Mark Morford is a Real Treat

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode LXXXV

This one could have been filed under Remember That "Decorative" Turkey? But it really deserves it's own special place. It's a bilious, hilarious screed by Mark Morford at the San Francisco Gate, Dec. 17, 2003 (emphasis in original).

Well gosh golly it took only upward of 500 dead U.S. soldiers (and counting) and more than 2,500 U.S. wounded (and counting) and more than 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi citizens (and counting) and countless tens of thousands of hapless dead Iraqi soldiers (and counting).

And it'll only cost U.S. taxpayers at least a staggering $350 billion along with the complete gutting of our foreign policy and our national treasury and the appalling blood sacrifice of our national pride and our international status and global sense of self-respect.

Oh, and the truth is, it turns out Saddam actually did have some old stashes of weaponry, a bit of rusty, small-scale WMDs, after all -- because we sold them to him, 20 years ago. But they were never any sort of direct danger to America -- or anyone else, for that matter -- and regardless all evidence points to the fact that the stash was completely destroyed more than a decade ago.

Remember that time? Right about when the U.S. hushed up all those sales of biological weapons and computer technology to Iraq? Right about when all those American corporations, from Bechtel to Kodak to AT&T, from Dow Chemical to Hewlett-Packard to IBM and at least 100 more, decided it might be best to begin shredding their records detailing all their Iraq business deals? Hey, why is Donny Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam and smiling in this photo? Shhh.

And now, long after his political usefulness to us has expired, we up and invade his unhappy nation and lay waste to the entire region for no justifiable reason, and we inflate his global stature into this massive inhuman Hitler-esque monster when in fact he was really just an old, tired, small-time thug, and now finally Saddam Hussein, the brutal pip-squeak dictator/former beloved U.S. ally who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, has been captured alive. Yay yay go team.

It was a proud moment in American history. Almost as proud as when Dubya secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a decorative roast turkey to that handful of carefully selected, prescreened soldiers for a Thanksgiving PR stunt that will forever embarrass anyone with any sense of decency and pride -- which is, according to Bush's instant surge in the polls after the photo op, fewer and fewer of us.

As if this changes a single thing. As if Saddam's capture suddenly means BushCo is some sort of nimble or subtly intelligent leader, and that nine months of brutal ongoing gut-busting war was all worth it.

As if we are safer from terrorism. As if we are safer from Karl Rove and John Ashcroft. As if the nation can now stand proud.

Think again. Even Bush himself is not quite so stupid as to go that far. Note how just after Saddam's capture, his army of handlers rushed in to make sure Americans don't expect any lessening of U.S. casualties in Iraq, no slowdown in the number of dead American soldiers or the killing of innocent Iraqis who just happen to be trying to get some clean water or a gallon of fuel when U.S. forces blow another building apart while they're looking for guerrilla insurgents.

Oh yes, Saddam needed to be captured. Oh yes, his capture is a swell thing for the world. Oh yes, Bush desperately needed the ratings boost. But we as a nation have been utterly pulverized with the lie that this war was the only way. We have been slammed for more than two years with relentless hammer of fear and inflated terrorist threats and bogus Orange Alerts, until we all just give in and our resistance crumbles and we say, fine.

Fine, just get it over with, Dubya, go slaughter yet another nearly defenseless nation and catch your impotent bad guy and eviscerate your own country's economy and embarrass us the world over and protect your oil cronies and your military portfolio. Get it over with.

By the way, from Bush Sr. forward (and, yes, that includes Clinton), the U.S. has to date killed far, far more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever could. Along with the United Kingdom, we've been bombing Iraq almost nonstop for the past decade. Not to mention the more than half a million Iraqi children who've died from lack of medicine or decent health care since the brutal, U.S.-backed U.N. sanctions were imposed 12 years ago. Shhh.

The capture does not justify the savagery, nor the humiliation. Not by a long shot. The ends do not justify the means. Nor do they justify the staggering, steaming pile of BushCo lies about why we went to war in the first place.

Remember those? Remember how not one single motive BushCo gave for launching this insane war has actually been proven true? Does this even matter anymore, the string of falsehoods and treasonous fabrications? Apparently not. This is America's biggest wonder, and its ugliest flaw: a nasty short-term memory.

But whatever. Most lockstep Americans do not care that Saddam was never a threat. Most do not care about how many Iraqi children have died, or that in just the first days of the war, U.S. forces killed far more innocent civilians than were killed by those non-Iraqi terrorists in the WTC (4,300, to be more specific). Most do not care that the other 25 despotic heads of state out there right now who are far worse than Saddam are not, apparently, quaking in their dictatorial boots.

Most Americans do not care that somewhere, Osama is probably cheering (hey, he hated Saddam, too). They do not care that, what with our outward display of savagery, new America-loathing terrorists are being spawned faster than BushCo's war machine can possibly keep up with them.

They care only for waving the bloody flag. They care only for the jingoistic PR spin and the hollow sophomoric neocon punditry of Fox News and enough oil to fuel the Expedition for another year. This is what matters most. Kill 'em all, let Halliburton sort 'em out.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Saddam's capture really will mean an earlier end to this tragic and painful war. Maybe it will mean we can get our soldiers home sooner. Maybe it will mean we can get the U.N. and NATO and our international allies involved in setting up a reasonably stable, noncorrupt government in Iraq, one not so obviously in the back pocket of ExxonMobil and Shell. Whoops, too late.

Maybe now that Saddam's captured, we can begin to focus on what's really important: the mandatory and deliberate ouster of another truly ruinous global threat, a shockingly disastrous political puppet.

After all, Saddam's not the only dreadful world leader who's abused his allies, ravaged his economy, launched two blood-drenched wars in as many years, authorized the bombing of tens of thousands, allowed hundreds of U.S. soldiers to die, cut the benefits of war veterans, poisoned the environment, invoked the name of God to justify it all and smirked away every notion of his obvious ineptitude. Can we send Special Forces to the Oval Office now?

This article has been corrected since its original publication.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

San Francisco, huh? I guess he knows his audience.

You may be wondering what was "corrected". Fortunately, The Blog from the Core can provide you with that information. Changes are underlined.

Original: It was a proud moment in American history. Almost as proud as when Dubya secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a fake, inedible plastic turkey to that handful of carefully selected, prescreened soldiers for that Thanksgiving PR stunt that will forever embarrass anyone with any sense of decency and pride -- which is, according to Bush's instant surge in the polls after the photo op, fewer and fewer of us.

"Corrected": It was a proud moment in American history. Almost as proud as when Dubya secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a decorative roast turkey to that handful of carefully selected, prescreened soldiers for a Thanksgiving PR stunt that will forever embarrass anyone with any sense of decency and pride -- which is, according to Bush's instant surge in the polls after the photo op, fewer and fewer of us.

It had been well known for a couple of weeks that the "decorative" turkey was, indeed, a real turkey "roasted and primped... to adorn the buffet line".

P.S. The conclusion of the last quoted paragraph indicates that, this time next year, Morford's incoherent rage will be directed, not against George W. Bush, but against all those millions of Americans who will have kept Bush in the White House for another four years. And all I can say now is... what a treat that will be!

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 09:58:37 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Remember That "Decorative" Turkey?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode LXXXIV

As I'm sure you remember, Faithful Reader, the president was photographed carrying a "decorative" turkey while in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day. The way that liberal commentators zeroed in on that bird reveals the kind of eye with which they view the world and may very well help us to understand why their side is going to accomplish what it will have accomplished in the general election in November.

First, a blog by Gregg Easterbrook at The New Republic, Dec. 10, 2003:

The "decorative turkey" in George W. Bush's hands in the Thanksgiving pictures from Baghdad should in fact make people angry. Hundreds of American dead, thousands of Iraqi dead, and the White House is staging phony photos on Iraqi soil? The occupation of Iraq may be justified, but White House use of the war as a political prop is becoming unseemly. And think: somebody had to fly a fake turkey to Iraq. Voters are not stupid; this sort of thing may backfire on Bush.

Well, some voters are stupid. And some bloggers are stupid, too. The "decorative turkey" was not a fake turkey: it had been "roasted and primped... to adorn the buffet line". And such a thing is, as explained at JunkYardBlog, a "standard prop" in the military for the holiday. That Easterbrook thinks this may "backfire" on Bush is silly and reveals more about Easterbrook — as in, he's way out of touch — than it does about Bush.

Next, Matt Taibbi writes an hysterical (in at least two senses of the word) column at New York Press, Dec. 3-9, 2003.

It was a media event without precedent–an elaborately staged production in which a small group of journalists was literally kidnapped, flown into a war zone, stuffed headfirst into the ass of a Thanksgiving turkey and then made to flap its arms for the amusement of all humanity when the commander-in-chief blew into a kazoo. A more dramatic example of Stockholm Syndrome has probably never been shown on television.

There are going to be a lot of Bush-haters out there who will be tempted to evince disgust at the "shock and awe" Thanksgiving trip for the obvious reasons: the stage-managed sentimentality, the humiliating spectacle of our commander-in-chief whizzing in and out of Baghdad under cover of darkness like a campus flasher, the billionaire president’s simultaneously hilarious and sickening appropriation of poor-person language in asking for a "warm meal somewhere."

This is wrong. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that this stunt was certainly the closest thing to physical courage that George Bush has ever publicly demonstrated. Not that it isn’t tempting to make light of some of the "hazards" he faced ("The president encountered and witnessed traffic for the first time in three years," White House communications director Dan Bartlett told reporters), but there’s no denying that the trip was a serious logistical achievement and not without real risks. Even if he were only following the orders of his pollster, Bush should at least be given credit for not sh*tting his pants in the line of duty.

It’s Bush’s job, after all, to lead us into disastrous foreign-policy adventures and then try to sugarcoat them with mawkish, grandstanding publicity stunts. No one should be upset with the president for doing his job. What we should be upset about is the national press corps behaving like p.r. agents, which is what happened last week.

Rather than tune out and tell the president to pay for his campaign ads like all the other candidates, the entire American media rolled over and covered the stunt at face value, even after the administration made it clear that the only journalists they would invite along would be the ones who could be counted on to portray Bush as a cross between Christ and Douglas MacArthur.

Take Terrence Hunt of the Associated Press, one of the 13 journalists selected for this courageous exercise in editorial independence. When finally called upon to file his surprise-guest story, Hunt, perhaps moved by his Mesopotamian surroundings, described Bush in mythical tones:

At that moment, President Bush strode forth from the wings in an Army track suit emblazoned with a First Armored Division patch. The bored crowd shot from their seats and whooped. As he surveyed the crowd, a tear dripped down the president’s cheek…

It may very well be that in the age of Plutarch, kings not only wept over conquered horizons, but were said to "stride forth from the wings." From reading Hunt, you’d never know that the vocabulary of executive entrance has advanced in a less hysterical direction since then. But such literary trumpet calls were about par for the course for the major dailies, which followed a peculiar pattern in their coverage: First gushingly swallow Bush’s p.r. stunt whole on the front page, then later freak out about what they’d done in pusillanimous, self-hating analysis pieces somewhere deep in the bowels of their news sections.

The New York Times was a great example. America’s paper of record was one of dozens of publications around the country to run Hunt’s piece on its front page, and for the Times this in itself was already a kind of gross public surrender to the White House. After all, the reason they’d had to resort to leading with a shoddy wire-service report was that its own correspondents, like CNN’s, had been conspicuously disinvited to the Air Force One adventure.

That this was in retaliation for unfriendly Iraq coverage was obvious. The White House has been quite open about its use of tactics like these for some time now. Citing concerns about the "filter" through which the ostensibly cheerful news from Iraq was reaching ordinary Americans, Bush last month bypassed the major networks to give a series of eight-minute interviews to local television stations. CBS called it the "public relations equivalent of a declaration of war."

Similarly, Bush last spring passed over Washington Post reporters Mike Allen and Dana Milbank at the notorious pre-war press conference, apparently in retaliation for a Post Iraq story entitled "Taking Liberties With the Truth." And Houston Chronicle White House reporter Bennett Roth was frozen out for months after asking an untoward question about Bush’s daughter.

So how did the mighty Times react to being forced to take its turn at being publicly slapped in the face with the proverbial presidential rubber chicken? Well, first it dutifully followed the New York tabloids in splashing Bush’s Julia-Child-holding-the-turkey pool photo on the front page. Then it ran Hunt’s piece underneath, below the loving headline, "Surprise Guest Makes it Worth the Wait."

Then, inside, at the very end of a spineless analysis piece, it had its own Washington bureau chief, Phillip Taubman, whisper the faintest of third-person protests to reporters Jacques Steinberg and Jim Rutenberg:

Mr. Taubman said he respected pool protocol but questioned why the press corps traveling on Air Force One could not have been enlarged somewhat, given the gravity of a visit by the president to Iraq on Thanksgiving.

This, folks, is how the press fights back in America. If the Times had any balls at all, it would have answered Bush in kind–either by ignoring his nauseating trip entirely, or, even better, by burying his turkey picture under a page-19 feature about Belgian anti-fur activists. Instead, it invited its readers to sit in on the pathetic spectacle of its editors and reporters timidly complaining to one another about having been left out of the fun.

The Washington Post also complained, even though it had been included on the trip. Mike Abramowitz, the paper’s national editor, ventured to the Times that the abduction of its reporter Mike Allen to a foreign country, and the confiscation of his cellphone, had perhaps in some mysterious way disrupted the editor-journalist relationship. "I don’t feel entirely comfortable with that," Abramowitz said. "I prefer to know what our White House reporter is doing." Meanwhile, the Post dutifully ran the Julia Child photo and all the rest of it on the front page.

Outside of America, the response to Bush’s stunt was universally savage and unrelenting, with the London-based Independent leading the way (front page headline: "The Turkey Has Landed"). Many papers chose a Caesar theme to lampoon Bush: The headline in the Lebanese An-Nahar paper hissed, "I came, I saw nothing, but I will conquer." Other papers were less flippant in their condemnation: The Barcelona daily Vanguardia prosaically commented that "George W Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, but has dinner in Baghdad with those who dream of coming home alive."

Only in the States did reporters swallow the whole thing without irony. Even when Bush pissed in their professional faces, America’s intrepid journalists did not blink, instead seeming glad for the attention. Here is how Newsday described one particularly delicious scene:

Soon they touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., taxied into a hangar where another Air Force One jet was waiting, and climbed out into the white and noisy, brightly lit space. [White House reporter Mike] Allen looked up and saw Bush at the top of the plane’s stairs… He paused, and holding his thumb and pinkie apart at his ear in the symbol for the cell phone, he mouthed, "No calls, got it?

In case they did not, the president, with good humor, made the "cut" sign across his throat.

I’m not sure a real journalist would have found too much "good humor" in that scene. Then again, how could a real journalist have gotten on that plane?

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Look, I never heard of this Matt Taibbi before I read this piece. (Now, I can't say as I was really missing anything; even so, it's delightful to get to read this kind of hysterical ranting when I come across it.) But, let me ask you this: how freaking far to the Left does one have to be to complain about how The New York Times and The Associated Press report on George W. Bush?

The New! York! Times! And The! Associated! Press!

Taibbi's attitude is to be contrasted with that of the military, who actually do something instead of merely writing.

P.S. Upon reflection, Taibbi's attitude seems an awful lot like that of a child who is very upset that he's not the center of attention. No?

P.P.S. See Dust in the Light.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 06:50:26 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Howard "Chameleon" Dean

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode LXXXIII

If you have been paying attention, Faithful Reader, you will have noticed that Howard Dean has said that the election in the South will not... just will not.... absolutely will not be about "race, guns, God, and gays". Now, he is bringing faith — if not exactly God — into the race just about every chance he gets.

See today's WaPo article, for instance.

Howard Dean, after practicing a quiet Christianity throughout his political career, said he is talking more about his faith because the presidential race has awakened him to the importance of religious expression, especially to southerners.

"I am not used to wearing religion on my sleeve and being open about it," the former Vermont governor told reporters aboard his campaign plane late Friday. "I am gradually getting more comfortable to talk about religion in ways I did not talk about it before."

Dean said frequent trips to Bible Belt states such as South Carolina, where evangelical Christianity flourishes often in public ways, are prompting him to more candidly discuss his faith. "It does not make me more religious or less religious than before. It just means I am more comfortable talking about it in different ways," he said.

He cited the Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- as a strong influence. The Gospels tell the story of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. "As I have gotten older I have thought about what it means to be a Christian and what the role of religion is in my life," Dean said.

Dean's comments about Christianity provide a rare, if obscured, look at the Democrat who is leading in the polls. He has seldom talked about his family, feelings or religion when campaigning, unlike other candidates who discuss such issues to connect with voters on a personal level.

"The campaign has changed the way I am willing to talk about religion. It has not changed my religious beliefs," Dean reiterated Saturday.

In some ways, Dean is coming to acknowledge a reality of American politics: Voters, particularly in the South, want to hear more about faith and morality from national leaders. This phenomenon has hurt Democrats and helped President Bush, according to strategists from both parties. A recent poll showed 63 percent of voters who regularly attend church back Bush, while a similar percentage of those who rarely or never attend lean toward Democrats. A small shift in support of religious voters could provide a big boost to the Democratic nominee.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), an orthodox Jew, and Al Sharpton, a minister, are the two Democratic presidential candidates who have given their faith and God a role in their campaign rhetoric. Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark recently said faith will become a centerpiece of his campaign message, too. Dean is still wrestling with how prominent a place faith should take in his campaign. The more he talks about it, though, the more comfortable he feels, an aide said.

"I am still learning a lot about faith and the South and how important it is," said Dean, a Congregationalist. The Congregationalist Church is a Christian denomination that preaches a personal relationship with God without a strong hierarchal structure guiding it. Dean was reared an Episcopalian, but left the church 25 years ago in a dispute with a local Vermont church over efforts to build a bike path. Dean's wife is Jewish, as are their two children.

"Faith is important in a lot of places, but it is really important in the South -- I think I did not understand fully how comfortably religion fits in with daily life -- for both black and white populations in the South," he said. Dean has visited South Carolina, which holds its presidential primary Feb. 3, nine times since the beginning of the campaign. "The people there are pretty openly religious, and it plays an ingrained role in people's daily lives," he said.

Dean's decision reflects the evolution of a candidate who earlier in the campaign said it was the New England tradition to practice religion quietly. Still, Dean's remarks about his faith have been mostly confined to discussions with reporters and campaign stops at African American churches in South Carolina. At the same time, he tells Democratic audiences to move elections away from "guns, God and gays."

"What I have not done is figured out is how to talk about [my faith] publicly," he said.

The Democratic front-runner probably will not have much time to elaborate until the presidential race heads South on Feb. 3, an aide said Saturday. But if he wins the nomination, polls show voters want to hear more about faith from political leaders. The general election campaign is when Dean might open up more, the aide said.

The last two Democrats to win the White House -- Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter -- evoked God and their faith. Both are Christians. Some Democrats have said that Dean may be perceived as too secular because of his affiliation with civil unions for gays, which many Christians oppose.

President Bush, a born-again Christian, is one of the most openly religious presidents in generations and enjoys very strong backing in the South, according to recent polls. In 2000, he won every state in the Bible Belt. It would be tough, though not impossible, for a Democrat to defeat Bush without making inroads in the South, strategists from both parties say.

Dean said he prays daily and has read the Bible from cover to cover. "If there was one experience that deepened my religious faith," Dean said Saturday, "it was the capture of my brother [in Laos] almost 30 years ago."

He rarely attends church services, unless it is for a political event. When he talks about Jesus, he usually focuses on Christianity's teachings about helping the poor and less fortunate.

When asked Friday night about his favorite book of the New Testament, he cited Job, about a righteous man whose faith was tested mightily by God through great suffering. After thinking about the scripture, Dean pointed out an hour later that Job is from the Old Testament. Dean said Job reinforces the uncomfortable fact of life that "terrible things can happen to very good people for no good reason."

"I think all human beings have to have an explanation for why bad things happen to good people," which resonates with him, in part, because the suffering he witnessed as a medical doctor, Dean said.

At a breakfast here Saturday, Dean had an opportunity to discuss his faith when an Iowan asked what sustains the front-runner when his rivals are relentlessly criticizing him. Instead, Dean shared a secular belief in the power of people to change government.

A few minutes later, when discussing corporate greed, Dean promised if elected president to call business leaders from around the country into the White House to stress ethics and responsibility. "Moral tone is a huge deal in the presidency," he told the audience.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

If you have been paying attention, Faithful Reader, you will also remember that Dean thinks one of his strong points is that he is willing to tell people what they don't want to hear and isn't willing to do or say anything just to get elected. Strange, then, how he spent most of December insulting every inhabitant south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and is now willing to talk about things he didn't use to talk about because he wants every inhabitant south of the Mason-Dixon Line to vote for him.

Personally, I think this is a great plan: first, Dean wants to get "race, guns, God, and gays" out of the race, then he himself brings at least some of them back in, while showing how committed he is to Christianity by thinking an Old Testament book is a New Testament book. And talking about have switched from Episcopalian to Congregationalist over a... bike path. What an absolutely brilliant calculation to appeal to the southern voter!

Yep. That Karl Rove is a genius.

I am wondering how much vitriolic outrage this new-found talking-about-faith angle will produce amongst his supporters, fellow Democratic politicians, and the mainstream media. Very little, if any, I should think. Why? I think there are at least two reasons: (1) they know Dean is a bald hypocrite pandering for votes and no matter how much he talks religion it really means nothing to him (that is, Bill Clinton is his religion role-model) and/or (2) it's okay because it's "left-wing" religion, which is really social-work dressed up in preacher's garb, rather than "right-wing" religion which, as everybody knows, is really about hating women, homosexuals, immigrants, and the poor.

This WaPo article doesn't make Dean look very good, does it?

(Thanks, Diogenes.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 01:36:30 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

"The Western Disease"

Sorry I've neglected to blog this monumental column by VDH @ NRO, Dec. 30:

After watching a string of editorial attacks on America both at home and from abroad in the aftermath of Saddam’s capture, I thought back to the actual record of the last two years. In 24 months the United States defeated two of the most hideous regimes in modern memory. For all the sorrow involved, it has already made progress in the unthinkable: bringing consensual government into the heart of Middle Eastern autocracy, where there has been no political heritage other than tyranny, theocracy, and dictatorship.

In liberating 50 million people from both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein it has lost so far less than 500 soldiers — some of whom were killed precisely because they waged a war that sought to minimalize not just civilian casualties but even the killing of their enemies. Contrary to the invective of Western intellectuals, the American military’s sins until recently have been of omission — preferring not to shoot looters or hunt down and kill insurgents — rather than brutal commission. While the United States has conducted these successive wars some 7,000 miles beyond its borders, it also avoided another terrorist attack of the scale of September 11 — and all the while crafting a policy of containment of North Korea and soon-to-be nuclear Iran.

Thus by any comparative standard of military history, the last two difficult years, despite setbacks and disappointments, represent a remarkable military achievement .Yet no one would ever gather even the slightest acknowledgment of such success from our Democratic grandees. Al Gore dubbed the Iraqi liberation a quagmire and, absurdly, the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Howard Dean, more absurdly, suggested that the president of the United States might have had foreknowledge of September 11. Most Americans now shudder at the thought that the former might have been president in this time of crisis — and that the latter still could be....

Where did this disease come from? Would I be too much of a crackpot if I speculated that, if Communist infiltrators subverted our institutions decades ago — infecting them with anti-Americanism to be passed on from generation to generation in order that our whole society would be weakened and possibly destroyed without the need of a conventional war to do it in — "The Western Disease" might very well be the longed-for result?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 12:49:54 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

More "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code"

Part Two of a Special Planet Envoy Critique of The Da Vinci Code

See "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code".

(Thanks, David.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 12:26:04 PM
Categorized as Religious.

"Religious Freedom is for Everyone — Not Just Minorities"

A fine article at Towards Tradition by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Jan. 2:

Well, 2004 has arrived which means that dreaded "C word" is behind us. Put politely, "the holiday season" has passed. Having shopped in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle lately and having listened to talk radio in each city I couldn't help noticing a startling double standard.

Overwhelmingly, store assistants and talk radio hosts bid farewell to Jewish guests with a cheerful "Happy Chanukah" while others, including those identified as Christians, received the generic "Happy holidays." With each passing year, secular fundamentalism more successfully injects into American culture the notion that the word "Christmas" is deeply offensive. Well, after watching this year's repeat of the annual "hate Christianity ritual" I think we may be mistaken in allowing this assault to go unchallenged....

(Thanks, David.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 12:17:04 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Three from Morrison V

Poems from Masterpieces of Religious Verse.

"With Whom is no Variableness, Neither Shadow of Turning"

It fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)

All Beautiful the March of Days

All beautiful the march of days,
   As seasons come and go;
The hand that shaped the rose hath wrought
   The crystal of the snow;
Hath sent the hoary frost of heaven,
   The flowing waters sealed,
And laid a silent loveliness
   On hill, and wood, and field.

O'er white expanses sparkling pure
   The radiant morns unfold;
The solemn splendours of the night
   Burn brighter through the cold:
Life mounts in every throbbing vein,
   Love deepens round the hearth,
And clearer sounds the angel-hymn,
   “Good will to men on earth.”

O Thou from whose unfathomed law
   The year in beauty flows,
Thyself the vision passing by
   In crystal and in rose:
Day unto day doth utter speech,
   And night to night proclaim,
In everlasting words of light,
   The wonder of Thy Name.

Frances Whitmarsh Wile (1878-1939)

Lines Written in Her Breviary

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Masterpieces of Religious Verse (1948), ed. James Dalton Morrison, ## 129, 18, 130.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/04 10:04:59 AM
Categorized as Literary & Religious & Sunday Poetry Series.