Click for Main Weblog

   
The Weblog at The View from the Core - Sunday, February 01, 2004
   
   

Battering the "House of Bush"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CLVII

"The crowd roared. Then again, this was Berkeley."

An informative report at the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 25.

+ + + + +

Loathing President Bush is an art form in Berkeley, a disgust so pointed that 3,500 people recently gave a standing ovation to a trio of best- selling Bush-bashing authors — comedian Al Franken, economist Paul Krugman and ex-Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips — before they uttered a word onstage.

Unbeknownst to most in the sold-out Berkeley Community Theater audience, they were beta-testing a show that East Coast promoters are developing into a national barnstorming tour. The promoters were impressed; dates in New York and New Haven, Conn., are expected to be announced in the next week on what's being billed as the "Rolling Thunder" tour.

Bookers in Los Angeles and Chicago are gauging the reception of the unorthodox concept — three disparate authors, fronted by three different publishers, united only by their common pounding of the leader of the free world — before scheduling local versions.

While political commentary wrapped in entertainment harkens back at least to the 1950s and such comics as Mort Sahl, the concept has largely been hibernating until recently, dismissed as box-office death for those to the left of Rush Limbaugh. That attitude began to change last fall, when best- sellers by Franken and filmmaker Michael Moore uncovered an appetite for Bush- bashing entertainment.

Propelling it forward are performers who are willing to sacrifice ego and cash for the cause; the authors at the Berkeley show waived five-figure speaking fees.

But while the progressive faithful are thrilled with the books, music and performance art that's bubbling up, the real test will be whether such political entertainment can convert voters in the "red states" that supported Bush over Al Gore in 2000.

"The truth is, I don't know. I know writing for journals with a circulation of 3,000 won't do it," Krugman, a New York Times columnist, said before last Sunday's Berkeley show. Facetiously, he added, "And writing for the New York Times only gets the latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, sushi-eating types. What we really need to do is reach out and grab people."

The barnstorming tour is the latest lapel-grab from progressive voices. Franken, the Emmy-award-winning writer, will host a program on a soon-to-be- launched liberal radio network. His book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," is in its 21st week on the best- seller list. This past week, it was joined by Phillips' "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush."

Krugman's "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way" was a best-seller for more than two months last fall.

The trend is turning up in other media as well. MoveOn.org, the Berkeley- birthed grassroots online organization, peppered CNN all week with the winner of its "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest, chosen from more than 1,000 submissions created by nonpoliticos and judged by hipsters such as musician-actor Jack Black.

In the Bay Area, activists are trying to jolt armchair liberals into action with a little entertainment.

A show featuring comedy, music, film and "censored truths," dubbed "Behind Every Terrorist Is a Bush," is set for next Sunday at the Herbst Theater. In April, the San Francisco punk rock label Fat Wreck Chords will release "Rock Against Bush," a compilation of political songs, and stage a tour by several bands.

A series of performances aimed at getting young clubbers interested in politics debuted Jan. 11 at San Francisco's Cafe Du Nord, where a larger-than- normal Sunday night audience saw a lineup featuring veteran Bay Area stage actor Geoff Hoyle, video artist VJ Luna and longtime activist David Harris.

The next gig in that series, however, won't be in a red state. It will be in Berkeley.

"Club owners are a hard nut," said the series' co-creator, Infotainment Posse's Michael Ward. "They're going to have to be convinced that it's not a dog show, so I'm going to have to show them this is going to work on a commercial level."

Even the people behind the Franken-headlined event in Berkeley were reluctant to call it "entertainment." One preferred "intellectual resistance."

"I see this as more about politics and a movement than just entertainment, " said Drake McFeely, chairman and president of W.W. Norton and Co., the New York outfit that published Krugman's book and united the three authors in Berkeley. "If this keeps drawing 3,500 people, we're going to try to keep it going as long as we can. If we can get four or five dates out of this, I'd be overjoyed."

Commercially, the Berkeley audience at Sunday's author show gobbled up everything the three authors tossed them.

"It was really entertaining," said Chris Vibbets, a 30-year-old Forestville musician, as he waited for Franken to sign his book afterward. "It's a way to convey something political to people who would otherwise not want to deal with politics."

The audience jeered mentions of Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly and Nixon attorney general John Mitchell and cheered nods to filmmaker Moore. Confident his audience was conversant with the new book by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, which compared Bush to a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people" during cabinet meetings, Franken opened by saying O'Neill "was going to come on as a surprise guest. But earlier today, he was murdered."

The crowd roared. Then again, this was Berkeley.

"I don't know if it's the kind of thing that will play beyond the universities. I don't see it playing in, say, Georgia unless it's at a college, " said Steven Barclay of Petaluma, an agent for 40 top national lecturers including Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner and humorist David Sedaris. He is not affiliated with any of the authors.

"Part of me likes to believe it could, though," Barclay said, noting that many in his stable have toured the Deep South. "You could find audiences for (progressives) everywhere."

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

+ + + + +

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

See also A Different State of the Union?

(Thanks, Donald.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 08:35:11 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media & Political.


   
   

"Clark Appealed to Group Suspected of Terror Link"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CLVI

A New York Daily News story, Jan. 30 (brackets in original).

+ + + + +

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark sought the political support of a Muslim group that is under FBI investigation for terror ties, sources told the Daily News.

The Democratic presidential candidate's videotaped message was played Dec. 27 in Chicago for the annual conference of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America - a Queens group being probed by the FBI counterterrorism agents, said two federal law enforcement officials.

Both groups have held conferences featuring speakers accused of terror ties and have published material supporting suicide bombings against Israel.

Clark campaign spokesman Matt Bennett said yesterday they were unaware of the allegations or the FBI probe.

"I wish I could be there with you in person," Clark said in his four-minute video. "I hope I will have your support in the months and years ahead." An audiotape of the Clark speech was provided by terrorism investigator Steven Emerson and first aired on MSNBC.

Two past conference speakers face terror-related indictments and a third is identified in FBI reports as a Hamas terror leader. In March 2002, American Muslim magazine - described as "the voice of [the Muslim American Society]" - interviewed assassinated Hamas leader Abu Bakr's wife, who said she was "willing to give my life and the lives of my children" and advocated "standing beside the families of the martyrs."

Another article explained that "martyr operations are not suicide."

Islamic Circle President Talat Sultan and Muslim American Society spokesman Raeed Tayeh denied their groups have terror ties.

+ + + + +

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

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 08:25:43 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.


   
   

"Kennedy Touts Kerry in Chappaquiddick Flashback"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CLV

Carl Limbacher takes a cheap (but good) shot at the socialist senior senator from Taxachusetts.

+ + + + +

In touting Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry's war heroics yesterday, Sen. Ted Kennedy swerved dangerously close to his own past when he bragged about how Kerry would never leave anyone behind to drown.

"You have a Jim Rassmann, who was a Special Forces officer that was blown off John Kerry's small boat," Kennedy told CNN.

Then, without a hint of irony, the man whose own presidential ambitions ended at Chappaquiddick added:

"When John Kerry turned that boat back and hauled Jim Rassmann out of the water, risking his own life, what he has said: We leave no one behind. He didn't leave Jim Rassmann behind. He won't leave veterans behind. He won't leave our national security behind."

Too bad Sen. Kerry wasn't driving the night Teddy left Mary Jo Kopechne behind.

+ + + + +

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

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 08:14:06 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.


   
   

"Don't You Know There's a War on?"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CLIV

Tony Blankley writes at The Washington Times, Jan. 28 (quoted ellipsis in original).

+ + + + +

A French writer living in America has written that "this war is not a war in the ordinary sense of the word ... There are two series of conflicts going on at the same time: conflicts (involving military action) and conflicts that are ideological, political, social and economic. The latter transcend boundaries. The very confusion of the situation has often served as an excuse for recommending a policy of aloofness." The writer was Raoul de Roussy de Salles. The date of publication was 1942. And the war was World War II.

Now, of course, we recall WWII as a classic, all-out, necessary war. But in the spring of 1942 in America, de Salles, the patriotic citizen of a defeated France, could feel the need to explain that "it is only recently that America has lost the belief that she had a choice. Up to Pearl Harbor, the Americans were made to think not only that they could decide between peace and war, but that they could decide how much war they would accept. This capacity of choice was an illusion. Although he is fully at war now, he cannot forget overnight the point of view of the spectator that he so recently was. The American still believes that it is his peculiar privilege to discuss from a more impersonal angle the social, political and economic future which will come out of this war."

As I was reading this old volume from my father's library in Los Angeles last week, I was struck by how fresh-sounding the author's description was of an American public still tentative in its acceptance of the reality of total war. Today's soundbites from news coverage of the presidential election campaign are filled with candidates for president, and their supporters in the public, discussing exit strategies, turning the war over to the United Nations, focusing on the more pressing needs here at home for federal dollars, etc.

Listening to all the aspiring commanders in chief (except for Joe Lieberman), I don't hear any campaign promises related to winning the war on terrorism. They make a few obligatory references to getting Osama bin Laden rather than wasting our time with Saddam Hussein, and then they get on to their real campaign message, which is the conventional, peacetime Democratic argument to tax the rich and give the proceeds to their likely voters. I am tempted to respond to these candidates with the snappy WWII-era retort to complainers: "Don't you know there's a war on?"

Of course domestic life and politics goes on today as it did during 1941-1945. But it is striking that the challengers for president have virtually nothing to say about the central event of our time. If they think President Bush is fighting the war badly (and they could do a better job), they should be shouting both their criticism and their better plan from the rooftops.

In nine months, one of these men could be elected president. It doesn't particularly surprise or worry me that the candidates are just making what they judge to be useful political chatter. But I don't get the feeling that any of them (again, except for Mr. Lieberman) sit up at night worrying how they will protect America from the terrorist threat if they get elected president. It would show in at least the tone, if not the words, of their public oratory.

Rather, I get the sense that, as de Salles described too many Americans 60 years ago at the beginning of WWII, today's candidates for commander in chief still think the war is optional. They still think they can select "how much war they would accept." They let the confusion of the situation "serve as an excuse for recommending a policy of aloofness."

Whatever each of the candidates may think of the wisdom of the Iraq war and democracy project, as the next president, he will be obliged to play the hand he has been dealt. Manifestly, the United Nations and the international set has neither the military nor the will to fight on to total military and political success in Iraq. Thus, when all but Mr. Lieberman recommend turning Iraq over to the United Nations, they are in reality aloofly washing their hands of the matter and are willing to let political nature take its course. The terrorists across the Middle East and around the world would be greatly heartened by such a capitulation by the West.

In the coming weeks and months, reporters ought to feel obliged to closely question the Democratic candidates on the implications that would flow specifically from their Iraq policy. It is not enough for them to say they would have done otherwise. They must explain how what they would start doing on Jan. 20, 2005, would make the country safer, not more dangerous. It is a deadly illusion for either the reporters or the candidates to think they have a capacity for choice on whether America must succeed at the Iraq venture. We are no longer mere spectators to the human butchery that has long plagued the world.

+ + + + +

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

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 08:07:34 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media & Political.


   
   

Fair Tax Act of 2003

108th Congress, 1st Session, H. R. 25.

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 07:40:48 PM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

George W. Bush and (or?) Conservatism

A reader writes:

Thanks for the link to Reed's column and site — boy, he sums up what I have experienced and intuited — what the conservative minority of the country has known for some time and fumes over on the web and talk radio.
Makes me wonder about Bush and his "compassionate conservatism" — isn't he a holdover from his parents' WASPish values — noblesse oblige and all that? I kept wondering why he didn't set Ashcroft after the Clintons for their many legal violations while in office. I fear that he and they agree on too many essentials, except for personal, sexual morality and the real defense of our country. The latter are very important differences, but I don't see Bush using his "bully pulpit" to try to advance the conservative agenda — smaller federal government, personal responsibility for getting educated, working, saving for your old age, marrying before having children. He only speaks out about the war. He hasn't even done an evening public address to support his judicial appointees and his reasons for choosing them. It could be entitled, "The Crisis in Our Federal Courts." Maybe with that title and the preemption of the airwaves, he could make his case and generate concern from the muddled middle.
Reagan did an admirable job of changing public opinion as did Margaret Thatcher in spite of the range of societal pressure groups against both of them. Without strong, passionate, and positive leadership, our cause is doomed to being portrayed as held by a cranky minority.
I will vote for Bush because of his defense position, but I no longer have the regard for him that I once did. You and our children and grandchildren are going to have a higher tax burden laid on your shoulders because of the silly prescription drug bill that was not needed. Most states have plans to help the really poor get the drugs they need. Bush is trying to curry favor with the Left and it never works, they continue to hate him and lie about him and his positions anyway. Didn't he learn with the Education Act that he let Kennedy write?

Colin McNickle, editorial page editor at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, writes today about how un-conservative George W. Bush is (quoted ellipses in original):

.... Monday last, Bobby Eberle, GOPUSA's president and CEO, filed a commentary with the headline, "Bush-bashing conservatives should focus on the big picture." It was in response to the many conservatives who think the president has lost his way and are rethinking what to do with their franchise on Nov. 2.
The over-riding theme of Mr. Eberle's position: "It's time for conservatives across the country to ... realize that a Bush loss is far worse than a Bush victory."
I certainly don't disagree. The thought of any of the current crop of Democrat presidential candidates actually being elected should give dry heaves and itchy hives to any reasonable person with even an elementary education.
But rationalizing Mr. Bush's shortcomings will serve not only to give conservatives and their cause a bad name but weaken both....
Indeed, I fully understand, as Jerry Z. Muller wrote in the introduction to his 1997 anthology, "Conservatism," that "conservatives have, at one time and place or another, defended royal power, constitutional monarchy, aristocratic prerogative, representative democracy, and presidential dictatorship; high tariffs and free trade; nationalism and internationalism; centralism and federalism; a society of inherited estates, a capitalist, market society, and one or another version of the welfare state."
That is to say (and after that indictment, not without irony), as great political philosopher Russell Kirk did in his seminal 1953 work, "The Conservative Mind,'" that conservatism "is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma."
But, I would add, neither is it the open-borders, spendaholic, prescription-drug-entitlement mutation that George Bush has created....
So, what is a "conservative?" And, what is "conservatism"? Russell Kirk's "Six Canons of Conservative Thought" say it best:
  • "Belief in transcendent order, or body of natural law."
  • "Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems ... "
  • "Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a 'classless society.'"
  • "Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possessions, and Leviathan becomes master of all."
  • "Faith in prescription and distrust of 'sophisters, calculators and economists' who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power."
  • "Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, a statesman's chief virtue ... is prudence."
  • These canons represents much of what George Bush is not, and much of what many conservatives claim to embrace but do not know....

    By prescription is meant, I take it, something akin to tradition.

    Also, John Fund writes at OpinionJournal, Jan. 26:

    For 30 years, the foot soldiers of the conservative movement have gathered here for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. It is the only major conclave in which all elements of the conservative movement — from home-schoolers to antitax crusaders to missile-defense advocates — are represented.
    What should worry President Bush is that at the CPAC meeting that ended Saturday there was a clear undercurrent of discontent with his administration. "The people here will vote for Bush, but their friends could be dispirited and stay home just as [White House adviser] Karl Rove said some did in 2000," says Don Devine, who served as President Reagan's director of federal personnel. "We all know how close that election turned out."
    That's one reason President Bush is scrambling to quell a conservative revolt. In his State of the Union Address, Mr. Bush called for fighting wasteful spending and also tried to placate his base by announcing support on several issues important to his core constituency. The president gave tacit support for a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage and backed modest Social Security reform as well as expanding individual retirement accounts. To address the spending issue more directly, as CPAC was meeting the president announced he'd hold the line on spending in the budget he'll submit to Congress early next month. Mr. Bush promises to ask for an overall increase in discretionary spending of less than 4%. For spending not related to defense and homeland security, he says he'll hold the increase to 1%.
    That didn't quiet the grumbling at CPAC. What nearly everyone seemed concerned about is the 36% increase in nonentitlement spending since Mr. Bush took office. From the farm bill to the new Medicare entitlement, spending lobbies have never had it so good since the heyday of the Great Society....

    Finally, former congressman John Kasich writes at the New York Times today:

    .... Since 2001 government spending has grown almost 20 percent, from $1.96 trillion then to the more than $2.3 trillion contained in the budget that President Bush is expected to release to Congress tomorrow. The Congressional Budget Office predicted last week that the deficit would hit a record $477 billion, and yet the spending spree goes on with no apparent end in sight. The surpluses that could have been used to save Social Security are gone, and Medicare continues its move toward bankruptcy.
    Some blame President Bush's tax cuts, some blame the war on terrorism, but it all comes down to one simple reason: a lack of political will to curtail the rise and growth of government spending. An example of this is the bloated budget bill. It provides money for a birthday party for Hawaii and the study of fruit flies in France. Who is to blame? Everyone who has participated in the process, which means both Republicans and Democrats.
    So I have a few things I would like to say to both sides. To my Republican friends: please don't argue that deficit spending and big government don't matter. They are a claim on future income either through higher taxes, or inflation and higher interest rates. And to my Democratic friends: deficits are not caused by taxes being too low, but by spending being too high. Your solution of raising taxes will lead only to slower economic growth and even more spending in the future....

    Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 07:17:52 PM
    Categorized as Political.


       
       

    Tracking the New Hampshire Tracking Polls

    Here, at last, are the final results.

    Who
    Kerry
    35%
    36%
    36%
    31%
    39%
    Dean
    25%
    25%
    25%
    28%
    26%
    Clark
    13%
    11%
    13%
    13%
    13%
    Edwards
    15%
    13%
    10%
    12%
    12%
    Lieberman
    6%
    7%
    10%
    9%
    9%
    Kucinich
    1%
    3%
    1%
    2%
    1%

    Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 06:48:03 PM
    Categorized as Political.


       
       

    Three by Tabb IV

    Quatrains by Father John Banister Tabb.

    Silence

    A sea wherein the rivers of all sound
       Their streams incessant pour,
    But whence no tide returning e'er hath found
       An echo on the shore.

    (August 1894)

    Stilling the Tempest

    'Twas all she could:—The gift that Nature gave,
       The torrent of her tresses, did she spill
    Before His feet; and lo, the troubled wave
       Of passion heard His whisper, "Peace, be still!"

    (April 1895)

    Whisper

    Close cleaving unto silence, into sound
       She ventures as a timorous child from land,
    Still glancing, at each step, around,
       Lest suddenly she lose her sister's hand.

    (September 1893)

    The Poetry of Father Tabb (1928) pp. 364, 362, 361.
    ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D.

    See also Three by Tabb III: Poems by Father John Banister Tabb.

    [Follow-up: One by Hearn: A quatrain by John Hearn.]

    Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/01/04 08:55:04 AM
    Categorized as Sunday Poetry Series.


       

    The Blog from the Core © 2002-2008 E. L. Core. All rights reserved.