The Blog from the Core - Thursday, August 19, 2004

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		The Weblog at The View from the Core - Thursday, August 19, 2004

The Sub Standard

A new weblog by some folks at the Weekly Standard.

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 08/19/04 09:03:27 PM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

Hoo-ahs, Bookends, Boos, and Heckling

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLVII

A delightful column by Peter Bronson in today's Cincinnati Enquirer about John Kerry's bomb at the 105th Veteran of Foreign Wars convention.

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VFW members were a lot nicer to John Kerry than he was to them in 1971, when he accused Vietnam veterans of war crimes "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.''

But when he said, "For 35 years I have fought and kept the faith with our veterans,'' it was more than some could take.

About 50 to 100 veterans walked out before Kerry spoke, said Vietnam veteran and Bush supporter Gene Watts of Columbus, a former Ohio state senator.

And in the Massachusetts delegation — Kerry's home state — two Vietnam vets stood and turned their backs on Kerry for his entire speech.

Before Kerry showed up a half-hour late, some in the Massachusetts delegation planned to walk out. "I told our group to show respect, we want to hear what he has to say,'' said Massachusetts state Commander Robert VanKirk.

So some vets just stayed away. Twelve minutes before Kerry was supposed to speak, it was announced: "There are still many seats up front.''

"I've already heard him, and I am not impressed,'' said one boycotter, Anthony Albano of New Jersey. "To me, he's an 'I' and 'me' man.''

In the Texas group, where Bush's home state sat next door to Kerry's, Vietnam vet Glen Gardner of Austin said, "There was lots of talk about walking out,'' but most showed respect.

Several vets said they didn't believe media reports that the VFW convention was evenly divided.

My own "Hoo-Ah Poll'' results show Kerry was drubbed by Bush. Monday, Bush had three Hoo-Ahs and four strong standing ovations. Kerry got zero Hoo-Ahs, two polite bookend standing ovations, one loud boo and scattered heckling.

Maybe it was his droning monotone that could put a double espresso to sleep. Or maybe it was just hard to tell which Kerry showed up. Was it the leader of the anti-war party, or was it a new Kerry auditioning to play George C. Scott doing Patton?

"Since (9/11), we have become a country divided over Iraq — and it didn't have to be that way,'' said the nominee of the party that gives French kisses to Michael Moore.

Then he pledged: "Any imminent threat to our security will be dealt with swiftly and severely. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security.''

So how does that differ from Bush, who didn't wait for permission from France and Germany to snuff an imminent threat from Saddam?

Beats me.

Kerry said, "I know what to do in Iraq,'' but didn't offer many details except to say he wants Germany and France "on the team'' — which is like asking Whoopi Goldberg to join the Navy Seals.

Kerry said he had a plan for a "smarter, more efficient war on terrorism,'' but again it was Kleenex-thin on specifics.

And Kerry couldn't resist boasting about his increasingly suspect record in Vietnam. It was not a wise move. Many VFW members have not forgotten Kerry's reckless slander of Vietnam vets as baby-killers in 1971.

"I'm here because I have to be, to take pictures,'' said William Juteau, a Vietnam vet from New York. "I don't care for him, his actions overseas or his associations with Jane Fonda.''

Korean vet Theodore Eaton said he understood why guys in his Massachusetts group turned their backs on Kerry. When Kerry talked about "keeping faith'' with vets, "It was like rubbing salt in the wounds,'' he said.

The Massachusetts commander was more diplomatic: "The war in Vietnam is over,'' he said.

Someone should tell Kerry.

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P.S. A photo from the occasion.

War veterans Jere Hill, middle, from Warham, Mass., and Robert Gibson, right, from Lexington, Ky., stand with their backs turned during Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's speech at the 105th Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in Cincinnati on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2004. Man in foreground is unidentified. Kerry received a polite if not overwhelmingly positive reaction from the VFW. But there was a clear divide, with scores of veterans sittings with their arms folded while others clapped. (AP Photo/David Kohl)

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 08/19/04 05:54:32 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.

Bigger Bounce

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLVI

A while back, I said that I thought the Republicans will get from their convention an undeniable bounce in the polls:

.... I think Bush-Cheney will get a noticeable bounce during polling after the RNC. Double digits? I don't think so. But a bounce so big, so undeniable, that it can't be explained away by taking refuge in the margin of error or the vagaries of polling methodologies....

One has been hearing tell, though, of massive & intrusive disruptions planned by anti-American protestors. (Oh, they call themselves pro-something or anti-something-else, but anti-American is what they are.) I'll say this now: if the protests go off as planned, the Republicans will get a huge bump in the polls afterwards. Double digits? Not out of the question anymore. In the Post-Cronkite Era, Americans are no longer going to be fooled by the agitprop of Marxoid protest-whores.

Or the execrable Ted Rall.

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Tourists are pleasantly surprised when New Yorkers act as friendly and polite as the people back home in Maybury. However, delegates to this month's Republican National Convention shouldn't expect to be treated to our standard out-of-towner treatment. The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army. Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places. Objects will be thrown in their direction. Children will call them obscene names.

They will not be greeted as liberators.

Well aware that it is barren soil for their party's anti-urban, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, overtly racist ideology, Republican leaders have wisely avoided New York City as a convention site for the past 150 years. Even as the rest of America turns red, we New Yorkers remain as liberal as the people's republic of San Francisco: fewer than 18 percent of the citizens of New York's five boroughs (which include relatively conservative places like Staten Island) cast ballots for Bush/Cheney in 2000. But White House strategist Karl Rove sees the continued exploitation of 9/11 for partisan political gain as Bush's key to victory in November. That means bringing the big bash three miles north of the hole where the Twin Towers used to stand, where most of the victims of 9/11 were burned, suffocated, impaled and pulverized.

Making hay of the dead is also the point of this confab's timing. The 2004 Necropublican National Convention is being held a full month later than normal, from August 30 to September 2. The original plan was to have Bush shuttle between Madison Square Garden and Ground Zero for photo ops to coincide with the third anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Bush's visits to the Trade Center site were quietly canceled a few months back after 9/11 survivors expressed revulsion at the idea. But it was too late to change the date.

Anti-Republican sentiment is rising to a fever pitch here as the dog days tick down to the dreaded affair. A poll cited by the local ABC affiliate shows 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want their city to host the RNC. And many of them are planning to do something about it.

Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch's call to "make nice" with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers — most of them Democrats — for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq to enrich Dick Cheney and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city's squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush's policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

Anywhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 anti-Bush demonstrators are expected to hit the streets of Manhattan, but the city and protest organizers can't agree on where to put them. Activists say they'll direct marchers to Central Park, their preferred site; city officials are threatening mass arrests if they do. Adding to the already combustible Chicago '68 vibe is a possible wildcat strike by city cops and firefighters. And now, as if everyone concerned wasn't already tweaky, FBI agents are traveling around the United States, to harass members of leftist groups planning to protest the New York RNC.

Strikebreaking policemen and private security personnel may be able to keep the protesters away from the convention hall. But Republicans who venture outside the Garden deserve the abuse ordinary New Yorkers will likely inflict upon them.

True, the Administration eventually coughed up the $20 billion aid package Bush promised the city after 9/11. But that sum — equal to the cost of occupying Iraq for four months — barely made up for such disaster-related expenses as police overtime, debris removal and rebuilding damaged subway stations and tunnels. New York's economy hasn't even begun to recover. As the nation's official unemployment rate hovers at six percent, the city's runs around eight. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, opposes virtually every Bush Administration decision concerning New York City.

Even viler than Bush's urban neglect is his failure to avenge the World Trade Center victims as he pledged to do on 9/14, dusty firefighter helpfully posing under his arm on The Pile. After 9/11, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were in Pakistan. They and the Taliban received funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The 19 hijackers, organized by Egyptian Islamic Jihad, were Egyptian and Saudi. But Bush didn't attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. He went after Afghanistan and Iraq instead, nations that had nothing to do with 9/11 but offered business opportunities for GOP-connected oil concerns. Incredibly, he siphoned more money and arms to the Egyptians, Saudis and Pakistanis.

Not only did Bush let the terrorists get away, he raised their allowance.

If today's GOP retained a shred of the dignity and patriotism that it once possessed as the Party of Lincoln, it would have dumped Bush in favor of a candidate more interested in defending America than his wealthy contributors. Republicans are neofascists now, and that's why New Yorkers good and true will be yelling at them to go back home.

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 08/19/04 05:29:40 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.

"Have the Democrats Gotten Religion?"

Sure! Sort of. Well, maybe. Whatever.

Joseph Knippenberg looks at the culture war as it's playing out in Democratic politics (brackets and italics in original):

.... And as long as we are paying attention to deeds rather than mere words, it makes sense to examine how Kerry and the Democrats have chosen to reach out to their religious brethren. Earlier this year, the Kerry campaign appointed its first Director of Religious Outreach, Mara Vanderslice, whom they recruited from the Dean campaign. While she had interned for a year at Jim Wallis’ liberal evangelical Sojourners magazine, she had also worked as an organizer of anti-globalization protests, some of which turned violent. Nothing in her background suggested that she could effectively reach out to mainstream people of faith. When the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights criticized her for speaking at a rally co-sponsored by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (Act-Up), the Kerry campaign cut her access to the press. Just before the Boston convention, the Democratic National Committee stepped into the breach, naming the Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson as senior advisor for religious outreach. An ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she formerly directed the liberal Clergy Network for National Leadership Change (whose "sole mission is to get a national leadership change") and is married to John Lynner Peterson, communications director for the Interfaith Alliance, an ecumenical group at the forefront of Bush’s religious critics. Her other claim to fame, noted by the Catholic League, is that she joined an amicus curiae brief in support of Michael Newdow’s suit to take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. (Less than two weeks later, she resigned under fire, admitting that she couldn’t be effective in her post.) Wherever two or three are gathered on behalf of secular liberal causes, there you will find John Kerry and his (disappearing) liaisons to the religious community. Even PBS noted that "the efforts [at the convention] are mainly aimed at political and theological liberals" and that "white evangelicals and Catholics had a much lower profile." Ray Flynn, former Democratic mayor of Boston and Clinton’s Ambassador to the Vatican, asserted that "there was no room for dissenting voice or diversity on some of these issues" at the convention. By their deeds we’ll know them indeed!...