Nader Shmader

I suppose it would behoove The Blog from the Core not to be the only weblog in America to fail to comment on the biggest non-news of the weekend: the announcement that Ralph Nader will run for the presidency.

Ho hum.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 10:21:55 PM
Categorized as Political.

Senator Writes to President

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCIV

In other news, a Vietnam veteran writes a scorching editorial on the senator.

John "F" Kennedy Clinton Kerry writes, yesterday, a letter to George W. Bush.

Over the last week, you and your campaign have initiated a widespread attack on my service in Vietnam, my decision to speak out to end that war, and my commitment to the defense of this nation. Just today, Saxby Chambliss — a man elected to the US Senate on the back of one of the most despicable campaigns ever conducted against Max Cleland, a true American Hero — was carrying this attack for you.

As you well know, Vietnam was a very difficult and painful period in our nation's history, and the struggle for our veterans continues. So, it has been hard to believe that you would choose to re-open these wounds for your personal political gain. But, that is what you have chosen to do.

I am fighting to become the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Even before Democrats make their choice, you’ve launched a campaign of attacks against me. I am determined to run a campaign on the great challenges facing this country — from creating jobs, to solving our health care crisis to getting our nation's ballooning deficit under control. But I will not sit back and allow my patriotism to be challenged.

America deserves a better debate. If you want to debate the Vietnam era, and the impact of our experiences on our approaches to presidential leadership, I am prepared to do so.

This is not a debate to be distorted through your $100 million dollar campaign fund. This is a debate that should be conducted face to face.

Mr. President, I hope you will conduct a campaign worthy of this nation’s future.

That just screams I really do have something to hide! Doesn't it? I hope Charles Krauthammer will write a column on this letter. You know: Dr. Krauthammer, the psychiatrist turned pundit.

Here, in contrast, is an editorial, Feb. (3?) 2004, by Don Bendell of Cañon City, Colorado.

My wife had rotator cuff surgery earlier this year, and the recovery is terribly painful. Then, she developed a staph-epi infection, and they had to cut the same scar open and operate on her again. Just thinking about the pain and anxiety of facing that painful surgery a second time in the same wound, makes me cringe. That experience, however pales in comparison to what I am going through right now, in my heart.

The old hurts are surfacing and the feelings of betrayal by fellow citizens, and their leader stirring them up, are breaking my heart again. I am being cut in the same scar. How did we who served in Vietnam suddenly become cold-blooded killers, torturers, and rapists, of the ilk of the Nazi SS or the Taliban? Most of us were American soldiers who grew up idolizing John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and all the other heroes. That was why I volunteered. But for political expediency, John Kerry has rewritten history, again. After spending only four months in the country of Vietnam, John Kerry testified before Congress in 1971 with these exact words about incidents he supposedly witnessed or heard about from other vets: “They personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam."

I was a green beret officer who volunteered for duty in Vietnam and fought in the thick of it in 1968 and 1969 on a Special Forces A-team on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just for starters. We were the elite. We saw the most action. Everybody in the world knows that. But we did not just kill people, we built a church, a school, treated illnesses, passed out soap, food, and clothing, and had fun and loving interaction with the indigenous people of Vietnam, just like our boys did in Normandy, Baghdad, Saigon, and everywhere American soldiers ever served. We all gave away our candy bars and rations to kids. Our hearts to oppressed people all over the globe.

My children and grandchildren could read your words, and think those horrendous things about me, Mr. Kerry. You are a bold-faced, unprincipled liar, and a disgrace, and you have dishonored me and all my fellow Vietnam veterans. Sure, there were a couple bad-apples, but I saw none, and I saw it all, and if I did, as an army officer, it was my obligation to stop it, or at the very least report it. Why is there not a single record anywhere of you ever reporting any incidents like this or having the perpetrators arrested? The answer is simple. You are a liar. Your medals and mine are not a free pass for lifetime, Senator Kerry, to bypass character, integrity, and morality. I earn my green beret over and over daily in all aspects of my life.

Eight National Guard green berets, and other National Guard soldiers, have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you totally dishonored their widows and families by lumping National Guard service in with being a draft-dodger, conscientious objector, and deserter, just so you can try to sabotage the patriotism of our President who proudly served as an Air National Guard jet pilot. I have a son earning his green beret at Fort Bragg right now, and his wife serves honorably in the Air National Guard, just like President Bush did, and I am as proud of her as I am my son. I volunteered for Vietnam and have no problem whatsoever with President Bush being our Commander-In-Chief. In fact, I am proud of him as our leader.

John Kerry, you personally derailed the Vietnam Human Rights Bill, HR2883, in 2001, after it had passed the House by a 411 to 1 vote, and thousands of pro-American Montagnard tribespeople in Vietnam died since then who could have been saved, by you. Earlier, as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW Affairs, you personally quashed the efforts of any and all veterans to report sightings of living POW’s, when you held those reins in Congress. You have fought tooth and nail to push for the US to normalize relations with Vietnam for years. Why, Mr. Kerry? Simple, your first cousin C. Stewart Forbes, CEO, of Colliers International, recently signed a contract with Hanoi, worth BILLIONS of dollars for Collier’s International to become the exclusive real estate representative for the country of Vietnam.

“Hanoi John,” now that it works for you, you beat your chest about your Vietnam service, but to me, you are a phony, opportunistic, hypocrite. You are one of those politicians that is like a fertilizer machine: all that comes out of you is horse manure, and you are spreading it everywhere.

Medals do not make a man. Morals do.

Don Bendell served as an officer in four Special Forces Groups, is a best-selling author with over 1,500,000 books in print, a 1995 inductee into the International Karate Hall of Fame, and owns karate schools in southern Colorado.

(Thanks, John.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 09:40:37 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry & Political.

Why Not Polygamy?

An article in today's Manchester Union Leader:

ONE QUESTION for the Rev. Gene Robinson, the nation’s first openly gay Episcopal priest (now bishop) who cautions those of us opposed to same-sex marriage: “Don’t waste your time and energy defending marriage from something that doesn’t threaten it.” Doesn’t polygamy threaten marriage?

Would the Rev. Robinson rise to defend polygamy, and perform wedding ceremonies for a man and two women, or a woman and two men (polyandry)? Because if same-sex marriage doesn’t threaten real marriage, why should polygamy? There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two institutions when you study them.

This comparison is not intended to be degrading or insulting; it’s not likening same-sex marriage to bestiality or incest or any other perversions that harm children and animals. Both same-sex marriage and polygamy are voluntary arrangements by consenting adults; why should we care what people do behind closed doors?

And if marriage need not be limited to one man and one woman — as Robinson is saying — why need it be limited to couples only? What’s so sacred about the number 2?

It seems a bit arbitrary to allow one man to marry another man, but not to marry two women. Why should the government restrict his choice, provided his partners are willing? Would the Rev. Robinson concede that letting groups of three, four or more marry would water down the meaning of marriage, which elevates and sanctifies the precise biological recipe for creating children?

Many homosexuals don’t take the polygamy analogy seriously, or they become easily offended when the comparison is made. But there are many sound reasons to consider legalizing polygamy, advocates of same-sex marriage must admit.

Just like people feel that they are born homosexual, which justifies their right to marry same-sex lovers, people also are born with the proclivity to have multiple sex partners. For many people, monogamy does not feel like their natural, biological state....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 08:52:01 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Long Face or Pretty Boy?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCIII

The Inimitable One has a typically delightful column in today's Telegraph.

Last weekend, George W Bush went to Florida for Nascar's Daytona 500 race. His likely Democratic rival, John F Kerry, did not approve. "We don't need," he declared, in the portentous drone he has been perfecting for three decades, "a President who says, 'Gentlemen, start your engines.' We need a President who says, 'America, let's start our economy.'"

Hmm. If this is the best material Senator Kerry's high-price consultants can provide, it is going to be a long, long while from here to November. It's unlikely that any but the most partisan Democrats can stomach nine months of a candidate who is Al Gore without the personal charm and affable public-speaking style. The Massachusetts Senator with the patrician manner and a face as long as his one-liners is the Default Democrat. He is the guy the party's voters fell back on after concluding that Howard Dean, the surging Vermonter, was, in the pithy summation of the union boss Gerald McEntee, "nuts". And McEntee was a Dean supporter.

So Democrats decided that Kerry was more "electable". Which he is, next to Dean — in the same way that, if Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe entered the Iowa caucuses, Farmer Bob would be Mister Electable. But, once Saddam had thrown in the towel, you'd start wondering whether Bob Mugabe was really the best you could do.

So, having anointed Kerry as the unDean, a significant chunk of Democrats are now looking around for the unKerry. The only guy available is John Edwards, the pretty-boy trial lawyer from North Carolina. He is 50 but looks about 13, which is kind of refreshing after that strange feeling you get a third of a way into Kerry's stump speech that your body's atrophying and crumbling to dust. In Tuesday's Wisconsin primary, Senator Edwards ran Kerry a strong second and came bouncing out on stage, his fabulous bangs (that's "fringe" in British) dancing in the air like a Charlie's Angels title sequence.

He said that the voters of Wisconsin had sent a message: "Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear." These words are printed on the wing mirrors of every American automobile, and Edwards meant them as a jocular warning to Kerry: you may be in the driver's seat but I'm closing in fast. He was upbeat and breezy and his line, if only by comparison with the President-who'll-start-the-economy gag, was cute.

At that point, over at Kerry HQ, the frontrunner decided it was time to get Pretty Boy off the air, so he walked out and started his victory speech, knowing the networks would cut away from Edwards to him. Not such a smart move. For the television audience, Edwards's solitary minute was entertaining, Kerry's 20 minutes of hollow stump banalities was a sonorous snoozeroo: "The motto of the state of Wisconsin is 'Forward' and I want to thank the state of Wisconsin for moving this cause and this campaign forward tonight here in this great state. Tonight I say to all of America, get ready. A new day is on the way."

It may be a new day, but already a lot of us are finding it hard to stay awake. As The New York Times put it, when Senator Kerry "bumped Mr Edwards's own ebullient speech off the air, it was as if a pep rally had morphed into math class". When you are too dull a Democrat even for The New York Times, you've got a problem.

On the other hand, if Edwards is the unKerry, he is developing a distressing habit of never doing quite well enough. If Edwards were to come a narrow first instead of a close second, the Kerry bubble would burst: he wins because he's seen as likely to win. Alas, coming a close second is pretty much all Edwards does. He was a close second in Iowa, a close second in Oklahoma, a close second in Wisconsin.

The only difference is that coming a close second in an eight-man race in late January is more impressive than coming a close second in a four-man race in late February. Given that on Super Tuesday, March 2, it will be impossible for Senator Edwards to come worse than second, he really has to win something, and he doesn't seem to have the wit or energy to pull those extra few thousands votes that would put him over the top.

So the race has come down to a weak default candidate v a glamorous insurgent who is not quite glamorous to insurge sufficiently. Other than that, there is not much to choose between them. Both men are enormously wealthy. Kerry was a blueblood of relatively minor means who married a woman worth $300 million and then traded up to a woman worth $500 million. If I were Teresa Heinz Kerry I'd be worried, now Massachusetts is introducing gay marriage, that hubby may start giving the come-hither look to some of the state's elderly bachelor billionaires.

By contrast, John Edwards had a dirt-poor hard-scrabble childhood but managed to sue his way out of poverty. He has made 25 million bucks just from suing tobacco companies. His is an inspirational message: If I can do it, the rest of you haven't a hope in hell. But fortunately I've got a thousand new government programmes and micro-initiatives that will partially ameliorate your hopeless mediocrity. (I paraphrase.)

My favourite line in the Edwards spiel comes about two-thirds in, when, after outlining the regulatory hell in which he is going to ensnare banks, the pharmaceutical industry, etc, he confides: "But I'll be honest with you. I don't think I can change this country by myself." It's good to know the other 280 million Americans aren't entirely redundant. His basic pitch is that the entire electorate are victims, and his candidacy is the all-time biggest class-action suit on your behalf.

Edwards is condescending. Kerry is far too grand to condescend. But both are agreed that America is a vast wasteland of unemployed, shivering, diseased losers. For single-issue guys like me, Edwards barely says a word on Iraq and the war, though I am inclined to think he'd be better than Kerry. The latter seems eager to do whatever Chirac and Kofi want, whereas with Edwards there's always the possibility he will wind up suing the UN Security Council for emotional distress. More importantly, even as he's painting his heart-wrenching portraits of starving children, Edwards is sunny, albeit in a grotesque and mawkish way. And, as a general rule, the sunnier disposition wins (see Bush/Gore, Clinton/Dole, Reagan/Mondale).

It is true that in his five years in Washington Edwards hasn't accomplished anything, but then neither has Kerry, and he has been there four times as long. If Pretty Boy wins somewhere, anywhere, on Super Tuesday, the mantle of inevitability falls away from Kerry. If he doesn't, Dems are stuck with the default guy, and by April they're going to be awful sick of him.

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

(Thanks, Charles.)

Here is the NYT article Steyn quotes.

In this unsettled Democratic primary season, time has been John Edwards's friend, and tough competition has always inspired John Kerry, and on Tuesday the searching, independent-minded voters of Wisconsin gave both men a bit more of each.

Senator Kerry racked up another victory, but Senator Edwards's second-place showing made it easier for him to argue that the 29 days since the Iowa caucuses have not been enough time to pick his party's best-tested nominee. Mr. Kerry now faces at least a couple of more weeks of the kind of contest that has helped sharpen his skills on the stump.

Democratic Party leaders designed this year's front-loaded primary process to produce a consensus candidate quickly, without bloodletting and with the broad backing needed to take on President Bush. Mr. Kerry had hoped Wisconsin would make him the near-nominee with just such support — and with an array of pragmatic policy positions on topics from tax cuts, to trade to gay marriage that he contends can make him competitive in November — and he came ever closer.

Still, Mr. Kerry could not quite close the deal, and this famously iconoclastic state gave Mr. Edwards hard evidence for his own lawyer's case that a mere month of voting should not produce a verdict. He won the support of about half the primary voters who made up their minds within the last three days, according to a survey of those leaving the polls. And with Wisconsin allowing independents and Republicans to vote in its open primary, the senator from North Carolina also won the support of roughly 4 in 10 non-Democrats, compared with about a quarter for Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Edwards's campaign skills have improved with each election, and he declared Tuesday that Wisconsin voters had decided, "Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear." Perhaps, but it is also fair to ask how much a second-place finish, even a fairly close one, in a single state might ultimately matter. The next batch of primaries will not all have Wisconsin's multiparty participation. Mr. Edwards has already signaled he may skip the biggest one, California, and Mr. Kerry now has roughly three times as many delegates.

Howard Dean has seen his own candidacy come full circle from asterisk to afterthought, with a few heady months as a fiery, front-running asteroid in between. He had staked out Wisconsin as his last stand, but came in a distant third. "We are not done," he vowed, but he may be. Depending on how and whether he decides to retool his efforts — as a quest for personal vindication or as a journey to keep molding the party he briefly electrified — he has already largely framed the terms of the debate. Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now covet his support, and his supporters. And Mr. Kerry now calls his own campaign a cause.

If Dr. Dean spent months allowing restive Democrats to feel that it was good to be angry, Mr. Kerry began persuading voters last month that it would be better to get even — for the election of 2000. In his final rallies here, Dr. Dean was still urging voters to send a message to Washington, while Mr. Kerry long ago asked them to send a president. Now, Mr. Edwards is arguing that he deserves yet another look, and though he has lost 16 states, just enough voters have kept agreeing with him to keep him in the race.

"This is a great place for the Democrats to be," said Mandy Grunwald, a media consultant who advised Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut until he dropped out of the race earlier this month. "The president's on the defensive," she said. "I think if this goes on some more, it actually isn't so bad for the Democrats, or for Kerry, to keep going out there. The American people are learning more and more about John Kerry and the Democrats, all of which is good, and I'm not that eager to shift to the Republicans training their full fire on one person."

Members of any party were allowed to participate in Wisconsin's primary, and about twice as many people who called themselves Republicans voted here on Tuesday as in any other state so far, offering at least a tentative hint of Mr. Edwards's potential appeal in a general election.

Mr. Edwards again did significantly better than Mr. Kerry among voters who said that the economy was the issue that mattered most in making their decision, the survey found. That issue was cited by more voters here than any other — roughly 40 percent — and Mr. Edwards won nearly half of their votes, compared with about a third for Mr. Kerry. Among the 20 percent of voters who said that the impression that the candidate cared about them was most important, Mr. Edwards drew close to half, compared with about a third for Mr. Kerry.

The survey of voters leaving polling places throughout the state was conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the television networks and The Associated Press.

Mr. Kerry's and Mr. Edwards's contrasts with each other are mostly textbook questions of style and tone. On Tuesday night, when Mr. Kerry took to television to claim victory and bumped Mr. Edwards's own ebullient speech off the air, it was as if a pep rally had morphed into math class.

Still, as Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Kerry supporter, put it, "President Bush said that he was a uniter and not a divider, and he has united the Democratic Party in a way it has not been united in a generation." He added: "Every candidate is now 95 percent on the same sheet. Each has a different articulation of it, but they all oppose Bush in the same way."

If Mr. Edwards, who has run an upbeat campaign, is to continue as an alternative to Mr. Kerry, he will face pressure to begin drawing some sharper differences with his opponent. He suggested one possible approach in their debate Sunday night by gently mocking Mr. Kerry for a long-winded answer about his vote to authorize Mr. Bush to use force in Iraq, a position Mr. Edwards shared.

Mr. Kerry did not wear especially well in the period in early 2003 when he was seen by many party leaders as the presumptive front-runner. Only after he slipped far behind Dr. Dean in the polls and joined him and Mr. Bush in opting out of public financing and the spending and contribution limits that come with it did Mr. Kerry begin to rebound.

Joe Trippi, who built a half-million strong Internet-based following as Dr. Dean's campaign manager until he was replaced after Dr. Dean lost the New Hampshire primary said, "Even the opt-out happened because of Dean. We moved the entire debate."

Mr. Edwards is now betting that he can move it some more.

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 07:53:44 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry & Political.

"Here Comes The Bride, Or Maybe The Groom"

Speaking of Fred Reed — here's his latest:

.... So why am I against marriage of gays? Which I am.

For several reasons, the first of which has precious little to do with gays. As an American in remission, I have a romantic fondness for the notion of constitutional government, which of course doesn’t exist and never will again in the United States if it ever did. Face it: The constitution is deader than a doorknob. I mean a doorknob with melanoma and clogged arteries. But the memory does provide a convenient platform for launching vituperations and upsettances. That’s what we in the column racket do.

The first objection is to the further extension of judicial dictatorship. Courts run the country these days. The will of the people is irrelevant.

When did you last hear of anything of lasting import being done by Congress? I can’t either. But almost every week you read about some federal judge, or that ratpack of pompous drones on the Supreme Court, who has (Have? This sentence is going to hell) defunded the Boy Scouts, or invented a constitutional right to abortion, or imposed integration, or outlawed the public expression of Christianity, or made it impossible to stop immigration. They tell you who you can hire, who you can sell your house to, what your children will be taught. They serve to impose what could never be legislatively enacted. The judges are out of control.

They’re at it again. Marriage doesn’t mean what it has always meant. It means what some over-promoted nonentity wants it to mean. And the country will obey. Roll over. Bark. Fetch.

A second objection is that there is no logical end in sight once the courts arrogate the power to define marriage. If a man can marry a man, why can he not marry two men? I’m serious. I could argue that the bonds of affection can exist between three men as well as between two. The norm today is serial marriage. Why not parallel marriage? Who are we to discriminate in favor of couples?...

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 06:44:28 PM
Categorized as Political.

"Democratic Deficit"

Margaret calls my attention to the latest from David Warren (who channels Fred Reed):

.... From top to bottom, we now live under a system of governance that is called "democratic", but remains so only in outward form. The ability of the people to make choices effecting their own lives by voting, at any level of government, has almost disappeared, as we have become locked in by massive bureaucracies and vested interests, integrated across both "public" and "private" spheres. The chain of command which was once established — the idea that real power would be vested in political representatives that the people could remove in free elections — has been broken....

When people cannot influence what happens around them, they have no power. Democracy works from the bottom up, but government everywhere now works from the top down.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 06:43:10 PM
Categorized as International.

I Left My Heart in Sodom and Gomorrah

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCII

First, one of our favorite columnists, Mark Morford, writes at SFG, Feb. 18, about the executive lawlessness in San Francisco. Note the sort of respect he shows towards Christians.

Friendly sex shops. Peet's. Dog parks. Stellar restaurants. Superlative tattoo artists. Fabulous weather. Unparalleled natural beauty. Organic foods. Fewer SUVs, more Priuses. Mission burritos. An overwhelming anti-Schwarzenegger sentiment. Sushi. Bush never visits.

There are things that make you happy to live in San Francisco, truly grateful, along with plenty of things that make you hyper-aware that you live in the country's most progressive open-minded convoluted messed-up liberal bubble, for both good and ill.

But few are the things that transcend mere gratitude, things that our struggling budget-strapped modern metropolis has offered of late that makes you say, oh my God, I am right now so incredibly proud to say I live here, I mean just look what we're doing, look what ground we are breaking, what stagnant trends we are blasting, what history we are making.

But for the moment, that's all changed. There is one astounding beacon of political and social (and romantic) action about which San Franciscans can be truly emboldened: The move to legalize same-sex marriage, to hold genuine same-sex wedding ceremonies, this should make any progressive soul proud to live in this amazing city. Deeply, genuinely, thoroughly.

Here's why: No matter what the final outcome, this past week will go down as one of those defining moments, a seminal point in American history. It hearkens back to the civil rights movement and to women's suffrage, though with less screaming chanting effigy-burning marches and beatings by angry cops, and more roses and warm-hearted grins and life-affirming smooches on the steps of city hall.

It was a delicious and heartwarming historic spectacle indeed, and there was simply no way for any person of any elevated consciousness or spiritual awareness — anyone with any heart whatsoever — to witness the huge line of happy, eager same-sex couples snaking around city hall and not be deeply moved, profoundly touched.

I was there. I saw the lines, the smiles, felt the intense emotional energy. It was simply irrefutable: These are people in love. These are couples who have been together for years, decades, who have started families and raised children and set up homes replete with dogs and dinner parties and antiques and regular shopping excursions to Safeway and the mall. You know, just like "real" Americans.

These are couples who are willing to go the distance, to commit and connect, and who are eager to prove to themselves and the world that their love is something true and real and momentous, something that, in truth, can only serve to reignite and reunite our stagnant, fractured, contentious, 50 percent-divorce-rate nation. Hey, we need all the help we can get.

And one other thing was very apparent: It was a situation in which you simply could not imagine anyone hurling gobs of intolerant hate at it. It would have required a serious amount of nasty, inbred ignorance and appalling nerve to march up to any of the passionate and committed couples waiting patiently in line for their marriage ceremony and say, you know, God hates you for this, you immoral disgusting sodomites, and it's intolerable and unacceptable that you wish to love and honor each other till death do you part.

Which, yes indeed, is exactly what a great many antigay groups are doing, in effect, right now.

But here's the best part: The City's brave move was not merely a giant well-manicured middle finger to the Christian Right and indignant homophobic conservatives everywhere.

Nor was it just an audacious act of civil disobedience, guaranteed to raise the ire of Bible thumpers and so-called pro-family groups hailing everywhere from Orange County to Colorado Springs. That's just a nice bonus.

It was, more than anything, an incredible celebration of love. The more than 2,600 wedding ceremonies performed so far were the purest evidence, an irrefutable outpouring of the most wondrous and messy and baffling and orgasmic and desperately needed of human emotions, the air electric and warm, the ceremonies themselves radiant and poignant and genuinely tearful.

And no question became so clear, so obvious, as the one being asked by same-sex-marriage advocates around the world: What, really, is so wrong about this? What is the horrible threat about two adults who love each other so intensely, so purely, that they're willing to commit to a lifetime of being together and sleeping together and arguing over who controls the remote? And what government body dares to claim a right to legislate against it?

It is a question no group, no homophobic senator, no piece of antigay legislation, no BushCo stump speech, no Bible-humping [sic] pastor has been able to answer with any clarity or conviction.

They can only mumble about immorality and quote some vague Scripture about sodomy that makes them all tingly, as wary biblical scholars all over the world roll their eyes and point to a thousand proofs that demonstrate, over and over again, how the Bible is basically a reinterpreted regurgitated piece of classic patriarchal misogynistic mythmaking that says exactly what the church rewrote it to say.

But I might have part of an answer. From what I can glean from some of my hate mail and the general conservative outcry, here is what the homophobes fear about same-sex marriage: bestiality.

That is, they are utterly terrified that same-sex marriage is a slippery slope of permissive debauchery that will lead to the utter breakdown of social rules and sexual mores, to people being allowed to marry their dogs, or their own dead grandmothers, or chairs, or three hairy men from Miami Beach.

In short, to the neocon Right, a nation that allows gays to marry is a nation with no boundaries and no condoms and where all sorts of illicit disgusting behaviors will soon be legal and be forced upon them, a horrific tribal wasteland full of leeches and flying bugs and scary sex acts they only read about in chat rooms and their beloved "Left Behind" series of cute apocalypse-porn books.

You know, just like how giving blacks the right to own their own land meant we had to give the same rights to house plants and power tools, or how granting women the right to vote meant it was a slippery slope until we gave suffrage to feral cats and sea slugs and rusty hubcaps.

This, then, is why it is a time to be incredibly proud. San Francisco is slapping this moronic worldview back to the dank basement of subhuman intellect, where it belongs. We have broken the taboo, challenged the ignorant and the easily terrified, made it beautifully clear that what matters most in a modern society is not unfounded, naive fears, not uptight religious puling, but a humane and equal, joyous sense of love for all.

The war is far from over. It will be a brutal battle, with much hate yet to be spewed, much Bible waving and law mangling accompanying what will undoubtedly be a slow, painful sea change for a very uptight, easily terrified American society.

But S.F. has taken the lead, has sounded the battle cry, has defined itself anew. And for that, more than any other of its wonders, I am incredibly proud that I live in San Francisco, the best city in the whole goddamn world — gay, straight or anywhere in between.

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

Back to Planet Earth.

First, an article by Peter Schrag at SacBee, Feb. 18.

Pollster Stanley Greenberg was in Berkeley the other day flogging his new book, "The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It." Greenberg, political adviser to President Clinton and a list of other political leaders on the liberal side of the spectrum — from Al Gore to Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela and Gerhard Schroeder — believes that the sharp and nearly even political split in America reflects, more than anything else, a deep cultural divide. Within that divide, the major parties represent two "cultural blocs" clustered around deep splits about faith, family and moral values.

On the Republican side: Christian evangelicals; "privileged men," the "f-you boys," blue-collar men without a college education; exurbia and rural voters.

On the Democratic side: "black power" and, to a lesser degree, Latinos; "super-educated women"; "secular warriors," people who don't go to church and don't own guns; the unions; and, more generally, the "cosmopolitan states" (including California and most of the Northeast) with high concentrations of college-educated voters, environmentalists and minorities.

Because of the sharp and nearly even national divisions — in voting, in Congress, in the states — between these two party blocs, Greenberg says, each has concentrated its electoral strategy in getting out its base and only marginally in broadening its appeal.

And so for more than a generation, neither party has offered the kind of vision for the country that, for example, gave the New Deal its dominance and ability to control the national agenda through five elections. Ditto, to a much smaller degree, for the short-lived Reagan revolution that, in Greenberg's view, still "lives vividly in the consciousness of today's modern conservatives."

Greenberg, who hopes his Democrats can break the deadlock, thinks they could win the 2004 election with their re-energized base alone. So far, he said, they've avoided the symbolic internal cultural fights that badly damaged them in the past.

In general, while the Republican states are gaining population, the demographic trends favor his party. The declining number of "f-you boys" now represents just 6 percent of the electorate, the rural vote is shrinking and the percentage of the population with at least a college degree is growing.

With mounting doubts, moreover, about the costs of the Iraq war and the distorted intelligence used to justify it, the jobless recovery, the ballooning deficit, the endemic favoritism for corporations and their executives, the festering White House embarrassment about the president's National Guard service, President Bush's own base is not as imposing as it seemed a year ago.

But Greenberg wants something broader and policy-rich than another swing of the pendulum, and he thinks his party could do it — as he unsuccessfully urged Gore to do in 2000 — by coupling its attacks on corporate favoritism with a much more positive and encompassing "opportunity" vision.

The notion of equal opportunity, he says, is losing the racial cast it's had since the 1960s. Clinton sold the idea of diversity as a source of national strength, and equal rights are more accepted.

According to Greenberg's polls and surveys, "People are hungry for a view of America as a place of opportunity." The opportunity vision cuts across the cultural divide.

Greenberg also understands that there's risk in a no-risk, just-bring-out-the-base strategy, in part because unforeseeable events could confound it, and in part because Republicans control all three branches of government in Washington — and because of that huge advantages in campaign funds — and thus have enormous power to manipulate the political agenda.

One unforeseeable event — the gay marriage issue — is already in play, thanks in part to the Massachusetts Supreme Court and thanks in part to Gavin Newsom, the new mayor of San Francisco, who in one of his first major acts (of monumental political stupidity), successfully urged city officials to grant licenses for the gay unions that Californians had voted overwhelmingly to forbid.

That measure, Proposition 22, the gay marriage initiative passed by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin four years ago, was itself a nasty volley in the culture wars and a foray into religious wedge politics where, aside from the property and custodial laws relating to civil unions, the state ought to have no business at all.

Polls show that while Americans oppose gay marriage, they also worry about the federal government's meddling with the sort of constitutional gay marriage ban that Bush has been toying with. But just when Bush's support and his poll standings are shrinking, here come San Francisco's city-county sanctioned gay marriages — almost certain to be declared invalid anyway — to rouse Bush's base.

Clinton learned painfully that wading into the gay front of the culture wars in his first days in office is not a good way to begin. Maybe Newsom has no wider political ambitions. But just as Bush, fearing a weakening political base, is working overtime to inflame the cultural right, couldn't Newsom have done his fellow Democrats a favor and waited a year before adding fuel to the fire?

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

Finally, Carla Marinucci writes at the San Francisco Chronicle, today.

Now that Democratic San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is allowing same-sex marriage in San Francisco, he has won the gratitude of Republican Party activists in California and across the nation.

GOP stalwarts say Newsom has fired up Republicans by handing them a defining issue just when they needed one. The parade of City Hall marriage ceremonies blanketed cable TV news shows at the height of the 2004 Democratic primary season, when presidential contenders were grabbing most of the headlines by bashing President Bush on issues like jobs and the economy.

"It's going to be a political backlash, and I think it will obviously mobilize our troops a lot more than it will mobilize traditional Democrats," said leading GOP consultant Ed Rollins, who believes the same sex marriage issue could impact both the presidential and California U.S. Senate races.

Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County), noting that two-thirds of state voters approved the 2000 Knight Initiative defining marriage between a man and woman, said the issue "doesn't fire up just rank and file Republicans. It draws a visceral reaction from most Californians.''

Said Brulte: "If the mayor of San Francisco wants the people of California to debate gay marriage again, we're more than happy to have that debate."

Indeed, the possibility of such a revived debate, and the potential national ripple effect on the political front, was underscored this weekend as 1,200 GOP insiders from the nation's most populous state gathered at their semiannual state convention in the Hyatt Regency Burlingame, not far from where hundreds of gay marriages have been performed.

From the exhibition halls to the debates and cocktail receptions, the chatter this weekend was about the next step: taking the issue of San Francisco's gay marriage to the streets, to the court, and to the heartland, with an eye toward helping George W. Bush get re-elected.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking before the California state Republican convention Friday, won a standing ovation when he urged Democratic state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the state's top law enforcement officer, to terminate San Francisco's wedding celebrations immediately, blasting what he called Newsom's "unfortunate choice to disregard state law."

And Republican U.S. Senate candidate Howard Kaloogian drew cheers Saturday when, in an obvious jab at the San Francisco mayor's recent actions, said that "when a judge steps over a line" and writes law from the bench, "that judge should be removed.''

The comments dramatized the increasingly high stakes of an election year that has morphed a local matter into a national battle, one in which Republicans have begun gearing up in earnest.

"We're mad as hell about it," said Marilyn Mellander, a central Contra Costa County GOP committee representative of Newsom's actions in San Francisco City Hall. She said that voters will revolt if Democrats try to push the matter too far and that Republicans will begin demanding to "send out the police and arrest these people.''

Tim Bueler, 17, a young Sonoma County GOP activist who has been featured on national television shows for trying to start a conservative club at his Rancho Cotati high school, said young voters were also getting fired up because gays and lesbians "have no right to redefine marriage.''

While many Republicans believe gays have the right to be happy and live their lives, he said, it's angering some that "communists are using homosexuality to push an attack on the family.''

Loren Thornton, a GOP activist from the South Bay, predicted the issue would backfire on the Democrats come fall.

"The more they shoot their mouths off, doing things that offend ordinary people, the better for Bush," said Thornton, who shook his head as he talked about the San Francisco mayor.

Newsom's actions will "force politicians to take a stand," he said. "And if they stand with gay marriage, they're dead.''

Pete Ragone, spokesman for Newsom, said this week that the mayor's action were not political at all, but merely an effort to uphold the state Constitution by "refusing to discriminate against anyone in our state." He noted that hundreds of couples daily were committing to each other and their families at City Hall, and that Republican leaders should see for themselves that "what has happened is both lawful and loving.''

But that explanation — and the mayor's contention that he would abide by what the courts decide — hasn't deterred Bush and other GOP officials from weighing in on a matter that fires up their conservative base.

Indeed, Republicans in Burlingame are gleeful that Lockyer, a potential Democratic candidate for governor in 2006, has had his feet put to the fire on the issue.

Likewise, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer has faced some heat. This week, the Democrat pronounced the law banning gay marriage to be "fair," getting a tongue lashing from other Democrats like Board of Equalization Chair Carole Migden, who said Boxer's reluctance to stand with gays and lesbians could cost her support from her own base.

"The mere fact that Boxer has already switched her position" from being against (Proposition 22) to calling it fair "indicates that she sees a political sensitivity to it," said Rollins. "There are an awful lot of people in America who would certainly be supportive of a contractual arrangement," such as civil unions. But most still see marriage as "a sacred thing," Rollins said.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, speaking out for the first time, also said this week that Newsom should have taken a legal route to challenge the current state law. The Democrat worried publicly that he may have set off a political earthquake that, in the end, could endanger domestic partnership rights and fire up a move toward a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

But Rollins also cautioned that Bush — or any other Republican, for that matter — should avoid pressing the matter too aggressively — or allow it to be perceived as a wedge issue.

Brulte said that voters may not see this as a wedge issue, but as a matter of principle — and that's where the GOP can win with voters.

"You have a relatively young mayor from San Francisco who wanted to make a name for himself, who's already put himself on the national political stage by defining California law," Brulte said. "But I think if he (saw) the logical conclusion of what he's doing, he wouldn't do it.''

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

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 05:07:40 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Cathedrae S. Petri Apostoli

Though impeded by the Sunday this year, today is the feastday of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle, in the Roman Church. Here is the prayer of the feast from the Tridentine ritual:

Deus, qui beáto Petro Apóstolo tuo, collátis clávibus regni caeléstis, ligándi atque solvéndi pontifícium tradidísti: concéde; ut, intercessiónis eius auxilio, a peccatórum nostrórum néxibus liberémur.

O God, by delivering the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Blessed Peter, Your Apostle, You bestowed upon him the pontifical power of binding and loosing; grant that, by the help of his intercession, we may be released from the bonds of our sins.

See also The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 08:45:21 AM
Categorized as Religious.

Three by Madeleva IV

Poems by Sister M. Madeleva, C.S.C.

See also Three by Madeleva III: Poems by Sister M. Madeleva, C.S.C.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 02/22/04 08:16:10 AM
Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.