![]() |
The Weblog at The View from the Core - Saturday, January 17, 2004
|
Running Away From Their Records And Hoping Nobody Will Notice Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXX An article in today's Boston Globe. + + + + + John F. Kerry paced the front row of his audience, a microphone in his hand. He professed to see people of all ages, colors, religions, races. "Folks, you are John Ashcroft's worst nightmare," he exclaimed. In fact, the audience was almost all white, but "Ashcroft" is now a potent applause line for every campaign in Iowa, as if the mere mention of the attorney general would send cats diving under the sofa. Ashcroft is shorthand for the USA Patriot Act, which Kerry says the attorney general has "abused." But the senator himself voted for the USA Patriot Act -- and so did Senators John Edwards and Joseph I. Lieberman, and Representative Richard A. Gephardt, all of whom regularly decry the Bush administration as undercutting civil liberties. In the waning days of the Iowa campaign, the candidates are sounding very much alike. Stump speeches, delivered six and seven times a day, can be exercises in trial and error. Candidates gauge the responses they get, like taste-testers evaluating brands of coffee, and eventually mold each speech into a crowd pleaser. Thus, the voters get to shape the platform, and the candidates oblige. Kerry, for example, now attacks President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, under a resolution the senator supported. He laces into No Child Left Behind, an education plan the senator backed. And he vows to modify the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the senator helped enact. Gephardt likes to point out that he voted against NAFTA and has been a consistent opponent, even when it was unfashionable. He makes this assertion just before launching into his own attack on the Patriot Act, which he supported, and then rumbling toward his final applause line. The only way to cure No Child Left Behind, he chortles, is to "Leave George Bush behind." And yes, Gephardt voted for the program. Edwards, no doubt aware that Whitney Houston borrowed a song by Dolly Parton and turned it into one of the biggest hits of the '90s, admits to taking one of Gephardt's "great lines" about foreign policy: "George Bush doesn't play well with others." He also credits the people of Iowa with showing him the flaws in No Child Left Behind. He seeks to elevate schools rather than stigmatize them. "That's the problem with what Bush has done," Edwards declares. Of course, Bush didn't do it alone; Edwards voted for the bill. It's possible that Edwards, like Gephardt and Kerry, was educated by voters on these matters. To those supporting former governor Howard Dean of Vermont, it seems more like thievery. Dean, however, is reacting like a child who's watched his brothers take his favorite toys: He's clamoring for attention, shooting rhetorical spitballs. Voters don't seem to like that. Yesterday, he pulled an attack ad off the air. He seems to be experimenting with a little Edwards niceness. Every candidate gets educated along the way, even the mavericks. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 09:43:10 PM |
Anglican Membership Plummets Way to go, Rowan Williams! From an undated Church Times article: STATISTICIANS for the Church of England have recorded another across-the-board drop in attendance figures. Average weekly attendance at churches and cathedrals dropped by three per cent in 2002. This was on top of a five-per-cent drop from the previous year. Provisional statistics for 2002, released this week, show that an average 1,166,000 people, including children and young people, attended services once a week in 2002, down from 1,205,000 the year before. In 2000, 1,274,000 on average attended church each week. Under the old method of counting usual Sunday attendance the total was 916,000. Ten years ago, this figure was 1,122,600, representing a drop of 18.5 per cent.... Now, without falling into the old post hoc ergo propter hoc error, may we ask what has been going on in the Anglican Church the past couple of years? First, the installation of liberal Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. Next, the agitation for a "gay" "bishop". Here's a clue for church leaders everywhere, Protestant, Catholic, whatever: the more you make your church indistinguishable from the surrounding culture, the less reason you give anybody to actually belong. And, as a corollary, ask yourselves this question: how does driving people away in droves make your church more "inclusive"? (Thanks, Diogenes.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 09:29:11 PM |
Michael Moore Backs General Wesley Clark Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXIX I guess the slut vote wasn't enough. + + + + + Many of you have written to me in the past months asking, "Who are you going to vote for this year?" I have decided to cast my vote in the primary for Wesley Clark. That's right, a peacenik is voting for a general. What a country! I believe that Wesley Clark will end this war. He will make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. He will stand up for the rights of women, African Americans, and the working people of this country. And he will cream George W. Bush. I have met Clark and spoken to him on a number of occasions, feeling him out on the issues but, more importantly, getting a sense of him as a human being. And I have to tell you I have found him to be the real deal, someone whom I'm convinced all of you would like, both as a person and as the individual leading this country. He is an honest, decent, honorable man who would be a breath of fresh air in the White House. He is clearly not a professional politician. He is clearly not from Park Avenue. And he is clearly the absolute best hope we have of defeating George W. Bush. This is not to say the other candidates won't be able to beat Bush, and I will work enthusiastically for any of the non-Lieberman 8 who might get the nomination. But I must tell you, after completing my recent 43-city tour of this country, I came to the conclusion that Clark has the best chance of beating Bush. He is going to inspire the independents and the undecided to come our way. The hard core (like us) already have their minds made up. It's the fence sitters who will decide this election. The decision in November is going to come down to 15 states and just a few percentage points. So, I had to ask myself -- and I want you to honestly ask yourselves -- who has the BEST chance of winning Florida, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, Missouri, Ohio? Because THAT is the only thing that is going to matter in the end. You know the answer -- and it ain't you or me or our good internet doctor. This is not about voting for who is more anti-war or who was anti-war first or who the media has already anointed. It is about backing a candidate that shares our values AND can communicate them to Middle America. I am convinced that the surest slam dunk to remove Bush is with a four-star-general-top-of-his-class-at-West-Point- Rhodes-Scholar-Medal-of-Freedom-winning- gun-owner-from-the-South -- who also, by chance, happens to be pro-choice, pro environment, and anti-war. You don't get handed a gift like this very often. I hope the liberal/left is wise enough to accept it. It's hard, when you're so used to losing, to think that this time you can actually win. It is Clark who stands the best chance -- maybe the only chance -- to win those Southern and Midwestern states that we MUST win in order to accomplish Bush Removal. And if what I have just said is true, then we have no choice but to get behind the one who can make this happen. There are times to vote to make a statement, there are times to vote for the underdog and there are times to vote to save the country from catastrophe. This time we can and must do all three. I still believe that each one of us must vote his or her heart and conscience. If we fail to do that, we will continue to be stuck with spineless politicians who stand for nothing and no one (except those who write them the biggest checks). My vote for Clark is one of conscience. I feel so strongly about this that I'm going to devote the next few weeks of my life to do everything I can to help Wesley Clark win. I would love it if you would join me on this mission. Here are just a few of the reasons why I feel this way about Wes Clark:
Now, before those of you who are Dean or Kucinich supporters start cloggin' my box with emails tearing Clark down with some of the stuff I've seen floating around the web ("Mike! He voted for Reagan! He bombed Kosovo!"), let me respond by pointing out that Dennis Kucinich refused to vote against a resolution in Congress on March 21 (two days after the war started) which stated "unequivocal support" for Bush and the war (only 11 Democrats voted against this--Dennis abstained. http://clerk.house.gov/ evs/2003/ roll083.xml). Or, need I quote Dr. Dean who, the month after Bush "won" the election, said he wasn't too worried about Bush because Bush "in his soul, is a moderate" (http://www.nytimes.com/ 2004/01/09/politics/campaigns/ 09DEAN.html)? What's the point of this ridiculous tit-for-tat sniping? I applaud Dennis for all his other stands against the war, and I am certain Howard no longer believes we have nothing to fear about Bush. They are good people. Why expend energy on the past when we have such grave danger facing us in the present and in the near future? I don't feel bad nor do I care that Clark -- or anyone -- voted for Reagan over 20 years ago. Let's face it, the vast majority of Americans voted for Reagan -- and I want every single one of them to be WELCOMED into our tent this year. The message to these voters -- and many of them are from the working class -- should not be, "You voted for Reagan? Well, to hell with you!" Every time you attack Clark for that, that is the message you are sending to all the people who at one time liked Reagan. If they have now changed their minds (just as Kucinich has done by going from anti-choice to pro-choice, and Dean has done by wanting to cut Medicare to now not wanting to cut it) - and if Clark has become a liberal Democrat, is that not something to cheer? In fact, having made that political journey and metamorphosis, is he not the best candidate to bring millions of other former Reagan supporters to our side -- blue collar people who have now learned the hard way just how bad Reagan and the Republicans were (and are) for them? We need to take that big DO NOT ENTER sign off our tent and reach out to the vast majority who have been snookered by these right-wingers. And we have a better chance of winning in November with one of their own leading them to the promised land. There is much more to discuss and, in the days and weeks ahead, I will continue to send you my thoughts. In the coming months, I will also be initiating a number of efforts on my website to make sure we get out the vote for the Democratic nominee in November. In addition to voting for Wesley Clark, I will also be spending part of my Bush tax cut to help him out. You can join me, if you like, by going to his website to learn more about him, to volunteer, or to donate. To find out about when your state's presidential primaries are, visit Vote Smart: http://www.vote-smart.org/ election_president_state_primary_dates.php. I strongly urge you to vote for Wes Clark. Let's join together to ensure that we are putting forth our BEST chance to defeat Bush on the November ballot. It is, at this point, for the sake of the world, a moral imperative. Yours, www.michaelmoore.com P.S. To register to vote visit www.yourvotematters.org. + + + + + And he [General Wesley Clark] will cream George W. Bush. Really? I'm not the only one, Mikey, who remembers "Payback" Tuesday. See also Mike and Wesley. (Thanks, Stefan.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 08:45:20 PM |
David Morrison to Monica Hingston A most worthy blog. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 08:32:38 PM |
Gore Talks About Global Warming in NYC on Coldest Day in Ten Years Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXVIII The Beacon Theater Speech, Noon, Wednesday, January 15, 2004. NYT reports, Jan. 16, in what strikes me as a well-balanced article. The editorial staff must have been snowed in and had to call off. + + + + + Former Vice President Al Gore said yesterday that the Bush administration was "wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining industries" and that President Bush was a "moral coward" for not standing up to his campaign contributors when their interests conflicted with those of the public. Mr. Gore's speech in New York, billed as an attack on Mr. Bush's environmental record, proved to be a far broader critique. The former vice president used environmental issues to highlight what he called moral failures and deceptions by the Bush administration. "While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors he is a moral coward, so weak that he seldom if ever says `no' to anything, no matter what the public interest might mandate," Mr. Gore said to a standing ovation. The speech, co-sponsored by the group MoveOn.org, was his fourth in a series that takes the administration to task while helping keep Mr. Gore in the nation's political dialogue. He is not a candidate for office, but he looked and sounded like one with a speech that blended humor with outrage. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, called Mr. Gore's remarks "political hate speech" and said in a statement: "Instead of repudiating these tactics, Al Gore chose to embrace the vile tactics that are becoming the hallmark of the Democrat Party at its highest levels. "Like the Democrat presidential candidates, Al Gore has once again chosen to use his time at the podium to attack the president rather than put forward a positive agenda of his own." But Mr. Gore appeared to give the crowd what it wanted. Organizers said they had distributed 3,500 tickets in just two hours via the Internet and despite frigid temperatures, the Beacon Theater on Broadway was packed. On several occasions Mr. Gore could hardly be heard above the applause. The speech began as a familiar tutorial on climate and mankind, of the kind Mr. Gore has been giving for two decades. But it soon encompassed foreign policy and the president's recent proposal to try to build a base on the moon, which Mr. Gore called an "unimaginative and retreated effort." He accused the Bush White House of often operating in secret, of intentionally deceiving the public and of "radical changes that reverse a century of American policy designed to protect our natural resources." Mr. Gore assailed Mr. Bush as having criticized the concept of "nation building" during the campaign in 2000 only to invade and occupy Iraq. He said Mr. Bush's promise as a candidate to regulate carbon dioxide as a polluting greenhouse gas "was instantly transformed by the inauguration into a promise to the generators of CO2 that it would not be regulated at all." Mr. Gore's impassioned delivery prompted several people in the audience to remark afterward that had he been as forceful as a candidate in 2000, he might have won. Doug Hattaway, Mr. Gore's national spokesman in 2000, said he believed that Mr. Gore was speaking out with one goal in mind: to help defeat Mr. Bush in 2004. "He is helping to add fuel to the fire and keep issues in the news that are problematic for the administration," Mr. Hattaway said. But while Mr. Gore may have helped rally the Democratic faithful, the political cast to his speech drew concern that he might be undermining the very cause he said he was addressing. "In many ways it is the politicization of the climate issue that has stifled discussions of new and innovative policy options," Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado commented after reading the speech. "As opposing sides use the issue for political gain, it is very difficult for new ideas to enter the discussion. The politics is all well and good, but meanwhile we lack effective options on climate." + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. He is helping to add fuel to the fire: what a nicely ironic image, no? The speech, Jan. 15, follows (ellipses in original). + + + + + Thank you, Carol, Joan and Peter. And thanks to all of you for coming here today. It was an honor to work with Carol Browner on environmental policies in the last administration and I am grateful for her leadership of Environment 2004. I want to thank Peter for his leadership as Executive Director of Moveon.org and I appreciate all of those who have worked in the trenches with both of these organizations that are co-sponsoring today's speech. I want to say a special word about Joan Blades, who traveled from California for this event and who, along with her husband, Wes Boyd, co-founded Moveon.org. She has been from the beginning a moving force behind the emergence of this dynamic new grassroots movement in American politics and public policy. I have made a series of speeches about the policies of the Bush / Cheney Administration towards the major challenges that confront our nation: national security, economic policy, civil liberties, and today: the environment. For me, this issue is in a special category because of what I believe is at stake. I am particularly concerned because the vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists from all over the world have sounded a clear and urgent alarm. The international community - including the United States - began a massive effort several years ago to assemble the most accurate scientific assessment of the growing evidence that the earth's environment is sustaining severe and potentially irreparable damage from the unprecedented accumulation of pollution in the global atmosphere. In essence, these scientists are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities is becoming a serious threat to our common future. I am also troubled that the Bush/Cheney Administration does not seem to hear the warnings of the scientific community in the same way that most of us do. Here is what we are talking about: PICTURES 1 THROUGH 8 Even though the earth is of such vast size, the most vulnerable part of the global environment is the atmosphere - because it is surprisingly thin - as the late Carl Sagan used to say: like a coat of varnish on a globe. PICTURES 9 THROUGH 12 I don't think there is any longer a credible basis for doubting that the earth's atmosphere is heating up because of global warming. PICTURES 13 THROUGH 65 So the evidence is overwhelming and undeniable. Global Warming is real. It is happening already and the anticipated consequences are unacceptable. But it is important to understand that this crisis is actually just a symptom of a deeper underlying cause: PICTURES 66 THROUGH 126 Yet in spite of the clear evidence available all around us, there are many who still do not believe that Global Warming is a problem at all. And it's no wonder: because they are the targets of a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters who are determined to prevent any action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, out of a fear that their profits might be affected if they had to stop dumping so much pollution into the atmosphere. And wealthy right-wing ideologues have joined with the most cynical and irresponsible companies in the oil, coal and mining industries to contribute large sums of money to finance pseudo-scientific front groups that specialize in sowing confusion in the public's mind about global warming. They issue one misleading "report" after another, pretending that there is significant disagreement in the legitimate scientific community in areas where there is actually a broad-based consensus. The techniques they use were pioneered years earlier by the tobacco industry in its long campaign to create uncertainty in the public's mind about the health risks caused by tobacco smoke. Indeed, some of the very same scientific camp-followers who took money from the tobacco companies during that effort are now taking money from coal and oil companies in return for their willingness to say that global warming is not real. PICTURES 127 AND 128 In a candid memo about political strategy for Republican leaders, pollster Frank Luntz expressed concern that voters might punish candidates who supported more pollution, but offered advice on the key tactic for defusing the issue: PICTURE 129 The Bush Administration has gone far beyond Luntz' recommendations, however, and has explored new frontiers in cynicism by time and time again actually appointing the principal lobbyists and lawyers for the biggest polluters to be in charge of administering the laws that their clients are charged with violating. Some of these appointees have continued to work very closely with the outside pseudo-scientific front groups even though they are now on the public payroll. Two Attorneys General have now publicly accused officials in the Bush White House Council on Environmental Quality of conspiring with one of the outside groups to encourage the filing of a lawsuit as part of a shared strategy to undermine the possibility of government action on Global Warming. Vice President Cheney's infamous "Energy Task Force" advised lobbyists for polluters early in the new administration that there would be no action by the Bush White House on Global Warming and then asked for their help in designing a totally meaningless "voluntary" program. One of the industry lobbyists who heard this pitch later made an unguarded speech to his peers about the experience and said the following: "Let me put it to you in political terms. The President needs a fig leaf. He's dismantling Kyoto, but he's out there on a limb." The White House has routinely gone out on a limb to involve large contributors representing companies charged with violating environmental laws and regulations in the drafting of new laws and regulations designed to let their clients off the hook. The story is the same when it comes to protecting the American people from pollution. The Bush administration chooses special interests over the public interest, ignoring the scientific evidence in favor of policies its contributors demand. Consider Mercury, an extremely toxic pollutant causing severe developmental and neurological defects in fetuses. We know its principal unregulated source is coal-fired power plants. But the Bush Administration has gutted the protections of the Clean Air Act, revoking an earlier determination by the EPA that mercury emissions from power plants should be treated as hazardous air pollutants. Even Bush's own FDA issued warning about mercury in tuna. Are you all right with that - the President saying that Mercury shouldn't be treated as a hazardous air pollutant? Consider toxic wastes. The Superfund has gone from $3.8 billion to a shortfall of $175 million. The result is fewer cleanups, slower cleanups, and a toxic mess left for our children. That's because the Bush administration has let its industry friends off the hook; the tax these polluters used to pay to support the Superfund has been eliminated, so that you, me, and other taxpayers are left holding the bill. Are you all right with that - the country's worst polluters getting off the hook while you and I pay? And consider the enforcement of environmental laws. For three years in a row, the Bush administration has sought to slash enforcement personnel levels at EPA. Offices were told to back off cases, leaving one veteran EPA servant to say, "The rug was pulled out from under us...You look around and say, "What contribution can I make here?" Are you all right with that - the EPA being stripped of its ability to protect our air and water? I'll tell you who's all right with that. A recent review of contributions to the Bush campaign from utility industry executives, lawyers and lobbyists showed that 15 individuals were Bush Pioneers - those who raised at least $100,000 for the Bush campaign. We've seen this radical change in our parks too. Just ask the coalition of more than 100 retired career park service employees who wrote a letter saying that their mission to protect parks' natural resources has been changed to focus on commercial and special-interest use of parks. These are not small shifts in policy - they are radical changes that reverse a century of American policy designed to protect our natural resources. Here's what America used to be. Yellowstone Park was created in 1872, in part to preserve its forest, mineral and geothermal resources. Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 championed this philosophy, setting aside millions of acres of forest reserves, national monuments and wildlife refuges. This balanced approach - combining use of needed resources in the short term with conservation for future generations -- has been honored by Roosevelt on down the line, president after president - until this one. In preparing this series of speeches, I have noticed a troubling pattern that characterizes the Bush/Cheney Administration's approach to almost all issues. In almost every policy area, the Administration's consistent goal has been to eliminate any constraints on their exercise of raw power, whether by law, regulation, alliance or treaty - and in the process they have in each case caused America to be seen by the other nations of the world as showing disdain for the international community. In each case they devise their policies with as much secrecy as possible and in close cooperation with the most powerful special interests that have a monetary stake in what happens. In each case the public interest is not only ignored but actively undermined. In each case they devote considerable attention to a clever strategy of deception that appears designed to prevent the American people from discerning what it is they are actually doing. Indeed, they often use Orwellian language to disguise their true purposes. For example, a policy that opens national forests to destructive logging of old-growth trees is labeled "The Healthy Forest Initiative." A policy that vastly increases the amount of pollution that can be dumped into the air is called the "Clear Skies Initiative." And in case after case, the policy adopted immediately after the inauguration has been the exact opposite of what was pledged to the American people during the election campaign. The promise by candidate Bush to conduct a "humble" foreign policy and avoid any semblance of "nation building" was transformed in the first days of the Bush presidency, into a frenzied preparation for a military invasion of Iraq, complete with detailed plans for the remaking of that nation under American occupation. And in the same way, a solemn promise made to the country that carbon dioxide would be regulated as a polluting greenhouse gas was instantly transformed by the inauguration into a promise to the generators of CO2 that it would not be regulated at all. And a seemingly heartfelt declaration to the American people during the campaign that he genuinely believed that global warming is a real problem which must be addressed was replaced after the Inauguration by a dismissive expression of contempt for careful, peer-reviewed work by EPA scientists setting forth the plain facts on at global warming. These and other activities make it abundantly clear that the Bush White House represents a new departure in the history of the Presidency. He is so eager to accommodate his supporters and contributors that there seems to be very little that he is not willing to do for them at the expense of the public interest. To mention only one example, we've seen him work tirelessly to allow his friends to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Indeed, it seems at times as if the Bush-Cheney Administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining companies. While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors he is a moral coward - so weak that he seldom if ever says "No" to them on anything - no matter what the public interest might mandate. The problem is that our world is now confronting a five-alarm fire that calls for bold moral and political leadership from the United States of America. With such leadership, there is no doubt that we could solve the problem of global warming. After all, we brought down communism, won wars in the Pacific and Europe simultaneously, enacted the Marshall Plan, found a cure for polio and put men on the moon. When we set our sights on a visionary goal and are unified in pursuing it, there is very little we cannot accomplish. And it is important to recall that we have also already succeeded in organizing a winning global strategy to solve one massive global environmental challenge: PICTURE 130 AND 131 Instead of spending enormous sums of money on an unimaginative and retread effort to make a tiny portion of the Moon habitable for a handful of people, we should focus instead on a massive effort to ensure that the Earth is habitable for future generations. If we make that choice, the U.S. can strengthen our economy with a new generation of advanced technologies, create millions of good new jobs, and inspire the world with a bold and moral vision of humankind's future. PICTURES 132 THROUGH 138 We are now at a true fork in the road. And in order to take the right path, we must choose the right values and adopt the right perspective. PICTURES 139 THROUGH 142 My friend the late Carl Sagan, whose idea it was to take this picture of the Earth, said this: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know. Everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever WAS lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds , Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light... The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand... There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." PICTURES 143 AND 144 + + + + + I don't have the pictures. Darn. I bet they were nice. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 04:08:53 PM |
What Part Of This Will Be "Clarified", Corrected, Or Retracted By Tuesday? Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXVII A Boston Herald article, today, on Wesley Clark who was tickled pink last April 10th about the War Against Saddam Hussein. + + + + + Stepping up his fiery defense of perceived flip-flops on Iraq, retired Gen. Wesley Clark yesterday said he relishes Republican claims he once backed the war - and vowed to "beat down" President Bush if he ever used it against him. "Every time he brings it up, I'm going to beat him down with it," Clark said in a Boston Herald interview. "I can't wait until I'm standing on that stage looking at George W. Bush and he repeats a simplicity and I repeat my simplicity - you didn't do everything you could have done to have prevented 9/11, you failed in your duty to the Ameican people and you took us into a war to distract the American people instead of focusing on the real threat to America." Clark, meeting with Herald reporters and editors, vowed that, if he were president, Osama bin Laden would already be captured or dead. The ex-general also said that, while pushed by friends in the Republican Party, he never considered running for office in the GOP and reiterated controversial statements that he would back abortion for women at any time during their pregnancy. Clark's comments came as he rises to within striking distance of New Hampshire front-runner Howard Dean and is under attack from Republicans and his Democratic opponents alike - mostly over his stance on the Iraq war. On Thursday, the Republican National Committee released testimony from Clark before a congressional committee in which he appeared to back Bush's reasons for going to war in Iraq. The Clark campaign made a show yesterday of highlighting instances when reports on the testimony used ellipses to try to skew Clark's quotes, particularly the controversial Drudge Report Web site. The RNC responded with a press release using no less than 24 ellipses to mock Clark. "Mr. Clark is reinventing himself daily," the RNC wrote. Clark, in the Herald interview, angrily decried the use of his testimony as out of context. "I was against the war then, I'm against the war now," Clark said. "It was a strategic mistake for America." But, asked again why he said he "probably" would have voted for the resolution authorizing force in Iraq, Clark said, "that was also a strategic mistake. It was a bobble, and there's no explaining it." Though apparently admitting he gave conflicting comments on the war, Clark wouldn't acknowledge a change in opinion. "It may be that the very kinds of skills that made me so successful as a military commentator, the ability to think in nuance and be clear, are not the kind of skills you need in a political leader," Clark said. "It may be that, in a democracy, you have to have a political leader who can't tell the American people the truth, he just has to speak in slogans and soundbites. It may be that a guy like that speaks like that is even a better leader. I hope it's not the case." On the trail in New Hampshire, the former NATO commander released to reporters stacks of his old tax returns and other personal files in an effort to prod secrets kept by Dean from his days as Vermont governor and the Bush administration. But U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's campaign criticized Clark for making a show of releasing his records but refusing to detail his time spent working as a lobbyist for a Defense Department contractor. "If Clark truly wants to send a message that he believes in open and honest government, he would release who he worked for, how much he got paid, who his clients were and what exactly he did for them," Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera said. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. "It may be that the very kinds of skills that made me so successful as a military commentator, the ability to think in nuance and be clear, are not the kind of skills you need in a political leader," Clark said. Considering the number and frequency of Clark's gaffes since his entry (for unfathomable reasons) into the presidential race, one could hardly underestimate the chutzpah it took for him to say that. Clark's response to the week's revelations are those of a man desperate to change the subject because he knows he can't win the debate on the merits. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 03:49:28 PM |
Our Children's Catastrophe Moral relativism. Elizabeth Nickson writes at The National Post, yesterday: The smart young are, of course, already trending conservative -- they've grown up with the hash my generation has made of love and marriage, and they have soldiered their way through the nonsense we have made of education. But way-left boomers turning right in middle age? Come on. But it's true. A woman around my age, a stalwart, a pillar, a lodestone of the ultra left-wing literary world on Canada's West Coast told me last week, that this year she was going to embrace her Inner Republican. An adorable new friend, Howie Siegel who spent the '70s naked and stoned on Lasquiti Island owns Pagliacci's, the most successful restaurant in Victoria, the Roxy, an art house cinema, and treats the City of Victoria every summer to a free concert in the Park, this year we hope Diana Krall and maybe even Elvis. Classic barking radical, right? Nope. Early adopters of the tsunami wave to come, both. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing it wasn't studying the demand curve that changed them, it was their children. Or rather, the catastrophe that has been visited upon children by moral relativism at home, and multiculturalism in the schools. Two books published just recently, were written by former '60s radicals, pushed right by the terrible plight of kids, and (spare me the invective from the union hate mail tree) by the sheer backwards idiocy that informs the teachers' unions. The Epidemic: the Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children did not hail from some right-wing think-tank, it is written by Robert Shaw, a psychiatrist who practices in Berkeley, Calif. Equally, Breaking Free, Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice was written by Sol Stern, like my pal Howie Siegel, a New York Jew, who first embraced with fervour the once great public school P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the spiritual home of American socialism, and found that he had to tutor his kids in four out of the five subjects that they were taking. Both books serve as object lessons in why conservatives own the future..... How does this link up with teachers unions and school choice, I hear you asking. Easy. Experts. Sol Stern and Dr. Shaw believe that at home we defer to the "wisdom" published in thousands of books by self-styled "professionals" every year, and in the schools, we bow and scrape to pedagogical madness. Behind both sets of experts lies a grim ideology that is designed to change our culture, starting with the youngest among us. As Stern makes clear, good schooling is now focused on encouraging children to free themselves from capitalism's competitive mindset and false patriotism. In its place race- and gender-centred philosophy of teaching and development. Put in the plainest language possible, says Stern, children who learn about the plight of Indians and nothing about the American Revolution, come to believe that everyone is racist, even the hundreds of thousands of whites who gave their lives in the Civil War so that slavery would be eradicated; that all business is thievery; and all men oppress women. Students are starved of factual knowledge and basic skills. With such revisionist history, distinguishing between right and wrong is a useless skill, and in any case, not taught either at home or at school. Moral Darwinism has replaced the development of the soul. We are just beginning to reap those results: Enron, the Clintons, Martha Stewart, Global Crossing, 12-year-olds delivering blow jobs in school buses for cocaine.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 03:35:46 PM |
The European Left's Anti-Americanism Geoffrey Wheatcroft glances, Jan. 11, at a new John Le Carrι novel, and casts this out for our enlightment: .... A large part of the European left spent a large part of the 20th century hating the United States not because it had economic inequality or Jim Crow but because it did not have show trials, labor camps and the other appurtenances of "actually existing socialism." .... Makes sense to me. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 03:29:02 PM |
"Who Gets It?" Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXVI In an article whose title is delightfully fraught with dramatic irony, Paul Krugman writes, yesterday, with the typical intensity and perception of a man who thinks he has a vista onto the world when he is actually staring into a mirror. + + + + + Earlier this week, Wesley Clark had some strong words about the state of the nation. "I think we're at risk with our democracy," he said. "I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame." In other words, the general gets it: he understands that America is facing what Kevin Phillips, in his remarkable new book, "American Dynasty," calls a "Machiavellian moment." Among other things, this tells us that General Clark and Howard Dean, whatever they may say in the heat of the nomination fight, are on the same side of the great Democratic divide. Most political reporting on the Democratic race, it seems to me, has gotten it wrong. Some journalists do, of course, insist on trivializing the whole thing: what I dread most, in the event of an upset in Iowa, is the return of reporting about the political significance of John Kerry's hair. But even those who refrain from turning political reporting into gossip have used the wrong categories. Again and again, one reads that it's about the left wing of the Democratic party versus the centrists; but Mr. Dean was a very centrist governor, and his policy proposals are not obviously more liberal than those of his rivals. The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren't. What makes Mr. Dean seem radical aren't his policy positions but his willingness shared, we now know, by General Clark to take a hard line against the Bush administration. This horrifies some veterans of the Clinton years, who have nostalgic memories of elections that were won by emphasizing the positive. Indeed, George Bush's handlers have already made it clear that they intend to make his "optimism" as opposed to the negativism of his angry opponents a campaign theme. (Money-saving suggestion: let's cut directly to the scene where Mr. Bush dresses up as an astronaut, and skip the rest of his expensive, pointless but optimistic! Moon-base program.) But even Bill Clinton couldn't run a successful Clinton-style campaign this year, for several reasons. One is that the Democratic candidate, no matter how business-friendly, will not be able to get lots of corporate contributions, as Clinton did. In the Clinton era, a Democrat could still raise a lot of money from business, partly because there really are liberal businessmen, partly because donors wanted to hedge their bets. But these days the Republicans control all three branches of government and exercise that control ruthlessly. Even corporate types who have grave misgivings about the Bush administration a much larger group than you might think are afraid to give money to Democrats. Another is that the Bush people really are Nixonian. The bogus security investigation over Ron Suskind's "The Price of Loyalty," like the outing of Valerie Plame, shows the lengths they're willing to go to in intimidating their critics. (In the case of Paul O'Neill, alas, the intimidation seems to be working.) A mild-mannered, upbeat candidate would get eaten alive. Finally, any Democrat has to expect not just severely slanted coverage from the fair and balanced Republican media, but asymmetric treatment even from the mainstream media. For example, some have said that the intense scrutiny of Mr. Dean's Vermont record is what every governor who runs for president faces. No, it isn't. I've looked at press coverage of questions surrounding Mr. Bush's tenure in Austin, like the investment of state university funds with Republican donors; he got a free pass during the 2000 campaign. So what's the answer? A Democratic candidate will have a chance of winning only if he has an energized base, willing to contribute money in many small donations, willing to contribute their own time, willing to stand up for the candidate in the face of smear tactics and unfair coverage. That doesn't mean that the Democratic candidate has to be a radical which is a good thing for the party, since all of the candidates are actually quite moderate. In fact, what the party needs is a candidate who inspires the base enough to get out the message that he isn't a radical and that Mr. Bush is. + + + + + The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes. Can it get much better than that, Faithful Reader? What a shame this man's column isn't run in every newspaper & read on the nightly news. See also Hoystory.com. P.S. Mainstream media goes... easy... on... George W. Bush! Giggle. Chuckle. Snort. Guffaw! Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 03:15:19 PM |
Rachel The Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year. See also Jhimmi Carter Wins! Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 10:59:48 AM |
Out of the Depths of Hell Whence else? Young Palestinian mother Reem Salih al-Rayashi rejoiced to become a human bomb. Little green footballs covers the inhuman, diabolical event of Jan. 14, and the subsequent laudatory celebrations:
That's neither a Torah nor a New Testament she's brandishing, but a Quran. Alas, there are lots of folks who would think it a "hate crime" for me to have pointed that out. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Sat. 01/17/04 10:36:26 AM |
The Blog from the Core © 2002-2008 E. L. Core. All rights reserved. |
Previous | Week | Next |