Hurricane Frances

Let's all keep in our prayers everybody in the path of Hurricane Frances, especially emergency personnel who put their own safety, health, and lives on the line in the service of the community.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/02/04 08:49:25 PM
Categorized as Religious.

Kedwards Planning to Commit Suicide?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLXVI

A bit ago, I saw Carl Cameron on FNC saying that John Kerry plans to come out swinging. He's going to go after George Bush for having been in the Texas Air National Guard instead of committing war crimes in an unjust and immoral war in Vietnam.... — er... no... wait... — Sorry, I slipped into Kerry-1971 mode there.........

Anyway, Kedwards is going to go after Bush-Cheney, according to Cameron, for Bush having been in TANG and Cheney having gotten five deferments during the Vietnam era.

After having had his goose cooked last night, Kerry has evidently decided to inter it.

I say this because (1) nobody besides left-wing wackos and mainstream media (I know, I know: I repeat myself) really cares what Bush-Cheney did in the 1970s and (2) I have a hunch the Swiftees have actually been pulling their punches so far and will consider a Kerry offensive about the Vietnam Era to be the signal for them to intensify the assault.

P.S. Jim Geraghty agrees over at The Kerry Spot (italics in original):

.... Only a small subset of political geeks, bloggers, and Star Wars geeks will grasp the meaning of the conclusion that Kerry is deploying the famous "Ackbar defense" — i.e., blindly walking into a trap.

Unless he's going to come out and address the Swift Boat Vets' arguments point by point, there's no point in John Kerry saying another word about Vietnam for the rest of the campaign. There is nothing he could say, less relevant to the here and now, and to the argument he has to make to the voters in the next 60 days, than to bring up Dick Cheney's deferments. His surrogates — McPeak, Wes Clark, even John Edwards — can do that. McPeak did it in a blistering way Wednesday morning, in fact. But Kerry needs to portray himself as a man focused on the future.

If Kerry spends the next couple days continuing to talk about Vietnam, and displaying the same ugly, "I-served-and-you-didn't-how-dare-you-judge-me" argument he used in his earlier Massachusetts races, he will continue to step deeper and deeper into the trap.

The last man picked in the National Football League's draft each year usually gets nicknamed "Mr. Irrelevant." If Kerry continues to talk about what he, Bush and Cheney did in 1968 instead of what he will do starting Jan. 20, 2005, he will earn that nickname for himself.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/02/04 08:17:33 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Re: I'm Watching Zell Miller

My friend Paul, a former Democrat, writes:

Last night's speech was riveting television; a REAL reality show. Only 15 minutes in length, but people in political circles will be talking about that one for years to come.

What he talked about last night covered the reasons that I'm no longer a Democrat. He didn't leave the party; the party left him, much the same way that it left me. The party of FDR, JFK, Truman that he was speaking about — that was the party my grandparents and parents grew up with and supported all their lives, and taught me to support. That party doesn't exist anymore. Oh, there is a Democratic Party, to be sure, but they might as well just rename it the Communist Party and be done with it. What kind of political party has no place at their podium for people like Zell Miller and Joe Leiberman, viewing them as if they were hard-line conservatives?

Maybe it's about time that ol' Zell decides to make his party affiliation match what's obviously in his heart. I did....

That speech may have been red meat for the attendees at the convention, but they were the secondary audience; it was really a clarion call to rank-and-file Democrats that they need to perform some serious examination of the direction in which their party is headed and its leaders, or face the real possibility of a future where the Democratic Party is one day relegated to minor-party status or even extinction.

P.S. Margaret also writes:

Zell is my new hero — that is what a serious Marine sounds like! Thank God, and I do, that the conservatives in this country are finally letting loose with the unvarnished truth. I was afraid I'd die before hearing it. The "newsies" weren't able to distort the speeches; they had to listen to every painful word, and cringe that it was their candidate being dissected....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/02/04 05:59:31 PM
Categorized as Political.

Rest Across the River

A new blogger in the neighborhood — literally. Bentleyville is only a few miles from Roscoe. But, it's on the same side of the river — the Monongahela, that is. ;-)

(Thanks, Christopher.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/02/04 05:47:47 PM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

Chastity — In San Francisco?

A beautiful & remarkable website.

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/02/04 07:32:59 AM
Categorized as Religious.

The Mythology of the Liberal-Left in America

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLXV

James Taranto with some insightful observations yesterday. (Quoted ellipses in original.)

.... Street protest is central to the mythology of the liberal-left in America, which romanticizes (rightly) the civil-rights marches of the early 1960s and (less rightly) the antiwar demonstrations of the late '60s and early '70s. In contrast, there's nothing like this on the right, except for the antiabortion movement and the occasional ad hoc protest, like the one in Florida against the Clinton administration's abduction and deportation of Elian Gonzalez.

The liberal media generally present these protests as if they're wholesome, all-American expressions of opinion, glossing over the reality that the protesters are a motley collection of extreme partisans, antieverything nihilists and single-issue fanatics. This allows liberal elites to imagine that their loathing of the president is a populist posture.

Yet although it would be unfair to characterize the protesters as representing the mainstream of the Democratic Party, the differences between the "respectable" liberal-left and the wacko protesters have become increasingly blurred. While we've been out on the town enjoying the parties of the right, National Review's Byron York has been bravely venturing into the fever swamps of the Angry Left. Yesterday he reported on "the 'Big Tent Extravaganza,' a gathering of musicians, actors, and comedians co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood and its affiliate, Planned Parenthood Republicans for Choice":

One featured performer, the comedian Lewis Black, had a message for GOP delegates who might hold other views.

"It is un-fu**ing-believable that since the time I was 15 we have been having to argue this sh**," Black said. "There comes a point where you say, f**k you, enough is enough. There is no argument. It's not your body, a**hole. Shut the f**k up."

Black's words summed up the uneasy division onstage at the Beacon. Every time a speaker at the "Big Tent Extravaganza" offered conciliatory words — as when Sex in the City actress Cynthia Nixon said, "I am here today to applaud and thank and salute a brave and tenacious group of Republicans, Republicans for Choice" — another speaker was considerably less welcoming. Shortly before Nixon spoke, for example, the lesbian comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer said of religious conservatives, "I support any religion that brings people up. Anything that brings people down, your ass is mine. That's f**king bullsh**." Westenhoefer also described her fundamentalist sister as "a whack-job Christian," and added that "Mormons are whack jobs, too." And she launched into an extended discussion of the actor Mel Gibson and his movie The Passion, saying, "He's a f**king a**hole."

Today York has a report on an appearance by former Enron adviser Paul Krugman:

Krugman says he believes the United States needs a "mega-Watergate" scandal to uncover a far-reaching right-wing conspiracy, going back forty years, to gain control of the U.S. government and roll back civil rights.... Krugman told the crowd that the president is simply a front man for larger and more sinister forces.

"We probably make a mistake when we place too much emphasis on Bush the individual," said Krugman, who received a standing ovation when he was introduced. "This really isn't about Bush. Bush is the guy that the movement found to take them over the top. But it didn't start with him, and it won't end with him. What's going on in this country is that a radical movement... that had been building for several decades, finally found their moment and their man in Bush."

Krugman described the conspiracy as "the coalition between the malefactors of great wealth and the religious right." He offered no further details about who, precisely, is in the conspiracy but said that "substantial chunks of the media are part of this same movement."

Krugman said he and other liberals had been "asleep" and unaware of the true dimensions of the danger during the years in which President Bill Clinton found himself facing a variety of scandal allegations. But Krugman said there is a "complete continuity" between today's politics and the "campaign of slander and innuendo" against Clinton. "There's complete continuity going back, really, I think — but this is my next book — you really need to go back to Goldwater. A lot of this has to do with civil rights, and the people who don't like them."

Such paranoid lunacy would be merely laughable did it not come from someone who has a twice-weekly op-ed slot at the once-respected New York Times. Krugman's moonbat ranting encapsulates the combination of rage and nostalgia that is at the heart of the Angry Left. They still think they're fighting for civil rights, a battle their predecessors won two generations ago. They long for another Vietnam; hence the endless insistence that Afghanistan and Iraq are "quagmires." And they fondly remember — and hope for a repetition of — Watergate. This time, they hope, such a scandal will do permanent damage to the GOP and conservatism.

In the 1970s, the left prevailed in persuading America to withdraw from Vietnam, albeit at the cost (which they rarely acknowledge) of subjecting millions of Vietnamese people to communist slavery, and Watergate enabled them to bring down a hated president — something they had been unable to do at the ballot box. For guys like Krugman, that is, the era of Vietnam and Watergate was a time of triumph. But for most Americans it was a low point in recent American history — and certainly not something we'd like to relive....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/02/04 07:16:23 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode.