losing all that terrific oil-for-food program money? Why would they want a new president?

Answer: because they have been bested by President Bush, and they don't like it. Because they hope to be able to pick up where they left off, exploiting the Iraqi people and ripping off all the peoples of the world through the corrupt bureaucrats at the U.N.

Who hates George Bush?

Easy. Michael Moore, Al Franken, Jeanene Garafolo, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Barbara Streisand, and their crowd. Also, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Al Gore, and theirs. Add to that the populations of France, Spain, and much of Great Britain. And--most troublesome of all--the mullahs in Iran, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Moqtada alSadr, North Korean nutcase Kim Jong Il, the government of the Sudan, the government of Syria, Yasser Arafat, Hezbolla, Hamas, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

These are not people and nations whose respect I want. These are people whose opinions I do not respect (and they return the favor) and nations who pose a danger to every American, red and blue, liberal and conservative, from sea to shining sea. These are entertainers who have no respect for the presidency, no taste, and no class. They are politicians whose ideas are the remnants of ages long past and administrations of failure. They are nations where slavery (sexual and otherwise) is practiced, where children are exploited, where heads and hands are cut off and tongues cut out as routine punishment, where women are subjugated, where justice has no meaning and revenge no limits.

I cannot imagine why we would want to elect the president they think we should have.

THE UNSPEAKABLE AND THE UNSPOKEN

2004-07-28T03:30:00.000-05:00

THE UNSPEAKABLE AND THE UNSPOKEN

Increasingly, the media hatred of George W Bush is becoming transparent and its cozy hand-in-glove relationship with those who would depose the President is being laid bare. Perhaps the most stark rendering of this tableau can be seen in the recently and repeatedly told tale of two sets of American images.

The first set, of course, came to our attention when America was dunked unceremoniously into a cesspool of pornographic photos of Iraqi prisoners being toyed with by sexual sadists disguised as United States soldiers. The media loved this story as much as it loved to pretend to hate it. It was vile, reprehensible, disgusting--but no story ran without another display of the grinning face of Lynndie England lording it over a pyramid of naked Iraqis.

For more than a week, day in and day out, every time the news cycled, the image was thrown in our face again, along with dark intimations that the Secretary of Defense somehow should be held accountable for the midnight games of perverts drunk on unrestrained power thousands of miles from Washington. Moreover, one pundit after another fretted endlessly that for some inexplicable reason, President Bush didn't seem to be losing popularity in the face of this horrific scandal. I even heard one say that the reason the American people still supported Rumsfeld was that there was a lot of ground to make up from its formerly "idolatrous" coverage of the Secretary.

In other words, the people will only think what the media tell them to think, and if, by some malfunction of the public mind, they do not, it is only because the media has not sufficiently browbeaten them with the facts. How the people interpret the facts for themselves has nothing to do with it.

And then came the inhuman, inhumane, and brutal murder of Nick Berg. Except, truly, "murder" is too genteel a word for it. That word conjures images of the pearl-handled revolver in the handbag, the bustling clean-up work of the crime scene squad, the legalistic courtroom accusation. And "execution" seems not quite right either, for that carries with it the resonance of a quick and official, almost merciful, death at the hands of the state--or at least of professionals who pride themselves on a code of conduct. Even "beheading" doesn't carry the right image, because there was no quick, clean slice as we imagine with a guillotine or even (forgive me, PETA) the hard snap of a chicken's neck as the cleaver smacks the stump.

This was, by far, something more primitive than any of that. This was unprofessional, barbaric, and clumsy. The hooded cowards in the video sawed the boy's head off while he screamed. It was official only in the sense that it was sanctioned by the state where al-Quaeda operatives and their sympathizers reside in their foolish imaginations, a "nation" where Sharia law rules and great powers are at the mercy of brutal marauders with seventh-century values and twenty-first century weaponry. A nation that must never be brought into being.

The video of the act makes the tame still photos of the cruel yet idiotic mopes in the Iraqi prison pale by comparison. It lays bare the difference between those we fight and those we are. For America did not display her shameful photos in glory, but in penance. There is no equivalent response in the soul of the American patriot to the leaping, gibbering joy of the barbaric madmen who revel in hacking off the head of an innocent, a stranger, a man who came only to help.

The video was deemed too repulsive to show. Suddenly, the media became squeamish. They had told us, with great sanctimony, that the posed photos of humiliation were a necessary truth that we simply could not turn away from. To have hidden the photos from the public would have been false to the ugly truth about war that the media wanted us to know as much of as we could stomach. Yet I suspect it had nothing to do with the public's need to know the truth, but only with the media's deep desire to tell the ugliest truths they can find about America and Americans. Because the press powers-that-be knew (or, at least, hoped) that when we had reached our limit, our rage would turn not on the malefactors in the jails--but upon the figurehead/scapegoat president they so fervently wish to topple.

And so the members of the press, while still frowning to show the depths of their extreme displeasure, refused to display for the American audience any but a shadow of the screaming evil that fell upon Nick Berg. Some showed a few still photos of the young man before the deed was done. Almost none showed any of the video. And once their brief moment of dim recognition was over, they went right back to showing us the full-color photos of American shame.

Shame on them.

Some might be surprised that I, a Christian mother of three small boys, enthusiastic recipient of traditional values-oriented emails urging my help in fighting porn and violence on television, would want the media to display such grotesque images.

But it is precisely because of those very values that I am outraged that the American media has chosen to depict what happened to Nick Berg with taste and decorum.

Because if ever there was a moment when the American people needed to see the full-face ugliness of the enemy we face, it was when that video rippled across the Internet. If ever there was a time to set aside the politeness of international diplomacy, not to shy away from the blood-soaked rage that animates al-Quaeda and its allies around the world, it is right now. If we don't comprehend--NOW--the depths of depravity we are up against, we will forever be at the mercy of the thug, the pirate, the gang. Not only in Iraq, but in the everyday moments of our own lives.

Yes, absolutely, for the soul of America, we must punish those who violated our core principles in American uniform by humiliating and maltreating people at their mercy in the darkness of a prison cell. But for the same reason, we must go past the apology and the self-flagellation and remember what we are fighting for. Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy want to paint this military adventure as another Vietnam. But they could not be more dangerously wrong.

When we left Vietnam, ignominiously, defeated, denied the will to win by faux-idealists at home destroying morale as part of their "Question Authority" project, the Vietnamese people experienced persecutions, executions, and massacres on an horrific scale, and the killing fields of Cambodia ran red with the blood of intellectuals as the Communists rolled over them. Though it is no longer popular to remember (indeed, it never has been, as we were not well-informed of it at the time), the result of American withdrawal was military and material catastrophe for the Vietnamese we had fought for, and generations of moral retardation in America.

And there lies the difference. When we left Vietnam, they suffered the murders; we merely grew sicker in the soul. But today there are no borders left. Already we have lost 3000 on our own soil (not even counting the international atrocities that prefaced the main event--the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the despicable drowning of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer on the Achille Lauro). Already we know that their hatred of us will not be stopped by the civilized niceties of national boundaries. They have come after us before. And they will again.

If we believe, or come to believe, that it is somehow in our interest to leave Iraq to the Iraqis before they are able to stem the tide of terrorism, our leaving will not guarantee our security. Instead, it will diffuse the firestorm of Iraq throughout the world, civilized and less so. If we truly believe that running away will stop Americans from dying at the hands of Islamofascist terrorists, we are fooling ourselves.

They know where we live.

SENATOR KERRY'S CHOICE

2004-07-27T22:16:00.000-05:00

THE BISHOPS KNOW THEIR DOCTRINE; KERRY KNOWS ONLY HIS PRO-CHOICE BENEFACTORS

By
Kerry Jacoby

It is time for Senator Kerry to examine his conscience and decide what he truly is.

And it is not only Senator Kerry who must make this choice, but Senator Kennedy, Senator Feinstein, Mario Cuomo, and all those who stand on the razor-thin ledge called "personally pro-life, but--." By this they generally mean that they are, in fact, Catholic in heritage, but because they are (usually) Democrats they feel obliged to pay homage to their pro-choice masters. Although politicians and professional observers of the political scene are howling at the very idea, the Vatican has made it crystal clear--though not in so many words--that one cannot, technically, be both pro-choice and a good Catholic. It therefore follows that politicians attempting to present themselves as such ought to refrain from receiving communion, and priests ought to refrain from giving it to them.

What? How can this be? Do we not have separation of church and state? How dare the religious authorities even whisper advice to politicians about how they ought to vote? Isn't there something downright communistic about the very notion of such a thing?

In a word, no.

The Church isn't telling John Kerry or anyone else what he should think or how he should vote. There's no "threat" involved here, despite pro-abortion politicians' best efforts to paint this move as some form of mystical blackmail. In fact, it's very odd to think that such clear-headed and otherwise secularly-oriented politicians as these would be the least bit bothered by the inability to receive communion. After all, they seem undisturbed by the cognitive dissonance of being pro-choice and Catholic or pro-gay and Catholic. They pay no heed to the official teachings of the Church on any other matter or at any other time. Indeed, not long ago on the Floor of the Senate, Mrs. Feinstein waxed philosophical with the very un-Catholic position that perhaps one was not really a baby until one came home from the hospital!

What the no-communion-for-pro-choice-politicians rule is doing is protecting the souls of those politicians. They may not believe it, but for once "it's for your own good" really applies. The Bible admonishes us to examine ourselves before taking the Body and Blood of the Lord, lest we eat and drink condemnation upon ourselves. It is the responsibility of those who administer communion to remind us of this, and the responsibility of the shepherds of our souls to see to it that we are in alignment with the will of God.

In the worldview of Catholicism, to take communion while in flagrant sin (as those who advocate the abomination of abortion are) is to compound a mortal sin with a sin against the Body and Blood of Christ. Redemption becomes that much more difficult, for one's initial sin is intensified. Even for Protestants, taking communion in unrepentant sin varies from a risky proposition to a forbidden act. Given the Scripture, it is hard to imagine a Christian position that would encourage its members to take communion while in unrepentant sin.
Those who object to the bishops' position misunderstand the direction of the directive. It does not dictate how the politician must vote or what stance he or she must take on the tricky question of abortion. It only clarifies the consequences of that choice for those who would be Catholic. Advocating the murder of children in the womb is simply something that disqualifies one from being a good Catholic. Some folks think that's unfair. But nobody ever said that religions and religious organizations had to be fair, within the bounds of their own structures. Indeed, to do such a thing would itself violate the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion.

Religions have rules. Mormons can't smoke or drink. Neither can Pentecostals. Most Christians are circumscribed in their behavior by the restrictions of their doctrine. Majorities of Protestant groups forbid adultery, fornication, and homosexuality; others add restrictions of dress. Catholicism, as it happens, has a thing about abortion. In some cases, violating these rules renders one ineligible for membership, though usually still welcome in fellowship. And the benefits and obligations of membership vary, as well.

Kerry is welcome to be pro-choice, if that is where his conscience leads him. But if he chooses to elevate his own wisdom over the two-thousand year consistent teaching of the church, he has chosen a religion that is not Catholic, and a Lord that is not the Christ of Catholicism. At that point, his membership is void, and he is barred from the privileges thereof, one of which is taking communion.
The problem lies in the transparently false Catholicism practiced by politicians whose only interest in religion is in the photo opportunities it provides for them so they can appeal to people in the "red" states, where folks are largely pro-life. Truly they must hold a low opinion of such benighted souls, for their pretense is entirely superficial--they call themselves "Catholic," yet agree with the church on fewer issues than they do with President Bush. They are not "personally pro-life," unless by that they mean that they personally would find it distasteful to crush the skull of a baby in the birth canal in order to administer a partial-birth abortion. They are, in fact, personally pro-choice, and they are publicly Catholic only in the sense that they want to go to Mass and take communion, because to publicly NOT do so would be to admit to themselves and others what they in fact are: apostates.

This may seem a harsh, even medieval, word, but it is backed up by the catechism of the Catholic church, which assigns to abortion a special category of sin. To commit or participate in an abortion is an excommunicating act, one by which the perpetrator is separated from the church and from God in the spiritual realm, regardless of what any earthly authority says about it. In other words, the minute the act is committed, one is no longer a Catholic and is forbidden to receive communion.

While Kerry and his ilk do not actually participate in abortions, the Church has recently clarified the position on those who advocate abortion and concludes that they are guilty of the same sin as those who commit the act. Therefore, pro-choice politicians are not only guilty of a mortal sin against the body and blood of Christ, but they are also no longer Catholic the minute the words drift from their lips.

Now, of course, since we have freedom of speech, Kerry can call himself a Catholic, if he wishes. He can also call himself a Klingon, a race car driver, or a bowl of porridge. But there are certain rules by which those things are defined, and since he does not conform to any of them, he cannot be any of them. In other words, he can call himself anything he chooses (pun intended), but saying something doesn’t make it true.

So now it is time for politicians claiming to be pro-choice and Catholic to decide. Whose side are they on? What do they desire more? To be on the right side of God? Or to be on the right side of NOW?

God and Mammon await their decision.